Kessler Syndrome is not a new idea. It was theorized a long time ago – a situation where debris and space junk in Low Earth Orbit reaches a density where an impact can cause a chain reaction of chaotic incidents, making space travel drastically more dangerous and taking out satellites en masse.
It sounds like one of those absurd sci-fi ideas: space is big, so filling it up to the point where an entire orbital area goes into billiards from hell doesn’t seem reasonable. But space is also very fast, meaning that because individual pieces of debris can cover a lot of “ground”, the scenario is more likely than you might think.
But what to do about it? Well, in addition to trying to dispose of our junk responsibly by boosting it into decaying orbits and letting it burn up in the atmosphere, we could plan operations specifically to, you know, clean up after ourselves. This is where Planetes comes in.
The year is 2075. After a disaster involving a commercial space plane in 2068, people have started to take space trash seriously, resulting in a whole new sector of labor as somebody has to either recycle the junk or at least knock it towards re-entry to clean up orbit.
We begin with Ai Tanabe, a new hire for the company Technora who, seemingly unfortunately for her, goes from general ed to a new position as space garbage collector. Assigned to the Debris Section, or “Half-Section”, she’s quickly thrown in with a load of eccentric lunatics who have the privelege of using a dilapidated junker of a space ship to go around dealing with all the assorted clutter in orbit.
Most notable of the lot is the other character assigned to do EVAs and actually mess with the junk, Hachirouta Hoshino, or “Hachimaki”, her abrasive blue-collar senpai. Not that Ai makes the greatest introduction for herself either – not only does she not know anything about the job she’s actually been hired to do, but she whines through the whole first mission and even tries to sabotage it since it involves junking an engraved plate (with wishes for peace) that’s going to smack into a military satellite and her morals don’t want to let such a thing burn for that cause. It even turns out to be just another miserable propaganda piece in a future that… while not outright dystopian is certainly far from ideal at that.
This is pretty much the first arc of the show: dealing with being the bottom rung of the corporate latter, collecting debris in space, and playing Hachimaki as the shouty idiot versus Ai as the overly sentimental loose cannon rookie, going ape about the meaning of various debris or punching VIPs (though to be fair that guy was so slimy it was at least a little gratifying).
For the most part, this is the dynamic for the first fourteen episodes. Now, to be fair, during that time we get to know these characters, like how Hachimaki pursues his dream of someday having his own space ship, or how Ai is a little weirdly love-obsessed. Actually, we get quite a bit of good building for the secondary characters (like Yuri, a member of the Debris Section who lost his wife in that accident that kicked off debris handling) and even incidentals (Such as Hachimaki’s old mentor, now with the space cops).
There are some changes in scenario and environment as well, including a three-episode vacation to the Moon (with an incredibly childish bit involving ninja wannabes in 1/6G bracketed by serious episodes about suicidal debtors and the tragedy of those born or dying in space) or an episode where terrorists start attacking humanity’s space assets and the main debris hauler ship gets sacrificed to keep them from blowing up the home space station and invoking Kessler Syndrome in its fullest awfulness.
This leads to an episode visiting Hachimaki’s family on Earth, and then one episode back in the saddle with a new ride before things take a turn.
Since this is a longer show I don’t want to go through every episode in obnoxious detail, especially not when a number of them are “the interpersonal dynamics slowly progress as we deal with the hard to catch debris of the week that somehow connects to the current issue.”, but I think it’s important to highlight themes. I’ve spent so many reviews grousing at the commonality of dystopia and futures where everything is awful, but Planetes – despite having quite a few issues in its setting – comes off as more hopeful, looking towards the future and greater heights as something humanity naturally reaches for, with few regrets despite the cost. This comes across in melancholy scenes, like old astronauts dying of cancer thanks to all the cosmic rays they soaked up yet still wanting to stay in space to the end… and in less dismal moments, like an engineer from an impovrished country who gets the Debris Section’s help to test and certify his “spacesuit” (it’s more like a little one-person pod).
Big dreams are important in Planetes, and there’s a real weight and pride to them.
However, I mentioned things taking a turn. At the end of Episode 14, Ai and Hachimaki more or less become an item.
