Futatsu no Spica

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Kei, Marika, and Asumi

Twin Spica (Futatsu no Spica in the original Japanese) is a seinen manga series written and illustrated by Kou Yaginuma, that ran between 2002 and 2009. It was adapted as an anime by Animax Asia in 2003.

An accident caused the Japanese space program's manned rocket, the Lion, to crash into Yuigahama. Asumi Kamogawa, who was one year old at the time, survives the incident, protected by her mother Kyouko, who is badly burned and falls into a coma. Five years later, Kyouko dies without ever having regained consciousness. After the funeral, Asumi meets a strange man wearing a lion head from a mascot costume and playing the harmonica. Although she doesn't believe him at first, he is the ghost of one of the astronauts killed in the Lion incident. Between her teacher and her father telling her that dead people become stars, and talking with Lion-san, she decides to become a "rocket driver" when she grows up.

To that end, Asumi applies to the prestigious and expensive Tokyo Space Academy, to enroll in the newly created astronaut training course. During the rather unusual entrance exam, she meets Marika Ukita and Kei Oumi. At the same time, her childhood friend Shinnosuke Fuchuuya, who has followed her to the school, meets Shuu Suzuki, and the five of them eventually form a group.

Since this is a whole new area of study for this level, the teachers and administrators are feeling out what needs to be done and learning as much as the students are. This leads to some rather odd training scenarios combined with the more expected. It doesn't help that one of the teachers knew Asumi's father.

The main story line covers Asumi and the others during their time at Tokyo Space Academy, but there are numerous flashbacks to earlier periods.

The anime is only 20 episodes long, with a non-ending. It follows the manga fairly closely until the end of the anime, but only covers part of the first five volumes, most of what was out at the time. Given the length differences, many of these tropes only apply to the manga.

A Live Action Adaptation produced by NHK aired in the summer of 2009. Vertical released the manga in the US.

Tropes used in Futatsu no Spica include:

• Airplane Arms (Young Asumi does this a lot)
• All of the Other Reindeer (Asumi in middle school)
• Anime Theme Song (The music pre-dates the anime, but the lyrics for the opening were written for it)
• Anyone Can Die
• Artificial Human (Marika)
• Backstory (Everyone except Kei).
• Beach Episode
• Big Fancy House (Marika. Shuu's family has one as well, but he lives in a dinky little apartment)
• Big Sleep
• Broken Bird
• Cherry Blossoms (One of Asumi's flashbacks covers this in detail)
• Cloning Blues (Made worse by the fact that human cloning was banned by international treaty in this world)
• Coming of Age Story
• Cool Chair (The multi-axis chair)
• Cut Short (The anime)
• Defrosting Ice Queen
• Discretion Shot
• Elaborate University High (Tokyo Space Academy)
• Ending Theme
• Fatal Flaw (Asumi, who nearly drowned as a child, is afraid of water. Which is something of a problem, given that they have to be able to swim in full flight gear and do a lot of simulated zero-g work in pools)
• Festival Episode
• First-Name Basis
• Flash Back (Numerous)
• Genetic Memory (Current Marika sometimes remembers things the original Marika knew)
• Go Out with a Smile
• The Glasses Gotta Go (Kei switched from glasses to contact lens after she had successfully enrolled in the school, hoping to make herself more attractive.)
• Government Conspiracy (The real cause of the Lion incident is apparently corner-cutting and outsourcing of what was supposed to be the first manned rocked designed and made entirely in Japan. Which The Government has been trying to keep under wraps.)
• Great Escape (One of the stranger class projects involve one of these)
• Heel Face Turn
• He Is Not My Boyfriend (Asumi to protect Shimizu from bullying)
• Heroic BSOD
• Ill Girl ( And a couple of Ill Guys, too)
• Invisible to Normals (Lion-san)
• Incurable Cough of Death (Started with a nosebleed for one. Possibly building to a straight version of this with another character. For the second time.)
• Intrepid Reporter (Ichimura, who recognizes Marika during the media attention surrounding Shuu after he's been selcted to participate in a Shuttle mission, and starts investigating.)
• I Remember Because (Asumi remembering their room number in the closed environment adaptation test)
  • Fridge Logic: It's weird though that a lot of other participants are not able to remember a simple 4-digit number, especially since they had to search for their rooms first.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold
• Landlord (Ringo)
• Kids Are Cruel (Kasane's problem)
• Lonely Rich Kid
• Loners Are Freaks (Marika until she becomes Nakama. Asumi in middle school.)
• Luminescent Blush
• Meaningful Funeral (Where Neko Funjatta is played)
• Meaningful Name ("Asumi", when written in kanji, would mean as much as "view into the future")
• Meganekko (Kei, until she switches to contacts)
  • She only wore glasses in the first volume of the manga. After after she had successfully enrolled in the school, she ditched them so that she can be more attractive So it's really a subversion. Sorry, no glasses girl for you!
• Memento MacGuffin (The pin of Asumi's mother)
• Missing Mom (Asumi's mother, among others)
• Motif: The harmonica is featured prominently, both musically and visually.
• Mundane Dogmatic
• Nakama
• Never Got to Say Goodbye
• Next Sunday A.D. (Started publication in 2001, the Lion incident happening in 2010. This leaves a list of space travel disasters mentioned early in the series Jossed by reality.)
• Obsolete Mentor (Lion-san's advice to Asumi ranges from helpful to worthless. Justified in that he was an astronaut before any established training regime, and the new course at the Tokyo Space Academy is the first attempt to establish one)
• Ojou
• One-Note Cook (Asumi never seems to make anything other than riceballs or curry)
• Ordinary High School Student
• Parental Abandonment (Done in various ways, from dead parents to ones that are simply never mentioned)
• Pensieve Flashback
• Perpetual Poverty (Asumi. Kei is surprised to find out she doesn't even have a cell phone)
• Plot Based Photograph Obfuscation (In the opening credits, no less)
• Plucky Girl
• The Power of Friendship
• The Promise
• Replacement Goldfish Marika is cloned to be a replacement of the original Marika
• Rich Bitch
• Rousseau Was Right (Even the Sadist Teacher is just misguided. Although there is that whole Government Conspiracy thing that hasn't been resolved yet)
• Sadist Teacher (Sano to Asumi. Kei's view of the phys ed teacher)
• Scary Shiny Glasses (Sano)
• Seinen
• Selective Obliviousness (Asumi doesn't have much room in her head for anything besides space)
• Sempai-Kohai (During their second year, another girl, Mikan, moves in to the dorm Asumi stays at. Due to Asumi's appearance, it takes Mikan a while to acknowledge Asumi as sempai)
• Sins of Our Fathers
• Sitting on the Roof (Shuu likes to do this for stargazing)
• Sleep Cute
• Slice of Life
• Spirit Advisor
• Standing in the Hall
• Stylistic Suck
• Team Shot (For the Eyecatch)
• Team Spirit (Not quite played straight, since the point is made repeatedly that few of the students will actually be able to go in to space, but no-one can go in to space alone)
• Theme Tune Cameo (The ending theme is frequently played on a harmonica by Lion-san)
• There Are No Therapists
• Threshold Guardians (The closed-environment test of the entrance exam)
• Trademark Favorite Food (Shuu has a fondness for Chinese Honey Orange juice)
• Training from Hell (The astronaut training program likes to push the students physically. Especially with jogging, obstacle courses, orienteering, and more high-tech things like pressure chambers and the multi-axis chair)
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future
• Unlucky Childhood Friend
• Weirdness Censor (Usually involving Lion-san)
• Whole-Episode Flashback (Several)