'For All There Exists the Inevitable' is a tragedy of a romance through the lens of a Saturday morning cartoon. It's aesthetics give off the vibes of some of the more popular narrative focused cartoons. The characters are vibrant and expressive though cliche anime emoji expressions, and really carry the experience through their charm and fun designs. A manager bird guy who gets completely overwhelmed and the ant gal who carries a jpeg step stool everywhere to be at the same eye level, are really cute and creative choices. I think the plot of 'building a rocket to go to the moon cause the sun's not shining' is an over-the-top but fun plot device, but, functionality its lack of stakes feels like it undermines the emotions that it's trying to evoke from the romance.
The story frames the 'not-so-end-of-the-world' though a humorous satire of cartoon logic, where asteroid mining causes a cloud of debris to block out the sun, commercial space travel is now a thing for the citizens of the area they live in, and also building a rocket is possible out of materials from a junk yard. The nonchalant-ness of everyone who is not going on a rocket up to the moon is also dissonant with the severity of the stakes that the story presents it as. The story can't decide how important the 'no-sun' detail is. Thus, the time limit imposed on the characters for when they have to launch, also feels arbitrary. I can't tell how serious this story wants to treat it's premise.
Additionally, it's like the characterization for the main couple is only surface deep. It's hard for me to understand how a romance developed between the two, or how they show that love other than just by the story telling us they are. For one, they nearly immediately realize that they both have different goals, and aside from 'he's a nice guy', there's not much chemistry between the two. Stoffel says that he wants to stay on Earth to 'help people', but it's such a generalized and nondescript way, like, he has literally no plan other than to keep working at the convenience store. Rover wants to build a rocket to go to the moon, but as explained before, staying on earth isn't a death sentence, so why is it so urgent to go up there? Why is he the only one making bootleg rockets? Why is the moon colony the solution and not getting rid of the cloud? Also, neither side wants to fight for this relationship or put effort into it, so it's like, 'if they don't care about it, why should I?' They say they do, but it's never shown through actions, making time for each other (that isn't building the rocket), or wanting to change for the other person. It comes across as melodramatic for the sake of having a 'lovers part ways based on differing ideals', but they weren't even really lovers. Ironically, I think it's a self-described 'failure-to-launch' type of relationship.
Thematically, I think the story was trying to go for a 'carpe diem' type of message, live in the moment, don't worry about the future, but also wanting to also care about the future by striving to work towards a nondescript good future. Just, really kind of all over the place. Even the theme of 'light in the dark', I think, is supposed to be the rocket in the night sky literally, but figuratively, it would be a stretch to consider either character an 'emotional light', since they both end up hurting each other in the end though their lack of effort in the relationship, and not really changing either character's outlook. I think if you were going for that lighthearted approach with a tinge of drama that's reminiscent of more modern day cartoon shows, the world and the characters need to be solid and follow their own intrinsic logic, in order for all the charm and humor that's there to shine through.