Planetes

In 2075, space travel is no longer just a dream, but an everyday reality for mankind. Advancements in science and technology have led to the colonization of the moon, the commercialization of outer space, and the formation of large space corporations. Ai Tanabe, an upbeat woman whose interests lie in the cosmos, joins Technora Corporation as a member of their Debris Section, a department dedicated to the removal of dangerous space junk between the orbits of the Earth and Moon.

However, Ai soon discovers how unappreciated her job is. As the laughingstock of Technora, the Debris Section is severely understaffed, poorly funded, and is forced to use a dilapidated spaceship nicknamed the "Toy Box" for debris retrieval. Undeterred, Ai perseveres and gradually becomes acquainted with the strange personalities that make up the Debris Section's staff, such as the bumbling but good-natured chief clerk Philippe Myers; the mysterious and tight-lipped temp worker Edelgard Rivera; and the hotheaded and passionate Hachirouta Hoshino, who longs for a spaceship to call his own.

Planetes is an unconventional sci-fi series that portrays the vastness of space as a backdrop for the personal lives of ordinary people—people who may have been born on Earth, but whose hopes and dreams lie amongst the stars.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hoshino, Hachirouta Main

Tanaka, Kazunari Japanese

Tanabe, Ai Main

Yukino, Satsuki Japanese

Carmichael, Fee Supporting

Orikasa, Ai Japanese

Mihalkov, Yuri Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Nono Supporting

Koorogi, Satomi Japanese

Locksmith, Werner Supporting

Ishizuka, Unshou Japanese

Rondo, Claire Supporting

Watanabe, Kumiko Japanese

Rivera, Edelgard Supporting

Itou, Maiko Japanese

Chad Supporting

Oka, Kazuo Japanese

Ashmead, Hakim Supporting

Ootomo, Ryuuzaburou Japanese

Yukawa, Jun Producer

Taniguchi, Gorou Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Urakami, Yasuo Sound Director

Murata, Kazuya Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Reviews

Jul 28, 2024

Latooq

Recommended

Planets is the first story written by Makoto Yukimura. And just as Vinland Saga this anime offers a unique setting. It's a distant future and it's set in space but it's not sci-fi. It's more like an alternative universe if governments still funded space programs as they used to do during the space race. And with Planets I'm confident that character writing is Yukimura's forte. Male characters are exceptional just as I expected but there are also a female lead and several female side characters who are as interesting and diverse. And speaking of the story, Planets has several storylines. Hoshino's character development, Tanabe's coming ... of age, few side characters' arcs, and there are politics as well. Of course it wouldn't be Yukumura's story if it didn't have social commentary. An international military organization ( probably inspired by NATO ) abuses its power and invades poor countries to establish piece; space exploration leads to widening inequality as only few countries benefit from it; civilians are under constant pressure by terrorists. This is an incomplete list of themes in the anime about people whose mission is to collect space garbage.

I was complimenting this anime so much that one would question why it didn't become a classic. I think the reason is the plot structure. There are so many storylines and themes but they are almost never interconnected. To draw a comparison, despite how different tone of the second season of Vinland Saga was, that didn't look out of place because the story sticks to specific theme. It's hard for me to pinpoint the central conflict in this story as if there is a wall between world building and the story of the main protagonist. You would expect Hoshiro to be more involved in the events surrounding him but he ends up just ignoring them. Planets is an entertaining anime with good characters but its story would hardly resonate with the viewers.

Planets is over 20yo but the animation doesn't look outdated at all. The ending hasn't aged well, though. In the second part when the story gets more dark, the ending never failed to ruin my immersion. The opening on the other hand complement the setting by featuring the chronology of the space race. And aside from hair that are pulled "down" despite the lack of gravity, space is portrayed realistically. Like there is noticeable delay if you want to talk to someone from the Moon or using acceleration to create a temporary gravity field. There are lots of small details like these, which make the show more enjoyable.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Sep 13, 2023

Strikeca

Mixed Feelings

Plantes is a really hard series to review due to how far apart its highs and lows are. The first 14 episodes or so are fantastic. However, ep 15 and onwards has a dramatic crash in the quality of characters and episode structure. That being said, even with the very disappointing ending it's still a show that I keep thinking about for positive reasons.

What makes the first half of the show so great? The biggest strength of the first half was its character interactions. Each episode was stuffed full of fast-paced banter and discussion from a wide variety of characters, and it all worked ... extremely well. It led to episodes that could both be funny while still keeping the viewer emotionally invested in the serious problems each episode presented. Its very rare to find a show that does this better than Planates did.

Each episode also had a lot going on but never felt overwhelming. Instead many episodes had multiple, all equally interesting and engaging sub-plots that all softly intersected at some point. Each episode had at least some minor humor which worked well, but every episode was also fairly grounded and presented serious problems for either individuals or the entire crew.

