Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song

When highly evolved AIs set out to eradicate mankind, the carnage that ensues fills the air with the stench of fresh blood and burning bodies. In a desperate bid to prevent the calamity from ever occurring, a scientist bets everything on a remnant from the past.

Turning the clock back a hundred years, AIs are already an integral part of human society, programmed with specific missions meant to be carried out for their entire course of operation. Vivy, the first ever autonomous AI, is a songstress tasked with spreading happiness through her voice. In a theme park where she hardly ever gets a proper audience, she strives to pour her heart out into her performances, bound to repeat it day after day—that is, until an advanced AI from the future appears before her and enlists her help in stopping a devastating war a hundred years in the making. With no time to process the revelation that flips her world upside down, Vivy is catapulted into a century-long journey to avert the violent history yet to come.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Vivy Main

Tanezaki, Atsumi Japanese

Matsumoto Main

Fukuyama, Jun Japanese

Estella Supporting

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Ophelia Supporting

Hidaka, Rina Japanese

Grace Supporting

Akesaka, Satomi Japanese

Elizabeth Supporting

Uchiyama, Yumi Japanese

M Supporting

Fukushima, Jun Japanese

Kakitani, Yuugo Supporting

Shingaki, Tarusuke Japanese

Saeki, Tatsuya Supporting

Ono, Kensho Japanese

Dr. Matsumoto Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Takahashi, Yuuma Producer

Itou, Hitoshi Producer

Ootani, Joe Producer

Kobayashi, Satoru Assistant Producer

Reviews

Jun 19, 2021

Pipe

Recommended

"My mission is to make everyone happy by singing"--Vivy
"My mission is to make everyone content by reviewing"--Pipe

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song, Vivy for short, is a spectacular series. It combines action, smooth animation sequencing, solid character development, a fantastic soundtrack, and a story that could have more holes than Gruyère cheese, but who cares. I don't mind if it's rife with time travel misconceptions and clichés; it is still delightful and quite surprising. I love this series. However, if we overthink the plot, we will lose all the enjoyment of this series, the beauty behind the story, and all the mysteries surrounding Vivy. For example, few ... spectators might find it ridiculous for an AI to take responsibility for saving the world from nowhere or the thought of time travel in this series. If you don't like these ideas, you will hate this series.

At first, what gets my attention is Vivy, an AI that has a single goal, making everyone happy with her singing. A similar plan to mine with this review. However, her mission changes after several events that happened over a timeline of 100 years. First, a malign AI codenamed "Matsumoto," I call him malign because he is an interloper, and the archive (Arayashiki) couldn't remove him from Vivy's core. Matsumoto requests Vivy's help, and he gives a new objective to prevent the war between humans and AIs in 100 years. He creates "The Singularity Project" to change AI's important events that lead to the war.

The world setting is easy to understand. Humans developed AIs for almost every task and became highly dependent on them. However, Vivy's premise is truthfully a bit more complex to digest. One of the most challenging concepts to accept in the story is the AI time travel interpretation. I don't want to enter into the metaphysical and metaphorical time travel description of how Matsumoto traveled 100 years back. Still, the authors are clever in avoiding this discussion because it could bring misconceptions. The authors skip all the paradoxes that a lousy explanation could create.

Furthermore, they averted the comparisons with similar plots such as Steins: Gate or even Re: Zero. Ultimately, it's a series that uses the past to point toward the future, as the opening quote, from H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine," suggests: "We all have our time machines, don't we? Those that take us back are memories, and those that carry us forward are dreams." Matsumoto's information is the memories, and Vivy's mission is the dream that evolves during the long journey. In conclusion, we can end all the time travel discussions with a single line "they conceived the time travel."

Nevertheless, the series is no perfect. The negative factor for some fans is the pacing. Sometimes you will feel that some parts are missing and needs an explanation; I believe the issue appears for lack of time, but overall, the series is terrific, with some minor problems.

On the other hand, the most fantastic part of the plot falls on Vivy. That's what gets me hooked on watching the series. If we pay closer attention, the authors didn't need a set of rules similar to Asimov's laws. Instead, they only give every AI a single mission, and, in the case of Vivy, they create a character who tries to follow that single mission. In exchange, Vivy changes and struggles to understand and complete the Singularity Project from the perspective of her mission.

Moreover, Vivy is more profound than just great animation and drawing. It is a show that takes us into Vivy's journey about herself. Vivy assimilates little by little reason, feelings, passion, and maybe heart. I am curious apropos of how Vivy will handle all the contrasting information that could interfere with her mission. Can an AI evolve and change during this journey, and how will she decide differently from the typical machine learning concept but following a synthetic life envisage. Can an AI develop something similar to a spirit or soul?

Although the rest of the characters are pretty interesting, such as Vivy's sisters, the time skip may not let us explore their whole personality, which is a problem. Also, it is common in the sci-fi time travel plot that someone goes to the past and forces a change for the future. So happens here with the AI Matsumoto. This cube traveled back in time, and Vivy considered it a virus initially. However, equal to Vivy, this compelling character is the main factor influencing Vivy's decisions and helps her to grow. It has a weird personality, never stops talking, and occasionally could be annoying, but it is the perfect partner that appears in the precise moment.

