Planetarian - General Discussion

[Aspirety]

Okay guys, keep the discussion flowing! Take notes while you’re playing of things that come to mind that you’d like to talk about here. Let’s analyse planetarian as thoroughly as we can over these next two weeks!

We’re also now accepting recorded messages! Maybe you want to tell us what you thought of planetarian, or you have some topic or question you’d like us to address on the podcast? Record a short voice clip, link it here and if we like it, we’ll include it!

Also! I’ve extended the bookclub by 2 weeks! You’ll all have more time to chat here, and prepare artwork to submit!

[HeliosAlpha]

I finished Planetarian and it was very enjoyable for the time and money invested. Yumemi now places pretty high on my list of Key heroines(9/32), she caught my interest very quickly. Having Kanata/Shizuru´s voice helped but I was hooked when they had a line like, -This unit has an error causing it to talk for long periods without consideration of time or place-(paraphrasing), that was hilarious and she proved it to be true that’s for sure. One exchange that made me laugh hard was when the Junker tells Yumemi to be quiet as a high priority, she accepts but after about 5 seconds she continues talking, certain people can take stuff that normally would be annoying and make it extremely funny.
Since Planetarian is around half the length of the common route of Rewrite or LB it helps incredibly much to have an instantly likeable character as opposed to someone like Lucia who picks up after some time. The entire novel lives or dies depending on this character. Now you could look at Planetarian and see some philosophical stuff but that’s not my cup of tea, I just like the emotions and it did a great job on that part.

[JDC]

Planetarian has inspired me to do a lot of thinking (some of which I hope to talk about in future posts), but for now I’ll just share the emotional impact it had on me.

Although this was the first Key visual novel I’d ever had the pleasure of experiencing, I already knew beforehand that their stories had quite the reputation for making people cry–it’s the one thing you can count on people in comments sections to joke about when any of Key’s games are under discussion: “Have a box of tissues ready,” and so on and so forth. I just took it as so much internet hyperbole, one of those things that people enjoy saying for comedic effect but gets worn out from overuse. I was very excited to play a Key game for the first time, but I did not for a second really think that it would bring me to tears. Fictional stories just generally don’t have that effect on me, and I didn’t see why Planetarian should be any different.

But then I actually met Yumemi–so clearly a robot despite her highly sophisticated programming, and yet still strangely captivating. During her entire “death” scene, to my astonishment I really was crying. More than that, by the end of it I had to actively restrain myself so my weeping would not become audible and cause my family to ask me what was wrong! Against all of my expectations (and most of my experience with entertainment of different kinds), this simple, 2-3 hour story reduced me to tears.

What was it that caused this reaction? How could such a short story produce such powerful emotions and feelings? Everyone will have a different answer to go with their own experience, but I hope to offer my own thoughts in a later post. Suffice to say, I was blown away by how much Planetarian moved me, and I’ll definitely play Clannad with a similar expectation (and maybe a box of tissues at the ready!).

[Aspirety]

It’s really special to find people who are experiencing Key for the first time. Thank you so much for sharing that experience with us! Hopefully we’ll see you around talking about your first time reading Clannad in the near future!

[JDC]

My pleasure, thank you for creating this website and forum so that there’s a place to talk about these things! Even though they’re getting more exposure in the West than ever before, visual novels are still very niche, so it’s great to be able to come to this forum and talk with other fans right after finishing Planetarian.

As for Clannad, I hope so too!

Also, @therationalpi: The development of Yumemi’s leitmotif didn’t really strike me until you pointed it out. Thanks for talking about the soundtrack in such detail, the music in things like this matters a great deal to me too!

[JDC]

Here’s the first part of my thoughts on Planetarian (be warned that it is on the lengthy side). I hope it will lead to further discussion!

Planetarian: An Analysis (Part 1)

Despite its short length, Planetarian’s story is striking indeed. The apparent disproportion between the novel’s simplicity and its emotional power led me to wonder: why did this story touch me so? Before I can give my answer, though, it is necessary for me to spend some time talking about the pervasive spiritual themes that are present in the story. As such, the purpose of this post is to draw attention to these themes.

