Overall: 9.5

Planetes by Makoto Yukimura is one of the more underrated manga I've read. It is by the same creator as Vinland Saga, so it is often overshadowed by the more popular work. However, Planetes displays Yukimura's talents just as well as Vinland Saga. The art is incredible, the characters are very vivid and believable, and it is obvious that a lot of thought and research went into creating the setting. When it comes to Sci-Fi and Fantasy, world building is very important. Planetes has some of the best world-building I've ever seen in a Sci-Fi series. It feels like this really could be what life is like in the near future.

Story

The story is very unimportant. This is the case with most slice-of-life series. The driving force of this manga is the character growth. The main character we follow is Hachimaki, but we follow the other crewmates as well. There are life lessons to be learned from each character's story, and they all come together to create a beautiful tale.

Characters

Creating brilliant and believable characters is one of Makoto Yukimura's strong suits. Planetes is no exception. All of the characters are dynamic, unique, and wonderfully human. The different personalities come together to create an interesting group dynamic. Everyone that reads this is sure to find at least one character they can connect with.

P.S. Hachimaki's character growth strongly parallels Thorfinn's in Vinland Saga. I assume that fundamental story is something very personal for Yukimura.

Art

The art is nothing short of amazing. Yukimura excels at drawing people and fluid action sequences. But since this is a sci-fi set in space, it wouldn't work if the technology was drawn poorly. It is drawn very well. He even goes into detail on some of the technology to show that it is scientifically accurate. Very impressive as always from Yukimura.