Planetarian: Chiisana Hoshi no Yume
Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet
planetarian～ちいさなほしのゆめ～
It is thirty years after the failure of the Space Colonization Program. Humanity is nearly extinct. A perpetual and deadly Rain falls on the Earth. Men known as "Junkers" plunder goods and artifacts from the ruins of civilization. One such Junker sneaks alone into the most dangerous of all ruins—a "Sarcophagus City." In the center of this dead city, he discovers a pre-War planetarium. And as he enters he is greeted by Hoshino Yumemi, a companion robot. Without a single shred of doubt, she assumes he is the first customer she's had in 30 years. She attempts to show him the stars at once, but the planetarium projector is broken. Unable to make heads or tails of her conversation, he ends up agreeing to try and repair the projector... (Source: Steam)
Synopsis
It is thirty years after the failure of the Space Colonization Program. Humanity is nearly extinct. A perpetual and deadly Rain falls on the Earth. Men known as "Junkers" plunder goods and artifacts from the ruins of civilization. One such Junker sneaks alone into the most dangerous of all ruins—a "Sarcophagus City." In the center of this dead city, he discovers a pre-War planetarium. And as he enters he is greeted by Hoshino Yumemi, a companion robot. Without a single shred of doubt, she assumes he is the first customer she's had in 30 years. She attempts to show him the stars at once, but the planetarium projector is broken. Unable to make heads or tails of her conversation, he ends up agreeing to try and repair the projector... (Source: Steam)
Characters
Main
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Supporting
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Trailer
Reviews(20)
Veronin
August 4, 2016
After nearly a decade of reading and watching Key's works, and now having finished Planetarian's unlikely adaptation, I think I have come to accept that Key does not appeal much to me anymore. I have aged and moved on since those times, as has the anime industry and its community, and no longer feel all too impressed by what their stories had to offer. At the same time, I recognise that not everybody began watching anime at the same time. Some people have only just gotten into the medium in recent months, and so they may not yet be acquainted with Key's works. For thesepeople, there is still value to be found in Planetarian, for it is actually a surprisingly well-produced, if brief and heavy-handed tale. I cannot feel much of anything towards it, but maybe someone, somewhere, will feel that same fire and emotion I did all those years ago. Planetarian's soundtrack, much like the rest of Key's catalog, is excellent, and the art direction, particularly during the projection scene, does a solid job of creating atmosphere and making time and space truly feel vast, with humanity's greatest achievements flashing before the Junker in the blink of an eye. Hoshino is also, fortunately, not treated as eye-candy or some sort of waifu fantasy, as her mechanical (and somewhat creepy!) eyes make it clear that she is a robot and not a living and breathing human being. She is cute, but she is also a genuine character with purpose in the story. While there are issues to be had with the content of Planetarian, the execution of said content (in the context of an adaptation) is certainly worthy of praise and difficult to fault. It's a very solid production all-around. All one needs to do to understand the difference in quality between a poorly-directed anime and a well-directed one is to compare Planetarian to Rewrite, the other ongoing (and perhaps somewhat abysmal) Key adaptation. Planetarian is leagues better, and is about as good as any fan of the source material could have hoped for, really. But I do not know if that is enough to sway most anime-only viewers. The story is a nice, heart-warming little thing, but there is not much there with regards to depth and meaning. You will watch it, perhaps get a little misty-eyed during its dramatic conclusion, and that is where it ends. You will move on, get on with your day, and find the next thing to watch. A good anime or visual novel-- indeed, even a good story in general-- should have something to say or give to its readers. I am just not confident that this short little tragedy qualifies as that something. Even though the conclusion is a bit more low-key and reserved than other Key works (particularly Angel Beats), it still falls much into the same issue of being too dramatic for its own good. It so desperately wants to make the audience cry, but with scenes such as Hoshino lamenting how she cannot shed tears (and the rain so conveniently falling into her eyes as if she were actually crying), it becomes a bit difficult to take Planetarian's cloying conclusion all too seriously. I loathe the term "forced drama" as it is not a valid criticism, but those who have used it to attack Key works in the past will absolutely find more reason to use it here. I would personally have liked to see a less artificial ending without so many unnecessary theatrics. The potential for a great story is here, with its bleak, post-apocalyptic setting, but Key overthrew and missed the strike zone with Planetarian. It was somewhat disappointing to see the protagonist in the anime being a young-- no more than twenty-five years old-- jaded dude. If Key really wished to drive the emotional punch at the end, with the Junker regaining part of his humanity, it would have been much more powerful were he an older man who has been through and seen a lot of the new world. The anime does not sell me on his character being an emotionally broken and hardened soldier-- he just seems like a bit of an ass most of the time. Planetarian would also have benefited from being a movie instead of an ONA series, as the gaps between episodes (even if it is only as much as clicking on the next episode and sitting through a couple minutes of logos and advertisements) make the experience feel rather disjointed. Planetarian is meant to be a single, continuous story rather than a series marked by chapters and episodes. If you ever have had to pause a movie in the middle of your viewing for hours or days at a time, you will know just how much it ruins the experience and how difficult it makes it to feel much of anything during the climax, what with all the build-up gone and wasted. This is what it has felt like for me to watch Planetarian on a weekly basis. Anyone with the privilege of watching the anime after its airing is highly recommended to do so in one sitting, assuming they want to get something out of it. I may have been more excited with the concept of a Planetarian anime were it not 2016. The decade of the 2000's is a part of the past, and both the anime and visual novel industries have moved on from when Key was in their heyday. They have not released a new story in over five years, and seem more interested in having anime adaptations and remakes produced instead of something fresh and new. So I have to ask: do they intend to be the new Type-Moon, endlessly reliving its glory days and refusing to move on, or do they wish to regain their status and become relevant once again? This is a world where visual novel masterpieces like Sakura no Uta and Full Metal Daemon Muramasa now exist. The industry has surpassed Key, and now Key needs to catch back up before they fade to dust. Will they? Can they? A part of me remains skeptical.