Upon reading Planetarian with a careful eye it quickly becomes evident that the story is filled with religious elements, the most obvious example of this being the novel’s ongoing discussion of prayer and Heaven. It begins when the Junker, in an offhand remark, suggests to Yumemi that she pray to God that the projector be repaired in time for the next day’s 11:00 AM presentation. Yumemi, dutiful robot that she is, promptly asks in response, “Which god should I pray to, then?” A lengthy and somewhat humorous exchange follows in which Yumemi decides she should pray to Dionysus because the Junker would like him best, to which he replies that she should instead pray to “the god of robots.” After scanning her data banks for this entity, she declares: “I cannot find the information you have requested in my base databases or in my accumulated databases.”

On its own this conversation would easily pass as nothing more than a comical interlude, but it leads to more serious musings later in the novel. Not long after the previous exchange, Yumemi recalls an occasion where she asked her co-workers if robots have a Heaven as well. They assured her this was so, and that the Heaven of robots is a place where “everything that a robot wished for would come true.” The Junker, despite internally dismissing the notion of robot Heaven as nothing more than a “frivolous joke,” adds on to the idea by telling Yumemi, “The God of Robots lives in the Heaven of Robots. Remember this.” She accepts this statement “as if it were the most natural thing in the world.”

Moments later, Yumemi takes things in a more personal direction when she asks the Junker a simple but piercing question: “Have you ever prayed to God?” He answers that while he may have prayed before, he never expected anything. When he asks Yumemi the same thing she begins to say that she has a prayer for the God of Robots pertaining to Heaven, but she is cut short by her mandatory 12:00 AM shutdown, leaving the nature of her prayer a mystery.

The subject comes up again when Yumemi and the Junker are heading out of the city. Interestingly, she asks him the exact same question as she did before, “Have you ever prayed to God,” and the Junker even notes that she already asked him this. It never becomes clear why Yumemi asks this question a second time, but in any case it prompts the Junker to remind her that she never finished telling him what her prayer is. What she says is unexpected: “Please do not divide Heaven in two,” separating robots from humans. As she puts it, she wants “to be able to be of aid to everyone, now and forever.” She repeats this prayer to the Junker at the end of the story in her final moments, saying she does not need the Heaven of self-satisfaction her co-workers once promised her. Rather, if she must go to Heaven her only desire is that “Heaven not be split in two” so that she may “work on the behalf of humans for all of eternity.”

It is clear enough just from how frequently these two themes of prayer and Heaven recur in the story that Planetarian has an interesting preoccupation with spiritual matters, but these are hardly the only examples to be found. There are also several telling tidbits from the Junker’s narration that reveal a decidedly religious bent to the story as well. To begin with, when the Junker first enters the planetarium he likens it to a place of worship: “Had all the chairs been populated with people, it would seem almost as if those people were worshipping the ant [i.e., the projector].” (He even extends the comparison by later noting that the projector’s control panel resembles a church organ.) This observation then leads him to remember an idol he once saw that had been made by the local villagers and was worshipped by them in the hope of stopping the nuclear Rain.

Later, during his repairs of the projector, the Junker also recalls a time in his life when missionaries told people about the heavenly bodies “in reverent voices, as if they were reciting verses from their mold-ridden holy books.” When the projector is finally fixed and Yumemi is making one final call to the streets for people to come to the planetarium, he notes that her voice resembles a “requiem mass,” which is a Catholic Mass offered for the souls of dead people. During the presentation itself he describes Yumemi as “a priestess telling of oracular visions.” Finally, when he and Yumemi are leaving the planetarium he reflects, “In the space of one hour, I felt as if I had already done a decade’s worth of penance.”

Beyond the visual novel proper, there are even further religious references in some of the supplementary material. The second drama CD is titled “Jerusalem,” and it tells a story about the Great War (mentioned by the Junker in Planetarian) where a group of soldiers are all killed by a sniper—who just happens to be a nun. The third drama CD, “Man of the Stars,” features three children whose names are Levi, Ruth and Job, all major biblical figures. The opening of the light novel from which the drama CDs are derived even reads, “Starry sky, words, God, robots. A collection of short stories in the key of these four themes.”

In closing, it is plain to see that Planetarian is to a great extent permeated with religious and spiritual themes. But do all these conversations and scattered references have any deeper meaning? Is there a coherent message underlying them, or have they been included just for the sake of “spicing up” the story? (To put it another way, are we witnessing a case of what TV Tropes calls “faux symbolism”?)

