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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That was the biggest unanswered question of the podcast. I always assumed that the older junker had encountered a robot of the same sort before. It could not be Yumemi because the junker was the first person in the almost 30 years and also the junker mentions that he knows which sarcophagus cities he and his older buddy have already raided. He wouldn’t go back to a place the old junker already went to.
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The old junker said “not to get involved with robots” because they “bring nothing but trouble”, which in my opinion can be interpreted in two ways
From the beginning, Mr. Customer talks about different kinds of war machines (robots), describing his encounter with one and how he barely escaped it. In this occasion, he remembers what the old junker said to him about robots. The robots who are still alive at this point are mostly military weapons, which either are (possibly) under control by warmongers or independent parties, or just gone into auto mode altogether like the Crab.
We now come to think that the robots are not to be trusted, and this reflects on Mr. Customer’s very first attitude towards Yumemi. It was an attitude which melted quickly due to Yumemi’s personality, but his first reaction was of distrust more than anything else.
I personally believe this is most realistically the interpretation the old junker was trying to convey: he could have met some killer robot and barely escaped just like Mr. Customer, and thus labeled robots as “troublesome”.
Fast forward towards the end of the game. Mr. Customer is crying over Yumemi’s body, and he remembers the old junker’s words: Mr. Customer got involved with a robot, and now he’s out in the open, with anti-personnel machines and possibly warmongers about to rain hell on him.
She brought him almost nothing but trouble.
Except he’s fine with that, because Yumemi had given him back his humanity.
It’s very poetic how the perspective shifts, and how the irony marks the contrast between the start and the end of the story.
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Narcissu is a great VN you are right and 1 & 2 are free on steam. But if you like it i recommend Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project with the season pass. It cost 30 euro but it has some very nice short storys or better 4 new scenarios in the series. @cjlim2007 And for planetarian…i have bought planetarian HD in this years sale and the CGs are very good in high definition.
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On the “planetarian Analog Collector’s Edition” (KSLA-0142) there is track 8, which is titled “SecretVoice” and on “planetarian Analog Collector’s Edition Hi-Resolution Data Disc” (KSLC-0018) Side B - Track 4 it is titled " ゆめみセリフ", which loosely translated means “Yumemi’s speech”.
Does anybody know what the speech is about? Just curious, Thanks.
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Wild guess, but it could be referring to her planetarium conference?
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Planetarian is probably one of the most beautiful novel I have ever read ! The projection scene and Yumemi becoming more likeable through the story are the best parts for me and I adore " Gentle Jena "
. I took 4 hours to read it and it was probably enough but I would have liked to know more about the universe of Planetarian. It wasn’t as sad as Clannad or Little busters but the feels were here and it was really refreshing. I think the message of the story is pretty similar to Rewrite’s
( reach the space in order to let life survives)
but it was easier to understand there. Reading it after Harmonia I liked Planetarian as much as its successor. I recommend it for every person who haven’t read it yet ! 
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I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner… This will probably be the first of many of my posts on planetarian topics. Ever since I listened to the podcast many years ago I’ve always wanted to explore more of the Christian themes of planetarian because the story itself was a big reason why I came back to faith in the first place. Looking back at all the posts here, I am reminded that there was already a ton of analysis regarding the Christian themes here but I know that there is so much more to explore so I will be doing so in probably all my posts for this series. So here is part one out of who even knows anyways. It’s always possible that I edit these posts upon doing more research but feel free to ask questions and stuff.
The first topic I want to address is the style of the ending. Some of this stuff has already been discussed before, but I want to put my spin on it because I think Suzumoto is a genius writer whether he intended this stuff or not. So people have talked about how the ending is different from what you would expect from a Key work, especially if you put aside Hoshi no Hito for now. This ending is probably intentional to emphasize how the Junker has changed, even if the catalyst for that change is no longer alive. But I want to relate this to the Bible because I’ve been reading a lot of that lately.
