A post was merged into an existing topic: CLANNAD - General Discussion
So this is my first time reading a Key novel and let me start off by saying i was not prepared for the feels. Good grief was that a sad ending. I went into this with zero expectations (as you should) and was delighted by the presentation of Planetarian’s best girl Yumemi (she’s such a sweet cinnamon roll) and the dialogue between Yumemi and Mr Customer was such a delight to read. The contrast between the two, with Mr Customer representing a cold unfeeling and chaotic new world and Yumemi representing a bright cheerful orderly ancient one was brilliantly executed. I couldn’t help but feel like this screencap illustrated their relationship pretty succinctly:
Even when he has someone right in front of him to talk to, he detests the idea of conversation, almost as though he is afraid of showing the weakness that would kill him outside of the planetarium’s relative safety. Having grown up during the post-apocalypse Mr Customer has a hard time letting go of the traditions that have kept him alive this long. Speaking of which:
Part of the dialogue of this story is the difference between machine and man, characterized between the relationships between Mr Customer and Yumemi, as well as the Fiddler Crab’s actions towards the end of the story. The actions of both machines presented are against their programming, both have gained a level of sentience after years of independent activity. The machines of this new era are driven by a unique desire, and one that is completely and utterly ‘human’. The Crab Fiddler seems to most accurately represent Mr Customer as we see him at the beginning of the novel, concerned only with its own survival, while Yumemi is from the very beginning the most relatable thing on screen. She’s sassy, she jokes a lot, she’s completely adorable. Even when she acts in line with her robotic nature it’s endearing. The bouquet in particular I feel is telling of her desire to prove that she is worth existing, seeing the act of pushing the ‘bouquet of flowers’ onto Mr Customer as a way of proving that she mattered, that she fulfilled her desire to help humans, and at the very end of the novel to prove that she is not ‘broken’ and she will be remembered by Mr Customer.
Speaking of gifts, I found the discussion of gods and heaven to be very interesting. There is an ongoing narrative which is first begun by Yumemi about ‘heaven’ and how she chooses to believe in a robot heaven, something which Mr Customer speculates was a cruel joke by her human colleagues, I’m not so sure about that given the recordings we’re shown at the end, however. Point is Yumemi believes that once she has ceased to function she will transition to a perfect place where all of the hardships she has endured will be replaced and everyone will be happy. Typically heaven as a religious concept is a reward for good deeds and a lack of ‘sin’ which Yumemi certainly seems to be striving for. Mr Customer on the other hand, is always in search of strong drink and cigarettes:
Both characters have very different opinions of what the perfect world is, one much more simplistic (being from a world which just had its civilisation rating reset back down to zero this doesn’t surprise me) and the other wishing upon a star for something that will be everlasting, Yumemi hopes that one day the entire broken world will be replaced by something pure though she herself lacks any power to bring that future about. Which of course brings me right to the end, in a slightly cheesy and yet incredibly powerful moment Yumemi’s memory is literally gifted to Mr Customer and it replaces the space his cigarettes once stood in. The Recordings serve as a catalyst to bring us to this incredibly emotional climax where mr Customer takes everything he’s learned from Yumemi, accepts not a bouquet that is quote “just a little broken” but the entire life of this poor sweet robot who he’d only known for a few days.
I haven’t read through the posts above mine yet (I want to keep my impressions as fresh as possible) but i do wonder about the ending. It seems to imply by the dropping of the grenade launcher that Mr Customer is giving up his life at the end there, although I’m not really sure why. I suppose Yumemi as the symbol of hope being snuffed out really must have lead to a break down of his psyche, maybe if her memory card had been orange it would have made all the difference?
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That’s more or less it. You could also argue that he no longer needs the grenade launcher since he now has Yumemi’s memories, which represent the innocent hope for a perfect world where no grenade launchers are needed, but ultimately, the easy reading is that the Junker accepted his death and is prepared to depart to a better life with newfound knowledge for him.
Keep in mind though, that Planetarian also has the Hoshi no Hito story and a couple of other drama CDs which got translated to English by Helios. I definitely recommend checking them out to have a more deep understanding of the world that surrounds these two protagonists.
