Usually the topic of space in anime comes in the sci-fi genre, but Rocket Girls takes place in our world, with presently-existing technology



The story follows a young girl who travels to the Solomon Islands in search of her missing father, which also is home to the fictional Solomon Space Association. There, she unexpectedly gets roped into becoming an astronaut in order to find him. The SSA's manned spaceflight program is struggling, and in the interest of making their rockets smaller and lighter, shaving every kilo counts, thus, a petite high school girl becomes an astronaut!



The story is good, the characters are fun, but what I really liked about the show was the scientific accuracy. When it comes to technology, movies and TV shows (and anime) tend to dumb it down for the general public, sometimes by hilariously misrepresenting reality, sometimes, by simply bending the facts to make things more interesting.

Rocket Girls however, gives you a relatively realistic side dish of orbital mechanics and spaceflight science, while presenting things in a very digestable manner.



And while I am certainly no rocket scientist, I have been interested in spaceflight since I was a child, and I have played a fair bit of Kerbal Space Program, and thus found myself recognizing the names of transfer equations and other terminology in a way that felt very rewarding.

Hohmann transfers, delta V, apogees, perigees, eccentric orbits, and so on

It felt intellectually stimulating at times

did I mention this was produced with cooperation from JAXA? (Japans version of NASA or Roscosmos)



The shows animation is warm and very happy, and the rockets and some other scenes such as the control center are made in CGI, I liked both.



All in all, I really enjoyed it