Asteroid in Love

Introduction:
Titles about cute girls increasingly make themselves known in the world of anime, as every one of them tries to show us bits of life from the best side, and even encourage us to try new hobbies. "Koisuru Asteroid" is an another one of the new productions in which we will go outside where the fresh air is, and bring along our telescopes and maps to see the beauty of the world around us. But is it a title able to endanger other sweet slice of life anime?.

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Story:
Imagine that you are out camping with your family. Suddenly at the camp you notice a boy who looks just about your age. You decide to approach him and talk in order to find out what is he doing. At first, you have a modest conversation, but later it turns into taking a promise to find an asteroid together and name it Ao – the same name as the boy. It sounds like a great dream, right? Mira – the main protagonist of this series, just so happens to be in that exact situation at the time we meet her. However, not everything went according to the original plan the kids had. After that one time they have never met again and in the span of many years realizing their dream became something uncertain. Yet the situation changes in high school when they finally get to meet each other in the earth sciences club room. But this is not the end of the surprises because the boy from the beginning turns out to be a girl, and the misunderstanding was caused by a typical boyish hairstyle that Ao had in those years. After joining the club they begun to slowly approach their shared goal, with the help of all the club members.

The story is pleasant and very sweet as it revolves around astronomy and geography, but it is also a very typical slice of life and besides the main theme we will not witness any innovative ideas. The episodes are mostly clusters of scenes taking place at school, home and more often outside. The author limited himself to the very general knowledge from these scientific topics and on the first hand, it is a good procedure that allows us to discover the world and the galaxy with the girls, but on the other hand, someone, even if a little bit familiar with the topic, will be disappointed. You can even get the impression that the author is not interested in these topics at all, and all of the curiosities look as if they had been taken from a random natural science book. Also, very often the chance to present an interesting possibility got replaced with simply looking through a telescope. Very little time was actually devoted to these themes, and the pace itself was so fast that, at times, it was hard to find your way around, especially at the beginning of the episodes. The plot didn’t skip a beat, getting straight to the action without having a care in the world if we are prepared for. This lack of an explanation caused a huge inaccuracy of the plot and it really hurt the eyes. Although the first episode was really good, everything in between the start and the finish was as chaotic as it could be. Yet, the finale of the season was very decent. At the end, the focus was centered around what it should have been centered on from the beginning and the last episode’s ending said goodbye to us with a very good punchline.

____ Characters: "Asteroid in Love" introduces us to a huge number of cute girls, much more than in other titles of the moe genre. Each one of them is different and the relationships between them get sweeter with each episode. I very much liked how the balance between the two groups was kept, and members of both the astronomical and geographical side began to take an interest in the other group's love, tightening the ties between them. However, the characters were not written ambitiously, for example, if were to put them alongside the vast choice of other characters with the same personality type, then we wouldn't find any difference. Each character in this anime has specific predefined behaviors that stick around throughout the season. Although each of the girls have their own understandable backstory and many good reasons for dedicating themes to what they are doing, none of them stand out and seem truly unique in a sense that would make them memorable. Also by observing their relations, you can quite easily see hints of the yuri genre with the course of events itself showing it, although the anime never tells us about it directly. ____ Graphics: The employees of the Doga Kobo studio have always been great at drawing cute characters and making cute animations, which they managed to prove, notably in the productions “Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san” and “New Game!”. Here it is no different than the rest of their productions. The graphics looked beautiful in all the places that they needed to be. Playing with the color palette resulted in a very effective combination of cold and warm colors present in the designs of all the characters. How all of them look really catches the eye. Unfortunately, you could also see the effects of a tight and limited budget - for all the things in the further part of the set we were shown slide shows. But it didn't bother me that much, as all the other aspects effectively obscured this flaw. ____ Sound design: The soundtrack is quite meagre and at times it's hard to pay attention to it at all, but all the tracks fit perfectly with whatever is happening on the screen. Nevertheless, we can’t go about without mentioning the opening and ending that are exactly the thing which awakens this show’s full potential. Brilliantly composed sounds combined with the voices of Nao Tōyama and Minori Suzuki create something that should not be overlooked. It is something you should listen to even if you haven’t watched the anime.

The voices of the characters were lent by more or less known seiyuu. Half of them have already voiced characters in various series, while the others are just starting their careers. Still, they did a nice job, and paying attention to their character’s quirks and personalities was absolutely not an easy thing to do.

▶ ____ Summary: The potential of Koisuru Asteroid definitely hasn’t been fully reached. The main problem with this production is the small amount of knowledge and novelties about it’s main theme that were given us. A pace too fast also qualitatively killed this adaptation. "Asteroid in Love" might have had a better chance of fighting for the title of one of the best slice of life, but unfortunately it failed. Because of that the sequel needs to improve upon all of these above mentioned flaws. Fixing all of that is a necessity and it should be a known fact that good graphics and atmospheric sounds by themselves aren't enough. ____ Text by: @Scr33n Revised and corrected by: @xkrayz