Anyway, the analysis was pretty good, but there’s a certain sentence that caught my eye:
Sure, the Junker receiving Yumemi’s memories is important, but I failed to see which place it was occupying. The two different ways of facing life in that world being represented by those items as you described earlier are an amazing metaphor that I surprisingly failed to realize up until now. Good eye having spotted that.
To be honest, your post was so good that now I’m looking forward to you reading the whole topic (or a significant part of it) and giving your impressions and insights on some of the other forumer’s thoughts and ideas.
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Thanks a bunch for the response and the encouragement! I’ve read a little bit of what’s here but I won’t be able to give it a proper crack until tomorrow. I also would like to listen to the podcast (the very first of the site as I understand it) before updating my thoughts here.
Yeah I feel like the ambiguous ending is intentional, and even though I think it’s less likely to be the case given what we know of his character I hope Mr Customer decided to change his line of work and become a doctor or something. He’s filled with so many beautiful hopeful thoughts right up until the final scene that it just breaks my heart. I noticed our wonderful leader @Aspirety has uploaded some of the drama CDs and posted them on the steam community, mayhaps I will check those out too if I can squeeze them in .
That’s very interesting, I’m sure I’ve missed some pretty significant stuff but to me the metaphor of placing the memory chip into the cigarette case was so important, it was such a solid metaphor for Mr Customer’s entire character arc for the story and I’m a sucker for that sort of thing. That moment was what made the ending for me.
And can I just say your profile picture is incredibly distracting and I love it <3
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Sorry, I didn’t reupload anything, we only provided translations for Jerusalem and Tircis & Aminte
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Before I comment on other’s posts (good gravy there are some really extensive ones here i love it!) I wanted to clarify the last sentence of my original post, because it doesn’t seem to be something others have written about yet and apparently orange is an important color in other Key works, leading to rumors that i may have in fact cheated or worse, been spoiled! This injustice shall not stand!
It was something that stood out to me fairly early on, the entire planetarium is bathed in a soft hazy orange color. The seats are this color, the backdrop of the strong metal projector itself is this color, and it is described as being ‘frail and harmless’ by Mr Customer.
This immediately indicated to me that I should be looking for other soft orange-colored objects that fit that specification, and, well,
The info ribbon, the gem in the center of her chest, the flower and linings on the lower part of her dress, and lastly the earpiece that she uses to connect with the projector through its cable, are all a similar color. This leads me to believe that the hazy orange color is associated with both the planetarium and its sole denizen. The relationship between Jena and Yumemi is represented by both the literal cable along with her dependency on a battery as a power source and the tale which she tells of the tragic heroine trapped for all eternity, the hope that someone, anyone, will come to the planetarium to help her. So from this, I extrapolate that this color is symbolic of the ‘fragile hope’ which Yumemi and the planetarium represent in the world, they are a sole, temporary safe haven for Mr Customer (no I won’t stop calling him that) the orange light is welcoming and in terms of visual design helps to put the reader’s mind at ease while they read. The entire space has a feel to it not dissimilar to the viewing of old photos like this one:
Visually cementing the planetarium as a thing of the past, something that we reminisce about but can never truly obtain. The viewer that the images are displayed in also encourages this mentality, it’s almost like we’re viewing the story through a projector ourselves. Yumemi is the only thing that isn’t constrained by the image box, the only possible thing in the world that can reach out to her audience.
Oh would you look at that, she’s literally the only thing that can reach us in this scene and her orange and yellow bits are lit up like a christmas tree. She is a single, hopeful, selfless being in a broken world filled with darkness.
Just a final piece of visual evidence, the object Yumemi uses to try and pass the hope torch on to Mr Customer is her ‘bouquet’ an object that despite not being organic flowers has much more meaning (more commentary on machine vs organic human but I’ll get to that later). There’s a bunch of orange here too, particularly the object most closely resembling an organic flower on the right there, the object that looks strikingly similar to the flower that’s on her dress that is also orange. Any questions? 
