 The "Look
What Happened
When I Became an Astronaut"
ROSSMAN
Arthur C. Clarke, eat your damn heart out. Planetes
director Goro Taniguchi put together a show that is more realistic,
more emotionally charged, more dramatic and 20,000 times more
political than anything you ever could have imagined, Mr. Clarke.
God, you suck.
Taniguchi (from here on out known as The Gooch)
presents us with a look at space travel in the future that is
so detailed and thoughtful that if things turn out any different
you will scratch your head and wonder why the future scientists
didn't just follow his already well laid out plans. The Gooch's
space is beautiful, but deadly. See, because of space debris
(anything from a left over screw from the construction of a
space station to derelict satellites), mankind has got to be
careful in his daily travels around the Earth and the Moon.
One tiny screw (orbiting the planet at several kilometers per
second) can fux up a space plane like nobody's business. So,
debris collectors (aka space garbage men) are a very necessary,
just a looked down upon, part of the space faring business.
And business is booming.
Planetes' story takes place in
2075, and there are already colonies on the moon and tons of
space stations around Earth. There's even a ship being built
to go to Jupiter, but that's kinda spoiler material, so I'll
refrain from talking about that too much. Anyway, after a "screw
+ space plane" incident a few years previous, companies
begin funding debris collection agencies to start scooping up
the dangerous scraps and thus clearing the way for more safe
space exploration. We, the viewers, follow the Technora Debris
Agency and their spacey hijinks for 26 glorious space filled
episodes. The main players are Hachimaki (the dreamer who wants
his own space ship someday), Ai Tanabe (the newbie with high
hopes and morals, but who's still cute and likeable), Yuri (the
quiet guy), and Fee (the last chain smoking hottie in the cosmos).
There are quite a few secondary characters who hold sway over
the plot of the show too. There's Edle (the overworked part
timer), Hakim (the tough as a chainsaw security dude), Claire
Rondo (the "trying to make something better of her life"
lower class cutie trying to be an upper class new hotness),
and, and... Well, there are just so many more that it would
take up another couple of paragraphs to simply list
their names and not even to get into who they are. In that sense
Planetes is kind of like The Gooch's other
space drama show, Infinite
Ryvius. Only it's not half as depressing... Though it is
as dramatic (more so in the last 7 or 8 episodes than the earlier
more light hearted ones).
Planetes is basically "Blue
collared workers in space". Which is really cool when you
think about it. It's about a bunch of guys and gals in low paying,
dirty jobs in space getting caught up in things that are much
bigger than they are (think Sanford & Son
in spacesuits). The politics in the show mainly stick to the
background at first, but come back to bite the main players
squarely on the ass like a super space snake in the last few
eps. The first half of the show has a playful attitude. The
slight bickering between Tanabe and Hachimaki, the borderline
contempt that Edle has for the Debris Section supervisors, and
the chain smoking antics of the piloting goddess Fee all make
me chuckle just thinking about them. Hee hee ha ha and so forth.
But then we get some dramatic moments that remind us how human
the cast really is. Like Claire's self-obsessed work load that
she tries to balance in order to prove to others that she's
not just some bumpkin from a country with no plumbing, let alone
a space port, but a potential elite class citizen. Or Yuri's
unspoken quest to find himself (and possibly something that
he treasures as even more valuable) amid the almost endless
orbiting debris above the planet.
But, about 2/3rds of the way through, Planetes
turns hyperdramatic. That's not a bad thing though, 'cause it
handles the change very well, and the change happens as a result
of plot choices that were made earlier both by our main characters
and those way higher up on the space pecking order. The Space
Defense Front (or whatever the fuck they call themselves) terrorists,
who were basically not very threatening before, turn out to
be some of the biggest dickheads in the known universe in the
last leg of the series as they try to stop mankind from colonizing
the worlds beyond our Terran atmosphere. This is when things
get very exciting, but also very nails-to-the-chalkboard irritating.
