I’m coming to the Slice of Life genre through a seemingly hyper specific lens right now, with my previous two favourite shows that fit into the genre being carbon copies of one another and having some kind of supernatural element essentially hijacking a working stiff’s life.
Asteroid in Love, or Koisuru Asteroid comes in from a totally different direction, focusing on a group of school girls as they come together to share their passions and hobbies with one another in the “Earth Sciences Club”. So half of the girls are really into astronomy and the other are really keen on geology.
You’re mainly coming this show for one thing, it’s to see a bunch of girls being gosh darnned adorable and if you’re lucky, you might pick up a factoids about the constellations, comet magnitudes or types of rocks often found on Japanese riverbeds along the way.
The super cute lectures about earth sciences seem a little hit and miss per episode though, as some seeming to focus on them pretty heavily to the point we see the girls giving miniature monologues about them, while other episodes seem to focus entirely on something more “slice of lifey”, like working part time in a bakery or studying for a make-up exam.
The main focus of the show are Mira and Ao, two first year girls who join the Earth Sciences on their first day of high school for the same reason, unbeknownst to them at the time. Y’see, the two met one another once before in their childhood, Mira mistaking Ao for a boy and making a determined promise that they’d help one another discover and name an asteroid in the future.
Their reunion and any possible misunderstanding is quickly brushed over as they become new besties and get on with their lives, being oh so cute and awkward (in Ao’s case) all along the way, much to the delight of Miru’s childhood friend Suzu, who is seemingly acting as the audience surrogate for this show, getting all hot under the collar any time anyone’s toe even thinks about crossing a Yuri line.
Verdict: It’s cute, just not quite up my alley
I really don’t have a bad thing to say about this series in all honesty. It’s cute, it promotes a very wholesome message about sharing your hobbies and passions with your friends and growing closer with them as a result. It’s just not connecting with me enough that I want to keep up with it I guess.
Having somehow managed to avoid ever being a Japanese, teenage girl myself, it’s a little more difficult for me to slot myself into the situations and lives of the characters present, which is kind of the whole thing that made me so attracted to the slice of life shows I’ve seen in the past.
From the looks of things, there aren’t going to be any stakes or ongoing story line to add any drama or mild stakes to affairs, so I think I’ll end up giving this one a skip. Unless every other show this season turns out to be a great big wet fart then I might end up coming back, stranger things have happened.
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 