There is something deeply romantic about the freedom of space. Unmoored from the limitations of home, kingdom, or even gravity itself, space promises an open horizon of exploration, a new world where anyone’s potential can be realized. Space is often framed as a realm of conquest to be claimed by bold pioneers; what holds you back is not the gritty specifics of your prior life, but the reach of your spirit. If you can dream it, you can build it. If you can seek it, you can seize it.
Tag Archives: Planetes
Planetes – Episode 10
Secrets abound in Planetes’ tenth episode. There is one secret we know of, and that is being consciously held by Tanabe – Mr. Gigalt’s failing health, which he asked Tanabe not to share with Hachi. There is one secret who even its holder isn’t aware of: Hachi’s shifting feelings for Tanabe, a truth he is unwilling to admit to himself. And there is one new secret, the secret of Yuri’s past, which is slowly unspooled across the course of one more melancholy adventure.
Planetes – Episode 9
Even Hachimaki was a rookie at one point, and in episode nine, we’re finally introduced to the man who taught Hachi everything he knows. A month of security inspections prompts the return of Gigalt Gungulgash, a veteran debris hauler turned OSA agent, now here to make sure the Half section have got all their security-related affairs in order. And so we spend an episode looking both back at the past and on towards the future, in a present moment that reflects both our old triumphs and long-standing regrets.
Planetes – Episode 8
The Planetes crew was back to the grind this episode, having returned from the moon and immediately being put back to work. While Hachi and Tanabe’s lives largely returned to business as usual, Fee opened this episode by meeting with her old coworker Dolf, now a division manager within Technora. Though Fee wanted to reminisce about the good old days, Dolf had a forward-thinking proposal for Fee – accept a promotion out of the Debris unit and directly into Central. Her talents are too good for a group as pointless and disparaged as Debris. He needs her where he can use her.
Planetes – Episode 7
As Planetes’ seventh episode begins, Hachi explains how the moon is often used as a place of recuperation for those suffering from the effects of long-term space habitation. With his leg still broken from his prior adventures, Hachi has plenty of time with his own thoughts this week, and so we hear his internal voice for the very first time. Hachi meets a pair of new acquaintances during his time recovering, as well – an old astronaut named Harry Roland, who spent twenty years in space carving the way for the current era, and a young woman named Nono, who claims to have been on the moon for twelve years. Both of these are dramatic stretches of time; the human body isn’t naturally suited for space travel, and so both Harry and Nono are something of space oddities, stranded from humanity’s terrestrial home.
Planetes – Episode 6
In today’s episode of Planetes, Hachi and Tanabe arrive at the moon only to discover it’s full of weebs.
I mentioned in my last writeup that I was fairly, but not one hundred percent sure Planetes was in on the joke. That episode was silly, but it still conformed to something resembling a conventional narrative shell. Some of its camp was clearly intentional, but the underlying humor of the contrived story didn’t have to be. It might have just been an unintentionally funny episode.
Planetes – Episode 5
This was a very silly episode of Planetes. How silly? Well, a running subplot involves an amateur film production of “Space Wolf Goes to the Moon,” a pickpocket at one point laments that his “nimble pianist’s fingers are only used to steal other people’s stuff,” and the climactic scene involves a pair of parents verbally underlining the lesson they’ve learned about parenting, each gasping, and then turning to stare at each other, their eyes filled with daytime soap opera wonder. Planetes can be a hammy and broad show at the best of times, but this episode pretty much reveled in a kind of archetypal TV storytelling that reminded me more of something like M.A.S.H. or the A-Team than anything anime genres approach. And for all that, it was a really good time.
Planetes – Episode 4
Today’s Planetes episode was about how rich people are terrible and should probably be killed.
Well, there was a little more to it than that, but not much. This was one more classic office storyline, the episode where the head office’s son visits the branch and everyone has to kowtow and dance for him because nepotism is awesome. It’s a standard plot shell that was executed in a pretty routine manner – we learned that Hachi and the Control employee Claire were once an item, and Tanabe’s ultimate defense of the debris unit earned her some clearly plotted respect from Hachi, but in the end, this is the kind of episode you could see in basically any episodic drama or sitcom.
Planetes – Episode 3
Early on in this episode, Tanabe challenges Hachimaki on his dreams of finding love, asking “why are all your fantasies like something out of a comic book?” It’s a funny line coming from her, considering their usual relationship – while Hachi is fundamentally a dreamer, he buries that nature under years of defensive cynicism. Tanabe, on the other hand, is all optimism and love and roses – she might think she’s more practical and mature than her lazy teammate, but her confidence and drive lack the tempering of experience. She is in Optimism Stage One, optimism untested by the harshness of the adult vacuum. And in this episode, that optimism runs up against one more frank reality of adult living – the fact that everyone dies.
Planetes – Episode 2
I mentioned in my last episode writeup that so far, Planetes was succeeding largely on premise and polish. On top of that, I also briefly talked about how both the show’s genre structure and its ending song somewhat gave away the fact that this was likely Hachimaki’s story, as he reignites the passion that sent him into space in the first place. This second episode reaffirmed all those points, and further underlined how important good storytelling fundamentals can be. On top of that, it was just a fine vignette that stared directly into the abyss of an unfulfilling professional life. For a show about spacemen in a glorious scifi future, Planetes is far more grounded than the vast majority of anime out there.