Mujin Wakusei Survive

In a brief flashback, the main character Luna is shown as a young girl being pushed into an escape capsule by her father, who is then killed in an explosion. Several years later, Luna is preparing for her first day at a school she is transferring into. Upon entering the grounds, she is stopped and scolded by the student council president Menori for running on the pavement, but quickly befriends a kinder girl named Sharla. On their way to class, the girls run into a student named Howard and his gang taunting an older boy from Pluto named Bell, telling him to clean their shoes better. Luna attempts to intervene, only to be told that Bell in fact wants to clean their shoes. At the start of class, Luna is introduced, as is another recent transfer student named Shingo. The teacher discusses a field trip coming up, meant to give the students experience in planetary settling, and some of Earth's late history is revealed. During gym class, Luna, Sharla and another student named Kaoru play Air Basketball against Howard and two others. Luna scores with some help from Kaoru, despite Howard playing rough. On the way home, Shingo nearly hits the girls on a gasoline-powered scooter he has built. While discussing the scooter, they hear Howard and his gang starting a fight with Kaoru. Luna tries to stop the fight, but a member of Howard's gang accidentally starts a fire. Howard and his gang retreats, but Sharla is trapped by the fire.

aired Oct 16, 2003

Luna tries to help Sharla, but ends up getting trapped by the fire as well. Shingo tries to save them in a construction vehicle, while Kaoru helps from the shadows by throwing them a line. They manage to escape, but the incident has been kept out of the media because of Howard's father's influence. A week later, Chako, Luna's robot pet, sneaks into her backpack as she heads for the shuttle to depart on the class's field trip. Before boarding the shuttle, Menori announces the groups into which the class has been divided, with Luna being grouped with Menori, Sharla, Bell, Howard, Shingo, and Kaoru. The shuttle runs into an unusually strong gravity storm, and the captain orders the passengers into escape shuttles as a precaution while they perform an emergency warp to escape it. Howard and Shingo excitedly sit in the pilot seats, but as the shuttle begins to warp, someone's hand inadvertently hits the release button of their group's shuttle, leaving the shuttle and the seven children behind in the gravity storm as the main ship warps away.

aired Oct 23, 2003

The shuttle is sucked into the gravity storm, and thrown out of the far end, in an unknown location far from the colony. The children struggle with the ship's unhelpful computer system to determine their position, and it announces that they have entered the gravity well of a planet. As the children theorize on what planet it might be, Chako emerges from Luna's backpack. With the shuttle's autopilot system damaged in the storm, Chako connects to the computer and guides Luna - who has previous experience flying an escape shuttle - through the procedures to land the ship. The ship is struck by lightning on the way down, and crash-lands into an ocean, coming to rest on a large rock. The next morning, as the children emerge from the shuttle to look around, they are surprised to see real clouds, a real ocean, and a real sun. Chako tells them that the atmosphere is similar to Earth's, though not exactly the same. As the children search the shuttle for supplies, Shingo finds a small inflatable life raft, and Menori and Howard decide to row towards nearby land to scout. On their way, they are attacked by a large snake-like sea monster.

aired Oct 30, 2003

Menori and Howard try to row back to the shuttle, but the sea monster catches up with them. The monster destroys the boat, but Menori and Howard manage to get back to the shuttle. The children hide inside the shuttle until the monster loses interest and leaves. After waiting some time for the tide to rise, the children emerge and try to push the shuttle lose from the rocks where it is caught so that they can float it to land on the ocean currents. They almost push it free, but the sea monster returns. The children quickly hide inside the shuttle, but this time the monster is more persistent, ramming the shuttle repeatedly and eventually forcing the hatch open. It nearly catches Bell in its jaws, but Kaoru throws a knife at its eye and the monster retreats. The force of the snake pulling its head out of the shuttle lifts it off the rocks, and the shuttle slowly floats towards land. The wounded monster returns once more, but by then the shuttle has entered water too shallow for it to follow. The children tie the shuttle to a tree so that it cannot float away again, and spend the night in the shuttle. Early the next morning, the ground shakes from what sounds like large footsteps.

