Volume 1 of Makoto Yukimura's Planetes Omnibus starts with a crew of space garbagemen, essentially. Fee, Yuri, and Hachimaki's jobs are to clear debris that orbits Earth so it doesn't cause horrific space disasters. That's where it starts, before it starts concerning itself with the challenges of life in space, the reasons people go into space, the people left behind, humanity, the universe, all that stuff.
There's a lot of lovely imagery. Their spaceship is a tiny, squat thing that reminds me of a mini-sub, and all the panels of the interior emphasize the cramped conditions, pulled in tight around whichever character is the focus, but with machinery or instrument panels intruding around the edges. There's no room for anyone to be alone inside the ship.
Outside the ship is another matter, and Yukimura uses a lot of large panels or full-page spreads of the characters floating above Earth, or a single figure in a spacesuit tromping across the Moon's surface with nothing but a field of stars above them. Emphasizing the size of space, and the isolation. There's some figurative imagery, such as Hachimaki seeing a version of himself in a spacesuit that torments him with the things he doesn't want to admit, or a strange cat he sees when he nearly drowns on the way back from a beer run. I don't get the cat thing, but the interactions between Hachimaki and the phantom are deeply affecting. How calmly the phantom tries to tear him open (verbally), and how visceral Hachimaki's reactions are.
The art does work against something the story keeps bringing up, that people are always in space. Earth is in space, we're told, so we're already in space all the time. Except the art shows there's Earth, and there's space around it. When Hachimaki's adrift, he's not on Earth, where he could lay on his back in a field alone for days. He's in space, where either his air is going to run out, his blood is going to boil, or he'll move out from behind the moon and be cooked by radiation. It's not something the visuals would let us ignore, so the idea rings false.
Most of this is focused on Hachimaki, who's the youngest of the crew. He's the one who gets injured because he hasn't been taking proper care of himself and has developed low-gravity issues with his bones and whatnot. He's the one who survives being adrift for a time, and has to overcome the psychological stress that results if he wants to achieve his dream. He wants a spaceship of his own, but he needs a lot of money for that, so he needs a bigger, more high-profile job that will open the doors to greater opportunities. And there just so happens to be a mission coming together to go to Jupiter to try and harvest helium for fuel. Of course, once Hachimaki rededicates himself to this goal, he abandons concern for anything else, and he's told he's lost his humanity by the girl replacing him on the garbage crew, Tanabe.
Which is sort of my problem with this series. Hachimaki seems to be the main character, but all we get is people telling him he's wrong, he doesn't understand, he's mistaken. When he considers that maybe he should get away from space after his injury, Fee hits him and calls him a sissy. When he decides he's going to push himself so he'll be selected for the Jupiter mission, Tanabe screams in his ear about being heartless.
He gets lectured by a member of a terrorist organization that plants bombs that kill people because they object to the exploitation of space's natural resources about how far he's willing to go. He gets crap from his dad, who says he's going to retire from being an astronaut, then changes his mind and accepts a spot on the Jupiter mission because the guy in charge is such a heartless piece of shit he'll surely make it work. He gets his ass kicked by his little brother in an argument over which of them better understands the realities of traveling in space.
I don't expect the protagonist to have everything figured out from the jump, but Yukimura's writes his main character basically having nothing figured out, and getting lectured by people I'm not convinced have any grounds to do so. Especially because we never see any pushback from anyone else against these characters. No one beside Hachimaki argues with Tanabe when she decides she knows best what a dead man really wanted. Lockwood, the project director, ignores or dismisses anyone who raises concerns about the project or the 300+ who died in a reactor explosion. The terrorist guy just, gives up, because Tanabe kissed Hachimaki to keep him from killing the terrorist. All these people are also apparently following their own codes with no question or reservations, but Hachimaki's the only one constantly being called to task for it.
Which kicks off one of those romantic subplots between two characters who fight and bicker and argue constantly, and I have been very clear I think that stuff is bullshit. I managed to keep one eye from rolling clean out of my head at that development, but it was a near thing. Overall, it's lovely to look at, but the writing pisses me off.
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