Space Brothers

I'm only three episodes into this, and really want to like it, but I'm struggling with Space Brothers.

On the surface it seems like it should be great, and the broad story is something I'd like to see, but by God is it slow. Everything so far feels like it should have been covered in a single-episode flashback. I already know, since the show is on its 50th episode, that Mutta is going to become an astronaut. Frankly, anybody who ever suspected he'd wash out hasn't seen much TV.

But that means that everything that's happened, and all the secondary characters that've been introduced, have been utterly inconsequential. The outcome of the last two episodes' worth of JAXA tests is a foregone conclusion, and it's not like Chihayafuru where we're learning anything important about the character, so why is the series wasting time through this nonsense?

I know I'm probably going to give it another couple of episodes before giving up - I stuck through BTOOOM!, after all. Once Mutta gets through all the interviews and tests I'm hoping it picks up. I'm really just disappointed that it's not as much like Planetes as I'd hoped.