J’s Take on PLANETES Volumes 1-3

PLANETES is a five volume manga series. Or four volumes. They’ve numbered it 1, 2, 3, 4-1, and 4-2. So take your pick. The mangaka is Makoto Yukimura or Yukimura Makoto. Again, take your pick.

This review is of the first three volumes.

The first volume starts off interesting. There’s these two people travelling together on a shuttle. And I think they’re both guys, but it turns out they’re not. I would have that problem again later, but it was most striking in this first scene. Well, so there’s an accident, and the woman dies. And then it’s 6 years later, which is really annoying. Because now I have to get oriented all over again, with new characters.

So these new characters are space junk gatherers. Can you hear the Klingons yelling at Scotty that the Enterprise is a garbage scow? I can! But, really, you don’t want all that space junk cluttering up the orbits. It’s a real hazard. Kills people who look like guys when they’re really girls.

Plot? Well, one of the main character’s coworkers is all broody because of that wife he lost back on the first few pages. And at the same time, there’s eco-terrorists going around blowing up smoking rooms. Because astronauts need places to smoke their cigarettes, y’all!

In volume 2, we learn that space is big, and dark, and empty, and lonely. And, then, whoa dude, did you know we’re all in space? All the time?! Floating around on our giant blue spaceship. Trippy.

So our main character, whose nickname is Hachimaki, has decided to find a plot for himself. He’s going to try to get on the special mission to Jupiter, so he can come back a hero, and make lots of money, and buy his own ship. Sounds like he’s taking the hard road to me.

And those wacky eco-terrorists who want to save space from the evil astronauts are blowing things up still.

In volume 3, space is still big and dark and empty and lonely. But Hachimaki decides to go out on (I think it’s Mars) in his spacesuit and have a picnic by himself. For days and days. And somehow he doesn’t run out of oxygen and die. But he does hallucinate a weird white cat. A mystical, cosmic, cryptic cat.

And one of his co-astronauts on the Jupiter trip, which is still in the training phase, gets naked to turn him on. And then there’s lots of embarrassing pages where she’s naked and everyone on the bus can totally see you’re reading a manga with naked boobs in it. And meanwhile Hachimaki could care less, so all that nudity is pointless!

Why is he not interested? The white cat made him impotent. Or he’s totally in love with a chick from volume 2. I… really don’t know which. But then he does up and marry her out of nowhere. But maybe that makes the cat happy so he won’t have to whip out the space Viagra.

And at the end of this volume is a longish extra about when Hachimaki’s father was out in space playing baseball on Mars while his mother was busy giving birth to him.

So, to sum up: Clearing space junk won’t get you ahead in life, except it gives you a lot of EVA experience, which helps you land the sweet Jupiter gig. But it can all really mess with your head. And look out for those eco-terrorists and their bombs.

At the end of the first two volumes is a little blurb about the background of space travel. So you can learn a bit about the famous men and (ha, did you really think I was going to say women?) who were rocket scientists and cosmonauts.

All in all, not bad, but I wish it had more focus. And what is it about Japanese manga and anime that it has to take straightforward science fiction and get all philosophical and mystical and make you ponder the meaning of it all? Because those are the bits where I just get completely lost.