Kanata Hoshijima

Kanata Hoshijima (カナタ・ホシジマ) is the leader of Group B-5. He dreams of exploring space someday and wants to protect everyone around him.

Appearance
Kanata has a fair complexion with black spiky hair and brown eyes. He has a small scar on the bridge of his nose. His crust suit, a standard men's make by Falken designed with athletics in mind, is mostly red, white, and blue.

In episode 11, he loses his arm and was given a prosthetic arm in episode 12.

Personality
Kanata is a steadfast and deeply driven person, to the point that he will take risks (no matter how extreme) to save those he cares about. Whether or not he feels confident, he exudes confidence so that he might be seen and acknowledged as a reliable leader by those around him.

Background
Kanata was raised by Rei Hoshijima, a professional decathlete who suffered an injury that ended his promising career in athletics, to be an athlete in order to replace him. Kanata quit his training after he developed a goal for himself. In school, he grew attached to a teacher of his and derived much of his core ideology from him. During a camping trip with his teacher, they and four other campers were caught in bad weather resulting in the loss of said teacher. He and the four students ended up lost in the forest and weren't found for many days. His teacher's death and this dangerous camping trip devastated Kanata, but his teacher's last words to him, telling him to be strong when all seems lost, left an undeniable mark on him. He wanted to become stronger to prevent such a thing from happening again, so he returned to his "father" and demanded that they resume his training, which resulted in him becoming one of the world's foremost teenage decathletes.

Main Storyline
In 2163 A.D. at the Mousanish Spaceport, he hears the cries of Aries Spring who had her purse snatched away by a thief. He chases after the thief and is able to knock him down after leaping over a fountain. He gives the purse back to Aries who begins to thank him. Soon he is carried away by a group of patrol-bots for assault and battery. Sometime later he is cleared of charges and the patrol-bots carry him to where Group B-5 is meeting and he introduces himself. He also proclaims himself as the captain of the group, much to some objections by the other students.

They then board a spaceship and begin their four-hour journey to Planet McPa. Once everyone is given permission to move freely around the cabin, Kanata is approached by Aries who thanks him for his help. When she asks him what made him decide he wants to be the captain of the group, Kanata says that he wants to become a space explorer with his own spaceship and crew. He then says that he is only taking on the dreams of a person who had passed away and has made it his own aspiration. Aries is moved by this and says that she will cheer him on. Sometime later, the spaceship lands on Planet McPa and the group steps outside to walk around, taking in the vast landscape. When Luca Esposito points out a strange globe that's been approaching them and is sucked in by it, Kanata tells everyone to run and to reactivate their helmets, but the whole group is caught and sent into outer space. He notices where they are and sees a floating space ship in the distance. He instructs everyone to propel towards the ship.

He asks if everyone is inside and if they are hurt, and panics when Zack Walker notes that one person is missing. When Ulgar Zweig points out Aries, who is still floating in space, with her thrusters and communication system not working, everyone wonders what they can do in this situation, and Kanata thinks back to the day that his teacher fell to his death. He then resolves to go out and rescue Aries with the help of a cable cord to keep him attached to the ship. As he got closer to Aries, he finds that the cord is not long enough and unclips himself to reach her. He is able to reach Aries and they get back safely. As soon as he gets Aries on board, she thanks him repeatedly.

He's shocked when they learn they are no longer above Planet McPa and that they are 5,012 light-years away from their original location.

Skills
Athleticism  - Kanata's training under his father has made him a stellar athlete. His raw ability is shown in his chasing and catching up to a thief on a unibike, as well as jumping from tree-poline to tree-poline and spearing a tur-gon with a javelin-like pole on the planet Vilavurs.

Leadership - Throughout the expedition back to Astra, Kanata portrays advanced leadership skills. Some times they were shown include when he gathered everyone back onto the ship when the wormhole teleported them above Earth, and when they land on a new planet and need to gather resources for the next leg of the journey.

Aries Spring
In the first episode we see Kanata save Aries' backpack from a robber and Aries gets interested in Kanata. After they got sucked into the worm hole, Aries is separated in space from B-5 team and Kanata saved her. Aries began to develop feelings towards Kanata for saving her. On his part, Kanata sees Aries as someone he can rely on and develops feelings for her as well. At the end of series Kanata and Aries got engaged and were to be married once Kanata gets back from his mission in space.

Quitterie Raffaeli
At first, Quitterie didn't really see Kanata as being captain material for their team. But after Kanata saves Funicia, she started to believe Kanata to be a good captain and deep down, she really respected Kanata.

Funicia Raffaeli
Kanata saved her life in episode 2 after she was nearly attacked by a Tur-gon while stranded on a Tree-poline, risking his own life in the process.

Zack Walker
Zack Walker is the pilot of the Astra ship. He complements with Kanata's personality as he is the calm type. B-5 team survived after visiting many planets and came home to planet Astra. After the 7 year timeskip he once again piloted the Astra ship, like he promised Kanata that he would once Kanata obtained a ship of his own. He is also the one who made Kanata his prosthetic arm.

Luca Esposito
Luca is one of Kanata's crew. Kanata sees Luca as a capable crewmate as he is very resourceful and really good at making materials. Kanata treated Luca as male, but after learning that Luca was intersex, he began to sometimes hesitate to play silly games such as sumo with him as he somewhat saw Luca as a girl. Nonetheless, Kanata's respect and friendship with Luca didn't change.

Charce Lacroix
Both of them place deep trust in each other. Early in the series, Charce claims that he'll be Kanata's right hand man. Later on in episode 11, when Charce realizes that he doesn't want to kill anyone and attempts suicide, Kanata saves him and loses his right arm in the process. Kanata then says that he wants Charce to be his right hand man and he agrees. After the seven year timeskip, Kanata asks Charce for Aries' hand in marriage and later the two are seen along with Zack voyaging out into space.

Yun-hua Lu
At first, Yun-hua was not very engaged with everyone on the ship, due to the way that she was raised by her mother. She saw herself as a burden for the team and thus she left a note to Kanata that she'll just leave to not keep on being a burden. Kanata sets off to find her and brought her back to the ship where everyone else's lives where in danger due to the poison in the Shummoor planet. They overcame the adversity and during this time, she broke out of her shell and chose to cut her hair to forget about her past and welcome her new self and thus she opened her heart to everyone in her team.

Ulgar Zweig
At first, Ulgar was a very closed off person, not wanting to be in friendly relations with anyone. After the "Ulgar points a gun to the head of Luca incident" a tsunami swept Ulgar and Luca away. Ulgar was saved by Kanata and then Kanata tells him to keep the gun and that Kanata would be trusting him to keep everyone safe. Because if this, Ulgar began to truly respect Kanata for saving him and he also became friendly with everyone else. In the epilogue, Ulgar went to Kanata and Zack to see them off. Kanata wanted Ulgar to come with them on their voyage to space but Ulgar declined because he was too busy with his journalism work.

Kanata's teacher
Kanata looked up to his teacher a great deal, being inspired by him to become an astronaut and seeing him as a sort of parental figure. When his teacher died, Kanata was devastated and swore to go to space someday, just as his teacher had wanted for him. This loss was also what caused Kanata to be so protective and to go along with his father's training.

Rei Hoshijima
Rei is Kanata's father and Original. He trained Kanata to be a world class athlete like himself, but never saw him as a son or loved him.

Trivia

 * His first name can be written as "彼方" meaning "the other side" or "far away". Hoshijima can be written as "星島" meaning "star island".