In Japanese culture orange is symbolic of love and happiness. It conveys a sense of peace and nostalgia through its context in the novel. It’s used to tie the bouquet and Yumemi and Jena and the planetarium as a whole into this one big orange ball in a world of grey and blue (colors associated with technology and progress). Orange represents the world that humanity left behind, and a world that could be. In that last sentence of my post I joked that if the memory card had only been of the same color it might have compelled him to hold onto it tighter and to seek a return to the old world, one that Yumemi dreams of and he can only dare hope for.
UPDATE: Well it’s looking like my next segment will be about the religious subtext of the game, @JDC has done some pretty thorough breakdowns of the story from a Christian perspective and I’m interested to see what extra meaning I can add on three years down the line. I lean strongly towards atheism myself but grew up in a Christian household so this should be interesting.
I’ve read them all! cackles maniacally I have reached the end of your posts and now may comment at my will. I’ll try and keep things chronological as much as I can. From the top! 
A lot of you commented on the use of Christian symbolism in the story, I’ll be honest I was more paying attention to the general theme of religion as an ultimate happiness in life but @JDC broke things down in an extremely thorough way, in particular the discussion of prayer and worship surrounding Jena and then their follow-through with the description of Yumemi as a ‘priestess’, implying that she is here to protect Jena and the planetarium, and to spread the word of her god. I think it’s pretty obvious given the sheer amount of religious symbolism that the novel is preaching a Christian message. i think Yerian’s observation in particular gives the world a lot of context.
The rain is an allusion to the story of Noah’s Ark as @Mogaoscar pointed out, in which all of the sinful humans of the world are washed away and only a handful of blameless (meek) individuals are left behind to inherit the earth. It is the weight of humanity’s sins, plain and simple, and is a tragedy that we have brought upon ourselves in this dystopian future. In the Bible this sin is irredeemable except for the sacrifice of God’s son, Jesus Christ, and for all intents it seems Yumemi fits this role perfectly. She has no sin thus the rain does not harm her and at the end of the novel she gives up her life so that Mr Customer can be absolved and ‘resurrected following his three days of penance in the prison of grease which I’m 99% certain is an allusion to Purgatory, mirroring Jesus’ three days of combat with the Devil after he was killed on the Cross. The time spent in labor and then the savior’s sacrifice is what will purge the ‘sin’ from Mr Customer’s soul and send him on a path of redemption.
Speaking of sin, I unfortunately didn’t take a screenshot of it but there were definitely mentions of the planetarium as a ‘garden’, which once again seems to reference Biblical stories, this time the Garden of Eden. The moral of temptation is less prevalent here but it seems to reinforce the fact that the building, like Yumemi, is sinless. They are both unmarked by the sin of humanity, oblivious to the terrible things which brought about the destruction of their world. As a ‘sinless’ being who has not eaten of the apple of knowledge and has not been ejected from the great Garden of Eden surely she of all people is eligible for a place in heaven?
Heaven in any religion is ultimately a reward for following the beliefs of the creed. This typically involves doing good deeds and I have spoken with many people of Christian belief who believe that without religion and without God guiding us towards a proper morality we wouldn’t have one, we would cease all civilization and become lawless fools. This is represented by Mr Customer, who is tainted with sin (he doesn’t think twice about killing fellow humans and taking their car afterwards, he doesn’t want to communicate with yumemi on first greeting her, viewing her happiness and lawfulness as annoying) whereas Yumemi occupies a religious status, she follows her religion (her programming) and is promised by her fellow staff members a place in ‘robot heaven’ as a reward.
And here we come to the discussion of sentience, or ‘sapience’ as @VyseGolbez defines it. Yumemi herself denies that anything is wrong with the world and at the very end of the novel it’s revealed that she has known for a long time that everything. All of her data pointed to the fact that humans had abandoned her, that no one would ever come to the planetarium again, and yet she stayed waiting, hoping for someone to show up. She followed her ‘creed’ perfectly by protecting Mr Customer from the Fiddler Crab and by the doctrine she should be able to reach a heaven at the end of the novel.
