Harmony Episode 1 Discussion

Dicky1 said:
i don't get the ending, is miach's plan successed? then why

alyya said:

Tuan don't care about humanity at all, she just don't want Miach become doll without soul, so she killed her to preserved Miach's image.

Dicky1 said:


omg so that's it :D
at first i thought it will be generic like clone of guilty crown
but the story is so confuse me with many things unexplained or missing my view
like what is past dissaster or why tuan not connected like other

try find out other prequel or spin off this movie on mal but seems that's it

alyya said:

if you confused, I'm recommend to read the book. It's more comfortable reading than watching the story like this.

past disaster? There is no past disaster like WWIII or nuclear by uncontrolled AI. Medical world just significantly evolve and make people more healthy. For example, you already see this type of person who always check their heartbeat or their calory every hour and upload that on database.

TheKillerAngel said:
Harmony is supposed to be a loose sequel to Genocidal Organ.

Dicky1 said:


so no past dissaster?
i remember professor sae (her farher's mentor) mentioned about big dissaster half century ago that killed 10 milion people
might mistranslation though

Hidayat246 said:


really ????
like prequel ????

alyya said:
or maybe I was wrong.



there is no direct connection between GO and harmony, though.

TheKillerAngel said:


There isn't, but the setting (temporally speaking) is the same.

eso18 said:
The world in which everyone is happy and they will look towards you and smile... that scene at the airport really creep me out.

eso18 said:

I like how the story developed and the fact that Tuan did slay Miach at the end. From the very start, I got "Griffith Vibes" from Miach and well, even though it's rare, any time a character gives me Griffith Vibes I want to see them dead.
I didn't like the motive, for the killing though but oh well, the fact that Tuan finally showed her own will in that was good of itself.

eso18 said:

Now, the whole movie was really good but I am still somehow disappointed with an ending. Not the killing part. The meeting between the Tuan and Miach was really greatly done and I enjoyed this scene a lot... my problem is rather, that after that there is nothing else other than Harmony project activating.

eso18 said:

The theme of the harmony project was build up for the whole movie and well... if it already activated itself I really wanted to see how the world would look like afterwards and whatever if Tuan didn't perhaps "destroy" humanity by her selfishness.

cO_zero said:


All in all I liked the film. I found the cities a little bit weird color-wise but the rest of the art was good (except that one moment on the plane where Tuan is seen from a bit farther away and suddenly looks like cgi).
I wonder why Tuan didn't shoot herself after she killed Miach. It wouldn't really change anything if loss of consciousness equals death for her but it's not like it would have been a big hassle.
Besides Cian the characters weren't bad but why did they have to foreshadow that Interpol guy -.-

edit: Oh, i forgot. I found the subtitle the society killed with "compassion" odd.

here weren’t any laws against painting a building something more exciting, and yet here they were, an endless line of houses, all cast in bland, nondescript shades. None of them stood out against the others. Nothing to disturb the eye, and therefore nothing to disturb the heart

“The exact opposite of here. Over there guns kill people.
Here, kindness kills them. It’s all the same.”

alyya said:
ex: Tuan's mother cried cause Miach died even though they never met

Paulo27 said:
This was so dumb, it's a perfectly normal reaction, it's like, is this how you're trying to prove that the world is weird? Because someone is crying over someone else's death? At first I thought it was something like "Tuan knows her mother is being "manipulated" so she thinks this reaction isn't normal and that's it's fabricated" but as I watched the rest I kinda ruled that out and went with "silly writing" instead.

alyya said:

no, it's not. for stranger's death, the normal response maybe sad. but Tuan's mother just crying like it her fault that Miach died. It pretty abnormal, I think.

Paulo27 said:
Her daughter's friend just committed suicide and her daughter almost died too, what's there not to cry about? She doesn't even need to be crying over the girl, just that her daughter lost a good friend, just out of compassion for her daughter and overall situation. It's like crying over a sad story you read on the internet or even a book, you don't know these people, you're not gaining anything from crying nor are they, but you still might, it's perfectly normal human response, hell, not even necessarily human-exclusive.

alyya said:

no, everyone on airport smile to Tuan not cause her position, but because that their ethic/unwritten rule to nice to everyone. for ex: Tuan's mother cried cause Miach died even though they never met, the mother who choose suicide cause don't want kill anyone.

alyya said:

why the color city like that? in book explain it citizen paint their house with bland color cause their are one unit, so nothing stood out.

alyya said:

I'm more prefere 'kindness' than 'compassion'. Translation book also use that word.

alyya said:

fyi, in book emotion-in-text markup coding more using than anime cause this already memory from Tuan who already became one with Harmony.

alyya said:

ex: Tuan's mother cried cause Miach died even though they never met

TheKillerAngel said:
I strongly encourage reading the book and watching a proper translation. The story tackles some very heavy ideas which I think were not conveyed well in some subtitles, based on the posts in this thread.

