Quite "hard" science-fiction, with attention given to the technology of the colonists and the native life of each planet, with a few breaks such as FTL and perhaps the powers of the mysterious "Mantrisse".
Each series follows a handful of characters as they face problems both personal and affecting the entire planet. Tends to have a tragic tone, with many of the problems arising from "the follies of humanity". The partial regression of technology among the colonists gives it a visual Space Western feel.
The series so far consists of:
- Aldébaran cycle:
- La Catastrophe (The Catastrophe – 1994)
- La Blonde (The Blonde – 1995)
- La Photo (The Photo – 1996)
- Le Groupe (The Group – 1997)
- La Créature (The Creature – 1998)
- Bételgeuse cycle:
- La Planète (The Betelgeuse Planet – 2000)
- Les Survivants (The Survivors – 2001)
- L'Expédition (The Expedition – 2002)
- Les Cavernes (The Caves – 2003)
- L'Autre (The Other – 2005)
- Antarès cycle:
- Episode 1 (2007)
- Episode 2 (2009)
- Episode 3 (2010)
- Episode 4 (2011)
- Episode 5 (2013)
- Episode 6 (2015)
- Survivants – Anomalies quantique (Survivors – Quantum Anomalies) spin-off cycle:
- Episode 1 (2011)
- Episode 2 (2012)
- Episode 3 (2014)
- Episode 4 (2016)
- Episode 5 (2017)
- Retour sur Aldébaran (Return to Aldebaran) 5th (and currently last) cycle:
- Episode 1 (2018)
- Episode 2 (2019)
- Episode 3 (2020)
Tropes:
- Action Girl:
- Alexa Komarova, who in her 139 years alive has had plenty of time to practice dishing out the ass-whooping.
- Kim Keller, after being the Tagalong Kid in the first albums, becomes The Hero of the series.
- Manon, the main character of the Survivors spin-of, too: Dad the Veteran was a religious extremist. No, not that kind, more of that kind, he had a strong belief that Religion Makes You Stupid so he blows churches, temples and other religious buildings. Oh, and he raised her.
- Alien Sky: Aldébaran-4 has two moons, Antarès-5 has five of them.
- Also the quantum time anomalies on GJ 1347-4 can make visible "time cut" on the sky: night and day, sunny and rainy sky, etc.
- All There in the Manual: Much of the information about the planets or events from the first space colonization are done out of the narration.
- Animal Eyes: At first glance, the only thing noticeably off about Lynn are her eyes, which have vertical slits for pupils. Kim passes this off as a rare deformity, while Lorna takes to calling Lynn "the lizard baby".
- Bald of Evil: Zig-zagged. While not all bald characters are portrayed as villains, such as Jedediah Thornton and the women in his church, baldness seems to serve as a sign of a certain wrongness or anomaly pertaining to the character in question, be it the non-human Tsalterians, Mai Lan whose baldness is caused by a biological defect (later "fixed" by the Mantrisse) or Lorna, who starts growing out her hair once she gains some confidence and maturity.
- Belief Makes You Stupid: According to Sven, this trope can be applying to Jedediah Thornton but also to a large portion of humanity.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: One of the main appeals of the series is the various and strange alien fauna.
- Black Best Friend: June, an old college friend of Kim's with whom she temporarily lives in Paris after the events of Betelgeuse, doesn't appear to do much besides ask Kim about her love life and hype up her sex appeal.
- Blessed with Suck: The longevity and superhuman healing factor bestowed by the Mantrisse certainly sounds enviable to anyone who hasn't experienced it; the reality of it is shown to be a tad more existentially horrifying. Alexa has a full-on breakdown in Betelgeuse due to not having physically aged in over a hundred years, while Kim admits that the whole thing just tends to make her feel like little more than a test subject.
- Body Horror: Whatever happens to the people and creatures stung by the miniature drones in Antares makes them progressively disappear by making every layer of their skin vanish before even their skeleton shrinks down to nothing. Watching it happen to little baby Lynn is particularly disturbing.
- But I Can't Be Pregnant!: Kim gets a medical checkup in preparation for the Antares-5 expedition and is happily informed by the doctor that she is pregnant. Kim denies this, citing that she hasn't had sex in years. And then she remembers Sven.
