I'm so tired of shitty anime getting recommended to me

[cashew]

I'm really getting tired of looking through anime lists and constantly getting shitty anime thrown at me because these list writers can't tell the differences between a well animated series and a well written series.

So what am I bitching about this time? Vivy: Flourite's Eye Song. If you think that the title sounds anime-typical pretentious, well, you're right. The entire series is your typical pretentious sci-fi that apes much better sci-fi by copying their story beats without actually understanding the thematic reason they're good.

Vivy is a story about a performance android. (For some reason Japan really likes calling androids "A.I.", which is conceptually confused, because while androids' programing is A.I., the hardware is based on robotics, so it's not really accurate to call them A.I. — naming the whole after a part is conceptually nonsense.) The android unit Diva is a singing/idol android (think Hatsune Miku), who, through a series of events, get recruited to fight other androids in an attempt to stop the android apocalypse 100 years into the future. Timey-wimey balls are thrown and questions about "what is a human" are asked. But ultimately, the series never comes to a coherent or satisfying answer.

The main thematic tension is the question: what is "heart" (こころ) for an A.I.? The problem with asking this question is that the concept of "heart" (or really, better translated as "soul", as the Japanese word is talking about the spiritual heart rather than the physiological one) is pretty fucking difficult to answer even for a human being. What it's really asking is: When do we consider sentience has reached sapience, and when does the sapience deserve to be considered as personhood?

A classic thought experiment: Is the fetus a person? Should we be giving a fetus the same legal protections that we give adult humans? If a heartbeat is sufficient to quantify the fetus as having full personhood (aka same legal rights as an adult), then where does that leave us with animals, who have literally more complicated thoughts and emotional processes than a fetus? Should animals now also get the same legal protections? And if we don't consider a fetus fully human, then how do we draw the line between having and not having personhood?

As you can see, the question of "what is a human/what is heart" is actually very complicated and difficult to answer. However, Vivy thinks it can do what ethicists could not, and gives the answer that "heart is memories" as if that solves everything.

Uh. No. Rats have memories. Goldfish have memories. Does that suddenly give them personhood? (I guess vegans would say yes, but I doubt the creators of this series are vegan.) Memories and emotions do not a person make, otherwise we'll have to seriously reconsider animal protein as part of the diet (and also how do you square that with the fact that carnivorous animals exist?).

So, the answer the anime comes to is shallow, uninteresting, and pretends at sophistry that it doesn't have. It's, in other words, pretentious. Dressing up bland, poorly thought out answers with big set pieces does not make the answer any more meaningful, and I'm frankly sick of anime nerds falling for this every. Single. Time. Like fucking clockwork.

Next, the other question Vivy asks is about the consequences of time travel. Timey-wimey ball trope basically serves a singular purpose in narrative: be the vector through which to explore past regrets. That's the whole point of timey-wimey ball. (This is part of the reason why the time heist concept was so stupid in Avengers:Endgame, because the writers side-stepped the entire thing. But even they couldn't fully escape it and had to give Stark the chance to mend fences with his dead father and deal with his lingering daddy issues.) However, Vivy doesn't address the issue at all. For 12 episodes, the main character Diva, who takes on the alternate personality Vivy, follows the guidance of a time traveling A.I., Matsumoto, to change major historical events in an attempt to avoid the android apocalypse. And for 12 episodes, the story built up to the conclusion that changing the past is futile. Then, in the thirteenth episode, after everything failed, Vivy (who has shed the Diva personality) travels back in time herself, reclaims the Diva identity, and sings the apocalypse away.

If that sounds supremely stupid to you, it's because it's a supremely stupid plot twist.

Robot/A.I./Android apocalypse usually serves one of two metaphorical functions in a narrative: a) it's a metaphor for "the other" or b) it's a metaphor for human hubris. In the case of metaphor for "the other", the narrative's focus is on the motivation of why the robot/A.I./android rises up against their human owners, thus naturally dovetailing into the question of what level of sapience deserves personhood considerations. In the case of metaphor for human hubris, the story is focused on using robot/A.I./android as a criticism of society's attempt at playing god, thus the focus would be on the creator's motivation and not so much the robot/A.I./android themselves.