So you may or may not be familiar with the fact that there are four books of the Bible that tell the story of Jesus Christ. These are the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For the most part, they tell the same story but from different perspectives and for different audiences. All of them talk about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. That’s cool and all but one of them in particular, I believe, is similar to how the ending of Planetarian is written. Previous analysis above has established essentially that Yumemi parallels Jesus. At the end of Planetarian though, Yumemi doesn’t come back after death, so are we missing out on the resurrection aspect? Is Suzumoto’s interpretation of the gospel just fricken wrong? Actually this is probably just a question I’ve thought about but I’ve concluded that no, its not. Interestingly, the gospel of Mark is the only gospel doesn’t explicitly say that anyone has seen the resurrected Jesus. Instead, the last chapter, chapter 16 depicts two of his followers discovering an empty tomb with an angel telling them that Jesus is risen. In most versions of the Bible starting from verse 9, there’s a little note that says, “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include verse 9 to 20.” Verses 9 to 20 which supposedly are not in the earliest manuscripts detail the resurrection stories present in the other gospels, specifically about Jesus’ appearance to his disciples. So basically at the end of Mark, you get this kind of cut off point where you don’t have confirmation about the biggest question of all time because that’s for you to decide. If you believe that Jesus has indeed risen, then the logical answer is to follow him as he truly conquered death. If you adamantly believe that the resurrection is not true, then Christianity as a whole has no value in your life at all. If you’re unsure, then you can read the rest of the Bible.
As this question relates to Planetarian, we too are left with a similar question of whether or not Yumemi lives or dies. It’s not so much whether she physically lives or dies, but rather if she lives in our hearts. The junker’s answer in this case is of course, yes. At the end, he carefully removes her memory card, placing it in his waterproof container which stores his most precious treasure, and puts it in a place that physically is the closest to his heart that he can put it.
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Guess I should share this here! I recently wrote a review of planetarian for Vooks, a Nintendo news site. It’s a pretty surface level review of the story but I didn’t want to spoil it too heavily for new readers! It was an interesting experiment in trying to sell a visual novel to people who probably wouldn’t otherwise care about it.
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Ah, so I haven’t gotten to analyze this aspect quite yet but I’ve been kinda curious if anyone thinks this is important. I still hope people respond to my last post… but anyways here’s the question. So one person in this topic, @Wizzerd, commented about how the snow coming back at the end signifies that the seasons are changing which also reflects the Junker’s change in his heart. However, I feel like there may be more meaning than just that in the context of the planetarian story. We know that one of the side stories is named Snow Globe so I feel like the snow at the end has to have more meaning. So what do you all think that is? I’ll probably give my take on this question in a week or so.
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In Hoshi no Hito, the rain has been replaced with snow as well.
Perhaps the Junker surviving and Yumemi persisting through the memory card is supposed to be foreshadowing for Hoshi no Hito as well? That those dreams of stars haven’t gone away and indeed do not go away because someone is there to pass on the art even after the Junker passes on? The snow globes were a way to make sure folks remembered the planetarium, so it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to think of the snow as an in-universe symbol to remember the stars by, would it?
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Well, I guess here’s my take on it…
Snow can have a lot of different interpretations in a story. My first idea and interpretation of the snow at the end of the VN is something like it represents the ‘death’ of Yumemi. Well, according to my research, snow can portray or can link to ‘sadness, death and hardships’ so I thought that I can connect it with the story. But it’s not that negative at all. While it does means ‘death’ it can also means as ‘clean, new beginning’, so we can add the idea of Junker’s change of heart as a sign of a ‘new beginning’ after Yumemi’s death.
So the snow for me in the end means is the influence of Yumemi’s death to Junker, and the start of his clean, new beginning as a different person.
If we add the idea of Hoshi no Hito, it really does make sense. Like I said earlier, it also portrays ‘hardships and sadness’ and I think it fits with the story.
Also, snow can also be interpreted as ‘purity or innocence’.
Okay, another thing to add about the "A Snow Globe"
I guess this is my another interpretation:
One interesting thing I see is how they described the snow globe, I’ll quote it here:
The snow inside it just goes round and round in the same place, never stopping…
A promise that goes round and round inside that tiny memory card, huh…
This is the one of the few things that stood out to me the most. Aside from the fact that it was used as a souvenir for the planetarium plus connecting it to the previous post that was stated above earlier which is really a great point, I think I can add more to that.
The snow inside the globe and the snow globe itself represents the memory card and the promises and memories stored inside of it. It just stays in one place, it never fades or leaves inside the globe. We can relate this to the promise that the Junker and Yumemi made at the end, and the plot of Hoshi no Hito, or actually, even from the very beginning. Yumemi’s promise to the staff plus the events of A Snow Globe, I think the connection of snow globe does make sense in the overall story… It’s like this memory card and the snow globe are more than just things, it means ‘promises and memories’ and making a connection between the two is really beautiful, at least that’s how I see it.
I hope I make sense…
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