Planetarian - General Discussion

Key Discussion
#61

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.

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#62

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.

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#63

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?

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#64

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…?

#65

As the bookclub draws to a close, I though I would just throw out some in-game and out-of-game facts and statistics:

  • In-game
  • According to Yumemi’s internal clock, which says it has been 29 years and 81 day since a customer has come, the “about 10,000 days later” is 10,673 days
  • According to Junker, the population of Earth had been cut in half every year since the outbreak of the the Great War. If that actually continued for all 30 years, even if the population when the war started was double the population of the our earth (one of the causes of the war was overpopulation), there would only have been about 13 people left on Earth at the time of the story.
  • Out-of-game
  • On default auto-mode (.07 sec per character, .03 min), the novel takes 4 hours and 40 minutes to complete. this reflects the time it would take to be read out loud at a normal pace.
  • Flowercrest Department Store is based on the real Matsubishi Department Store of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka in Japan, although the planetarium on the rooftop is fictitious.
  • Jena is a manufacturing city in Germany, specializing in precision machinery, pharmaceuticals, optics and photographic equipment, and is home to the famous Zeiss optics plant. In 1926, the world’s first modern planetarium was built by the Zeiss company in the Damenviertel district of the town.
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#66

I must read through all this for tomorrow. :stuck_out_tongue:

However, I needed to stop by and share that Winter’s Tale is by far the god track of this VN to me. It’s absolutely gorgeous, melancholic, bittersweet and humbling all the same. It’s incredible when paired with the ideas of dreams, beliefs and closure, and just the neverending questions life poses to us as small specks in this infinite world and how it’s both sad and incomprehensibly beautiful.

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#67

The bookclub is now (officially) over. But the podcast recording is rescheduled for a week from now, so if you make some cool discussion here we won’t ignore it.

#68
#69

http://kazamatsuri.org/kazamatsuri-org-podcast-ep-1-planetarian-bookclub/

Podcast is up! Thanks everyone for your contributions :smiley: And congratulations to our winner of the competition!

#70

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:

  1. Explaining part of Junker’s past through his interaction with his old junker pal, and
  2. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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
  3. 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.
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#71

What an experience.

Planetarian is my first venture into Key’s side-story projects, and right off the bat, I can tell how small and experimental it feels compared to most of the larger Key games. Since it is experimental, this novel has a lot of good and bad points.

Let’s start with the good ones. Planetarian is quite well-written, penned by the same guy who wrote Summer (which you can hear my thoughts about here). It’s quite a shame that this guy doesn’t get very much work at Key, but I guess he’s more comfortable writing shorter, more original stories. I felt that the serious and lighthearted moments were kept relatively balanced, and I felt the story got really dark at points. I felt that Suzumoto had quite a few messages he wanted to deliver with Planetarian, and I feel that said messages were well-delivered.

The story is very much focused on our two main characters: the nameless Junker and Yumemi. Their relationship felt a bit like a combination between Yukito and Misuzu from AIR, and Hiro and Baymax from Big Hero 6. One starts out rather annoyed by the other, they grow used to each other and help each other progress as individuals, and then one of the two dies, leaving the other to move on with his own life. Although the ultimate fate of the Junker and Yumemi is left up to interpretation, their whole relationship was both charming and touching. It’s such a shame that the novel ended so abruptly. :frowning:

Yumemi herself is full of personality, and quite easily steals the spotlight on multiple occasions. Despite her simple behavior and childlike, obedient personality, she’s quite the complex character. Her interaction with the environment is at one time rather amusing to watch, and at another staying quite true to the depressing, hopeless tone of the post-apocalyptic world around her. Despite her seeming obliviousness to the situation around her, she is very much aware of the fact that her caretakers and the customers are nowhere to be found, and are likely to have died. However, in her own way, she refuses to admit it, and with no one to blame, she is led to believe that it is her fault, rather than the result of fate. She is programmed to like and protect humans, so she can’t blame them for her circumstances, either. This conflict, as well as her desire to see through to her job even beyond the curtain of death, make her a solid character in my opinion.

Finally, Yumemi’s spritework is probably the most detailed I have ever seen in a Key game. It really helps make her as expressive and fits the given situation. I thought that the different-colored ribbons were quite amazing, and it makes me wish other Key games were as attentive to detail with their character sprites. Hopefully Harmonia can help scratch that itch… :slight_smile:

Okay, now for what I didn’t like. The game’s interface felt rather jarring and clunky compared to other Key games, and it took me a while to get used to. I like the idea of being able to jump from chapter to chapter, but it feels kind of redundant considering that visual novels have save slots. Oh, well.

Save for a couple of standout tracks, the soundtrack to Planetarian was largely forgettable and is quite easily the weakest soundtrack I have ever heard in a Key game. The title screen music, Gentle Jena, is quite soothing and it reminds me of a starry sky, so it sets the mood rather well. Another piece, titled ‘The Loving Depths’, has the exact same melody as a specific hymn that I occasionally sing in church, which I found quite interesting.

Finally, as impactful as Yumemi’s ‘death’ scene was, I felt it was a bit too long for its own good. I also spotted a spelling mistake and what feels like a missing voice clip, but those are nitpicks.

So, was this novel worth the $10 that I never paid in the first place? I’m going to say yes. Although it had its fair share of problems and has less content than a game like 100% Orange Juice, there’s enough good things about this visual novel to be worth the purchase. Special thanks to @Gnashes for acquiring the game for me, as well as @Yerian and the rest of the Kazamatsuri group for supporting me as I read this gem of a novel. You guys are awesome. :slight_smile:

I am satisfied with my care. :3

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#72

This may very well be intentional, as Planetarian does have a large amount of Christian symbolism and references. I’m sure you’ll read about that and listen to them in the podcast though!

#73

Has anyone else listened to Jerusalem? I thought it was really neat. The final song was really good. How it tied into the rest of Planetarian and all made the song the most emotional part for me, of course it’s an emotional song so it make sense.

#74

Last I checked I couldn’t find a translation of Jerusalem. Is one available?

#75

Probably not; I just listened to it raw. It was on Itunes for 4 euro so even if I didn’t understand anything I wouldn’t lose much.

#76

We need some MoeBoys subs on this shit XP

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#77

Was that referring to us? I’m not in on all the jokes. I was considering it but then we got the text for AB! and I don’t have the book and so on. It kinda went in a box for later.

#78

You need to listen to our podcasts :stuck_out_tongue:
So what, did the Jerusalem Drama CD come with a booklet with a complete transcript?

#79

According to wikipedia there’s a LN with all the CDs, and that would help a lot with some of the special terminology they use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetarian:_The_Reverie_of_a_Little_Planet#Light_novel

#80

I’ve got a copy of the light novel but I don’t think there is a translation to it. The pictures in it do relate to the drama CDs. I’ve been looking for a translation for Jerusalem or even better, the light novel. I don’t currently have anyway to translate the text in the book. Though it has been encouraging me to learn to read Japanese.