Spoilers in a marked section of the review.

The first two minutes of Astra: Lost in Space are by far the best in the entire show.

A girl floats helplessly in deep space, spinning in circles at a nauseating speed. Nothing is in sight aside for hundreds upon thousands of blinding stars streaming across pitch-black space. The execution is amazing; it is tense, the fear written across the girl’s face makes you feel a genuine sense of danger. Those two minutes hooked me. Suddenly, a hand reaches out from dizzying light. Then the only exceptional scene in the show ended. Astra could have been a great sci-fi thriller, if only they hadn't made every possible mistake when writing science fiction. It’s surprising that so few people have pointed out the obvious plot holes, leaps in logic, retcons, contrivances, and lazy writing.

Kanata no Astra could have been written in one of two ways: They could have made it a realistic survival story and focused on the characters’ struggle to work together as a team. Or it could have been a fun comedy/slice-of-life with hints of romance. Both could work together with moderation—but unfortunately, the writers did not know this. Instead, the story is a hackneyed blend of each with disastrous tonal issues and stupidly ham-fisted writing. My hopes for a tense survival story were crushed within an episode; NO ONE IS EVER IN DANGER. Everyone has plot armor, everyone. At the start, all of the characters are sent to deep space by a wormhole, yet they are all unharmed. Friendship and plot conveniences are all these kids need to survive alone in deep space. There’s always an implication of danger, whether it be a group member getting separated, or a heated argument—but Astra never takes it too far. It is always clear that everyone will always be safe, draining all tension from the show. There is only ONE time when someone is physically harmed, but it only happens because of their stupidity, undercutting the potential shock factor the scene wanted to have.

Astra knows how to raise the stakes, and it’s so frustrating because it chooses not to. At the start, the crew is worried about starving to death due to limited food/storage space. The premise is great, they need to fly to each planet to collect resources. Somehow food shortage is never an issue for the crew, they always seem to have an abundance of food or just enough. Establishing that the ship has limited space leads us to think there might be a shortage, causing conflict later on, however this never happens. Why did the writers point this out? To make you think there would be stakes when in truth they were never there. There are other avenues for tension in the show, all of which are written horribly. Whenever the group becomes suspicious of a traitor in their midst, they fight for about a minute at most. Aries just suggests they have a snacktime to forget about any issues the group is facing at the moment, and everyone always goes along with it. Afraid that one of your friends might kill you in your sleep? Snacktime~! Occasionally I appreciated how braindead Aries was; she added some levity among the awful writing, but I won't confuse so-bad-it's-good for truly good entertainment.

Nearly every episode begins with a major tonal shift. They all have a very similar formula: a life-threatening crisis in the previous episode followed by a drastic shift to the crew being excited to explore a new planet. As if they forgot the last one they explored ‘nearly’ killed them, they always make the same naive mistake. They have a fun time on each new planet (at first). It’s all so goddamn predictable. You know if they have fun on an alien planet, they’re more likely to be in danger. The comedy is very trite and unfunny because the whole cast is very archetypal, they have next to no chemistry with each other. Rinse, repeat. In an attempt to fix the monotonous planet-of-the-week plot, traitors are added at random with increasingly baffling reasons. From the second episode, the cracks were already showing; everyone who knew this train was about to derail prepared themselves, and it never stopped flying off the rails (I will analyze the downward spiral later on). Making the awful plotting worse is the adaptation’s rushed pacing, each episode has at least on montage to bridge each chapter. Sometimes (especially in the second half) the chapter will change mid-episode; rather than developing their friendships they skip straight to the part when everyone is friends.

