I'm not much of an anime fan, but friends who are tell me that I should watch Cowboy Bebop and Planetes, because they're very Travellerish. Anyone familiar with them?
Hi,
Both stories are set in the not too distant future (the 2070's) in our solar system. Cowboy Bebop envisions a solar system where Earth has been badly ravaged by a natural disaster but mankind has spread out into the surrounding planets and moons, through the use of some sort of Hyper gate type system. Additionally many of the characters have small personal craft capable of both atmospheric and near space travel.
In the Cowboy Bebop setting there are only humans, and action focuses around bounty hunters, crime syndicates, and an ineffective solar system wide police force.
In Planetes, the technology seems to be more focused on potentially hard science (or at least estimates of what hard science might be like in the not too distant future). In this setting man has a colony on the moon, some orbiting space stations, and an outpost on Mars. The main focus of the story lines focus on individuals stationed on one of these space stations including the crew of an orbital debris collection vessel. As the story progresses a long duration exploratory expedition to Jupiter is brought into the story.
Alot of the action in this setting focuses around life in space, the drive to explore in contrast to resolving existing issues on Earth, interpersonal relationships, and even terrorism.
As such, neither setting is really all that similar to most Traveller settings I'm familiar with (especially since they both focus on a single solar system), though alot of the action and story lines could easily be adapted to a Traveller like setting.
Ultimately, though both stories are very very good and I personally recommend them both, thoughn initially it took me a few episodes to really get hooked on Planetes.
Regards
PF