Personally, given the sheer quantity of religiously oriented content contained in the novel (including some references I haven’t mentioned yet but will in the next post), I find it extremely unlikely that it is all in there just to “add color.” I think a coherent religious message can most definitely be pieced together from the content of the story, and in the next post I will describe what I believe it to be.

[Takafumi]

The third drama CD, “Man of the Stars,” features three children whose names are Levi, Ruth and Job, all major biblical figures.

I was just waiting to see this mentioned. Hoshi no Hito felt like a very religious story to me and I never really bothered to ask why it did. Felt like something from a weird Sci-Fi old testament.

[JDC]

Really? Interesting, guess I should check it out at some point (and the others as well, if possible).

[Yerian]

I will post my full thoughts, feelings, discussions when I finish, but I really wanted to get this part out right now since you mentioned it.

---

I totally agree with the religious symbolism. Since I am Catholic, I parallel it Catholic history and theology.

The Rain is like sin and punishment (the devil?) in the hellish world that the planet has become. It is the result of all the greed, murder, and inhumanity that all the humans brought about through the Great War. It pours down on them as a burden everyday, reminding them the terrible crimes humanity has committed; it forces them to live in a world that reflects their actions, a world devoid of love.

Yumemi is the hope, that love (God? an angel?) that humanity had given up on. It does not make sense for them to love in their world, and thus the concept feels “broken”, as Junker describes her several times. Junker does not want to accept her at first. In fact she often seems like even more of a burden than the Rain. But she slowly grows on him, and despite all of his logic telling him to get rid of her, to forget about Jena, to throw the makeshift bouquet on the ground, for some reason he still lets her in.

Yumemi says several times that she likes the Rain, because it brings people into the planetarium. Her sole goal is to bring people to experience the pure goodness and beauty of the planetarium. The planetarium itself is a representation of heaven. The stars, or “heavenly bodies” immediately pull Junker into a daze due to their astounding brilliance. Even I, who unlike Junker see the stars everyday, was awestruck just by the way Junker described the projection. Even after the power goes out, Junker still yearns so much for the stars that he would even settle for just hearing about them. These descriptions perfectly fit the concept of heaven.

Jesus says in the Bible that he came not to be king but to be the greatest servant of all. Yumemi says that as a robot, here only desire is to serve humanity as best as she can. Jesus sacrificed his own life on the cross so that humanity could live for eternal life in heaven. Similarly, Yumemi sacrifices herself so that Junker could live.

Then, in Hoshi no Hito, Junker has been so moved my her that he desires to go and spread the “good news” of the stars to the rest of humanity. Despite the village’s resistance to his message, he still succeeds in passing on the stories and the mini planetarium. This parallels the early Catholic Church. The disciples were sent by Jesus to share the word of the Kingdom of Heaven with the entire world. They were met with great opposition from the Jews and the Romans, but in the end they still succeeded in spreading the love and greatness of God.

[JDC]

._.

Well, there goes Part 2…

Just kidding, I’ll still write Part 2. But seriously, you totally pegged quite a bit of what I had in mind to say. As you may have guessed at this point, I am a Christian myself and had many of the same thoughts you mention here. Nice to know I’m not the only one thinking along these lines.

[Pepe]

In reply to @JDC and @yerian98:

I agree with the religious symbolism, and it’s great that you were able to point it out. It’s like one of those things that stays subconsciously in your mind when you think of planetarian, but you never really fully realize it.

Now, after thinking a bit, I ask myself “Why the religious symbolism?” I think I’d like to stray away from our current notions of religion and religious practices and beliefs, and go down to a more fundamental level: why religions exist in the first place. Based on Junker’s stories, we see that the new world is very primitive in terms of philosophical thought. People struggle to survive but neglect to question their fundamental existence. In comes religion. Religion, on a fundamental level, attempts to answer the questions to our existence. How was humanity created? What is our purpose in existing? What is our soul?

In comes the planetarium. In the planetarium, the Junker is shown of the mass of heavenly bodies, and our insignificance in the universe, which leaves us to question the purpose of our existence. Yumemi, on the other hand, knows and accepts her purpose. She has a reason for existing, and thus, she has a soul.

Now, another point that religion tries to answer is what happens to our souls after we vanish from this earth. Again, the Junker is oblivious to this question, and seems not to care for it, as he has much more problems to deal with. Whereas Yumemi desires to know. She desires her own “soul” to go into heaven with humans, hence the popular phrase “Please do not divide Heaven in two.” Why is that her desire? Because, even after death, she wants her soul to continue on for her own purpose.

