Planetes is the story of Hachirota Hoshino, dubbed “Hachimaki†by his crewmates for his propensity to wear a headband (hachimaki), who dreams of earning enough fame and fortune to buy his own spaceship and achieve complete freedom. As the series begins, however, he’s part of a crew of “extraplanetary sanitation workers†who clean up space debris.
Continue reading “Planetes 1-3 by Makoto Yukimura: B+”
Spotted on the BBC’s News site today:
UK researchers have developed a device to drag space debris out of orbit.
They plan to launch a demonstration of their “CubeSail” next year. It is a small satellite cube that deploys a thin, 25-sq-m plastic sheet.
Residual air molecules still present in the spacecraft’s low-Earth orbit will catch the sheet and pull the object out of the sky much faster than is normal.
Read the full article, Tiny cube to tackle space debris.
The Plot
With Hachimaki off to Jupiter, his former crewmates (and current wife) are left to deal with the garbage in orbit around Earth on their own. Fee, the captain of the Toy Box, is feeling adrift. Some time spent with her family gives her a new perspective and she begins trying to prevent an environmental disaster threatened by a war between two factions on Earth. Meanwhile, the trip to Jupiter continues and the crew is aware of how momentous their journey is. Sort of.
Continue reading “Planetes 4 (Makoto Yukimura)”
The last two volumes of the manga series “Planetes” by Makoto Yukimura are numbered 4.1 and 4.2. As for actual manga content, they really are one volume. Roughly a quarter to half the content of each is text, background information on space and the world of the story.
Volume 4.1
Hachimaki, the person I thought was our main character, is completely absent from this (half)-volume. He’s off on his way to Jupiter. Meanwhile, we get some side stories and backstories for other people he collected space junk with. One of them gets to know a creepy dude with an Elvis bouffant hairdo and poor grammar. He claims to be an alien. Which fact is supposed to explain why he grabbed another woman’s boob in greeting. Is he an alien? We never know for sure. But his apology for the boob-grabbing seems to go down all right.
Another story is about landmines planted by.. I’m never quite sure. The US government? Maybe. I have to say the politics of the whole thing left me baffled. I don’t know if it was partly the translation’s fault, as there seemed to be several names for one faction. Continue reading “J’s Take on PLANETES Volumes 4.1 and 4.2”
The Plot
In the not so distant future, humankind has made orbital space-flight relatively routine. Hakimachi, who dreams someday of the freedom of owning his own space ship, works as a space trash collector, clearing dangerous debris from orbit. But he knows that won’t ever earn him enough to fulfill his dream, and he has his sights set higher. His shipmates aren’t sure whether to encourage him or convince him he’s being a fool.
Continue reading “Planetes 1-3 (Makoto Yukimura)”