Now, up until this point there had been some romantic tension at moments, but it had skewed more belligerent. Ai had also been courted by a friend of Hachimaki, Cheng-Shin, who Hachimaki helped with the process, and who seems like a top-grade stand-up sort of guy. A friend of Ai’s who likes said guy herself tried to beg him to take Ai, but he didn’t bite, and on her side that arrangement seemed to be going pretty well.
And on the other hand, up until this point, Hachimaki and Ai had done very little except for fight and bicker. I don’t actually think the dynamic where two characters are at odds at times and yet work together romantically is something that’s wrong on its own, but you have to have chemistry aside from the fighting, and throughout the first part of the show it had been pretty lackluster for our leads here, with the possible exception of Ai acting a little jealous whenever she hears about Hachimaki being potentially interested in someone else (despite openly professing to dislike him).
The potential saving grace is that this is, again, a longer show, weighing in at 26 episodes. That means we’re basically making this move at the halfway point, which would give us more of a chance to explore their chemistry as a couple. But the show has work to do in order to make this a likable romance.
Oddly enough, there’s not much of the two being warmer to each other, as the second plot needs to fire. Shortly after that turning point, a corporate shake-up threatens to dissolve the Debris Section, which they escape thanks to massive PR for another heroic action – not as big as stopping the attack on the space station, but still publicized.
Hachimaki, however, is done. Not only did he go through an episode around having PTSD thanks to getting lost in space before the opening of the episode, but the cure for it was getting him enamored with something that had been building in the background since fairly early in the show: the Von Braun, humanity’s most powerful ship ever built, gearing up to take a seven-year trip to Jupiter in order to extend Mankind’s reach.
Thus, Hachimaki quits Debris Section in order to take the tests to become part of the crew. It’s a grueling affair that takes months in total, with round after round of eliminations. At first, he has some friends there: Cheng-Shin and an ex-military buddy called Hakim. Cheng-Shin basically punts the first round though to go back to his safety net, while Hakim, after getting through several trials with Hachimaki, turns out to be another member of the terrorist organization, who gives their spiel about blowing up space stuff because it doesn’t benefit his impoverished homeland like the crab bucket mentality is actually going to help.
All the while, he basically ghosts Ai. Strangely, this ends up working as we see her faith in love tested and we see a few scenes of Hachimaki facing his inner demons where it’s clear that the idea of leaving her, in particular, behind is tearing up even as his determination pushes him forward.
So, about that terrorism. Naturally, it puts things on hold with the Von Braun. Hachimaki seems to be cleared overall, but still has to stew over things while the framers and culprits alike set up for their next move.
In this climate, Hachimaki eventually gets back to the lunar hospital to see his old mentor, who he didn’t know was dying of cancer. After learning that he has already passed, he runs into Ai… who lets slip that she did know about his condition (which she kept to herself at said mentor’s behest) and has it out with her in a way that’s clearly agony for both of them.
This is just in time to get a big action set piece where the terrorists (including Hachimaki’s ex, Claire, who had been a friend to the Debris Section for most of the show and who even became a member due to demotion after Hachimaki left) execute a huge plot, taking almost everyone we care about hostage with a plan to crash the Von Braun into the largest lunar city in order to obliterate both.
The boarding action of the Von Braun sees Hachimaki get a rematch with Hakim. Ai, who managed a very ill-timed visit to the Von Braun, ends up rescuing Claire, who had been shot in the leg. They escape in a pod, while the political movers cut a deal with the terrorists that allows the Von Braun to pull out of its death spiral.
For a shocking hangtime, we don’t follow up on how the last confrontation between Hachimaki and Hakim ended, with our last shot being Hakim goading Hachimaki into killing him, saying it will make Hachimaki a hollow animal. We instead spend time with Ai and Claire. Having landed on the lunar surface far from settlements, Ai tries to carry Claire at a grueling pace to an outpost, even as Claire mocks her and confesses her own misdeeds. At last, out of air, Ai reaches both epiphany and breaking point.
And we leave her on a cliffhanger where it seems that she’s doomed to die, and might also give up on all her ideals by stealing what little O2 the unconscious Claire has left in those last moments.
