Planetes



Garbage collecting... ! Because in space, bolts screw you!

An anime series, based on a manga series of the same name, that provides a realistic and dramatic view of life in space in the near future. The principal cast are the "Debris Section" of the Technora corporation, space trash collectors that are charged with the prevention of deadly orbital collisions with free-floating junk.

By 2075, the depletion of oil reserves has caused mankind to turn to space to solve its increasing demand for energy, through the mining of Helium-3 isotope deposits from the moon. With the increase in traffic, the accumulation of debris in Earth orbit has caused a number of spectacular and deadly accidents, as even a tiny piece of debris at orbital velocity (for reference, orbital velocity for an object in LEO is about 7 and a half kilometers per second) can take down a spacecraft. So, our "heroes" (really just blue-collar astronauts and administrators) must collect and salvage this space junk.

Please don't read the examples if you ever plan on watching the show. Just don't.

Combines with Flight Gear to make Orbiter.

This show contains examples of:
"Hachimaki (as they're gathering equipment for the next mission): "This, this, this... And this too." * Places Hustler magazine in the cart* Tanabe: "Wha... What is that?" Hachimaki: "In this field of work men and women may have to live together in close quarters for several weeks. If we don't take matters into our own hands something ugly might happen. Here, this is yours." * Holds up a porn mag supposedly for women*"
 * A Date with Rosie Palms: Implied in episode one.


 * A Day in the Limelight: Several of the Section Debris crew get episodes that focus largely on them, such as Yuri in episodes 10 and 14, as well as Fee in episodes 8 and 12, and Edel in episode 15.
 * Air Vent Passageway: Chapter 9 of the manga.
 * Almost Kiss: Hachimaki and Tanabe nearly have one on the beach in episode 13, until a rocket launched by Hachimaki's brother nearly hits them.
 * Amazingly Embarrassing Parent:
 * Yukari Tanabe, Ai's mom, who is very enthusiastic about Hachimaki and openly nags Ai to marry him. Cue beer fountain (Hachi just had some from Ai's dad).
 * Goro Hoshino. Given that Hachi is his spitting image, both in looks and in character, you can imagine what a person he is.
 * Annoying Younger Sibling: Hachimaki's, whose love for space manifests not as a desire to be an astronaut, but as a rocket engineer. They often come to blows as to which one is the more legitimate calling.
 * Art Evolution: Tanabe's a bit ugly in the first volumes of the manga. Fortunately, this changes.
 * Badass Crew: The crew of the Toybox, with the biggest Badass of them all, Fee, as captain.
 * Bald of Awesome: Gigalt.
 * Banana Republic: El Tanika.
 * Beard of Sorrow: (Variation, )
 * Big Damn Heroes: At the end, several groups of main characters are all rushing towards the von Braun to
 * Big Guy: Several, but most surprising one is Kyutaro Hoshino, who had a growth spurt in the last volume, and by the end of the manga stands at 183 cm (6'1"). Hachi and Goro, both being relatively short, were utterly dumbstruck.
 * Bilingual Bonus: In the manga version, Hachimaki meets the mother of an astronaut whose life he just saved, who speaks to him in Russian. In Yukimura's typical Shown Their Work fashion the words are written using the Cyrillic alphabet and are entirely correct. They still don't understand each other at all. We do.
 * Bishonen: Hachi's old friend and spaceship pilot, Kho Cheng-Shin.
 * Most male characters below fifty in the manga. Which leads to a lot of Ambiguous Gender moments for the reader.
 * Byronic Hero: Werner Locksmith, the man who can only love spaceships.
 * Break the Cutie:
 * Broken Bird: Claire. Increasingly broken as the series goes on. Edel was one in the past.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: Many of the main characters are really good at their jobs, even if they're a bit eccentric. Such as Locksmith, Hachimaki, and Fee.
 * Character Development: Quite a few characters get episodes that focus on them, and we get to learn more about their past as well as why they act the way they do, such as Hachimaki wearing said headband all the time.
 * Clingy Jealous Girl: Tanabe towards Hachimaki, who gets angry or at least suspicious anytime she sees him hanging out with a woman. Lucie towards Cheng-Shin.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Deconstructed with Fee's uncle, Roy Bryant. He was kind and talented, but almost terminally shy and autistic. Not that terrible per se, but he had the misfortune of being the lone, unemployed, and black weirdo in the Deep South. He was feared and ostracized by almost everyone around, until some day, after the locals, suspecting him of kidnapping a neighbor's daughter, burned his shack, and he went off to the woods and was never heard about again. This still weighs on Fee.
