By Tsutomo Nihei translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-935654-80-3

As I’ve often said, these days nobody does hard comics science fiction like the Japanese – although admittedly our own 2000AD and Warren Ellis’ SF are keeping the flag flying ahead of much of even manga’s greatest masters in their own mostly unacknowledged way…

In the tech-obsessed East, the tough, no-nonsense, nuts-and-bolts mystery and refined imagination of star flight have long been blended with more fanciful and romantic futuristic themes to captivate at least four generations since Osamu Tezuka first started the ball rolling in the 1950s, making space commonplace and conceptually comfortable for the Japanese.

We in Western world have been simultaneously enraptured and frantically trying to catch up, ever since some – too few, alas – of these manga tales first began to be translated into English at the end of the 1980s.

One of the most talented and respected proponents of the genre is Tsutomu Nihei whose triumphs have ranged from wholly self-created graphic epics such the stunning cyberpunk thriller Blame!, its prequel NOiSE, and Biomega to impressive stints on major commercial properties such as comics iterations of the video game Halo and the miniseries Wolverine: Snikt! for Marvel.

Born in 1971, the author prefers to let his works speak for him. His latest series Shidonia no Kishi began in 2009, debuting in Kodansha’s Seinen title Bessatsu Shonen Magazine and running to nine volumes so far.

The premise is familiar but evergreen. A thousand years from now Earth is gone. Our solar system was destroyed by unstoppable alien monsters and the survivors of humanity have scattered to the stars in vast self-contained generational vessels as much rock as rocketship. Over a millennium these colonies have hurtled ever outward seeking escape and survival, whilst within them humans have slowly become something different…

The eponymous Knights of Sidonia are the young pilots gifted enough to pilot the colossal humanoid fighter vessels that defend and scavenge interstellar resources for the ever-moving colony our story concerns…

The story begins with ‘Nagate Tanikaze’s Choice’ as an unexpected event occurs. Unknown to all the inhabitants of the hive-like colony ship years ago, an old man took his infant grandson deep into the bowels of the vessel and vanished. Raised in utter isolation with only tapes, a flight simulator/VR trainer and stolen food, the boy grew into a tough, hardy and independent survivor.

When, after three years, Nagate Tanikaze finally accepted that the corpse in the chair was no longer his “gramps”, he regretfully headed up in search of food and was soon caught by the incredulous authorities. He is starving and impossibly weak, but adamantly refuses to undergo the commonplace genetic procedure that will enable him to photosynthesise starlight. He might well be the only traditionally human being on Sidonia…

His captors-turned-benefactors accept his idiosyncrasies and welcome him into their austere, oddly passionless society, but some people seem to seethe with hostility at Tanikaze’s presence.

He is assigned quarters at a dorm and is welcomed by Ms. Hiyama, a motherly amalgam of human, bear and cyborg. He spends his time acclimatising by aimlessly wandering the vast labyrinthine cocoon which has patterned itself on an idealised 20^th century Japan, but trouble still finds him when he wanders into a female photosynthesis chamber and is beaten up by the outraged girls “feeding” inside…

In the higher echelons of the ship, passive panic is gripping the ship’s leaders. Long range sensors have spotted a Gauna – one of the Brobdingnagian bio-horrors that invaded and destroyed Earth ten centuries past – and with grim fatality the Garde pilots are mobilised.

Tanikaze has been tested and found to be a superb pilot prospect. As the ship goes on alert his actual training begins, converting his years on the simulator into hands-on experience…

‘Nagate Tanikaze’s Maiden Battle’ finds the trainee mecha-rider still experiencing some prejudice but making his first friend in pretty Izana Shinatose, a fellow Garde pilot who adopts the outsider, acting as his guide and social mentor. Izana is warm and welcoming and it’s not too long before Nagate accepts “her” (to him) odd situation as a third-gendered, asexual parthenogenetic hermaphrodite. “She” also seems to be mildly telepathic…

Testing on the latest simulator, the outcast astounds all his classmates by scoring far above the machine’s assessment parameters but the purely physical – and appallingly uncomfortable and embarrassing – aspects of wearing a working spacesuit and dealing with the psychological pressures of working in the limitless void still challenges Tanikaze’s resolve and mental resources.

