Stories about technology and its foremost extension—the artificial simulation of consciousness, are typically best when they are as much about their potential to supplant humanity as they are sending us to a higher evolutionary stratum. It is too early to assess whether the retribalized digital age will ultimately spell destitution or reunite us in singularity so it is probably better to hold off on value judgments and stick with reports upon reality. This is why, as with most science fiction stories, the post-apocalypse of Planetarian is brought about by humanity's technological hubris. Yet it is the humble programming of a talkative pre-war gynoid that redirects the last man's eyes away from the folly of Earth and back towards the stars above. The irony of our greatest technological mirror image inspiring us through the most primeval of human traditions—oral storytelling—is manifest and brilliant. Were it not for its excessively mawkish ending, it'd easily rank among the finer gateway visual novels that aren't monstrously lengthy. As it is, it's pretty alright. Once we finally get our heads out of the gruel and start colonizing the stars we should give our A.I. moe personification.

"Virtually all works on mental illness and psychiatry are about what goes on in the heads of either mental patients or psychiatrists. In the former class fall the tragedies written by former patients, novelists, philosophers, and some mental health professionals about what they—the sufferers or those who sympathize with them—think is going on in the minds of the mentally ill: these are called the inner experiences of the insane and the torments inflicted on them by others. In the later class fall the comedies written by psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and other professionals about what they—the scientists and therapists eager to understand and help the helpless—think is going on in the minds of mental patients and what ought to be done about it: these are called the scientific theories and therapeutic techniques of psychiatry."