Anime that Makes Astronomers Cringe

Why do I keep doing this to myself? I made a post about Partridge Family 2200 A.D. and a post about Bananaman. I even made a post about Inside-Out Boy. What did I ever do that was so bad that I would want to punish myself like this? Oh, wait. I remember now what I did. O.K. Here's another post to help make up for that transgression.

I vaguely remember watching The Adventures of the Little Prince on Nickelodeon back in the late 1980s. Back then times were more simple and rewatching it now on YouTube is a whole different experience. We didn't know back then what we know now. Back then Pluto was considered a planet and the world hadn't seen Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 collide into Jupiter yet.

Let me quote from the Wikipedia entry for this series:

The series followed the Little Prince as he travels on a comet from his home planet, B-612, to Earth. He lands in Europe and embarks on a journey across the continent, where he helps various people along the way.

Basically this seems like Japan's version of Doctor Who. For all I know this Little Prince (Voiced by Taiki Matsuno, Julie Dees, Katie Leigh) kid might be a Time Lord. His name is a title and thanks to Chris Chibnall writing the episode "The Timeless Children" we now know that a child left abandoned in front of an interdimensional gateway on an isolated planet is a thing that can happen. It's now my headcanon that the Little prince comes from the same place as The Doctor originally did. Why not?

That B-612 planet (or dwarf planet as we now know since Pluto was redesignated) is just plain freaky. I recently shared a video from YouTube that analyzed the ringed planet at the beginning of every Star Trek: Voyager episode and determined the diameter to be approximately 6.2 km. The video pointed out that there are many asteroids in Earth's solar system that are hundreds of kilometers across and only the largest have enough gravity to be spheroid in shape. That tiny ringed Star Trek planet is far less anomalous than the Little Prince's planet. For the sake of argument let's say B-612 is a planet proper. The entire surface area can't be any larger than a small city but whatever it's a planet. The Little Prince commands that it be called a planet. After being isolated for so long we should probably humor the space cadet.

B-612 must be incredibly dense because there seems to be roughly one g of force acting on the Little Prince standing on the planet's surface. Part of this might be due to B-612 having a faster rate of rotation. In a following English dubbed episode Little Prince tells a stranded pilot in the Sahara that he sees the sun rise on B-612 every half hour. I would say that must play havoc on the Little Prince's sleep cycle but we hardly ever see The Doctor asleep on Doctor Who so this just reinforces my headcanon that the Little Prince is a Time Lord.

The Little Prince has to clean out several small volcanoes every day like a chimney sweep. That seems to indicate an active dense core in which radioactive elements are decaying. I don't see any evidence of an alternative explanation of tidal heating.

I guess the Little Prince would want an active molten core inside B-612. When you barely have a house to live in a planet's magnetic field will at least provide some protection against the charged particles in cosmic rays.

You know what else is good to have besides a planet's magnetic field? A thick atmosphere. Having enough air to breathe isn't enough. Cosmic rays will hit the upper atmosphere. I don't imagine a small planet like B-612 has much vertical depth of atmosphere. A lot more particles with higher states of energy such as muons probably strike the surface of B-612 than Earth or even Mars which lacks a magnetic field. Maybe that's not a problem for Little Prince. When enough damage from radiation occurs he would probably just regenerate because in my headcanon he's a Time Lord and that's how they often cheat death.

Another thing that's great about an atmosphere with as much vertical depth as possible is that most meteors on a collision path with a planet will vaporize in the atmosphere due to friction from air being compressed in the front as it falls to the surface.

In the English dubbed version of the show the Little Prince visits planets every day by riding on comets. If comets whizzing by your planet is a daily event then I think you've got a big problem. Just ask the dinosaurs. Oh, wait you can't. They were killed when a comet smashed into the Earth.

What about that little body of water on B-612? If there isn't some sort of basic water cycle on B-612 the water would have all evaporated long ago. But there's hardly any shelter for the Little Prince if it does rain. I am pretty sure B-612 has never had a rain cloud before.

Somehow it all works itself out. Water evaporating away on a small planet isn't a problem and breathable air is abundant. So abundant that the Little prince can just breath in interstellar space. Or Little Prince can survive in a vacuum because he's really a Time Lord. Probably the former since that's not the strongest evidence of Little Prince being a Time Lord. The birds that fly him high enough to catch a comet with a net can also travel in space. We're going by Rick and Morty logic. There are wild geese in space like there are snakes in space. Literally everything is in space.

Still not convinced Little Prince is really an anime Time Lord? The entire premise is the smoking gun. Little Prince travels by comet. It doesn't matter if it's the original Japanese or dubbed English version. Comets do not move at relativistic speeds. Halley's comet was last at perihelion in 1986 and won't reach aphelion until late 2023. Even if comets moved at the speed of light then time, according to Einstein, would stop for Little Prince but not for everyone else. Clearly Little Prince while traveling is manipulating time in a way contrary to our modern understanding of physics.