kurt93 - 2014-12-10 03:19:30

Space. The final frontier. Joto, matte! Wrong series. That's Star Trek, I think? Star Wars? ...What was it again! Ah! It was Star Fight! Star Battle? Star Voyage? ...Star Wars. You got me. Anyway, this anime is nothing like that, but it relates in one way: it's interstellar! 

But no. It is not Star Wars. And this anime is pretty hard to find. I spent years looking for it. YEARS. (There's one other anime I've been spending years looking for, too, but I'll never find it tbh.) Anyway, I'm off track.

Story.

Futatsu no Spica follows the story of Asumi Kamogawa who dreams of going into space. So, she applies for Tokyo Space School so she can study to become an astronaut. Asumi can see a ghost whom she calls "Lion-san" who cannot leave the town, and Lion-san is her best friend. Lion-san is the one who nutured Asumi's interest in space. After the entrance exam, Asumi makes it into Tokyo Space School, and many obstacles are sure to get in her way, such as her height, but she makes friends along the way and they all make a promise to never give up and go for their dreams of going into space. This is the story of a girl who just simply wants to go into space.

This story is very easy to follow. It's probably the anime's strongest points. However, in its twenty episodes, it doesn't adapt a lot of the manga. It only adapts the first twenty five chapters and, it ends some things prematurely. That's not good... Still the story is its strongest point. The story is pretty accurate to the manga.

But the animation is not accurate. First of all, Asumi's design is entirely inaccurate to the way she looks in the manga. Asumi is really small. In the manga, you'd mistake her for an elementary school girl, but in the anime, she's got a rather inaccurate figure. Her hair is a lot different, and she doesn't look like she did in the manga. ...I didn't like that. Also, we meet a character named Kei during the space exam. First of all, Kei had glasses at first. In this version, she doesn't seem to have them at all. At some point, she switched to contacts, but in the anime, she has perfect vision. That's very inaccurate. It's very visually inaccurate. For that, it gets a not so nice score in the animation department.

The animation itself is fine, but the art inaccuracy kills it for me.

The sound is average. The voice acting is well done, but I don't pay any attention to the sound, to be honest. 

Characters are pretty good. I love Asumi's simple aspiration to get into space and to be with her friends. Of course, since the show doesn't go through the entire manga, I can't say there's any character development, sadly. Asumi and Lion-san's relationship is wonderful, though. Kei is okay. She really does care for Asumi (which it doesn't really get to in the anime since it doesn't get that far.) As for Marika, I really do like her, but since the anime didn't adapt the more important parts of Marika, it's hard to love her in the anime version. Fuchiya and Shu are great characters, though. 

Over all, I really do I like this anime. I feel it just came out way too early. Maybe it would have been great if it came out later than it did to adapt more of the manga. 20 episodes wasn't enough, either, but it's a perfect anime for kids to watch. 

Try it at least once.

Also, there's a lot of flashback episodes, don't get bored. They're actually important.