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EP. REVIEW: Astra Lost in Space


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steelmirror



Joined: 22 Oct 2015
Posts: 342
PostPosted: Fri Aug 23, 2019 1:24 pm Reply with quote
I'll throw in my agreement that I don't believe that the crew of the Astra is actually from Earth. If Polina is from Earth in the near future, where Russia, Seattle, and so on are all still around, in a time when I expect to still be living, then I don't think that the kids and their world full of places and political arrangements completely unfamiliar to us are the same place.

They COULD be from Earth much more distant in the future than their year of 20whatever suggests, and they are just using an alternative dating system. That explanation struggles somewhat because I'm not sure if it would be reasonable for them to be able to communicate with Polina in the same language so easily.

So my theory is that they are from another planet, one which was settled a while ago by colonists on another ark ship from Earth for whatever reason, maybe fleeing some sort of catastrophe. It does seem likely that most of them are clones of their parents. Maybe cloning technology played a big part in being able to colonize their new world so quickly? I dunno.

No idea what is happening with the wormhole thing, why it put them into orbit around a world with an ark ship, or what it wants. I do think that all the other planets they've been visiting so far were probably targets in the same colonization program that Polina was on a mission for, and that each of the worlds was disqualified as a home for humanity because of some feature that made it untenable for immediate colonization. That's why the ship had info about each planet on board, and also why none of the planets have been colonized by humans despite their apparent technological ability to do so.

I look forward to being proven horribly wrong in all my suppositions in the future Anime hyper.

PS. as an aside, I thought it was odd since I first noticed in ep 3 that Aries' name was upside down in the OP of the show, which turned out to be foreshadowing in a pretty big way. I'm wondering what other foreshadowing might be gleaned from the OP!
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Fri Aug 23, 2019 1:46 pm Reply with quote
whiskeyii wrote:
But I am genuinely confused that one of Polina's crewmmates dog tag's had a date of birth for 2012 in Seattle, WA, which is weird, because we haven't even heard if Seattle, Washington state, or even the US is still even around at this point.

I hadn't noticed that, but that's a relief, since it all but rules out the time travel possibility. It's now 2063, so if he was born in 2012, and she's been asleep for 12 years, that means he was 39 when he died, which is reasonable.

I hadn't put much stock in the names, since they mentioned a war and Charce's medieval kingdom being allowed to remain separate, so it seems like it resulted in some major geopolitical reshuffling, and new names for places and countries could be part of that. If they're merely colony world names or something, you'd expect at least a few places like Nueva España or NeoTokyo out there, instead of stuff like Pupapep and Giveav. Or maybe those are all alien names. Wink Maybe the DNA tests aren't to prove you're human, but to prove you're not human, to protect against invasion by those colonizing humans. Evil or Very Mad Epileptic trees!!!

I also didn't put much weight on her suit, since tech can advance at ridiculous rates (the kids all have fashion space suits from different designers!), but who knows, it could mean something.

One other thing, fwiw, the shot of the Earth she wants to return to seems to have a rather conspicuous black spot on it - it looks kind of like a view from the north pole sans ice cap.
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WatcherZer



Joined: 29 Dec 2016
Posts: 266
PostPosted: Sat Aug 24, 2019 11:47 am Reply with quote
I think they are from Earth but its an alternate universe where technology progressed faster. Theres a reference to the Second World War only ending in the 60's and that at the conclusion a world government was formed which banned guns.

Also as to the parents motive for getting rid of their clones think back a couple of episodes to when the son of the politician was giving his backstory. One of the issues that the politician was dealing with was a bill that made it mandatory for everyone to have their DNA recorded by the state. That would have exposed the fact the kids were clones.
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myskaros



Joined: 13 Jun 2011
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2019 4:26 pm Reply with quote
Wahahahaha, I was waiting for this episode xD
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WatcherZer



Joined: 29 Dec 2016
Posts: 266
PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2019 6:19 pm Reply with quote
It must be a parallel universe, I cant see how if it was actually a massive time jump (and rather than 12 years Polina had been asleep for thousands and the year is actually the year since the new colonies founding) that the ships would have changed so little that their modules are interchangeable in both hardware and software.

