Just in response to the whole conversation you guys had about this in the podcast:
First of all I don’t think its necessary to look past the face value of:
- Explaining part of Junker’s past through his interaction with his old junker pal, and
- Both demonstrating how most humans left on earth thought about robots, and reminding us of the fact that literally, robots do not really fit into this post-apocalyptic world
However, if you want to look past that into the old junker’s actual interaction with the robot he met:
- We know that here were lots of sarcophagus cities, so we do not know that the one he was referring to was the one Junker ended up in.
- We also know that Yumemi was not the only robot left, as shown in Hoshi no Hito, so all the more reason to believe that the robot he met was not Yumemi
- Based on this and the fact that Yumemi had “not had a customer for almost 30 years,” we could say that this anecdote shows that: despite several bits hope, several chances that are contained in the robots, to latch on to and save the pre-apocalyptic world, man still chooses to destroy and reject life, the world, and the stars.
