Planetarian - General Discussion

[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:

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“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.

[Naoki_Saten]

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.

Is it about the part where Yumemi fails to understand her current (hopeless) situation, with the world in ruins and all?
If so, I would say that this exact trait makes her very human. It’s not so uncommon for humans to deny things that would make them despair should they acknowledge them. And humans are capable of denying reality to an extremely scary degree.
Yumemi even pointed it out herself at the end of the novel. She kept telling herself that she’s broken, fooling herself, because the painful truth was that it’s the world that’s broken, not her.

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).

Could you explain this part? I can’t really follow how intelligence is a religious question.

[JDC]

I’m sorry, I wasn’t very clear here. I wasn’t thinking of intelligence when I said that, but rather whether humans are “free.” The issue of freedom usually touches on the question of whether humans are purely physical or have a nonphysical mind or “soul” as it is often called, and this of course is a religious question.

[Naoki_Saten]

But depending on the religion, humans aren’t the only living beings that can posess a soul. Animals, and even plants are supposed to have one, too, in certain religions.
And it should be possible to believe in the existence of souls, yet not having an actual religion. Not all “belief” is a religion. For example, how do you classify people who believe in aliens?

[Takafumi]

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.

I haven’t read the ending scene in years, but from the majority of the VN it’s apparent that Yumemi is a robot who struggles to acknowledge new information, is only aware of the things she was created to do, and becomes extremely repetitive in what she does in just a few hours.
All of these could be considered human traits, but it’s fairly obvious that Yumemi’s boundaries are stricter than the average human’s.
Plus of course, she’s not a water-based oxygen breathing creature with a ToM. She’s just something built to act as a human would.

I guess personifying Yumemi as a human would be similar to giving a personality and thoughts to your pet cat They can do certain actions (and in Yumemi’s case, say certain things) but in the end the “human” part of it all is created by the human observing it.

She’s a figure that the readers can project “humanity” onto to create a contrast between the reader’s world and the world of planetarian. I think anyway~ But of course I’m sure that if I’d just come out of reading it I’d be comparing Yumemi’s actions to that of a human.

I hate to recommend something with hype, but Mother’s Rosario and Alicization from the Sword Art Online series of books talk about this topic very well. The series becomes an internal conflict for Kirito about what separates reality and artificial creation. The series isn’t finished and I never read the originals, so I can’t tell if the topic is handled well… but it’s interesting~

[Yerian]

I actually don’t think these are the right questions. To me its pretty clear that Yumemi is not human. I mean, come on, she says it at least once or twice every time she talks to Junker:

私はロボとです。
I am a robot.

Therefore, I think the question we should be asking is, "Why/How do we become so attached to something so obviously not human, something that could be so easily be replaced that we might not even notice a difference, so much so that we that we start treating it as if it were human?

So despite his proclaim dislike of planetarian, I am going to call upon the @Takafumi… oh wait he showed up while i was typing this… for he has much greater knowledge than I about a certain VN called Hatoful Boyfriend, where this topic is extremely applicable. For those of you who don’t know, Hatoful Boyfriend is an otome game where instead of human boys, you date pigeon boys. I have now heard from several places, to my original disbelief, that pigeon stories can apparently give you the same emotions that human stories can, so it would be great if the Taka could elaborate on that for us here.

[quote=“Naoki_Saten, post:51, topic:34”]
“What does it take for something or someone to become human?”
[/quote]I think we should instead ask,

What does it take for something or someone to evoke the same emotions as a human?

What sets humans apart from everything else is, 1) our intelligence, but more importantly, 2) the massive complexity of our body system and personalities, to the extent that each human is extremely unique and it is impossible for there to ever be another human that looks and acts the way they do. So,something that is obviously not a human (e.g. a robot, a pigeon) can “become human” if they become irreplaceable, if they are given some kind of personality, some quality that could never be replicated.

That means that the same is true the other way: humans who lose anything to set them apart - no accomplishments, no relationships, no reason to live - might as well not be human. The world of planetarian has turned the homo sapiens into animals (or robots). If our Junker had met another junker (with the same outlook on life and the world as our Junker had at the beginning) instead of Yumemi do you think you would have cried if that junker died? Or if Junker had refused Yumemi and didn’t change at all from the beginning, why would it be any sadder for Yumemi to die than it was for the Fiddler Crab?

Actually, Yumemi treated the Fiddler Crab as if it were just as capable of being human as she was. Junker seemed like he could almost share Yumemi’s feelings about the Fiddler Crab, thinking about how broken this world had made it. Do you think you would have felt differently about the Fiddler Crab if was in the shape of a human and spoke in human language?

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And once again, some small idea of mine has turned into a wall of text that just kept building upon its self… sigh

[Takafumi]

I have now heard from several places, to my original disbelief, that pigeon stories can apparently give you the same emotions that human stories can, so it would be great if the Taka could elaborate on that for us here.

planetarian did it much better, but yes, Hatoful projects humanity onto things that aren’t human. They are pigeons. They look like pigeons and act in ways that hint towards their pigeon nature. Yumemi is a robot. She looks like a humanoid robot and acts in ways that hints towards her robot nature.
There are a lot of similarities between the two. A sole human finds moments of silly happiness in an otherwise empty world. The happiness they find is due to the connections they make with their respective life forms. (I say life forms because Yumemi has self-sustaining processes, and those processes are capable of stopping should something go wrong - turning her into an inanimate object.)