But it does play into one of my biggest gripes with the series, that they never questioned why there was an empty ship floating in space, they never wondered what happened to the previous crew (Hell they could have stranded them in deep space by nicking their spaceship while they were on an away mission for all they know) And why they never attempted to access any ships logs to learn about the ship and crew? No personal effects on the ship?
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steelmirror



Joined: 22 Oct 2015
Posts: 342
PostPosted: Thu Aug 29, 2019 1:21 am Reply with quote
I just want to say, I totally called it. Razz

Look, let me enjoy it. I never get these things right.

I'm still thinking that the planet they are all from (Astra I guess) is a colony that was founded by the same program that Polina was a part of, which is also the program that discovered all the planets the kids have been to. The Astra (the ship, not the world; that's going to get annoying) was probably also a part of that exploration program, and survived in better condition than Polina's ship did because there isn't much weather to worry about in space.

My only real question is why the kids speak a language that is apparently completely intelligible to Polina. Other than that little quirk, my guess would be that they come from several centuries or millenia after Polina's time, probably 2063 (or whatever the year is, idr exactly) years after the founding of Astra (the world, not the ship).

My next guess is that Aries is a clone of Seira who was meant to either be a vessel for her consciousness or spare organs. Charce knows more about this than he's letting on, so maybe he actually isn't a clone himself, but arranged to be put on the trip because he realized that Aries was a clone and he wanted to rescue her to save Seira...or something. Okay I'm reaching a bit on that one, but he just seems so suspicious. I think he probably broke the communicator, but not because he was working with the adults, but for his own ends somehow. Stopping them from communicating with their home planet so that he could bring them back without letting anyone else know first, so he could take Aries back with him to save Seira maybe?

Still having great fun with the show, and enjoyed a bit of a rest episode before what I assume will be the start of the show's climactic arc next week.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2019 1:47 am Reply with quote
So they named the ship Astra after part of a quote on a plate on the ship and never mentioned it shared the name of their home planet, instead seeming like it was new to them?
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Netero



Joined: 10 Jun 2018
Posts: 159
PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2019 2:31 pm Reply with quote
I can't buy the "2000 years have passed" thing. Because the two spaceships were clearly built around the same time (otherwise they wouldn't fit like Lego), wouldn't the kids immediately spot that the one they found in orbit was something out of ancient archaeology?
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steelmirror



Joined: 22 Oct 2015
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2019 5:57 pm Reply with quote
Netero wrote:
I can't buy the "2000 years have passed" thing. Because the two spaceships were clearly built around the same time (otherwise they wouldn't fit like Lego), wouldn't the kids immediately spot that the one they found in orbit was something out of ancient archaeology?
It's a pretty weak guess for a number of reasons. Technology may not have advanced too far, if most of people's effort has been spent in trying to settle a new world instead of pure scientific research. But yeah, that's a stretch. The language barrier is more evidence against centuries having passed. It could have only been a few decades, but then I'm not sure how the kids don't know what Earth is, or why the planet they are from looks like it's been settled for a long time.

I'm still going to stick with that prediction until the show proves me horribly wrong!

It also bothers the astronomer in me that they would name a planet "Star", but then Japanese iirc has a single word that can mean both "planet" or "star", so I guess the confusion is baked into their lexicon. Would irk me to no end if I ever lived there.
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DuskyPredator



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PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2019 10:48 pm Reply with quote
I do have a problem with the theory with the Charce being sent to make sure it worked, because it kind of sounded like they expected them all to die in the vacuum after being wormholed, I don't think they knew the other ship would be there. Which I have built my own theory that Charce was one of the clones, and perhaps foreseeing the change in policy and that the rest would dispose of the clones, the original maybe went through with the memory implantation. He placed the ship at the location so that they could survive, all so he could have Aries who was going to be disposed of, for whatever her connection to Seira is. And so Charce may still be planning to kill the rest of them as to remove evidence to get his Seira back.
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4070
PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2019 1:57 am Reply with quote
Quote:
That also might explain why there was a return ship prepared for them (or more specifically, prepared for one person).