We now have a contrast between two persona: one who has the opportunity to religion, the opportunity to question his existence, and the opportunity to have a soul, but does not take this opportunity (Junker) and the other who already knows her existence, but does not have the opportunity to a religion or a soul, as she had been taught, because she is a robot (Yumemi). Herein, we discover that Yumemi is more human than the Junker, because this yearning is one of the things that separates us as humans. Self-actualization and questioning our existence is (supposedly) something that defines us as humans. This is the reason why we have religions. This is the reason why we pray. We have religions because we are human and we are human because we have religions.

I do not see Yumemi as a form of goodness that people should emulate to experience salvation. Rather, I see Yumemi as a human being. One that has remained human throughout the great war. She is the representation of humanity that had been forgotten over the years. Rather, what we should learn from her is not the goodness and beauty of heaven, or the importance of religion, but rather, the importance of our own humanity. We should ponder own existence and meaning in this universe because that is what makes us human. And once we have found our meaning, we must have the desire to carry out this meaning, even after our deaths.

Sidenote: I should really listen to Hoshi no Hito one of these days. Just found some subs for it yay.

[Yerian]

Ah just finished it. This was my second time reading planetarian, and I have to say while it was almost just as emotional, I feel very different about it this time. I guess this could be could be considered part 1 of my thoughts, feelings, discussion, etc. Since we decided to extend the bookclub, I plan on rereading it and doing an in depth analysis by means of tearing every single line apart with speculation. But these are just my “original”/general thoughts:

---

“Even now, the rain still continued to fall.”

The first time I read this, I remember almost seeing the story from what I might call Yumemi’s view. I had a had to keep reminding myself that Yumemi was not human, even though she continually said: “I am a robot.” I remember being in awe of the world and the setting, but feeling distant from it, like Yumemi must have.

This second time, I related completely with Junker. I really felt the pain that he had experienced every day, trying to survive in such a broken world. It felt like the Rain was bearing down on me exactly how he described it. This time, Yumemi started out as just a robot to me. In most cases she reminded me of a child, in her innocent and inquiring nature. But just as Junker for some reason slowly grew more and more attached to her, I felt the same way. @Pepe’s thoughts about how Yumemi, despite being the only nonhuman, is the only one with a soul, really makes sense to me.

One of the most memorable moments, (again pertaining to the fact that I really related to Junker) was when the stars first appeared. The first part is the enormous satisfaction from working so hard to fix the projector for several days. But I can never figure out why, despite having seen the starts myself thousands of times, I find that moment to be so awe-striking. (“Gentle Jena” in the background probably is part of it) Obviously, to Junker, having never imagined this projection thing could ever be so incredible and having never seen the stars before, this moment must have been like the only one beautiful thing in his world. And indeed, it changed his life, so much so that he wanted to spend the rest of his life showing everyone this amazing scene.

One of Key’s very common themes also shows up here: the town. I won’t go into depth about towns in other Key VNs, but I think the so called “sarcophagus city” plays an important role that could be easily overlooked. First off, its emptiness represents the what the entire world had become: lonely and devoid of any reason to exist. But this one foresaken town completely changes Junker’s philosophy and entire life. To use Pepe’s analogy again, he comes in as a shell, but he leaves with a soul.

And finally, is the matter of “Key magic.” Most people seem to say (including myself in previous posts) that planatarian sticks out from the rest of Key’s VNs because it has no supernatural factor, usually at the end, commonly known as “Key magic.” But I would now argue that planetarian does contain Key magic, just not at the end and not in the usual manner. In planetarian, the Key magic has already happened before the story starts: it is the series of coincidences that bring Junker and Yumemi together. First, the fact that Yumemi still exists after 30 years: the power still runs through the town because of military backup generators just happened to be left there; and somehow, no other junker got there first and pillaged the planetarium as Yumemi for her parts. Then Yumemi, who only wakes up for less than a week a year, just happens to be awake when Junker just happens to wander into that certain town. As Junker puts it, “The very fact that she was functional in this day and age was something close to a miracle.” And to quotes Kanon: “It’s called a miracle because it doesn’t happen.”

