Planetes - A well done scifi masterwork

Written by Raudorn on July 8, 2010 at 8:40 AM

If I was to put my finger on the aspect of Planetes, that's the best of the whole serie, I could not decide. All parts are well put together leaving no question marks. The setting of Planetes is well-thought-out, with an absolute minimum of handwavium, unlike other scifi-animes. One could say it is realistic to the detail, especially since it is a quite amusing thought, that such a lovely debris section could acutally exist sometime in the future. Rest assured, that you won't find stupid technobabble, handwaving or kryptonite in this anime.
In this well done framework the characters and their relationships to each other begin to shine. Planetes doesn't need the lone hero, it has a whole bunch of 'em! The viewer starts just as clueless to the future development as the characters and the further the series goes on, the more connections and relationships are revealed. The story doesn't seem to go on a line from A to B, but it was there right from the beginning. A lot of the story happens retrospective (and that's to say without ANY of those stupic, unnecessary flashback scenes) as previously unimportant characters were involved in the whole thing from the start. The story doesn't take us along on it's roadtrip straight to the finale, but let the viewer figure it out for themselves, yet isn't too cryptic about it.
Though the story seems a bit of slice of life at the start and nothing with long term affects seems to happen, the main part actually happens in the dialogue and the relationships between the characters. The dialogues have, like in many animes, the slight drawback, that sometimes meanings get lost in translation and foreign viewers don't always understand why who said what.
The animation is pure eyecandy. It fits the setting with open, wide shots that show more than just the characters, but don't get too distracting. Facial expressions and gestures strenghten the dialogue and always fit the scence, which is quite important, when you want to make weightlessness seem realistic. Again, the animators spent quite a bit of work on the animation of objects in the absence of gravity, which will please all scifi fans, trust me!
Overall, this anime fascinates me and drew me into it's rich world. Go ahead, watch the first episode and let the work speak for itself.