Despite not having memories of his past, Souya lives a peaceful high school life. However, one day his town is threatened by huge objects floating in the sky.
Conventional weapons are useless against them, but the 7 heroes charged with defending the city emerge in their mechs and head into battle.
Souya, too, finds himself drawn to battle, but not against the objects, he is drawn to fight the heroes.
Anime is a creative medium, but its rare to find a series that really tries to do something new. Planet With dares to try. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Planet With, head on down below.
Anime Like Planet With
For Fans of Main Characters That Might Be Villains
Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer
One day, Yuuhi Amamiya finds himself ceaselessly followed by a talking lizard. This lizard claims to be Sir Noi Crezant who has chosen Yuuhi to be the Lizard Beast Knight, one of several guardians of a princess who is destined to beat a mage that threatens to destroy the world.
After being attacked by a representative of the mage and saved by his neighbor, Asahina Samidare, he discovers that she is the princess in question and is suddenly able to see a giant hammer in the sky threatening Earth.
While swearing loyalty to her, he discovers that while Samidare wants to defeat the mage, that is only because she wants to destroy the world herself afterwards.
Planet With and Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer share an author, and the anime adaptations of works by that author all share the same fundamental problems – they don’t have time for the finer details. The source material for both series is actually quite dense and detail-oriented, but the anime series both pare them down to what amounts to B-tier shounen stories and/or mecha experiences.
That said, you can see the greatness in there still. Planet With does the better job playing out its intricate plot even if it is highly rushed.
While these two series have quite different stories, they feature intriguing, yet weird characters who may or may not actually be the villains of the story. They also create stories that are kind of unlike anything else in anime in terms of creativity.
World Conquest Zvezda Plot
A runaway named Jimon is wandering the streets one night when he encounters a collapsed young girl. After offering her some food, she invites him to join her organization.
Really just needing a place to stay, he accepts and accepts her nickname of Dva. The girl turns out to be Kate, leader of Zvezda, an organization bent on world conquest.
Both Planet With and World Conquest Zvezda both follow main characters that are doing things that villains would do, like fighting heroes of trying to take over the world. However, while they are following villains, they both are being delightfully comedic about it so it is harder to take their evil motives seriously.
While World Conquest Zvezda Plot isn’t a mecha series, it does share Planet With’s passion for eccentric characters.
Terror in Resonance
After a terrorist attack on a Japanese nuclear facility, the country was paralyzed to act. After six months of searching for the perpetrators, the public is shown a video of two boys known as Sphinx who take credit for a recent bomb attack. The pair are soon linked to the terrorist attack on the nuclear facility by police.
Threatening more mayhem to come, it is up to the police to catch these terrorists. However, Sphinx has been very careful to never kill anyone with their attacks. Instead, they hope to use them to expose a secret government experiment and its cruelty.
Like Planet With surprised people by having the main character fighting the world-saving heroes for initially mysterious reasons, Terror in Resonance boldly set terrorists as main characters. However, both series handled these clearly-villainous main characters well by explaining their stories, making them sympathetic, and showing who the real villains are by the end.
All that said, Terror in Resonance is a bit of a different experience from Planet With in that it is not a mecha anime and it isn’t a silly anime either. Planet With adds levity by how silly some characters are like Sensei or Kakka, but Terror in Resonance is a more serious drama where everyone is dour if not psychotic.
For Fans of Innovative Mecha Action
SSSS.Gridman
Amnesiac Yuta Hibiki one day encounters Hyper Agent Gridman inside an old computer. Gridman tells him that he needs to fulfill his mission.
While sorting out what that all means, a giant monster attacks his city. Yuta then discovers he can merge with Gridman to fight the monster, but once it is done, everyone’s memories reset and the dead are forgotten.
Both Planet With and SSSS.Gridman provide a similar sort of mecha experience where the main character immediately get pulled into fighting someone, and you – the audience – have no idea why. However, by the end, the reasoning is made perfectly clear.
Although SSSS.Gridman is a anime re-imagining of a much older Tokusatsu show, it still captures everything you like about mecha. Both Gridman and Planet With are about mechs fighting giant monsters for the sake of the world. Planet With just makes you think the main character is a villain at first. SSSS.Gridman keeps things vague and unexplainable by giving the main character amnesia.
Bokurano
During their summer vacation, 15 children are enjoying summer camp together. One day, they decide to go explore a cave by the sea, inside they meet a mysterious man named Kokopelli who is surrounded by high-tech equipment.
