Madowanai Hoshi (lit. Unconfused Planet) is a manga series written and illustrated by Masayuki Ishikawa, author of Moyashimon.
Set in the distant future, after an event called "End of Summer Vacation" began the rapid deterioration of Earth's surface, most of what remains of humanity resides underground in societies called the "Inside", living in blissful ignorance, waiting for the surface to detoxify itself for resettlement. S-zawa and Hazuki Oikawa are two people who work on the "Outside", sending messages into space and checking the surface. One day, a woman comes to them claiming to be the Earth itself, and pleads S-zawa to send a call for help into space. Soon, other women claiming to be planets arrive at their facility...
This series provides examples of:
- Advert-Overloaded Future: The Japanese populace is constantly bombarded by constant ads and anime shows in order to keep them entertained underground.
- After the End: The setting of the story is in a decayed Earth where the skies are grey with constant storms and most of the oceans have become seas of toxic sludge. Humanity has been living underground for generations.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: All of the solar systems celestial bodies can immediately shrink down to human-size and turn into women in order to enter another planet's atmosphere. This also goes for any of their moons, who otherwise retain an appearance similar to the germs in Moyashimon.
- Apocalypse How: The Earth is decimated and almost all natural life has been extincted for hundreds of years thanks to an ever increasing pollution problem and constant war. Most of the species that remain are farmed for sustenance as the remainder of humanity waits for it all to blow over.
- Artistic License – Space:
- The Moon constantly complains about sci-fi anime conventions that don't work that way in real life, such as the constant fiery explosions and humans breathing without an apparatus.
- Ironically enough, the manga is prone to this too. Instances like the Gas Planets heading towards Earth in a matter of days should have thrown everything within its gravitational pull out of orbit to begin with, especially with Jupiter. Hand-waved in a sense as it's constantly noted that humanity only learned about 5% of the universe in its lifetime, so they truly didn't understand everything.
- Author Filibuster: Just like Moyashimon, a lot of the manga is reflective on what Ishikawa thinks of Japan's societal unwillingness to see the harm they cause to the environment, albeit to a much more bleak level.
- Butt-Monkey: S-zawa takes the brunt of most of the physical trauma.
- Cool Old Guy: The Sun.
- Covert Pervert: S-zawa, who would always try and sneak looks at Oikawa and would send messages detailing her body into space as a way to vent about it without no one hearing. And then he realizes the planets had seen every single one of them.
- Cute Mute: The Moon's human form, which cannot speak. She often uses it to keep herself from complaining a lot.
- The Cynic: S-zawa believes himself to be entirely worthless and out of his element when it comes to the restoration of Earth, especially after seeing for himself how small the Earth was in relation to the vast cosmos. However when push comes to shove he's a Knight in Sour Armor.
- Deadly Dust Storm: Earth is engulfed in a neverending storm of smog and dust, and humans can't really go outside without a sort of hazmat suit. However, the planets are home to atmospheres and storms much stronger than Earth's, so they can part the storm any time they wish to see space.
- Earth That Was: The facility S-zawa and Oikawa used to be an observatory with a heavily advanced hologram system. They use it to see how the Solar System truly looks like and what Earth had looked like in the far past.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Pluto, who is inexplicably in the form of Kei Yuuki, from Moyashimon
- Genius Loci: Earth and all the other planets and celestial bodies. Earth and the Moon in particular keep their embodiment forms while still existing on top of the planet itself.
- Gonk:
- S-zawa, who looks like a middle-aged overweight man at the age of 23.
- The Sun also counts for this, inhabiting the body of a short, fat man.
- Humans Are Bastards: The Moon and Pluto regard humanity as redundant beings only capable of harming and thinking only for themselves. The Moon comes to this conclusion with the state of Earth, while Pluto came to this conclusion long before that, when she was downgraded from being recognized as a true planet.
- Humans Are Flawed: It's widely regarded that for all of their knowledge and tenacity, humanity itself was to blame for rapidly deteriorating the Earth's surface. Whether or not they can be considered better off dead is the consistant question in the story.
- Humans Are Special: Earth does not blame humanity for the state she is in, and regards them as her children. The others regard humanity and their creations as curiosities.
- Infodump: Courtesy of the Moon, who takes it upon himself to teach S-zawa and Oikawa anything about history, math, and physics in order to help Earth feel better.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When The Sun introduces himself S-zawa immediately complains that they didn't need another new character, as keeping track of the planets was hard enough for him as it is.
- Ms. Fanservice: Most of the planets take form of attractive women, some with revealing outfits. The Moon can transform into a bunny girl, who is the closest thing to a mascot the manga has outside of the other chibified moons.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Believe it or not, most of the moons.
- Reality Warper:
- Even in human form, the planets are still planets, and can exhibit the powers of their immense gravitational forces, their atmosphere, and their immense forces of energy.
- The Sun can bend time and space within its immediate vicinity, as while it cannot influence much outside the Solar System, he's still the "king of his castle". This includes making it seem like he's lived as a human on Earth for decades, even if in-story he had only done so for a scant few days.
- Reused Character Design: Pluto in its human form is spitting image of Kei Yuuki from Moyashimon.
- Secret Test of Character: The Sun gives one to S-zawa and Oikawa to see if they would accept his offer to reverse time before the End of Summer Vacation without any real way of changing the fate of Earth so they themselves can be saved. They end up refusing it, getting the Sun's praise.
- Shown Their Work: Ishikawa goes to great lengths to portray high-school to college level astronomy and physics information in a generally accurate fashion. Sometimes in the usually way.
- Stupid Future People: The general populace is so entrenched in escapism, that most conventional schooling (including math and physics), is generally ignored to the point where S-zawa and Oikawa both didn't know what the word physics was.
- Time Abyss: All of the planets are billions of years old, and some of them mostly regard humanity as a curious annoyance.
- Universal-Adaptor Cast: Hazuki Oikawa is straight up just transplanted into the story as one of its main protagonists.
- Uranus Is Showing: The reason why Uranus initially refused to speak with S-zawa and Oikawa is because of humanity's favor of this joke for ages. She only overcomes it when it's revealed that the joke had been lost with most of civilization, and that neither of them, nor humanity as a whole, have real context for it.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Oikawa's sudden confession and rant that she had hated the Earth she was forced to live in by her ancestors. Which was a reply to the actual Earth's question of if she was loved. She immediately regrets it when the Earth passes out again and the outer planets leave in response to this.
- Willing Suspension of Disbelief: The Moon has an utter lack of one, and is unable to watch human commercials or anime without going on a rant on why none of it makes sense and how going with ignorant concepts with such seriousness infuriates her.
