Planet With (Clarke?)

[Dave Baranyi]

With the revelation in episode 10 of Satoshi Mizukami's “Planet With” that the names of the two main aliens are Rashaverak and Karellen the audience now gets to realize that this story is Mizukami's rewrite of Arthur C. Clarke's “Childhood End”. Sure, Mizukami has added humour, funny-looking characters and a high school protagonist, but the overall story is pretty much the same: powerful aliens tasked with maintaining peace in the Universe set out to stop the Human Race from becoming powerful enough to be a threat to itself and everyone else. This is an anime so the major difference is that Mizukami has psychic mecha battles instead of talking heads debating Life.

With two episodes left will Mizukami simply take the typical anime Decisive Battle route or will he introduce some “Overmind” to finish the parallel to Clarke's work? I'm not certain either will work well, but Mizukami does tend to put tons of twists and turns in his manga stories (see “Sengoku Youko” for a good example of this) so it will be interesting to see which route he does take.

BTW – I read Childhood's End many, many years ago and I'm not a fan of it. I found it dull, pretentious and nihilistic. My favourite Clarke novels are “The City and the Stars” and “Rendezvous with Rama”, although I suspect that if I re-read City and Stars today I might not be as impressed as I was long ago (1950s sci-fi hasn't aged any better than 1930s sci-fi in many cases).

In any event, if you've avoided “Planet With” because of its shounen/mecha/high school vibes, you might want to reconsider it again and see what you think of the ambitions in its story telling.

Dave Baranyi

[Tank]

I watched the Childhood End mini series on TV and quite enjoyed their
adaptation. It seemed less about the human race becoming too powerful and
destroying itself or others, and more about the human race being on the
verge of evolving to a higher existence. I have the Clark paper back; just
waiting for enough time to sit down enjoy and enjoy the read. By your
comments, makes me wonder whether the TV series diverted from the original
novel. Either way, you have me interested in Planet With.

--Edwin E.

[Dave Baranyi]

Post by Tank
I watched the Childhood End mini series on TV and quite enjoyed their
adaptation. It seemed less about the human race becoming too powerful and
destroying itself or others, and more about the human race being on the
verge of evolving to a higher existence. I have the Clark paper back; just
waiting for enough time to sit down enjoy and enjoy the read. By your
comments, makes me wonder whether the TV series diverted from the original
novel. Either way, you have me interested in Planet With.
--Edwin E.

It's been quite a long time since I read Childhood's End but I vaguely remember that the revelation about the Overmind came quite late in the novel. I remember the first part of the novel being concerned with the Aliens forcing Peace on Earth. Later it turned out that the aliens were doing that because Humanity had to get away from its violent behaviour in order to be able to turn into a group mind that could join the Overmind.

So I'm interested to see if Planet With parallels the switch the last part of Childhood and an Overmind situation comes up.

BTW - Childhood also had at least one time skip, just like Planet Earth has done.

Dave Baranyi