Over three years ago, in the midst of one of my occasional bouts of blog-self-loathing, I mentioned that I had some thoughts about the final episode of the show Rocket Girls.  Shortly thereafter, I forgot that I even mentioned it and away it went into the depths of the internet.  Flash-forward to last week, when Pete Z won the fourth installment of the "Name This Mystery Ship" contest... which brings with it the winner's choice of a blog post.  His selection was for me to write up those thoughts on Rocket Girls ep12. 

To be honest, I had no idea what he was talking about.  I found the post where I mentioned it the first time, and that jogged no memories.  I had no idea what I was referring to!  Still, a promise is a promise, so it was off to the show to watch ep12 again, see what sprang to mind. 

By the end of it, I knew exactly what I meant. 

If you remember, JAXA's manned two-seat capsule, the Mangosteen, had made rendezvous with NASA's space shuttle Atlantis in an attempt to rescue a space probe destined for Pluto.  The problem was that the probe had reached an orbit too high for either the shuttle or the capsule to reach individually.  After an amazing kludge, however, the shuttle gave Mangosteen enough of a boost so it could reach the probe, fix it, and send it on it's way.  While unlikely, I could roll with that; it made for good story after all.

However, all is not well.  Due to a data-entry mixup (ain't that always the way?), it turns out that the Mangosteen won't be able to return to Earth without burning up during re-entry.  Some quick thinking on the part of both NASA and JAXA gives our heroines, hot pilot Yukari and mission specialist Akane, one chance: a skip re-entry.  This involves the capsule rebounding off the atmosphere a couple of times so as to slow down enough to come through okay.  Okay, I can buy that... it's been done before.  But there's a snag: there's a whole slew of numbers (Coordinates?  Drag coefficients?  Shoe sizes?) that are needed so's the capsule can perform the maneuvers correctly.  One tiny mixup and poof, they're burned to a crisp... and the crew of the Mangosteen traded away their pens to the NASA astronauts.  No problem!  Akane is a super-geeeeenius and can memorize any long sequence of numbers you care to throw at her.  Okay, I can buy that, too. 

Re-entry begins.  The G-forces build.  Akane, frail little flower that she is, passes out leaving hot pilot Yukari to just wing it.  Soon enough, the stresses build enough to drop Yukari as well.

And this is where I began to get really angry at Rocket Girls.

Up until this point, Rocket Girls had one thing going for it that practically no other anime, and perishingly few TV shows of any sort, had ever had before: a realistic grasp of the science of space-flight.  While the concept of having a space program based around high-school girls may sound silly, they had a good explanation for it (size and weight savings) that made perfectly good sense.  All throughout the show, Rocket Girls showed us that they understood just what it took to put anything into space, and used that understanding to make us believe that what they were doing could work... which is exactly what I'd expect from a show that had JAXA, Japan's space agency, as a production partner.  Was it perfect?  No, of course not... but it was close enough to make it seem right.

So what happens?  Is there any doubt?  Of course not: the Mangosteen comes through the blind, unpiloted, bloody-bedamned-impossible re-entry sequence totally intact, everybody's happy, the end, fade to black.

However, what should have happened makes for a more realistic, and in my mind much stronger, resolution, and a much better show as a result.  Simply put, they should have killed the main characters.

The Mangosteen should have burned up on re-entry.  They had gone through all the trouble of explaining just how difficult a maneuver this skip re-entry was, how nigh-on impossible it'd be, then given us the resolution: super-genius Akane being able to spew out the needed digits on demand so hot pilot Yukari could make the required corrections at the required times so as to bring them home.  Remember, up to this point, Rocket Girls had gone to exquisite lengths to demonstrate that they had the science of space flight down cold, and made us all believe that two joshikousei could fly.

And then they threw it all away.  They threw it all away by saying "gosh, let's have a happy ending despite impossible, unbelievable odds."  To use a phrase from Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, they screwed the pooch.  What would have been a magnificent opportunity to show the viewers just how dangerous manned space flight can be, and why we should do it anyway, became just another ending of a Magical Girl show.  For that's what Rocket Girls became in the final few minutes of the final episode of the series... "love and dreams will conquer all."  Space flight is dangerous, and one simple screwup can kill a crew.  They could have shown that, and explained why the sacrifice of hot pilot Yukari and super-genius Akane was worth making.  Indeed, throughout the series the producers never shied away from letting us know the risks... until the very end, when the risks came to the forefront.

Then they pissed the chance away, and what was a decent-to-good series became ashes in the viewer's mouth.  Yes, you could say "it wasn't that type of show."  To which I'd say, "horsehockey."  They went to great lengths to make it exactly that type of show, and they didn't deliver.  I hadn't been that frustrated with an ending since Kare Kano or episodes 25 and 26 of Evangelion. 

Without a doubt, Rocket Girls was flawed before the ending.  But it could have been memorable nevertheless.  By taking it from the reality-based concept into the realm of fantasy right at the very end, however, they completely ruined it for me.

Too damn bad; I may as well have been the target audience.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:02 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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