Kokopelli claims to be a game developer and asks if the children would help him test it.
Each child signs a contract, but instead of playing a game, they are actually piloting a giant mech to defend the earth from 15 different alien invasions.
Both Planet With and Bokurano offer non-traditional mecha experiences. Planet With does this by making the main character seem like a villain while Bokurano does it by killing its child characters each episode.
They are both mecha anime about the characters fighting for the fate of the planet, and have elements of characters being from other planets as well. However, Planet With undercuts serious moments with how silly some of the action is and how eccentric some characters are. Bokurano, by comparison, is all serious suffering in a difficult situation.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Simon and Kamina were living boring lives in their deep underground village when, on an excavation dig, they find a mysterious object that turns out to be the ignition key to an ancient war machine.
With their new weapon, the pair are able to fend off an attack from above, but upon catching a glimpse of the sky, they set off on an adventure that will take them out of this universe.
Planet With and Gurren Lagann are two mecha anime that aren’t afraid to be silly and parody the pretty stale mecha genre. If you enjoy eccentric characters and fluid, colorful, high-energy mecha action, then what Planet With offered in that, Gurren Lagann goes above and beyond.
However, while Planet With has some flaws in its production and storytelling, Gurren Lagann offers a smoother storytelling experience.
Listeners
While humanity eeks out an existence, they are constantly threatened by mysterious beings known as Earless. To defend their towns, powerful heroes known as Players wield equipment and sound to take down Earless.
Echo is a boy obsessed with Players and dreams of becoming one. However, he never had a shot until he meets Mu, a girl with amnesia, an input jack in her waist, and a mysterious connection to the most infamous Player of all time.
To be perfectly honest, both Planet With and Listeners are mecha anime with pacing problems, but are no less enjoyable in the unique things they are trying to do in what is a pretty boilerplate-following genre.
Both series attempt to do new things with the mecha genre with their plot, and fumble a bit in the execution. The issue with Listeners is that is likes to frequently jump to new plot lines without necessarily concluding the previous ones. However, if you like mecha that isn’t actually the same standard mecha experience, Listeners offers that.
For Fans of Uniquely Weird Beginning, But Makes Perfect Sense By The End
Punch Line
Yuuta Iridatsu is your average high school kid, except that he faints when he sees a girl’s panties.
However, on a chance encounter with a vigilante fighter called Strange Juice, his soul gets separated from his body. Not only does this allow him to go on panty adventures unseen, but it may make him the key to saving the world.
Planet With enjoys being ridiculous with its main character living with a maid, a giant cat, and never getting to eat meat. However, Punch Line goes a lot weirder and occasionally more perverted. Regardless, both series start off silly and not really making much sense. However, things unfold and a plot starts to come together.
Punch Line is admittedly more abstract and it takes much longer for the plot to start to make sense, but it is still a wonderfully weird ride to get there.
Gatchaman Crowds
One day, Hajime Ichinose is given a small book called a NOTE. It turns out that this is a device that allows her to transform into a Gatchaman, one of the legendary protectors of her city.
Meeting other Gatchamen, they stress upon her the importance of staying secret and invite her into their base of operations and task her with helping them keep the city safe.
Both Planet With and Gatchaman Crowds are about a group of people who use superpowers or mechs to protect people. However, Planet With twists that common set up by making the main character fight against them.
While Gatchaman Crowds plays its premise in the usual way, it is not without its deeper twists, it just saves them until the end.
What these series have most in common is they come at action with a lot of energy, a lot of flash, and just the right amount of silliness.
Sarazanmai
One day, after a weird run in with his classmate, Kazuki and two of his classmates knock over a Kappa statue in Asakusa and meet a creature named Keppi.
Before they know it, they are turned into kappa-like creatures and tasked by Keppi to destroy kappa-zombies if they want to become human again.
Like Planet With starts off with big action and makes you extremely confused as to why he is fighting against the heroes protecting the world, Sarazanmai starts off with even bigger, even weirder action that leaves you extremely confused as to what is going on.
However, both Planet With and Sarazanmai are the type of anime that make no sense in the first few episodes, but do actually make perfect sense by the end. Unfortunately, you have to really pay attention to the quick-moving dialogue in Sarazanmai to piece things together whereas Planet With spells it out a little better.
If you liked how weird Planet With could be, Sarazanmai is much weirder.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Planet With? Let fans know in the comments section below.
