Planet With (original) (raw)

I love Mizukami Satoshi and two of his earlier works: Hoshi no Samidare and Spirit Circle, and I also highly appreciate Sengoku Youko, but damn this one really, really sucks.

*contains light spoilers*

Setup:

Alien suffering from memory loss fights against humans who try to save their home planet with the power of dragon powder. Why do they fight? Because this alien dude really hates dragons.

Other aliens teleport in the sky in forms of human insecurities and mental barriers and then explode and further turn into cotton after a short past story revealing something about the psychological side of our main antagonist humans occurs.

Rest of this side... of the anime focuses around mecha fights where the mc pilots an alien cat and the humans use dragon powder to battle him because he is apparently the enemy of mankind even tho the fights are personal nakama revenging -tier nonsense... until the Fairy Tail effect hits among the nakama ranks and every upcoming twist is eventually the same as in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann except the opposite in quality. Or the same if you hate TTGL.

The other half is slice of life school settings where people participate in club activities, read books and try to form some sort of interspecies romantic subplot that eventually starts looking like a harem of 3. The outcome is a complete and utter mess that mainly looks like what Devilman Crybaby would have been if it had been aimed for children, directed by a baboon, suffered from hideous world-building and its 180 degree genre changes had been 300 times worse in every new occasion.

Characters:

Girl who has a friend wants to be strong because friend wants her to be strong. Actually it's okay to be weak, too, but she can't accept this so she loses the control over the dragon powder. Very thought-provoking and psychologically accurate.

Dude who has a regret experiences enlightenment from alien rays and rides off to the sunset with a military aircraft because he has a family and should be spending time with them instead of saving the earth. Very philosophical and ultra hyped deep.

Guy almost loses himself in past mistakes after mourning over a dead person and then builds his whole life accordingly to become something he couldn't be as a kid. Whatever you want to call this one.

All the human characters are practically presentation of one singular human idiocy. Instead of appearing as "there is something very important that has happened to this character in his past, and to understand him at all, you definitely need to hear out what it was." the meaning is secondary as presenting the episodic theme related to character's past is more important than the character itself.

The alien maiden literally exist in the series only for the memory loss alien, same with the most potential love interest, and our alien dude's entire motivation to fight relies on hatred and the translated words of a talking cat.

It didn't matter whether our mc had a past and memories and personality because he is the exact same empty puppet with or without because there simply isn't anything to him. And whenever he fights, he comes up with random movements and yells out their names to a point that it mainly reminds me of that part in Naruto (shippuden) where he came up with 3 new types of rasengans in each episode. Moreover, this dude yells and yells and yells and yells to a point that it seems the only thing he can do is be loud and annoying.

The entire characterization of the cast is so horrendous its hard to even gasp how Mizukami Satoshi spend 4 years writing this yet couldn't manage to make it any better than Psycho Staff (not to be confused with Psycho Pass).

Major complains:

The mental barriers is among the most interesting concepts in the work, yet it is being dealt with way too poorly. Appearance, past story, resolve, impact to present time = 6 minutes. Do much with little they say, yet what we get instead is the amount of information prioritized over how to present it. The pacing is ludicrous and makes all the problems seem exponentially worse.

Our main character's memory loss is downright used as a mystery element in the series and its narration. Even when he experiences memory recollection, they aren't revealed to the viewer in the purpose of maintaining the illusion of suspense. It makes the whole thing cheaper.

The main antagonists suffer from some highly obvious character flaws to a point that they reveal their faces in live tv. Even Lelouch in the idiocy that Code Geass was, was smart enough to use the zero mask to hide his identity. The entirety of the first half of the series would be impossible if the characters had any sense in hiding themselves. Even such shitty studios like Marvel and their "superheroes" are smarter than these fellas.