- The Call Knows Where You Live: Kim clearly states she has had more than enough dangerous adventures to last her a lifetime, and really just wants to go home to Aldebaran and live out the rest of her days undisturbed. Her retirement plans are thwarted again and again, namely when the CEO of Forward Enterprises decides she'd make a perfect spokeswoman for his colony project, and when her fling with an alien catches up with her in the form of a retroactive accidental pregnancy.
- Cassandra Truth: Driss in his first appearance, warning the inhabitants of the Doomed Hometown that something bad is coming for them.
- Cat Folk: Antac and his wife Selkert in the Survivors spin-off, who resemble a mountain lion and a leopard, respectively.
- Celibate Heroine: Alexa is rarely if ever involved in any kind of romance plot, which marks a sharp contrast with her friend Kim.
- Censorship Bureau: On Aldébaran, state censors are assigned to newspapers.
- Church Police: Senior police positions are held by clergy.
- Cool Airship: The double zeppelin in La Créature probably qualifies. The album before also has a very cool-looking military zeppelin.
- Corrupt Church:
- Aldebaran itself (the first colonized planet) became a theocracy shortly after colonization. The series describes itself as "humanistic".
- More obvious with the third series, Antares, with the heroes regularly clashing with the extremely religious colonists they are supposed to help.
- Crapsack World: Earth is polluted and overpopulated, and out of three other planets colonized, two have produced oppressive regimes within years of colonisation and within days of landing the third is moving in the same direction.
- Creator Provincialism: A lot of the colonists on Aldebaran (including the highest government authorities), appear to be of Brazilian origin, at least judging by their names and appearance.
- Deuteragonist: The first cycle of books starts with Marc as the protagonist and Kim as the Tagalong Kid. But as the series progresses, Kim first becomes the deuteragonist and then the true protagonist, with Marc being relegated into a supporting role.
- Doomed Hometown: The first series starts with a stranger coming to the heroes' village, warning them of the imminent arrival of a massive, incredibly dangerous sea creature which will cause the annihilation of their village. And of course, the villagers don't trust him...
- Driven to Suicide:
- Bert and Phi Ahn hang themselves after their daughter is taken away to serve as breeding stock.
- Some trapped crew members of the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky kill themselves with pills.
- Jedediah Thornton throws himself off the side of the ship after Sven, the alien he so wanted to meet, gives him a thorough "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
- Dude Magnet: Kim. Let's count them, shall we? Marc Sorensen, Hector Albornoz, Toshiro Matsuda, lieutenant Steve Hudson, Sven, Dr Amos Blum, and Leilah Nakad's son Samir is a minor one. Oh, and Lorna White.
- Dwindling Party: The rescue mission on Antares-5 progressively loses more and more members: One man dies on arrival when the pod crash lands. Aninka is wounded and remains comatose for most of the trip (before eventually succumbing to internal bleeding). Zhou's unnamed friend is stung by a venomous sand dwelling crustacean, and later Zhou absconds with the canoe and is never seen again. Erwan's death is particularly jarring, as he gets entirely drained of his blood by a giant cave dwelling leech, and yet is still isn't as jarring as what happens to Lynn.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Mantrisse appears as this. It certainly has no ill-will towards humans, it simply doesn't realise they are any different from other forms of life. One of the Bételgeuse ones even has tentacles of sorts.
- Evil-Detecting Baby: Kim's daughter Lynn has an instinct for when things are about to go horribly wrong.
- Fair Cop: Officer Nora Hutton is a member of the law enforcement team assigned to project Antares by the United Nations. She's first seen admiring Alexa's handiwork when she saves Mai Lan from an attempted gang rape. The next time we see her is when she frees Alexa from her cell so that she can go and save Kim and the gang, which is when she also informs Alexa of the recent sectarian drift which has cost Hutton her position on the force. Thankfully, she later gets her job back, and even rescues Lorna from her violently abusive parents.
