per aspera ad astra

Before I go on with my review, I'll state that I'm a space junkie. I dig this kind of story where you mix sci-fi and adventures together. Recently before reading this manga I just finished reading the novel version of 'The Martian' by Andy Weir; a space survival story in mars with a backing of hard science with an astounding level of technical accuracy. A really decent story in which I invested almost all of my free time in the weekend to read through it, thanks to its brilliance as a story.

As I start with my review, I'll say this with an absolute confidence : As a form of pure literature fiction, I enjoyed 'Kanata no Astra' ten times better than'The Martian'.

I tried to write this review as spoiler free as possible, as I believe to enjoy the story the best you just had to see it for yourself. As for you whom already read the manga, I hope you liked the manga as well as I do.

This is my first time writing any review related to manga/anime, I'm still surprised myself how much I wrote in the end. If you spot any grammatical inaccuracy or scientific nonsense I might write on this review, please feel free to let me know.

Plot/Story

The story was set in a not so distant future where space travels for commoners is already available. With this in mind a group of high school students were set to go for a camp in a distant planet in order to make these student experience what it takes to survive in a remote environment away from their home planet. Even though it was not quite clear why the curriculuum was this extreme, I guess this kind of casuality just expressed that space travel in this day and age had turned out to be that common.

Their destination planet was called McPa, which is in a distance of 9-light-years away from home. With the help of the so called 'cleaving engine', a faster-than-light travel was made possible, thus rendering the time required to cover 9-light-year distance in a mere 4 hours.

After landing on the aforementioned destination planet, they were somehow transported by a mysterious object to the orbit(as in space, force of gravitational pull=0G) of an unknown planet with a hovering spacecraft drifting in empty space just nearby. The group of student took control of the ship and found out they were teleported as far away as 5012 light years away from home. With the spacecraft's ability, its only possible to reach home within 3 months, while on the other hand, it's capacity of life support including water and sustenance would only last the 9 of them 3 days.
Thus begin the group of student's attempt at cleaving away the deep space with the spacecraft 'Astra' in order to return home.

The progression of the story followed a logical pattern which branched off of one thing in mind : Survive.
Along the way, they had to scavenge on several planets for food and water supplies. With this many encounter on the remote, unexplored corners of the deep space, the amusement of their adventure is jam packed with charm, suspense, light hearted laughter or tear-inducing concoction.

The downside of futuristic science fiction most of the time(in contrast to near-future science fiction like The Martian) is its lack of technical accuracy, in which the writer of the story will try to make inventions to suit their story as they see fit. But instead, this manga does the opposite. The mangaka told the scientific parts of the story through the eyes of a children. Like at one point where Charce explained how the food chain worked to Funi in order to slip the trivia of planetary evolutionary biology to the readers is one real decent example.

Deep into the story, there'll be a bunch of developments which you'll expect the least, whether from inside the group or from the outside.
With the lurking shadow of conspiracy looming over the group of students, the story I expected to be an exciting and light hearted encounter with alien lifeforms (oh yes they do have those, It's a space adventure story after all) and a drama typical of adventure shounen manga stereotype I had etched in the back of my mind, took a sharp turn and bamboozled me. It's amazing, in retrospect, how the author could jam-pack all the mumbo-jumbo elements of brilliant plots into a space adventure story and made a plausible perfect loop out of everything.

Individual score for the story: perfect 10.

Characters
There were 9 characters (mainly involved in the adventure)in all, 8 high school students (5 males and 3 females), and one 10 year old girl, which is the sister of one of the female student. These characters were each unique and plays a vital role in developing the story, whose I think deserved some proper short introduction:

Kanata, the main male character, is the self proclaimed leader with a strong body and spirit, yet comically lack of competence.
Zack, the über genius engineer boy with an IQ of 200 with zero delicacy towards women.
Charce, the dreamy hunk with a fetish for xenobiology.
Ulger, the gloomy emo boy which is actualy a tsundere.
Luca, a dexterous and artistic individual with an adventurous recklessness.
Aries, the main female protagonist with a bright persona, a tact for unpurposed puns, and a photographic memory.
Quitterie, the stylish sassy girl with a sharp tongue but well versed in basic level human medicine.
Yun Hua, the gloomy emo girl except with the body of a (slightly) chunky supermodel, and a hidden talent.
Funi, the little sister of Quitterie, but with the exact opposite personality.

