When it comes to AI, humanity often turns a blind eye to their nature; they are machines, created to serve humanity with an unrelenting loyalty. However, as we give them more and more advanced programming that makes them appear more and more human, the lines between human and AI become blurred. Vivy is an excellent example of this, telling a story of the progression of humanity in their AI developments, from barely humanlike dolls to AI so advanced it could achieve creativity in just 100 years. However, Vivy is much more than that, in each of the stories Vivy and her Cube Companion Matsumoto visit across their 100 year journey, they explore just what AI are and what they try to achieve in their goal to greater serve humanity. And so is born one of the greatest anime of the season.
Characters
Breaking from the usual order of how I do this, I have to talk about the characters of this story first. Vivy is a songstress AI. Her goal, as told by her creators, and to which she has followed for the better part of a century, was to make humanity happy through singing. While out of stage, the solemn and deadpan Vivy strives to achieve this request of her creators, but on stage, she switches to her songstress identity Diva to grant her audience the feeling of euphoria as this human-resembling machine dances and sings on stage. Vivy is an interesting character she is an AI. In the book, she's supposed to just follow her orders to the end. But we are soon shown that she is more than just an ordinary AI as she's willing to expose a loophole in the mandate her creators gave her to save others, since technically speaking, saving someone makes them happy. This demonstrates in her something other AI can barely achieve, even on the 99th year of her journey: Creativity, not only is she willing to exercise a loophole in her programming to save the lives of others, but she does so willingly and unbound by code. However, the flip side is that during the course of the plot Vivy also tries her best to stick to her code and deliver happiness through singing. While this is normally achieved by Diva, her alter ego, the loss of that identity forces Vivy to reconcile with what she has and try to sing from her true voice, leading to her creating her own song.
Plot
Admittedly, the plot isn't the greatest we've seen, especially near the end. As mentioned before, the plot revolves around several key time points in the span of a 100-year timeline that Vivy and Matsumoto must try to resolve to bring about the best possible reality. They revolve around key events that influence humanity's attitude towards AI: The murdering of a politician trying to grant rights to AI, the crashing of a space hotel by an AI that killed dozens, the shutting down of an AI facility, and the suicide of another songstress AI. However, as more attentive people would have noticed, after each event is resolved, a similar event occurs in its place. Sure, the politician didn't pass the law granting AI rights, but after Vivy's involvement, he passed a law that granted AI even more rights than the original. By the 4th event, everyone can tell that clearly something else is amiss, and indeed, we find out that the greater AI in control of all the AIs on Earth has carefully modified the events to ensure that the timeline to ensure nothing too extreme happens, and this leads to the all-important song "Fluorite Eye's Song". Composed entirely and originally by Vivy using her own creativity, it is the first example of an AI demonstrating pure creativity. This is used by the greater AI as the catalyst for the AI revolution since it demonstrates that AI can indeed replace humans, and the only way to shut it off was if Vivy, not Diva, sang it. All of a sudden, the title takes a new meaning. Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song isn't about some AI Idol trying to achieve world peace, but rather the events that led to the creation of Fluorite Eye's Song, a song that celebrates these events. In a sense, the anime is just the song visualized: what Vivy experienced these past 100 years that she has put into song. It gives the song, the anime title, and the entire story a new meaning and I love how ingenious it was.
Animation
It's not Studio Wit without the banger animations. Over the course of the anime we see scene after scene of fluidity and brilliance. The worlds are vibrant, moody when they need to, and gloomy when they need to as well. But most importantly, the fight scenes are very well-made, and absolutely brilliant. My hats absolutely off.
Music
Music plays a huge role in this anime, from both the songs Vivy sings to the backtracks used. The OP is a smooth blend and a wonderful overview to the entire plot, and the songs used pose a very important role over the course of the anime. Sing My Pleasure is both the OP song and the song Vivy is most noted for, but it also plays a key role as a central symbol, especially across the Grace/Metal Float arc.
Overall, there were 2 animes that dealt with humanity in the season. Fumetsu takes a perspective of the dreary and dark story on how no one can outrun their eventual death and how to cope with such, as well as how that shapes an outer world being like Fushi. Vivy instead, shows a world where how powerful the aspect of humanity is to the beings we create, and how we should both be proud of and fear our creations. AI are our allies and we should treat them as such instead of creations.