And even training is deadly work. As two squads of Mecha extract ice from a passing asteroid the simple drill turns into a disaster when a Gauna ambushes the novices…

‘Eiko Yamano’s Starry Heavens’ recalls that cadet’s spurning of the students’ superstitious pre-flight ritual before returning to her present as the star-beast consumes her and adds her DNA to its metamorphic mass, simultaneously gravely damaging Tanikaze’s vessel. The telemetry from his ship indicates he’s near death…

Aboard Sidonia, their superiors can only write off the kids and begin readying their only effective weapon – a Heavy Mass Cannon that should push the nigh-unkillable free-floating carnivore far out of range…

The Sidonians are astonished when Nagate apparently regains consciousness and valiantly confronts the gigantic horror slowly assuming Yamano’s form. Incomprehensibly driving it back, he is dragged away by his comrades just as the huge projectile from the mass cannon devastatingly hits home…

‘Norio Kunato’s Fury’ finds the recovering Nagate plagued by ghastly dreams of Eiko’s death – and particularly her imagined transubstantiation into a Gauna. He should be dead but refuses even to give in to the pace of his own healing and soon drags himself on crutches back to lectures. When Izana sees him leaning on willowy Kunato in moments of dizziness, the outraged asexual storms off in a huff…

The baffled Tanikaze only gets the chance to make amends at the Gravity Festival – an annual function that allows the barbarian boy opportunity to eat as much actual food as he can hold – but is distracted by the attentions of fellow pilot Hoshijiro Shizuka who had brought his wounded Mecha and battered body back to Sidonia after the Gauna ambush. However when haughty Norio Kunato insults and assaults Izana, Nagate goes crazy and jumps the elitist bigot. Their battle wrecks the fair, and the outcast learns that many of his fellow pilot candidates feel he is unworthy to ride the giant guardian mecha…

This first monochrome volume concludes with ‘Mochikuni Akai’s Glory’ as the trainees continue their steep and brutal learning curve. The repelled Gauna is gradually, inexorably approaching Sidonia again. Moreover it’s clear that not all the populace despise the new kid. As the first person to fight – let alone survive – a Gauna attack Tanikaze is apparently held in high regard by the older Guardians.

When hot-shot pilot Akai invites Nagate and Izana to a private paradise of artificial seas and beaches, it is to reveal that he and his fellow officers have been tasked with deflecting the beast’s next attack. Although the party is enjoyable and the surroundings stunning, the cadets can’t help but feel they’re intruders at a Last Supper…

To Be Continued…

Like Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven and other masters of the art form, Tsutomu Nihei frequently works in a notional shared continuity (for instance the monstrous Gauna first appeared in his earlier series Abara), but there’s no sense of having missed anything in this premier instalment of a wonderfully engrossing, gloriously engaging epic of Horatian heroism and Mankind’s Last Stand.

Compelling, subtle, spectacular and even funny, this is a yarn no adventure aficionados or sci-fi fanatics should miss.

This book is printed in the traditional Japanese right to left, back to front format.

© 2013 Tsutomu Nihei. All rights reserved.

By Kou Yaginuma (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-90-3

The hungry fascination, hopeful imagination and fevered anticipation of space travel which was an integral component of post-World War II society is the driving narrative engine for this inspiring manga epic from Kou Yaginuma, who began capturing questing imaginations with his poignant short story ‘2015 Nen no Uchiage Hanabi’ (‘2015: Fireworks’), published in Gekkan Comics Flapper magazine in June 2000.

The author subsequently expanded and enhanced the subject, themes and characters into an all-consuming narrative epic combining hard science and humanist fiction with lyrical mysticism and traditional tales of school-days and growing up.

Diminutive teenager Asumi Kamogawa has always dreamed of going into space. From her earliest moments the lonely child had gazed with intense longing up at the stars, her only companion and confidante her imaginary friend Mr. Lion.