(I was originally going to put a comparison to another character/story in this post, but I decided to move it to its own as not to overload a single post too much.)

[JDC]

Part 2 became so long that it will now be followed by at least a Part 3! Again, be warned that this is a bit involved.

Planetarian: An Analysis (Part 2)

At the end of my previous post I suggested that there is a coherent religious message to be found in Planetarian. Before I elaborate, I must emphasize that there is obviously no way I can be certain that the author of the story intended to communicate the precise message I have in mind. Even so, considering the evidence that exists in the story, I think it is highly probable that the author at least intended to convey something very similar to what I propose:

I believe this story promotes the idea that true humanity is to be found not in ourselves, but rather in God and specifically in Jesus, the perfect human.

Again, I could never prove that the author actually meant to say this, but as I hope to show you, if nothing else it is incredibly easy and natural to take this message from the novel based on its content.

My interpretation is rooted in a key juxtaposition of music and story that takes place at the very end of the novel. Yumemi has sacrificed herself in order to save the Junker from certain death at the hands of the Fiddler Crab. As we see her fragmented remains scattered about, a mournful tune begins to play. This song is titled “Perfectly Human” in Planetarian’s in-game track list, but alternate translations of the title are “Perfect Human” and “The Perfect Man.” Assuming the song’s title has been meaningfully chosen, we must ask: in what sense is Yumemi “perfectly human” or a “perfect human”? The novel bends over backwards to periodically remind the reader that Yumemi, for all her intelligence and kindness, is still a robot. Clearly her tendency to constantly check her databases for information and coming up short—in addition to her corresponding failure to assimilate the new information the Junker repeatedly tries to convey to her—mark her as less than human, so in what sense is she a “perfect human”?

The answer becomes evident if we take into account the third possible translation of the song’s title, “The Perfect Man.” In this moment Yumemi has just “taken the bullet” for the Junker, thus saving his life. She approached the Fiddler Crab “without any hesitation at all” and the Junker observes, “It was like a scene from an antique religious painting.” In stepping into harm’s way for the sake of the Junker without considering her own wellbeing, she was a selfless servant to the end, even to the point of “dying” for the Junker. This scene strongly evokes Jesus’ death on the cross that he suffered so that not just one person, but all people might live. As Philippians 2:8 says, “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”

But why should I mention Jesus here? After all, he is hardly the only figure—religious, historical, or otherwise—to sacrifice himself for the sake of another. Why treat the scene as though it evokes him? Well, for the simple reason that as Yumemi utters her last words, the melody to the historic Christian hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, is playing. The track is labeled as such on iTunes, and the Wikipedia track list uses the Japanese translation of this title, “Itsukushimi Fukaki” (“Deep Affection” in English), while the in-game track list uses an alternate English translation of this Japanese title, “The Loving Depths.” Yet this same tune as used at the very beginning of the story is labeled “Hoshi no Sekai” (“World of Stars”) in both the Wikipedia and iTunes track lists, and is referred to simply as “Opening” in the in-game track list. What is going on here?

At this point we must engage in a brief history lesson. In 1868, Charles Crozat Converse wrote a melody titled “Erie” that was subsequently applied to a Christian poem previously written by Joseph Scriven in 1855, “Pray Without Ceasing.” The words and melody together became known as “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” which went on to become a popular Christian hymn. This hymn was later translated into Japanese with the title “Itsukushimi Fukaki.” The melody was then taken and applied to a Japanese children’s folk song written by Daisui Sugitani, which was titled “Hoshi no Yo.” Not at all coincidentally, this children’s song is about the stars in the night sky. The title was repurposed as “Hoshi no Sekai” and is listed as the first musical track in Planetarian.

So why is the exact same melody identified under two different titles, the first referencing a Japanese children’s song about the stars and the second a popular Christian hymn? Bearing in mind that the reader ordinarily would not register any such naming distinction when experiencing the story, I believe that the author of Planetarian was ingeniously trying to send a message by using these two different song titles in the official track list. Imagine for a moment that you are reading the story from the beginning, and that track titles of songs are visible when the music begins to play. As Yumemi advertises the planetarium on a pre-apocalyptic Earth, the track title “Hoshi no Sekai” appears on the screen. Assuming you knew the information given in the previous paragraph, you would think to yourself, “Ah, it’s a song about the stars in the night sky. How appropriate for a story called Planetarian.” But if the exact same melody started playing at the very end of the story with the words “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” appearing on the screen instead, after Yumemi has sacrificed herself to save the protagonist and is using her last moments to yet again call for people to come to “the twinkling of eternity that will never fade,” you would probably think, “Oh! I thought this story was just about the stars, but it’s really about more, so much more.”