For the curious, Genocidal Organ takes place over 50 years before the events of Harmony. It is not required reading to understand the story, but it provides historical context and establishes the groundwork for the philosophical themes explored in Harmony.

CommanderAmarao said:
OK the white towers. What are they? I know they are the people somehow. Backup data?
Who was the lady at the end?

proJektFade said:
Some seriously spooky stuff here, gonna have nightmares about pink architecture for weeks now... I thought the ending was great personally, since it felt like the quintessential dystopian conclusion, with an extra cup of sadness. I guess for the people who didn't like it, this probably isn't a good genre to watch hahaha



Just speculation, but they look a lot like the chairs that the committee members sat on, so maybe their memories or stories were preserved. The girl at the end is probably some random student (she had the same uniform as Tuan Cian and Miach), likely meant to show that despite the Harmony system's execution, the next generation will be exposed to the same ideas. Who knows, didn't read the book! Hopefully someone who has can further elaborate, if the book does provide more context.

derprume said:
Probably the only thing I am left puzzled with, is trying to imagine a human without consciousness and yet still display "self evident behavior". Things were lost in translation so meh.

“That’s right, the conference. If all the participants have the same opinion, and all of their roles are perfectly aligned, then why hold a conference at all? If the feedback web does not plot our values on a hyperbola, but instead uses a logical, exponential curve, this is perfect harmony, in other words a state without any consciousness. It was something we couldn’t detect in our tests on animals.”
So my father had been trying to create a self-evident person, perfectly adapted to the stresses of admedistrative society. For someone whose every desire was self-evident, there was no need to make decisions. If their feedback web worked on clear, logical values, no will was needed to choose between one thing or the other. Consciousness was no longer required.
It almost made me laugh to think that such an obvious outcome hadn’t occurred to anyone in my father’s research group.
The mingled smells of spices and things cooking floated down toward the river from the direction of Abū-Nuwās. I spotted the boys again with their dog, running in and out of the water.
“We announced our findings to the other researchers and investors in the working group, that perfect harmony invariably meant the absence of consciousness. That consciousness was indeed only a mechanism for choosing between the various agents of desire teeming in our subconscious, the result of conflicts that required conscious thought to resolve, and the acting upon those conflicts. These choices were obvious to a perfectly harmonious will, thereby removing the need for a will to determine actions. We were chasing after the perfect human but ended up killing consciousness, for it was no longer needed.”
It was ironic. Our souls were nothing more than the product of a hyperbolic evaluation system we had developed over the course of our evolution. Perfect humans didn’t need souls.
“What happens when you lose your consciousness? Do you just sit there all day in your chair, drooling?”
“Nothing of the sort. You go shopping, you eat, you enjoy entertainment—you merely no longer have to make decisions what to do at any given time because everything is self-evident. It’s the difference between having to make choices and having it all be obvious to you. That’s all it is. That’s what divides the world of the consciousness and the world without. People have absolutely no problem living without consciousness or will, Tuan. They live their lives as normal. People can be born, grow old, and die without consciousness. Consciousness has very little to do with culture, really. From the outside, it’s nearly impossible to tell whether someone has a consciousness or is merely acting as though they did. However, because their system of values is fashioned to be in perfect harmony with society, there are far fewer suicides, and the kinds of stress we find in our admedistrative society disappear completely.”

Tumbril said:
(e.g. it's mentioned that the sunflowers shown at the very beginning are genetically engineered to extract and clean up nuclear fallout.)

Darkness_Wolf said:
Now that I have finished watching the movie. I have many questions.. Can someone explain to me the relationship between all different organisation like the WHO and 'the next generation human behavioural special characteristics monitoring working group' etc. Also, what is with the "consiousness" thing tuan's dad talked about? And what is miach real motives and why did tuan kill her at the end? Sorry for so many questions XD Really want to know the answer

Tumbril said:
Basically, after harmony, the correct action to take is logical and obvious (i.e. self evident), so there's no need for a consciousness to choose an action.

GoldenDevilGamer said:
Overall okay movie. First half felt pretty average, but the second half was somewhat enjoyable, plus the ending was pretty good too (even if it's a tad bit predictable).

3/5