- Fish People: Tsalterians are hairless, have gills and also fins which they seem to shed at certain stages.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Thornton brothers. Jedediah is a self-important religious fanatic while his brother Elijah, head of the Antares colony project, comes accross as more down-to-earth and reasonable. That said, he has no qualms over cutting corners on space travel maintenance (with disastrous results) and lets Jedediah get away with a hell of a lot more than should be acceptable.
- The brothers Liang have shades of this: Zhou is younger and more reckless, given that he stowed away illegally aboard a spaceship. He's belligerent, as seen when he picks a fight with John Nash, and is admonished by Zao for favoring violence as a solution to problems. In the end, Zhou steals the rescue team's boat and leaves, never to be seen again and is presumed dead; Zao is older, more serious and responsible, and actively volunteered to be among the first to travel to Antares-5 knowing full well that, should the colonization project fail, he would be left stranded. He also sticks to his principles, as shown when he tells Elijah Thornton where to stick it, and is possibly one of the only male characters who isn't sexually interested in Kim.
- Forbidden Zone: The giant swamps strike fear in all Aldébaran inhabitants, and no one dares go there or even fly over them.
- Generic Cuteness: You have to take the characters' word about who is more attractive.
- Hair Color Dissonance: Alexa's very distinctive white hair is repeatedly described as being blonde by other characters.
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: Mai Lan suddenly starts acting like this after her encounter with the Mantrisse, which hints that it might be a side effect.
- Erwan's sole apparent personality trait in Antares.
- Human Popsicle: Colony ships are filled with these.
- Informed Attractiveness: Kim's beauty is brought up often enough in-universe that she's a bit of a Dude Magnet as an adult. Yet her looks don't really stand out among the other women in the cast.
- Inhumanable Alien Rights: The UN has created rules for dealing with intelligent life should it be found, but unfortunately was too Human-centric in defining what would constitute intelligence.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: Mai Lan is one in-universe (not so much on a meta level). She's introduced in Betelgeuse book 1 happily walking around topless despite being probably in her late teens. The "innocent" part has somewhat gone by Antares, where Mai Lan is now in her twenties and more brazen, in her pursuit of Marc most especially.
- In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race: Weirdly averted on Aldébaran. Even though representatives of all races have been living perfectly mixed for a century on Aldébaran, and that extends to tiny villages where the same small gene pool has existed for nearly all that time, there's no evidence of intermixing whatsoever.
- Just Following Orders: Inspector Stutz stays away from politics, just wanting to be a good policeman (which he isn't). He's mocked for this.
- Leader Wannabe: Jedediah is convinced that he's in charge of the expedition launched in Antares book 5, when in reality he's only along for the trip by virtue of being the head honcho's brother.
- Love Dodecahedron: Most notably in Antares: Kim and Marc are a couple. Mai Lan is attracted to Marc and he more or less reciprocates. Amos is attracted to Kim and she absolutely reciprocates. Lorna is crushing on Kim, who doesn't pay her any mind because she's just a kid.
- Made of Iron: A side effect of encountering the Mantrisse is an oddly convenient Healing Factor, to the point where Kim survives a bullet to the stomach without any kind of proper medical care.
- Meaningful Background Event: A rather interesting variant is sometimes used where the characters themselves are moved to the background for a single frame, so that some random Nature Documentary type event can be highlighted in the foreground.
- No Biochemical Barriers: Lynn's father is an alien. See Half-Human Hybrid. However, several characters speculate that it was made possible by the changes the Mantrisse brought about in Kim's body.
- In the third and last episode of Retour sur Aldébaran it's revealed that a precursor species modified proto-humanoids to help them evolve and then seeded them on different planets all over the galaxy. It is unknown if the species was from Earth or from a different planet, so it's not actually certain where "human-like intelligent life" originated yet.
- No Music Allowed: Music is forbidden by the corrupt government of Aldébaran.
- Nervous Wreck: Having spent the first volumes of the Antares cycle putting up a tough and no-nonsense front, Deputy Commander Ashley Scott turns out to be this when confronted with the dangerously unpredictable local fauna. Scott admits to Kim that she's terrified of dense jungle environments and creepy crawlies, and that she came along for the expedition as a way of getting over that fear.
