I genuinely think this show is one huge bait which was hyped up way too much back when it aired and time simply proved it wasn't as big of a deal as fanboys made it out to be, considering no one really talks about Vivy anymore but to this day I still encounter people claiming Odd taxi as a modern classic and both aired the same season
One thing I cannot deny is that Vivy is fun, relaxed and careless fun and that's why I still like it but the moment you try to think about the worldbuilding in itself nothing at all makes sense, and when you dig even deeper you realized there are actually no characters, no antagonist, no real plot and especially no real theme inside the show.
The center of the story is AI but we never get clear explanation of how those AIs even work and what is their actual limitation as Artificial intelligence, the only thing they introduce as a getaway is "AI cannot process several missions, that's why there is a rule for only 1 mission per AI for them to function correctly" but the actual concept of those missions are so vague for most AIs none of those mission make sense.
Vivy's mission is to "make everyone happy with her singing", if you take that for exactly what it is she is supposed to ONLY be able to sing and doing any other tasks would make her loses control like the test AI we saw at the beginning which couldn't both type on a keyboard and take care of a baby, but instead she basically can do anything, she has nothing making her distinct from an human, she thinks, she expresses emotions, she takes decisions, she can decide to fight or flee, her mission does not matter at all in her programming. If you take the mission metaphorically within the narrative as the "purpose" of the AI like what's the purpose of each individuals, it works perfectly fine, but inside of the world the author created intelligent AIs are just humans who do not age and who needs to do 1 job.
Those intelligent AIs are really the biggest flaws in worldbuilding, the fact there is not a single moment we actually see them as what they are supposed to be, robots, make it even worse to believe there is actually discrimination towards allowing them human rights because for what we see, they are entirely humans but their robotic skeletons.
For me, the most baffling element of unexplained worldbuilding are those little diode chips on their neck. We have ZERO explanation of what they are and ZERO explanation of what their light bleeping means, everything you might think is their purpose is complete headcannon as they are never referred to at any point during the serie. The existence of these diodes is simply "make difference between humans and AIs" and that's the shittiest kind of plot device you can possibly write and still there is so much insistence on those little things with SOOOOO many close-up shots you might think they have to be useful for something but nope, they are meaningless, it's simply "if chips bleep = AI has emotions" and that's it. There could have been lots of thing done with those chips; so AIs could have hidden them to appear as humans and do political manipulation for AI rights, some AIs could have advocate for the removal of those chips because it induces segregation between human and AIs, what if the light bleeping actually had reasoning was there to indentify if an AI is going rogue or not, in a way we could have shown intelligent AIs with red chip before the great war which is the only moment the light changing color matter at all.
That's just one of the many component of Vivy which is completely ignored in the sake of more action or melodrama babbling and all those incoherences just make the show feel so much less grounded in pure sci-fi, you just feel like most of the tech is magic.
Matsumoto is a computer program from 2160 sent back into the past, how does he get a physical form? The sole reason he took control of a teddy bear is because the tech wasn't evolved enough at that point in the past so how does he get that ultra advanced cube body this early in the show?
Why is the Archive in Vivy's perspective a music classroom for any reason but because the plot requiring her to compose a song later on, something she wasn't created for ?
On what energy source does intelligent AIs operate ? If it's simply elecricity, why there was no use of IEM bombs whatsoever from TOAK or as a contingence program if AI went rogue as they fucking ended up doing? If it's not electricity, what is it and what is this blue blood they have and why it exists for anything else but looking cool during some shots.
Considering how easily TOAK got defeated during the whole floating AI island arc, how in the fuck did they managed to hijack the Sunrise IN SPACE with little to no troops shown, are there even AI guards on a gigantic tourism spacestation?
When escaping the Sunrise, why does Vivy wears a space helmet, those machines can breathe ? If the Sisters need breathing and have a pulmonary system due to them being songstresses, why breathing intense amount of fire smokes during Sunrise's destructions doesn't kill them right away?
Why is Elisabeth the only AI with her data saved to put it into another clone body?
Why is the TOAK chief the only human we see turning himself into a cyborg and this concept was never brought up again?
Why, when we see the POV of a machine, either be Vivy, the little M205 robot, or Antonio, they ALL have the same HUD and interface even despite being from widly different eras ? In real life we change HUD every year of a device with updates, sometimes months.
Why is Matsumoto the only AI able of effective hacking ? Surely TOAK would have make use of hacking in their 100+ year terrorist war agains the AIs, but all of them are useless foot soldiers.
What is the point of using Grace body to manage the big AI citadel? She's an AI, her consciousness can be uploaded into anything. I'm even more concerned why is her naked body needs to just be half inside a gigantic ball core and the other half hanging outside of it, especially stupid when attacking her body destroys the entire facility. The fact that she's naked is already pretty anime shit if you want my opinion but wouldn't it be more logical for her to be entirely INSIDE the whole core except for having cool imagery when Vivy kills her?
This one is abhorrent: If after getting rebooted past witnessing Saeki's suicide, Vivy now Diva has amnesia and doesn't remember her actions from before, why does she still remembers when she was performing on that small stage at Nialand when explaining to Ophelia her past, at a point when she was still Vivy ?
If Vivy is stated to be the FIRST intelligent AI, why does she end up being some bum robot singing songs in a small booth in a random amusement park in japan ?
Why do we never see actual maintenance of intelligent AIs ? Despite what that hack Tappei might think, robot do not age but mechanical parts can break down, especially in ONE HUNDRED YEARS. Why is there never a moment where we see an update of Vivy's components in an entire century of her existing ?
Are intelligent AIs mass produced ? We never get a clue but it feel like they are still important money and technological investments but humans still throw Beth in the garbage dump like she was a deficient washing machine and not an ultra advanced robot.
WHY IS THERE NO WORLDWIDE CONTINGENT PLAN IF AIS WERE TO GO ROGUE ???!!! You tell me the ENTIRE WORLD has enough confidence in japan to let them build a gigantic datatower with complete control over every AIs in activity as their collective hivemind ?! This HAS to be explained when you write the whole world going into war afterwards and not strictly japan.
This is only surface level complaints but see there are many, I could go on about the characters has to why does Matsumoto always wake up like 24 hours before the singularity point and always end up creating more conflicts which could have been avoided if him and Vivy had more time to prepare and also how does Vivy's body managed to sustain this amount of damage when removing the head of an intelligent AI kills them instantely and that in 2160 she's an hundred years old model who'd never be able to face machine of this era, it's like thinking a car from a century ago could outspeed a car from nowadays.
I feel like I had to write this, not for people but for me, in this way I can really disentangle in my mind the real issues of this clearly overrated but fun show. |