Dec 22, 2015 | 528 Pages
“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
