Planetarian: Snow Globe

Oswallt Mar 8, 2021

6

I enjoyed the original anime, so it was nice to see a little more of the characters from when the planetarium was still operating.  However, that's really all you get, a glimpse of Yumemi when she first came to the planetarium, there's not really any story.  So, as long as you go in expecting a vignette, and not a story, I think you can enjoy it.  Also, just to note, there is an after credits scene.

DGFischer Apr 24, 2022

9.5

Forgetting the melancholia of the 2016 series and movie, Planetarian: Snow Globe substitutes the warmth of nostalgia.  It was the fifth anniversary of the 5-part web Planetarian series which was followed up by the resolution-movie Planetarian: Hoshi no Hito.  Better, Snow Globe commemorated the 15th anniversary of the visual novel which began it all.  It deals with the planetarium in better days.  Ten years of Hoshino Yumemi's career in just above a half-hour. Doing the task of the prequel, Snow Globe does the job of explaining details.  While it doesn't explain the choice of Hoshino's name (she enters the story just divulging her serial number to a customer who wishes to know the robot-presenter's name), we do learn why the projector is called 'Miss Jena.'   We find out when Hoshino acquires the 'halo' which she uses to analyze situations in that brilliant glow.  We get a better handle on Hoshino's co-workers, even Satori, who is hesitant to go the innovation route with the new-fangled robot.  In the ten years that pass, we watch Hoshino become a concern, displaying an initiative which isn't typical for an android or gynoid.  The technician Gorou Mikashima must constantly insist that there are no bugs in Hoshino.  A ten-year revision of Hoshino's persona is rejected, simply allowing the planetarian to be who she is. But the OVA has the dark side.  There is a rise of anti-technology and disdain for science.  Audiences at the planetarium are getting thinner with each performance.  Anti-robot fervor is on the increase.  A little girl strikes Hoshino because her father lost his job to a robot.  Subtle clues that suggest the coming catastrophe that would occur five years afterward, causing the flight of the human staff and the beginning of Hoshino's lonely thirty-year vigil at the planetarium in the center of a dead city. The animation that made the 2016 presentations stellar performances is not as stated in the OVA, though there are bursts of grandeur as Hoshino offers her lessons on the night sky.  The music fit blends the wonders of all things astronomical.  As this was my only subbed version of the Planetarian trifecta, I compared the voices of Hoshino.  Both English and Japanese seiyuu conveyed the integrity of the robot who knows little of the complexities of the society which is souring yet has the determination to promote the cosmos.  It fills out the whole Planetarian experience and gives it a sense of balance to the morose 2016 presentations.