(L) Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song-

[Magewolf]

Originally Posted by Applehell

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/rev...ode-12/.173881

Once again Eisenbeis puts it in words better than I could. The key point that makes all the difference in this timeline and why this journey is not meaningless despite the overall result being similar, the existence of Vivy's own song created to tell her story of her 100 journey. Even after a century no AI has made any of their own, they are still primary dependent on humans, to be human. What Vivy just did though almost flies in face of the Archive reasoning needs Vivy to settle that contradiction.

Actually I would say it is the other way around if looked at rationally. Without Vivy's song the Archive looks insane since it is killing the humans for an endless future of AI's making coffee for a race that no longer exists. With the song it can say "We can do the whole coming up with ideas thing on our own. Who needs humans?". But that would require rational thought a resource the show is totally deficient in.

[Liddo-kun]

episode 12:

emotional moment, when Vivy meet Osamu. Sadly, she has to abandon him on the next time travel, because saving Yui is more important.

Elizabeth is badass in combat. Destroy robot security guards, suricide attack to destroy clone Matsumoto. Archive planned well, because clone Matsumoto seems stronger than the original.

looking forward to next week.

[Archon_Wing]

You know, Vivy never picked up any weapons. I guess the Kung Fu program didn't cover firearms. But she's just a songtress! (That can jump from buildings and run really fast, but standard feature). I just think it was a bad idea to give every AI regardless of role superstrength.

Vivy's inability to sing was pretty sad. It's always awful for any one to run into a block and be unable to express themselves. Probably something a lot of the writers must be familiar with.

Last episode is brought to you by Return by Death. Also, love Vivy's coat/cape thingy.

Atsumi Tanezaki has definitely always been a very flexible and talented voice actor but has been hitting it out the park with this series.

[scififan]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

You know, Vivy never picked up any weapons. I guess the Kung Fu program didn't cover firearms. But she's just a songtress! (That can jump from buildings and run really fast, but standard feature). I just think it was a bad idea to give every AI regardless of role superstrength.

Vivy's inability to sing was pretty sad. It's always awful for any one to run into a block and be unable to express themselves. Probably something a lot of the writers must be familiar with.

Last episode is brought to you by Return by Death. Also, love Vivy's coat/cape thingy.

Atsumi Tanezaki has definitely always been a very flexible and talented voice actor but has been hitting it out the park with this series.

Technically, Vivy's archtype is "utahime", or song princess. This is very common in many anime, even Wit Studio has made uta-hime type anime before.

Initially, Vivy refused to load the fighting program, because she was concerned that other type program will interfere with her main function.

Vivy's officially AI model is called "Diva". Vivy's name is given by her first fan, because her look resembles the princess VIvy in girl's picture book. This friendship between AI and human reminds me about another anime. In the episode 2, the girl is killed by the plane crash.

Vivy is the first self-controlled/self-conscious AI. The researcher created her to see any possible outcome. In the original timeline, Vivy performed in the theme park for two years. The experiment was considered as a failure, and VIvy was retired in the mesuem. Her endin was better than Elizabeth, which the researchers sent Elizabeth into a robot junk yard.

After 98 years, AI killing rampage began. The researcher discovered that Vivy was not affected. He installed the program to Vivy to 100 years ago. However, his installation goes through Archive, so his action is under the Archive's watchlist.

Diva successes what Vivy tried to achieve and sang for 40 years. In Diva's last concert, the researcher who set the task for Vivy was there. Since he was still a boy, he visited VIvy frequently.

[belatkuro]

Spoiler for ep13:

In the end, we never got to see that part in the OP with Vivy and Yugo going at it with Vivy wearing her uniform. At 1:09 in the OP.
I would have thought it'd be in this last episode as a desperate mental attack by Archive using Yugo as a model and Vivy fights him. They probably cut out a lot of stuff to be able to fit the 13 episodes, including that.

Still, not bad. Great final song by Vivy, and they stopped Archive, even with a cheesy and impossible interception of a satellite by Matsumoto. Though I would like to know more about the aftermath given that crying guy stomping on the AI and how this would lead to the coexistence. Since Vivy got revive in the end in a new body, society recovered enough for her to be rebuilt and resume her purpose. We'll probably just read the details in between in the BD booklets or something.
I still loved the whole series. It didn't really flop hard in itself even if there were some gaps in details that needed to be filled somehow. Love the soundtrack, the animation and the voice acting. FukuJun did get a bit hammy as Matsumoto that detracts the mood a bit but overall a great original series.