(continued in Part 3)

[Kanon]

i finished it
key are terrible and i hate them

[rune_devros]

This is a slightly cleaned up version of something I posted on Tumblr a few days ago at 3AM in the morning.

The dream of the future of our “Pale Blue Dot” as told by planetarian

Planetarian foretells two futures. On the surface, planetarian’s world is an age where the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources is the trigger for the third world war, which unleashes the most frightening man made creations like biological weapons and automated killer robots to bring an end to civilization. The other vision is presented by Yumemi’s planetarium show: Humanity is able to overcome our differences, begins traveling to other worlds, and becomes a space-faring species.

“The starry sky belongs to you.”

If we are to discuss humanity’s future in space, we should go back to the beginning. The idea that we journey to the stars is not a new one. As early as 1903, before the Wright Brothers flew their first airplane at the dunes of Kitty Hawk, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky of Russia outlined the mechanics which made space travel possible by the means of rocket propulsion [1]. Well known to any players of Kerbal Space Program, the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation bears his name [2]. Tsiolkovsky in 1911 [3]:

“Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot remain on a cradle forever.”

Less than half a century later, the USSR sparks the beginning of the space age with Sputnik 1 in 1957. Then, 12 years later in 1969, the first man sets foot on the moon. This was no feat of a unified humanity, however. For the first decades of the space age, this arena was used as another front of the Cold War. The same rockets that deliver people to space also could be used to deliver a nuclear warhead across the ocean to level an entire city in one great fireball. Landing the first man on the moon would prove the superiority of the ideals of the United States or the Soviet Union and their respective allies. For the latter half of the 20th century, the world lay on the brink of nuclear annihilation. And yet, there were signs of cooperation between otherwise bitter rivals in space following the end of the space race. The Apollo-Soyuz program in 1975 was the first meeting of Russian and American spacecraft [4].

It is helpful to compare the ideas presented in planetarian with those discussed in planetary scientist Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot [5], and I have felt that this book is a good companion to the fictional tale of planetarian. Published in 1994, right at the end of the Cold War, Sagan’s book beams with an optimism for a brighter future. He discusses a similar vision of our future as Yumemi presents during the “The Reverie of Mankind Spreading Its Wings Towards the Cosmos” scene. Sagan imagines that starting from space stations in Earth orbit, we would eventually colonize Mars, asteroids, and even the small icy worlds that exist at the fringes of the solar system. The end of the Cold War marked the start of an age of accelerated international cooperation in space. The American space shuttle made frequent trips to the Russian space station Mir where experiments were conducted about how humans experienced long term trips in space [6]. This paved the way for the greatest international collaboration in space to date: the International Space Station [7], which was constructed and operated by not only the two superpowers of the Cold War, but also contributions from Japan and the European Space Agency.From the perspective of someone living in the 90s, such dreams were within reach.

planetarian presents a bleak future in parallel to the hopeful one in part because it has the hindsight of having been published ten years later in 2004, with the world having experienced the dawn of of the 21st century and the realization that great challenges remain unsolved in the new century. We are confronted with the tackling the problems of of dwindling resources, pollution from our factories and power plants, and small scale political instabilities all over the world. It is telling that the instruments of planetarian’s apocalypse are very much 21st century tools of war. The spectre of nuclear annihilation and mutually assured destruction that resulted from the Cold War has largely been laid to rest. Satellite deployed biological weapons reflect the fear of bio-terrorism in the first decade of the 21st century, and the robots that perform much of the fighting in planetarian’s world are a natural evolution of our increasing reliance on drones for warfare. Despite these seemingly insurmountable challenges, progress on the space frontier continues. Advances in robotics have allowed us to explore other worlds with rovers like NASA JPL’s Curiosity which beams back detailed images of the red planet and is equipped with a suite of advanced sensors to answer the question of whether there was once life on Mars [8]. Scheduled to first launch in 2018, NASA’s Space Launch System is intended to take us to the Moon, near earth asteroids, and eventually to Mars [9]. At the same time, private industry has stepped in to compete with the old guard; Elon Musk’s company SpaceX proposes to eventually send their own capsule to Mars as the first step in the colonization of another world [10]. Just last night, India sent it’s first orbiter to Mars on a shoestring budget [11]. Sagan writes concerning new frontiers [5]:

“Just as the exploration of the Earth was being completed, we began to recognize it as one world among an uncounted multitude of others. […] Our planet and our solar system are surrounded by a new world ocean - the depths of space. It is no more impassable than the last.”

