As I previously said in the Summer Preview, this is the show I’m been actually looking forward to since I learned about it back in November and then got formally announced in March. Mizukami Satoshi is a manga artist best known for critically acclaimed Spirit Circle and Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer. It turns out that Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer is one of my top 5 favorite manga and I recently did a 3rd read through because I love it so much, so of course I wasn’t going to skip out on this one.
Mizukami-sensei had never got an anime adaptation of any of his manga before, so I was surprised to hear that the focus for this multimedia original project was a sci-fi story he had been writing for 4 years before anime development. The manga started publishing in April, but since it was very recently, I thought I could wait and go into the anime blind. I’ll stick to that idea for the time being.
Planet With starts out with some weird events that end up being the dream of our main character, Kuroi Soya. After he wakes up, he has breakfast with a lady dressed as a maid and a giant cat. Here we get our first dose of Mizukami-sensei! He combines modern settings with fantasy and supernatural elements in a way that’s interesting because it disrupts the reality of some of the characters, but others take these elements for granted.
On his way to school, Kuroi runs into his class representative and later on they’re having lunch together. He complains his meals have been meat free lately and she offers some of her food. As they eat, they talk and we learned that Kuroi has recently transferred into the school, that he was in a coma in the past and that he’s currently suffering from amnesia. His strange companions took him in after he ended up an orphan and he seems fairly unaffected by this, although the class representative is worried about him.
During the afternoon class there is an announcement for people to evacuate the city as an UFO is making its way to the coast and things are looking complicated. The same kind of object appears in the sky of different cities of the world, but here in this town there are seven people who appear as people evacuate and they engage the flying object. The flying object has a very old and childish design, but it’s oddly cute. It was attacked by the military, but they failed to damage it and the object emitted a light that seemed to impact the behavior of one of the pilots. I’m curious as to why the light was, but I suspect it has to do with illusion, alteration of memories and regret over loss of something as they seem recurrent topics in the episode.
The seven warriors that appear use some sort of power to transform and call on vessels that get them close to the UFO. During this time, the maid lady gets in touch with Kuroi while he’s in school and she tells him he has to fight these seven people and stop them. Kuroi runs out of the school to meet with them and then we go back to the aerial battle where one of the seven people have infiltrated the inside of the flying object to destroy it.
Torai Hideo has a strange experience just as he gets in though! In a touching scene we see him at different ages talking to himself and being able to rescue his mother from a fire, something that didn’t happen in reality. He gets to talk to her and tell her about his current life, but then one of his teammates gets in contact with him and tells him the world he’s in is an illusion and he has to break it to get out and destroy the device. He transforms and breaks the world with causes the UFO to disappear there and all over the world.
The media arrives as the fight ends so the heroes disperse separately. As Torai makes his way home, he’s ambushed by Kuroi, Ginko (the maid girl) and the giant cat Sensei. Sensei eats Kuroi, which causes some sort of transformation that fusions both of them and Torai transforms too. They engage in battle as Kuroi demands for Torai’s source of power, but Torai refuses to give it up willingly.
In the end Torai loses and Kuroi is able to get a hold of his necklace which holds a certain powder that seems to be the source of power. As he holds it, Kuroi gets increasingly angry and he claims he has regained his memories now and he will destroy all seven warriors. Intriguing!
Now that the summary is done, I’d like to talk about a couple extra things. One, the animation is crisp and the character designs translate decently, but I don’t really like how the CGI or the colors look so far! Well, I’m pretty sure that I’ll get used to them given time though.Two, I’m ridiculously excited about this show, which gives me a lot of expectations… which may backfire horribly… but I’m hoping that won’t be the case at all.
Mikazuki-sensei tends to play a lot with emotions, trying to engage the readers through a big cast of characters with multiple experiences but that have something in common that connects them. He likes to start from a place of darkness and guide the hero towards the light while they grow up and are influenced by the people around him. I really recommend Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer and I hope some people will join me during the super self-indulging blogging I’ll do on this show.
Possibility of blogging: 100% guaranteed
Possibility of watching: I can’t be stopped