Planetarian Movie: Hoshi no Hito - Reviews

This is a very good movie, have not cried so hard in a long time.

I read the visual novel about 2 years ago, and while a good story, was a bit bad on pacing.  I was surprised they made an anime about it, and trimmed a lot of it down while staying true to the story.  Tearful but good.  Later they made THIS movie which was essentially a re-hash and continuation about what happens after the planetarium.

In general someone could skip the first as most of it is covered in here.  The entire story is very well down from the innocence of the character, to the hopelessnes of the world.  A lot of little details become relevant as well.

Highly recommended - and I am normally a fan of seinens like berserk etc.

The whole Planetarian anime franchise feels like a broken record player that's stuck on repeat mode. The movie follows the same formula as the OVAs, and web episodes. The scenes are reused too much. Those "high ratings" are for an anime franchise that repeats the same story and settings over and over again. It's like listening to the same melody and song with the same constant beats, verses, rhymes, choruses, and rhythms over and over again. 

It's the same apocalyptic and sci-fi setting where Yumemi and human kind is faced with abandoned cities full of the wrecked remains of biological and nuclear warfare. Even when the city is deserted, Yumemi stays to fulfill her job as the guide to the Planetarian. She gives lectures and educates people on the wonders of the planetarian. She has a lot of fond, tender, and heartwarming moments of sharing pleasant experiences with the guests and scientific team that stayed in the planetarian. 

Yumemi is a warm, and friendly android. She can speak robotic language but she is also very cheerful and upbeat some times. Her main job is to give lectures at the planetarian, and educating the guests. She also helps promote the planetarian and pass out fliers. 

Overall, the movie did introduce new characters to expand the story but I still feel like the story has a very limited scope. It reuses scenes too much. But people might enjoy this show if they enjoy mecha and sci-fi settings where humanity is at the brink of destruction, and struggling to survive in the damaged remains. There's brief romance as well. 

My enjoyment is a 3/10 at this point for the Planetarian franchise. I enjoyed watching a charming android trying her hardest to promote a deserted planetarian. But I got bored watching and  following the same story over and over again. 

Preface: This movie has pretty much all ONA scenes + more,  I suggest just watching this movie.

Satisfying Conclusion?✔️
Emotional?✔️
Actual Romance?❌
Actual Comedy?❌
Fanservice/Nudity? ❌

What is this anime?
A scavenger in a post-apocalyptic world stumbles upon an android somehow still functioning. With nowhere to go for the night, he stays with the android who works in a planetarian.

Did I enjoy it?
It was a nice watch. The android acts... like an android. Some shows that have androids make it so they look and interact just like a human. However this android acts like you'd imagine one to act. There are parameters it doesn't go outside of. It does the same thing every day. However, this doesn't detract from the show, and shows us that it doesn't need to be on human levels of reasoning to make an impact on our MC's life. The movie adds in scenes to the ONA where the scavenger is in the future. It gets emotional so bring your tissues. With the way that it ended, at first I was angry that it didn't conclude differently. But after thinking about it, it is perhaps the best ending this show could have come up with. Give it a watch.

I dont cry at many shows/movies often, but this, this is one of the ones I do, this was a very strong emotional rollercoaster of a movie and I loved every bit of it. Truly one of the greatest "diamond in rough" shows I've ever ever ever seen. 100/10 would recommend and 100/10 will remember for the rest of my life!

Planetarian: Hoshi no Hito (Man of the Stars, though the dubbed version translated the phrase as 'Stargazer') is a continuation/resolution of the five-part web series.  In the final episode of Planetarian, Kuzuya promises the shattered robot Hoshino Yumemi a better life beyond the limits of Sarcophagus City and its defunct planetarium.  Hoshino declines, knowing that a life of service to humans is the ideal 'heaven' for her species.  Kuzuya takes Yumemi's memory card and moves forward, his dream now to share the splendors of the night sky to all who will hear him.

Tough job, seeing that the world population has shrunk to roughly the size of Madison, WI.  And the struggle to survive draws attention away from the esoterica.

We meet Kuzuya as an old man, given no clues that it could be the junker of the series other than those blue eyes and the lanyard bearing the memory card.  The decades have not been kind and Kuzuya is battling to drive his sled bearing a projection device and apparatuses through a driving snowstorm.  He crumbles and is saved by three children of a colony in those icy reaches.  He is treated for his exhaustion and is welcomed initially.  But the man known as 'Hoshi no Hito' is deemed an idealistic dreamer with no social worth in a society where prospects of poor harvest in the hydroponic gardens and dwindling resources mark Kuzuya as an unnecessary consumer of necessities.  Some of those resources are being used to help Kuzuya build a portable planetarium where he shows the children Job, Levi, and Ruth the beauty of the stars and the stories they bear.  The kids are intent on carrying on the work of story-tellers of the night skies, which the adults would reject for more practical things in the quest to survive.  A sudden  relapse delays Kuzuya's banishment from the colony, but not before he catches the children praying to the town 'goddess,' a defunct robot who could easily power-up and assume the role of Hoshino ... should Kuzuya live long enough.

The 117-minute movie intertwines scenes from the series, retelling the story once more to demonstrate the relevance of Hoshino's mission, service to humanity in her intriguing lessons which she gave in the fifteen years when the planetarium thrives, before the cataclysm.  Religious themes keep cropping up, as notions of heaven, a common destination of man and robot.  J. M. Scriven's hymn-tune plays a part in the reenactments of the series, but it is not heard in the scenes of the ice-colony, as if it were to be banished as the Hoshi no Hito.  But religion gets clumsy.  The names of the colonists are definitely Old Testament names, but nomenclature is fouled up.  Male names as Ezra, Isaiah, and Jeremiah are given to ladies, and one shaggy-haired boy is stuck being Ruth.  Perhaps this is symbolic of the inconsistencies of a society driven solely by need and human value is measured unmercifully by how much one can contribute.  But all scene of things earthly suddenly shift to heavenly visions of Hoshino in an ethereal planetarium flanked by her staff cohorts welcoming Kuzuya to the ideal place of peace.

Quiet, thoughtful, and seeking to see things beyond mere appearance (which could be exercises in the disheartening), the movie employs the same technique David Production used in Planetarian: Reverie of a Small Planet.  The closing graphics that transcends beyond the cloud cover of the doomed planet to display the much-longed for stars and ... is that a UFO?  Do they come in peace ... or to pick up the pieces?  The closing theme is soft and lilting, echoing the hope that humanity had given up on. 

It's the hope that works.