Planetes Volume 1

Goro Taniguchi’s Planetes is one of the strangest anime series to have been produced in recent years. Of course a futuristic space setting is nothing new, but a story about garbage men is admittedly not the most enticing of premises. But do not be put off; PlanetES is a unique and frankly brave production that deserves your attention; something special for fans of science fiction or distinctly warm human drama.

In the year 2075, all the previous decades mankind has spent carelessly dumping miniscule garbage and scrap metal into space have hindered our first few steps into the great void of space. To combat this growing issue, low ranking astronauts are trained up and work hard to collect this deadly garbage- it may sound like a mundane job, but these unsung heroes are saving lives every day.

Hachimaki and Ai Tanabe are the bright eyed, zero-gravity garbage collectors from the Technora Corp., a company that specializes in organising space travel.
We join the story as Tanabe begins her first day at work with Technora and despite not being particularly talented, she has high hopes for her life in space; hopes that soon drain from her face when she meets her new senior co-worker; the outspoken and generally repellent Hachimaki, clad in an adult sized diaper! Of course, Tanabe’s first impressions are hardly eased when she learns that her job is something of a joke within Technora. The Space Debris department is infamously full of losers, eccentrics and idiots and is generally derided throughout the company as being the lowest of the low.
Despite all this, Tanabe is determined to make a decent career for herself and refuses to let her unflappable spirit diminish.

More than anything else, Planetes is a story about chasing dreams and never folding for anyone but yourself, no matter how high the odds are stacked against you. Tanabe is an instantly likable personality because her presumed naivety and innocent nature is backed up with a steely, almost frightening determination; she is soon driving everyone around her onwards and upwards- none more so than the complex and increasingly pessimistic Hachimaki, who’s childhood dream of one day earning his own spaceship is being lost in a torrential down pour of mundane everyday tasks. Whether he likes it or not, Hachimaki and Tanabe click immediately.

Beyond this central pairing, the rest of the crew that make up the Debris section are nothing if not a memorable bunch of outcasts. Fee Carmichael, the captain of the Collection ship, makes a strong impression as a character who lives by her own rules but the rest are a hodgepodge collection of slapstick, impossibly thick personalities placed there to provide comic relief at the expense of their frail dignity- suffice to say, they are true to their reputations of being annoying and eccentric dimwits!

It is easy to discuss the character-driven aspects of Planetes but a massive plus point for this series has to be its ultra-realistic vision of the future. Planetes achieves a gritty atmosphere by developing a complex, engrossing world for these characters to bounce off; their daily struggles eventually giving rise to the prevalent clashes of philosophy that run through out the narrative.
By now it should be apparent that Gundam specialists Sunrise have done a bang up job in creating such a realistic and detailed vision of our future, never before has an anime series taken such a meticulous approach to getting space travel just right.

Completing this impressive debut, Kotaro Nakagawa’s work on the soundtrack is excellent, whether he is composing music for a compelling outburst of emotion or an exciting moment of death-defying space walking, he captures the mood perfectly. There is a hint of Yoko Kanno’s influential Cowboy Bebop score when Nakagawa mixes jazzy sounds with subtle piano tinkling and the occasional electronic beat, but his work here is nothing less than impressive and does well to compliment Tanabe’s heart-on-sleeve teary speeches.

I am becoming a big fan of the work of Goro Taniguchi; having already delivered accomplished series like Infinite Ryvius and S-CRY-ED, Planetes is his most impressive work to date and shows us just what he and his talented team of artists at Sunrise are capable of achieving.

In Summary

This is an excellent debut for a series brimming with life-affirming philosophy and a realistic presentation of science fiction. I urge anyone looking for a mature, interesting anime series to grab Planetes now- it resonates so much more than the mundane premise would suggest.