First of all, I think it's fair to say that at it's heart, this show has a story to tell, and it wants to get a message across. It's a work of passion, that much is obvious. However, it utterly fails to communicate anything because there simply isn't enough time to say anything it wants to say. The plot is barely existent, consisting of a dystopian world where a scavenger runs into a robot hostess who is still alive and functioning at a planetarium, wherein he takes a few days off to help her repair the observatory and listen to her endless chatter about her life prior to the cataclysmic event that turned the city into a wasteland.
The clear push of the story was to have the audience connect to this jaded man and innocent robot girl as we see him begin to take a liking to her, going so far as to stick around to hear her commentary on the stars that she would normally tell to an auditorium full of customers, and even repairing the projector for her. However, the juxtaposition of the innocent robot girl--who talks very optimistically about her managers returning one day and about hoping to see more customers come back eventually--and the reality that the world is broken points to some greater tragedy that will most likely occur later on. Spoiler alert, a tragedy does occur. They're all typical Key story elements really, i.e., innocent girls, jaded guys, sad conclusions, etc.
The problem with all of this is that we aren't given enough time to connect to these characters so as to feel for the tragedy that is to come. Tragedy in a show makes you feel like you lost something, i.e., you lost a fictional character, or a fictional character had something horrible happen to them. However, you can't lose something you never had in the first place. Comparing this story to something such as Key's other work Clannad, they are not all that different in the emotional goals of the plot. The innocent girl slowly warms the heart of the jaded guy, but then tragedy strikes at the worst time possible, and then tears and spoilers ensue. However Clannad has a massive 40-something episodes all together, and takes a lot of time showing its characters in comical settings, it has them go through copious amounts of dialogue with each other in various settings, and there are many different story arcs that each focus on different side characters. Once all that is over, the real tragedy finally strikes in the latter half of the second season, AFTER we've had plenty of time to feel like we've gotten to know these characters as if they were real people. That's how we get to know characters, after all. We have to see them laugh, cry, scowl, sigh, smile, scoff, smirk, grimace, and a whole host of other emotes that indicate a human personality.
In Planetarian, we get to see about 10% of the jaded guy's personality, and probably about 75% of the innocent girl, since she's a robot with a very clear operating procedure. It's not hard to insinuate that her personality is fairly linear. However, even though we know after only an episode or two exactly what kind of person the robot girl is, we still haven't spent much time seeing her interact with anyone, and the only person we have seen her interact with is a very inexpressive loner-type who rarely talks. Combine that with short episode runtimes and only 5 episodes total and you've got one of the worst combinations for trying to create an emotional connection I could possibly think of.
It's got heart, I have to give it that. But there is just no way to care about these two people when you've only spent around an hour getting to know them. I started a job working at a daycare when I was in highschool, and one month into the experience, I got a call before work one day saying that the teacher I was working with had just committed suicide. That's pretty tragic, right? Well you know what I felt? Shock, surprise, and then I moved on. Why? Because I'm heartless? No, because I barely knew the woman, that's why. There was no connection to be severed, so there was no pain. It was a loss of human life, yes, but there just was no depth of connection with this person to feel anguish over. That's what this show suffers from. It's trying to rush you into a really serious relationship without taking the proper time to set things up and ease you into anything before suddenly telling you about all the hardships its gone through in an attempt to bring you to tears over its tragic backstory. I appreciate the gesture, but I'm sorry, you have just not given me enough time to care about anything you're saying, Planetarian. That's all I can say.
P.S. Art is great, sound is great, ending song is catchy, final ending credits song is really really pretty. Visual novel was probably better, wouldn't know, but that's usually the case in these situations.