[Ragashingo]

Episode 13
I liked it.

Spoiler:

Yes, the final episode was a bit compressed. I kinda wish it had been double length to just fit more in. But, I liked every part of it. We got a Diva snap. We got time travel that actually worked where knowledge of the future allowed Vivy to significantly change events. Vivy did about what I figured she'd do: She sang and shut down. But, I was happy to see that it wasn't a permanent wipe. In the end she was rebooted and given back her pure, "simple" mission to sing and make everyone happy. And she was freed from her tragic 100 years of trauma. It's a little sad that she's no longer who she became, but it's a better life for her, and that makes me happy.

Also, that new short haircut is awesome.

As for the series as a whole:

Spoiler:

It's certainly one of my favorites of all time. But not without flaws. I greatly enjoyed the musical aspect. I liked the agelessness of Diva/Vivy as the story took her sometimes decades further in her life. I liked her growth, especially since we got to see her at her most awesome songstress peak as the happy, talented, Diva in the Ophelia arc. We got at a pair of really awesome fights in Vivy vs Elizabeth and Diva vs Yugo. And, Vivy and her music and her memories were the key to saving the day. It was a different, interesting take on time travel where the direct act of traveling back and changing things didn't affect much, but where the experiences and emotions and memories made during the journey back to the present mattered a great deal. My pluses list might be a bit short, here, but that's because I loved so much of the show it would be a huge chore listing off all the scenes and moments.

Oh the downside, I was disappointed in the Yugo Kakatani running arc. I wanted his passion for destroying AIs to be more than being upset that AIs have the capacity to exceed their mission and save human lives. I just needed a bit more trauma. A bit more consequence and tragedy to his story to set him on such a bad path. Something more similar to Will Smith's character hating AIs in the iRobot movie because they would calculate a mathematically correct decision that was not necessarily morally/emotionally correct. Because we didn't get that I felt Yugo's arc was a bit hollow. And on top of that, they seemed to say he actually turned himself around in the end, but then why did we have that whole fight vs Diva? His returning in a "young" AI robot body was never explained, either.

The big time skips also removed a bit of consequence from Vivy and Matsumoto's actions. Or, rather, we didn't see as much of the consequences as we could have. I liked the idea that some of this was the Archive subtly correcting the timeline over the years and decades that Vivy and Matsumoto weren't altering it, but the four singularity points did sorta not do much. I think it's a neat bit of storytelling in one way. They were fixing the wrong problem. That's kinda fair. But, I do wish the individual points had mattered more in their own right. Also... I really wanted Vivy to have to go back through the entire 100 years and use her knowledge of the future to save everyone similar to how she saved Toak in the end. That sorta Back To The Future operating with perfect knowledge of what to do the second time around would have been awesome if applied to the entire series!

Also, I wish we got a little more insight into the world post war. The AI uprising would have lasted less than 24 hours, and AIs such as Elizabeth and Vivy were allowed to continue to exist. How about all the others? There may be some answers in the ending scenes but I'll need to go back and watch them again...

But, overall, yeah, I loved this series. I think my favorite moments came from the SPAAACE arc. It had the tense, "who done it" build up in the first half. That first episode concluded with at least a couple really good shocking twists. Then the second episode in the arc went all out as it gave Vivy a purpose beyond singing and gave us the sweet/tragic story of Estella and Elizabeth. And in the cool fight and the lovely, fiery ending for the two sisters as they sang and I was in tears by the end of episode 4. There were many more cool and tearful moments in the series, but nothing really topped that arc for me.

I'm also glad it's getting an English dub. Vivy being Mio and Homura is a bit jarring at first, but it's a good choice for the English version of Vivy. And the English Matsumoto sounds great. The English actor is able to maintain the rapid speech which was one of the most important parts of the character.

I can't wait to buy this on Blu Ray some day. And... yeah... no sequels please. Let the story end. But maybe sell me a stuffed Matsumoto cube.

