Review: Planetes Omnibus, Volume 1

Planetes Omnibus, Volume 1 by Makoto Yukimura
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received a free e-galley copy of this book from Edelweiss.

I'd heard about "Planetes" when I received my e-galley copy, but I hadn't heard much. I had no idea what this book was about, no expectations, and I was honestly pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed everything about it. From the opening scenes the characters, the world, and the style pulled me in. All of the SF anime and manga I've consumed has either been near-future, Earth-based, and often dystopian or cyberpunk (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Akira), or set in the far future when humanity is already living comfortably in space (Knights of Sidonia) - but above all, thematically concerned with human and other, instantiated as humans and the super-human (either superpowered humans or something more alien and more powerful). "Planetes" is unique (to me) in that it's a near-ish future concerned with expansion into space and humans living their lives. There are no giant aliens, no cyborgs, no superhumans, just humanity.

This focus on human life is clear from the opening scenes: a man and his wife are flying in a low-orbit ship across the planet. The wife is nervous, as she always is. The husband moves to the back of the ship to get some coffee, and the entire front end of the ship is destroyed. A few years later, he is part of the three-person crew that are the core characters of the story. Their ship is a garbage collector; they spend their days literally cleaning up after humanity, collecting space debris. This is an important job, though, because the thoughtless, random detritus of human expansion can be deadly, from the largest chunk of space station to the smallest screw. There's Yuri, who is looking for his late wife's compass, Hachimaki, who wants nothing more than to be chosen for the longest space trip ever, a trip to Jupiter, and Fee, who wants nothing more than a good place for a smoke.

Most of the story arcs can stand alone, and many are slice-of-life pieces, but together they build a story that spans several years and chronicles the lives of a crew that grow together and come to depend on each other. I love the character dynamics, especially as the series continues and minor characters blossom. I also very much enjoy the world Yukimura has built (as a side note, I'm impressed that he's both the writer and illustrator for the whole thing). It's a world with moving parts and importance, and a message that comes through pervasively but not overwhelmingly. The art was a slow burn. I didn't love it at first, because I do have a strong preference for color over black and white, but there are some absolutely gorgeous scenes where the blackness of space feels as vast and drowning as it is in reality.

Overall, strongly recommend this collection, and I'll be on the lookout for the second one soon!

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Review: Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I saw the Ghost in the Shell movie a while back, but don't remember much of it because my memory for media is terrible (hence my obsessive book reviewing). What I remember is actually pretty true to the final story arc in this book, and to the general tone of the manga. There were a lot of vivid, easy-to-follow action scenes, and Major Kusanagi is a fun, realized character. It's a cool, cyberpunk world full of cyborgs and robots and neural nets and body-tech integration, which gives it a lot of opportunity for exploring the nature of personhood and humanity. And it tries to make use of that opportunity, but it ultimately fails to say anything interesting or groundbreaking.

The highlights of this book are Marjo Kusanagi and the technology. Kusanagi is fun, but doesn't take any shit. She fights for her country but is willing to bend the rules to do what's right - she's the quintessential action hero with a little more spunk. And the sci-fi tech aspects are loads of fun as well, providing a lot of creative mission opportunities.

Those highlights were dragged down, though, by the incomprehensibility of huge parts of the story. On a basic plot-and-character-development level it's often unclear what is happening and to whom, and this really makes the other characters struggle to be consistent or notable. I generally followed the gist of the plot, but details got lost or muddled frequently. There's a scene where someone tells Kusanagi 'this cyborg is basically the same model you are' - but soon after, the director of the team says 'there are no cyborgs on my team.' Maybe he's lying, maybe I misunderstood the first scene - but it was never ever made clear. Things like that permeated the story and made it hard to get fully into the world.

And all of those opportunities for exploring the nature of personhood and humanity? Squandered, completely. The climax of the story - the last three chapters, I believe - is essentially the plot of the movie, and involves the ghosts/spirits/minds of characters interacting, and attempting to explain the philosophy of mind of the world. But any time the "ghosts" or spirits or souls were mentioned, the entire context was absolute nonsense. Combinations of words that didn't make sense together. When there was some semantic coherence, it was either too brief to provide context for the rest of the rambling or it didn't make logical sense. Shirow obviously ascribes to some sort of dualism - the mind/spirit/ghost is separate from the body - but he also has some kind of complex and nonsensical architecture of the mind (or of the digital mind? not even sure). The edition I read had a host of footnotes in the back and all they revealed to me was that he didn't understand 1) what was interesting about his world, 2) what people might want clarification on, or 3) how to integrate important information into the story. There are paragraphs of footnotes detailing how particular weapons that appear in one scene work, but those aren't questionsI ever wanted answered. Many explain the structure of the government - something that probably should've gotten better treatment in-story, because it is relevant to Kusanagi's actions. But there is no clarification at all of what happens in the final chapter of the book, which is a shame, because that should have been the most interesting and powerful part of the story, but instead reads like gobbledygook to anyone with even a cursory understanding of biology.

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