"Being able to endure the unfairness of the world and still remain kind is a more noble thing than justice."
—Takezō Ryūzōji, Episode 6
Soya Kuroi is an Ordinary High-School Student living with his surrogate parents, a green-haired maid and a purple cat-man known as "Sensei." He's got amnesia and had an oddly vivid dream about a dragon and a fiery apocalypse, but he just wants to live a normal life, and hopefully get to eat some real meat once in a while. But things take a turn for the weird(er) when Earth is invaded by giant floating wooden dolls with hands sprouting out of their bases. A squad of supers known as "Grand Paladin" appears to take them on, and "Sensei" informs Soya he must fight... against the heroes?
Planet With is a simultaneous anime and manga project led by Satoshi Mizukami, marking his first foray into the anime sphere. Both versions of the story are based on a draft manga/screenplay by Mizukami, and are largely identical with the exception of the manga including extra content that fills out the anime's pre-finale Time Skip.
The anime ran for 12 episodes in 2018, receiving a simulcast
by Crunchyroll in most of the world outside Asia. The manga meanwhile ran for 50 chapters in Young King OURS (the usual home of Mizukami's manga works) from 2018-2022, and has been compiled into eight volumes.
Compare The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer and Psycho Staff for earlier Mizukami works with motifs of aliens and/or Psychic Powers. See also Childhood's End, an Arthur C. Clarke novel to which this work plays heavy tribute.
Planet With provides examples of:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The Nebula Weapons and the mechs are mostly animated with CG, emphasizing their otherworldly nature.
- Amnesiac Hero: Soya remembers nothing about his past, at first, though bits and pieces gradually come back to him as the story progresses.
- Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: The Grand Paladin manifest their powers using vials of gray sand. When it's taken from them, they're Brought Down to Normal. This gets subverted with the reveal that Grand Paladin, along with the rest of humanity, have had latent and developing psychic powers to begin with, and the vials merely acted as a catalyst. In the second half of the anime the Grand Paladin have developed their powers enough to not need the vials.
- Apocalypse How: Planet Sirius experiences complete planetary destruction at the hands of the Dragon.
- Brainwashing for the Greater Good: The modus operandii of the Sealing Faction is to inflict upon humans an illusion of their greatest desire. Those who fail to resist enter a nirvana of fulfillment that strips them of any aggression, but also of the natural human drive for change and evolution. A Sealing Device inflicts a greater-scale version of this on an entire world, trapping its entire population in dreams forever.
- Calling Your Attacks: "Giga Cat Hammer!" The members of Grand Paladin sometimes do this, as well.
- Clark Kenting: Soya often runs into members of Grand Paladin, who mostly fail to recognize him even though his "disguise" consists of his normal outfit with a mask over his eyes. Justified, as Sensei creates a memory-altering effect during battles that makes people forget what he looks like.
- Covert Pervert: Whenever no one is looking, Sensei starts trying to peek up the skirts of Soya's anime-girl figurines.
- Nezuya of Grand Paladin is disabled by a Lotus-Eater Machine of being in a harem fantasy.
- Deconstruction: Grand Paladin and Nebula seem to be a deconstruction of Sentai shows, namely the heroic and villainous organizations in them:
- Grand Paladin, while appear to be the heroes, it's clear that most of it's members are in the dark regarding the nature of their abilities and how dangerous they might be. Additionally, its leadership has plans beyond simply defeating the invaders, and plans to use their powers to Take Over the World, supposedly for the greater good. When Benika learns this, she declares You're Insane! and quits.
- Nebula meanwhile, might seem like Nebulous Evil Organization, but is actually appears to be a federation of aliens that may well be trying to stop humanity from destroying itself.
- The concept of motivation is deconstructed as well. Soya's sole reason for fighting for Sensei was to take revenge on the man who destroyed his home world. Once he seemingly accomplishes this halfway through the series, he actively refuses to get involved in the new battle against Nebula, as he literally has no stake in the conflict anymore.
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Harumi's voice actress, Mai Fuchigami sings the ending theme.
- Easily Forgiven: Gets played with regarding Souya; after the other Paladins learns of Takashi's true nature and the reason for Souya's attacks on them, they don't actually harbor any ill will towards him. Even Takezō is understanding over the fact that Souya's final duel with Takashi ends in his son's death. It does get subverted with Miu and Harumi here. While it's Played for Laughs, it gets implied that they still had some baggage towards Souya they had to work through over the course of the timeskip, though that involved torturing him at their dojo.
- Good Versus Good: Both factions of Nebula are filled with kind, selfless beings who risk their lives to protect developing races. Even the Dragon is just trying to uphold justice, even if Black-and-White Insanity has long taken over.
- Hero Antagonist: The Grand Paladins seem like your typical Sentai heroes and it's Soya's job to oppose them. Though their leader has plans of world domination.
