PlanetES Review, one of the few space animes / mangas

Planetes is Makoto Yukimuras four-piece scifi-manga, which was published from 2001 onwards. In addition to Japanese and English, Planetes has also been translated into Spanish, Italian and German.

 

Planetes milieu is located in space and there floating planets and space stations. The human race has evolved by leaps, making the space another human environment in which travel between the moon and the space stations is common. Despite the evolution of technology there is still one big problem, space debris. Rampant floating debris are a danger to space vehicles, and if you thought that the space didn't require garbage drivers, guess again.

The story follows space debris collection vessel's crew called Toy Box, which includes the Hachimaki, Fee and Yuri. Hachimaki is an ambitious waste collector, who dreams of one day owning his own space ship. Fee is the ship's hard-bitten female pilot, who sits inside the vessel while others drag scrap into the ship's cargo hold. Yuri is silent, but a hard-working employee who lost his wife in the crash shuttle. Together, they clean up space satellite and other junk that has been forgotten, but Hachimaki dreams of his own spaceship and freedom. In order to obtain the money to his vessel, Hachimaki is searching for the work of the first manned flight to Jupiter. The road to Jupiter is not completely straightforward, but it is complicated by an armed terrorist organization, Hachis dark side, and even Death himself.

I'd say that PlanetES is kind of like Mushishi, but it still isn't. The animation is pretty well designed and sometimes as it flows with the story it brings me some sense of calmness.

The series is however very much character and character interaction based, they have pretty solid banter and at times it's a bit enjoyable to read about them. I have to say that this series in my opinion doesn't really have any truly memorable characters who stick to mind, but more as a average guys in space that do their daily stuff.

Story of PlanetES is in my opinion maybe its weakest side: it really doesn't offer anything for me who is some kind of action / swift plot twist junkie. The pace of PlanetES is such that it doesn't hurry anywhere: it takes it time and brings the reader along with it.

In addition to Manga there is also a 26-episode anime.