Damn, PLANETES keeps amazing me with how deep it is for such a simple premise. Basically, the main character is an astronaut in his mid 20's who works with a squad of space-debris collectors. It's about his attitudes towards living and working in space, his interactions with his coworkers, and his aspirations of one day owning his own spacecraft.

I've been watching the animé and reading the manga concurrently. The focus of the manga is a little bit more on Hachimaki's preoccupations and internalizations of his everday circumstances, and the animé deals a lot more with his human relationships. That's not to say that the supporting characters are just “satellites” for him to play against. They are all very rich and interesting too, although completely different from him.

Hachimaki seems to embrace the unforgiving vacuum of space, integrating it into his overly serious demeanor. He doesn't seem to really enjoy anything besides the struggle to survive in such a harsh and unnatural environment. I'm on the 4th graphic novel and the 4th DVD, and the existential themes are finally starting to really converge between the two.