Hacker Cinema
Space Brothers
宇宙兄弟
2012 · TV series · 24 min episodes · 2 seasons
AnimationDramaScience FictionFantasy
When they were young, the brothers Mutta and Hibito promised each other they would become astronauts. Now, in 2025, Hibito has followed his dream to become the first Japanese on the moon, but Mutta has just been fired from his job. His brother reminds him of their childhood promise, and Mutta decides once again to aim for space.
3 positivefrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
(My first thought when reading the title is Three Body Problem, but of course you already read it) Some manga / anime recs:
- Planetes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes) is a hard scifi manga with anime adaptation about daily life of astronauts cleaning up space debris. It feels pretty grounded, you can feel how its like living in Earth orbit and Moon
- Space Brothers / Uchuu Kyodai (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Brothers_(manga)) tells the story of a Japanese worker getting kicked out from his company and then he applied to JAXA, following his younger brother's footstep
Not manga/anime/books, but there's a Korean scifi movie at Netflix called Space Sweepers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Sweepers), similar to Planetes. What I found interesting is that they have people speaking different language, and you can hear their universal translator translating their conversation to their own languages. Different than western scifi where everyone speaks English
Adding couple space related yet quite plausible anime/manga series:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Girls - basically space flight marketing for highschoolers created in cooperation with JAXA - has a pretty good description of using a biosuit
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Brothers_(manga) - a near future "so you want to be an astronaut, eh? " story - very realistic description of what you need to do before actually going to space (38 volumes/99 anime episodes)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Operators - a space opera that has quite minimal super science and a lot of hard physics - lasers vs overheating, detection/stealth in space (and the lack thereof), signal propagation issues, how to turn big ships quickly enough to use thrusters/fire axial weapons, using neutrino detectors to spot enemy warships based on neutrinos from their nuclear reactors
Various UC Gundam series - pretty accurate description of O'Neil Island 3 space colonies, mass drivers, orbital infrastructure in general - zero g only ships & stations
This reminds me of uchuu kyodai or the space brothers anime where hibito wraps his comadre's body with a gold like foil to keep his body warm but also to reflect sunlight when it gets too hot. This anime is pretty realistic and I recommend you watch it if you'd like to know what it takes to be an astronaut.