Boy, was I betrayed.
This isn't a bad anime, by any means, but it is a confused one. The idea of consistent tone is completely lost to the directors, which is stunning considering this was written by the same mastermind who gave us Steins;Gate. The plot bounces from colorful slice-of-life hijinks to unspeakably tragic emotional drama and back again with the vigor of a pinball in a dryer. The premise and world of this somewhat distant future is not explored very far beyond the world as seen through the eyes of our "good-natured idiot" protagonist. Characters' motivations are often murky, when they are delved into at all.
The series has a very neat futuristic vision that permeates the setting. The gadgets and gizmos are interesting analogues, but the series doesn't delve into the mechanics of how these things work, which is kind of a bother when they go full sci-fi in one episode and Tsukasa fires some sort of beam cannon that shoots...virus packets?
The character designs are decent but nothing you haven't seen before. Tsukasa is the everyman character with boring looks to match his boring personality. Isla has the traditional albino pseudo-loli look made famous by Illyasviel von Einzbern. Eru is the fan-service genki girl technician who is only around to get her tits out. Kazuki is the somewhat-threatening mentor with ties to Isla's past. Michiru is your oh-so-typical hot-blooded tsundere who devotes herself purely to furthering the tragedy train that is TsukasaxIsla to its inevitable conclusion. Yeah, don't do us any goddamn favors, girl.
The art is crisp but everything seems to have this ridiculous white gleam to it. I guess it's because it's THE FUUUUUTURE and everything has to be shiny and spotless in the future. It becomes especially noticeable in the characters' hair, like they all bathe in vaseline before every scene or something. It's off-putting.
Soundtrack is actually really good. The OP visuals and song are a bit deceptive, but still listenable. The ED song is a performance by Asami Imai with random color filter shots of Isla making strange faces. It's decent to listen to. The voice acting is perfunctory, with no real standout performances, although Chinatsu Akasaki and celebrated veteran Megumi Toyoguchi turn in above-the-curve roles as Michiru and Kazuki, respectively.
The story is a pretty decent romp as long as you don't think about it so hard and as long as you understand that everything outside of the romance is treated with precisely zero importance. This is a romance story first and foremost: Guy meets girl, guy falls in love, guy finds out girl has about a month left to live, and decides to make that month full of memories for her to...take with her to data oblivion? This is where it starts to become physically painful to try and delve into these characters' heads or try to impose logic on the world outside of that possessed by demented sadists. Why would anyone think making and disseminating Giftia as they are presently constructed was anything less than a recipe for intense heartbreak? Why would you make androids that are capable of emotion, sell them to people, have them forge bonds, and then have your goons happily show up at their door to reclaim the "property" with a disturbingly hearse-like vehicle and plastic smiles? Is SAI Corporation secretly a major backer of some anti-depressant manufacturing company or something? I fail to see the purpose, because it's never explained, and that leads me to my next huge problem with this series.
A lot of things are NEVER explained or elaborated upon. They're hinted at. We see that the CEO of SAI is a bit of a shady, "ends-justify-the-means" kind of figure...but that's as far as it goes, because we only see bits and pieces of the world outside of the love bubble occupied by Tsukasa and Isla, and neither of them has the slightest hint of curiosity about anything outside of the other party. There's a sub-plot about the fact that Tsukasa's particular branch of the Terminal Service (read: the above-mentioned reclamation crews) is a huge profit loss to SAI because they conduct their recoveries much more humanely than other branches, but it never goes anywhere. Michiru has a tragic past, but it's resolved in one episode and never spoken of again.
Instead of diving into the science of this science-fiction tale (you know, the stuff that made Steins;Gate an instant classic), we have innumerable scenes of our supposedly true love pairing failing to communicate and generally being extremely awkward around each other. Tsukasa has the character depth of a mud puddle and similar perceptive faculties, but somehow we're supposed to root for this guy because he's... I dunno, nice, I guess? Isla deserves better, but chooses to spend the final 2000 hours of her life devoting herself to him.
And speaking of Isla, she's the one character that doesn't seem like a carbon copy of somebody from another series, and has some of the best dialogue and some truly funny moments in the show, especially her facial expressions. She's emotive, charming, clumsy, cheerful, but above all never a bore to watch. She's a bright spot in an otherwise rote and shallow viewing experience.
In closing, is there anyone I would recommend this to? I guess if CLANNAD: After Story made you sad, but you didn't want that pesky moral and message getting in the way, you can subject yourself to this emotional torture porn. The fact that Plastic Memories has no real message behind it just makes it feel empty. Sure, it'll make softies like myself tear up a bit, but there's no real substance, nothing to make you think after the credits roll for the final time. It's just unrelenting sadness for its own sake, and that is its greatest sin of all. Tragedy is a part of human life. Senseless tragedy, on the other hand, is something we see too much of in our cruel world. Personally, it doesn't make any sense to make it part of your entertainment options. There are better romances out there, and there are definitely better sci-fi stories.
I guess the funny image was right: it made me cry. I guess it's just a shame that was all it was capable of doing.
