Customer Reviews

Planetes: Volume 4: Part 1

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I aint good with words so here it is in just a few of them. A must read for any lover of sci-fi. Light hearted but not childish in nature. Mature but a good read for younger readers. Good near future sci-fi.

Volume 4 of Planetes has been divided into two parts for some reason. Perhaps in order to bring characters that were once mainly in the background of Hachi's quest to go to Jupiter. Strangely enough, he is absent from this volume except in flashbacks. After a US transport is destroyed by an orbital mine controlled by the Republic Country, factions in both governments are itching to go to war. The problem is that any war conducted in space risks Kessler's Syndrome, in which so much debris accumulates in Earth's atmosphere that leaving the atmosphere becomes an impossible task. With the background of impending war, the story focuses mainly on Fee, and the decisions she makes on whether to intervene in the conflict or not. Along the way, her and Tanabe make friends with a weirdo named Baron who sports an Elvis pompadour and claims that he is an alien observer. In a more touching storyline, Dr. Locksmith, the designer of the Von Braun Jupiter exploration ship, meets with the loved ones of the scientists that died in the development of his dream. And in a homage to Kentucky Fried Chicken, a US Army Space Intelligence Officer named Col. Sanders tries to convince Fee to take his side against the coming space conflict.

The writing in the first part of Volume 4 seemed a little lacking in the maturity department, especially in the scenes where Fee is kicked in the butt by her young son and we see just how pitiful her home life is. I do not know of any parent that would allow their kid to kick them and not respond. Of course it's all a message about rebelling against the system and all that but I just didn't get it. The Baron storyline tried but failed to achieve humorous results. And what is the whole Col. Sanders thing? It was just weird. Again, the pages about Dr. Locksmith were well done but did not make up for the juvenalia of the others.