Planetes: Astronomical series

Reviewer: Isaac Bernhard
Rating (out of 5): **** (Full series)

Planetes is the story of "Half Section," an orbital garbage collection service which operates out of a corporate space station in the near future. Ai Tanabe is a new recruit who finds herself assigned to the least fashionable job in space -- retrieving space debris -- and a member of a team of misfits and outcasts. But her unenviable position at the bottom of the space-faring hierarchy puts her and Half Section squarely in the middle of a very terrestrial struggle for control of the vast resources of the solar system.

To review, there are essentially three kinds of science fiction stories, and you usually know which kind you're watching once you've seen something explode in space. If the explosion makes a big bang accompanied by a plume of smoke which rises upward, then you have schlocky sci-fi on your hands (not always a bad thing, depending). If the explosion makes a loud noise and an impressive fireball, but with no smoke, you have a film or animation which follows the now-standard generic norms of science fiction fantasy. But if the explosion is silent, perhaps accompanied by a seemingly small puff of debris, then you are probably watching that rare bird, "hard" science fiction. Planetes, a thoughtful and realistic speculation on the near future of space exploration, is very much in this last category.

But as "hard" as Planetes is in this sense, it also shows, for better and worse, that there need not be anything particularly hard about this kind of science fiction. Indeed, it is usually "soft" science fiction which lingers fetishistically on military hardware and technologically enhanced violence, and it is the so-called hard science fiction which is often interested in the much more perplexing problem of how human beings deal with the technological transformation of their environment and their society. Good examples of this sub-genre (such as Solaris, 2001, etc.) are all technologically fastidious as a means to an end, because it is in the details of our technologically amplified, enhanced, and circumscribed world that real insight into the limits of human adaptation and potential can be explored.

For the most part, Planetes's vision of near-future space exploration and the attendant technology is pitch-perfect. While it does stumble sometimes or fudge a bit on details, for the most part it can stand with all but the most serious hard sci-fi in its rich and informed vision of the near future. But hard science fiction is not just about technology, it is about people, and it is in its characters that Planetes sometimes falters badly.

In essence, Planetes is really a refreshingly anti-utopian story about people at the bottom struggling for respect and recognition. In other words, it's about class relations. Overall, Planetes is impressive in its understanding of the difficulties of hardened status differences both between individuals and in the geo-politics which inevitably serves as the background to any realistic tale of space exploration. Toward the end of the series, in the final two discs, Planetes is not only notable for this but it is superb.

Likewise the first third of Planetes is impressive. In the first few discs a future world is constructed and a variety of interesting characters are introduced. Unfortunately, the series' middle third is just not that good. For some reason the characters become shallow and many of the stories are crudely designed to illustrate facile platitudes. In fact, during this middle part of the series I began to wonder whether Planetes wasn't actually made for children, with its trite exclamations involving duty and love conquering all, its suddenly rather lifeless characters, and its exceedingly clownish sense of humor. Still, later on, when the show wakes up again, the tone is much darker and more serious and this lapse is redeemed somewhat. Making your way through these lackluster middle episodes is worthwhile if you can manage it.

It is very hard to review a show like Planetes, because it's so close to great that it's tempting to ignore its flaws. And that is what I'd recommend: when it gets a bit simplistic, just wait it out. If you have any interest in hard science fiction, and in imagining how we might make our way in the future, you will probably be glad you did. As with any long TV show, Planetes isn't perfect throughout, but it is also quite a brilliant work.