When Asumi was a year old, the first Japanese space-launch ended in utter catastrophe when rocket-ship Shishigō (“The Lion”), exploded: crashing back to earth on the city ofYuigahama where the Kamogawas lived. Hundreds were killed and so many more injured, including Asumi’s mother.

Maimed and comatose, the matron took years to die and the long-drawn-out tragedy utterly traumatised the tiny uncomprehending daughter. The shock also crushed her grieving husband who had worked as a designer on the rockets for Japan’s Space Program.

In the wake of the disaster, Tomoro Kamogawa was assigned by the corporation who built the ship to head the reparations committee. Guilt-wracked and personally bereaved, the devastated technologist had to visit and formally apologise to each and every survivor or victim’s grieving family. The experience completely destroyed the man.

He was certainly no fan of the space program, having lost his wife, his beloved engineering career, and his pride to the race for the stars. He has raised his daughter alone by working two and often three menial jobs at a time for over a decade and cannot countenance losing the very last of his loved ones to the cold black heavens…

In response to the disaster,Japanset up an Astronautics and Space Sciences Academy. After years of passionate struggle and in defiance of her father’s wishes, in 2024 Asumi – an isolated, solitary, serious but determinedly star-bound teenager – was accepted to theTokyoNationalSpaceSchool. She reluctantly left Yuigahama and joined the new class.

Amongst the year’s fresh intake were surly, abrasive Shinnosuke Fuchuya (an elementary school classmate who used to bully her as a child back in Yuigahama), jolly Kei Oumi, chilly Marika Ukita and spooky, ultra-cool style-icon and fashion victim Shu Suzuki who became the shy introvert’s closest acquaintances.

Every day Asumi nudged inexorably towards her goal: the stars. Ever since the crashing rocket had shattered her family, she had drawn comfort from the firmament, with Mr. Lion staring up at the heavens at her wide – especially drawn to the twinkling glow of Virgo and the alluring binary star Spica. And now she was so tantalisingly close…

Small, poor, physically weak but resolutely capable, Asumi endures and triumphs over every obstacle… and she still talks with Mr. Lion – who might just be the ghost of one of the astronauts who died on the Shishigō…

All the students can think of is going to space, but they are constantly reminded of the fact that most of them won’t even finish their schooling…

Asumi – barely four feet, eight inches tall – is constantly struggling to meet the arduous physical requirements dictated by the Academy but has more immediate problems. She is only slowly adjusting to life in Tokyo, sleeps in tawdry communal women’s dorm “The Seagull”, struggles with many of her classes and subsists on meagre funds, supplemented by part-time jobs.

Moreover she has inexplicably incurred the obsessive hostility of astrophysics lecturer Professor Sano. Unbeknownst to Asumi, Sano has a long-hidden grievance with her father and has thus determined to kick her out of the school at all costs…

He has already tried to have her removed because her small size dictates that she needs a customised pressure suit – offering Sano an opportunity to force her out by citing budget restrictions…

The individual stories are broken up into “Missions” and this particularly moving and moody third volume covers numbers 9-13, plus a revealing sidebar tale and another autobiographical vignette about the author’s own school days.

‘Mission: 09’ begins with Asumi returning to her father’s home, pondering if she should ask Mr. Lion if the disgraced engineer was actually responsible for the rocketship crash all those years ago. Meanwhile inTokyo her classmates are trying to intervene in Sano’s obvious vendetta against their friend…

Mr. Lion is there too, but has been drawn to the wedding of Asumi’s old teacher Miss Yuko Suzinari. Although she still desperately misses her fiancé, who piloted The Lion and died in the tragic explosion five years previously, she is getting married today… a fact Asumi discovers from an invitation left in an unopened pile of mail she finds in her father’s empty house…

Having missed another day of school, Asumi again incurs Sano’s wrath as ‘Mission: 10’ begins, but the astrophysicist and his mysterious superior are in for a rude awakening. Meanwhile the determinedly upbeat Miss Kamogawa is having an oddly unifying effect on her fiercely independent classmates, turning rivals into comrades. All, that is, except the chilly, acerbic, mysteriously aloof Marika Ukita…

Undeterred, Asumi probes deeper, and with her phantom mentor’s spiritual advice finally finds a way to crack the ice-queen’s brittle exterior. Valiant, protective Kei Oumi meanwhile openly challenges Sano over his unfair treatment and is soundly reminded by the teacher that the course is a process of elimination. Would she surrender her own chances of success to ensure Asumi remained…?