Ultimately, I read the theme of planetarian as the belief that we as a species must wisely choose how we use our technology. Will we deploy the instruments of our destruction, or do we fulfil the dreams laid out by visionaries like Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, Sagan, and the “Reverie of Humanity Spreading Its Wings Towards the Cosmos”?

[1] Clark, J. D. Ignition: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants. Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 1972
[2] http://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2012/10/14/a-man-and-an-equation/
[3] Chakrabarti, B. “One hundred and fifty years of a dreamer and fifty years of realization of his dream: Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky and the Sputnik 1.” Curr. Sci., 2007, 93, 862.
[4] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo-soyuz/
[5] Sagan, C. Pale Blue Dot: A vision of the Human Future in Space, Random House, New York, 1994.
[6] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle-mir/
[7] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/cooperation/index.html
[8] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/
[9] http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/664158main_sls_fs_master.pdf ; http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/august/nasa-completes-key-review-of-world-s-most-powerful-rocket-in-support-of-journey-to/#.VB5sK_ldXSR
[10] http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/marsconcepts2012/pdf/4315.pdf
[11] http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/scripts/pressreleasein.aspx?Sep24_2014

[JDC]

Planetarian: An Analysis (Part 3)

(continues directly from the end of Part 2)

If we keep this meaningful juxtaposition of music and story fixed firmly in our minds and accept the Christian interpretation, the rest of the novel falls into place remarkably well. To begin with, consider the setting Planetarian takes place in. The entire world has been ravaged by a “Great War” instigated by “foolish and selfish human beings.” By the Junker’s own account, “People worked so hard to slaughter each other…even when there were no humans left to fight” because they had become bent on “the internecine creed of revenge and massacre.” In this way, “The purpose of life became merely to live,” and “There was nothing left in this world but dirt immersed in poison and unspeakable ruin.”

In light of the Christian interpretation, this terrible state of affairs represents the depravity of mankind when left to its own devices, in all of its fallen sinfulness. (Not even the institution of the Church is immune to this systemic corruption, as the mere existence of the sniper nun from “Jerusalem” sadly attests.) The grim world depicted here is captured all too well in Micah 7:2-3a, “The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts the other with a net. Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well.” The fruit of mankind’s evil literally descends on people’s heads and destroys them in the form of the poisonous Rain. No one seems to have even an inkling of a better way of life, much less a means of attaining it. Indeed, in what must be the epitome of tragic absurdity, some people actively worship the very instruments of their own self-destruction (recall the Junker’s memory of the village idol made out of battle mechs). What delusion is this, that people would seek salvation from the works of their own hands, and artifacts of destruction to boot!

When the Junker, a product of this degenerate world, first meets Yumemi, her kindness, innocence, and unflagging devotion to serving others are initially dumbfounding to him, even repellent (note how at first he characterizes her smile as “childish” and her selfless behavior as “deranged”). As time goes on, however, he begins to describe her in much more generous terms—her smile becomes “pure,” “innocent,” “gentle,” “so gentle that even the angels would covet it,” and she herself is a “treasure.”

The Junker himself changes dramatically too. Where his mind was once “an empty desert, a clattering graveyard of hollow sounds,” after meeting Yumemi, “grains of stardust were shining like a stain undying on an imperishably dark heart of hearts that had long been without a single decent thought.” At the end of the novel he drops his grenade launcher in a puddle and leaves it behind, abandoning his old life as a Junker altogether: “I walked forth into this fractured world, yet my thoughts were forever of the sky.” Following the Christian interpretation, it would seem as though the Junker underwent some sort of miraculous “conversion,” but what was it that inspired him? Taking a closer look at Yumemi’s character will help us answer this question.