We follow up six months later with Hachimaki, looking quite dead inside, being announced as a final member of the Von Braun crew. He flubbs a public appearance due to obvious PTSD. He even spends his last vacation having a little brush with death wandering the lunar desert. Eventually, when he manages to wander to his old place of work on a layover, we find that Ai at least is alive, but that she’s returned to Earth – where Hachimaki is going for a little forced R&R. He eventually decides to go visit her, but has a soul searching flashback leading unto bike accident along the way. This gets us the resolve that he tried to pull the trigger on Hakim and found himself out of bullets when an explosion ripped through the area. He has some more heavy handed hallucinations about his connection to the rest of humanity as opposed to isolation from it and manages to pull himself out of the water he got thrown into.
Ai finds him, and tells her side of the story, how she managed to be rescued by a passing shuttle bus but how the time she spent with no oxygen left her with some severe nerve damage, to which she’s currently wheelchair bound with a notable tremor in her hands as well, though it’s said she’ll be able to recover with physical therapy. Claire (using less oxygen for reason of unconscious, recall) made a full and quick recovery, but is later revealed to now be in prison for the whole terrorism thing. So, evidently, Ai didn’t betray herself at the critical moment. Thus, Hachimaki is able to share his recent revelation, apologize properly, and the two of them can move forward finally understanding each other on a deep level.
Of course, Hachimaki is still scheduled for a seven-year round trip to Jupiter. We get an episode long tail about the six months leading up to launch including postscripts for almost all the minor characters and some actual romantic scenes between Hachi and Ai (including the two deciding to get married), ending with Ai, at his family’s house, watching the launch broadcast go, with some heavy visual implications that Hachi will have a grade school kid waiting for him on his return.
The end.
Much like its main characters for each other, Planetes does not put its best foot forward, opening with an episode, or a few episodes really, dripping with all the tropes of the early 2000’s that we’re kind of glad are dead including the painfully outspoken bleeding heart girl paired across from the unlikable shouty jerk. It really is a marvel how well the show turns that all around.
The show splits in a major way once the terrorists come into focus and Hachi leaves Debris section. The second half is in some ways stronger, but in other ways it doesn’t feel quite as charming. There was something neat about seeing a space future through the eyes of blue collar workers in an imperfect but functional world, and it doesn’t jive with speeches trying to get us to sympathize with the pains in the rear ready and willing to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people to make a point, no matter if their supposed cause has weight to it. On the other hand, when we do get these action set pieces and the heavy drama, it still works. It’s well-written and well-paced, and there was a lot of subtle buildup towards these big issues that happened in the first half. I know I sped through it as “debris of the week”, but almost everything that goes on in the background through those episodes comes back.
On the whole, while I do have my issues with it on some levels, Planetes is an extremely solid show. It can be funny or tense, tragic or hopeful, and it feels like it has a thing or two to say without really rubbing it in the audience’s face the way certain other shows can.
In a sense, I wish I had a longer post-script to give you, but opening aside it really does just work, and work hard rather than doing the minimum to function. Debris Section goes the extra mile on the regular, and so does Planetes. In a sense that’s enough said.
But I am a reviewer known for waxing long on things, so I think I want to give an example, and that example is Ai’s character. She starts off shouty, worlds away from sensible, and always jabbering something or another about love. It would be so very easy for her to stay a two dimensional character who does nothing but that, as she’s occasionally accused of being within the context of the show. But as we get to know her, we see that her conviction isn’t effortless idiocy, it’s a human attitude and her way of conceptualizing and coping with life. When, towards the end, she’s stranded on the moon thinking that she’s about to either die or kill someone she thought of as a friend and then maybe still die, you feel the strain she’s gone through, and while she still does have her own way of putting things coming out of that, you do feel like the experience is one that left its mark… mostly because the experiences she went through earlier, from the mundane on up to the tense, left marks on her as well, and she reacted to them as a person rather than as the cardboard cutout she could have been.
The ultimate grade I have for Planetes is an A. It’s a show I could recommend to just about anyone. If you’re more sensitive, it never really goes too dark and miserable. If you’re looking for serious portrayals of scenarios, the grounded hard science fiction and realistic world will do it. The romance is probably the weakest part, but even that works out in the end to the point where you like these characters and want to see them together, and it really is just woven well.