- Numbered Homeworld: Aldebaran-4, Betelgeuse-6 and Antares-5 respectively, though for the sake of convenience, the number is dropped in everyday conversation, when it's clear that one means the planet and not the star.
- Parental Substitute: Kim alternates between this and Cool Big Sis towards Mai Lan.
- Phlebotinum Breakdown: The FTL communication with Earth breaks down after landing on Aldebaran and is not up again a hundred years later, when its series is set.
- Pokémon Speak: Iums were named this way.
- Precocious Crush: Lorna, a teenager, briefly has a crush on Kim, who is in her mid-twenties.
- Relationship Revolving Door: Kim and Marc, who have broken up and gotten back together thrice over the course of the story. That said, none of their break-ups have ever been based on anything but bad timing, and they remain very good friends outside of their relationship.
- Sarcastic Confession: When asked about her mysterious past, Manon states that maybe she was an ex-terrorist or an ex-bank robber. This is revealed true in the next volume.
- Scenery Porn: Especially on Bételgeuse. Often as a backdrop for fauna porn.
- She Is All Grown Up: Kim when Marc gets out of prison.
- Single-Biome Planet: Aldebaran-4 is mostly ocean with a few scattered islands, Betelgeuse-6 is a desert world with most of the vegetation confined to deep river canyons. Averted with Antares-5 which has a varied biosphere.
- Single Specimen Species: The mantrisse, at least in the first cycle. Later it turns out that it wasn't native to Aldébaran, and there are more on other worlds.
- Sinister Minister: Algeron Loomis. It doesn't help that he's top cop in a police state.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Kim Keller has trouble dealing with it once grown up, mostly because of her chest.
- The Sociopath: George Dixon from Betelgeuse is a rude and callous man who barely displays any emotion and has a nasty habit of shooting anything on sight, and refuses to acknowledge or understand why that is not always necessary. This eventually culminates in Dixon shooting Kim in the stomach at close range during an argument, after which Steve, the nicest person on the team, finally snaps and gives him a long time-coming, very well deserved No Holds Barred Beat Down.
- Some Call Me "Tim": Eldermore Paderevsky, a.k.a. monsieur Pad.
- Sour Prudes: Jedediah Thornton. His unnamed church (read: cult) is full of these to an absurd degree, to the point where the women are made to wear inflatable bodysuits to conceal their figures and happily dish out a dose of Slut-Shaming to any woman who doesn't.
- Tagalong Kid: Kim Keller in Aldebaran.
- Mai Lan in Betelgeuse.
- Lorna, Erwan and Lynn in Antares.
- Pam in Survivors.
- Time Travel:
- Quantum FTL jumps do that. Each planet is located in a different "place" on the timeline and FTL jumps travel in time according to that position.
- Oh, there are some quantum anomalies on the planet of the Survivors spin-off and its appends sometimes. Notably for four characters of the cast.
- Touched by Vorlons: The few humans who have encountered the Mantrisse have become functionally immortal.
- Troubled Teen: Lorna White initially presents herself as a sullen, rebellious troublemaker. Having secretly snuck out of the Robert Godard via a reserve vehicle with her friend Erwan, she is found by Kim Keller and the Antares-5 recon team and proceeds to make a nuisance of herself at every turn, namely refusing to pull her weight and stirring up drama in order to get Kim's attention. Lynn's abduction and Erwan's death snap Lorna out of it and she is reduced to the terrified little kid she truly is beneath her grumpy exterior, which only gets worse when the team gets back to base and meets Lorna's horrible father, who just so happens to be the same cultist who tried to rape Mai Lan. Lorna gets some respite when Alexa protects her from her father, and even excitedly tells Mai Lan about her new girlfriend, but her homophobic parents decide to ruin that too. The next time we see Lorna is when the police find her manacled in her parents' bathroom, with several broken teeth and a black eye. By the end you really just want to give the poor kid a hug.
- Uneven Hybrid: Kim and Sven's daughter Lynn takes noticeably more from her human side than her Tsalterian side, namely the fact that she does grow hair, unlike the bald aliens, and lacks the odd, flat nose they all have. Lampshaded when Lynn meets her father, as they both agree it's a good thing she inherited Kim's nose and not Sven's.
