After I watched a bunch of mainstream anime like “Demon Slayer,” “Attack on Titan” and “One Punch Man,” I wanted to watch something that wasn’t as popular. After speeding through some other content, I finally found the show “Houseki no Kuni,” which translates to “Land of the Lustrous.”

It is set in the far future, where humanity has already fallen, and the only humanoid organisms left on Earth are called Lustrous. Lustrous are immortal rock life forms as long as they still have enough pieces that make up their body and are put back together when destroyed. They are born at the Shore of Nascency every hundred years, where they rise up from the sea. Each Lustrous has varying hardness based on the Mohs Hardness Scale and has a role in maintaining the school in which they reside. However, another species called the Lunarians warp from the moon to kidnap the Lustrous and break them down to use them as decoration. This obviously seems pointless and a waste of time for the Lunarians, but the truth that comes out later was a very good plot twist. 

The war between Lustrous and Lunarians has gone on for thousands of years, and each Lustrous has a role to play based on their abilities and hardness, except one: the story revolves around the main character: Phosphophyllite, or ‘Phos.’ 

Phos is the youngest of the 28 Lustrous, being 300 years old and the weakest at a hardness level of only 3.5. This means that during fights against the Lunarians, she is unable to help and always shatters pretty easily. But despite her limits, she eagerly wants to grow and prove herself.

What made this show such a standout was the constant climb of interest in the plot. Much like the protagonist, who knows nothing about the world, so do we as an audience experience the world and learn things just as Phos, which allows us to grow more attached to the character. Slowly the story moves on, teasing the mystery of the world at a consistent pace with more character backgrounds being revealed to keep things fresh. With no filler, Phos’ growth as a character was embellished. And despite being CGI animation, the characters still flowed smoothly and were accompanied by appropriate voices for each of the characters. 

In conclusion, I loved “Houseki” a lot. Its story and world is immediately captivating, and the characters are so memorable and have great chemistry. The animation motivated me to read the source manga, and I feel like a lot of work was put into this production. I greatly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch/read something new and invoking.

On this blog, members of the Carmel High School chapter of the Quill and Scroll International Honorary Society for High School Journalists (and the occasional guest writer) produce curations of all facets of popular culture, from TV shows to music to novels to technology. We hope our readers always leave with something new to muse over. Click here to read more from MUSE.