Wizzerd provides an excellent question, does Yumemi go to heaven? Is she rewarded for her hard work and reach the promised land? To me this is a very fundamental question pertaining to the foundation of religion, what gives a human a soul? What is it about the human that separates it from animals, from life that they have created with their own hands? If humans can go to heaven why can’t other lifeforms? The answer is left ambiguous at the end but i believe that @VyseGolbez is on the right track
Yumemi frequently disobeys orders, deciding for herself which things that Mr Customer tells her are important. She follows her ‘prime directive’ (to protect humans) at the end but it’s out of genuine care for the person who fixed her Jena. The holographic projections at the end prove that not only does she remember the kindness that others have shown to her, but she is affected by it. Her programming, like the Crab’s, has changed over time. her endless repetition of her key phrases inviting people to visit the planetarium are more a desperate plea than a formal greeting. Appearances can be deceiving in this novel.
Oh, the other thing I’d like to do is answer @Yerian’s question.
Who is the Planetarian?
Honestly, it’s gotta be both. The full title is Planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~ and I believe that 'planet is referring to both the literal planet of Earth and the self-contained space (heh) within the planetarium. In this way the planetarian is both someone who is in reverie (a state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts; a daydream) about the planet. At the beginning of the story this absolutely has to be yumemi, but as the orange bouquet of hope is passed to Mr Customer their role switch, Yumemi is crushed by the world after being exposed to sin and Mr Customer becomes the new planetarian, he now carries aloft the torch of hope, burning a bright orange.
Speaking of which I would like to thank HeliosAlpha for posting this wonderful image of Yumemi holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers with a large orange bow wrapped around it.
Is the sun setting or rising? It’s difficult to tell~
Also @HeliosAlpha your entire post on the significance of the term ‘broken’ was just magnificent. I believe it’s the small details that make a piece of media great, and your analysis of the word is just too beautiful. if I could give you more than one 
I would. Seriously everyone should go read that post.
Just, man, keep going it’s brilliant.
I would be remiss to avoid commenting on Sir @Mogaoscar’s tale, one of tragedy and heroism, of fighting against authority, of hope and the stars. I thought it was an excellent story and really highlighted the way that media can affect an individual, and also is an excellent example of human’s tendency to self-narrate their lives.
As strange as it may sound, this is the past that stood out the most to me. I myself have never been a confident note-taker. In class, while reading literature, while crafting theories, wherever i should be writing things down to remember them, i wasn’t. But then I realized all you have to do is try. Practice makes perfect after all, and i tell this to every single person telling me “I wouldn;t be very good at writing, I’m not creative enough” or “I don’t want to write an essay from x book because there’s not much to talk about” or even “WHAT IF I GET THE AN ANALYSIS WRONG!?” Quite frankly I want as many people expressing their thoughts as possible, I talked about this over on Rokkenjima.org in the third Higanbana podcast (shameless plug) but i fundamentally believe that it is incredibly important for everyone to have their say and that everyone’s perspective is important. It doesn’t matter the reason why you don’t want to express their opinion, throw it out the window because your own analyses is important to a diverse discussion.
Well, I have some other thoughts in my google doc but they’re kinda disjointed and I’m not sure if I can fit them in here without just slapping them on the end. So you know what? I’m just gonna link it down here if anyone wants to take a looksie.
If anything catches your eye feel free to respond or message me or whatever you’d like, maybe even throw some comments in the doc in different colored text maybe orange? This file will serve as my own memory of my time with Planetarian so feel free to contribute as you like. 
EDIT UNO: Oh my goodness I missed something else amazing. Yumemi is a ‘Bargain Edition’ model. You know, like when you have some kind of transaction that needs to occur and you don’t have anything to offer, so you offer up something else instead? Even more evidence that Yumemi is a Christ-figure. She’s been bargained away for Mr Customer’s absolvement of sin in the same way Jesus died for humanity’s sins. There’s just too many allusions here how did I miss this!?!?
EDIT DOS: Saul (who later became Paul) journeyed for three days in the bible story after being blinded by God’s presence on the road. my earlier note about Mr Customer’s labor in a ‘prison of grease’ more likely is a reference to Saul’s blind state at the time, and even Mr Customer’s lack of food by the end mirrors Saul’s experience:
As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.