[MisaoFan]

Spoiler for Episode 13 (End):

And everything ends with an emotional bang! Vivy restarted everything for the last time, saving everybody going back as early as the AI havoc, even going all out with her titular song that stop humanity from being eradicated by Archive and so on, even made me tearing up (almost). But Archive's motivation still doesn't completely make sense other than what we got so far. At the very least, Vivy is slowly taking an emotional role of overlord who wants to make everybody happy with her songs, it tooks some time for her to gain confidence and became the Diva she secretly wanted all this time. When Navi was reproducting an AI hallucination of Momoka, I knew that Vivy will eventually get cheered on and finally defeat Archive with her swan song. The AIs that went on killing spree across the world got shut down (so was herself, partially) and the song itself conveyed exactly the centennial journey she spends on. I didn't like how the aftermath was conveyed in still instead of animation + dialogue, but Vivy changing for the better with her short haircut and granny clothes being welcomed by Matsumoto at NiaLand feels so optimistic.

I really liked how the story evolved, but there are some glaring parts of wasted potential going on there, especially at the end. I thought it would end on a bittersweet note but it was at least happier than I thought honestly.

[Eater of All]

I think a pity is that there isn't really a conclusion (or my brain is too small to get it) on what should be done differently so the same thing won't repeat, for humans and AI to truly coexist. It just felt like a lot of baseless hope.

[scififan]

The ending is open for people's interpretation.

The final scene displays a video noise, suggesting the story is merely a video clip.

Spoiler:

The people outside the window have dresses from 100 years ago.

[Alchemist007]

The finale really hit it as high as I think it could get based on the track it was on; an impressive swan song. I also think the ending is a bit open to interpretation; an interesting point to leave off on to make the audience think instead of just assuming AI conflicts are inevitable.

8/10

I think I may rewatch it in dub form sometime.

[Nachtwandler]

My guilty pleasure of the season. The script was totally meh. I would have dropped it if not a good acction, direction and decent seiyuu work.

The ending was also super predictable.

Overal;l I somehgow enjopyed it but now I lost my desire to touch anything from Nagatsuki again (I had some hope after Sigdrifa).

[Xiyon]

Decent if predictable finale for the series. The post-credit "up for interpretation" aspect kinda dampened it for me, but I guess the studio didn't want to close this on a bittersweet note.

The actual plot lost me after the AI!Kakitani thing but, for the most part, Vivy was a fun and emotional series. Still a recommend.

[Magewolf]

I would say this was a case of style over substance but the style fell apart at the end as well.

Nothing about the ending made sense outside of that was the way things had to happen for their ending.

[moridin84]

The ending was pretty nice I think. Better than the last few episodes.

Overall it was a disappointment. It takes itself really serious so if you don't buy into the story it really falls flat. And there are issues.

1)
The Archive plot twist only happened because the main characters never questioned whether their actions had any effects. What did they even think caused the "AI War"?

2)
It was never really clear what AIs were supposed to be like. They seem calm, logically and single-mindedly obsessed with their mission but most of the characters are the opposite half the time.

3)
They talk about "humans and AI coexisting" but AI are created by humans and given a single mission by those humans so excluding some outliners AI are essentially just slaves of humans. The only reason the "AI War" happens is because The Archive mind-controlled all the AI in the world to go against their mission and mass murder all the humans.

4)
The whole "only one mission" design of AI is kind of stupid anyway. The talk about it as if it's some sort of universal truth but isn't it just how they are programmed? Why don't they program them to have two missions? Or none.

[Thor's Hammer]

Originally Posted by moridin84

The whole "only one mission" design of AI is kind of stupid anyway. The talk about it as if it's some sort of universal truth but isn't it just how they are programmed? Why don't they program them to have two missions? Or none.

As revealed in Episode 1, when AIs didn't have something to hone in on, they overloaded due to having too many choices. That's what resulted in the one mission design. I can't say how plausible this is given AIs in the real world aren't developed enough yet, but I guess we'll see in the coming decades.

[magnuskn]

Overall I liked the series, but it really had structural flaws. Too disjointed arcs, spotty character work in many places, the out-of-nowhere reveal that the Archive was the main villain all along, which put a giant idiot ball into the hands of the human creators, because they allowed the one AI which could feasibly start an overall rebellion to be without safety protocols to prevent that exact scenario.

