Not many notes this week. On page 64, Asumi asserts that the distance to Spica is 350 light years. At the time this was written, that was indeed the accepted figure (at least in Japan - reportedly it was listed on the website of the Japanese Astronomical something-or-other for many years afterwards too), but the current concensus is 250 ± 10 light years. I haven’t the foggiest idea what star is supposed to be found at 3776 light years, though - Wikipedia’s lists of noteworthy stars stop at 500 light years away.
It mildly bugs me that their test uniforms, which were issued on the spot, have consecutive numbers…
The “TSS” written on various officials’ hats presumably stands for “Tokyo Space School”, because it sure doesn’t stand for " 東京宇宙学校".
(Also, the absolute arrogance of Suzuki going “oh you can use both hands, 'cos you’re a girl”. So patronising.)
Did a bit of research. Some sources think that Spica might actually be a quintuple star, based on observations while it was being eclipsed by the moon. This individual says that two of the possible extra stars are listed as “uncertain”, and the third hasn’t been directly observed since 1975.
Who mentioned Leo?
Yeah, Orion and the Southern Cross (and also the two pointer stars, which happen to be Alpha and Beta Centauri, which I guess means I at least know where Centaurus is, even if I can’t recognise it) are the only constellations I can reliably recongise. The Pleiades too, but I can’t remember the last time the sky was actually dark enough to see them.
I’d assumed the door numbers were random numbers rather than carrying a particular significance, and that it was just by chance that the room Asumi and her team were in just happened to have a particular significance for Asumi. But maybe that will become clear later in the story. 3776 would seem an awfully specific distance for a star that far away. Unless 3776 has some other astronomical significance? There is a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Virgo called NGC 3776…
Mission 2 thoughts
I think someone mentioned last week that it is nice this story has moved on quite quickly with the plot without building up too slowly with backstory. Although as pointed out there was a prequel whose chapters we are going to get at the end of the first couple of volumes.
I’ve never been a fan of these all or nothing team challenges. It seems unfair if you are let down by a weak team member and get kicked out of the programme, or if you have a strong team and get carried along without earning it on your own merit.
Having said that, the whole challenge is a little bit silly. You fail for not remembering your room number, even though that had seemed fairly trivial information, or for pressing the exit button before being told that you are not supposed to press it.
Quite a challenge being locked in a room with two strangers for a long period. Will be interesting to see how the challenge unfolds.
Enjoyed this chapter, loving the test idea! (even though it’s hard to believe that they have found food for 7 days for so many people on the spot and made room in their calendar for the next 7 days, but oh well) Having a feeling that those two teams we are now following will do fine (or else what will be the manga about?), but let’s see.
Asumi tells Marika on page 63 that all of the room numbers are the distances to stars. Though it’s entirely possible that it’s merely all the ones that she saw were distances to stars - having some of them be catalogue numbers is a reasonable theory.
Mission 2 thoughts
The test is farily extreme (and fairly strict) for a reason. They have (at least) four bus-loads of hopeful applicants that they need to weed down to about the size of half a bus-load. Tanaka specifically instructs them on the bus not to forget their room number (though interestingly the Vertical translation omits that clause), and then the voice over the PA specifically instructs them to push the button by the door once only.
They are being subjected to what’s primarily an isolation test, yes, but they’re also being tested on how well they can follow instructions, how well they deal with stressful situations, how well they deal with other people, how well they handle repetitive, fiddly tasks, and (as we’ll see next chapter) how well they deal with emergency situations - there’s quite a lot going on all at once.
Fuchuya is also somewhat skeptical. “Oh look, here’s a quarter of a million dominoes that we just happened to have on-hand”… yeah, no.
Me too. My mind canon is that the numbers are on detachable labels.
Btw, I’m 158cm, so the scene where Asumi asks for XS-sized clothing and ends up drowing in baggy S-sized clothes because there is no XS is so relatable to me. My real life clothes shopping experience in a nutshell, I feel so seen .
Well, the thing where the instructor tries to make it sound like they spontaneously added a test (if I even understood that correctly) is obviously a misdirection.The whole building looks like they built it for this specific test and they’re repeating the test with every year of applicants.
But also, in the scene where Asumi checks the food, we see that the whole food supply is compact enough to fit into the tiny storage space next to the beds together with changes of clothing. So it might just be those compact high-calorie bars and pastes that real astronauts eat during missions. In that case, supplying the food would just consist of the cleaning staff running around for a quarter of an hour and lumping one box of those things into each room.
