Review

"When people recommend a good “gateway” manga for American comic readers, one choice that comes up often is Makoto Yukimura’s Planetes. Originally serialized in Japanese magazine Weekly Morning from 1999 to 2004, Planetes is a “hard sci-fi” drama set in the year 2075 that follows a crew on a debris-collection ship in outer space. It is highly recommended by manga enthusiasts, in part, because of its realistic tone, rich backstories, and complex themes involving environmentalism, terrorism, and existentialism. Another reason is Yukimura's artwork, which mixes cartoony characters with detailed backgrounds and machinery to ground it all in a sense of realism without losing the energy often associated with good manga. Dark Horse has brought a lot of quality manga to North American readers in the past couple of years, and with Planetes they’ve assembled the entire story into one giant 500+ page omnibus with restored color sequences." -Mental Floss

About the Author

Makoto Yukimura is a Japanese manga artist. He made his debut in 2000 with the praised Planetes, serialized in Kodansha Weekly Morning mangazine and adapted into a 26 episodes anime series by the studio Sunrise. Before that, he worked as an assistant for Shin Morimura.

He is currently working on Vinland Saga which was first serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine then moved to the monthly Afternoon magazine. For this work he received the 2009 Japan Media Arts Festival Grand Prize in the manga category. In 2010, he was a guest of the Angoulême International Comics Festival. The author lives in Yokohama, Japan.

It's the 2070s, and mankind has conquered space, making interplanetary travel possible and igniting the imaginations of the world. It's also vastly increased the amount of dangerous space debris, and someone has to clean it up. Hachimaki, Yuri, and Fee are a crew on that beat, each with their own goals, tendencies, and personal problems: Hachimaki dreams of deep-space exploration in his own ship, Yuri is still recovering from the death of his wife in an accident caused by orbiting debris, and Fee is secretive, but there's a lot going on under the surface!

Just trying to do their jobs in an age of space-age environmental concerns and new vistas of exploration, the crew deals with Hachi's fear of isolation hampering his hopes of joining an upcoming Jupiter mission, keep an eye on the wreckage for signs of Yuri's lost wife, and become unwitting heroes when the only place Fee can still smoke is threatened by terrorists! Dark Horse Manga is proud to present Makoto Yukimura's award-winning hard sci-fi epic Planetes in two omnibus-sized editions, complete with bonus color pages never before seen in America!

"Planetes has it all: strong themes, interesting characters, and great art." -Anime Fringe