Discussion topic for the “A Snow Globe” light novel & drama CD of planetarian. Feel free to refer to the entirety of the original planetarian and this story without spoiler tags, but please tag references to any other content with [spoiler], providing adequate context in parenthesis.
What would you rate this story?
0 voters
While personally I didn’t really like the whole ‘the boy’s proposal to Yumemi’ part, I thought this was a great side story for some extra planetarian content and backstory for the Yumemi, the planetarium staff and the pre-war social/economic tensions.
I can sense that the snow globes souvenirs are a powerful symbolization but what precisely is it?
A staff member says something like “They welcome people into the starry world” because the snowflakes are replaced with stars. The dome shape is like the planetarium dome, with the stars inside, welcoming people into the world of the starry sky… like Yumemi?
I was considering showing people this particular side story to introduce them to the series and so that they might consider reading the base story but after some thinking I feel its better to go into the base story blind to the details introduced here, saving them for after.
Also, where does this nice thread picture come from? It looks like the lady and her child apologizing for disturbing a projection show so I imagine it comes from this story’s CD album.
Yes, I’m pretty sure this is the CD’s cover art.
Seeing @Wizzerd’s post I told myself I should listen to Snow Globe again to have my thoughts on all four sorted. While listening on youtube, I hear a sound, a sound reminiscent of an old TV. I decide to go deeper by checking the individual clips on Itunes; lo and behold, the sounds almost always play at the end of the clips. I’ve been trying my darnedest to figure out what that sound is supposed to represent. My current theory isn’t perfect, but I think it’s the sound of Yumemi “dreaming.”
I started thinking this because of the parallel between the titles of the first and last clips. The first is called 28 Years and 87 Days, and the last is 29 Years and 81 Days. These titles are referring to the date when they take place most likely in relation to when the other staff members left for their “trip.” To get to why this is relevant to my theory, at the end of the first clip, Yumemi enters sleep mode while talking about prioritizing memory conservation; therefore, I’m thinking she “dreams” about what happens in clips 2-6 in order to conserve those memories. However, those stories aren’t told from Yumemi’s perspective but from her coworker Satomi’s. That’s why the theory isn’t perfect. My theory can be totally off, or this may have been an oversight when making the drama CD because the book only consists of parts 2-6.
So yeah, Snow Globe is the least relevant of the four; it’s pretty much just Yumemi fluff. But Yumemi is a wonderful character, so that’s hardly a bad thing. As a look into how Yumemi thinks, Snow Globe is definitely intriguing.
It’s definitely cringe to read my stuff from 3 years ago, but the conclusion still relatively accurate. There’s not a whole lot to Snow Globe. It does have a pretty direct allusion to Asimov’s I, Robot though. That’s not unique to Snow Globe–there’s a number of references to Asimov’s stories through out planetarian–but this is a probably the most obvious one. In part 4, Escape, we hear the ongoing anti-robot protests going outside. In Asimov’s world there were also much opposition to the use of robots, and they were eventually banned on Earth; Earth was basically the IKEA for robots where sets were made but they had to be assembled and used off-planet. Various social groups weren’t really a fan of robots as they became more and more human-like.
“We sold robots for Earth-use then – before my time it was, even. Of course, that was when robots could not talk. Afterward, they became more human and opposition began. The labor unions, of course, naturally opposed robot competition for human jobs, and various segments of religious opinion had their superstitious objections. It was all quite ridiculous and quite useless. And yet there it was.”
"By 2002, we had invented the mobile speaking robot which, of course, made all the nonspeaking models out of date, and which seemed to be the final straw as far as the nonrobot elements were concerned. Most of the world governments banned robot use on Earth for any purpose other than scientific research between 2003 and 2007.”
