Planet With

According to the theories of oneiromancy, dreams of dragons represent the struggle of losing yourself to your own anger. Fittingly, Souya Kuroi wakes up from a nightmare of a massive dragon destroying everything around him in a blaze of rainbow colored light. After being told that he lost his parents and memory in a strange accident, the waking world becomes another nightmare in itself. With this dream being his only memory, he has no choice but to be taken care of by his two strange guardians: the spunky and energetic maid Ginko, and a huge cat known only as "Sensei."

His new life is turned upside down when the denizens of Saromisaka City are beset by a teddy bear-shaped UFO. When military power proves to be ineffective, seven mysterious people rise up to fight off the monstrosity. These heroes destroy the invader in a flurry of rainbow colored lights, the very same lights that Souya saw in his nightmare.

With the alien threat repelled, these seven strangers find themselves facing a new adversary: Souya. Swearing vengeance upon the people who decimated his old life, he begins his crusade against these "heroes" and becomes embroiled in a struggle of galactic proportions.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kuroi, Ginko Main

Izawa, Shiori Japanese

Kuroi, Souya Main

Abe, Atsushi Japanese

Sensei Main

Koyama, Rikiya Japanese

Takamagahara, Nozomi Supporting

Harada, Sayaka Japanese

Nezuya, Tadayoshi Supporting

Sugawara, Shinsuke Japanese

Inaba, Miu Supporting

Oowada, Hitomi Japanese

Ryuuzouji, Takashi Supporting

Nomura, Kenji Japanese

Torai, Hideo Supporting

Umehara, Yuuichirou Japanese

Kakka Supporting

Wakamoto, Norio Japanese

Youtani, Yousuke Supporting

Okitsu, Kazuyuki Japanese

Oowada, Tomoyuki Producer

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Abe, Michihisa Producer

Reviews

Aug 30, 2022

MrRedMage

Recommended

Planet With is one of those shows you never expect to be amazing, but in reality you should have known all along. I cannot say that Planet With is the greatest anime of all time or the "most underrated" anime of all time, but I can say that it was a fun and bizarre show that I thoroughly enjoyed.

The characters are solid, especially Souya and Ginko. I can't really talk about them without spoilers, but I enjoyed the supporting cast members as well.

The animation is fantastic. I know this is a hot take but this might be the best use of 3D animation I've ... seen yet. All of the models look so clean and articulate. I can't say it wouldn't have looked better with 2D animation, but it doesn't detract from the experience. Fight scene choreography is on-point and the show's visual design is very creative.

The music and sound are great, especially the theme that plays like every battle. The OP and ED are so good as well.

The story is the best part of this show, and boy is it a rollercoaster. I'm not going to spoil anything here, but if you go into this show with expectations you will be proven wrong. The characters have decent motivations and despite the short runtime, they're all explained pretty well.

The comedy isn't always great but when it hits it hits. There's a scene in like episode two that got me to laugh hysterically which basically never happens with anime. It's not the selling point but you won't be wishing it wasn't there.

Now the question is: should you watch it? HELL YES!!! Regardless of what kind of anime fan you are I highly recommend Planet With. It's only 12 episodes and it has a little something for everyone, and I mean that. You might laugh, you might cry, you might get super hyped by the action. This show is awesome and I don't use that word lightly.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jan 21, 2020

BasicallyAnybody

Mixed Feelings

This isn't a bad show at all, it's pretty entertaining but it has some flaws that hinder it too much.

The first one is the CGI, it doens't look too bad most of the time, but there is an specific character with and very notorious and bad CGI that just looks like it's made of plastic and that robs part of the seriousness of some scenes. All the robots are CGI too, but they actually have some good shots and some action scenes are pretty good but in general it doesn't work as well as it could.

The story isn't bad, actually it has a few surprises ... and it's structure allows to unveil it slowly but it feels childish and without tension. There is a nice message about forgiveness but it's taken too far, the extent is taken to makes it seem absurd and stupid. It's events don't have the weight that they should have to tell a story like this correctly.

The characters are ok, there isn't much to say about them. It actually makes an effort to deepen a few of them but they are mostly archetipes so it's not anything amazing. They are characterized enough but not much more.

The soundtrack is ok, a little forgettable, but it does it's work.

In general, it's an amene watching that anyone who isn't expecting much can enjoy. It's short and has some things to say so it has some worth to what it does. Basically, you could watch it as long as you are not bothered by the CGI.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 23, 2018

Karhu

Not Recommended

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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