‘Mission: 11’ continues the deliberation of the completion for final places, but Mr. Lion again offers sage and calming words as, in the upper echelons, Sano’s words and actions have drawn unfavourable criticism, leading to some further surprising revelations about Asumi’s dad, hints of a concealed scandal regarding the construction of the doomed Shishigō and the disappearance of the conniving astrophysicist from the faculty…

With Sano abruptly replaced by the far more amenable and encouraging Mr. Shiomi, Asumi and the gang decide to take a short camping vacation to the Cosmic Communications Center atChiba, but not before Asumi has one last moving confrontation with her former nemesis…

‘Mission: 12’ finds them readying for the trip – all but the stand-offish Ukita who flatly refuses to join them – when an incident in the Multi-Axis Trainer (that’s the cool-looking. spinning ball thingy astronauts sit in) results in the ice-queen collapsing. When she gets out of the infirmary Asumi and Kei follow Ukita home and discover she lives in a palatial mansion…

When they see her being brutalised and abused by a shouting man – presumably her father – Asumi sees red and attacks. Suzuki and Fuchuya are astounded when without any explanation Ukita gets on the bus to Chiba with them and the smiling girls…

At their destination the cash-strapped kids walk until Marika again collapses.

Belligerent Fuchuya picks up the moody girl with the badly bleeding feet and carries her to their destination as ‘Mission: 13’, through dreamy flashbacks and a near-fatal hiking incident, discloses some of the incredible, uncomfortable secrets of Marika Ukita and how her own abiding love affair with the cosmos began…

To Be Continued…

Although the ongoing saga pauses here, there’s even more affecting revelations to come in the complete tale ‘Asumi’s Cherry Blossom’ which harks back to her school days in Yuigahama. A weird, distracted child, she is bullied by many classmates and even a few teachers, but is championed by a boy who seems very interested in her. Takashi Shimazu is a talented artist who won’t let Asumi see what he’s constantly drawing, and he’s absent from school quite a lot, but they strike up a friendship anyway. Asumi really likes the boy, but wishes he wouldn’t joke about being able to see Mr. Lion…

This bittersweet tragedy is followed by a beguiling and introspective ‘Another Spica’ episode in which Yaginuma details his shiftless, ambition-free teens and shared moment of clarity with a girl in his classroom…

These powerfully unforgettable tales originally appeared in 2001-2002 as Futatsu no Supika and in the Seinen manga magazine Gekkan Comics Flapper, targeted at male readers aged 18-30, but this ongoing, unfolding beguiling saga is perfect for any older kid with stars in their eyes…

Twin Spica filled sixteen collected volumes from September 2001 to August 2009, tracing the trajectories of Asumi and friends from callow students to competent astronauts and the series has spawned both anime and live action TV series.

This delightful serial has everything: plenty of hard science to back up the informed extrapolation, an engaging cast, mystery and frustrated passion, alienation, angst and true friendships; all welded seamlessly into a joyous coming-of-age drama with supernatural overtones and masses of sheer sentiment.

Rekindling the magical spark of the Wild Black Yonder for a new generation, this is a treat no imagineer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to miss…

This book is printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format.
© 2010 by Kou Yaginuma. Translation © 2010 Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Makoto Yukimura, translated and adapted by Yuki Nakamura & Anna Wenger (TokyoPop)
ISBN: 978-1-59182-509-8

These days nobody does gritty, authentic, fun hard-tech comics science fiction like the Japanese (although for sheer tight-lipped underplayed drama I’d still place Sydney Jordan’s Jeff Hawk, Frank Hampson’s Dan Dare and most of Warren Ellis’ SF work ahead of even Manga’s greatest masters…).