The character designs are so generic, as are all of their archetypal personalities. Even Kanata, the character with the most development can be summed up with two words, hero complex. For the female characters, after they get a development episode, they’re relegated to fanservice vehicles. Surprisingly there is a boatload of fanservice; the girls have pretty huge tits and the directing suffers from what I call "talking boob syndrome". The camera awkwardly fixates on a girl's breasts as she speaks, then it slowly pans up to her face. It's bizarre seeing so much blatant pandering in a supposed space exploration story. Fanservice first, humanized character second. With colorful art but lackluster design, it’s understandable why people weren’t all that interested in Astra initially. The CGI spaceship that looks hilariously stupid without the whooshing plane stock sound effects. Now and then, there is one truly song that builds tension excellently, until you realize what you’re seeing play out is pretty dumb. Otherwise, the production offers nothing noteworthy, no sakuga, forgettable OP/ED, decent voice work, boring directing.

If you like being treated like an idiot, Astra will not disappoint you. Letterboxing during scenes taking place in the past, name tags used to introduce the cast. Astra takes place in a futuristic society because that’s when the writers decided kids can go to space camp commercially. All of the world-building comes from lazy exposition dumps too. And that lazy writing extends to the dialogue as well. Rather than giving dialogue relevant to each character, one or two are picked at random to narrate exactly what is happening. We have eyes, we can see for ourselves. It’s an excuse Astra frequently to give characters lines so that we don’t forget about them. Along with this, characters get to make really bad jokes and say pointless comments to let us know they still exist. Individually these seem like minor issues, but to me when there are so many of them I can’t ignore it. This show is targeted at the same age range as the cast of kids, however, kids are young, not morons.

There is a lot of mystery baiting in this show. They kept piling one mystery onto the next as if they forgot about the previous one right away. It worked to keep me interested. First, they don’t know where the wormhole came from, then there’s a traitor! I’ll give credit where it’s due, Astra always escalates its twists. The mysteries become increasingly illogical, making the rest of the story seem stupider in retrospect, but at least it wasn’t boring. Before getting into the spoilers, this is your only chance to learn the singular defining trait of the nine characters.

Spoilers section

Kanata: He can get his way out of any situation. He is a decathlete, or in other words a superhero, dark past and all. Like I said before, hero complex the character.
Aries: Braindead. I hoped there was some twist to explain why she was so stupid, but there isn't. She really is that dumb. She needs to be told that she is in love before she realizes it herself. But she has a photographic memory so it’s ok. That'll probably be a relevant detail in at least one scene.
Zack: 200 IQ Genius… or so he says. Other than that his personality is equivalent to a box of rocks. I’m going to mention him a ton because he’s essentially a walking plot device.
Quitterie: Her character arc peaks in episode 3, afterward she… offers some supportive comments and occupy space in the background. Rather than passively commenting on things, she yells and screams annoyingly.
Ulgar: He’s edgy, antisocial, and he’s got a gun.
Charce: A man with secrets… He’s a traitor, no a double agent, no! A triple agent!!
Yunhua: “Um I’m not good at anything, sorry.” Cuts hair “My depression is cured!”
Funicia: Cinnamon roll that does nothing. Who needs character development when you can emotionally manipulate the audience? She has a creepy hand puppet for some reason… Quitterie’s adopted sister.
Luca: A man who looks like a girl, but secretly has tits.

Analysis of each episode

1st Episode: Group of nine kids go to space camp, then they are eaten by a wormhole and sent into deep space! The whole plot is predicated wormholes that can appear at the press of a button. Somehow the first wormhole just stays still until everyone begins panicking. Even if we believe wormholes can appear anywhere, it shouldn’t be able to change speed as if it can think. Once they get to space, they find a spaceship! This is never explained, ever! Somehow Zack knows they are 5,000 miles away. No one questions this because haven't you heard? This kid has 200 IQ!

2nd Episode: Funicia (the toddler on the team) is separated from the group because of her stupidity, then Kanata has to save her with superhuman strength. We have no reason to care, so we get some development moments before the drama. The kid was an orphan rejected by her sister, how sad, but this adds nothing to her character. She loves her sister anyways, all sugar and no spice. Then she’s suddenly in danger! A little girl in danger is what evokes shock and fear in the viewer, no development necessary! Emotional manipulation at its finest. Later on Zack makes a food flavor measuring device at some point, I don’t think I need to explain how stupid this is. At the end of the second episode, it was revealed that someone destroyed the communication device that already didn’t work, and so now there is kind of a witch hunt for the traitor.

