Planetes Recommended

Publisher
Bandai
Director
Goro Taniguchi
Production
Bandai, NHK, Sunrise
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Running time
26 episodes
Year
2003

Planetes - Volume 3

By Joseph (Joe) Wood
21st Dec 05

Space the final frontier…and it is a dirty place. Rather than having to deal with alien trash though our intrepid *cough* crew of stellar garbage men and women must right the wrongs of humanity, such is the tale of Planetes.

Planetes volume three contains another four episodes. Episode ten “A Sky of Stardust” takes a look into the silent animal lover Yuri’s past. Hachimaki becomes annoyed that Yuri never talks about himself or what he’s looking for in space, despite them having been teammates for years. It seems Yuri was a passenger aboard the Alnair-8 with his wife when it was hit by space debris (remember the shuttle featured in episode one?). Yuri survived but his wife died, he joined the debris section to find her compass. Episode eleven and Cheng-Shin finally works up the courage to ask Tanabe out. Claire decides to help a fellow countryman test his new space suit; however, none of the sections are willing to test the suit apart from the debris section. As the testing begins, though the political situation in El Tanika becomes dangerous and the testing becomes a race for time as the OSA begin to take El Tanika citizens into protective custody. In episode twelve, a terrorist group is bombing space facilities in order to force man back onto the ground where it belongs. Their favourite targets are smoking rooms, and Fee is constantly hampered when trying to smoke, so much so that when the terrorists reveal their master plan, she is forced to stop them. Episode thirteen sees Hachimaki return home to Earth with Yuri and Tanabe; they visit Hachi’s home and encounter his rocket mad younger brother.

Planetes offers another truly great volume that shatters expectations. Instead of falling into an easy formula, the episodes are diverse yet centred in a deep rich universe with deep and believable characters. There’s also still a lot of comedy from the simple misunderstandings between the characters to the almost unbelievable slapstick moments. Seeing Fee in her quest for a cigarette is proof of this.

There still isn’t much of an overall plot developing, besides the obvious relationship issues between Tanabe and Hachi. There are again a few hints at where the series may be heading but honestly, it wouldn’t really matter if a plot never developed. Each episode of Planetes feels like a mini-movie as they are pretty much self contained yet they leave you desperately wanting more and find out what happens next. A serious plot development could ruin the fun of this remarkable series.

Planetes volume three is everything you could of expected and more, this series is well on it’s way to becoming a classic, yet it still seems to have a very low profile.

R2 DVD Notes

Features: English and Japanese 5.1, English and Japanese 2.0, English German French Dutch Subtitles, Trailers,Character Bios, Clean Opening and Closing Animation, Audio Drama 3 and 4. Audio Commentaries for two episodes.

Release information: Publisher: Beez Released: December 12th 2005 Classification: PG Running Time: 100mins

Notes: The auido dramas are little extra scence, the first one is more of a storyboard, where as the second uses colour stills. They are quite funny although you will have to have watched the episodes first. The audio commentaries are again in Japanese with subtitles so it's more of a case of reading them.

-- Joseph (Joe) Wood 21st Dec 05

Planetes Images