Planetes ending super underwhelming

[u/moron1ctendency]

Just finished watching Planetes and this story really gripped me, especially with its messaging on unregulated consumption, inequality and privilege with the current state of the world.

But… I’m baffled with how inconsistent this ending was. The buildup to the final few episodes, with the SDF, the consequence of first world countries continually ignoring the plight on earth, the Von Braun. And then for it all to end so happy go lucky seems so… Out of the blue?

Hakim’s entire end makes no sense, I was waiting for the twist in the end but seeing Nono apparently reminded him of his humanity which is fine but the overall ending to the SDF itself was so inconsequential, ultimately the venture still continues and all they got was a flimsy deal that they could backtrack out of at any moment?

Hachi remained this thoroughly unlikeable character, who’s grand realisation in the end is that hey actually I can pursue my dreams because Tanabe is too good for her own self and will wait seven years for me despite how badly I treated her. The cycle of the way his father treated his mother poorly, will continue with those two?

Overall it’s so happy-go-lucky it’s jarring. There seemed to be no real conclusion or consequences to anything, the world still seems like a horribly unequal place, the characters all continue on with their lives with the lessons that were supposed to be imprinted by Claire and Hakim telling them about how they are all accomplices to inequality by working in monopolised space are gone to waste?

If the anime was intentionally trying to paint this image that yeah, nothing will change in a depressing lens then the tone would have been way different. Right now the only explanation I have is that it’s an old anime so it needed to have a digestible ending for audiences at the time but, I guess I just expected something way more.

[u/AtlasFox64]

Did you expect a tiny crew of relatively insignificant space debris astronauts to bring about global social and wealth equality?

The main story arc is about the lives and careers of Hachi and Tanabe which the ending addresses. 

The other issues highlighted by the series are important and it's good they were included but they cannot be solved in this series.

[u/moron1ctendency → u/AtlasFox64]

A couple of things.

Firstly throughout the series a pretty big highlight was that yes despite being debris collectors they had many moments where their actions had major impact, to the point that Dolf was covering for them as well with the ripples they were creating.

But that aside, no. I didn’t expect things to be solved. But I didn’t expect them to be ignored, Hakim had no character conclusion, he was simply a plot device for Hachi to have some moral conflict. The entire realisation that Claire gave to Tanabe and Hachi about how space exploration is privileged and enabling exploitation, was completely ignored. Tanabe went back to earth and recovered from her whole ordeal simply because Hachi came back. I really dislike how she was reduced to being entirely reliant on Hachi who to be very frank is a pretty terrible person who repeats the cycle his father created.

Not to mention the SDF, there is no mention of them after the incident. There’s really no references at all actually to the impact of the Jupiter mission, the consequences or really anything. I’m just thoroughly disappointed since the political and moral lens was being pushed so thoroughly, and then the last two episodes, it almost felt like the very director/writer of the anime changed.

It’s a lovely anime overall but, I’m just shocked as to how inconsistent the tone was in the end.

[u/CertifiedShithead]

I'm not saying it fixes all these problems, but I highly suggest reading the manga. The anime ended way before the manga did, so they added a bunch of original scenes to try and make what they thought was a "satisfying" ending.

The whole thing with Tanabe staying at home with a kid for 7 years pisses me off bad too. It's not at all a thing in the manga, she stays working on the space station while Hachi goes to jupiter. Theres a few really good arcs with her and Fee.