3rd Episode: "So one of us is a traitor? Let's have snacks!!" Then everyone miraculously forgets about the traitor mystery, and just like that, we're all back to normal. Except! A bird comes out of absolutely nowhere, and if they don’t stop it they will all die! This is the tension this episode hinges on, caused by an unexplained plot contrivance, and it resolves anticlimactically. Ultimately, Zack didn’t realize he was flying too close to the planet, which led to the danger in the first place. Zack is a supergenius, and with his big brain, he managed to put the ship into a planet’s orbit while enjoying snacks and fighting with the crew. By the time he realized this idiotic mistake the ship only had nine minutes before it would crash land on the planet’s surface. THIS GUY IS A TRAINED SPACE PILOT. How the hell does anyone believe this crap?

4th Episode: On the next planet-of-the-week, the group had fun riding chocobos and shitting on Yunhua, the emo girl. She is fat-shamed, called ugly, useless, and she contributes nothing but brooding angst. Then she runs away, leaving a scribbled goodbye note, which forced everyone to go look for her. Suddenly a giant plant releases spores that cause a slow death. Thankfully they're all wearing their spacesuits—except they aren’t. Even though they wore protection the first time they explored the planet, all of them chose to go out onto outside totally vulnerable. Genius.

Kanata discovers that the poisoning can be cured by magic mushrooms. So to find them he comes up with a brilliant plan. He takes off his helmet and poisons himself. Of course, the plant only reveals itself to those who need it… At this point, I was far past the point where I could take this show seriously. I couldn’t tell if Astra was trying to be Sci-Fi or some kind of spiritual fantasy. Eventually, the whole cast almost died, but Yunhua saved them… by singing? Well, not really, Kanata saved the day again. So Yunhua nearly got them all killed than did nothing but sit around and sing… I would have sung too if the show ended right there. This is the last time she is ‘relevant’ in the plot—if you can even call it that.

5th Episode: Beach episode, IN SPACE! Rom-com shenanigans start here to fill time, it goes nowhere interesting, at least this episode shows us what’s happening back on their home planet. Under two months and a majority of the parents (including a politician) agreed to declare their kids as deceased. Even Aries’ mother who’s against their plan just gives in easily. It takes 10 years for missing people to be declared dead in the US. It is baffling to think this didn’t raise red flags with anyone on their home planet. 50 days people!

“If there’s a traitor I don’t know who it could be!” -Luca
Ulgar points a gun at his head

6th Episode: Luca revealed he is intersex to prevent Ulgar from killing him, alrighty then. This twist got me interested in Luca, you don’t see representation like this every day. Unfortunately, like any character development, it is surface level and forgotten immediately after the episode. Ulgar reveals his backstory, which makes the adult characters seem even more like cartoon villains. Right after he’s done, a tsunami hits, it’s so blatantly contrived to strengthen their bonds. They (of course) survive, cue montage with rom-com shenanigans between Ulgar and Luca, ok I’m tired of this episode already.

7th Episode: Charce confesses his true identity, which we later find out is entirely fabricated. The only purpose of the flashback to Charce’s (fake) past was to fill half the episode runtime and make it extra shocking when he reveals his true identity. The second half sees the cast crash land on a desolate planet, they bitch and moan about being trapped forever. Aboard the ship is only one cryosleep pod per spaceship containing a woman. Even though the spaceships accommodate ten or so people, all of them only have one cryosleep chamber... Yep, makes sense to me.