The tough, no-nonsense, gritty mystery and refined imagination of space travel – so much a component of immediate post-World War II industrial society in the West – began to once again captivate a legion of level-headed imagineers at the end of the 20^th century when Japanese tales first began to be translated into English. One superb exponent of that mini-boom was relative newcomer Makoto Yukimura who rekindled interest in near-space exploration in all its harsh and grimy glory with an inspiring “nuts-and-bolts” manga series which scrupulously explored the probable rather than the possible…

Yukimura (born in Yokohamain 1976, just as the once-ambitious American space program was languishing in cash-strapped doldrums and five long years before the first space shuttle launch) began his professional life as an assistant to veteran creator Shin Morimura before launching his independent career with the Planetes.

Working exclusively for Kodansha, his award-winning premier Seinen series ran in Weekly Morning magazine from January 1999-January 2004 and was later collected as four tankōbon volumes. The serial easily made the jump to a popular anime series and since then Yukimura, after producing Sayōnara ga Chikai node for Evening magazine, has since 2005 abandoned the future for the past and concentrated his creative energies on the monolithic historical epic Vinland Saga – serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine and Afternoon – and filling 11 bloodcurdling volumes to date…

The grimly existential premise of Planetes is devilishly simply and powerfully engaging. Humanity is a questing species but cannot escape its base origins. In 2075 space travel and exploitation is practically commonplace but, as we’ve conquered the void between Earth and the asteroid belt and prepare to exploit the outer planets, the once-pristine void around us has become clotted with our obsolete tech and casually discarded rubbish.

Even the most minuscule piece of junk or debris falling through hard vacuum is a high-speed, potentially deadly missile and to keep risk to a minimum, hardy teams of rugged individualists have to literally sweep the heavens free of our discarded crap.

The stories revolve around youthful trashman Hachimaki Hoshino whose greatest dream is to become a true deep-space astronaut and famous explorer like his famous – if disreputable – father. The boy has his future all mapped out: a similar career-path to dear old dad will lead to fame and wealth and then he can buy his own spaceship and be really free…

Sadly the incessantly dull toil of his deep night day-job is wearing away at the passionate, excitable Hachi who is becoming swiftly disenchanted with the whole dreary, disgusting drudgery aboard DS-12 - a standard sanitation/cargo ship fondly dubbed Toybox…

The first episode in this stunning second volume begins with ‘Running Man’ as the Toybox’s weary crew visit Moon Orbital Space Port and the obsessively training Hachimaki is approached by an unctuous business type looking for his infamous dad. Werner Locksmith is the head and chief designer of the Earth Development Community-sponsored manned mission to Jupiter and, unknown to the starry-eyed kid, had pegged Hachi’s father as the only man capable of piloting the innovative new vessel on the five year mission: one the boy would give anything to be on.

However the elder explorer doesn’t want to go and has actually absconded from the Private/Public sector project and is currently a fugitive…

The old rogue has had enough of space-faring: a fact he finds impossible to relate to his furious son when they meet. The old spacer intends to retire to Earth and make things right with the wife he’s abandoned…

Meanwhile Locksmith has been called away. Something has gone disastrously wrong with the Jupiter ship Von Braun…

Above Luna as Hachi argues with his dad, another crisis occurs as a devastating explosion rips through the station and everybody evacuates. In the safe chill of the void, Hachi and the crew see a phenomenal debris field emanating from the moon’s surface. The Von Braun’s experimental engines have failed and an entire lunar base has been evaporated…

Following the tragedy the ruthlessly cool Locksmith unswervingly starts to rebuild and the senior Hoshino breathes a sigh of relief. Hachi is undeterred. He resumes his training, knowing that when the Von Braun is ready to fly, he will be ready to join it…

