AI no Idenshi Episode 1 Discussion

kiyachis said:
I genuinely cannot tell if this thread is a joke or not. I get liking the show, but original? deep? this story has been told a thousand times over and i'd bet my ass that theyre all told better than this was, holy shit.

LostSpectre said:
The mother chose to stop the doctor from pressing the button and beginning the "procedure" because she realized in that instant that pressing the button would kill her, so she chose to live out her remaining time until the virus completely corrupted her and she stopped functioning.

kuroneko99 said:

• As for this episode, the idea is similar to thought experiment "swamp man".

ernest314 said:
I feel like you are the only other person who seems to "get" that she died, even despite the dramatic scene with her requesting to abort the formatting procedure... Everyone seems tripped up by the language used and thinks "it's only losing a week of memories, why is it such a big deal?" or "why is he so angry with the dad?"

I really like the worldbuilding--of course in a society with self-driving cars, "driving yourself" would be a breach of insurance. That's a lovely detail. In the same way, I think "losing memories" is a euphemism in this world for humanoids dying. It's spelled out in every other way--the characters act like she is going to die. They try to hide the decision from their daughter. They reminisce about their life together. They have a last meal, ffs. And during the crucial scene right before the formatting, she still talks about "losing her memories", but it's clear to everyone in the room (and the audience) that she's about to die.

That's why Hikaru is angry at the husband, because infecting her with the virus was tantamount to killing her. It is a big deal, and in that context, it's easy to see why he's angry.

I think this episode was about the selfishness of humans; how the mother was so easily replaceable to the husband, but not their (human) daughter; who gets to make these decisions, and who should get to make these decisions. I really enjoyed it.

traed said:
I like the premise but I will have to see where this goes. I don't feel like there was really a proper reason Hikaru should have put doubt in the mind of that daughter that her mom would even be her mom at all. Yes it's a philosophical thing but really she's still like 99.999% her mom still in one way you look at it and 100% another way you look at it as her being her mom just from a different time. You can sort of think of it like time travel. If someone's mother is sent a week into the future does that not make them their mother? Yes, he has his personal reasons for his view but he didn't have to force that on someone else who would only suffer from it. I of course also understand it is there to be impactful in that even though she was backed up and restored she still died and who died wasnt who was brought back but a different earlier version of her.


Sounds like a philisophical zombie. Seems more like the teletransportation paradox.

vienarr said:
1 week memory loss is no big deal, I thought the mother will lose like few years of memory.

Many detail still unanswered, I expect too much for first ep, gonna give this few more eps.

tekkenshu7 said:
This cour will probably cover the 1st series.

undeed said:
the mother scene in the beginning is from Red Queen, but the episodic story is from the original series,
this is what made me nervous about how the next 11 episodes will be,
again, unless they already planned more seasons to make,
will it combine and compress 2 series into 1 anime? or his mother will only be a teaser which will never be answered?
also, the 1st series is quite long, so surely they only picked the best episodic cases out of them

LostSpectre said:

It isn't her mom though, it's basically an exact copy of her mom, which could be identical in every way, but it still isn't "her" the mother she knew died after being corrupted by the virus. The point isn't that the copy is a "fake" but that the mother she knew (that experienced life after the back-up) has ceased to exist.

traed said:

That assumes an essence and one that can not be held in multiple bodies to begin with though. Her brain is a computer, couldn't her memories already been defragged over and over? Likewise human memory is imperfect always changing or being lost. If her memories were defragged it's not particularly different from being restored from backup because over time every memory will have been copied and the old memory location deleted and you have a Ship of Theseus type situation.

SL_Senjuhara said:
it was ok but there wasnt a hook to capture the audience

luinthoron said:
Well, this was not quite what I expected from the description, but that's not really a bad thing. It's still good, just a different kind of good.

LostSpectre said:
Right. I'm just saying that if you could make an identical clone of yourself, it would be "you", but it can't be you, because you could (likely) kill that clone and suffer no (physical) harm to yourself. So, my viewpoint is that you are the only you at this present moment in time, perhaps it would be wrong to call this "consciousness" itself, maybe that's a term more apt to an immutable state of being of your person, as a continued observer of the universe, so long as you are alive. However, I feel as if there should be some sort of distinction between an overall consciousness of the person, and the "consciousness" of your current self, how can I be "me" as I currently perceive myself to be if I were to lose the very memories that allow me to have such a perception of my present existence? To be clear, by that logic I'm also not the same "me" from ten years ago, I can't be, there's too many gaps between then and now. So, I would definitely call it "dying" in the anime if the doctor had pressed the button, because her world would have likely faded to black, and she can't be the same her that opens her eyes after the back-up because she has no frame of reference for those experiences, it's like anything that occurred after the backup never existed at all. So, maybe it's just semantics what you want to call that, but I think it would be a tangible concept nonetheless. 

traed said:

Yeah, basically what I was saying is something of such uncertain complex philosophical nature isn't really a good grounds for Hikaru's actions. He made it sound like it's an absolute rather than uncertainty. Yes I'd also call it dying in the sense the one who was a week (plus whatever time it took before her total failure) additional experience died but in a way the older previous self also lived. So you could take it as bittersweet.

Yes, your body actually replaces every single cell i think it was like every 8 years is how long it takes so not only is your state of mind different but you have a completely different body in one way.

Avvenirista said:
Setting aside your silly bet because you'd lose your ass immediately, what people find fresh about this series obviously isn't the usual sci-fi setting with humanoids being mixed with the human population, it's the Black Jack-like character dealing with robot drama.

LostSpectre said:
Yeah, I guess he's just not the type of guy to sugarcoat the reality of the situation to a child. I assume it likely has something to do with whatever happened when he was a child, and that got his mother sent to prison. Of course, it doesn't seem like he believes that is his actual mother, so maybe that's a copy of her. There's definitely something going on there, but I'm not sure what it is. I do agree that it's bittersweet, because the mother came back to life, it just wasn't the "original" (if she was the original to begin with) mother, which is why there was the difference in her not putting cream in the eggs, because whatever gave rise to that insight never occurred. I am aware of that as well when it comes to cells, but certain cells and parts don't ever change as well, but more so than that, I don't think our "body" necessarily gives us consciousness, other than to say it is only because of the body that we are alive. So, if we could map everything and put it into a machine, I wouldn't say that this isn't consciousness even if they lacked an organic body. Alright, I'm just rambling now, but yeah. 

ukbeast said:
Absolutely loved the 1st episode, glad it didn't end Black Mirror style 

About the mother's case

ukbeast said:
Absolutely loved the 1st episode, glad it didn't end Black Mirror style 

About the mother's case

__andre__ said:
I really like the premise of this anime and how it immerses into the AI world. The characters are nice as well and I dig the animation. This anime let me think of Detroit Become Human