Planetes: Complete Collection

A 12 year old girl, born in space, whose bones are so fragile she can never land on Earth. Astronauts who have lived in space so long hard radiation has riddled their bodies with cancer. Hard men making hard decisions, unsympathetic bastards who nonetheless drive the engine of progress. This is quite simply one of the best shows I've ever seen. It deals maturely with a great deal of unresolvable issues, including the human drive towards exploration, the personality and sacrifices of the explorers, and perhaps most importantly, who exploration benefits.

Planetes is set against the backdrop of a very basic extrapolation of our world. The overarching plot involves orbital terrorism and humanity's first drive towards Jupiter. The rich countries, who would benefit from Jupiter's exploitation as a limitless source of cheap fuel, and the poor countries, who having no military or political strength will probably never benefit. This show is as much about our world as about a possible world 100 years from now.

Perhaps I've made it sound like a dry, ptolemic drama, though that is far from the truth. The first DVD contains quite a bit of humor and doesn't introduce the main plot points at all, a humor much of the series maintains even as it exposes us to the human costs of exploration. This show is everything entertainment promises to be and so seldom is: entertaining, enriching, informative, intellectual, and inspiring.

Planetes is one of the greatest drama series ever created, though you might not think so from it's outward appearance. In this age of information, western audiences scream for ever greater realism, grittiness, and violence, focusing on sacrifice and suffering and at the same time forgetting the purpose that it serves. The world of animation, and particularly the animation pouring out of Japan in a raging torrent, is largely popular for it's flash and not for it's substance, despite the fact that substance is there in ample quality for the discerning viewer.

And where does Planetes come in? Planetes is an anime with the styling of a realistic Western Drama, a Realistic Epic set in the not-too-distant future that focuses on the people, their sacrifice, their world, and greater ideals and yearnings that it serves.

You could say that Planetes (which is Greek for Wanderers) is simply a story about astronauts in space collecting debris garbage. But this show is SO much more than that.

The first time I saw this show, I was very off-put by the first episode, as it starts out like so many anime, with Japanese quirkiness and awkwardness, but very quickly hints at something far greater. From the very first episode we are shown a world of great ideals and dreams, of righteous beliefs just under the surface of the unfair world if only you can look for it. Throughout the show this same theme resonates again and again, being attacked but never thwarted by the never-ending cruelty of reality. It takes many forms, from from not wanting to destroy a peace plaque to protect a satellite of war, to helping people from a tiny third-world country test their space suit and get it certified for space-worthiness even as the world government seizes the country and it's representatives in space.

While the heart-touching (and at times heart-wrenching) ideals keep coming up, it's the characters who embody these choices of practical vs.idealistic conflict that give the show it's heart. Almost every major character in the show gets character development time, showing why they are the way that they are. As their stories unfold before our eyes and we gain insight into their feelings, we come to identify with and sympathize with their feelings. I can think of no better example of this then the Russian astronaut's story wherein (spoiler alert) we learn of the death of his dear wife, and how one small trinket she had on her when she died drives him to search through the debris of space endlessly to find the message written inside. When he finally finds the item (a compass) and sees the message inside, I think it was one of the most profound moments of any drama I had ever seen. Have you ever had a premonition of tragedy to come, have you ever wished for the safety and happiness of someone you love? Have you ever had to move past losing a person you love to live life again? Such was the struggle of a single character in a single episode!

There are many subplots which continue simultaneously, from the idealistic astronaut's arguing and (spoilers again) eventually love for the seemingly cynical rough talking astronaut (who despite all appearances is actually just as idealistic as she is) to the struggle between the terrorists seeking to destroy all space travel and the world government taking advantage of small nations. And as the series progresses, you may find yourself, like me, wondering just where it is going. Rest assured, while it may seem to derail toward the end, destiny pushes events to a head, and ultimately toward one of the most satisfying conclusions to any anime I can recall.

I could talk about the dramatic music, the historical opening, the pastel colored highly-detailed animation, the incredible realism (no sound in space!), the superb voice-acting in the Japanese dub, the INCREDIBLE drama in the final episodes (the most dramatic moment in any television show I have seen comes in an episode where the main protagonist is stranded on the moon with a terrorist, and has the choice of stealing her air, or dying a horrible death from oxygen starvation {watching the seconds tick down as she stares at the oxygen tanks, flashes of everything she has ever said about love and sacrifice playing through her head had me worked up more than I can ever remember being from a TV show}). Really though, any fan of serious animated drama, or just drama in general owes it to their self to give this show a watch. It was undoubtedly the greatest show produced that year, and one of the best anime I have ever seen. The world would be a better place if more people watched shows like Planetes.

I was browsing at Borders, and this series caught my eye. The box art was nice, and the plot of the series seemed interesting, so I picked it up. Planetes turned out to be everything I could have hoped for, and more.

The Show:

This is an excellent series, both technically and objectively--beautiful animation (with a surprisingly high cel count, especially in zero-g sequences) is coupled with surprising technical realism and well-developed characters to create one of the best animes in years, and possibly the best science fiction anime ever. Planetes is the most realistic and inspiring vision of near-future space exploration and habitation I have ever seen. Zero-gravity environments, spacecraft, and character movement are portrayed with a level of detail and realism which far surpasses that of most series touting themselves as science fiction; because of this realism, even the tiniest details of the characters' lives take on a sense of grandeur and beauty. Even my father, a man who isn't particularly fond of anime, was greatly impressed, and found the show enjoyable. I would reccomend this series to anyone from anime newbie to veteran otaku. For a newcomer, Planetes contains most of the best possible elements of anime; good story, well-developed characters, visual beauty, a gentle dose of philosophy, and a setting which is impossible to recreate in live action. For the weary veteran, it has both plenty of what you already love, and enough new ideas to remind you of why you started watching anime in the first place.

The Product:

This box set is a cheap and easy way to collect the entire series at once. It contains every episode with both english dubbed and subbed versions (though the dub is a bit miscast), and has a few of the basic extras expected of any anime, mainly clean opening and closing credit sequences. The only real drawback of this set is the lack of some of the more interesting special features which were included in the special edition DVDs of volumes one through three (e.g. interviews with NASA professionals, orbital debris CGI models). Though these aren't critical, their absence may prompt die-hard fans to purchase the individual volumes instead, although in my oppinion, the incredibly low price of this box set is enough to warrant forgiving Bandai the omissions. If you already own some of the individual volumes then it's a toss-up, but if you don't, this set is by far the better way to go.