The Series (5/5)

    Sentai Filmworks brings to Blu-ray Volume 1 of Space Brothers which contains the first 13 episode of this 97 episode anime series. Space Brothers follows the two titular  brothers Mutta and Hibito.  The two as children were passionate about space and space exploration, as adults Hibito has managed to become an astronaut, while Mutta has become a designer of automobiles.  Unfortunately, for Mutta he has ended up in some  entanglements at work and lost his job. After the firing Mutta finds himself blacklisted from the auto industry, and must find new work.  Fortunately, Hibito steps in, and gets his resume in the hands of his bosses at JAXA, the space agency, and gets Mutta on the road to his lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut.

      Space Brothers is the type of anime that one sees far too rarely.  It is a show with a somewhat fantastic premise, that is grounded in the reality of everyday life.  We see Mutta go through the struggles of becoming an astronaut, the meetings, and test.  We deal with the relationships with new co-workers and old friends.  This is a show that works in Mutta's present struggle, but also digs deep into the past of the brothers offering a beautiful nostalgic quality to the proceedings.

     The animation by A-1 Pictures is simply stunning. It offers a blend of naturalistic characters and environments, and the occasional beautiful spacescape.  The character designs and details are intricate and interesting, and really help to set this apart from a lot of the modern anime I have been  viewing.  At the end of the 13 episodes which only just begins to set up the series I was left certainly left wanting to see where the series would go from here.

Audio/Video (4/5)

Sentai Filmworks presents Space Brothers in a gorgeous 1080p AVC encoded transfer in the series native 1:78:1 aspect ratio.  This is simply a gorgeous transfer, that brings out the gorgeous colors and details of the series. 

    The audio is presented in a DTS-HD MA Japanese language track that sound quite good with dialogue, score, and effects coming through nicely.  I did not detect any instances of pops, cracks, or hissing on the track.

Extras (1/5)

A clean opening and closing credit sequence.

Overall

    Space Brothers is one of the finest animes I have seen in quite some time.  The animation is subtle, but gorgeous, and the series offers a nice slice of approach that is quite refreshing. The extras are slim, but that's expected, the A/V looks and sounds quite nice. RECOMMENDED.