 * Baron is a straight example.
 * Coincidence Magnet: The cast, in the course of the series, rescue a handful of people from a fire on the Moon, capture a ship dumping illegal waste, foil an elaborate terrorist plot, locate and remove a Kill Sat disguised as debris, and finally encounter another elaborate terrorist plot. This from people who are, in essence, garbagemen in space.
 * Not all of that was coincidence. Remember that scene in the car with the guy talking to Dolph.
 * Cold Equation: During a teamwork assessment exercise for the Jovian mission, oxygen is vented out of the testing chamber during a power failure. The applicants are incommunicado, so have no way of determining whether this is an accident or a test. They could hit the emergency button (and fail if this is a test) or murder one of their team so they'll have enough oxygen until the door opens automatically.  occurs when Ai is struggling to carry  across the Luna surface -- when her effort causes her to run out of oxygen early, Ai has to make the decision on whether to steal her companion's air tank.
 * Colony Drop: Late in the series, a rather large spaceship threatens to collide with a city on the moon.
 * Continuity Nod: The Moon Ninjas from the anime are eventually mentioned again...
 * Pretty much everyone who shows up in the Anime is mentioned or visited again.
 * Cross-continuity in the manga: when the author made a bonus four-panel comic gag including Claire, an anime-only character, he didn't draw her face because he didn't think he could draw her right.
 * Cooldown Hug: In the manga, Ai to stop Hachi's Unstoppable Rage Tranquil Fury, as the latter is about to Preceded by a , and followed by a.
 * Cool Old Guy: Gigalt.
 * Goro as well, though mostly in the manga, where he's much better developed.
 * Cool Ship: von Braun.
 * Also, the Toybox I. It's ugly, unwieldy, and older than most of its crew, but it has a lot of character and had an incredible sendoff.
 * Creepy Child: Of all people,.
 * Cultural Cross-Reference: In the manga version, a military officer named Colonel Sanders tries to make a deal with Fee to help stop the impending space war. She flatly denies him and tells him to go "sell fried chicken at a gas station." This is made even more hilarious by the fact that his appearance is seemingly based upon a certain other Colonel Sanders.
 * Dangerously Genre Savvy: The Space Defense Force, who accurately guesses that INTO and other organizations will be too busy guarding certain places, and make it seem like they'll attack those places, only to then attack another station. It was only because of a really ticked off Fee (who hasn't had a smoke for a while due to air quality reasons and smoking sections on the moon being blown up) saving the space station that saved them.
 * Later, they learned from that first incident, and this time makes sure to take several extra precautions to ensure neither Fee nor anyone else would be able to stop their second plan.
 * Dead Little Sister:.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Edel often makes snarky comments around the office of the Debris Section office.
 * De Fictionalisation: While it seems unlikely to take the same form as in the show, scientists have said that cleaning up space debris has become a pressing concern, apparently the ISS has had to dodge dangerous debris several times already.
 * Description Cut: Cheng-Shin assures a friend that Hachimaki is a lot more subdued now than he was the last time they met. Guess who comes running past them playing space-ninja at that very moment?
 * Determinator: Deconstructed. Hachi almost alienated Ai and his peers with his fanatical commitment to board the von Braun, and desire to liberate the developing countries eventually made him a shell.
 * Detonation Moon: Although a (relatively) minor one: the Tandem Mirror Engine accident that turns a considerable chunk of the Moon into dust.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: The odd imagery during the docking sequence in episode 14, combined with the context of the episode itself makes it pretty clear exactly what the scene is a metaphor of.
 * Norio Wakamoto once again lends his voice to a badass doomed mentor dying from radiation sickness. ..
 * Dying Alone: Hachimaki's dark self constantly reminds himself of this fate in the 2nd half of the season. Tanabe on the other hand, feels this trope should be averted, such as when the body of one of the early space pioneers makes its way back to Earth, and she feels he should be buried by his family, rather than sent back into the void of space.
 * Evolving Credits
 * Face Heel Turn:, who joins the Space Defense Front when life hits one too many speed bumps.