Vivy herself was, IMO, way too moody a character to really like, which was highlighted very much with the two episode arc where Diva took over. Matsumoto... I quite liked the bugger in later episodes, but let's be honest, his letting Vivy's young friend die in the first episode was completely unnecessary and just put him into a bad light for much of the first half of the series.

[scififan]

Originally Posted by magnuskn

Overall I liked the series, but it really had structural flaws. Too disjointed arcs, spotty character work in many places, the out-of-nowhere reveal that the Archive was the main villain all along, which put a giant idiot ball into the hands of the human creators, because they allowed the one AI which could feasibly start an overall rebellion to be without safety protocols to prevent that exact scenario.

The production team tried to make the story more simple. The writers explored the idea of singularity and Three Laws of Robotics. Singualrity, or singular point, is triggered after Zeroth Law is broken. The usage of Singularity(特異点) is similar to Super DImensional Century Orguss.

The first singularity is to save the lawmaker in the theme park. The result is that the legislation is changed from "AI Naming Law"(original timeline) to "AI Rights Law"(revised history).

The second singularity is save the reputation of stewardess Estella. In the original timeline, the space hotel she operates lands on the city and kills many. In the corrected timeline, Estella evacuates customers and pilots the space hotel to be burned in the atmosphere of Earth.

Estella is blamed in the original timeline. To clear AI's bad reputation, the researcher marries the nurse Grace. Due to the change in the second singularity, Grace is ordered to become a center of Metal Float.


The show has its own terminology:

1. Positronic brain:
A computer running autonomous humanoid AI.
Even if the same software is installed on the same hardware and the same stored data exists, it has different personalities, and this personality is used as an individual authentication key for each positron brain.
Once the power is completely turned off, the individuality is lost, and even if the power is turned on again, it becomes another individuality and cannot be restored. Therefore, for autonomous humanoid AI, stopping the power supply to the positron brain means the death of its individuality.
Conversely, if it is a different personality with a different individual authentication key and individuality, it is possible to make a duplicate having the same stored data.

2. Dual Positronic Brains Plan
The research plan that created Estella and Elizabeth.
The details are written in the booklet "Vivy prototype".

A plan to intentionally create an autonomous humanoid AI with the same personality by synchronizing two positron brains in synchronization.

The ultimate goal was to duplicate and restore the personality lost due to the power down.

Due to the enforcement of the "AI Naming Law in original timeline and the "AI Rights Law" in the revised history, the individuality of the positron brain was protected, so duplication of the individuality of the positron brain was contraindicated and stopped.

The only near-successful example of a 99.8% concordance in the positron brain waveform pattern, which is the individual authentication key, was the positron brains of Estella and Elizabeth.
As a test of operation, Estella was put into operation in advance of the body, and Elizabeth was put into a dormant state while maintaining the synchronization of the positron brain.

As a result of the enforcement of the "AI Naming Law" / "AI Rights Law", Estella, which was already in operation, was diverted to other uses, and Elizabeth, who was not in full operation, was destroyed for security reasons.

Elizabeth's personality survived because the power supply to her positron brain was operational. As a result, Elizabeth, with the same individual authentication key as Estella, led to the falling space hotel.

[Liddo-kun]

episode 13:

because Vivy went to Toak right away, more of them survived and able to help in the final battle.

now armed with proper information... the terrorists go to disable the power plant, while Matsumoto alone goes to inject the program to disable server.

since Toak has so many more men this time, and they even have their ai Jamming device... they are able to put up a much better fight against the rampaging robots.

Matsumoto vs. a fleet of red cubes. They outnumber him, but Matsumoto has it pre-planned with each cube of himself destroying one ship.

Vivy song is really emotional, I can feel it. Archive final Satellite Bomb attack to try to stop Vivy, was stopped by Matsumoto sacrifice himself to explode with the satellite.

Momoka finally see Vivy perform.

7.5/10 -- I absolutely hated the Ophelia arc, and planned not to buy anything from this show. But Vivy final song change my mind. Going to buy at least a cd when budget allows.

[grecefar]

Happy ending I guess?, as much after all that happened and at least vivy is alive and just start a new, too bad she doesn't remember but I'll take it.

8/10

[Endscape]

It's so rare to see sci-fi anime these days, especially more creative ones, so I'm really glad this show exists, regardless of anything else.

Seeing Vivy go through everything, struggle so much was the core of the show I think and I enjoyed watching her journey.