— Acts 9:3–9, NIV
So Yumemi is Jesus, Mr Customer is Saul before he is transformed into Paul by his encounter on the road with Jesus, he even ‘persecutes’ Yumemi up until his transformation in the same way Saul did before being shown the love that she offered him, and afterwards he becomes her ‘apostle’ to spread her word. I’m growing more confident that Mr Customer lives through the ending based on the religious context, though unfortunately this will probably lead to a martyring of some kind, which is the best guess historians have of how Paul the Apostle died in the end. He even lays down his grenade launcher, the tool he was using to threaten Yumemi in the very beginning, the persecutor has changed his ways and now goes to spread the good word. He can even preach a similar message to Paul, that Yumemi will return one day because he has her memory card. What a damn clever analogy. Planetarian is pretty sneaky for such a short story.
EDIT TRES: Well I can’t promise this will be the last one, but I looked up the flower shape that’s on Yumemi’s uniform and this was the first thing that popped up:
This orange star shaped flower is called (wait for it) THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. I cannot handle the level of detail put into this. The entire story is soaked in biblical references.
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I find it interesting you felt it was too short, because I felt it was too long. The pacing of the anime felt a lot smoother and less tedious to me.
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I see this topic has 197 comments so it will be quite hard to find the answer I thinks so I will just ask it now.
First did you cry when you read it? And on what kind of scale? I found the Clannad anime kinda sad but I didnt cry or anything like that. On the other hand, I cried at the ending of AB and cried like 3/4 times while watching LB Refrain. Is it somewhere between AB and LB? Or maybe between some other anime? I know this is very subjective but any opinion will probably do.
2 is there an anime? And should I watch it or should I just read the VN?
3 how long does the VN take for a slow reader like me? I heard it is short but not sure if I can bring up the motivation if it takes too long.
4do you think it is something everyone should have read/watched?
Thank you very much in advance and sorry for my laziness '
Also need to post some stuff and participate in this community so that is also reason why I am asking
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The reason why I love planetarian is because all of the rhetorical choices feel intentional. For example, the repair seems to be dragged on while the ending is quick, why? The junker has been living most of his life with the threat of death always looming above him. But then, he finds this relic of the past, this planetarium, untouched by the apocalypse aside from the fact that there is no one else there. He is given a time to just chill out a little, he doesn’t need to be on edge the whole time although there’s still the sense of urgency because of his waning rations. Once the power runs out, the reader is reminded that you’re in a world that ended already. And so he’s basically dumped back into this cruel world, but now with a newfound hope.
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I didn’t. I did however find Clannad sad when I first read it, and I didn’t find AB sad at all, so we clearly have different reactions.
There’s an anime. The VN is more immersive, but you may as well just watch it if you’re easily bored. The anime doesn’t miss much, and it adds/restructures a bit of the story in a way I’d praise.
For a slow reader… Maybe four or five hours? It depends how engaged you get with it. If the chill atmosphere and the calming rain sfx puts you to sleep, it’ll take longer.
Nah, it’s nothing special. If you like Key, or robots, or post apocalypse stories, it’s probably worth trying at least.
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Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts! I definitely think your criticisms of the novel have grounding, I don’t think that the novel is perfect myself, even if I did enjoy my time with it immensely. It seems to be a common criticism that the story was too short and that we didn’t get enough time with the characters to really understand them, personally I thought their characterisation was very to the point, the novel didn’t waste my time at all, I thought that Yumemi in particular was very subtle with the way she was written, flitting between being very strict and very fluid about the way she carried about her duties, and her attitude towards the world slowly changing from “I will call the other humans for help” to “You can help” to “I will help” Yumemi slowly gains agency through the story and I felt compelled by her struggle.
I definitely wouldn’t give the story a 10/10, as enjoyable as it was to unpack I, well, didn’t feel like I wanted to change my life after reading it. the dialogue about machine vs human is one echoed in plenty of cyberpunk fiction like Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, and Observer (anime, movie and video game respectively) so although I found the religious parable to be very interesting and skillfully woven, after reflecting I’m not sure what the story actually taught me, it made me think sure but I’m not sure what I can take from this and apply to my life with conviction other than ‘don’t forget to hope in dire circumstances’ but hey, that’s just me.