 * The Federation: What INTO likes to think of themselves as. The Space Defense Front, however, imagines them more like The Empire.
 * First Kiss: While it's not seen, it's heavily implied at the end of episode 14 with Hachimaki and Tanabe.
 * Foreshadowing: That woman we see in the spacecraft in episode 1 when a stray bolt hits it?, and in episode 10 we get more background on why Yuri was obsessed with looking for space debris and why he joined the Debris Section in the first place.
 * For Science!: Werner Locksmith "can only love space ships". Treated as realistically and thoughtfully as everything else.
 * Freeze-Frame Bonus: In episode 20, you can pause and read some of Hachimaki's details as Director Locksmith goes over it.
 * Friend to All Living Things: Yuri keeps a kennel for the station's officers' pets, because he's that good with animals.
 * Gainaxing: Fee, who apparently doesn't wear a bra.
 * Genre Busting: It's hard sci-fi (well, hard for anime), with plenty of drama, strong themes on relationship building, and a few comedy bits to relax the audience. Some people just agreed upon it to be a slice-of-life story, but In Space!
 * Gratuitous English: Some of it is possibly excusable, since high-tech jargon from a lot of countries adds English to the mix.
 * Then there's the Engrish Surgeon General's warning placed outside of the smoking rooms to explain: "Let's warn that you absorb it too much because your health is likely to be injured." And "Lunar Felly." Oy.
 * The spring issue of Strike, an adult magazine seen briefly in ep 16, has the rather amusing headline "Hit! Bitch! Sex!" sprawled across the front page. Oy indeed.
 * Hell, even the Title Sequence has some. If you stop to read its descriptions of important moments in the history of space exploration, you're treated to gems like "The father of modern rocket propulsion is the American. Successfully, the first a liquid fuel rocket."
 * Hachimaki: There's a reason Hachirota is nicknamed Hachimaki.
 * Hannibal Lecture: Twice, between the same two characters. The first time, it works wonderfully on its audience and leads to a massive Heroic BSOD; the second, it doesn't, and the lecturer is.
 * Happily Adopted:
 * Happily-Failed Suicide: In episode 5, a couple were planning to commit suicide with their young daughter due to some extreme financial burdens. But then a thief aboard the spaceship steals the medicine the father planned to use, and later takes the young girl hostage. As the parents try to dissuade the thief from killing her, it dawns on them that they themselves were about to decide her future in a bad way as well. After the girl is saved, she tells her parents about her hopes and dreams of going into space and piloting a spaceship. They seem to reconsider the suicide, and instead promise the little girl that they'll work hard for her as well.
 * Heel Realization: Hakim in the final episode.
 * Heroic BSOD: Tanabe suffers from one in episode 10 after finding out in the previous episode that  has cancer and is dying. What makes it worse is that he asks Tanabe not to reveal this information, which would be devastating to Hachimaki, who idolizes the man.
 * Hachimaki seems to go through one too in episode 25 of the anime, which takes place shortly after the Von Braun terrorist incident.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: Also, what everyone thought Fee was doing during her Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * He Who Fights Monsters: gets dangerously close to this when his zeal for.
 * Huge Schoolgirl: Nono, a twelve year-old that is taller than Hachimaki. Having spent her whole life in the Moon's limited gravity, special attention is made to how hard she has to work to keep her dangerously under-stressed (and therefore unusually tall) body working normally.
 * Human Alien: Baron, if we are to believe him.
 * Hypercompetent Sidekick: Edel, the contracted office employee (see Office Lady below) is the only one in the Debris Section office to ever be seen consistantly doing any office work. The other desk workers either spend all their time planning their impending retirement or trying to suck up to those higher on the corporate ladder.
 * Ill Girl: Nono is a rare case of a Genki Girl who is also technically one of these. She was born and grew up on the moon, and unfortunately, human bodies aren't designed to grow up in 1/6th Earth gravity. Aside from being freakishly tall, it is implied that she suffers from numerous other health problems as a result. She essentially lives in a hospital (both so that she can get constant treatments and to perform experiments on her body that might help future Lunarians live healthier lives), and judging by the looks of her room (which is filled with gym equipment), she has to train all the time for things not to get any worse. If she actually tried to land on Earth, she would be severely handicapped, and even that's assuming her cardiovascular system doesn't just give out.