One mystery gets solved. 3 seconds later --> New mysteries! The asspulled plot elements, near complete lack of foreshadowing and "shocking" twists that were used to create confrontation and some sort of "witty wordplays" are closer to being lame than anything else... Niichan! This is chaotic randomness and total nonsense to a point where it seems like zero fucks is given. I imagine the entirety of the story board was constructed by pulling new ideas from a hat. By hat, I mean that one meme where bunch of monkeys take a shit and the turds land on the words "San Fransisco", "Disco Club" and "1971" and then some clothes corporation prints that whole thing on a t-shirt. Except here we call it "epic writing stuff". Practically every single piece of writing in the latter half of the show is either deus ex machina or an asspull.

The fights are.... yeah, example instead because what else can prove how awful they are:
"I knew you weren't using your full powers!"
*me inserting "this isn't even my final form" memes*
>mc
>yells
>pray and spray
>wins
*me browsing more memes "Bravo, Nolan"*

^Some people think this anime is smart and epic, btw. All I am seeing is a collection of moviecirclejerk tier anti-quality memes. Speaking more about these memes, the appearance of Siriusian fleet is essentially Spanish inquisition and the love exist in other species an Interstellar ripoff. And the worst of them is the "the power was inside you all along" cliche which made me almost puke. If this was a self-aware parody, it would be amazing until it would turn so bad that it couldn't even be considered an excuse for comedy.

One more: The dialogue.

Mc: I see you're the type who uses his muscles instead of brains.
Also mc: *screams and smashes buttons angrily*

Unintentional comedy/5

Art:

The mecha side for mc was highly inspired by/lend from TTGL like so many other things.

The backgrounds are brilliant and pretty look at. The animation is often awkward. Especially robot movements which are relying on CGI.

The character design captures Mizukami's style perfectly and all the anomalies in the series are rather original and well-planned.

Sounds:

Did this thing really have music in it? Can't recall. Other than the mc who yells more during 12 episodes than Black Clover mc during the entire series, the sounds are forgettable.

Conclusion:

Absolute disaster of an anime beautified with ideas and concepts that offered enormous potential yet end up being enormously nothing. Countless anime series seem better than before thanks to them not being this anime.

When I say Planet With is bad, I don't mean any half-asset, zero-effort "bad",I mean the real die-hard bad stuff that wouldn't be able exist without a mastermind who was able to ruin every trace of quality in them. Planet With is not shallow, superficial bad, it is complex, deep, in-depth bad.

This series will be remembered as an example that manga writer shouldn't try to make millions of compromises just to make their series fit the animated medium. Hoshi no Samidare and Spirits Circle could never work in the anime format and now I pray no one ever tries to adapt them.

Planet With's biggest achievement is working as an advertisement for the mangaka's other works, but as far as entertainment goes, it certainly did its job by offering an anime that was much more fun to watch than it was good in terms of anything. Mainly because it was so bad that the difference between quality and enjoyment grew larger. If you thought this series is as bad as I did, consider giving Mizukami's manga a try nevertheless because those are great.

I really wanted to praise this because I have read Hoshi no Samidare 4 times and it's in generally among the reasons why I am into the animanga industry in the first place, but Planet With doesn't deserve positive praise. Its merits are almost entirely limited to how awful it is.

tldr

-Story 1/10 It's rare for writing to reach this level of pathetic. Shows that impress with its lack of quality in this manner don't happen very often. In fact, I am surprised this wasn't written by the guy who did Guilty Crown and Code Geass. To make it clear as possible: I have been utterly impressed by how badly written this thing is.
-Characters 2/10 Yelling, yelling, yelling. Even Hand Shaker's cast had more charm, and this isn't even meant as an insult.
-Art 7/10 Really liking the art, tho.
-Sounds 5/10 Lots of yelling but not much more.
-Enjoyment 5/10 I enjoy bad anime often and consistently for their comedic value. This one was such advanced awfulness that it momentarily managed to even annoy me.
-Total 2/10 This thing is close to unwatchable. I don't see how this thing could appear to be any better unless watched completely half-assedly in the background, casually or even ironically. Personally, I couldn't do this out of the respect I hold towards the author.