Thread: Licensed + Crunchyroll Uchuu Kyoudai (Space Brothers)
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Old 2012-09-30, 17:03   Link #568
cyth
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Age: 38
I seriously don't think Mizoguchi is as bad as you guys seem to think. JAXA wouldn't accept his team's decision for Yuri and himself to advance if he were that self-centered. I mean, this is serious business, JAXA had been monitoring the guy's mental state all along. Surely they would have stepped in if they saw him as an inappropriate candidate that could hurt future missions.

Nitta was introduced to us as a jealous nonbeliever, but he turned out to be a pretty cool guy. Now the series is trying its hand with Takio, trying to portray him as a tightass that won't pass Mutta no matter what, as he is supposedly holding a grudge against Hibito. I didn't believe that premise for a second. Takio has visited space, he must have a solid state of mind. Honestly, I thought it was below the series to try the same hand again. Now here comes the big bad Mizoguchi that's going to ruin everybody's fun. I think it's the most obvious red herring to date. You can easily notice that there are no true antagonists in this series, except bad luck. All of the astronaut figures have turned out to be cool people in the end. I seriously don't know why the series is even attempting to make Mizoguchi look like a bad guy at this point.

Think about this for a second: the real winner on Team A was Mutta, as he was able to convince JAXA on his own merit. If Fukuda got lucky at Rock Paper Scissors, JAXA would've had doubts about him. Heck, they still might have doubts about Serika or Nitta, even though they said right before the beginning of the second exam that any one of the candidates was fit to become an astronaut. Circumstances have changed and made that statement invalid because JAXA got to probe their mental state and daily interaction for two weeks.

While Mizoguchi's selection approach wasn't the most appropriate for what they were doing, it had legitimacy because the rules were clear from the start. One might say Team A had a system as well (Rock Paper Scissors), but this was decided at the very last minute. Team A believed that as time passed, they would be able to discern naturally who gets to advance. They couldn't agree on that because they didn't anticipate they would be making a very close call, so their system was fundamentally flawed. Instead of forcing themselves through a vote, Mutta threw the original premise out the window! Compared to that, Mizoguchi gets mad props for being consistent. He made sure the original selection approach was carried out, even when one of the members received a green card to destroy the score board. This convinced me Mizoguchi has the integrity to qualify for the job, and even though JAXA and NASA might have some doubts about him, I doubt those are about his self-centeredness.
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