English Dub Review: Astra Lost in Space “Culprit”

In the last episode, a series of revelations were unraveled. Not only are most of the space crew discovered they were clones of their uncaring biological parents whose mere existence was meant for their ulterior motives, but Paulina discovered that the Earth she spent years trying to save is no more and is replaced with a similar planet called “Astra” with a slightly different history compared to the Earth we know. As the group talk with each other, Paulina (And by-extension the audience) discover that Earth and Astra both had the same history up until 1962, wherein Astra’s history, the Cuban Missile Crisis caused World War III, spurring the survivors to learn from their foolish mistakes and form the “unified world government” which not only removed the concept of separate countries & territories but supposedly banned firearms thereby establishing a form of “world peace”.

While a good portion of this episode is spent on a series of exposition-dumps that further expand upon the established universe this show is set in, they do put the pieces together on what Earths’s original plan was that Paulina was supposedly part of, but it turns out that the same “Ark ship” that the Astra Crew is currently traveling in was one of many ships designed to seek out habitable planets when news of an asteroid would destroy Earth in 8 years and the entire population would evacuate in advance through the use of teleportation devices/wormholes which were a technological advancement that wasn’t fully realized at the time. Of course, given its past encounters with the Astra crew, these “wormholes” were one of the many contributing factors that lead to a few near-death experiences, and consequently the events of the first episode. Heck, they even figure out that they were brought to what was left of Earth through one of these wormholes, that almost killed them the first time.

As Paulina theorizes that Earth’s population successfully settled on Astra, she assumes that the government felt the need to cover up their history for some odd reason. You’d think shit like this would be an event that’s worth adding to their history books yet why would the Schools in Astra never encourage studying the past? That kinda defeats the purpose of history classes, doesn’t it? It’s even more shocking that religion doesn’t exist in their universe either. But Aries being so dead-set of focusing on their mission, suggests that rather than thinking on it too much, they should focus on getting home first. As they all arrive in the last planet, “Galem”, and forage for supplies, Kanata encounters another wormhole and narrowly escapes the damn thing. Realizing that the traitor will most likely make another attempt to take them out on Galem and take the last leg of the trip home themselves, Kanata decides after nine damn episodes to confront the actual traitor, who he has already figured out. Without giving too much away, the episode ends on another intense cliffhanger when we find out who the traitor is, and it’s somebody even I didn’t expect…

Our Take

Damn shit got way too intense at the end there, and on Kanata’s end, that was one weird fast-paced solution had to expose the traitor who was pretty much a mystery up to this point. Aside from one specific clue, I guess they never really had anything else to work with but among all this drama, we still got a heaping dose of space exploration and they even arrive at a new planet. I must say, the world fiction and building in this show keep managing to be pretty damn spectacular.

If there’s anything I’m bothered by the most in regards to this “alternate history” that’s just been established, it’s that a space ship “MANAGED” to survive all along orbiting around Earth and still be in one piece after the Earth was impacted by a dangerous asteroid, and yet these scientists could make a wormhole device to teleport people and objects but couldn’t create a weapon that could shatter this asteroid Armageddon-style before it hits earth? Or at least, change its path? Heck, they could in-theory also have used this wormhole thingy to warp the damn asteroid away from Earth instead of themselves.

With two episodes left, I’m very much looking forward to what’s to come during the finale.