Romi flees a dying Earth alongside her husband, George, to colonize Eden 17—a planet falsely advertised as a lush haven but revealed as a barren desert. After George drowns in an accident, she raises their son, Cain, in isolation with the aid of Shiva, a domestic robot. Overwhelmed by the fear of witnessing Cain’s solitary aging, Romi enters hypersleep to reemerge when he reaches adulthood. A seismic disaster disrupts the system, trapping her in cryosleep for a millennium. Stranded in prolonged despair, Cain spirals into rage, destroying Shiva.

The cosmic Phoenix, embodying cyclical rebirth, dispatches a shapeshifting Moopie alien to Eden 17. Mimicking Romi’s appearance, the Moopie consoles Cain, and their union births a hybrid species. Romi awakens millennia later to find herself venerated as a divine matriarch by this new society, yet her prolonged absence estranges her from the civilization forged in her image, underscoring dissonance between myth and identity.

Her narrative interrogates humanity’s reliance on fragile technologies and the moral complexities of survival, juxtaposing her hopeful vision of colonization against its brutal realities. While the manga adaptation delves into taboo acts among her descendants, the anime strips these elements to concentrate on her existential solitude and yearning for connection.

Spanning epochs, Romi’s odyssey mirrors the fragility of ambition against time’s expanse. Her reckoning with the unintended consequences of her choices intertwines with the Phoenix’s themes of eternal recurrence, binding her fate to cycles of destruction and renewal, karma and rebirth.