Since this is Key/Visual Arts, I’m expecting the cutest thing alive and crippling sadness.
“Planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~” is a kinetic visual novel, released in Japan in 2004 and worldwide in 2014. Planetarian was developed by Visual Arts/Key, who have made other popular visual novels like "Angel Beats," "Clannad," and more.
Planetarian was also published and localized by Sekai Project, who also localized "Clannad" and "Clannad Side Stories."
There is a HD version of Planetarian on Steam, but it’s only in Japanese. It’s probably for the best that I’m not confused throughout the entire review, so I went with the original on Steam.
There was also an original net animation and movie made that adapted the visual novel in 2016. Along with an original video animation released this year based on one of the chapters of the light novel.
My only experience with Visual Arts/Key is watching the "Clannad" and "Clannad After Story." animes. If it also counts, the "Charlotte" anime too, which was created by the same creator as Clannad, Jun Maeda. Although, I just found these animes alright. They have fantastic concepts, but hit-or-miss execution.
Also, this review will spoil the entirety of "Planetarian," I recommend going into "Planterian" blind if you can.
Visual Novel Explanation Time
"Planetarian is about an unnamed man, who is our protagonist, in a devastated world. His only means of survival is scavenging, which leads him to a dangerous city full of automated war machines that attack on sight.
While exploring, he comes across a planetarium with a hospitable robot named Yumemi Hoshino. Hoshino confuses the protagonist as a customer of the planetarium.
Adorableness ensues.
This is a kinetic visual novel like "Petit Novel Series - Harvest December." There aren't any choices to make, the reader just advances dialogue. It’s basically a book with visuals and audio, which is far from a bad thing, and even has very nice visuals at that.
The game does show its age with the black bars on the side, due to the game's resolution being made for older computers.
"Planetarian" has a lot of the standard elements for visual novels like advancing dialogue automatically. Something cool is that the font can be changed from a list of options, you can go through the entire game in New Times Roman if that's your preference. However, there are spacing problems with some fonts.
On the bright side, Comic Sans MS is an option if you hate yourself.
The sound effects themselves add to the atmosphere and communicate what's happening, such as the heavy rain. Although, the music itself is... Passable.
While tracks like Gentle Jena and Perfectly Human are amazing, the other tracks are repetitive (The Rain and the Robot) or overstay their welcome (Honky-Tonk, Metronome). The soundtrack selection is small too, only having nine songs.
Weirdly, my favourite song in the soundtrack, isn't even in the game. Human Warrior is an amazing track, but never appears, although I can guess where it would be played at. I feel robbed it wasn't included.
Optimism vs. Pessimism
The story and characters of "Planetarian work well. A major reason for this is because of the dynamic between the protagonist and Hoshino because both characters live in drastically different worlds.
The protagonist was born in a world of ruin, where there is non-stop poisonous rain. His life is a living hell as each day is spent scavenging, even killing other humans, just to survive. He's always on edge because one mistake can mean death.
While rude and cautious, his behaviour is understand as we learn of the state of the world overtime. The world building is very well done and really puts everything into perspective.
The abandoned city the visual novel takes place in is depressing. It isn't a city anymore, they're ruins, ruins that scream despair to any human.
Keywords being... Any human.
Hoshino isn't human but very much acts like one. She only wants to make the people around her happy by helping them and showing planetarium projections. Due to only being in the planetarium even before the world collapsed, she's unware of how ruined the world is. She’s a robot that simply can’t realize reality nor grasp it.
To her, the city isn't abandoned, she just thinks everyone is staying home because of the weather. She still advertises the planetarium despite never seeing a single soul around. Despite spending 30 years alone, she still has hope of people coming to the planetarium for a show.
Hoshino's design highlights her optimism and hope. In this world devoid of colour, she's bright and vibrant. She stands out and is adorable to boot.
Furthermore, she’s the ONLY character with sprites.
Her functions as a robot are explored thoroughly too. Her abilities, not being able to cry, and more.
The dynamic between the protagonist and Hoshino starts sour. Hoshino tries to help the protagonist but it only ends up being an annoyance to him. Despite this, the protagonist does warm up to her. The protagonist also helps Hoshino by fixing the planetarium's projector.
During that time, they discuss several things, learning more about each other. For example, their belief in God. The protagonist has prayed to God but never expected to receive anything.
Hoshino believes humans and robots aren’t separated in Heaven, since robots want nothing more than to serve humans, to be separated wouldn't be right. No God would allow a separation like that to happen.
I will throw hands with God himself to make sure robots and humans aren’t segregated in Heaven for Yumemi’s sake.
Hoshino's optimism ultimately wins over the protagonist. This is especially clear during and after the projection show that leaves the protagonist in awe.
While the beginning is slow and feels like it’s going nowhere for some time, it’s worth sticking around for this moment. Everything before was worldbuilding and getting to know the characters, here is where we see them glow.
The projection show and Hoshino also gives the protagonist the one thing he hasn’t had for so long: hope. Hope in a world of ruin that has taken so much from the protagonist: his friends, his family, his happiness, and nearly his life.
This hope also causes the protagonist to lie to Hoshino as she's dying after being shot by a patrolling robot. She dies no questioning humanity and causing her spark of hope extinguishing, but dies believing humanity is still thriving, that the protagonist was sent to get Hoshino to her new workplace, and that her colleagues still care for her,
While the stuff about protagonist being sent to get Hoshino and the stuff about Hoshino's colleagues are lies, the protagonist knew it was better to tell a white lie than crush her hope.
While Hoshino's body is functionless, she's still alive through her memory card. The card contains all of her memories, if put into another machine, she can come back. The protagonist, who is given the memory card, has a goal in his life other then to survive, to bring back Hoshino.
We don't know if he'll succeed or not, we can only hope he does. A thematically fitting ending.
The protagonist's and Hoshino's dynamic in the story feels real and it's beautifully executed. Their dynamic makes for an amazing, albeit short experience.
My only criticism with the story is Hoshino's death. It doesn't have nearly as much impact because it drags on for so long. In-universe her death took 10 minutes, but playtime-wise, it took over half an hour.
It's immersion-breaking and took me out of the scene hard asking, "HOW IS THIS STILL GOING?!" While I get the intent with Hoshino's memories was to make it sadder, it caused me to see Hoshino's memories for what they really are, exposition. Unfortunately, they're boring exposition. Her death feels milked, to the point of overkill.
Overall (A+)
“Planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~” is a short but extremely well-done visual novel that tells a fantastic story with great characters, visuals and sound design. I can’t call it perfect because of the admittedly melodramatic death of Hoshino and passable soundtrack, but it’s close to being a masterpiece.
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