There are also several stories from I, Robot that deal with robots “going against the First Law” and then scientists have to go through and figure out that the robot is actually still perfectly in line with the law. Like in the story Reason where a robot creates a religion that overrides the orders of the humans. Though in the end, the purpose of that religion is to save humans: both from the physical harm from a giant death laser and the mental harm of realizing the robot is just leagues better at operating the laser than a human ever could. This is a bit similar to how Yumemi apparently gave herself a 0th law or something.
I plan on experiencing the drama CD for the snow globe tomorrow morning.
I’ll post up my first impressions as soon as I am done and then a few analysis notes later.
Sorry about the post going missing I hadnt spoiler blured stuff so ill split it up into to messages
A Snow Globe is really good and a rather interesting prologue to planetarian.
One of the coolest things about “A Snow Glove,” was how it used the games small backstory when the staff leave the planetarian on vacation and delved further into their characters particularly ‘Satomi.’
With Yumemi its amazing how she respects humans with her constant bragging about her construction and software or how she even reacts, for example when all the staff are crying when leaving and she replies with “Did I do something wrong?” It kind of shows this awe and respect for the humans without even a complaint when a little girl hits you. Seriously if Sunohara punched hit her she would reply with, "Sorry, I didnt mean for my metal construction to hurt your hand. 
Her respect seriously earns a golden takafumi reward.
as does her stupidity.
[Satomi]
“For two days in a row, who has been abandoning her duties to go outside and play, I wonder?”
[Yumemi]
“Yes, that’s me.”
Just INSTANT REPLY
Okay, Theorytime. THIS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR HARMONIA
So when you hear the robot protesters at around the 19 minutes mark I thought of this theory that could link planetarian together. Harmonia and planetarian already are somewhat linked as they are both about robots and are the only kinetic novels form key (That i am aware of) another potential link is the timeline assuming that the rain from planetarian can stop.
Some small minority of people in countries could have started the war due to it requiring sudden need of production and other jobs that would employ them work as they have an income this would then lead people to blaming robots for the reason the war started in the first place and thus would explain the hate of robots seen in Harmonia. Another thing that points towards this is how the world is already in ruin and the robot technology is well gone as is even true by the time the junker showed up to the planetarian. Also in Harmonia the further the generation the more emotional understanding the robot has until the final 5th generation can understand the concept of death. Yumemi which we learn form this drama CD was an original Robot and thus would be classified a 1st generation. Its also rather likely that she lacks the possibility of understanding death from how she reacted to the absence of people when she was in the city with the junker but she seemed to have understood when the two kids mentioned their parents where now stars (this may contradict my theory)
Everything does seem to line up with this theory but let me know if you have any information that supports or denies this theory. Do keep in mind that the planetarian movie came out in September 3, 2016 and Harmonia come out worldwide in September 23, 2016 and Japan in December 29, 2016 both are really close which may or may not be a coincidence.
“BEATRICE confirm that with a read truth”
“YOUR INCOMPETENT”
Quite an interesting short story, I like how this initially suggests that Yumemi is indeed a little broken, but then reveals that she has acted in an entirely logical way given how her circuits were configured to obey commands. It also starts to address a couple of questions I raised in the General Discussion topic, that concern the backstory of the pre-war world. In particular that Yumemi (or that model) was the first to conform to the Three Laws of Robotics, and also the reaction from the populace or at least some sections of it. Starts…but only goes a little way.
I think it also shows how difficult it is to make an AI fully understand the full complexity of human behaviour and emotions - especially when the two seem to contradict each other!
As far as it goes, A Snow Globe is good enough for me to give 4/5 but the brevity (bearing in mind some content already seen in Chiisana Hoshi no Yume) means it offers only limited insight.
One thing that i found in a snow glove that was kind of cool was the riots about the loss of jobs caused by robots and how they even went about rioting destroying robots (at least the one that happened in the story).
This really is a nice Parallel to the industrial revolution when the industrial revolution came around in the 19th century mass unemployment ensued. These staggering unemployment rates (up to even 30% in some countries) first caused by the invention of looms resulted in riots known as the Luddite Riots. Lots of unemployed British people went around destroying these mechanised looms that caused their loss of jobs.
