First Impressions – AI no Idenshi

Ai no Idenshi is an interesting wild card for this season, maybe even bordering on a sleeper.  It’s based on a manga by Yamada Kyuuri which ended in 2017 and wasn’t especially popular that I was aware of.  It did however get a couple of sequels – one of which is currently running – so maybe it was more successful than I remember.  It comes from Madhouse and old-school director Sato Yuzo, and it’s very much a hard sci-fi premise.  As such it feels (and kind of looks) a bit like a throwback to an earlier time in anime.

The premise here is that sometime in the future a percentage (1% is referenced in the episode but I’ve heard 10% thrown around) of the population are “humanoids”- human-like (apart from the eyes) androids.  They get hungry, they love, they cry.  And they can die, too, if their “heads” go bad, which sometimes happens.  But creating a backup of a humanoid is highly illegal, not that it stops people from doing it.  Backups are often used in criminal activities, it seems, but there are deeper ethical reasons to question the practice.  And it’s those questions that form the heart of Ai no Idenshi.

Hikaru, the human protagonist, was apparently raised by a humanoid mother.  She allowed herself to be copied in exchange for medical treatments for Hikaru when he was a child, and is now doing hard time making geta for it.  Hikaru, meanwhile, grew up to be a doctor.  He has a legit clinic with a humanoid receptionist where he treats humans, including those getting implants for various reasons (including elective).  He also works on humanoids, strictly off the grid.  That includes a humanoid woman with a humanoid husband and a human adopted daughter, who was infected with a virus when her husband used black market tech to make a backup of her.

The philosophical dilemma here is as classic sci-fi as it gets, right down to using androids as a means to ask questions about human consciousness.  The only way to “save” the woman is to restore her from the uninfected backup.  She’d lose a week of memories but that’s no big deal, right?  Except humanoids are, by all appearances, fully sentient.  And like a human, the woman questions whether this restored version of herself would actually be her.  Would it?  Hell if I know – or anyone else.  Defining consciousness and identity is not such an easy thing.  And this question is not so theoretical, as we may not be all that far from facing it in real life (“the singularity is near”).

As entertainment, this is all pretty good.  Hikaru makes an interesting protagonist, and one senses this is going to be a “movie of the week” format where these big questions are explored through his underground medical work.  Sci-fi of this sort can sometimes be a bit dry and distant, but the premiere doesn’t shy away from playing on emotion (sometimes a bit too broadly, perhaps).  I’m plenty intrigued enough to want to see where this is going, though it’s way to early to tell if Ai no Idenshi has the genes to be a compelling series.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

6 comments

  1. O

    I liked the first episode and we in general don’t get enough classic hard sci-fi so i’m at minimum intrigued! Also, if I’m completely honest this show does not have a steep hill to climb to become one of the series I may finish this summer. This season looks like it might struggle to present 5/6 solid anime, that one would even entertain the idea of wanting to follow along.

  2. Like I said, a bit of a throwback. As someone who loves hard sci-fi that’s a point in its favor for me.

  3. This is the first of the new shows this season that has intrigued me enough to want to continue. I want to know the journey that it will be taking me. What questions will it be asking? What moral dilemmas will it be tackling?

  4. If these humanoids were exactly like computer systems today, then if your backup is good and clean, and your restore is done properly, then you would be exactly like you were when the backup was taken. Also all transactions are backed up, and then you restore forward with all the transactions which have taken place after the backup, and so if no error was made, then the restore is complete to the present time. But the plot here says that we cannot restore forward with the week’s transactions so the woman loses a week of her life. I don’t know about others, but most of my weeks are not so significant that I could not afford to lose a week of my life. Yet the characters here freak out about this lost week! Ok, so anime physics.There is an excellent anime called Kaiba (カイバ)(2008) by Masaaki Yuasa which covers exactly this same territory, where characters constantly transfer their minds to other bodies in a bewildering and confusing plot. Master Yuasa rides the idea to its ultimate conclusion while your head is spinning. “AI no Idenshi” has enough moxie going for it, that I also will ride this one for awhile and see where it takes me.

  5. I liked this one, will follow.
    My only doubt is, will the focus be more of the humanoids or on the humans?

  6. My guess would be the former.

Leave a Comment