- Human Alien: Soya. He's actually a Siriusian.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The invading Nebula Weapons must be destroyed from the inside, so they trap anyone who enters in one of these, hoping to make them forget their mission. The first Nebula Weapon convinces a fighter pilot to leave this way. It's eventually revealed that this is what "sealing" entails: since conflict and desire arise from a sense of unfulfillment, the Weapons fill their targets with dreams of a perfect life until they simply don't want anything anymore.
- In episode 4, the third one stops Nezuya by giving him a fantasy world based on the Harem Genre.
- Marshmallow Dream: Right when he tries to bite into some fried chicken, Soya wakes up and bites into his blanket instead.
- Meaningful Name: All of the Grand Paladins have some serious Animal Theme Naming going on. Meanwhile, the black and white contrast between Sensei and the Generalissimo is continued with their assistants, Kuroi and Shiraishi. And then there's the part where the alien race of cartoon animal people is called the Kigurumizoku (literally "Fullbodycostumians")...
- Mini-Mecha: The mechas in the show are quite big, but not skyscraper sized. However, Sensei and Generalissimo can increase their mecha forms size, so in their gigantic mecha forms, they definitely count as Humongous Mecha.
- Older Than They Look: A newscaster mistakes Soya's classmate Nozomi for a middle-schooler.
- Running Gag: Soya's hopeless quest for real meat, and his repeated butcherings of Nozomi Takamagahara's last name.
- Sensory Abuse: One of the last Nebula Weapons is shaped like a snake in a rice bowl. After the bowl is destroyed, the snake turns aggressive with a thunderous roar.
- Serial Escalation: Soya's means of fighting his foes evolve over time as he faces bigger opposition. Starting with Sensei's mecha form, he then uses "doping" to allow mecha-Sensei to fly, and then Sensei turns his own spaceship into a mecha large enough to fight Yosuke's enhanced psychokinetic armor.
- Shout-Out:
- Soya's anime figures are of Samidare Asahina and Anima
- Four elephants holding up the world/universe while standing on the back of a turtle? Is it an invadeer or Discworld ?
- Episode 8 features a Shout-Out to an iconic scene in Ghost in the Shell in which Kusanagi falls while becoming invisible.
- The investigation probe at the start of Episode 11 closely resembles HAL 9000.
- Karellen (or "Generalissimo") and Rashaverak (or "Sensei") are from Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End. The theme of the novel is similar to Planet With, about benevolent aliens looking over humanity. However, Rashaverak and Karellen worked together in Clarke's novel. They were not in different Factions.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Played with in regards of how Souya defeats the Paladins. Torai goes down first, which makes Miu assume he was the weakest of them all. Takeshi is quick to point that Torai was actually the strongest of them all, but not by a wide margin.
- Starfish Aliens: "Sensei" the bipedal cat with creepy humanlike teeth is weird enough, but the "Nebula Weapons" are like something out of a surrealist painting, ranging from the aforementioned dolls with too many hands to groups of giant upside-down babies.
- We later learn that this apparently applies "Sensei"'s whole species, the Kigurumians.
- Super Robot: Definitely fits into this genre, as Hot-Blooded piloting and philosophical differences resolved by gigantic fistfights fit the genre.
- Translation: "Yes": Sensei only speaks in meows except during the dream Soya has about Sensei meeting with a member of the Sealing Faction, so Ginko has to translate for Soya. A single "nya" often becomes a long and complex sentence. The same goes for Generalissimo.
- The Federation: Flashbacks in episode 7 reveal that at one point Nebula was a galatic federation of planets whose inhabitants subscribed to the evolution of love.
- Time Skip: After the Sealing and Pacifist Factions make peace, the plot skips 5 years ahead as Nebula and the psychics prepare to engage the Dragon on the moon.
- Verbal Tic: Ginko finishes her sentences with "-nya" when translating.
- Villain Protagonist: Played with. Soya appears to be this at first, but who the bad guys really are soon becomes muddled. Two alien factions are fighting over how to deal with humanity and their newly-acquired powers, with one (Soya's) trying to take the power away, and the other trying to "seal" humans away indefinitely. In addition, the leader of the heroes defending Earth has some connection to the dangerous dragon from Soya's fuzzy memories, and intends to Take Over the World once they've dealt with the invaders.
- Wolverine Claws: "Giga Cat Blade" is essentially this.
- Word Salad Title: Planet with... what? Whether this is the question we're meant to ask remains to be seen, but for now, it's pretty hard to interpret.
- The series implies it's meant to be a fill-in-the-blank title, in the vein of ×××HOLiC. Planet With___
- The series implies it's meant to be a fill-in-the-blank title, in the vein of ×××HOLiC