8th Episode: Nothing noteworthy happened in this episode, lots of filler. At the end of the episode, it’s revealed Funicia and Quitterie are clones because luckily the ship has a DNA testing mechanism. Quitterie and Funicia look identical! But no one has commented on it up until now. Not even Quitterie considered they might be related.

9th Episode: This is where Astra jumps the shark. It is revealed that all of the kids are clones of their parents. There a law passed on their planet to prevent cloning, so the parents sent the kids to space to die. This explains a few things, like why they were sent to deep space and the evilness of the parents, but it creates more questions. If this planet has such a large clone problem that they need a law for it, this shouldn't be the first time we're hearing the word clone. Did you want to think about the implications of this twist? Too bad! Here’s another one! The kids are not from Earth, apparently, but another planet called Astra. This is also the name of their spaceship, yet no one commented on it beforehand.

10th Episode: The woman who they coincidentally found alive on a random planet (god knows how she got there) happened to be an info dispenser! She revealed that the artificial wormhole was created to emigrate from Earth to Astra after it had been struck by a meteor. Thousands of wormholes were used to safely move the entire population to a new planet... but this brings up an important question. If Earth had this kind of technological capability, why couldn't they just open one big wormhole to send the meteor into deep space? She offhandedly mentioned that this was probably the reason why they found a spaceship. It is never explained why the kids appeared right next to the ship, the Earth’s circumference is 25 thousand miles, there is no logical explanation for this coincidence, it’s just another gaping plot hole. Moreover, guns were banned and religion was abolished. As long as there is pain, suffering, and death, religion and the belief in God will never disappear, to think otherwise is unbelievably braindead. God, I hate this show.

Later on, Kanata discusses who the traitor is with Aries (offscreen), she uses her photographic memory to see Charce was the one who activated the first wormhole. Then the entire group does a bait and switch, trapping Charce into a confession. It would have been a clever twist, but we were shown none of the buildups. Somehow all of them knew Charce was the traitor. The show left out tons of information for no reason other than surprising us.

11th Episode: Charce recounted his life as a clone of a king and his destiny, emotionally abused all his life. Once the anti-clone law was created, he was sent to kill all of the space camp clones and die with them. Why did he choose to carry out the king’s orders? How did the king become involved with the evil parents? Why does a medieval kingdom exist in a communist futuristic society? The king forced his daughter Seria to be cloned too, she refused but he did so against her will. She named her clone Aries because of course, she did. After Aries escaped with a surrogate mother, Seria refused again to be cloned. For some reason, the king just didn’t clone her again. I have no fucking clue why Charce made up the story that Seria was his childhood friend in episode seven, there was no reason whatsoever. Charce said that he only kept everyone alive to save Aries, yet he let her get absorbed by the wormhole on the first planet...

Kanata raises his arm towards wormhole to protect Charce
“Stay back or else!”
Wormhole eats arm
“AHH, MY ARM!!”

12th Episode: In the end, the kids spend a lot of time crying and then they go back home. There is a very long montage of mostly Kanata getting awards, a new arm, and another spaceship. The ending is everything you expect, overly optimistic, and anticlimactic. The kids become celebrities; billboard models, commercial actors, world-renowned performers, and heroes to be interviewed by News channels. Everyone gets a Hollywood style logic bending happy ending shown in rushed as hell montages. Finale done. Roll credits. Cue the applause and tears. Thank you and goodnight.

Spoilers complete

Kanata no Astra falls victim to one big misconception I’ve noticed in anime. The belief that anime made for a younger audience must be dumbed down. Kids are young, not stupid. This is show is incredibly cliched, generic, and filled with lazy writing. Any ‘development’ the characters had was predictable, simplistic, and all of it was contrived. All of them were defined by candy-colored hair and their struggle to be edgier, stupider, or louder than each other. Initially, I was excited to see what direction it would take... at least I can’t say I wasn’t entertained. Astra: Lost in Space is like watching a garbage truck crash and burn, the awful stench will linger as it lowers the community’s expectations for what a good Sci-fi mystery is.