This parallels exactly as it does in snow glove, that robots took the jobs of many humans just like the mechanical looms and riots and destruction of looms/robots ensued. Sadly I can’t find information about when these riots took place after the invention of looms (due to contradictory information) but it would be really cool if these happened 10 years later like they do in snow globe.
…almost makes one wonder if the advent of humanoid robots meant there was at least one of these guys showing their frustrations by going around like Jack The Ripper or something, especially because androids would be an even easier target societally than prostitutes…
They’d be especially easy to kill robots because all you need to do is run at your buddy with a knife and the robot would jump in the way because of their written code.
This is a really nice prologue to planetarian, it gives a lot more insight about Yumemi and how she functions socially and mechanically, being treated as a human by her coworkers, but also being perceived as a robot, which while isn’t take different from how the Junker treats Yumemi in planetarian, is still nice to see. In the VN, we don’t actually get to see much technical talk of how Yumemi functions and processes certain pieces of information as a machine. We also get to see what is essentially Yumemi’s upbringing, and I thought some of the connotations in relation to the VN were really interesting.
One thing I found really interesting is how Yumemi processes concepts such as keeping a secret. Now, this made me think, how would a machine keep a secret? The obvious answer would be by not telling anyone, but what else could it do? This is one reason I really enjoy the extent that Yumemi goes through to actually hide things when her assistants are looking through the code - it shows how a robot can interpret the concept of a secret given that Yumemi most likely knows when her code is being observed. The other thing I really enjoy about this comes from the concept that Yumemi might not even be fully aware of all the processes happening within her, as it is never made clear whether she was doing all those processes with her code on purpose. This feeds into one of the main things that I noticed during my listen of this, and that’s when one of Yumemi’s coworker asks her to never change, and she registers that as a priority. Now I find this a really interesting detail considering the events of planetarian, and how despite the world basically ending, Yumemi is exactly the same, even though she has doubts as to whether humanity will ever return to the planetarium. I think this order is one of the key factors that prevents her from thinking all of humanity is lost and will never return, but at the same time, I don’t think she’s fully aware of that. This introduces the concept of a robots conscious and subconscious, with these mentioned high priority tasks being a part of Yumemi’s subconscious, because if she acknowledged them, it would cause her to potentially not fulfil those requests (if she acknowledges a secret, she may break it, and if she acknowledges that she was told to not change, she could potentially change). This is not much different from general human psychology, and once again emphasises Yumemi’s humanity despite being a robot.
The other thing I found interesting is how it’s mainly children that love Yumemi in the audio drama, while many adults don’t. I think this can be tied back to a religious argument. Many children are brought up with a religion as a child, but over time as they mature, they start to lose that belief because of how they perceive the world around them or some other reason. Now given that Yumemi can easily be perceived as robot Christ, I think the change of attitude of people over time also helps to represent that. One example of this is how the kid that wanted to marry Yumemi lost interest in planetariums after he moved away. Now while we don’t know if where he moved to had a planetarium or not, it’s still symbolic of losing exposure to Yumemi’s faith, causing him to lose that belief in Yumemi, which can once again be compare to losing belief in a religion. This is also emphasised by him later not wanting to go watch the showing at the planetarium. Another example of this is how Yumemi was originally incredibly popular because of how special she was, but over time many people lost that mentality, and less and less people came to the planetarium. It also follows that in this world, there’s a group people wanting to kill robots because of the issues that they presented socially (more specifically, taking away peoples jobs), which is comparative to how the Romans wanted Jesus dead due to the changes in the world he was making.
Overall, I quite enjoyed this - it serves as a means to present Yumemi’s nature under traditional, non post-apocalyptic circumstances, as well as present the relationship between Yumemi and her co-workers and the perception of her by general society, and I think it does that really well.
After listening to Snow Globe I think one of the main points they tried to bring up is, well, Yumemi is just a little bit broken, isn’t she? 
