The penultimate volume of Planetes, volume five, really gathers speed and several plots accelerate as they get ready to reach their conclusions.  Hachimaki tries out for the mission to Jupiter, but the trip will last seven years, round trip, and so he breaks off all ties with his friends.  Including Ai.  A great volume that really builds on the previous instalments and has some surprising revelations.

Series synopsis:

Ai Tanabe has finally achieved her dream of working in space.  Though she was at the bottom of her class and has no special skills, she somehow managed to swing an assignment on her companies space station.  When she gets there though Tanabe discovers that she's been assigned to Debris Section, know throughout the station as Half Section because they only have half the workers and half the budget they need to get the job done.  They are people responsible for collecting space junk that may be dangerous to other space vehicles and satellites.

Though their offices are in the basement in an old storage container, and the manager and second in command are idiots, Tanabe is excited about her new position and filled with youthful enthusiasm.  In addition to her two bosses Ai works with several people.  Hachimaki is her partner, a young man who desperately wants to own his own space ship, and teaches Tanabe how to work out in space.  Fee Carmichael is the tough female pilot of the spaceship they use, the 30 year old 'Toy Box' and Yuri is her first mate.  The Debris Section is rounded out by Edelgard a temp worker who doesn't say much and does all of the paper work for the section.

The work they do is hard, very dangerous, they don't have an appropriate budget, and everyone treats them poorly since they are just garbage men.  But the job is also important and saves lives, so Tanabe gets a lot of job satisfaction.

This volume:

Hachimaki has decided once and for all to try out for the Von Braun, the first manned mission to Jupiter.  He knows that being a debris hauler will never allow him to save the money he needs to buy his own space ship.  So he changes his dream and sets his sights on Jupiter.  Figuring that he can't give it his all if he knows he has a job to go back to if he fails, he quits Debris section and doesn't look back.

With 50,000 people trying out for the mission, and only 18 slots, the selection and training process for the Von Braun mission is tough, and dangerous.  The tests are designed to weed out the weakest applicants, and some of the strong ones too.  Hachimaki is determined to succeed, no matter what.  The fact that one of the applicants might be a spy or saboteur just makes the process even more dangerous.

Back in division two, Debris Section has gotten a new lease on life, and even a new employee.  Claire has been demoted from Control to Half Section.  Not because she was a bad employee, but because she was too efficient and had thoughts of her own.  She's not happy being transfered to Debris, and the fact that she's working with her old boyfriends current love interest doesn't make it any easier.

This was one of the best volumes so far.  The plot about the Von Braun is very engaging, but the subplot of Hachimaki's relationship with Ai is developing nicely too.  The show just keeps getting better and better as it goes on.

Like the previous installment, this volume of Planetes has been ramped down to single disc releases and we loose the clear plastic slip covers (at least the promo disc I received didn't have one.)

Audio:

This disc features the original Japanese soundtrack and an English dub, both in stereo surround sound.  I alternated soundtracks while watching the show and enjoyed both of them equally.  The English dub was very good, with the voice actors giving good performances.  They brought their characters to life without overacting or using fake accents.

The audio quality was very good.  The dialog was clean and the more subtle sound effects came through fine.  The sounds of the astronauts breathing in their suits were clear as were the engine sounds and background noises.  Overall a nice sounding disc.

Video:

The anamorphic enhanced widescreen (1.78:1) video looked excellent.  The lines were tight and the colors were bright and strong.  The show has a lot of fine details that come through well.  The clouds of Earth as seen from space and the plates that form Space Station 7 are all reproduced wonderfully.  The backgrounds have a lot of shading but banding wasn't a problem at all.  Other digital defects were also nonexistent.  Aliasing and blocking weren't to be found.  A really nice looking disc.

Extras:

The extras get pared down a good bit from the earlier volumes since there isn't a second disc devoted to bonus material, but there's still some interesting items.  This time there are parts 7 and 8 of the audio drama and some "digital comics", three four panel comics strips (based on the show) in Japanese with translations underneath.  These were mildly amusing but not more than that.

Final Thoughts:

This series made it onto DVD Talk's list of top anime series for 2005, and it certainly deserves its spot.  This show keeps getting better and better with tightly crafted stories and intriguing realistic characters.  A wonderful series that all anime fans should check out.  Highly Recommended.