An Ark type ship that's built on the same era as the one of the "Great Human Exodus"? That's... unlikely... to put it mildly. I can at least accept a ship in space showing less aging than one that stuck on a planet's atmosphere.

But I said in the other thread, I have no idea of the level of science or even science fiction this author has knowledge of... for example, the moment I saw Astra, I thought "Oh, that's Earth but one that went through cataclysmic experiences as well as time to change the land mass and this projection is from 2000 light years away so its image is also 2000 years in the past. Neat"... but I have no idea how the author knows what they're doing or if they're just taking plot twists from Sci Fi movies to use in a series that the author had characters actively call more romantic comedy than science fiction adventure. That's a narrative foul by the way... "Don't blame me for bad science, this isn't that kind of story. Now let's have some science facts I cribbed from Ridley Scott!"

But "It was Earth all along" was Rod Serling's favorite plot twist, an ending he used multiple times in the Twilight Zone and more famously if more confusingly in the Planet of the Apes. In that one, they ended up going back to the their planet of origin but there was some wonky, not the scientific term, side effects from time dilation due to FTL travel.

At this point, I don't really care as the solution/problem may as well just be attributed to Star Trek IV's alien space whales.
Why anything?
Because alien space whales.

Also, I'm still betting the traitor is the puppet. Why?
Because alien space whales.

Additional: Seeing how the founding of Astra was done two thousand years ago, the Astra group could actually watch it happen in real time; That would be a great set up if they were trying to solve a two thousand year old murder... or something similar.

If they looked behind them, it'd be three thousand years in the past... FTL travel is funny that way. I wondered, I always wondered why that 5000 light year distance was so exact...

It's suggestive but I'm not saying of what as it could possible just be a better story, a science fiction Rear Window.... Wow, that would be pretty sweet, wouldn't it?
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2019 4:34 am Reply with quote
It sure does seem to be a Chekhov's puppet, doesn't it? It ostensibly reads her thoughts and expresses them for her, but she's never been all that shy around people that we've seen, so why would she need such a crutch? It should have another purpose other than mascot character. It hasn't even been on screen enough to really fill that role.
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steelmirror



Joined: 22 Oct 2015
Posts: 342
PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2019 11:17 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
It sure does seem to be a Chekhov's puppet, doesn't it?
That's exactly the kind of crazy twist fan theory that I'd be totally on board for if it turns out to be true. Anime hyper
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Nom De Plume De Fanboy
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Joined: 14 Jan 2011
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 04, 2019 11:29 pm Reply with quote
Ep 10

So, spoiler[two alternative takes on human history]. That's going to to take some work to straighten that out.

I was kinda hoping 'the enemy' spoiler[would have given up]...

I don't care how nice the person has been, I think I'd have to lock them up and put the key away until the ship's docked and unloaded in a very safe place. That's a lot of power to control from a little hand remote control. Could come in handy, though. Wink

That last line in the ep does spoiler[ make Charce's T-shirt back at the beach planet a little more understandable.] Smile

And the puppet could still be a bad guy, or something? This show is so full of twists.
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FilthyCasual



Joined: 01 Jun 2015
Posts: 2165
PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 7:13 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
the second half takes the crew to the final pit stop planet of Galem (an anagram of Legma, of course)
Admins, ban this man.

The #1 indicator of who the traitor was was that spoiler[Charce was last in the OP, and before that one of the last people to be on the tankoubon covers.]
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