05 May, 2007
(0 ) 20:35 OMG. This show just blew me right off my feet. I'd take some screencaptures and post them up, but I just can't decide which are good enough to represent the total awesomeness of the show, and not give away anything about the plot. It was a fantastic journey.
The plot is good. The complexities of the situations, the themes brought up and discussed, the politics at play... everything is handled very well. You never get bored or feel that an episode is just there for the sake of being there. Every episode makes you want to watch the next one to find out what happens.
And that's because you care about the characters. If there is nothing else that is good about this show, the level of characterisation will still blow you away. Every character feels deeply fleshed out, with well-rounded personalities. The anime takes time to develop them fully; you see their motivations, their hopes, their dreams, their visions. You understand why they do the things they do. And that doesn't apply only tot he main characters either. Almost every single character in this show is portrayed to the fullest, some even return later in the plot, and it's like meeting old friends again.
What piqued my interest in Planetes was a comment in its Wikipedia article which mentions how realistic it is. You can definitely see the painstaking effort the animators put in to make everything seem real and plausible (well, there's that handphone-shaped spaceship...). Being the hard sci-fi nut that I was, I was immediately hooked.
This is not to say that Planetes is all about spaceships and technology. It's not. There's a huge human element in the show, and deals with questions like "Where am I from?" and "Where am I going?". Space is such a vast place and it's infinite nature boggles the mind. It also talks about the divide between rich and poor countries, and how rich countries are the only ones who will benefit from further space exploration, using up resources that could have helped the 10 million people who starved to death back on Earth.
There are some funny parts as well. Several characters (like Ravi and Myers) provide comic relief, although at some points I think their idea of funny is a tad too kitsch. Thankfully, they don't appear in the manga. We also don't see Tanabe's family, nor learn about her past and childhood. Oh, and remember that favourite scene I mentioned in an earlier post? They used it as the last scene (before the extended ending) in the anime. ♥♥♥!
I haven't actually finished the manga yet. One more volume to go. But I'm still kind of reeling from the total awesomeness of the show, so I shan't spoil it yet. :)
The plot is good. The complexities of the situations, the themes brought up and discussed, the politics at play... everything is handled very well. You never get bored or feel that an episode is just there for the sake of being there. Every episode makes you want to watch the next one to find out what happens.
And that's because you care about the characters. If there is nothing else that is good about this show, the level of characterisation will still blow you away. Every character feels deeply fleshed out, with well-rounded personalities. The anime takes time to develop them fully; you see their motivations, their hopes, their dreams, their visions. You understand why they do the things they do. And that doesn't apply only tot he main characters either. Almost every single character in this show is portrayed to the fullest, some even return later in the plot, and it's like meeting old friends again.
What piqued my interest in Planetes was a comment in its Wikipedia article which mentions how realistic it is. You can definitely see the painstaking effort the animators put in to make everything seem real and plausible (well, there's that handphone-shaped spaceship...). Being the hard sci-fi nut that I was, I was immediately hooked.
This is not to say that Planetes is all about spaceships and technology. It's not. There's a huge human element in the show, and deals with questions like "Where am I from?" and "Where am I going?". Space is such a vast place and it's infinite nature boggles the mind. It also talks about the divide between rich and poor countries, and how rich countries are the only ones who will benefit from further space exploration, using up resources that could have helped the 10 million people who starved to death back on Earth.
There are some funny parts as well. Several characters (like Ravi and Myers) provide comic relief, although at some points I think their idea of funny is a tad too kitsch. Thankfully, they don't appear in the manga. We also don't see Tanabe's family, nor learn about her past and childhood. Oh, and remember that favourite scene I mentioned in an earlier post? They used it as the last scene (before the extended ending) in the anime. ♥♥♥!
I haven't actually finished the manga yet. One more volume to go. But I'm still kind of reeling from the total awesomeness of the show, so I shan't spoil it yet. :)