Yeah, and Asumi gets it at once. She even says that according to Mr. Lion, the most important talents for astronauts are teamwork and patience. For that, the test is right on point. It even simulates life aboard a space ship to a degree, so that people who find out that being stuck in a tiny room with people they might not like while eating crappy food and working on a fiddly, repetitive task is really, really not their thing can rethink their career choice and skip out voluntarily even if they pass the test.
The top right panel, where it’s talking about how pressing the button a second time means the team fails, I’m struggling with the third section of the bubble.
From what I can tell, it’s saying people who have already pressed the button twice would have originally been eliminated, but this time they’re only loosing points. But underneath there’s all the people leaving because they pressed the button a second time, so they have failed and haven’t just lost points. So a bit confused on that.
On the whole I liked this chapter a lot more.
I like how the test has been designed and how finicky it is. Only minor nitpick is the kids should have been informed of the camera ahead of time, but in an environment like this they’re going to need to keep an eye on people to intervene in any problems before anyone gets seriously hurt. I’m looking forward to getting to know all the characters. There isn’t anyone I’ve taken an instant dislike to yet. 宇喜多 came close with her introduction, but after that she was mostly saying all the thoughts I was thinking so I’m pretty much obligated to like her.
Thank you for links. I was looking at that number and wondering is that right? So I googled how far away Andromeda is, which we all know is the next closet star to the sun /s, and came to the conclusion Asumi for some reason knew how far away Virgo and Spica are.
Aye, that always mildly confused me too, but the guy he’s talking to is also criticising him for forgetting the room number, so I guess they’re just both taking their frustrations out on each other (i.e. they failed not for pushing the button twice, but for mis-entering the chest unlock code).
I’m enjoying this manga a lot more than I expected so far. It feels a bit like the current IMC pick with the girl getting to discover a new school where she faces some adversity, except it’s actually good.
I thought the same.
Yeah she says that but maybe she’s wrong. I mean I can believe that the author meant for it it to be true but I think it’s a bit silly IMO. With the number of stars out there, how you you even begin to remember them and then randomly notice that a bunch of numbers are from the same set? Isn’t there basically at least one star at most integer light year from 1 to 9999? I just generated a random number in the range 0;500, ended up with 271 and lo and behold: 88 Aquarii - Wikipedia
So I prefer to believe that Asumi is reaching.
I don’t remember it either, but おとめ座 was mentioned which was funny because I randomly discovered the zodiac was called in Japanese in the video game thread this week:
That was a funny coincidence.
The guy in the bus explicitly tells them not to forget the number though, so they know they’re expected to remember it. If all three people forgot it in the 5 minutes that elapsed since they entered the room… that’s very unlucky. I guess they should have allowed for unlimited retries so that the absent-minded contestants could at least bruteforce the code over the week…
As for pressing the button twice, they do mention that people who have done it before they were explicitly told not to do it would just get deducted points and not failed on the spot. I think it’s harsh but fair.
Yeah she’s a bit of a dick but at least she’s right so…
I was thinking that おとめ座 is physically located adjacent to しし座, and that may have a meaning.
About locating Spica, I think this one can be seen at this time of the year too, past midnight (Northern Hemisphere?). Checking with Sky Map. I just need sky not to be too bright (and I am still awake).
Also another point is that we don’t know how exactly the test will be evaluated. The supervisors are clearly manufacturing a crisis to see how the candidates will work under pressure (as the kid in the bus points out). It’s possible that the actual evaluation will be more lenient than the rules make it out to be. It’s actually a fairly decent test for the circumstances I think, being good at teamwork in a constrained environment under pressure is a good skill for an astronaut to have…
That said we do see a bunch of people walk out at page 51 which confused me a bit since it seems to imply that they already failed but the voice said that people who pressed the button before being given the instruction not to wouldn’t automatically fail. So that would mean that these people actually pressed the button right after they were told not to?
One of them scolds the other for forgetting the room number though, implying that maybe these people were actually in the wrong room to begin with and had no choice but to open the door to leave? Or maybe they just typed one wrong code, couldn’t open the chest and gave up I guess.
It confused me too, but someone above already mentioned that one of the people who failed blamed his group member for not remembering the door number, so apparently their group got both the number and the button wrong and were failed for that.
I also think that the actual rules might be more lenient or just different from the official ones. Otherwise they wouldn’t need the video surveillance, that only makes sense if you want to evaluate the individual team member’s behavior.
While I agree the cameras are going to help with evaluating the results, it’s not the only reason they’re there. It would not be wise to leave the kids completely unsupervised because if any of them got injured that would likely end badly and nobody would know until the week was over.
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