aired Nov 13, 2003

The children hear the sounds of a large creature outside the shuttle, and Sharla catches a glimpse of it out the window, causing her to start crying hysterically. The creature bashes the shuttle repeatedly, but after making no progress, seems to lose interest and leaves. In the morning, they find a large footprint in the shuttle's hull, and Chako estimates its height to be around ten meters. Chako deems the shuttle's flight systems useless, but Shingo says he might be able to fix the communications system. They take inventory of what they have with them, and then split up to search for food and water along the beach, with Shingo and Chako staying behind to look at the communications system. Luna tries to cheer Sharla up, but she's very shaken over the recent events, and depressed with their situation in general. Luna and Sharla find some fruit, but a strange carnivorous pitcher plant catches them in its vine-like tentacles. Hearing Sharla scream, Bell and Kaoru come to their rescue, and destroy the plant's pitcher. Shingo doesn't have much success with the communications system and Chako is low on power. The group returns to the shuttle for the night and eat the fruit that Luna, Sharla, Bell, and Kaoru bring back, and Chako uses it to recharge her fuel cell.

aired Nov 20, 2003

The next day, the children set out again to find food and water, this time with Shingo and Chako going as well. Kaoru is told to go with Shingo and Chako, but is reluctant, and eventually goes off on his own after finding some fruit. At the beach, he finds some obsidian. Bell and Sharla attempt to start a fire, first trying to get a spark from rocks, and then by spinning a stick with their hands. Bell tries until his hands are blistered and bleeding, but insists that he must continue, despite Sharla's pleading. Luna, Menori, and Howard head into the forest. First chasing after a small kangaroo-like creature, they then encounter a giant lizard that chases after them instead. They get away at first, but lose their bearings. While trying to find their way, they find a large fresh water lake, but the lizard catches up with them. The three climb up a very large tree to avoid it, but it is soon scared off by loud thumping footsteps. As the source of the footsteps emerges from the forest, it is revealed to be an elephantine creature with a long prehensile tongue that tries to reach the leaves of the big tree to eat, but it cannot. Howard gets frightened and screams, scaring the creature away. Menori and Luna resolve to climb a small mountain in the distance to re-establish their bearings, even though it will mean they won't make it back to the shuttle by nightfall, and Howard follows.

aired Nov 27, 2003

Kaoru fashions the obsidian he found into a crude spear which he uses to catch a fish. Chako and Shingo collect worms for bait and build simple fishing rods, but don't have much luck catching fish without hooks. Bell and Sharla continue their attempts to build a fire together, and Sharla eventually succeeds shortly before sunset due to her lighter touch and faster hands, despite both of them rubbing their palms raw. The group is concerned that Luna, Menori, and Howard have not returned, and vow to search for them at sunrise. They are also impressed at the obsidian knife and spear-head that Kaoru made, but he insists that the others should make their own. When Bell reveals that the fish should be cleaned and gutted before eating, something that Kaoru didn't know, he realizes that they all need to work together, and makes more knives, and a fishing hook out of bone for Shingo and Chako. The next day, after spending a night in a small cave, Luna, Menori, and Howard reach the top of the mountain, and discover that they are on an island. Despite being at first depressed that there are no people in sight, they are able to find their bearings again. After drawing a map of the island, they return to the lake for more water, then set off for the shuttle again, meeting up with the other children who have started searching for them.

aired Dec 4, 2003

The children now have sources of food and water, but the three-hour round trip to the lake takes up too much time and energy every day, and their only means of carrying water are the plastic bottles from the shuttle's emergency rations, which don't hold much water. Bell and Shingo come up with the idea of digging a pit and filling it with water, using their deflated life raft - which washed up on the beach during the night - to hold and carry the water. After digging the pit, the children head towards the lake, on the way encountering the small kangaroo-like creature from earlier. Sharla finds it cute, and calls it a tobihane, from the verb meaning "to hop" (飛び跳ねる tobihaneru?), but she is horrified when the others want to catch it for food. They reach the lake, which Sharla names "Fairy Lake", and stop to rest. When Howard pushes Luna into the lake, she suddenly feels a strange sensation, and is briefly surrounded by a pink glow. After they find fruit on the trees and fish in the lake, Shingo suggests the idea of building a house in the big tree, which Sharla names "Magnificent Tree" (大いなる木 Ooinaru Ki?). As the children inspect the tree, Menori realizes that the footprints left by the elephantine creature they'd encountered earlier were the same as the footprints left in the shuttle's hull after their first night on land. They decide the area around the tree is simply too dangerous, and head back to the beach with the raft filled with water. On the way back, Shingo slips and accidentally spills some water, and Menori's overly-strict admonishment is questioned by Luna.

