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‘Planetes’: NASA could use these misfits to clean up space junk
09-16-11
Last week, a National Research Council report urged NASA to start thinking seriously yiwu cords about cleaning up the more than 22,000 fragments of satellites, rockets and other junk orbiting the Earth.They’re way behind Ai Tanabe, Hachirota Hoshino and the other grunts of the Debris Section of Space Station ISPV-7 in the anime series “Planetes”; they’ve been disposing of that Yiwu coats stuff since the show debuted in 2004. So now’s a good time to revisit the DVD set “Planetes: Complete Collection.”The story line goes like this: In 2075, eager but maladroit Ai arrives at the Space Station and is dismayed to discover she’s been assigned to the Debris Section. This group of mismatched misfits is at the bottom of the station, physically and socially. Supervisor Meyers frets; his assistant Arvind does yiwu lace sleight-of-hand magic; pilot Fee hides in a decompression chamber to sneak cigarettes. Because they’re understaffed, they’re often referred to as the Half Section; one of Ai’s fellow recruits says it’s Yiwu costumes because they’re also “half-trained, half-assed, half-cocked, halfhearted and half-crazy.”Ai immediately begins squabbling with her instructor, veteran astronaut Hachirota “Hachimaki” Hoshino, when he stumbles promotional gifts in, clad in the upper part of his spacesuit and the diaper he’s required to wear during extravehicular maneuvers. He sums up their situation: “The work’s hard, it’s dangerous, our budget is a joke, and then yiwu patches there’s the diapers.”The setup of a feisty newcomer joining an eccentric but hard-working crew, and the feuding friendship between an idealistic rookie and a seasoned senior officer, have been used in numerous anime series.But Hachimaki has more depth than ordinary diamond-in-the-rough characters, and the setting allows for some imaginative story lines. Ai berates Hachimaki for destroying an orbiting plaque Yiwu dresses that’s inscribed with the hope that the children of a Third World country might grow up in peace. He replies that he’s following orders — and that the plaque is on a collision course with a satellite that tracks potential military threats to that country. And he makes sure the plaque will Yiwu Apparel burn up in the atmosphere at a time when it will give those children a spectacular meteor shower.When Ai and Hachimaki visit the moon for some R and R, they’re attacked by an inept troupe of ninja wannabes. During the ensuing fracas, Hachimaki breaks his ankle and spends the rest of his vacation hobbling around the lunar hospital. When he and Ai return to work, they share a series of linked adventures that reveal their pasts. Director Goro Taniguchi overstock products and his artists use the back stories to transform a fairly standard cast of characters into a group of intriguing individuals.In addition to the usual interviews with the ADR director and voice actors, the yiwu rhinestones extras on the “Planetes: Complete Collection” set include photographs of real space debris that’s fallen to Earth, and discussions with NASA officials about the threat posed to space exploration by thousands of objects 10 centimeters or larger orbiting the planet at speeds approaching 8 kilometers per second.
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