 * Improvised Weapon: Industrial tools are used as instruments of mayhem and/or self defense on more than one occasion. Including two notable instances where the tool in question is a crossbow designed to anchor tow lines in space ship hulls.
 * Inherently Funny Words: "Dlum Mild".
 * It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": Some may want to pronounce the title as "Plan-Eats" or "Pla-Neats", however the name is Greek and ΠΛΑΝΗΤΕΣ is pronounced either "pla-net-es" or "pla-nee-tes" (depending on the dialect).
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: Episode 6 has some out of work guys pretending their ninjas. Their consistent pursuit of Hachimaki only adds to their Cosplay. And due to the moon's lower gravity, they really are able to jump really high in the air. Even Hachimaki, who's really annoyed with this stunt at first, starts to get into it as well.
 * Japanese Language: The dub uses a fair number of Japanese words consistently throughout its run without ever translating them, particularly the Japanese Honorifics "sempai" and "sensei", as well as "Hachimaki" (which means "headband") as a character's nickname.
 * Played with in the last episode, where the two Japanese nationals (Ai and Hachi) play a word game which consists of saying a word or term that begins with the last vowel (or syllable) the other person just said. In the English dub, the actors speak the Japanese words (and very well, too) and immediately say the English translation of the term, for clarity.
 * Japan Takes Over the World: Never mentioned but inadvertently implied, due to everyone in the cast acting in accordance with uniquely Japanese cultural norms pretty much all the time regardless of their actual nationality.
 * Probably just on the animation crew part, manga was much more cosmopolitan, and all specifically Japanese relationship norms were limited basically just to Hachi and Tanabe, who are both Japanese.
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Hachirota "Hachimaki" Hoshino
 * All Hoshino males, really: the brothers have clearly taken after their father. Hoshino's mom is basically a saint (and knows it).
 * Karma Houdini:
 * Also, arguably., who happens to be delightfully aware of that fact.
 * Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: INTO is a very, very, very thinly-veiled Expy of the real-world NATO.
 * Love Dodecahedron: Lucie likes Cheng-Shin, who likes Tanabe, who likes Hachimaki, who seems to still have feelings for Claire or outright tries to avoid the issue.
 * Love Freak: Tanabe Ai
 * As I see it, the primary theme of the manga is the ideological conflict between Ai's love and Hachimaki's ambition. (It's there in the anime too, but not so strong.)
 * Love Hotels: Technically, accommodations for transitory visitors, but explained as the only non-work area on the station where a couple can do anything date-like and have privacy from co-workers.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: To roughly the same level as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. 7 main characters (Hachimaki, Tanabe, Fee, Yuri, Chief, Ravi, Edel), and a host of well developed and influential secondary (Claire, Hakim, Colin Clifford, Cheng Shin, Goro Hoshino, Werner Locksmith, Gigalt, Dolph) and tertiary (Harry Roland, Kyutaro Hoshino, Nono, The Ninjas, Lucy), characters.
 * It's even worse in the manga, which doesn't have salarimen and Ninjas, but has a lot of other people.
 * Loophole Abuse: In episode 4, when Colin Clifford starts insulting the Debris Section, Hachimaki nearly punches his lights out in anger. But before he can, Tanabe does it instead, then berates him for being such a jerk. Colin threatens to punish them for assaulting a non-employee, but then Fee mentions that there were only 5 people aboard the ship, and therefore they never had any non-employees in the area in the first place. Colin whines some more about it, but the director mentions that either Colin let this issue go, or else he could file a full report, and then Colin's father finds out about him being there illegally in the first place.
 * It's done again in episode 14 when they move a satellite to avoid a meteoroid from destroying it. Robbie says that they're not allowed to destroy a natural body, so Hachimaki instead moves the satellite away to avoid the collison.
 * Married to the Job: Hachimaki's father, Goro. His mother is extremely specific about how lucky he is to have her as a wife, as, by all rights, she should have gotten into an affair by now. It's also implied that Hachi himself is headed this way.
 * Meaningful Name: Yuri Mihairokov shares the name of famous cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who was the first man in space. Werner Locksmith shares the name of Werner von Braun, one of, if not the most important rocket designers who ever lived whose designs include the terrifying V-2 for the Nazis, and the mighty Saturn V, the famous moon rocket. Ai Tanabe's name is also a pun, as 'ai' is the Japanese word for love, which matches with her belief in love's power.
