RogerBW's Blog

Plastic Memories 28 November 2015

2015 science fiction, manga adaptation, 13 episodes: AniDB.

The Giftia androids look and act like humans, but they have a limited lifespan: 81,920 hours. After that, they need to be retrieved and shut down before bad things happen. Mizugaki Tsukasa goes to work for Terminal Services, and is partnered with the Giftia called Isla…

There are some interesting ideas here, but the writers don't really seem to know what to do with them. Nobody ever attempts to justify the nine-year lifespan, and it feels sometimes as though it's there just to produce dramatic tragedy. And the "bad things" include superhuman rampages straight out of Bubblegum Crisis: so, um, why does your domestic companion-bot have the capacity for superhuman strength in the first place? Or, y'know, it could have a timer to shut it down before it goes mad.

The co-workers at Terminal Services are all standard character stereotypes (lecherous guy, violent woman, alcoholic pushover boss), and Tsukasa is strangely ignorant of androids given where he's working (and the way the things are used everywhere in the world). Yes, sure, stuff has to be explained to the audience, but it makes him even less convincing than the generic nonentity protagonist that he was probably supposed to be.

The first few episodes set up what might be an interesting world, but the story rapidly turns into a Dying Girl Romance: yes, of course Isla is coming to the end of her lifespan, yes of course she and Tsukasa fall in love, you can predict all this by the end of the first episode but the show still treats it as a series of great dramatic revelations. (That Isla looks distinctly childlike in shape, and often acts that way too, doesn't help matters.)

It's not a terrible series, but it feels as though it's been made up out of individual bits of variable quality which were then haphazardly glued together and don't really fit properly.


  1. Posted by dp at 08:05am on 29 November 2015

    Yeah, I liked the first couple of episodes - the focus on androids as companions for the elderly and so on was nicely realistic.

    And the basic idea of Isla seeming to be a young stereotypical clumsy anime girl, but this clumsy ditsyness actually being the result of what was essentially old age and senility (wearing out) had potential. But it was kind of wasted with too many standard tropes and silliness.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 09:15am on 29 November 2015

    If we'd seen more of the world, and of why so many people are using nine-year androids rather than trying to make human relationships, that could have been interesting in itself.

    And yes, they never really used the senility/breakdown idea – we had Isla furiously doing and re-doing the physical tests, but it never came to anything, and seemed more like gym workouts (i.e. to improve herself and last longer) than calibration (i.e. to see how much she'd decayed).

    Missed opportunities.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 essen 2024 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1