Bear with me here. See, the tension brought on in the last 1/3rd
of the show is well plotted, well acted and supercalifragilistically
directed, but the terrorists are just such incredible ASSHOLES
that I wanted them all to die horrible brain-slug induced deaths,
like what Khan did to Chekov and his buddy in Star Trek
II. I mean, the Space Liberation terrorists wanted
to make everybody on Earth equal. They thought that only the
advanced nations would benefit from space travel while the third
world nations left on Earth would kill themselves off with wars,
famines and diseases... YET THEY DON'T EVER TRY to save those
countries... They just try to KILL OFF INNOCENT CIVILIANS in
space. Does that make any kind of sense to you? Just watching
the show it seemed to me that I was supposed to feel sorry for
the terrorists and their plight, but I just hated them (as one
should when dealing with cowardly mass muderers). Their goal
was to get all the worlds' super powers to stop exploring space
so that they could make dying and self-destructive countries
as strong as they are (of which most of those dirt countries
still don't even believe that AIDs is real despite the fact
that 1 in 10 of their peoples are infected with it... but that's
not even here nor there), OR split up the resources of the moon
and the planets beyond between ALL OF THE COUNTRIES on Earth
based on population, not how much money and effort
individual countries put into exploring the outer reaches. Hmmm,
that sounds kind of familiar... Why does the word "COMMUNISM"
pop into my mind? The Space Liberation Front is nothing but
a bunch of mindless COMMIE TERRORISTS!!! Fuck them all.
But I digress. Things work out (kind of) for all
those involved. There was one point in the final episode in
which something almost happened that would have made
me utterly HATE this show if they went ahead with it, but a
philosophical point is made, along with a decision, that ended
up saving the life of possibly the most likeable character in
the show. And then I loved it. Though the best scene of the
entire story still has to be when Tanabe has to make a decision
to either uphold her previously preached about morality or do
something that would take another murdering human's life, but
save her own. It was acted out so spectacularly well that I
was taken aback. I haven't seen many live action American dramatic
situations that could hold a candle to the crap Tanabe had to
put herself through. Mr. The Gooch, I applaud you.
So, what did I think of Planetes?
It was kind of slow at first. It started out as a separate-space-adventure-a-week
without any discernable plot, but everything came into focus
by the end, and in such a realistic way too. I give
Planetes 34 out of 36 Super Space Stars of Spacey Excellence!
If you don't like dramas, stay far the fuck away from it. But
if you dig great storytelling and wonderful characters, by all
means get spacey.
And FYI, "planetes" is the Greek word
for "wanderers", which was what those ancients called
those moving stars in the night sky that they couldn't explain
because they were heathen polytheists. The title does not
refer to the planets as we know them. There, now you learned
something.
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The Super Spaced Ticked Off
BOB FROM THE FUTURE
LIES!! Unsubstantiated LIIIIIIIIES! This Planetes
show seriously rubbed me the wrong way. The way it intentionally
altered its telling of the past (well, my past, your
future) was astonishingly terrifying. Space with no sound? Blasphemy!!
No teleportation devices to teleport to planets inhabited with
nothing but hot green women?!?! Preposterous!! No warp drives
to make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs?!?!? What the hell was
the writer thinking?!?!? This show is an embarrassment to science!
Even more so than that embarrassingly bad "Mir Space Station
show" that the Rossman showed me a few years back. Like
those commie punks could ever even send a monkey into space,
let alone build an orbiting station....
I.... I'm sorry. I let my guard down and let my
rage get the better of me. It's just that... I am very disturbed
when some of you primitives tries to make a futuristic show
that completely forgets the laws of "Danny Trebecski's
2nd Branch of Physics and Slinky Science" that we hold
in a higher regard than our love of your comedic god Carrotis
Toppis. My lord can that guy make you laugh with his telephone
humor.
I am forced to give this show
a thumbs down. I shudder that anybody might want to
become an astronaut thinking that the world of Planetes
is in their future...
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The Non-UN Spacey
MALCOLM
Z
Yo, crackers. What is this shit. So only Japs
and white devils are allowed to go into space in the future?
Oh, and that white Russian too, but he's more white than the
Americans so he don't count. What I don't understand, fuckahs,
is why those black and Arabic terrorists didn't jus' take over
that damn space station and then be in space that way? Then
they could have been all like, "Bitches in the developed
countries of the world... See, whores, we didn' need to build
this shit ourselves... We just needed to take this shit from
you." I mean, some of the crap that they was able
to pull off was pretty amazin'. Not that I take their fucked
up side or nothin', just wonderin' why all they ever did was
bellyache and blow the fuck out of shit. And the terrorists'
mascot was a fuckin' white pussy cat. Yeah, you read
that shit right. There's just abso-fucking-lutely NOTHIN' right
with that fucked up shit.
I refuse to rate this. It's too demeaning to
the black man and his dark skinned Earthy brothers. A'ight?
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