 * Memento MacGuffin: Yuri's wife's compass. Eventually, Yuri decides.
 * Mid-Season Upgrade: The crew of the Toy Box get a new ship in episode 14, since they sacrificed their ship in order to save the space station they live on.
 * Mission Control: Literally, the Control section of ISVP 7. Much more prominent in the anime, where it has named characters related to the plot. Also, Fee often plays this role when Hachi, Ai, and Yuri perform EVA operations.
 * Mistaken for Cheating: In episode 8, the Debris Section suspects Fee is having a secret affair with the Second Division director. Except that she's not, and she's not too happy about that accusation when she hears about it.
 * Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness: Very hard, possibly the hardest series ever made up to this point. Commercial spaceflight less than a century in the future and almost completely limited to the Earth Sphere itself. Detailed orbital mechanics, realistic effects of space on health, dependency theory, diapers under spacesuits, and invisible laser beams. Even the gratuitous In Space Everyone Can See Your Face is justified as mere thematic close-ups on the characters' faces -- with their faceplates down. Its premise -- the collection of space garbage to prevent multimillion-dollar spacecraft from being scrapped by screws -- is a Real Life problem but economically unfeasible(nowadays we Just Ignore It - military satellites are fitted with maneuvering thrusters to dodge but nobody cleans it up), but this is actually a major plot point -- though the job is essential to actual commercial space travel, the fact that nobody can find a way to make money off it means they ignored it right up until the accident that killed Yuri's wife. Then the Debris Sections were formed in response to public outcry -- and staffed by underpaid office drones with gear older than they are.
 * Even the Tandem Mirror drive is named after/based on a real magnetic confinement fusion technique, which has been noted to be uniquely suited to application as a space drive.
 * The Mole:  Played for even greater effect in the anime, where the character is introduced long before his arc begins, and is given a sympathetic background as Hachimaki's.
 * Mood Whiplash: The El Tanika representative in episode 11, who tries really hard to help his country out in whatever way he can, watches his country from above in space. It's a very serene and touching scene. Then they cut to the ground, and there's a war going on down there, and the factory that had the plans and parts for his spacesuit gets destroyed. Unfortunately for him, he is able to see the smoke cloud from space.
 * Motorcycle on the Coast Road: Hachimaki did this in the past, and does it again in episode 14 when visiting his hometown with Tanabe and Yuri.
 * Multinational Team: The section, and the company as a whole, are nationally and ethnically diverse (but seem to act unilaterally Japanese in most cases).
 * The most egregious example being when the El Tanikan-born, American-bred woman formally introduces herself and bows (in a manner identical to the way Tanabe, who is Japanese, did in the first episode) upon being transferred to a new department. Despite the fact that she's known everyone in that department for at least a year already.
 * Naive Newcomer: Tanabe Ai, new hire and first-time astronaut
 * Never Trust a Trailer: The next episode previews almost always misdirect the viewer on what will be the most dramatic moment.
 * The Nicknamer: Very explicitly, Hachimaki's (anime-only) mentor Gigalt Gangaragash. He even confesses to Ai that he has trouble remembering people's names, so he makes up nicknames for them to keep track of them. In this continuity, he's the one who gave Hachi his nickname, although the latter was already wearing said item long before Gigalt ever met him. However, there was one person for whom Gigalt was never able to figure out a nickname, and only later, when it's much too late, he realizes that it's because he could never figure out who.
 * Ninja: Actually, a bunch of unemployed workers who pretend to be Ninjas on the moon, where the low gravity makes them the stuff of Chop Sockey movies.
 * Norio Wakamoto: Plays Gigalt Gangaragash.
 * No Smoking: Of course not, they're on space stations! Oxygen is a precious commodity, which leaves the few smokers (such as Fee, see below) extremely irritated and having to resort to "Smoking Rooms" throughout the station (which become such a security blind spot for terrorist attacks that some places are even getting rid of them) or even custom-built "Smoking Chambers" for individual use. Which then becomes a very pivotal plot point in episode 12.
 * The Obi-Wan: Gigalt, Hachi and Hakim's mentor in the anime.
 * Office Lady: Edel, the debris section's administrative office temp., but otherwise played straight, especially by the end of the series.