The episodes also tied in nicely with the overarching story. At least for the first half, there was no clear end goal for the story, but rather it just followed the people in the debris sector doing their job as time moved on. This worked really well in my opinion.

The shows good character interactions were in large part due to the quality of characters. Each character was very memorable, both in design, personality, and goals. Each key character got at least some spotlight and it was consistently well done. The romance (in the first half) also worked pretty well. It is much better than most other similar dramas. They actually put a decent amount of focus on it in each episode. Because the show is a drama and not a romance I was very happy with how they handled the romance in the first half.

If the first half was so great, what went wrong in the second half? Well, pretty much everything.

Remember the banter that I said was so great? Well in the second half it's pretty much all gone. This is due to changes in the crew staff and in changes due to character development.

The biggest weakness of the second half was its character development. There were two types. The first were characters that had literally 0 development (or a very tiny amount). This was mostly secondary characters or characters who didn't really have much of a reason to change. This was fine. The 2nd type was characters who got significantly worse. The 3 in particular were Hoshino, Tanabe and Claire. All 3 of these characters went from enjoyable to borderline unbearable after episode 15.

Hoshino went from a good friend and co-worker to a self-obsessed egomaniac who cut off all contact with all his friends/family/girlfriend and told multiple people to their face to go fuck themselves basically when they tried to be friendly. He deluded himself for literally 0 good reason that everyone was a negative influence and became a massive dick because of it. This character development was pretty bad and unenjoyable, but the thing that made it really bad was that nobody cared. Even while being a dick to everyone, anytime anyone saw him they acted super happy and friendly with him. Nobody cared that he didn't talk to them for months. Nobody cared that he told everyone that he didn't need them and that they didn't mean anything to him. Very normal. Of course, he does a complete 180 at the end and changes completely because why not.

The biggest culprit of the blind Hoshino forgiveness train was definitely Tanabe. In the first 14 episodes, she was a normal character who was quite enjoyable and acted like a normal human. Then in episode 15 she becomes super cold and mean to Hoshino for basically no reason. After this episode, she becomes love-obsessed with Hoshino and basically doesn't care how poorly he treats her over a very long period of time because LOVE. He ditches multiple dates to run on his treadmill. He ignores the problems of the debris crew and starts to ignore Tanabe in their little time together. Then he ignores her for multiple months during his training, and once she finally does get in contact with him, he is a complete asshole to her? No problem. All of this and her respect and love for Hoshino doesn't drop one bit. Once he does his random little 180 they finally reunite and can be in love together. What a great ending to a great saga. Definitely felt very genuine and deserved...

Finally, there is Claire. They decided to push her to a bigger role in the 2nd half. I enjoyed her character in the first half so I was looking forward to it, but it was really bad. All she does is whine and complain. Anytime any character decides to try and be positive they get shut down by her and she makes them feel bad. I won't spoil what happens next, but if you follow the drop in writing quality and character development while watching the show then you could probably guess (I sure could even though I really hoped they wouldn't do it).

All 3 of these characters went from enjoyable to very unenjoyable.

The story overall was still pretty good. It had a nice realistic goal for some characters and progressed at a good pace. There were also some really good episodes still (the training/tryout episodes especially) but on average they were more boring and annoying.

Yet despite all this I still am thinking fondly about the show. I decided to write a review after all. Honestly, I'm not sure exactly how I should feel about this show overall.

Also worth noting the animation and music were both pretty good. The music was pretty solid and I enjoyed the animation a fair amount.

Overall I'd give the scores of:

ep 1-14:
9/10 characters
7/10 story
7/10 animation
6/10 music
10/10 enjoyment
9/10 overall

ep 15-26:
2/10 characters
8/10 story
7/10 animation
6/10 music
3/10 enjoyment
4/10 overall

Total:
6.5/10 overall (rounding down because its slightly closer to 6 than 7)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Dec 16, 2020

geovannyboss

Not Recommended

Of course I respect everyone's tastes, but if you told me this was a joke anime, I'd believe you. I hated this show.

This is going to contain spoilers for Planetes, but you know what? Who cares. It's bad. There's the review. Don't watch it. Not even for "haha wow this is so bad" laughs. It has a handful of moments at best. It's bad and gets worse as time goes on. And it's so, incredibly, unbelievably boring.

I'm a guy who likes things that are boring. One of my favorite games? Civilzation 3. I play on the map TETurkhan's Test of Time. It's a game that ... takes dozens of hours to complete. I adore it. It's slow and plodding. I liked Meek's Cutoff, a movie about being bored. I even like slice of life animes that are boring. There's something fascinating about trying to find beauty in the mundane parts of reality, it's often a failure but I can enjoy the attempt. Sometimes characters have cool moments, sometimes it can be very sad.