aired Dec 11, 2003

Long days of little food followed by long nights of little sleep in the shuttle's seats are beginning to take their toll on the children, who are starting to get irritable and snappish with one another. Luna once again raises the idea of moving to Fairy Lake, building a house in the Magnificent Tree to keep it out of reach of the giant lizard. The children survey the tree, leaving Kaoru behind to tend the fire, who makes saws from panels scavenged from the shuttle. Chako, Shingo and Howard measure the tree for size and strength. When they return to the shuttle, Howard takes a small branch of the Magnificent Tree with him as a souvenir. Shingo and Chako spend the night drawing up plans for a house. The next day, the children - sans Howard, left behind to tend the fire and catch fish for dinner - find straight, sturdy trees and vines to construct the foundation of the house. Dismayed by the amount of effort required, and despite some mishaps, the group manages to complete the foundation. Bored of not being able to catch any fish, Howard comes to see how they are going, but when he climbs the tree to test the foundation, the whole structure collapses. Disheartened, they return to the shuttle - only to find that it too has been destroyed, and their fire has gone out.

aired Dec 18, 2003

In the destroyed shuttle, Menori finds her violin undamaged in one of the storage lockers. Luna sees the large creature's footprints leading away. Bell manages to re-start the fire from the remaining embers, and the children spend the night in a nearby cave. Luna decides that their only remaining option is to build a house in the Magnificent Tree after all. She comes up with the idea of using the shuttle's broken-off wings for the house's foundation and floor, but Menori quickly points out that the wings simply too heavy for them to move. However, Shingo comes up with ideas for some of the smaller components, such as making pulleys, or using a porthole for a window. The children return to the lake and start to search for more building materials and food, but while Luna is tying a pulley to a branch the huge creature returns, in a frenzy. Luna falls onto its back, and it runs into the lake. Suddenly, she starts to glow pink, and sees the creature's memory of Howard's Magnificent Tree branch, which he'd brought back to the shuttle the previous day, lying in the shuttle's open hatchway. She realizes the creature had been injured trying to reach the branch, and finds a piece of the shuttle sticking out of the side of its neck - when she pulls it out, the creature calms and starts to eat leaves. However, Howard, returning with fish, sees it and screams in terror, which frightens the creature away.

aired Dec 25, 2003

The children, with Pague's help, rip some of the remaining bulkhead panels off the shuttle to use on the house, while Menori stands to one side directing their efforts. As they start to lift the panels onto a cart for Pague to haul to Fairy Lake, Howard protests that Menori is standing doing nothing. Luna asks Menori to pitch in, but on helping to lift the first panel, she cuts her finger. As she spaces out, Bell fashions a bandage from a strip of Sharla's handkerchief. She has a flashback to a memory of her mother taking away her pain when she injured her finger as a child, then a memory of her mother's funeral, with a voice-over from her father commanding her to always hide her emotions from other people. Sharla and Shingo attempt to cheer her up, but she brushes them off.

aired Jan 8, 2004

As children put some finishing touches on their house, Howard emerges from the forest, leading Bell, who is bowed under the weight of one of the shuttle's seats, intended for Howard's exclusive use. Luna protests that if Howard wants the seat, he should carry it himself. They declare the house almost complete, lacking only a front door, until Menori suggests a shower. Meanwhile, Kaoru works at narrowing a river with rocks to force the fish into a smaller area, but still finds them difficult to catch with his spear. While the other children collect wood to construct a shower room and leaves for shower curtains, Bell and Luna attack a pitcher plant, using logs to occupy the tentacle vines. They miss one, which catches Luna. Bell saves Luna, but berates himself for missing it. Luna tells him to have more confidence in himself. They return with the pitcher to use as a tank for the shower. That night, as Bell muses by the fire, Sharla comes to remind him of all the good things he's done for them.

aired Jan 15, 2004