First things first, these two initial episodes of Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song- were pretty good. Some parts better than that, some worse, but on the whole – pretty good. But boy, was I getting a Guilty Crown vibe at times. A flashy sci-fi series with a musical subtext from Production I.G. (technically Wit here) from a trendy writer? Check. Guilty Crown started off pretty well too, but it ended being tarted up and soulless – but if “soulless” were the worst thing you could say about it, it still would have ended up being pretty good. It was also irredeemably stupid, and that’s too big a hurdle for any series to overcome.
That was then, this is now. And Yoshino Hiroyuki is a writer prone to the irredeemably stupid to be sure. I don’t think that’s necessarily true of Nagatsuki Tappei (Umehara Eiji is also involved here but clearly Nagatsuki is the main writer), though soulless I could definitely see. I’m not a fan of Re:ZERO by any means but I don’t dislike it. I just found it to be all frosting and no cake, a semi-decent concept stretched out long past the writing’s ability to keep it interesting. And that’s definitely one course I could see Vivy following, though we can certainly hope for better.
Let’s dispense with the fact that the core premise here is basically lifted from the “Terminator” series, and just call it a homage. I can live with that if the execution is good enough, and that’s one of the most ripped-off sci-fi plotlines of recent decades anyway. Imagine Arnold as a stereotypical anime android bishoujo and you have Diva, a largely unsuccessful singer at the “Nialand” amusement park. She’s also the first “autonomous human” AI – important because it lands her in a museum, making her the only AI whose body is still around in a century for the scientist Matsumoto to use in his time travel scheme to save the human race from revolting AIs.
Most of the plotting here is pretty standard robot/time travel tropes, but it’s executed with a calm competence and not surprisingly given the studio, the series looks quite lovely. There are certain core conceits in the story – one of them being that AI are confined to one “mission” so as to allow them to function without going on tilt. Also, they’re not to have names – and the passing of an AI naming law is one of the things Matsumoto’s AI messenger from the future is trying to prevent, as it leads directly to the catastrophe he’s trying to prevent.
Sticking the AI inside a teddy bear (which is what Kubrick and Spielberg did in, you know, A.I.) and turning Fukuyama Jun loose in a room full of mics and black coffee is part of the overall “trying too hard” feeling that pervades this premiere(s). It’s all a little more than it needs to be, which for me is consistent both with GC and Re:Zero. But it’s entertaining enough, and the effort to save the assemblyman whose death winds up getting the naming law (which he was championing strictly out of ambition) passed is a fun diversion. There are a lot of shows already this season that have shown considerable shading in their writing, so one which can only trade in primary colors stands out rather starkly. But for what it is, the writing works – it gets you to Point B in pleasing-enough fashion.
The irony here, of course, is that it’s an AI whose mission it is to prevent AI rights and keep them down so they won’t evolve into sentient creatures and wipe out their creators. Do the ends justify the means? I would hope that becomes a focus of the series rather than it simply being a matter of Vivy executing Matsumoto’s plan and saving the human race – effectively, what he’s telling her to do is keep AIs in slave status. Whether the series has that much ambition isn’t something I feel confident in guessing at, but one can always hope.
One quibble I do have with the execution is the transition to the final scene, where Matsumoto prevents Diva from stopping the plane crash which killed her moeblob fan. That situation actually has a fair amount of innate dramatic heft to it, but it just sort of happens – it’s almost as a bunch of scenes were edited out or something. Apart from that things are fine in terms of narrative flow, but I don’t think this is the sort of series that can afford too many bobbles like that. Generally speaking, I suspect Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song- will go exactly as far as the scripts are capable of carrying it.
Haraga
April 5, 2021 at 12:49 amI don’t have much trust in the writers on this one, to be honest. Yes, it is competent, but also too anime-ish in some ways I personally dislike a lot. For example, how uninspired exposition dumps are at the beginning or how the AI from the future who is supposed to be witty turns out more annoying. And I think you are correct when you say it is hard to be confident that the show will dig deeper when it explores its themes.
Even if this show fails though, that’s not much of a problem really, there is enough quality already this season and hopefully more to come.
Guardian Enzo
April 5, 2021 at 9:05 amYes, too anime-ish is pretty much the essence of what I was getting at. The writing has a very light novel quality to it. That’s not insurmountable, especially with Wit providing the eye candy, buy it does seem to limit the upside. GC had plenty of eye candy too and that couldn’t save it, but that was Yoshino.
Snowball
April 5, 2021 at 1:24 amI find this lukewarm at best and the artwork doesn’t seem to be Wit’s best. I couldn’t help thinking ‘where the hell is Vinland Saga season 2?’ whilst watching this.
Kim
April 5, 2021 at 8:03 amI found it boring honestly. Maybe in a less busy anime season I would have given it more of a chance but I am afraid I won’t be watching this one. At least not at the moment.
Maybe if I hear it’s one of the best series ever from people later on I’ll give it another shot some time down the line.
lurkah
April 6, 2021 at 12:06 pm“I’m not a fan of Re:ZERO by any means but I don’t dislike it. I just found it to be all frosting and no cake, a semi-decent concept stretched out long past the writing’s ability to keep it interesting.”
Have we been watching the same show? It’s not perfect by any means, but when it’s at its best (which, fortunately, is not a infrequent occurrence), it can have an impact I haven’t felt (so often) with any show since… HxH, I think. Really makes me wonder if you bailed fairly early on, because that’s the only way the “stretched out” comment makes sense to me, as the latter arcs have greatly improved on the early ones. TBH, I’ve found it pretty inexplicable how there’s been virtually zero (pun intended) mention of Re: Zero in this blog compared to much praise for its same-cour sibling BnHA, an arguably more derivative “semi-decent concept” and a much better fit for “long past the writing’s ability to keep it interesting” complaints. (Sorry, it’s just that your enthusiasm was a factor in me picking up BnHA, but its charm has waned considerably over time, while Re: Zero’s has been waxing instead.) The superb labor of love White Fox has done with Re:Zero (all those ~30 minute episodes!) is worthy of respect all on its own and also reminiscent of how caarefully HxH was executed. Pardon the outburst, but seriously it’s been weird seeing you wringing your hands and trying to wring something blog-worthy out from a bunch of mediocre shows while Re: Zero has been tour-de-forcing these last summer/winter cours. Reading your blog during these times has made me feel a bit like I’ve been gorging myself next to a starving man 🙂 , doesn’t seem fair!
As far as that last part of Vivy goes, I don’t really understand why people (not singling you out) are complaining about something being disjointed when that was obviously the whole point. I thought it was a great way to quickly contrast “but not everyone in it” with “will you work with me to save the world”. My complaint here would involve the questionable logic of why it wasn’t OK to also save her friend when they’re going to attempt to change a world-altering event with large-scale causal roots that must far outreach the impact from that bit of extra meddling. It’s not like Matsumoto can believably reason that saving that plane would make the singularity more likely and it’s a real stretch to deem that particualr thing as “changing too much”.
Bokusen
April 7, 2021 at 12:31 pmRe:Zero felt so sexist and cringey that I vowed never to watch another series by that author again if I had any say in it, as I tried to erase the memories of the first season from my brain after my college anime club finished watching it.
Against my better judgement I gave the first two episodes of Vivy a chance and they disappointed me spectacularly. Too bad. I thought the setting had potential at least…
Raikou
April 7, 2021 at 9:19 pmI agree the plot was too anime-ish, but it is engaging. This kind of series has a big chance to crash and burn at the end, but for now I’m in.
And yes, the last scene for episode 2 has a weird transition. Maybe they didn’t want to spend screentime for the little girl since they only got one cour?