Acknowledging their comrade’s impossible dream, stoic Russian Yuri Mihairokov and commander Fee Carmichael have inducted by a raw new recruit to the Toybox team and tasked Hachi with training her to be his eventual replacement. According to the ambitious lad, however, Ai ‘Tanabe’ is a hopeless case, fruitlessly wasting valuable time he could be using to train and study for his application to the Jupiter Mission. Suffering mightily from having to baby-sit the useless girl, he only discovers her suppressed inner fire after a 50-year old space coffin is recovered from the dark expanse and provokes a bitter dispute about love, passion and man’s place in the cold, lonely universe…

Hachi’s dream comes a giant leap closer to reality in ‘A Black Flower named Sakinohaka Part 1’ as he finally begins his official audition for the Von Braun. The boy has become an emotional void with nothing but his cold ambition driving him. He can’t even process the deadly and constant threat posed by increased sabotage activity from the terrorist SDL; a group determined to keep space free of Man’s toxic presence.

Despite the more than 20,000 applicants, Hoshino is beginning to distinguish himself when a series of bomb blasts rocks the controversial project. Narrowly escaping death, Hachi is visited by his old friends who are horrified by the obsessed spacer’s blasé attitude and apparent disregard for the pain and suffering of his rival candidates who were caught in the detonations. Is he truly so determined to get on the mission that all he sees are fewer competitors?

Only fellow applicant and new buddy Hakimu seems to understand that any sacrifice and personal misery are worth the prize…

Soon the testing is in its final stages and Werner Locksmith lectures the remaining candidates from the bridge of the almost completed Von Braun. Only nine of the desperate spacers will make this final cut but the big day is again delayed after Hachi confronts the insidious saboteur and fails to stop him…

The tale resumes six months later as the last twenty three candidates await the final call whilst in ‘A Black Flower named Sakinohaka Part 2’ Hachi’s still-fugitive father is targeted by SDL assassins and heads back to the son who has disowned him. His arrival coincides with young Tanabe’s visit to deliver the boy’s belongings from Toybox, leading to an embarrassing confusion as to her amatory status, but before things can be fully clarified the terrorists attack again, determined to ensure the death of the “only man who could pilot the Von Braun”…

Fleeing through the lowest levels of the Moon’s Oriental Basin Underground Tunnel City the trio are more of a danger to each other than their murderous pursuers and after another catastrophic explosion Hachi again confronts the traitor who sabotaged his last attempt to join the mission and almost commits an unpardonable act until gentle Tanabe talks him off the emotionally-charged metaphorical ledge…

‘Lost Souls’ sees the lad successfully in final training for the mission that has become his life when a lunar accident strands Hachi and new comrade Leonov on the unforgiving surface with only hours of oxygen and a 40 kilometre walk to the nearest relief station. It would have been impossible even if the co-pilot wasn’t wounded with a slowly-leaking suit.

By the time rescue arrived Hachi had reached the stage where he fought his saviours, frantic to prove that he truly needs no one’s help to achieve his goals…

This sublime saga concludes here with ‘СПАСИБО’ (or “Spasibo” which can be either “thank you” or “God save you”) as the recuperating Hachi returns to the family home in Japan, accompanied by his penitent father, and is visited by Leonov’s grateful mother. Although he doesn’t understand a word she says, the old lady still makes far more sense than his constantly warring family and, after another drunken fight with his dad, events come to tragic, galvanising crisis which at last crushes the walls around the traumatised young man’s head and heart…

Also included are working sketches, pin-ups, a bunch of four-panel sidebar humour strips ‘A Four Panel Comic’, ‘Namao-san (Presumably Male)’, ‘Eat? That Thing?’, ‘Drinking Hot Coffee through a Straw’ and prose biographies of revered and inspirational author Kenji Miyazawa and pioneer Cosmonaut Yuri Alexeyevitch Gagarin in ‘Conceptualising Space Travel’.

Suspenseful, funny, thrilling and utterly absorbing, these tales readily reinvigorate and reinvent the magical allure of the Wild Black Yonder for newer generations, and this authentic, hard-edged and wittily evocative epic is a treat no hard-headed dreamer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to miss…

This book is printed in the traditional Japanese right to left, back to front format.
© 2001 Makoto Yukimura. All rights reserved. English text © 2004 TOKYOPOP Inc.

