Astra Lost in Space Review

Can I just say it's a good show and you all just trust me without me giving any details? No? Well fuck, this is going to be an odd review to write. The thing with Astra Lost in Space is that just about everything really good about this show is hidden behind the spoilers,and none of these are small things I feel comfortable talking about in a review, they are all big.

The show itself sees everyone going to Space Camp, but once their team leaves the spaceship they are sucked into some kind of worm hole and dropped off 5,000 Light-years away from the planet. Due to a bit of luck, they had on their spacesuits at the time and ended up near a ship floating in outer space. The show makes the choice to not start on a normal anime episode, but a forty-five-minute episode. While it also ends on one, every other episode is normal length.

This first episode basically introduces you to the premise and the nine students that were part of the group. On the one hand, it does a great job of this, but the characters all feel a bit flat at first,and it's not something that really improves all that much. You essentially get just enough that they do feel like actual characters,but with one fantastic exception near the end of the show, you really don't get too much beyond some pretty basic character archetypes.Good, but for a show that is carried mostly by the characters I would hope for a bit more.

It is nice to see how well they all use their skills to overcome the problems of trying to get back home, and while many of them are more skilled in certain regards then you would expect seventeen-year olds to be, it's kind of a necessary conceit of the show's premise and doesn't really detract at all for me. You have a guy with a high IQ who is knowledgeable about electronics and ships,someone who has studied a lot of biology, a man competent with weaponry, and a variety of other things. There is one person who, in all honestly, could be cut from the show without any real changes needing to be made to the show and is actually kind of worthless to the overall story.

And despite the characters themselves being rather simple, they do have some pretty great relationships with each other. They all interact differently depending on who they are with at the time,while still feeling like they are the same person. Luca, for example,is always a pretty outgoing and fun character, but only with Ulgar does he go out of his way to tease him.

Something the show never truly escapes from, however, is the way it just unloads exposition and backstory on you. It always comes in giant dumps, and it's a bit obnoxious at times. If you can put up with that, it really does give you a lot of great lore and interesting things to think about, it's just not something delivered in the greatest of ways.

The last thing I can really talk about is the variety of planets they come across, and while I'd hope for more in a show about exploring the galaxy you do get a lot of interesting things. A small spoiler, there is one area they visit where the plants seem to be operating with animal hearts, and some interesting things come about as a result of that. Other planets catch them entirely off guard with their dangers, and the show does a great job of giving all these different places exotic appeals.

And then I can't say anymore, and so far it kind of just sounds like an average show. The twists, however, are what make it a few steps beyond that, and make it a really good show. Nothing likely to crack my top five of the year, possibly not even top ten considering it's been a really good year, but if you have the time it's definitely one worth taking the time to watch if a show like this is up your alley.