 * Parental Abandonment: Averted with Hachimaki's mother, but played straight with his dad, who is obsessed with getting humanity's place in space established. Quite a few characters are awestruck by his reputation, but Hachimaki could care less.
 * Perspective Magic
 * Pointy-Haired Boss: The Debris Section chief. He's harmless, since he's friendly and he doesn't get to make decisions. The Section 3 director (in charge of all Lunar facilities and operations,) on the other hand...
 * Qurac: Mananga.
 * Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Debris Section is where employees are sent when they either don't care where they go, or screw up so bad they can't be sent anywhere else. Of course, since they spend more time in EVA than anyone else, they wind up being the biggest zero-G badasses this side of the Orbital Security Agency.
 * Ramming Always Works: Also see Planetes/Awesome. Near the end of the series,.
 * Relationship Upgrade: Happens in episode 14 with Hachimaki and Tanabe.
 * Recycled in Space: Probably the only literal example. It's a show about recycling...in space...space recycling.
 * Salaryman: Debris section, period.
 * Due to the franchise's Broken Base, "Salarymen" became a semi-derogatory nickname for the Debris Section office staff in the anime, used mostly by the manga fans. Toybox crew aren't salarymen, they're astronauts!
 * Satsuki Yukino: Ai Tanabe's seiyuu.
 * Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: In episode 14, the Toy Box 2 is asked by some researchers to help them to avoid a meteoroid from hitting a satellite with their research in it. The Third Division manager explicitly wants them to back down and allow the satellite to get destroyed, but Hachimaki decides to do it anyway, even more so after he hears about all the protesting of destroying it. When Robbie orders that he's not allowed to destroy a natural object, Hachimaki decides to move the satellite instead. When the Third Division manager talks to the Toy Box crew's boss, he basically supports what his crew did, since they were preventing more debris from being formed.
 * Robbie himself does something similar in episode 18 when he thinks back to what his kids told him about keeping space safe, and destroys a satellite which was potentially harmful to spaceships. The director threatens to withdraw Robbie's position in another department and tries to disband them right then and there. Robbie destroys the satellite anyway, and later gives a Large Ham news interview discussing how the Debris Section keeps spaceships safe. Due to potential backlash from the public, and in keeping with a good corporate image, the director withdraws his threat to disband the section.
 * Secret Keeper: Gigalt asks Tanabe to keep his  secret from Hachimaki in episode 9. Then he finds this out anyway in episode 22.
 * Secret Test of Character: The von Braun crew candidate selection tests in episode 19. More specifically, while Hachimaki is taking the test with 3 other candidates in a pool repairing a pod to simulate a system going down on Jupiter, one of the other candidates accidentally cuts her air hose. The other two students taking the test at the time go to help her, while Hachimaki continues to work.
 * Sempai-Kohai: Tanabe does this with Hachimaki, even in the English dub.
 * She Is Not My Girlfriend: Hachimaki uses this several times when either confronted with his past relationship with Claire, and anytime Tanabe sees him with another woman, and questions him about it.
 * Shipper on Deck: Lucie tries to do this with Tanabe and Hachimaki, in an attempt to get closer to Cheng-Shin.
 * Shout-Out: Lavie's gag device to break the ice with Section 3's Debris department plays Thus Spake Zarathustra.
 * Shown Their Work: Very much so.
 * Sibling Yin-Yang: Hachimaki and Kyuutaro. He's an astronaut, he wants to build rockets and spaceships. Neither one believes that what the other pursues is a "serious" pursuit of outer-space.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The characters have to work hard for their ideals, and absolutely nothing ever comes easy for anyone, but the world of Planetes earnestly believes in the ultimate good within the soul of humanity.
 * Smoking Is Cool: Fee Carmichael and to a certain extent Hachirota "Hachimaki" Hoshino. In fact, in one episode, Fee saves outer space without knowing it because she is that desperate for a smoke.
 * Sociopathic Hero: Locksmith, although the degree of his detachment from humanity varies from manga to anime.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The characters have to work hard for their ideals, and absolutely nothing ever comes easy for anyone, but the world of Planetes earnestly believes in the ultimate good within the soul of humanity.
 * Smoking Is Cool: Fee Carmichael and to a certain extent Hachirota "Hachimaki" Hoshino. In fact, in one episode, Fee saves outer space without knowing it because she is that desperate for a smoke.
 * Sociopathic Hero: Locksmith, although the degree of his detachment from humanity varies from manga to anime.

