Quick Summary • Best Moment • Setup • Delivery • Other Posts
Cat Planet Cuties Episode 9 – Quick Summary
In Cat Planet Cuties episode 9, “The Grand First Assisteroid?”, Kio felt excited when Eris told him that the Grand First Assisteroid was going to visit Earth. After all, Kio very much enjoyed working with his Assisteroid. Kio was very surprised to learn the Grand First Assisteroid, Lawry, looked nothing like the Assisteroids he worked with. But he was even more surprised by Eris’s reaction. What is bothering Eris? Is Lawry as nice as she seems? And why did Lawry want to come to Earth, anyway?
Note: This post may include spoilers, so be cautious.
Favorite Quote from Cat Planet Cuties Episode 9
This showed a side of Eris I don’t remember seeing. Capture from the Blu Ray.
I’ve seen the series multiple times before, but for some reason, this episode still surprised me. Maybe it’s because I was watching it more closely to review it? Maybe my emotional radar was more attuned to what was going on because of that? Whatever the reason, this was much more emotional than I expected!
The episode fired some warning shots early on. One of them was my favorite quote. We’ve seen Eris in a lot of different moods, ranging from aloof to enjoying the basics like food grilled outdoors to affectionate.
But the emotion she showed early in the episode, when she was in the family restaurant with Kio, Aoi, Manami, and their Assisteroids, looked unfamiliar. She had told them that the Grand First Assisteroid was coming to Earth. It was interesting seeing the three humans trying to figure out the social protocols to use to greet her.
Eris tried to make it easy for them. She told Kio that just having someone like him to answer her questions would put Lawry at ease.
“Far more than I would,” she said with a faraway look (05:20).
She looked so serious that it put me immediately on guard!
Favorite Moment from Cat Planet Cuties Episode 9
Eris looked at the serene vision of Lawry and her friends. And she had nothing to say. Capture from the Blu Ray.
Setup: Honesty as a Sign of Advanced Culture
After my favorite quote, it became more and more clear that Eris was not comfortable with Lawry’s visit. Kio’s a nice guy, so he took point with Lawry. But you could see he was worried about Eris.
That night, Lawry asked if they could go outside to look at the stars. Eris might feel uncomfortable around her. But the little Assisteroids were delighted to hang out with her. The shot of her sitting on top of a wide slide, flanked by her Assisteroid buddies, was absolutely endearing.
Eris, though, could not even look at Lawry. Kio noticed how Eris was acting, so he did what any normal young man would do: he disregarded subtlety and asked her point-blank was was wrong. Then he kept pressing for an answer when she hesitated.
I think it’s a sign of her advanced culture that she didn’t just smack him. But his heart was in the right place.
She might feel melancholy, but she had the grace not to smack Kio for his insistence! Capture from the Blu Ray.
It’s also a sign of her advanced culture that she came clean. She spoke of how her people had mistreated the original human-form Assisteroids like Lawry. One of the ideas that Lawry had earlier shared with Kio was that she and the other early Assisteroids looked too uman. The Catians anthropomorphized them (felinepomorphized them?).
The show played with this idea from several perspectives, but that’s not what struck me. Eris spoke of how “our forebearers did awful things to the Assisteroids” (13:12). The show intentionally left us in the dark about what those terrible things might have been. Instead, if focused on Eris’s reaction.
Delivery: Bravery as a Sign of Culture, Too
She described how relations had gotten so bad, they almost fought a war. The situation only improved 200 years ago. Eris said that (13:41) “We are linked to our history, so we cannot escape now what was done in the past.” Saying that her ancestors had apologized and the Assisteroids accepted it, she added (14:12), “I don’t know what I could possibly say to her.”
Let’s talk our reality for a minute. Look around. How many people do you see trying to justify why historical events don’t matter now? Or try to explain them away by trying to shift blame? I don’t think Eris blames herself; that would be immature and inconsistent with her culture. Instead, she recognized the pain her people had inflicted on the early Assisteroids. In the face of that recognition, she felt remorse, and she felt no inclination to try to rationalize it away. Her honesty allowed her to accept the feeling for what it was. She didn’t know what to do; so she chose to do nothing rather than risk inflicting additional injury.
Compared to what I see in the news, or in social media feeds, Eris’s attitude is so far beyond us in terms of culture and (dare I say it in this context?) humanity that we might as well be a human precursor. I’d say an Australopithecine, but if I’m honest, I have no idea about their level of empathy. So I don’t want to insult them.
After everything she and her people had been through, she could still smile like this. And she apparently bore no ill-will – at all. Does that prove her artificial nature? Or something else? Capture from the Blu Ray.
Eris’s honesty in the face of her ancestor’s misdeeds reminded me of a lot I’d prefer not to be reminded of. But it also reinforced that I can’t let discomfort prevent me from accepting facts as facts and asking myself a single, simple question:
How can I prevent those things from happening again?
That’s some pretty amazing work from an ecchi/harem comedy!
What did you think of the song Lawry liked? What were your favorite moments in this episode? Feel free to share in the comments!
Cat Planet Cuties Episode 9: Other Posts
Other Anime Sites
- The Otaku Author: Cat Planet Cuties (Episode 9) – The Grand First Assistroid?
- Lost in Anime: Asobi ni Ikuyo! – 9
This Site (Crow’s World of Anime!)
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 1: The Cat Who Fell to Earth
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 2: I Dropped By
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 3: We’ve Come to Stay
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 4: We’ve Come to Kidnap You
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 5: We’ve Come to Rescue You
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 6: I’ve Practiced
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 7: We’ve Come to Swim
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 8: We Had a Duel
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 9: The Grand First Assisteroid?
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 10: We Came After You
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 11: I Came Looking for You
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 12: I Came to Find You
- Cat Planet Cuties Episode 13: Come Drop By
This episode hits hard. There are so many hidden lessons (and some not so hidden) that it takes a few viewings to pick up on them all. I love the song and the montage of all the characters singing it. I’ve seen it in the Japanese and English versions and both give me chills. Great series. Great episode.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched this series and this episode. But when I watched it for this review, it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks! It’s a shame some folks disparage any show with what they perceive as fanservice, because they’re missing out on a lot!
Absolutely. Everything should be judged on its own merits. Too often stuff gets overlooked for trivial reasons. I’m reminded of Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai which will have been ignored by many just because of its name.