Planetes wraps up with the sixth volume, ending the series on a high note.  This final installment ties up the story in a very satisfying manner.  One of the best series to come out in recent memory, the ending is just as good as the rest of the program.

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.

Not everyone is happy with the development of space though.  The Space Defense Front is a terrorist group that doesn't like the fact that only the first world countries are getting the benefit of the exploitation of the moon. With the first manned mission to Jupiter being prepared and a high level political summit taking place on the moon, the SDF is certain to launch an attack.

This Volume:

With the international summit taking place on the moon, the SDF launches their attack, but not where people think.  Instead of attacking the summit itself, they target the Von Braun, the new space ship that is being built to take mankind to Jupiter.  The attack is well planned and orchestrated, and the terrorists manage to send the ship crashing into the moon.  Straight toward the biggest city on the moon.

With people worrying about the destruction of Sea of Tranquility city, is there any hope of someone rescuing Ai who has taken an escape capsule to the moon and is stranded there?  With only a finite amount of Oxygen and a wounded Clair to take care of, Ai has some tough decisions to make.

This final volume has a lot of excitement and action and no small amount of suspense.  There are some surprising events that keep viewers guessing and the show interesting.  These last few episodes are the best in the series, which is saying a lot.
 

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 is part 9 of the audio drama and two more "digital comics", four panel comics strips (based on the show) in Japanese with translations underneath.  These were mildly amusing but not more than that.  In addition this disc has a collection of 10 textless openings and the textless closing for the final episode.

Final Thoughts:

This series made it onto DVD Talk's list of top anime series for 2005, and it certainly deserves its spot.  This last volume wraps the series up nicely and is sure to please fans of the series.  Highly Recommended.