It sells you a future and then makes you scrub the guest rooms in it. This is Fujiko F. Fujio doing what nobody else did as well: taking a kid with a genuine dream, in this case flying off into space, and chaining him to the family business, the Tsuzureya hotel, twenty-one generations deep since the Tokugawa era. The gag engine is customer service for aliens, and it never stops paying off, especially with Gonsuke the potato-shaped handyman grumbling through the work and Monga the flying space cat handling transport. The retro-futurism lands even harder now, since 1991 imagined 2018 as a planet built on off-world tourism. No trauma, no stakes inflation, just 39 episodes of an heir who wants the stars and gets the check-in desk instead.

In 2018, Earth has become a destination for tourists from all over space, and young 21 Emon dreams of becoming a space pilot and exploring the cosmos. He is heir to a line of hotel owners that goes back to the Tokugawa shogunate, and his family's business is at risk of going bankrupt unless he pitches in. The sci-fi comedy adventure sets his hopes of flying off into space against his duty to keep the family hotel running.