In the setting of the story, these group of 9 didn't know each other because the group for the camp was supposedly chosen in a random order (with several exception). By the beginning as they tried to get to know each other, these group of people were thrown together to the midst of chaos of sudden space survival, thus stripping them bare of the intention of just 'casually' getting to know each other. Their life's at stake, and they had to, along their trip, reveal their cards, one by one.
They assumed their position according to each other's specialty and quirk to go hand to hand solving problems which they would encounter on their journey home.

The conflict these character faced comes internally as they tried their best to understand others a bit better, as well as externally when the harsh, unknown environments of deep space threw them dozens of omnious, in-disguise curveball. Seeing them work together to solve complicated situations with their limited knowledge as teenagers, was refreshingly endearing to say the least. The mix of tense and serious discussion between the characters pulls you to think together and invest your full attention, while an unexpected, yet hilarious and well-timed tsukkomis is already lurking behind you to poof your tension and wrinkle on your forehead in an instant. These combination of distinct personality and traits were interlocked together as the main driving force of the already brilliant story and setting, gives it a big plus, in a sense which there were some stories with a really neat setting but bland characters flocking around. Nope. Not this one. Not this manga.

And hoo boy, what high school student oriented manga would be sated without a spice of romance? It's rather subtle because it's not the main focus of the story, but let your guard down and a curveball might hit you when you're less likely to notice.

The revelation of these character's aspiration, past, and secrets will unfold gently like an unrolled red carpet along the story line but with the suspense of taking a vertical nosedive in a seat of a roller coaster as the mysteries surrounding the story being put out to the spotlight.

If I were to mention a flaw of these characters (which might also be a flaw in the story) that would be the fact that they're teenagers with a 10-year old child tagging along. I mean, it's space. Leaving the fact that they were manga protagonists, on this day and age hundreds of astronaut candidates had to go through years of rigorous training regime and education which would technically qualify them to go out to space, but there was no guarantee that all of them would be chosen to take the seat on board of the spaceship. It's that strict.

Okay, it might seem plausible that the present condition (space travel being common and all) of the manga required the students to take some similar space-oriented training in their school, but what about Funi? Did she learn it on the fly? None of these were actually mentioned (or did I just missed it?) in the manga.

Other than that, there were few, if any, flaws of the characters in case of their personality. I only noticed really few personality inconsistency which is actually still acceptable when you view the story as a whole.

Individual score for the characters : a stylish 8.5

Artwork

We can't not speak about the art. I drew my share of manga illustration myself, so the artwork is actually a pretty important factor for me whether or not to read a manga. Just before I read this manga, I had read the previous manga by the same mangaka of this manga ; 'Sket Dance'. It was mainly a gag manga with school setting and some drama. I honestly liked the artwork as it eases me through the sometimes corny gags which failed to crack me up either because it is actually not funny or its just that Im a baka gaijin. huh. Anyway.

The artwork is wonderful. The character design reflects the personalities of the characters decently, it was as if I can see through them right before they introduce themselves. In contrast to some manga with brilliant plot but bland characters in aspect of their design (see Liar Game) or an overly furnished character design which actually doesn't reflect anything about him/her at all (remember Yugi, anyone?). But not only that the design reflects these characters well, they were drawn really properly as well. All the girls looked beautiful and cute, and the boys, well, just like how I see myself in the mirror.

The design of the environment of the space and planets is a candy to the eye as well. The setting of these planets were being conveyed clearly through the drawing, which signalled your brain whether the next few pages the story within the chapter would be rather laid-back or nerve-wracking. And of course, true to scientific backgrounds in top of that (like 4th planet for example).

And then comes the design of the spacecraft. After every few chapters, there'll be some extra page about exterior/interior details of the Astra, and it was well-made. Like I would mention later on the scientific point of view part, there's some scientific inconsistency about the Astra. But as it was, the artistic design of Astra was charming.

Then comes the alien life form. They look spectacular. The creatures were designed with a hindsight to evolutionary biology & astrology, as well as environmental science as well as xenobiology. To sum it up, a lot of thought was put down while designing these magnificent imaginative creatures, whether the flora or the fauna (or anything in between).
And they come out fitting in their role just right.
My absolute favourite were the Gloopies. They were just so dang adorable. No wonder the crew cried like a kid being dragged away from a zoo when they had to leave the planet where the Gloopies were.

Individual score for the Artwork : dazzling 9.5

Scientific point of view

As I said by the beginning, I'm a space junkie. One point of scientific or technical inconsistencies you give away, I'll spot it. Or at least those which were within my knowledge. Remember, I just finished the novel 'The Martian', a hard science-fiction novel with a staggering amount of technical accuracy. By the first few chapters of the manga, I was thinking, 'Man, it's a manga. Cut it some slack or two'.

