Planetes: It all depends on whose life you slice
Ah, “slice of life.” A loose categorization sometimes used in entertainment writing but rarely thought of as a genre outside anime. There in cartoon-land it lives a contentious existence being confused with other genres, added to other genres, and insisting that we’d like everything a little more if we thought of all our anime as “slice of life” with tendencies toward [comedy, mecha, earthquakes, tentacles].
The issue with cutting a small day-in-the-life “slice” from the fictional existences of characters is that there is nothing else inherent to the genre that makes it potentially interesting to watch. If someone sliced your life, chances are the audience would slice their wrists from boredom (sex scenes notwithstanding).
But that’s not to say “slice of life” has to be boring. It’s just that you have to rely on “life” itself to be interesting rather than contrived external circumstances.
What if your life was an exciting one? What if you were… I dunno, say, an astronaut? That might help. What if said life involved great danger, wonderful science, and scads of Engrish passed back and forth across crackly radios? Sounds, maybe… too exciting for a slice of life. Then ratchet it back down: you’re a garbage collector, and it’s all in a day’s work.
The first half of Goro Taniguchi’s (Code Geass, S-CRY-Ed) wonderful Planetes plays very much as slice of life, and I’m not saying that because I find that it does nothing else particularly well. In fact, it’s got exciting close shaves, satisfying romance, more than a few laughs, and sci-fi with a capital Science. But none feel out of place in the lives of the characters. When picking up space garbage — as Ai, Hachimaki, Fee, and the gang do — you might have to ram a satellite while in a fit of nicotine withdrawal. You might see people die. You might learn something new about your friends. And you might fall in love. That’s life.
What I’m talking about really only applies to the first half of the series, because I can’t keep calling an anime “slice of life” when it develops an over-arching plot structure with big character development, goals and traditional narrative conflict. Heaviness sets in somewhere around episode 17 or 18, but until that point Taniguchi (along with original mangaka Makoto Yukimura) has already cut a tasty slice that he uses to make us more personally invested in the later events.
And why does it work, even with spacemen?
We all live, uh… lives. Each boring day, each hour spent at a desk at work, each tiny little drama that doesn’t alter the fate of the world is a slice in our lives. And it’s pretty neat to see people in this near-future that’s neither dystopian nor utopian, just our potential future, going through those same slices. There’s no war, supernatural experience, or other crazy thing to make life stop or change drastically. Just regular people holding down a job and doing their best (it is Japanese after all). Thanks to some incredibly well-written/well-acted characters and a tendency to never portray anything as overly fantastic or glamorous, we can find the common points between their slices and ours.
Did I go anywhere with this? Short version, I really dig Planetes a lot. I’m not done though, so please no spoilers for me. I’m sure I’ll do another post when it’s over.
Alright, time to start watching again. I’m stuck at the point where the falling trash formed pretty sparklies in the sky.
Hachimaki, a certain F. Valentine is wondering where you’ve been all her life.
I don’t think it’d work out. Hachimaki really just wants a spaceship and Faye… she probably just loves money too much to love a garbageman.
I’ve been hearing so much about this show. You seem to have me at
“you might have to ram a satellite while in a fit of nicotine withdrawal.”
I’ll queue this for future viewing.
it’s an epic scene, and it’s exemplary for how Planetes manages to mix its moods up. The whole episode is outstandingly hilarious, but that funny premise leads into a dramatic and outstanding climax. Great stuff.
Fuck yeah, more people need to DIVE IN THE SKY
I’ll be honest I’m not a huge OP fan. But I’ll forgive the show something tiny like that.
More like they’d slice their wrists because of the the sex scenes, but that’s another story.
The middles episodes were really my favorite parts, right through the Von Braun trials, and episode 18 was a real highlight. Way back when we were both just starting this, I said some of these characters really annoyed me, but they really grew on me by that point. Shows the strength of storytelling ability, etc etc. Enjoy the rest of your Planetes.
haha I don’t know about you but I’m almost certain my pasty ass would not be pretty in HD.
I’ve finished now, and I think in the end I liked the middle episodes the most as well. Later on it becomes more typical anime drama but it’s elevated by how well the characters are set up in those middle eps. Just fantastic stuff.
Good stuff. You’re right that it basically boils down to the short version, but I’ve been convinced. Thanks.
Glad to aid in the convincing! This is one of those anime that you instantly want to bash people over the head until they watch (like Haibane Renmei).
Planetes is a bomb of a series, meaning that it is the bomb.
‘…neither dystopian nor utopian, just our potential future, going through those same slices.’
Oh! this line captures the essence of PlanetES’s first half so well! Politics and actions play bigger role in the later part of the show but it’s still a really great anime. I’ve recently finished this series myself