Futatsu no Spica Episode 1
Its the year 20xx and Japan had just build their own spacecraft and will be launching it soon. on the day of the launch, a little girl, named Kamogawa Asumi, and her friend, Fuchuya Shinnosuke, were at a festival, and watched the launch from afar. Unfortunately while on its way up to space, the spacecraft burst into flames, killing all aboard.
Ten years later, the little girl is now a high school student, on her way to her first day in school. This is not just any school. Its a Space School, established for the purpose of molding young minds to oneday, maybe, become outstanding astronauts.
Asumi's good friend, Shinnosuke, a guy, also manage to pass the exam to get into the same school. It can be seen right from the beginning that Shinnosuke admires Asumi, and may even like her as more than a friend. They bantered as they walked together to the school.
In the class, there were a small number of students together with Asumi and Fuchuya. Among them are Suzuki Shu, Ukita Marika and Omi Kei.
Straight away, the class teacher taught them a difficult subject, causing many of them to have difficulty catching up to the studies. Equally tough was the physical eds class. That first day, they met the many teachers and special tutors who would be teaching them throughout their schooling there.
While on her way to class, Asumi saw a guy (played by the uber cute Mukai Osamu- love him in AtaDan!) playing with water rockets. She felt a kinship with the guy as she also like to play with water rockets. After chatting a short while with him, Asumi continued on to class.
Omi didn't like Ukita as she felt Ukita was accepted into the school due to her family's connections, and not by her own abilities. When she found out that Asumi was also from such an "influential" family, she began ignoring Asumi.
The next day, the whole class was told that they are going to be given a test. Its team effort where everyone must contribute to the test, otherwise the whole team will fail. In random order, Asumi, Fuchuya, Shu, Ukita and Omi are in the same team.
The test requires that they build a miniature version of a structure that is situation away from the building that they are in. In each instance, only one member can run to view and memorize the structure. Every member can only run once. And there is a time limit to this exercise.
In the beginning, everyone was fighting with each other, especially Ukita and Omi, because Omi was the slowest of the group in a run. Suzuki Shu suddenly suggested that the person with the best eye for perspective should go first. Asumi immediately suggested Omi, as she is an avid photographer, thus having a good eye for pictures and designs. Next, Fuchuya was sent out as he was the one who is good with mechanism, what with having his own motorbike and all.
In the observation room, the teachers and special tutors were watching the interaction and noted that the guy, Shu was clever in phrasing his sentence in order to send out the slower team members. By highlighting each of those two members strengths, he draws attention away from their weakness of being the slower runners in the group.
All this while, Ukita was rearing to have her turn, and when Fuchuya came back with another piece of the structure puzzle, she grab her turn. When she got back to the team room, she quickly continued the assembly, but seeming to change the positions of certain items. immediately, a fight broke out, as Umi and Fuchuya disagreed with her design. While the three of them were fighting, Asumi and Shu tried to figure out the discrepancies. Suddenly Asumi realized that the perspective of their three members were different becasue they were looking at it from different angles.
Quickly, Shu took his turn, running at top speed. Once he got back, they continued building the miniature. Then they hit another snag. There don't seem to be enough pieces, or something like the pieces don't fit perfectly. Time was running out and all the members despaired of ever finishing this test.
Asumi rallied them all with her passion for going into space, and slowly they all backed her up and told her to go for it, to run like the wind. Asumi came back to the room, with just enough time to spare to put the whole miniature together.
Just when they tought they've completed the test succesfully, they were locked in the room and told to provide the pin no. to unlock the door. The pin no. is their room number. All four of them groaned, as none of them noticed the no. on the door as they were running in and out of the room. Asumi came to the reacue again. She proved her knowledge of the stars, constellations and space, by correctly informing them that their room numbers are arranged in the order of the different stars in space.
As they walked out of the building, tired but satisfied that they have successfully completed the test, Umi made peace with Asumi, realizing that Asumi was not the type who would get into the space school base on connections.
My thoughts
I was waiting and waiting for the appearance of Mukai Osamu. I'm real glad that he is in from the first episode of the show.
Ok, enough of the side-track on the show =)
From the beginning, I kinda knew that they would give the first episode over to showcase the heroine's (Asumi's) strengths in the team. But they writes are able to tastefully bring it up, thus not making Asumi seem arrogant or pushy about her abilities. Instead she came on as sweet and sincere in her feelings for her team members and in providing whatever help she could to reach the finishing line.
What I didn't expect was that the writers also highlighted the character of Suzuki Shu. From the first scene, I had already pegged him as the "playboy" of the group, with his laidback attitude, and smiling face. I'm glad to say that my first impression was wrong. He came across as a laidback person, yes, but also a person with good leadership qualities, and a serious side to him that he constantly hides behind the playfulness.
i like this show quite a bit, and wouldn't even mind if there is not even a hint of romance in it. That's because the description of the awesomeness of space travel and the passion that each of the characters seem to potray is already enough to grip me along with the story.
By the way, I've also posted this review in my blog, but i can't help it..I wanna share my very first review on japanese drama with everyone, everywhere!