But I’d like to get more into trying to understand why she ended up prioritizing this order, over her own assigned task.
The more recent priority order, “Try to listen to Satomi-chan when you two are alone” was something she registered as priority because she believed it to be related to Satomi’s own mental health. It’s a pretty sensible idea, really. And Satomi pretty much wore her heart on her sleeve on that regard. But why would she go so far as to escape work and go into the city, just to find time alone with Satomi? She may have been able to do that without violating her own original orders.
Which ties us back to the ten-year long priority order. The boy’s proposal had many parts, but I believe it to be quite important into understanding how Yumemi works. When Yumemi said that she has work so she cannot get married, the boy pretty clearly suggested to her that she can “go outside while nobody was watching”. Thus this override, plus the fact that the ten-year wait was already over, meant that she found herself capable of doing so, albeit unconsciously.
But why would such a proposal override everything else Yumemi was taught? Because the silly little boy said, and I quote, “If I don’t marry you, I’ll die”. The number 1 law of the law of robot’s is to not harm a human being and to not let them, through inaction, come to harm. So Yumemi registered that as a priority 0 order. If she didn’t keep the promise, the boy would die. If she didn’t go out and escape, the boy would die.
As Yumemi is the first model to fully comply with all three laws of robotics, I believe she was programmed as literally incapable of going against them. And, as we learned later with the Fiddler Crab, later models don’t seem all that keen on keeping those laws in check. Thus, Yumemi worked exactly as programmed; she dropped everything to protect the life of that little boy. If anything, the only bug she had was that she was way too gullible for her own good.
I believe this goes back in to her imagery as a “perfect human”. The reason why she is viewed as such a sparkling example of humanity is because of her respect for those laws. She is programmed to prioritize the well-being of humans over her own well-being. And, selfish as we may be, this is something that we, as humans, strive to become. Being altruistic and willing to harm yourself for the well-being of others is seen as the ultimate good, as referenced by numerous religious stories.
It is for this reason that I believe that this is what Robots were originally intended for. They were intended to do things that humans were not capable of doing. Things that humans wanted to do but, for numerous reasons, could not. Caring for other people above yourself is just one of these things. So it’s not so much that we humans should follow Yumemi’s example as the “perfect human”, but more that Yumemi was designed to be everything that we could not be. And she serves as a reminder to the Junker and the rest of the audience that “hey, this is what humanity wanted to be in the first place”.
And that’s something I think we should never forget.
For those of you who aren’t aware, I did a musical analysis of each track in the Planetarian - General Discussion and I thought it’d be appropriate to do the same for the side stories, so this post is focusing on how the placement of music represents and emphasises certain themes presented in Snow Globe, and how these can be compared to the original VN. Snow Globe uses fewer tracks than the VN, and some of them aren’t too notable given the context (such as Ame To Robot), so I’ll only be discussing a select few tracks.
Honky Tonk - This piece is used when the mechanic is trying to diagnose Yumemi and figure out why she’s acting like she is. It is believed that she is broken, but no-one can identify the issue that causes her to be broken. In my original post I discussed how the use of the term ‘Honky Tonk’ has several implications in relation to Yumemi’s broken state. One of the things that I mentioned was how it could imply that Yumemi chose to be broken, and while this is in a slightly different context, I think it holds in this case. Yumemi acts like she does because of a promise that she made 10 years before the events of Snow Globe. It is stated that at this time, Yumemi was still learning how to properly process information, and it is because of this why she takes the promise so seriously. This explains why she’s considered ‘broken’ in Snow Globe, but it also ties into the VN. In one of my previous posts, I argue that because of a similar promise made in Snow Globe, Yumemi’s personality doesn’t change in the entirety of the VN, despite the apocalyptic the events that have occurred, and this causes her to be ‘a little bit broken’. So the concept of Yumemi being broken is presented in similar ways in both the VN and Snow Globe, and Honky Tonk is one of the means of expressing those similarities.
