Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song is an anime about androids and time travel. But mostly androids. Like a lot of other media about androids, it dabbles in questions like, "What is the nature of the soul?" and "Where do people find a reason to live?"
I say dabble, because the thematic groundwork Vivy builds itself upon is as fragmented as the branching timelines that define its plot structure.
I'm happy to say that I found myself intrigued by the plot early on. The idea of trying to diverge from a timeline in which androids—ahem, sorry, AIs—and humans go to war is enough of a hook, but what really captured my attention was the way that it panned out: no matter what Vivy and Matsumoto do to avoid a bleak future—no matter how hard they work to steer everyone toward the idea that AI are soulless—humanity keeps veering toward the belief that they could in fact have souls. This progression suggests a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy about the future of humanity and AI that easily kept my three brain cells swimming happy little circles in the wading pool of my skull.
Unfortunately, the anime isn't trying to explore this idea. At all. It sets this hook aside in favor of focusing entirely on Vivy's personal journey to figure out what it means to "sing from the heart." Which, at the risk of sounding like a total curmudgeon, is really corny and not nearly as interesting.
Before before anybody evicts me for not paying the waifu tax, though, let me tell you honestly that I like Vivy as a character. The idea of an artificial girl trying to come to terms with her own existence is really cool, and watching her mannerisms go from robotic to human is satisfying. I just can't help feeling like Vivy was inserted into the wrong story; her struggle to fully understand her reason for living would have worked incredibly well in a slower-paced character drama, but instead we get time-travel and (admittedly very pretty) action scenes featuring the inevitable evolution of BattleBots.
I don't have much left to say, so let me tell you—SPOILER ALERT FOR THIS PARAGRAPH—about my favorite part of the entire show: episode 10. I loved this episode because it temporarily set aside the time-travel plot to calmly explore Vivy's struggle, and holy security subsystems, Batman, it was amazing. Watching Vivy spend literal decades trying to rediscover the feeling that allowed her to sing was enchanting, and genuine, and incredibly sad. It was like watching an artist who had created a masterpiece without knowing how, and was floundering in an attempt to recreate it. All the while, we watch the same character visit her again and again, growing older, fostering a family and a life of his own, while Vivy remains in the same place—lost, stagnant. It was tragic in such a beautiful, understated way, and I actually cried watching that scene play out, which is not a reaction anime often gets out of me.
Altogether, I'm genuinely torn on this one. I find myself unsatisfied because there was so much potential in so many directions; this anime could have explored the nature of humanity in an interesting way if it had doubled down, but it settles for flashy fights and a paper-thin time-travel plot where the real villain is yet another predictable Big Bad.
Let Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song serve as an example to writers: don't focus too much on the external. Don't try to convince people that the android has a soul by making it look human; try instead to show them what's going on beneath the surface.
