Before I go any further, a quick history lesson: before Haruhi Suzumiya, before Lucky Star, before the Full Metal Panic! sequels, hell, even before the Key adaptations, KyoAni made an OAV called Munto. Nope, I’d never heard of it before either. This may well come as a surprise to anyone else who shares my lack of knowledge of unlicenced anime prior to 2006 but they apparently hit the big time with a straight-to-video series that wasn’t an adaptation of something else. Now they’re revisiting Munto in TV format, which led to comparisons with the OAV from long-term fans, an intrigued exclamation of “O rly?” from a few of us and a complete lack of interest from everyone else.

The full title of the series is one of the most awesomely long-winded and poetic names of any anime I’ve ever come across: Sora o Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru no Sekai, a.k.a. The World Reflected in the Eyes of the Girl Who Looks at the Sky. Honestly, it sounds like a song from the Smashing Pumpkins, Pink Floyd or 65 Days of Static or something. The story starts off with what looks like a rebellion against the Magical Kingdom of the heavens over the flow of energy in the universe, and the possibility that a girl from the human world holds the key to restoring peace and balance. It sounds like a magical girl show, which I was hoping would mean I could enjoy a series from the last genre category that I’ve never had any interest in before now. The premise certainly sounds familiar…

It’s one of those peculiar coincidences where I run up against a number of things that make me wonder about one single topic; this time it’s way that science fiction is portrayed by film and TV. Both Hugh David (yep, the Hugh David) and the mighty Empire recently published blog posts that ask if our current definition of sci-fi is in line with the traditional ethos of the genre. Just because a story is set in the future, outer space or has a myriad of exotic technology, is it actually sci-fi? After reading both these and getting back into the work of Arthur C Clarke again I’ve come to realise that it could warrant an entire post of its own but the question “Yes, it’s good…but is it really sci-fi?” is especially important in one excellent piece of work: Planetes.

Yep, it’s every bit as uncomfortable as it looks

I’m probably the last to catch onto the series but in case you don’t know what the deal is it’s this: rubbish collectors in space. Really. Take the Final Frontier, the most romantic, exciting and downright cool setting possible, then pick out a section of it that is the complete opposite. The heroes – if you can call them that – of Planetes are the rank and file: the lowest-paid, least respected and most overlooked portion of humanity’s conquest of the stars. It’s both a wake-up call to those who fail to realise what it actually means to explore space, and is also one of the most well-executed pieces of animated character drama I’ve seen to date. Simply put, it rules.