I sincerely disagree with the suggestion that the Anime and the Manga are significantly different in their themes and execution.  The final message that the anime leaves the viewer with (seriously, they spend like... 20 minutes on this in the last episode) is one of the importance of the connection between humans no matter what the situation.  It's definitley true that the Anime explores the theme of exploitation of the underclass more, but I feel that suggesting that the manga is a fairy tale set in space while the anime is more classical is preposterous.  I'll grant you that my memory is a little rusty as I haven't read the manga since last summer, but I'm reasonably sure of the basic similarity.  07:26, 19 Aprial 2006 (UTC)  