(no subject)

[skygiants]

aquamirage, this is a post for you!

In other words, this is my post about the sci-fi anime Planetes, which I finally got around to seeing this summer.

Planetes is not space opera; it's hard sci-fi about a bunch of everyday employees on a giant space station going about their everyday jobs. Most of our protagonists are debris haulers who go out and pick up junk that could get in the way of scheduled flights. It is SUPER GLAMOROUS work, by which I mean they are just about the lowest people on the company totem pole.



These are Ai and Hachi. Ai is energetic and enthusiastic and wants to do her best and in love with LOVE! Hachi is cynical, grumpy, ambitious, and in love with SPACE.

Ai is sort of our viewpoint character, but a lot of the second half of the series focuses on Hachi and whether it's possible to balance an intense desire to achieve one dream with interpersonal connections. It's a really interesting examination and deconstruction of SPACE DREAMS, but he is not my favorite and I sort of wish he was less the protagonist than he was, especially since the rest of the ensemble is so great.



Like Fee! Fee is team boss and she is GREAT. She could probably be promoted like twenty times over, but eh, she's happy where she is, so why bother? She has a husband and son somewhere back in Florida, and she's a total nicotine addict, and in one episode she saves the entire space station because she REALLY NEEDS a place to smoke. It is the best episode.



Or Arvind Ravi, who spends a lot of time as a comic relief character -- company shill, constantly anxious about protocol -- but, you know, the reason he's worried about pay grades and getting promoted is because he has around eight kids and wants to make sure they all can follow their dreams because he is the best dad.



Or Edel, office temp, who does not care about your problems and is more competent than anybody else in this show. And has a ~secret past~, but mostly spends her time doing paperwork and quietly rolling her eyes.



Or Claire Rondo, most heartbreaking character -- an ambitious, brilliant space executive who immigrated to America as a child from a small South American country. Her arc is about struggling with the knowledge that space development is consistently increasing the privilege gap between global superpowers and less wealthy nations, and wondering whether she has to choose between rejecting her background, or rejecting her dreams. CLAIRE! She may not be the protagonist of the show, but she is the protagonist in my heart.

These are only a few characters from a huge and varied cast, and you may notice something: it's really diverse. Planetes is a show with a global scope, and it's grappling with a lot of incredibly complex issues about privilege and power, the benefits and the costs of space development, and how much human misery can be justified by human dreams. And obviously it doesn't have answers, because there aren't any good ones, and it's sure not perfect in everything it does, but it has the right amount of ambiguity in how it handles the questions. There are terrorists, their methods are terrible -- but their points aren't wrong. And the show knows that.

So that's why you should watch Planetes!


Sorry guys, but I was not happy with the very end of the series being marriage-and-baby. I have no inherent objection to marriage and babies! But Hachi spent so much time acting like such a jerk to Ai in the second half of the series, and what gets me is that he never actually apologized to her. I mean, he came to realize the importance of human connection, yes, fine, good, but COME ON, AN ACTUAL APOLOGY WOULD BE NICE. SHE IS SITTING THERE IN A WHEELCHAIR, HAVING HAD ALL HER DREAMS PUT ON HOLD, AND YOU HAVE BEEN BLOWING HER OFF FOR LIKE A YEAR.

And -- I dunno. I really like the overall themes of the series, I think they're well and thoughtfully handled. But I was kind of dissatisfied by how much it was Hachi's story, in the end; I wanted it to be Ai's story to the same degree. And during the part with Claire, it was! I loved that -- that that was about the Ai and Claire, and Ai's own brand of heroism, and how they made their choices to save each other. But then the end of her story made it about Hachi and Hachi's issues again, and . . . man, I really wanted a last scene and a happy ending of Ai getting to go back to work in the Debris Section, and I was really sad not to get it.

(But really really what I want is a completely ensemble show with no protagonist at all.

. . . alternately, really really what I want is a genderswap.)

Comments

:')

[aquamirage]

I love that you have the exact same opinions I thought you would have and dislike the same stuff I thought you would dislike. This is a good post.

I often dream of Lady Hachi. They are beautiful dreams.

Re: :')

[skygiants]

Sometimes, I am super predictable. >.>

I WOULD LOVE LADY HACHI SO MUCH. Maybe this is hypocritical of me but I don't care.

(Now we need to hang out so we can talk about it more in person! I want to hear your elaborate genderswap headcanon. :D)

[allchildren]

I am also not a big fan of the very end. Back on earth with a baby who she has to raise by herself for seven years while her husband is in space? wow that is depressing as fuck?

Mostly the series just cuts off in my mind with Ai and Claire OVERCOMING TOGETHER on the moon.

[skygiants]

Yes! Like, I would have been fine with 'let's see if we can keep this relationship going long-distance and take it from there in seven years,' okay, sure, whatever, but MARRIAGE AND BABIES? Clearly not the time!

That is a good place for it to cut off and I approve of that place.

[kate_nepveu]

I disliked the manga enough ( http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/2006/12/yukimura_planetes.php ) that I seem to have forgotten whether it ended up in babies. I think I am glad.

[skygiants]

Huh! There are definitely some very significant differences there. There's nothing like that Fee arc in the anime -- which, on the one hand, I liked her a lot and would have liked her to be a protagonist with an arc, but at the same time I would also like it to be a well-handled arc ...

[salinea]

I was so pissed off by Hachi by the end. Fuck that guy. AND CLAIRE WAS THE BEST EVER. I ship her with Felix Gaeta, lol. Also Fee was the best too. Such a strange mix of greatness with wince inducing stuff that anime.

[onnari]

I am really glad to be encountering this review of Planetes! It's been more than a year since I watched this, but my thoughts are your thoughts as I remember them. Overall I loved the themes and just the general concept of slice-of-life in space! And the topic of terrorism was handled in a way I appreciated. Claire is such a great character. But yes, as the anime progressed everything was all about Hachi and his issues at the expense of others narratively. He's not even called out on his behavior. And then suddenly all's well and he's off to explore space and she's just... staying behind to have a baby? It lost me there. I definitely feel like Ai's agency in the series was overlooked in the second half which is so very frustrating. :( I would have definitely loved a series with more focus on Ai or the ensemble cast.

After I watched this series though I decided to read the original manga since I had heard they are different. Overall, I have to say I left that version of the story more satisfied. Especially since the anime ends on such a disappointing note for me. I can't remember the manga perfectly, and it wasn't perfect for me, but it stuck to the slice-of-life tone that had attracted me in the first place. It doesn't give Hachi a grander, more eventful plotline. At the same time though, no one has that kind of plotline, and Claire doesn't exist at all, unfortunately. The Hachi/Ai romance was handled in a way that didn't really bother me, but it wasn't a romance I really took note of, either. (iirc, Ai has a noticeably different characterization and is firmly a secondary character.) So you win some and lose some. Adaptations can be pretty interesting in their execution.

[skygiants]

YES! I really just wanted someone to actually call him out on his behavior. (Uh, someone who wasn't Cheng-Shin.) And I really, really wanted the series to be as much about Ai and her love of space as it was about Hachi and his love of space, and . . . it was not. :(

I am curious about the manga! I've heard mixed things. I hear that there's more Fee, which is intriguing to me, but on the other hand, no Claire . . . it definitely is interesting to compare adaptations, always!