By Makoto Yukimura, translated and adapted by Yuki Nakamura & Ann Wenger (TokyoPop)
ISBN: 978-1-59182-262-2

The hard, gritty mystery and imagination of space travel, so much a component of immediate post-World War II industrial society, once again captivated a legion of level-headed imagineers at the end of the 20^th century when relative newcomer Makoto Yukimura rekindled interest in near-space exploration in all its harsh and grimy glory with this inspiring “nuts-and-bolts” manga series which explored the probable rather than the possible…

Yukimura (born in Yokohamain 1976, just as the once-ambitious American space program was languishing in cash-strapped doldrums and five long years before the first space shuttle launch) began his professional life as an assistant to veteran creator Shin Morimura before launching his independent career with the Planetes.

Working exclusively for Kodansha, his award-winning premier Seinen series ran in Weekly Morning magazine from January 1999-January 2004 and was later collected as four tankōbon volumes. The serial easily made the jump to a popular anime series and Yukimura – after producing Sayōnara ga Chikai node for Evening magazine – has since 2005 abandoned the future for the past and concentrated his creative energies on the monolithic historical epic Vinland Saga – serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine and Afternoon – and filling 11 bloodcurdling volumes to date…

The premise of Planetes is devilishly simply and powerfully engaging. Humanity is a questing species but cannot escape its base origins. In 2074 space travel and exploitation is practically commonplace but as we’ve conquered the void between Earth and the asteroid belt and prepare to exploit the outer planets, the once-pristine void around us has become clotted with our obsolete tech and casually discarded rubbish.

Even the most minute piece of junk or debris falling through hard vacuum is a high-speed, potentially deadly missile, and to keep risk to a minimum hardy teams of rugged individualists have to literally sweep the heavens free of our discarded crap.

‘A Stardust Sky’ begins with the death of a passenger on a commercial low-orbit space liner before jumping six years forward to introduce a trio of these celestial dustbin-men scooping up Mankind’s negligent cast-offs and unconsidered detritus.

Hachirota Hoshino is the newest member of the team, a kid who craves becoming a real astronaut and famous explorer like his dad and even dreams of one day owing his own prestige spaceship. However excitable “Hachimaki” is quickly becoming disenchanted with the dreary, dull and disgusting daily life of drudgery aboard DS-12 - a sanitation/cargo ship fondly dubbed Toybox but little better than the discards he and his two comrades daily scoop up or destroy…

These days there’s something wrong with the sombre, stoic Russian, Yuri Mihairokov.

The big man is increasingly distracted, blanking out, staring vacantly into the Wild Black Yonder as the cleaners orbit the Earth at 8 kilometres per second. Events come to head when a shard of micro-debris holes their ramshackle vessel and an old timer reveals the Russian’s tragic secret.

Long ago Yuri and his wife were on that shuttle and when it was holed she died. Heartbroken, her husband – one of the few survivors – returned to space to clear the deadly trash that took his wife, but he never forgot her.

Later, whilst drifting in the void the solitary astronaut sees a glitter, and her keepsake compass just floats into his hand, brought back to him by the winds of space. Beguiled, Yuri falls into Earth’s Gravity Well and only Hachimaki’s most frantic efforts save his comrade from a fiery death.

Safely back in free orbit, the Russian opens his gauntleted fist. On the compass are scratched his wife’s final thoughts as death took her – “please save Yuri”…

The poignant, bittersweet and deeply spiritual initial episode is followed by ‘A Girl from Beyond the Earth’ wherein young Hoshino slowly and impatiently recovers from a broken leg in the hospital of the moon colony Archimedes Crater City.

These tales are laced with the most up-to-date space science available to author Yukimura, and the recent discovery that extended time spent in low or zero-gravity radically weakens bones and muscles was the lynchpin of this moving brush with another youngster bound irrevocably to the void.

