It's likeable, if a bit generic. The cast are nice. The plot's heavier than my light expectations, but so simple and linear that a season synopsis would look like a piece of string. Schoolgirls start a school club, basically... and even that was a request from the manga editor to jump on what was then a genre bandwagon, to which the author (Rasuko Oukuma) never fully committed. When the manga began, it looked likely to be slice-of-life fluff about eccentric schoolgirls. The editor had other ideas but, ironically, this became one of Kirara's last school club series in the post-K-On! era. The genre's since pretty much died, unless you drag in things like Love Live! (school idols).

I suspect the editor's request improved this series. I'm not a big fan of pointless slice-of-life comedies that go nowhere, but these girls have a goal. They want to build a space rocket. It's a silly goal, but they're serious about it and they get into amateur rocket-making, physics research, fuel choices, etc.

They even enter a competition. This yields a surprise, because anime competitions are normally there to be won. Not many series are willing to crush their protagonists like bugs... but that's the case here, with grumpiness, depression and separation afterwards. That gives the last few episodes something to talk (and yell) about.

RANDOM OBSERVATION: the anime had only just started when on 7 October 2023 Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killed over a thousand people and called down upon themselves a two-year war that reduced Gaza to rubble. Because Japan is Japan, this show's fans went apeshit portraying its schoolgirls as Hamas fighters launching homemade rockets at Israel.

Our heroines are:

UMIKA KONOHOSHI = anti-social disaster area who'd given up on finding friends on the planet Earth. She thinks outer space is her only hope for finding life forms she can communicate with.

YUU AKEUCHI = bubbly, cute, pink-haired self-declared alien. We never get objective proof of this, but... (a) her forehead-telepathy is a major series element and she's capable of drawing recognisable-ish things that she's never seen except telepathically in Konohoshi's thoughts. (b) there's a scene where she claims to have teleported into Konohoshi's bedroom and any more realistic explanation would be a bit dodgy. (c) she lives alone in a lighthouse and claims not to need human food for sustenance. Instead, she can recharge her "space energy" by lazing on verandas. I assumed that she really was an alien, albeit also a loon.

HARUNO TAKARAGI = girlie girl and the class vice president. She's a faded blonde, serene, almost unflappable and the "straight man" of the girls.

MATATAKI RAIMON = a git who loves rockets and hates people. Persuading her to help you is a nearly impossible task. She's a great addition to the cast, though, because she adds a bit of salt and grit to a show that's otherwise extremely sweet.

The manga also got a 2024 live-action TV adaptation that I'd been planning to avoid, but I ended up making the mistake of watching its first episode. That show's not a catastrophe, but still... whoops. This franchise might seem well-suited to live action, since its cast are schoolgirls in the real world, but unfortunately the TV drama's performances aren't good enough. (It stars idols from AKB48.) Its version of Akeuchi is much less genki, outgoing and memorable. I found her bland. Her acting's nowhere near the size as it needed to be. Frankly, though, even the shrinking violet Konohoshi is dull compared with her anime equivalent.

That live-action episode made me appreciate this anime better. The latter's greatest strengths are things I'd been taking for granted, because anime's so good at them. Its schoolgirl heroines are always vivid and relatable. The acting, energy levels and emotional pitch are perfect. It's decent. I watched it and didn't feel I was wasting my time. It's not runaway amazing and in particular it's weaker than Bocchi the Rock (the previous year's anime based on a Manga Time Kirara series again with a pink-ish-haired shrinking violet protagonist who starts opening up to others after getting stuck into a hobby). I don't know if I'd recommend this compared with other anime, but you could definitely do a lot worse.