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.
Interesting comments. Do you mean that the people at the end are supporting the anti-dorikei pressure or opposing it? I guess Sugita Tomokazu’s character is their agent and followed the friend, who intended to follow him. I already hate the friend, lol. It appears that his father is an anti-dorikei bigwig.
I think I would be more inclined to think that a normal anime series has too much filler than to think this show is going to rush the ending. We’ll see. Maybe things are about to get even more interesting.
I am not a huge fan of Fukuyama Jun, but I think he’s doing a great job here.
It’s funny to see you trying to come to grips about the need for robots to be designed with a “consciousness” or “intelligence”, whereas for me that uninteresting and I’m more looking forward to the interactions between humans and robots.
But since you put such an effort on it, I’ll give you a good reason: commercial competition. Humans are social creatures, which crave for social contact. Hense a robot model capable to satisfy these cravings will be more comercially successful. That in doing so the companies produce “conscious” robots could be kind of unplanned.
On issues of consciousness and free-will, I’m a fan of python’s duck typing: if it walks like a duck, and squeaks like a duck, then it’s a duck.
If it’s advantageous to produce robots who seem conscious (ie: display a behavior we associate with consciousness), then they will be produced. And if they appear to be conscious, then it’s only a matter of time before they are declared conscious.
Now I just hope the anime won’t go into the direction of an action/spy movie, I’m enjoying the slice of life aspect of it.
“I however don’t think that this can just “appear” out of the blue, or as an accident. ”
Think about how much work needs to go into a robot to make it move, to make it understand human speech, to learn faces, understand commands, act on those commands, and learn from observing behavior. It would need to have a really complex AI that would be close to that of a child’s capability.
Then think about with all the information it needs to learn that, over time, it slowly starts to make better and better decisions based on the needs of its environment around and it. The question really isn’t “Can they learn to think” as much as “will they one day think they can?” The question is can the loops and switches be slowly refined within the system?
In time computers will slowly be able to predict what we are doing more and more. It will remember who you are and what you like and make educated guesses on what you want and sooner or later it will appear that it is sentient. How smart it will really become depends on the future…