Thank you very much for calling him that, it really is the only appropriate title for him I only wish others could see this 
The story is very intentionally paced I think, there were times when I was alt-tabbing to take notes that I would end up just sitting and thinking for a good 15 minutes listening to the soundtrack, conversely during the more urgent scenes I wouldn’t take nearly as many. Planetarian is designed for you to take your time with it and just observe this other world so close yet so far away from your own.
OH GOD YES. I’m terribly emotional when reading tragic stories like this, there were a few cracks in the dam wall by the halfway point (the projector scene when I realised there would be no more recharge for Yumemi) and then the floodgates were opened with the ‘broken’ speech, and there a secondary gate had to be released when she repeated her “won’t you come to the planetarium?” speech. It was all too much for me.
It took me 4 and a bit hours as a fast reader who takes a lot of notes at the same time, so 5 hours is a good estimate if you’re a tad on the slow side.
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I guess you could say she’s a… hoshino yumemi! (Reverie of a star)
Yes I came in here just to make that joke
But wow, great discussion from you guys! I’m honestly all discussed out of planetarian so I no longer have much to contribute, but it’s so refreshing to see all this analysis over the years. The colors! The contrast! The religious symbolism! If anything, the fact that we can discuss this game over a decade after its release speaks to its timelessness.
Makes me wonder what our perspective on this game will be once we actually have assistant robots in the world.
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Just finished the visual novel, which I bought recently, and I have to say that I am impressed by how good the story is set in a short timeline using only simple graphical effects compared to other visual novels out there which are fully animated but do not have a good plot.
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You should try out Narcissu. It’s free, and it’s also a decision-less game with no animation. It doesn’t even have sprites!
It’s a great VN, everyone should read it.
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Looking at the plot of the story, it sort of remembers me of the visual novel kana: imouto, thanks for the tip, will try it out later.
I read Planetarian a few days ago, and overall, I think that its pretty good. I enjoyed learning about Yumemi and the planetarium. Despite it being very short, it was still able to have a large emotional impact on me. I didn’t think that I would be holding back tears for twenty minutes. The art was nice and the music was great. The only complaint I have with the game is that I think it would have been nice to learn a little bit more about the experiences that the Junker had while traveling around.
Most of the point behind this is precisely that he had none besides being what he is, a Junker, though. His life was basically geared towards what he’d been taught regarding pure survival in the current world, and if his behaviour is anything to go by he’d rarely had time to focus on anything other than that or addictive substances (alcohol and cigarettes). I think it’s better that way than to tackle on a dramatic backstory for the sake of it.
That’s what makes the difference between his life before and after meeting Yumemi, because he was forced to stay with her and see his view on the world change according to her unwavering optimism and carry on her hopes for the future, when others had mostly fled not long after meeting her.
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That makes a lot of sense. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I kind of just automatically assumed that he had been through some more interesting events because the story is set in a post-apocalyptic world. It never occurred to me that him going to the planetarium would be the first thing to happen to him that didn’t have to do with just surviving
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m addressing two minor things about this
If I understood correctly, Mr. Customer could have left the Planetarium at any point, and purposely decided to stay there, ignoring his original mission of scavenging for valuable things, so he wasn’t forced to stay there.
Due to the fact that Yumemi was awake just one week every year, Mr. Customer is implied to be the first person Yumemi meets after the evacuation of the city, right?
On another note, I won’t repeat what others said many times on this topic, but I just wanted to express how impressed I was for such a short story to be able to build such a deep emotional attachment to both characters. There are many media I think should take inspiration from it.
If we want to split hairs, I just wish the VA for characters other than Yumemi was done a little bit better.
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…Yup, that’s just my brain farting in how I was writing that message. My bad.
Could again be my faulty memory acting up but I do recall Junker being warned by a more experienced scavenger about a pesky robot in that city at some point? That does imply other junkers have encountered her somewhat enough to give her that reputation to be warned about to anyone thinking of scavenging the city.
Been too damn long since I last reread Planetarian
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