Planetes

Number of Episodes: 26

What Anime News Network Wikipedia says: " In the year 2075, mankind has reached a point where journeying between Earth, the moon and the space stations is part of daily life. However, the progression of technology in space has also resulted in the problem of the space debris, which can cause excessive and even catastrophic damage to spacecrafts and equipment. This is the story of Technora's Debris Collecting section, its EVA worker, Hachirota "Hachimaki" Hoshino, and the newcomer to the group, Ai Tanabe."

What tTPO says: This is a special series. If you went on the description above (itself is really an injustice to the scale of the series) and the first few episodes you would be questioning whether it was worth continuing or not - standalone episodes loaded with apparent anime caricatures. But you would then miss out on a rare anime experience.

The characters which at first appear so shallow bloom over the course of the series. Some change markedly for good or ill, others less so but gain a backstory that explains why they are the way they are. And the secondary characters, that in other series may be discarded in one-shot episodes, start to recur and have their own arcs, as small as they may be. But inherently you can't appreciate this snowballing of richness and development of the bigger world of the story until many episodes have passed.

The bigger story itself doesn't really start till the second half of the series with the first half a series of (near) standalone episodes with sometimes a slice-of life feel laying the groundwork which is essential to later development. As big as the story gets though (and it is a decent story), it is really just a vehicle for the characters.

Of note are a few other aspects of the series. Firstly, because it ends up taking place over the course of about 18 months, the episodes more often than not fail to immediately follow one another. This means that it is not uncommon for one episode to end on a cliffhanger, then the next episode start sometime after, with the cliffhanger explained in hindsight. Or for an episode to start halfway through an event we have not seen yet, with the details filled out later on. The result of this is a story where the viewer is left a little disoriented as to how the story got where it is (in a good way). But you are not left hanging and things are explained sooner or later. Both this and the character arcs reminded me in some ways of Babylon 5.

Secondly the science in the series is hard. No giant robots, FTL drives or big laser weapons. Just the hard slog of humanity leaving the planet a bit at a time. The research by the author and production team just shows and they succeed (within the bounds of an anime) to make this future as plausible as possible. The designs to my eye all looked great. If you like your science fiction over your science fantasy, this is a show for you.

Lastly the series asks some serious questions about space, its development and the future directions we may take as a planet. Some of these are not pretty but we need art to make us think about these things before it is too late.

How About the Music?  Meh. The music was mostly unobtrusive (except for the final episode ED that reminded me overwhelmingly of Code Geass - which all makes sense now since Hitomi was responsible for the offending, though not offensive, music in question) but in truth the flavour of the show seemed to get on just fine without it being a focus. And this from a guy that likes his anime music. The OP was "Dive in the Sky" by Mikio Sakai and the ED 1-25 "Wonderful Life" also by Mikio Sakai.

So how does it end? (Spoiler Free.): Loose ends virtually all wrapped up with only a couple of small unanswered questions of minor consequence. The thoroughness of the end of the last episode (as well as the music) was again very reminiscent of Code Geass, and this was no bad thing. Did I mention some of the production team were the same as Code Geass?

Overall Grade: Grade A-. The strength of this show is also its weakness - if the ball got rolling just a bit faster this would have been an A but that's not how this series rolls. But the science, the unusual structure (for an anime), the asking of big questions, the shameless and brave main character development and the care given to even minor characters means that this definitely deserves a seat at the table reserved for the best.