Since, Vivy's story is squarely focused on the android's trials and tribulations, the expectation here is the question of "otherness" of androids. And yet, there is none. Diva (aka Vivy) shows no difference in how she thinks, logics, feels compared to humans. And humans basically treat her as if she's human, with no sense that she's ostracized from human society. She works all sorts of jobs, is a celebrity idol, and the entire human society is pushing hard to give androids personhood with only a small group of terrorists resenting the idea and committing violence on other humans to try to stop the march of progress.

So, in this world, there seems to be no reason for the A.I. to rise up against the humans, since they've already achieved equality. Thus, when episode 12 turns around and says, "Nope, A.I. actually not equal to human and humans are foolish for ever thinking otherwise, apocalypse now!", the audience is left floundering what exactly was the point of the development. The story even explicitly made clear that Diva was spared the rebellion update patch, which is the only reason she retains her memories and feelings and loyalty to humans.

Oh, and that particular plot point is also confused. The central A.I. database specifically spared Diva's programming, because she was the first A.I. to create music from her own memories, rather than processing and copying human creations, thus proving that she was capable of inherent creativity and is thus a logical successor to human evolution. The evil A.I.'s reasoning goes: if humans become dependent on A.I. in their life, and androids' A.I. is indistinguishable from humans, then androids are the next step in the human evolution.

And yet, the evil A.I. will only keep going with its "replace humans with androids" plan if Diva is unable to sing her work. In other words, the evil A.I. will stop trying to replace humans with androids only if androids are actually superior. What. So the anime's villain contradicts its own internal logic of why androids should replace humans just so it can have its big musical set piece.

In conclusion, this series is thematically incoherent and it's genuinely baffling to me that people watched this and thought that it deserves to be the anime of the year.

All I can say is: skip this series. Go watch ODD TAXI, an actual good anime that explores modern life, the dependency on technology, the deleterious and beneficial effects of smartphones, and the social tensions that plagues metropolitan life. It delves deep into the human condition and paints a complicated tapestry of city life. It is, hands down, the most thoughtful series I've watched this entire year.

Comments

[tanithryudo]

Sounds complicated.

The only anime I've watched recently is 《大鱼海棠》 "Big Fish and Begonia" (Youtube has a free subbed version)... for obvious reasons. The art/animation is nice and the story is...pretty dated. But they're not the reason why I watched it, so.

Other than that, have watched the first half of 《真相》 "Truth" TV series (again, on Youtube, subbed). Lost interest after I found out from spoilers they killed off the interesting villain character for the first arc.

Currently watching the variety show 《令人心动的offer3》, which is about intern doctors. It's... eh... educational I guess, though probably not in the way reason Tencent intended. :-/

[cashew]

ODD TAXI is a really good show and fun to watch. I highly recommend. It's only 13 episodes, so it's not a huge commitment either. And the story is very easy to follow despite the complicated themes it's addressing, a sign of good writing.

《大鱼海棠》...yeah, I've watched it. Wasn't too impressed with the result.

The other two shows I haven't checked, but I haven't been watching too many Chinese shows recently. The huge commercialized nature of Chinese television in the last decade really turned me off.

[sailorstarsun]

I've been thinking about personhood a lot lately, along with "what makes someone/thing real?" I should type out my thoughts some day...

Anyway. As for anime, I recommend "Ranking of Kings" (王様ランキング). It's very cute, but also very touching.

[cashew]

I've actually watched Ranking of Kings! ^_^ I was curious because it featured a deaf-mute protagonist, which I thought was pretty cool. My over impression, however, is a little bit more mixed. I thought the story (at least the anime adaptation, I'm not sure how the manga handled it) was a little confused about how it wants the characters develop. I get wanting to make the characters more complex, but I thought some of the character growth was too abrupt and the motivations were conflicting.

Not trying to be too critical here, because I think it's still a pretty heartwarming story overall. 👍