When a doctor suggests returning to full-gravity Earth to recuperate the easy way, Hachi is in two minds and sorely tempted. His commander and fellow debris-destroyer Fee Carmichael and an old 20-year veteran pour scorn on the quitter’s option. All real astronauts know that once back on the home world few ever return to space.

The lad is still tempted though until he strikes up a friendship with a thin, wasted young woman. Nono has been on Luna for twelve years and dreams of blue skies and open seas but will never see them. After aged Mr. Roland chooses to spend the rest of his life among the stars, Hachimaki learns Nono’s incredible sad secret and at last abandons all thoughts of forsaking the stars…

The focus stays on nicotine-fiend Fee Carmichael as she struggles to enjoy a well-deserved vice in ‘A Cigarette under Starlight’ in Orientale Basin Underground City a few months later. With breathing-oxygen at a premium, smokers must juggle their addiction for the weed with their dedication to life in space and poor Fee has been Jonesing for a drag for far too long. Now though, even whilst on shore-leave at a station big enough and sufficiently civilised to house a designated smoking area, the Toybox’s chief is still unable to indulge her vice.

An ideological terrorist group called the Space Defense Fighters want to keep the void pristine and free of Mankind’s polluting influence and have been detonating bombs in outposts all over the moon. Their latest outrages targeted the base’s vending machines and smoking rooms so the authorities have sealed them all in the name of public safety.

Driven near to distraction, Fee snaps and lights up in the public toilets, forgetting that smoke detection devices and fire countermeasures are automatic, incredibly sensitive and painfully effective…

Humiliated, sodden but undeterred, she takes off for another city and a solitary snout (for all you non-Brits that’s a particularly derogatory term for having a smoke) and finds the only guy more in need of a drag than her. Of course setting bombs is nervous work and a quick ciggy always calms his nerves…

The frustration is too much and Fee returns to her job but the SDF’s explosive campaign doesn’t end. Their latest scheme is the creation of deadly Kessler Syndrome wave (a blast or impact which changes the trajectories of free-floating orbital scrap and debris, making even more debris/shrapnel and aiming it like a hard rain of lethal micro-missiles)…

With a commandeered satellite directed inexorably at a space station, the terrorists intend to detonate their captured vehicle and shred the habitat – which coincidentally carries the last smokes in space – shooting it out of the sky and creating a lethal chain reaction making high-orbit space forever un-navigable…

Unsure of her own motives Fee uses the DS-12 to suicidally shove the stolen projectile away from the station and into Earth’s atmosphere…

In ‘Scenery for a Rocket’, as Fee recuperates in Florida, Hachimaki brings Yuri to visit Japan and falls back into a violent and historic sibling rivalry with baby brother Kyutaro, a rocketry prodigy even more determined to conquer space than his surly fanatical brother or their absentee astronaut father Goro…

Happily the Russian’s calming influence begins to repair fences between the warring Hoshino boys, but not before a series of explosive confrontations lead to Yuri finally passing on his beloved wife’s compass…

This first passionately philosophical and sentimentally suspenseful chronicle concludes with ‘Ignition’ as Fee, Yuri and Hachimaki reunite in time for the junior junkman to suffer an almost career-ending psychological injury. Although utterly unharmed by a rogue solar flare, the lad was completely isolated in the void for so long that he developed post-traumatic “Deep-Space Disorder”.

If he could not shake off the debilitating hallucinatory condition his life in space was over. Nothing the experts of the Astronaut Training Center did seemed to work, but fortunately Yuri knew just what prodding could awaken the wide-eyed, Wild Black Wonder in his feisty little comrade…

Tense, sensitive and moodily inspirational, these tales readily reinvigorate and reinvent the magical allure of the cold heavens for newer generations and this authentic, hard-edged and wittily rational saga is a treat no hard-headed dreamer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to miss…

This book – which also includes prose biographies of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert H. Goddard, Herman Julius Oberth & Werhner von Braun in ‘A Brief History of Modern Rocket Science’ – are printed in the traditional Japanese right to left, back to front format.
© 2001 Makoto Yukimura. All rights reserved. English text © 2003 TOKYOPOP Inc.