I also read chapters 6-8 over the weekend and agree.
Thoughts
Had the same reaction. Also, I had to fight to suspend my disbelief a bit that this problem came as such a surprise to them. Shouldn’t they already have some sort of height requirement in the selection process? I was also somewhat surprised that they actually bent over backwards to fund her suit, just because…she’s so enthusiastic about space? (or was there another reason that I missed?)
Gotta say, this series’ habit of having only a few regular chapters, then ending on a major cliffhanger and padding the volume with long side stories is getting painful. Do you know if every volume is going to be like this?
(Though I was a tiny bit mollified that the incident where Asumi nearly drowned as a child was brought up again, so that side story from vol 1 didn’t feel completely irrelevant to the main story)
The next volume has the last of the “canon” flashback chapters - afterwards, there are occasional shorter flashback chapters, and in two volumes there are completely stand-alone one-shot chapters starring unrelated characters. But regardless, every volume after this one has either five or six chapters each (with no reduction in page counts per chapter), and the final two have seven each.
All of the flashback chapters in the first three volumes come up again in the main story.
The title page image is likely taken from this crossing just east of Wadazuka Station on the Enoden line.
Kasane’s cat presumably shares its name with Laika, the first dog in space.
I’m not sure what station is performing the role of Yuigahama Station on page 177 onwards, but it’s not either of the two we’ve seen so far (as those have a single platform each, and this one has two).
Kinda didn’t say anything about Mission 5 here. I’m suspicious of リンゴ’s 花粉症 but maybe that’s just my 2020 paranoia kicking in. Other than that, アスミ having friends makes me happy.
Mission 6
I felt sympathy for 圭ちゃん during the PE lesson, but also she’s the one who chose to be an astronaut so I dunno what she expected. I was actually a little worried she wasn’t going to be able to keep up, with first struggling with that and second the falling asleep in class… I’m not entirely sure she properly thought through how much effort being an astronaut takes. Though to be fair she is a child and decisions are complicated. But I’m glad she seems to have found her motivation again.
It seems the evil teacher knew one of アスミ’s parents and did not like them and is projecting that onto her. Whatever his reason for dislike the parent, valid or not, he’s being uncalled for in how he’s taking it out on her.
Not only can she run and know enough knowledge to get into this school, but she can also map the stars? アスミ we’re gonna need to start giving you some flaws girl. I’m glad though, with how badly she was affecting during the test, I was worried how she was going to handle this. It’s nice to see she’s actually quite competent at stuff. And she’s so happy she’s going to get to try on the spacesuit she’s basically quivering! Adorable.
First name unlocked! マリカちゃん, I’d just went to the effort of remembering the 宇喜多 portion. Oh well, hooray friendship!
I really hope that the next two volumes are not them sitting at home having online lessons…
ふたりの星 はっぱ星
We’ve had so many of these flashback chapters now it’s about a third of all the content we’ve seen. Getting quite familiar with these younger versions of the characters. It’s nice building on the previous plot, and it feels like it all had relevance to the present day plot too.
I wonder where we will learn more about the reason evil teacher hates Asumi’s father - from the present day plot or the flashbacks…
At the end of the last regular chapter, Sano claimed that Asumi‘s father had caused the crash somehow, so when I saw him in the side story this week, I hoped we‘d get some more info on that. But nope. It doesn’t seem like the space agency blamed him enough to fire him, since he’s still working for them (even though he got the crap job of reimbursing the victims). That makes this all the more mysterious…I voted for going on without a break, cause I wanna know.