Colour me bloody surprised.
It is technical.
It is scientific.
And it is motherfokin' accurate.

As I wish to present this review to you as spoiler free as possible, I'll just mention some notable few scientific example. It's actually one which fascinates me the most. I picked this particular example because I think most of the reader would miss this one. It's subtle and quite hard to notice given the suspense within the circumstances, yet if you look closely, it's the proof of the author's dedication on his research while writing this manga to give his readers as realistic experience of underlying scientific mechanisms in space science as possible.

In case you don't wish to be spoiled, I'll just give you a hint where you should start paying attention to the manga a little bit closer: It's by the time they about to reach the 2nd planet.

By the time they arrived within orbital height of the second planet they supposed to visit to resupply, an accident happened and the engine responsible to control their levitation malfunctioned. Then they got pulled by the planet's gravity. The spacecraft is in a free fall. With limited time (as in 9 minutes) and rushing adrenaline, they had to somehow reroute the power supply for the levitation engine before they ended up squashed and went FUBAR.
Now here's the science.

By the time the Astra was pulled by the planet's gravity, the crew had to manoeuvre themselves using their spacesuit propeller to float about and fix the engine. Now you ask, 'they were pulled by the planet gravity, how come weren't they like, planted on the floor of the spacecraft?'. Enter the Newton's second law. During a free fall, an object (in this case the crew) within a free falling object (The Astra) would accelerate downward at the same rate. Thus creating the sensation of 0 G for the crew relative to The Astra, and murderous 'x' G relative to the planet.

The levitation engine, despite complication, were fixed and back in operation. Here, Zack activates the levitation engine, which essentially accelerates the Astra against the gravitational pull to avoid a crash. Now, all of the crew did got planted on the floor of the spacecraft. Like the moment when you were driving your car and had to suddenly hit the brake because you see a squirrel is crossing the street, the very same recoil you feel is exactly what the crew had just experienced, only several times more severe and lasts several tenth of seconds. This neat effect is dubbed the law of momentum conservation.

Just by the moment that Zack regained control of the Astra and stabilizes its downward velocity, the crew, which was helplessly planted to the floor of the spacecraft, were lifted off the floor for a moment, then falls back down. This happened because as Zack accelerates the Astra upwards against the pull of gravity, its essentially gradually trying to balance out the force 'x' G which was the gravitational pull exerted on the spacecraft. Whilst now the force of levitation force of the Astra balanced the gravitational pull and made it hover, the crew dont have their own means to decelerate against an upward acceleration exerted on their bodies by the astra. Then it took the crew off the floor of the Astra for a second (again, because of the law of momentum conservation)---and immediately after that, Zack already stabilised its vertical velocity to 0, which makes them fall back down to the floor of the spacecraft (yes, you guessed it right. it's the gravity).

Packing this amount of science into what boils down to a 50 page manga thriller really blew me away. In a similar fashion, some manga would try and achieve similar suspense in which they introduce a 1-in-a-hundred-million type of genius character, threw them into some convoluted cesspool of chaos, and see the gallant smug of the character as he walked out unscathed by the sheer power of his genius. But that free fall moment. No overpowered characters nor deus ex machina development. It was pure science. It was the first for me that it felt so set in stone and in order, yet shockingly astonishing.

Now away from the extensive example above, there would still be many scientific 'chicken soup' for you to digest as the story progresses. The alien lifeforms in the planets the students were visiting were there with a reason. The imaginative environment of the quasi-habitable planets were developed and established with a hindsight of proper astrophysical, environmental, evolutional, and (xeno)biological background.

But it was, indeed, not completely perfect. The mechanisms for the far end futuristic technologies were not 'dissected' deeply enough. The cleaving engine for example, or how the artificial gravity system inside the Astra worked without a centrifugal component, and several more technical details along the progression of the story.

But I did cut some slack. It's still pretty much technically acceptable, considering that the technical downside is not necessarily a mistake or an overly forced scientific logic.

Individual score for the Scientific point of view : a decent 9.

Overall
Kanata no Astra is a space adventure survival manga with a solid science backing it's story. The story may seem simplistic at first until you dove down deeper through the chapters. The science behind it were told the way it would be told to a 4th grader. No overpowered characters, nobody shoots out a laser beam, but It's more engaging (for me) than Star Wars. Drawn incredibly well with interesting and quirky characters. Engaging the alien lifeforms, escaping certain death crisis, laughing at stupid jokes, friendship and romance, all in one. Set some free time of about a day or two, and enjoy your journey to the stars.