Summer 2016 Anime in Review: Planetarian

In a season full of different kinds of series, I thought I had enough on my plate.  A five-episode series that happens to be a key adaption didn’t appeal to me.  I’m not a big fan of key series, so this felt like an instant miss.  It wasn’t until this week that I noticed how wrong I was.  One should never sweat the smaller things.  That is a lesson that came from finally getting around to watching this and is a major part of Planetarian itself.  I heavily appreciated and loved how small scale and standalone Planetarian is.  In a world that revolves around making big series that have an infinite number of seasons and spin offs, something standalone feels extra special.

When I say it’s small, I mean almost every physical aspect about it.  The series takes place in the apocalypse and between only two characters, the robot Yumemi and a male junker.  That’s it.  The setting takes place mostly in a Planetarium that has power for some reason and a little bit of the city that surrounds it.  Also, the animation and art aren’t anything to shout about about either.  I’m sure that more time was spent on Yumemi’s overly designed outfit then everything else.  You can tell that this was on David Production’s back burner while they focus on Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.  That being said, Planetarian is definitely not lacking on any sort of emotional or story level.  Those, the characters, and the direction were Planetarians strengths and the anime played to them at a high level.

From all of what I just said, it shouldn’t surprise anybody when I say that this is my favorite Key animation anime.  I think it just has something to do with visual novel adaptions.  Very few of them actually worked for me because they either are too wordy, the emotions feel too forced, or they are just slightly more advanced harem series.  Planeterian was simple, said what it wanted to say, and left.  It didn’t hang around longer than it should have.  If you have a little more than an hour of free time to spend, Planetarian is a good way to go.  For how long Planetarian lasted, it certainly left a great impact.