Yumemi is, first and foremost, completely and selflessly devoted to serving others, unceasingly kind and gentle, to use the Junker’s own words. This brings to mind what Jesus says about himself in Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” as well as what Jesus tells his disciples in Mark 9:35 when they are arguing over which of them is the greatest: “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” Toward the end of the story, Yumemi’s lack of interest in a Heaven of self-fulfillment and her prayer that Heaven not be torn in two so that she can serve everyone for eternity is a perfect model of this Christian calling, as well as the Christian hope for life after Christ’s return, when we will serve God and worship him for eternity. Yet despite Yumemi’s kindness and eagerness to serve, the Junker initially finds her behavior totally off-putting, just as his older friend did. Recall how the older man told the Junker, with great distaste, that Yumemi was “not a thing that is of this world,” a turn of phrase reminiscent of what Jesus says about Christians in John 17:16, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of it.”

Within the immediate context of the story, Yumemi is not of this world in a very noticeable sense: she’s got her head in the stars! The novel begins with her issuing a call for people to come to the planetarium, it ends the exact same way, and in between she regularly practices her invitation so she can do it well when customers come. What are we to make of her singular devotion to the stars and her “utmost and terribly genuine pride” in calling people to them? Keeping in mind the Christian interpretation, as well as the Junker’s first impression of the planetarium as a place of worship, it could be said that what Yumemi wishes so dearly to show people the glory and wonder of is more than just the heavens, but Heaven and the God who reigns there. In this vein, her other prayer (apart from the one that Heaven not be torn in two) that she offers during the commemorative projection is that people would never forget the stars (God), even when they are in the dark and can no longer see.

I began this analysis by asking, why is Planetarian so touching? In light of all I have said, my answer is simply this: how can we not be moved by such a selfless sacrifice made by one who is pure, gentle, kind, and blameless? In Yumemi these traits are striking, but ultimately not as impressive as they could be for the simple reason that she was “programmed to act that way from the start,” as the Junker points out. Yet despite her overtly robotic qualities, she amazingly approximates true humanity (without matching it perfectly) simply by serving and “dying” selflessly, akin to Jesus’ own selfless death on the cross. To complete the analogy, the story even holds out the possibility of Yumemi experiencing future “resurrection” when she gives the Junker her memory card (i.e., her “soul”) so that it can be placed into a new body.

In closing, consider the opening words from “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” the name of which is deliberately invoked in the novel’s ending:

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!

Yumemi directed the Junker’s thoughts to God by asking him (twice!) if he ever prayed to God, which is precisely what this hymn is all about, and she devoted her existence to inviting people to come be in the presence of “the twinkling of eternity that will never fade, no matter what.” Whether the reader heeds her exhortation or not is a matter of personal discretion.

[Naoki_Saten]

Those are some impressive interpretations, I must say. I myself (being an atheist) didn’t notice all that religious symbolism. And it’s hard to add anything to it after all the walls of text.

Therefore, I’d like us to discuss a different topic of Planetarian. This topic has appeared in many other works of fiction. It’s the question “How human can robots be?”, or in general “What does it take for something or someone to become human?”

We seem to pretty much all agree that Yumemi is human. But where would you draw the line? What are the requirements of an entity to be considered human?
Does it have to look human to a certain degree? Does it need to have a certain level of intelligence? Is a ‘soul’ or a ‘heart’ required (and how exactly would you define those)? The capability of feeling and expressing emotion?

[JDC]

Not to be contrary, but I actually don’t think it’s too controversial to say that Yumemi is not human, even if she approximates human behavior in many ways. Moreover, I don’t think it’s even really a close call: there are multiple robots in fiction who blur the line between robot and human far more than Yumemi does. As I mentioned briefly above, the novel repeatedly draws attention to the ways Yumemi falls short of being human, most notably her inability to assimilate new information. Additionally, while she may seem to display a variety of emotions and personality tics, the Junker himself notes that she was programmed that way.

In short, Yumemi’s failure to at least match the capability of human intelligence alone marks her as not human, but I would say her pre-programmed nature does so as well. Of course, whether one agrees with this or not has everything to do with how one defines humanity, which itself quickly becomes a religious question (even unbelief in religion is an opinion about religion).

[Bonecuss]

I think she is definitely sentient enough in areas to be considered at least a person, not a human.

[Kanon]

I’m pretty sure somewhere on this site I can be found saying something to the effect of ‘to hell with you if you even consider not thinking of her as ‘human’’
She is a wonderful person, who gives a damn how she got there.