The thing about Kanata no Astra is, there’s a lot of stuff that happens – character details and the like – which consumers of the story reflexively try and attach some sort of plot significance to.  And some stuff is significant – there are a couple of large mysteries at the center of events here to be sure.  But over time I’ve come to realize that it’s the incidentals that make Kanata no Astra something more than a standard animanga sci-fi serial – the character quirks especially.  Stuff doesn’t have to mean something, it just has to be entertaining and make you feel like you know the characters a little better.  That’s not the frosting – with Kanata no Astra, that’s the cake.

Take the seemingly throwaway exchange between Quitterie and Zack where he walks in on her in the bathroom after she’s taken a shower.  He totally doesn’t give a flip – he casually apologizes for not checking the “in use” indicator and goes to wash his face.  And she’s more pissed that he’s not turned on than that he saw her naked.  That didn’t play out according to the anime script, but these two are old friends and we learn a lot about their relationship through this little encounter.

A bunch of lovably goofy kids lost in space, acting like goody kids – that’s KnA pretty much, for better or worse.  If this story didn’t have stuff like Aries’ alien laugh or everyone deciding to adopt Beego’s “Aye, yeah!” anime catch phrase (and turn it into a burn on Kanata) it would have no raison d’être.  Of course things could hardly be more serious – they’re fighting for their lives and have a potential traitor in their midst – but their coping mechanism is simply to keep being themselves.  And Kanata is pretty sharp even if he plays the fool sometimes – he understands this on some level (I think because of his survival in a similar situation as a child) and tries to keep everyone in their comfort zone as much as possible.

Shummoor proves to be reticent in giving up provisions the kids need to survive until their next way station – the best food they find on their first sojourn is the “candy plants“, but they spoil in minutes and prove unsuitable for long-term use.  As for fauna, the most prominent entry is the “gruppies“, an ostrich-like species that seems to be self-domesticating (I was never quite sure why they were “unsuitable” for food, apart from the emotional issue).  Kanata decides that since the worst-case scenario is running out of food in space, they’ll remain however long it takes to find enough to get them to their next stop.  And Luca makes a rather unfortunate comment about Yunhua and her suspected eating habits.

Yunhua has definitely been the cipher of the cast for the first three episodes, but it’s always been clear that she’s socially awkward and doesn’t seem comfortable as part of the group.  We’re shown why here, as her mother is an unholy terror who seemed intent on destroying her daughter’s self-esteem at every turn.  Eventually Yunhua bails and leaves a note saying she’s going to remain (and die) on Shummoor, and Luca blames himself (Ulgar admits some responsibility too until Luca tries to share the blame, after which he shoves it all back on Luca).  She leaves her glasses behind, but Aries (the observant one) has realized that they were strictly for show.

As for the science, well, again it proves creative and interesting though perhaps not entirely realistic.  A mushroom seems to be at the top of the food chain here, symbiotically working with a type of moss to disable them with poisonous spores and lure them to their deaths looking for the cure.  Kanata and Yunhua are the only ones with their helmets on (it was the only way he could get her to talk with him) and thus, they’re the ones tasked with trying to find a cure before the poison does their crewmates in.

The rest is pretty much Kanata being Kanata (he was never going to let the others die, though the solution he figures out is a bit head-desk) and Yunhua finally showing the others her true self – her dream is to be a singer, and as it turns out going into space and getting sucked through a wormhole was the only way she was able to get far enough away from her mother to sing in public.  Another crisis is (barely) averted and Yunhua finds her place in the team, though the underlying threats to everyone’s survival certainly haven’t gone anywhere.