The pigeons in Hatoful are obviously not human, but you can still easily attribute emotions to their actions. You can make out expressions on their faces. You can empathize and sympathize with them, and you can like or hate different actions they take. I think those are the main things we look for when we describe something as “human.” They are all human traits.
Moving onto another title I hate, if you’ve seen Shin Sekai Yori, you will know that the ultimate thing determining whether we see something as human or not, is whether we allow ourselves to perceive human traits within a creature.

When people criticize Hatoful for being a pigeon dating sim, I like to respond by saying “Criticizing this VN for having images of Pigeons makes you the same as the people who criticize an anime for how it’s characters are drawn.”
There are a whole bunch of examples you could make about this topic - some more taboo than others.

Yumemi may be a robot, but that doesn’t stop us from seeing the humanity within her actions. Whether that humanity is real or not doesn’t matter - what matters is that we can see that humanity. We can appreciate the things Yumemi does as if she were like any other person. That’s something that our current society’s rapidly expanding anti-discriminatory movement would take pleasure in.

It doesn’t matter if Yumemi is just a robot. She did amazing things and she had her own goals and wishes. Whether they were due to programming or not isn’t the important thing.
The Fiddler Crab may have ultimately been a mistake to go near, but as a reader, and as someone who had spent so much time with Yumemi, you surely wanted to believe that you could find humanity within that robot too.
Having a humanoid form may speed up the process of sympathizing with something, but it’s still entirely possible to see something that is obviously not human as a creature with some humanity inside it. Just look at lolcats.

[Naoki_Saten]

A random thought: Maybe you guys should be careful with defining someone who acts “as she/he was programmed” as not human based on that specific trait. Because if you do, you’re denying the humanity of a certain character of Rewrite in a certain significant route (and I’m not referring to a girl here…) ^^

Although… that, too, might result in an interesting (and maybe tiring) discussion…

[Kanon]

Jokes on you guys, Yumemi doesn’t completely even act as she was programmed.
She’s a little bit broken, even ignoring her self diagnosis to ignore the state of the world, she was already little bit broken beforehand.

“There also exists known issues with my personal information databases and my conversational subroutines. Because of them, the tendency to engage in verbose coversation without taking time into consideration has become a unique characteristic of this unit”

Before stating that ‘manager-san thought it was fuckin’ kawaii so he chose not to fix it’

So yeah, Yumemi has personality traits that developed to her personally.

[Naoki_Saten]

So yeah, Yumemi has personality traits that developed to her personally.

I’m surprised to say this but I agree with Kanon. Yumemi’s imperfection as a robot makes her more human.
For example, there’s the scene where the Junker tells Yumemi something along the lines of “This is a high-priority directive: Shut up.”
But due to her “malfunction”, Yumemi’s silence only lasted a few seconds. If she had really followed that order back then, Yumemi would be considered way less human and way less interesting as a character. What she did there was very human. Talkative people don’t shut up obediently and permanently when you tell them to.

[Yerian]

I’ve got one more religious symbol:

The very first scene (second if you include the opening “Why don’t you come to the planetarium?”) starts off with the sudden light blinding Junker. I was immediately reminded of Acts of the Apostles chapter 9:

Saint Paul, then known as Saul, was traveling to Damascus with the intent of persecuting and arresting the Christians there. As he neared his destination, suddenly a bright light from heaven surrounds him and he hears the voice of Jesus urging him to convert. Not being able to see, he follows the instructions of the voice and continues into Damascus. After three days of blindness and fasting, he is baptized and “Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again.” Saul changes his name to Paul and immediately goes out into the city and starts preaching of his new religion.

Junker’s story parallels this in several ways:

Likewise, Junker, living a life in which his sole purpose “is to merely live” is ‘blinded’ by the light and hears the voice of Yumemi, “Congratulations!” She urges him to stay and see “the starry sky.” After spending three days at the planetarium fixing Jena, Junker witnesses “the starry sky” and immediately experiences a kind of revelation, suddenly seeing the world in a whole new light. He changes his profession from Junker to planetarian, and goes out of the sarcophagus city to show the remaining people on earth “the starry sky.”

---

In typing this, I thought of one more question:

Who is the planetarian in the title?

Is it Yumemi, is it Junker, or is it both?

[Yerian]

Yumemi doesn’t completely even act as she was programmed.
[/quote][quote=“Naoki_Saten, post:63, topic:34”]
Yumemi’s imperfection as a robot makes her more human.

Just to add to this, another thing that makes Yumemi ‘human’ is the fact that she continually lied to Junker and to herself throughout the entire novel. She is always practicing her “Why don’t you come to the planetarium” speech and says over and over again “When I compare my databases, I have no choice but to believe that customers will surely come again.” But the whole time she had known that the humans were never coming back.

“Not a single person, not a single person at all, had told the truth”, and so she told herself that she must be broken. But when Junker came she realized that the thing that was broken was not her… it the whole world.

どうして… 悪てしまたのでしょう…？
"Why… did everything break…?