Winter’s tale - This plays when Yumemi is doing her introduction talk for the projection. In my original analysis, I stated that Winter’s Tale is used to represent how concepts of faith are seeded into the Junker’s mind, and it holds for this as well, except with the general public. All the people who came to the planetarium came to see Yumemi and hear her talk about the stars. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned how the entire presentation of a projection is similar to a religious ceremony, and that allows this concept of passing on faith to become more prominent. The people attending the projection are presented with Yumemi’s perception of the world - Yumemi’s faith is presented to all these people and puts concepts of hope into their mind, and that’s why a Winter’s Tale is used.
Hoshi No Sekai: This piece plays when the planetariums snow globe is presented at the end, and how it’s welcoming people to a starry world. Normally this piece is used during Yumemi’s ‘Why don’t you come to the planetarium?’ speech, so it being used in a different context is quite notable - but the context it’s used in is very similar. The opening speech with Yumemi is about her inviting people to see the stars, which similar to how the snow globe is described. Given the religious origins of this piece, it follows that this piece is used to represent the idea of offering faith to someone. One thing to also note is how this is the only time this piece is used - Yumemi says her ‘Why don’t you come to the planetarium?’ speech multiple times, but this piece isn’t used during any of those times. That might be because of how this speech is used. In the VN, there are times when this speech is used, but this piece isn’t played. My theory as for why this is the case comes down to the context this speech is used. Both in the VN and Snow Globe, there are times when Yumemi is saying her speech, but it doesn’t seem to be directed at anyone - there isn’t anyone around. In the intro to the VN, she is directing the speech at the people that are passing by. This only emphasises the idea of this piece representing the offering of faith.
Gentle Jena - This plays when Yumemi’s colleagues have to leave her. It’s a very interesting placement of this track because of how one naturally associates this piece. I mentioned in my original analysis how this piece is used to make you remember the planetarium scene, what Yumemi said during that scene and what you felt during that scene. This placement of this piece could be done to provoke emotion in the listener. If you listened to this you most likely already read/saw planetarian, and the planetarium scene is one of the most emotional scenes in it, so just listening to this naturally causes all those feelings to rush back. Basically, the placement of this piece could just be used to make the listener cry. Snow Globe is a story about Yumemi’s colleges, so it is only natural that the writers would want an emotional response from the listener when they’re about to leave Yumemi and potentially die. However I think the use of this piece is more than that. In the VN, Gentle Jena is used to represent how one has complete faith in Yumemi, how one believes in what Yumemi believes in. In this scene, Yumemi’s co-workers are incredibly upset that they have to leave Yumemi - saying that it’s unfair and it shouldn’t be happening. These people love Yumemi, they want to be with her, and thus it would only make sense that they believe in Yumemi’s ideals, so the use of Gentle Jena makes that more apparent.
So despite Snow Globe being a side story, that generally isn’t that important to the overall world of planetarian, it’s still very consistent with the placement of the music when compared to the original VN, and it helps to emphasise many ideas that follow through into the VN.
I got through the Snow Globe audio drama earlier this week. It was…fine. I liked it better maybe after reading some of the things other people noticed.
I did like how they kept the dream motif - the splicing between Yumemi being alone and entering sleep mode gives the feeling that whole flashback with the co-workers is dreamlike. ‘Snow Globe’ also ties into the imagery of her being in a dreamlike world separated from reality.
Yumemi really blurs a lot of lines. It is impossible not to react to her as emotional being. She gets frantic when she registers she made a mistake, she seems genuinely happy to work at the planetarium, she gets distressed when someone is hurt. But then we contrast her reaction to the boy breaking off the proposal to how outraged her coworker got on her behalf for being ‘dumped’ and we are reminded of robot-ness. We know that some of her quirks are born from bug-like reactions to orders, but it is really significant that her coworker refuses to reset her at the risk of her personality. By allowing her to keep her bugs Yumemi is probably closer to being human than many robots get.