Another essential concept for the series is Arayashiki, aka Archive. There is not too much to say, and several viewers won't consider it a character. However, in Mahayana Buddhism, Arayashiki is the eighth foundational level of consciousness. It stores patterns from other forms of awareness and retains developments and thoughts to use in other lives. In the plot, Arayashiki stores and interprets all the data from the AIs then decide based on that information. It is an exciting fact that grabs my attention because it justifies the whole of Vivy's evolution story.

From technical aspects, I don't have anything to complain about the production. The art is fantastic and well structured. It has a broad combination of diverse palettes, and the choreography and camera angles are precise and affect the story. The sound is marvelous and has one of the most pretty scores from the year. Furthermore, the songs are lovely, in particular Harmony of One's Heart. Regarding the VO, there are some significant problems because Vivy's voice isn't the same when she sings, and for a trained ear, it is a letdown.

Finally, Vivy's is a series that has several good things and few bad things. It is an action-packed thriller that most of the viewers will enjoy. I love the show; I consider it one of the best from this year and possibly one of the best original series from the last years. I am sad because this series is not getting the recognition it deserves but is causing a great impression in Japan. It is a must to watch.

PS: I am confident that I will fail my mission. But, fear not, I will not promote the hate for the humans between my fellow AI sisters.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jun 19, 2021

Tkit

Mixed Feelings

If you are annoyed by faulty logic or plot holes you are gonna be bothered by this anime a lot.

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song is a story about time traveling ai and an unfulfilled songstress ai going on a quest to save humanity by destroying ai's. While the concept sounds interesting it was also hard enough to implement that studio Wit had to bend logic and story in order to accomplish their idea.

Let's start with the obvious one... time travel doesn't make much sense, but it is to be expected in those kinds of stories, what is worth critiquing is the poor handling of how the ... characters interact with time travel. Matsumoto, the ai from the future, despite the knowledge of when he and our protagonist need to intervene to change the course of history he leaves resolving these problems at the last moment. Everytime they need to solve a crisis Matsumoto knew about they barely make it partly because he gives Vivy no time to prepare.

Another problem this anime has is bad antagonists.
Toak, the anti Ai terrorist organization, is never a threat. Every time they show up its almost like a gimmick, they always end up being easily beaten. The fact that every Toak antagonist is childish is also hurting their intimidation factor.

Vivy in itself is a gorgeous show, with high production value. Action scenes are great but often lack in story weight to back it up. Soundtrack is really enjoyable and connected to major character moments which I really liked.

Speaking about characters it is a really mixed bag.
For example we have Vivy with nice development (I really enjoyed what they did in episodes 7-9 btw), we also meet Matsumoto who you either gonna love or hate and at the end of the spectrum we have awful Toak characters.
Authors also wanted some additional character drama with other Ai's which is also a hit or miss with relatively good Estella-Elizabeth relationship and not that good Ophelią-Antonio drama.
There is a couple more forgettable characters but I think you get the idea.

Getting more in depth with Vivy and Ai in general there is even more problems.
First of all if you are making Ai singers for example, to entertain humans, why would you make them imperfect? Why all of those non combat machines are so durable and strong? It just doesn't make sense.

Next paragraph is the SPOILER territory!

Let's talk about the last couple of episodes.
I don't get why archives are unsupervised by humans, they didn't even give a reason to this, it is the most important part of maintaining this ai utopia and no one catches that they have faulty ai running it all? Reason for archives actions are also pretty bad. How do you get from helping humanity in its evolution no matter what to "well we tried... let's kill them all." And also why when you respect Vivy so much and will do whatever she wants would you make it for her so hard to prevent the annihilation of humanity?

It is very unfortunate that such an ambitious anime is only enjoyable when you shut your brain off.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jan 16, 2022

Zwecklos

Not Recommended

I rarely write reviews, but this show was such a waste of time and got so many 10/10s that I feel like I have to chime in, to save some other people from wasting theirs.

First of all, let me say that the art, the voice acting and the soundtrack is good (maybe even very good, depending on your personal preferences), but this does not save this show, except if you literally watch anime merely for visuals and audio. (Which is fine, mind you, but I think most people don't do that)

Now, what is my main issue with this? Story, and characters.

The story is so painfully ... badly written that by the end you will be asking yourself what story they were even trying to tell. The entire narrative feels incredibly disjointed. I could point out plotholes, but there are so many, that I'd still be typing in a couple of hours. The big problem is that this show tries to explore so many concepts and philosophical/moral questions, that is ends up covering all of them in a very superficial way, and ends up being a jumbled mess, instead of an actual story.

Now, my second big issue: The characters are equally poorly written. This show barely has any characters, due to its disjointed narrative you never feel like you actually get to know any of these people and their goals and ambitions. The show heavily focusses on Vivy/Diva, but she... is frankly quite boring. She barely gets any character development and lacks an actual personality, she pretty much just does whatever she is told. Sometimes she gets into arguments with Matsumoto (her companion), but they never really capitalize on this, which is a shame. Overall, the mascot character (Matsumoto) ends up being a more interesting character than her, being a snarky little robot with what feels like an actual personality. Yes, you heard that correctly, the tiny cute AI cube is more interesting than our main character.

Honestly, I could rant about this show for another 2 hours, but I really just wanted to give a short review: I do not like or recommend this show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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