Planetarian: ~Reverie of a little planet~

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“What do you think about the planetarian?
That beautiful twinkling of eternity that will never fade, no matter when.
All the stars in the skies are waiting for you
What do you think about the planetarian?”
…

These were the lines most often spoken by Reverie, the robot in the kinetic novel, Planetarian. The whole watch of this beautiful visual novel was something special. You know that you were in the realm of a special creation, one that was done with a special heart. It touched the soul of many, including me, as I was slumped to a mess of tears at the end of the visual novel.

The very powerful messages, the poignant way that the story was created and the beautiful words that were used in this novel was a very potent mix and I am proud to say that my first exploration of the visual novels (other than Narcissu) was nothing less than wonderful. Planetarian was a story that would touch on the inners of your heart and it would probably touch the heart of the most stone-hearted and skeptical.

It was just that special to me. Especially when those tears of mine fell without me realizing. Those tears represented the essence of how I was feeling toward the two characters. A character that no longer dreamed about things started to dream and found a way to live. A robot that could not dream but yet was dreaming in a reality that disappeard 29 years ago from her life.

Was she broken? Or was everything else broken except her?

A short review of the story….

Plot

There was once in the word like now that Earth was growing by the minute, with the fear of scarce resources growing as time passed by. Nations fought and hunted each other for the precious resources that were starting to be reduced. At first, it was a battle of human armies but with the population quickly decimating from the various fighting that never end, the surviving nations deployed autonomous battle mechs known as “Warmongers” onto the battlefields, along with autonomous hunter-killer tanks known as “Hedgehogs” and anti-personnel drones known as “Menschenjagers”.

It was no longer a fight of the humans or a conquest of land. It was a painful remainder of the war

It was in the post-apocalypse time of Earth, where mankind was in the aftermath of war. Nothing was left, with the poisonous rain that corroded anything in its path. There was nothing left for man to fight for, with the endless rain dropping, reminding everyone of the painful memories that existed in the war. The rain continued on, corroding the buildings that were once the symbol of civilisation, killing the plants that gave us oxygen and also destroying living people that were unable to protect themselves from the toxic rain.

The battle had ended, with the rise of junkers that were hunting down spare parts and accessories in the abandoned cities. However, the residue of those automatic mechs still remind in the vicinity, continuing the massacre that was no longer in that time. It was then that a fateful Junker would arrive at the shopping mall, where he meets a slightly talkative (gross understatement) robot that was called Reverie. There, the story continued on, with a plot that returned the junker to his human roots.

The yearning of life. The purpose of life. The dream of life.

These questions will be answered in the story…

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Feelings

The story really touched me. It was mostly a light hearted affair, with the silly banter of Reverie incessantly irritating the main male lead. However, from the various interactions, he was soon to be touched by the presentation of the skies. With the poisonous rain that never ended, everyone had forgotten about how beautiful the world was. The world was no longer beautiful and the planetarian was one of the remaining artifacts from the yesterday of Earth.

It was then that the Earth was still populated and peaceful, even though the year when Reverie was abandoned was when the civil war was starting to occur. I felt that pain, as Reverie would have chirply said, the pain of being abandoned after thinking it through her programmed side. It was heartwrenching to see Reverie reaccounting her memories at the end of the visual novel.

In fact, for the whole period of the memory section, I was crying. I was not crying because it was depressing. I was crying because a robot could feel more than the silly humans who were savagely fighting each other. She was kind and only wanted to serve humans and had emotional abilities to feel pain. She really felt that she was abandoned by them, no matter how cheerful she was. She knew.

She was only a robot. But she knew.

The recollections were beautiful scenes, and it really felt heartwarming to see the capturing of human emotions so vividly in the words that were written. A true masterpiece.

I do not want to spoil you on the full story plot but here are some screenshots to end this review. If you have a chance, go buy or download this kinetic novel. It will be one of the best experiences ever…

A must watch. Recommended for everyone.

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Screenshots