Category: Eve no Jikan

Short Synopsis: This episode is about the couple that we’ve seen in Eve’s Cafe.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Well, there go my fears of this show being too short in five episodes: the ending mentions the “second half of the first season”, hinting that a second season is going to appear some day. It’ll probably be around 2011 when it comes out at this pace, but it’s nevertheless a good thing to see that this concept has been given more airtime.

In any case, three episodes so far and each of them was increasingly better. Even though this episode was really different in terms of storytelling style, and Rikuo’s teenaged tendencies were rather annoying, it worked somehow. Rikuo is really turning into a Dori-kei, while his friend is getting even more interesting, looking at both worlds with a rather open mind.

The interesting part of this episode was of course that it’s dealing with not just Dori-keis, but instead about Androids who can fall in love with each other, proving that the concept of love is also familiar to them, and yet at the same time the two of them try to act as humans. What’s different in this series when compared to most other “smart android series”, is that usually these androids retaliate when they’ve gotten smart enough to go beyond their master’s choices (example: The Matrix). Here instead, they try to be like humans.

That makes it strange: why would there be people opposing this? This episode featured some subtle hints that there’s some serious business going on behind the scene, but I still fail to see the problem that they want to prevent. The beginning of this episode also convinced me that they try to use propaganda to prevent as many people as possible to become Dori-kei, with the whole movie about loving a robot and the robot falling apart.

Short Synopsis: Rikuo suspects Sammi of lying to him and wants to get to the bottom of it.
Highlights: Rikuo is turning into a pretty interesting character.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, since I’m pretty much of the beta-sciences, I still have a bit of trouble trying to grasp the notion of real intelligence, as defined in this series. I mean, I fully believe that in the future, as long as the science advances, computers can be built with human consciousness and emotions. I however don’t think that this can just “appear” out of the blue, or as an accident. Why would someone design a cleaning-robot with human consciousness? Ergo Proxy solved this in a pretty interesting way, where it combined science fiction with fantasy by introducing a virus from higher-up that introduces self-consciousness for robots.

Just as I hoped, this episode shed a bit more light about how this could have happened in the first place. The TV-commercials and programs emphasized the evilness of Dori-kei. It’s being made ridiculous everywhere, as if someone high-ranked is desperately trying to give the robotic consciousness a bad name. I think it’s those mysterious people that appear at the end of the episode. I think that these robots originally were designed to really be like humans, and to act as companions, and just when these models were fully designed and produced, and acted just like humans, it turned out that this consciousness had a very nasty side-effect. This is why people who get too attached to robots are made ridiculous, to stop whatever nasty side-effect there is from getting out. I also think that Eve no Jikan is pretty much linked to this, in an attempt to resist these actions.

In the meantime, this episode did a pretty good job at fleshing out its characters. Rikuo turns out to be a closet Dori-kei, while his best friend Masaki seems to be turning into one of this series’ antagonists. It’s also quite fun to see the random people that decide to visit Eve no Jikan. It’s different in every episode, an din this way, it would have been pretty easy to make this series a 13-episode TV-series, simply by showing random visiters to the cafe, and it would also have allowed the setting to get a bit more airtime. Really, something tells me that the ending of this series is about to get rushed.

Short Synopsis: Our lead character lives in a future Japan where Androids are common and often used as tools
Highlights: The umpth anime about androids, let’s see what this one can add.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
So, the six-part OVA Eve no Jikan is the product of the creator of Aquatic Language and Pale Cocoon, and this seems to be set in the same world as Aquatic Language. The focus isn’t as much on the graphics as the ones above: the animation is way more static, and there’s not much experimental animation like in Aquatic Language either. Eve no Jikan is really about its setting: androids, and the difference between humans and androids.

It’s definitely not a new topic these days. There already have been so many android series that I’m wondering what this Eve no Jikan can add to this. The first episode was decent enough, but I like how the setting so far hasn’t tried to rip off other ideas. I think the best way to describe the level of androids is a more pessimistic look at the time-setting of Real Drive, and I also was reminded of the beginning of the Second Renaissance from The Animatrix. It’s at the border where androids have become nearly identical to humans, but still miss some subtle differences, which I expect to get blurred more and more in the rest of the six episodes of Eve no Jikan.

Real Drive showed these differences between Androids and Humans when the androids needed to do something that they weren’t designed for (the combat android, who tried to take his glasses back, for example). In Eve no Jikan, these differences seem more psychological. This episode suggested that androids very well have a human consciousness, but this continues to be repressed due to their servant-functions, but I first want to see more of these Doji-kois: what happens to those people who don’t oppress their androids, and treat them as regular humans instead? I also wonder, why design a sentient android when it’s just going to be a servant? I fail to see the economic purposes of designing androids that can feel sad when they’re abused. Either that, or the bartender’s owner bought the wrong sort of android…