I’m glad that Kanata no Astra doesn’t beat around the bush with the game changing revelation last week. Once they learn about Quitterie and Funi’s DNA match, they figure out themselves being clones from their respective single parents. It makes total sense as one of the common themes they all share is the neglectance from the parents, by design no less. But allow me to take a moment to dissect how good and bad this revelation gets. In order to do that I’m gonna address it from most to least effective. At its most effective, this twist asks the very question of their existence. They have been born as lab tests and now are being thrown away by their original selves. The weight of it sure is hard to dismiss. Secondly, as soon as we learn about the truth, we proceed to the perspective of the adults, who make it clear that they wanted to erase their clones from existence. It partly works as a tense reminder of threats of them returning home: there’s no home to begin with. On the less positive side, they do want to return home! Goddamnit, why don’t you just settle down somewhere and perhaps enhance yourself with skills and experience first?
Other aspect from this twist that I’m still not quite convinced is that Kanata no Astra frames the adults as cold-heart monsters, to the point (at least at this point) it feels implausible in both logical and psychological sense. Transplant memories to create younger self of yourself is legit, but explain to me why they spend all that time to raise them then toss them away like this? Isn’t it better to just kill them for their body parts? It would make more sense to me if this whole trip is an experiment instead of this “killing them softly” fashion. In addition, this episode makes it crystal clear that the adults don’t see their clone counterparts as their children. I totally get that, but aren’t they a part of them as well? I find it hard to swallow the way they treat their own “body parts” as cold as dead meat.
Putting those aside, the latter half of the episode deals with them coping with the news, and good news: they’re coping pretty well (or at least they appear that way). As Kanata goes to confront each of them, they all take it realistically well. It’s a neat trick that Kanata no Astra displays, as doesn’t matter how many thrilling twists and turns, we need the cast who has solid chemistry and worth caring for, which it succeeds. This second half also touches on the nature of personalities. Like Zack asserts that the environment plays just as important roles to determine someone’s personality, the clone kids already grow out of their original adults and become a completely different person. Just like Quitterie and Funi, though share the shame origin, grow up to be different individuals. We also have the whole proposal hijink between Zack and Quitterie, sadly it does very little to me. These humor-attempts are like a bitter chocolate within the whole package for me.
Finally, Kanata no Astra drops another bombshell at the end when Polina (and we) realize that it isn’t Earth they wanted to go back, but the planet Astra. Again, I applaud the ambition, not for the actual execution. It’s essential that in this very journey we are following the kids’ point of view. By making them an unreliable narrator as this late of a game feels more abrupt than narrative-grabbing. If we’re willing to overlook the presentation though, it opens to lots of interesting questions (Kanata no Astra is good at that, that’s for sure). Given how Polina was asleep for 12 years, it’s safe to assume that something happened to the Earth during the time (she’s aware of that) and the adults surely were around during that time. “Memory transplant” does ring a bell here, so it could be this Astra world is the artificial world created after the fall of Earth, but then how many survivors out there? How large it’s going to be? Hopefully it’s larger than the group of the parents.
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