14/08/05

At the moment most of my mind of occupied with worrying about the assessment centre, which is why I'm going to talk about Planetes instead. Because it's good! unlike every other thing I go on about here.

So yeah, it's about astronauts. It's set in the 2070's but is not particularly futuristic - that is, there are space stations, a moon base, plans for a manned mission to Jupiter etc. but all the technology is pretty recognisable as an extension of what we have now. It's actually fairly quiet. I mean, it has it's fair share of explosions (due largely to anti-space collonization terrorists), but a lot of the stories have quite a gentle pace, and the art-work is really clean and realistic avoiding eyes-twice-the-size -of-the-characters-head expressions of suprise, which I find a bit overpowering in some manga I've read.

The characters are very engaging as well. Hachimaki is very much the main character - being the young, ambitious and slightly dim Japanese guy (why are so many manga heroes stupid? I don't mind in this case - but seriously, why?), but the other characters are also very well observed. I love Fee and Yuri - in fact one of my favourite stories is still the first one, about Yuri finally dealing with losing his wife. And Hachimaki's pscyo selfish space-obsessed Dad is also great.

It's funny, I always remember I like Planetes, but I forget how much I like it, until I sit down and read one of the books.