Space Brothers #19

Or 宇宙兄弟 in Japanese. It's hard to believe this series is now up to volume 19. After the movie earlier in the year, which covered the first 7 volumes, and the anime series that is running too early on Sunday mornings for me to watch, the series seems to be pumping out content and establishing itself as a profitable franchise.

But it seemed to me that the story had stagnated a bit, everyone is still dealing with the fallout from Hibito's accident on the moon. The last few volumes seemed to be going in circles. Mutta getting shuffled around to various projects and training, but now in volume 19 I can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel as Hibito moves on with his career.

I'm a big fan of hard science fiction, Makoto Yukimura's Planetes from 10 years ago being one of my favourites, but it seems that the roles of NASA and JAXA have changed a lot recently. A lot less focus on the manned space flight we see in Uchu Kyodai, but I'm not sure a manga about little wheeled buggies testing dirt on Mars makes for an entertaining read. We need the human drama. So even if there is less need for astronauts in the future, I hope Uchu Kyodai is inspiring Japanese kids to look at the stars and become interested in science and astronomy.