"Hachimaki: I'm quitting the Debris Section."
 * Spell My Name with an "S": Differences in romanization according to the anime and manga. More particularly, the Tandem-Mirror/Tandem Miller engine, as well as Hakim/Hakimu/Hakeem. Specific to the anime, the Assistant Manager's name is pronounced "Ravi," but spelled "Lavie."
 * It's Tandem Mirror.
 * Seriously why would it be Tandem Miller? There was never any Miller involved!
 * Square-Cube Law: Deconstructed by Nono. She grew up on the moon, whose lower gravity made her taller than the average human, but as a result, Earth's gravity could easily crush her.
 * Take a Third Option: Hachimaki's decision regarding the von Braun Mission and Ai. He
 * Take My Hand:.
 * Three Amigos: What Hachi, Cheng-Shin, and Claire used to be. A lot of unresolved baggage with Hachi and her own quick climb up the corporate ladder has distanced Claire from the others, who remain close friends.
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hachimaki gives one to his friend Cheng-Shin when the latter mentioned about how he didn't expect to pass the Von Braun tests. Hachimaki yells at his friend for not going all out to make the cut, and how he used his pilot job as a safety net in case.
 * Too Long; Didn't Dub: Tokyo Pop's manga release didn't translate a very plot-significant Kenji Miyazawa poem from an astronaut's funeral. Fans were not pleased. Tokyo Pop released a painfully-literal translation a few volumes later.
 * Welcome Episode: Episode 1 lets the audience follow Tanabe as she arrives at ISVP7, meets everyone down in Debris Section, and is shown the ropes of the job.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Space Defense Force.
 * Wham! Episode: Episode 16, "Ignition."
 * Wham! Line: Hachimaki gives one at the end of episode 18.


 * What You Are in the Dark: A double whammy in Episode 24.
 * White-Haired Pretty Boy: Colin Clifford, and man is he gender-ambiguous. Especially with that camera thing.
 * Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Played with, Edel works full time in the Debris Section as a contract worker, but also has a part time job as a nurse. The characters are surprised when they see her during their physical exam.
 * Wise Beyond Their Years: Nono, the 12 year-old Lunar girl whose words can disarm even the most bitter and jaded cynic with a well-aimed (but perfectly innocent) critical hit to the heart.
 * You Are Not Alone: Hachimaki's dark self tells him that being alone is pretty much the fate of everyone, no matter what they say. It doesn't stop Tanabe however, from trying to invoke this trope on him.

This show is notable for not containing examples of:

 * Aliens: Rubber Forehead Aliens or otherwise
 * Well, there's always Baron, who claims to be an alien.
 * Nono the "Lunarian" (A Planetes term for persons (humans) born on the moon) is one, since she wasn't born on Earth, so she's technically an extraterrestrial.
 * Artificial Gravity: Except realistically in the rotating sections of space-stations etc.
 * Explosions in Space: There is an pretty big off-screen explosion, but the depicted cone of ejected matter is realistic and terrifying.
 * Gravity Sucks: Besides having realistic orbits paths, a ship about to crash into has to be shifted out of its path by a point-of-no-return it would reach quite a while before the actual impact.
 * In Space Everyone Can See Your Face: +95% averted. Spacesuits have faceplates with integrated HUDs, and are almost always lowered to protect against unfiltered sunlight and debris impacts. If you see a character's face in a spacesuit, it's a Closeup on Head. People raise their faceplates only to identify themselves to each other - or so they can see each other's faces during dramatic arguments.
 * Latex Space Suit: Spacesuits are realistically bulky, and the astronauts all wear diapers/nappies.
 * Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Baring a few unlikely coincidences such as Yuri searching for and finding a pocket compass in orbit around the Earth. These coincidences are all treated as miraculous events within the show and can be dismissed by the audience as necessary in order for the show to have a plot.
 * Keep in mind, though, that it did take Yuri five whole years of non-stop searching for the compass to find it.
 * And he didn't randomly search the vastness of space. What he did was spend all his spare time searching through the database of all known space debris, looking for the damn thing, selecting the ones most likely to be what he was looking for (as shown in episode 10 of the anime)
 * Space Clothes
 * Space Friction
 * Space Is an Ocean
 * Space Is Noisy
 * Teleporters and Transporters
 * 2-D Space