This is none of that. Planetes is nothing. It is an absence of everything. I sat down and watched 26 goddamn episodes of this thing and I can't name you a scene from it outside of the general "they're in space?" It's unbelievable. Literally beyond my comprehension. And it has a 97% like on Rotten Tomatoes. Average user rating 4.6. What the fuck is wrong with these people? where do I even start with how bad this is?

Most people probably missed what is the worst moment in the series so.. let's start there. So this sh*tpile has an episode where one of the characters goes to confront her ex-husband. Who may be a terrorist I guess? frick if I know. He's a terrorist who comes to a space station and takes a detour to meet with his ex-wife. You know what? Who cares. It makes no sense. This sucks. That's not the worst part. No, the worst part is her freakin' rant about how miserable he made her. There might be a video of it somewhere but frick me if I'm going to find it.

This poor voice actress. She wasn't that good, typical bad monotone early 2000s dub job, whatever. Not her fault, nobody could save this script. Whole point of her rant was that she was forced in to prostitution. You know how they convey how horrible it was? Not by the girl crying, not by her showing emotion in any way, not even by hinting as how horrible the life was.

She talks about how she was forced to get piercings all over. And if she didn't she was beat up.

I'm sayin' again If you told me this was a joke anime, I'd believe you. Do you get her rant? Piercings = whore. Get it? No? Of course you don't, it's garbage! Who sits down as a writer and goes "how am I going to convey sexual violence against a woman without outright saying it? Euphemisms? Imagery? Crying? Trauma? Nah. Piercings." No words. No freakin' words. This bullsh*t is all over the place. Later episode, guy is trapped in space alone. Mind you, we don't see him get trapped there except in a low-budget flashback. That might be exciting. No, we just see the aftermath. So what happens? Well, naturally he gets PTSD.

Except that they don't call it PTSD. They call it Space Loss Syndrome. I even checked to see if that was some obscure disease, but nope, found jack shit. They just made up a new word to describe PTSD. Why? Why not just say "dude was in a traumatic experience and has PTSD and now needs therapy." Oh, and he recovers from it. Not through therapy that we see, but by seeing a space engine. Anything can be fixed by remembering how awesome space is.

Well that’s annoying. But you know what? It's not even the little things. Oh no no no no. It's everything.

"It's a romance show more than anything else." The two characters are never shown kissing. It happens, but they literally put the camera right behind one character's head so that we don't see it. Why? Also that comes halfway through the series, with hardly any build-up. The kiss is supposed to be like a big scene. Yes it's not how romances work but it's when the guy gets the girl in a romcom. And it's a kiss. They aren't having anal or somethin', it's a small romantic gesture that helps us visually see characters emotions towards each other. Oh, and that starts up a love triangle that lasts a single episode. Why have it? Why not just not have the love triangle? Why put in story elements that don't get used, you freakin' people goddamn you all.

I can't even begin to convey how stupid this is. A character thwarts a terrorist plot because she wants to have a cigarette. Not comically, by ramming a spaceship in to a satellite. Unemployed people dressed as ninjas save a woman from a burning building. There's a whole episode revolving around a woman born on the moon who looks 18 but is actually 12, and the main male character is I think attracted to her, but it's HARD TO TELL BECAUSE THEY DON'T CONVEY EMOTIONS AT ALL. ohhhh good gracious almighty.

Planetes falls apart on a technical level too. Character's face change shape between scenes, and I suspect the reason it's set in space is so that they don't have to animate walking. Characters slide through frames, there's occasionally sound in space but not all the time. Music is almost non-existent and when it shows up is pretty freaking terrible. Character voices are the same 10 voice actors who voice act everyone, they do their best I'm sure but this was directed by someone who was unwilling to show two characters kissing so they aren't exactly dealing with a visionary. The art style is like a bad copy of Ghost in the Shell. Might even be the same company, and I'd certainly believe it if you told me. It's just terrible on so many levels.

I've just never seen anything so devoid of everything. There's literally nothing here. No joy, no passion for the series, nothing. Just some writer masturbating to their shitty space fantasies. Fantasies that freaking suck shit too. It's half an accurate representation of space and half a comedy, and as a result it accomplishes literally nothing. Of all of the anime that aren't failed comedies (a.k.a. the worst), this is it. This is the worst. Beyond this is only bugger-off trash. Do not watch Planetes. Ahh 97% like on Rotten Tomatoes. Shitt 8/10+ on other sites. What's that. Also, you know what? The plot goes no where important. The main characters get paralyzed and recovers in an episode. My brain melted.

I was more entertained by watching those goddamn 10 hour loops on youtube than this shit show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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