One Good Reason Space Bros Shouldn’t Be Overlooked

is that it’s a grown-up show. When I saw it on this season’s chart, I was all too ready to blow it off, having long grown tired of A1 Pictures’ constant stream of very pretty looking melodramatic shows. But this isn’t a show about lame crying teenagers, it’s about a grown-up pair of brothers going to space. There’s still a lot of crying, but it’s adult crying. Or something.

Unlike ghostlightning, I couldn’t care less about space, astronomy, or hard science, but I do love shows about brotherhood, because like him, I am the oldest (of three in my case). My first brother is only a year and a half younger than me, whereas Mutto’s is three years, but it’s just as well. When I was fifteen or so, my brother started to overtake me in height, and Mutto’s looks like he overtook him at twelve. Hibito is god damn monstrous.

I’m ten years too young to have a brother who’s way the fuck more successful than I am, but that doesn’t mean it seems unlikely. He may be fairly directionless, but at least he’s in a university, unlike some older brother who’s been bumming around the house for almost a solid year.

Mutto and Hibito seem to have been really close, which is good for me because I’m also extremely close to my brothers. Victor (nineteen) and I certainly ran around in a forest recording things for most of our teen years. Unlike Mutto, but like Hibito, my brother and I never forget anything that we do (though Victor is MUCH better at remembering every promise that I’ve ever made to him, apparently). We probably will never forget because the video evidence is everywhere, constantly reminding us.

Here’s a fact I didn’t remember: apparently, our still-running Project Awesomeness comedy series was originally something I thought would make us “famous.” According to Victor, every time I’ve ever talked about my plans, they’re about how I’m going to become rich and famous one day. Then I think back—to things I always remember, now re-contextualized into a straight line.

I remember being eight years old, Victor probably six, and we were jumping up and down on our beds. I was explaining to him that the video game I was “designing” was going to make me two million dollars. I literally thought that if I “designed” a game (this involved writing strategy-guide-esque descriptions of levels, drawing maps and enemies, etc.) and sold it to Nintendo, they would give me two million dollars. With that money, I explained, still jumping, I would purchase every video game console and every video game in existence.

Fast forward seven years; I’m fifteen, he’s fourteen. I’m dead-set on becoming a director. As a matter of fact, what I want to do is drop out of school like Ryuhei Kitamura did and make a breakout low-budget film, like he did with Versus, and become world famous. My breakout would make me a full-time director, and what did I want to do with the money? Buy every anime DVD in existence. I never change.

Hell, maybe the reason I’m not driven right now is that there’s no massive stock of collectible entertainment I want to purchase.

Anyways, here’s what my little brothers want to do in life:

My fourteen year-old brother, Shade, wants to be a game designer.

Victor isn’t sure exactly what he wants to do, but he knows he wants to do film, and he’s in a film curriculum.

HORY SHIET.

Both of them are lazy and impassionate, yet both are far better at what they’re trying to do than I ever was (and more consistent). Shade modifies his PC games (i.e. making Minecraft skins, etc.) and has a load of modeling programs. Victor is good enough at editing videos and enjoys it enough that there’s no reason for me to ever do it (I am terrible).

Have I gotten off-track? Mutto is a reprisal of Hirata Hiroaki’s previous role as Kotetsu from Tiger and Bunny: another older guy who we love, who acts like a loser even though he really isn’t one. Both characters start by losing their jobs and work their way back to the top (one would expect).

This show could be great, or it could be good. Basking in the majesty of space doesn’t have any effect on me, but we’ll see how it goes.