With this episode, it’s time to address the premise of this series: gamers saving the world. With gamers for some strange reason becoming more and more celebrities, it had it coming that there would be more series that would cater to them, resulting in creators finding more and more alaborate ways to somehow put these people in the spotlights. It’s not as bad as the typical loser, but yeah… you probably get what I mean.
Attempts so far failed for me. Kirito from Sword Art Online was just giant wish fulfillment. Accel World, from what I watched of it, looked the same. Btooom was better, but still gave the male lead way too much plot armour. With this, Robotics;Notes has given me the first gamer male lead that I actually like, and I feel is done well.
Either way this was so much better than the examples mentioned above. For one, the entire series doesn’t just revolve around Killballad, but the game is just a small part of the whole conspiracy that’s going on in this series. That means that the series doesn’t automatically revolve around the male lead, but it has to offer more than just him being good at this game. Second of all, it allowed the creators tocreate this weird mish-mash of subplots that somehow managed to link a robots, solar flares, an evil organization, an anime and brainwashing together, and actually get away with it pretty nicely. Sakurasou also has this variety of not just being based on one thing, which really helps for the diversity.
This episode had a climax for the gaming subplot. The robots can only be stopped if you manage to beat a game. It’s a completely crazy security system, but if you take into account that it was made by someone who was mentally screwed while also brainwashed… it’s still silly. And yet they pulled it off by using Kaito’s time slowing powers, which were previously established to be really intense. On top of that, some very convincing romance between him and Frau.
I usually hate love triangles for being pointless, so please: Akiho. Move on. Just… get over your crush. I know that this is unheard of in anime and all, but people can get over love. This series has intelligent writing, so make use of that.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)
don’t forget this thing is based on multiple route type visual novel. What we see here is like Ruka or Mayushi segemnts in Steins gate but just like there the adaptetion will for pragmatic reasons eventually focus on the main heroine (Aki in this case ) becuase her content is the most developed and likely is the only ending that explains the the mystery till the very end.
Both Chaos head and Stein’s gate were linear visual novels. Robotics notes is bound to be the same. There may be different endings but the main plot generally progresses the same.
I disagree about this series having intelligent writing. For one the robots in the outbreak looked fairly harmless. I say just run up some stairs and you would be perfectly safe. Even a well placed bullet was bound to take them down easy enough. So the threat was rather…stupid. Also I rather dislike evil organisations being the enemy in a show. Most of the time there motives don’t make much sense. Why exactly did SERN want to create a distopia? Also brainwashing…I find that rather odd. I mean brainwashing to my knowledge isn’t a instant process. You can’t just put an idea in someones head just like that. It would take years of conditioning.
And I really hope the writer does not intend to bring in Chaos head elements. Just let that crap die like it should.
I’m just going to comment on the SERN part. Their goal wasn’t to create a dystopia necessarily, their goal was to be the first to have access to time travel. Upon obtaining that they had the power to change whatever they wanted, and probably their power lust led to the dystopian world that was created.
Then with the robots I think part of the threat to them was that they completely lost control over them. Though of course they did seem to have some destructive force behind them to break through, but threat to people directly I’m not so sure (as you said, just run up some stairs). Maybe it was literally meant to be more of a threat than anything else.
Just my two cents on that.
Eh, it’s not SERN that wanted to create a dystopia – it’s simply the end result of the Committee of 300’s plan to rule the world – SERN was simply one of their underlings.
Well it’s still pretty weak for a villain motive. Hell that’s bond villain level there.
“I know that this is unheard of in anime and all, but people can get over love.”
But it is anime.
Shhhh, it doesn’t know it’s an anime .. don’t let it know XD
Both Chaos head and Stein’s gate were linear visual novels. Robotics notes is bound to be the same. There may be different endings but the main plot generally progresses the same.
Well yeach, it was linear but what I wrote was in response to Ixerc’s:”I usually hate love triangles for being pointless, so please: Akiho. Move on. Just… get over your crush.” line
which doesn’t take in to acount that just like in Steins gate the current “chapter” is probably where in the game Frau’s ending/mini route would cut off just like in steins gate. , as this is not the end she will probably lose her importance now as we will start arks of other chracters predictably ending with Aki.
Excellent episode. Up next should be Subaru’s problems which should only last one episode and then the rest will be the finale.
I think the tension over the crazy robots wasn’t due to the threat that the robots could kill anybody, but because the soldiers didn’t want to risk property damage. The cause of the robot uprising was believed to be the work of a hacker, after all. They wanted to stall for time as much as possible for people to find a solution, to minimize the necessity of destroying billions of dollars worth of property.
Well said, i totally agree, and i’m in fact surprised some people still think the the robot uprising was meant to be a real robot uprising (like the one from Terminator) or meant to bring down the government physically or hurt people when in fact it was mostly symbolic and meant to seed chaos and fear in the society by showing the government is losing control over things.
I just wanted to add it felt too forced the situation with the game. I mean he didn’t need that slow motion trick to beat the game this time. He only needed to input the moves when the right time came, given the enemy only required one hit to be killed. After repeating that for all night (and the cheat being always the same) any gamer could have meet the right timing at least one time.
I found it a downside when he just avoided and charged and hit, at the moment the cheat (predefined move) started. Side step, straight ahead, punch!
Really,if Akiho doesn’t act soon it well end up with a trio with the glasses guy!
Unless the cheat made the robot act with reflexes far faster than any normal human could possibly counter (which it did exactly) .. no matter how many times you try it isn’t going to change anything .. as soon as it’s HP hits the red zone it will act almost like it’s in God-Mode dodging ALL your attacks and hitting you faster than you can block .. the ONLY way to counter this cheat was to slow down time to a crawl.
Your character won’t move faster because your mind goes in slow motion, but because you input the moves in the controller really fast and the game executes them. I mean, your body can’t act faster, only your mind. If when the bar hits the red zone you input the right moves without thinking, it’s your win. A matter of time and practise (he had both things, no need for Slow-mo).
Obviously the cheat is not a “dodging all your attacks” because he won by hitting the enemy after the cheat’s activation.
That Slow-mo is useful for one time events but unnecessary for events that you can retry endlessly.
The bot was hit in the middle of shooting (first move of the cheat). Avoiding and hitting was possible if you don’t think too much about it. (if you fail once, try again ;))