Review: Rocket Girls episode 7

Wow, the fansubbers are pushing this series out fast.

Anyways, it's the latest edition of Rocket Girls, the amusing anime series about high-school girls in skin-tight spacesuits, flying rockets.

We started this episode off right where we ended the last one, with the girls' rocket capsule in the pool of Yukari's high school. Well, the usual things occur with Yukari taking charge, and pushing things through by the sheer weight of her will alone. We also learn that she's a lieutenant (or maybe lieutenant commander, I forget now).

This episode introduces the third of the rocket girls, though unless you're watching the opening you're not supposed to know that yet. Anyways, her name is Akane Miura, and she is a younger student at the same school that Yukari attends. Other things to note is that she is something of a teacher's pet, part of the biology club, and just smarter than the other girls.

The other two people with a decent amount of talking lines in these episodes are the Principle of Yukari's school and Yukari's mom. Yukari's mom is an odd character. A lot of the time she almost appears to not care about her daughter, yet the advice she gives is usually a lot better from my pov (as an adult) than what Yukari seems to hear and act upon. It's an interesting touch of reality in their relationship, and I like it a lot.

Now the principle I disliked. She's evil, and I have the feeling we'll see her again in the future being a hassle for the girls. Additionally, she annoyed me by getting onto the girls, and telling them that it was not right for a girl to want to be an astronaut (Yukari) or a biologist (Miura). Now, I know that speaking in generalities men are better at math and the hard sciences, but that's a generality and has no bearing on the performance of an individual in those subjects. As a teacher, one would think that she would want her students to excel regardless of the subject, instead she berates them for doing what they wish in this manner.

The main conflict of this episode is that Yukari has now fulfilled her promise to the Director in that she took a single trip into outer space for him. She now wants to take her father off the island (against his will) and return to living with her mother.

Or at least that's what she says she wants. Throughout the episode she's having flashbacks and suffering because she really enjoyed being in space, yet she doesn't want to admit that to herself. She just wants to be a "normal" high school girl.

Again, there's little doubt in my mind that she'll end up staying with the space program, but this time I'm seriously wondering how they're going to reconcile what Yukari says and acts like she wants and what she really wants to do, and how Miura plays into that.

Overall, another interesting episode. It's less fun than usual because they're actually focusing on character development, but oddly enough it worked, and while I did find myself amused by some of the things that happened, I am also finding myself interested in how things turns out for the girls. I started watching this for the novelty factor, and to my amazement, I'm finding that I'm actually looking forward to each new episode.

I guess I'm too used to American television because I'm amazed at that...