Review by Win Wiacek
Kou Yaginuma continues his unfolding saga of Asumi Kamogawa and her classmates undertaking training to be astronauts that they’re told few of them will complete. Asumi sleeps in tawdry communal women’s dorm ‘The Seagull’, struggles with many of her classes and subsists on meagre funds, supplemented by part-time jobs.
‘Mission: 19’ continues from events in Twin Spica 4. The mysterious Ukita – who has recently rejected her rich overbearing father’s domination – now resides with Asumi at the dorm. The solitary girl is subject to strange spells and is clearly suffering from some mystery malady. Only recently, spectral Mr. Lion saw Ukita dump a package of pills off a bridge. Now he informs concerned Asumi that she has arbitrarily moved into the storeroom, but before he can disclose more their mutual attention is diverted by the spectacle of a satellite soaring through the night sky. However, it’s Mr. Lion and his third grade romance that takes precedence.
‘Mission: 20’ begins with unsinkable, meddlesome Oumi researching the survivors of the Lion disaster, trying to get a handle on Kiriu’s overreaction (see Twin Spica 4). What she discovers breaks her heart. It’s the start of their second year of study, and Mr. Lion warns Asumi he might be away for a while.
Joy is quickly replaced by sadness and fear as ‘Mission: 21’ opens with a list of students axed from the program. Budget cuts and public opinion have affected the future of astronaut school and although Oumi, Fuchaya, Ukita and Suzuki have made the grade too, only fourteen cadets now comprise the entire Second Year. Their first test is being locked in tiny escape pods for hours to learn their psychological reaction to enforced extended claustrophobia.
The make-or-break endurance test continues in ‘Mission: 22’ as Asumi starts her arduous trek back to civilisation whilst pensive Mr. Lion follows a memory trail to the rocket he built of junk when he was kid. It leads to a surprising revelation about a lonely, ill child.
Decades later another girl with that name is failing fast as ‘Mission: 23’ opens. The spirit of the Lion is lost in reverie, remembering how his Ukita used to sneak away and help build his – no, their – rocket in the woods. She was fascinated by his tales of space flight and the history of exploration. She told him about the only joyous moment in her life, when her over-protective dad took her to see a play called Beauty and the Beast.
The intricate interlocking revelations conclude in ‘Mission: 24′ with Asumi storming towards the finish only to encounter another escape capsule, surrounded by droplets of blood. In another time, if not place, the tragedy of the past climaxes. Present day events also arrive at rather the cliffhanger to be continued in Twin Spica 6.
Still more affecting personal revelation in store, as ‘Another Spica’ finds author Yaginuma spinning another autobiographical tale from his ambition-free teens. Every volume to date has been a joyous, evocative, addictive drama, and so is this.
