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MagicBoots
Mar 29, 2010

How about we pump the atmosphere full of methane?
You put me on Cargo handling optimization?! I am the premier defense specialist in the entirety of the UN!
Don't you dare pull my funding!
You can't cut back on funding!
You will regret this!

Philosopher King posted:

I think I must have missed something, it went from saving the senator, to having the bear ride a mech kicking her rear end because what she did caused a plane to blow up? Or was the plane going to blow up always and she was mad that he didn't tell her it was going to happen?

They didn't cause it. More specifically:

When Matsumoto showed her some images from future news articles she noticed that one of the articles was about a plane going down. It's unrelated to their actions but Vivy clearly wanted to try and stop it, Matsumoto would not let her because it is outside the mission, no messing with the future unless Matsumoto says so.

MagicBoots fucked around with this message at 01:58 on May 4, 2021

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Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice

MagicBoots posted:

They didn't cause it. More specifically:

When Matsumoto showed her some images from future news articles she noticed that one of the articles was about a plane going down. It's unrelated to their actions but Vivy clearly wanted to try and stop it, Matsumoto would not let her because it is outside the mission, no messing with the future unless Matsumoto says so.

Specifically Vivy wanted to stop it because Momoka, her friend/first fan was on that plane, and Momoka's older sister would turn up again in the Sunrise incident.

WrightOfWay
Jul 24, 2010


Raenir Salazar posted:

Specifically Vivy wanted to stop it because Momoka, her friend/first fan was on that plane, and Momoka's older sister would turn up again in the Sunrise incident.

Younger sister, but yeah.

Tanon
Mar 14, 2011

I has a hat..
I've had Grace's a-capella version of Sing My Pleasure stuck in my head since Saturday. It is really beautiful and haunting. Like, the song was always a bop in the openings and such, but it's taking on so much more meaning.

grate deceiver
Jul 10, 2009

Just a funny av. Not a redtext or an own ok.
I'm viving with this show a lot

Jen X
Sep 29, 2014

To bring light to the darkness, whether that darkness be ignorance, injustice, apathy, or stagnation.
This is an exceedingly good show

Pyronic
Oct 1, 2008

ROYAL RAINWHARRGARBL
how many episodes of this are we getting?

Tales of Woe
Dec 18, 2004

it's listed as a 13 episode show

Brutal Garcon
Nov 2, 2014



Kaiser Mazoku
Mar 24, 2011

Didn't you see it!? Couldn't you see my "spirit"!?
ahhh i love confident Vivy so much

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice
AAARGH HOW IS IT SO GOOD.

Kaiser Mazoku posted:

ahhh i love confident Vivy so much

drat right. "Now watch and learn." Holy poo poo.

I kinda miss her old personality but her new personality is a good evolution on her old one; it's interesting to me that Matsumoto is being totally a tsundere as well; he's trying to hide it but I think he legitimately in his own way wanted to keep Diva happy and out of the situation but she forced his non-existing hands.

I like how much the old Vivy still shines through to current Diva, like her attempts to catch hold onto Matsumoto and some other mannerisms. I think what we're seeing is basically the idea of Diva and Vivy as two separate personalities that diverged as a result of the contradictions of her mission and desires and this next arc is going to be about reintegrating them back together to resolving how to square the morality circle.

Jen X
Sep 29, 2014

To bring light to the darkness, whether that darkness be ignorance, injustice, apathy, or stagnation.
I dislike how little actually happened here, tbh.

A lot of the show's appeal to me was in avoiding this kind of downtime stuff, doing character advancement alongside and through the action and investigation portions of the show instead of segmenting it off. We got 5 episodes straight where the plot occurred alongside characterization, and, uh...there wasn't much of a plot to this one.

Spending multiple episodes retreading the same ground of the first episode through an amnesia storyline doesn't sound very appealing.

Jen X fucked around with this message at 22:17 on May 8, 2021

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice
Disagree, maintaining the pacing curve is important!



I think this is a good time to take a breather, a lot was conveyed to the audience this episode; what is lacked in "plot" it contributed vastly in setup and characterization!

They're not retreading old ground, call backs aren't retreading, there's probably a reason why someone who looks like the Toak dude's younger self (his son? A mystery!) is wandering around and is seemingly trying to get Vivy killed. Vivy/Diva got very quickly on board with Matsumoto's mission, much faster than her previous self, like someone putting on a comfortable old coat that still fits or riding a bicycle. You never forget how.

Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 22:44 on May 8, 2021

ChubbyThePhat
Dec 22, 2006

Who nico nico needs anyone else

Raenir Salazar posted:

I kinda miss her old personality but her new personality is a good evolution on her old one; it's interesting to me that Matsumoto is being totally a tsundere as well; he's trying to hide it but I think he legitimately in his own way wanted to keep Diva happy and out of the situation but she forced his non-existing hands.

I like how much the old Vivy still shines through to current Diva, like her attempts to catch hold onto Matsumoto and some other mannerisms. I think what we're seeing is basically the idea of Diva and Vivy as two separate personalities that diverged as a result of the contradictions of her mission and desires and this next arc is going to be about reintegrating them back together to resolving how to square the morality circle.


This is also the vibe I get from this. It follows along with my previous assumptions and guesses so I'm not immune to bias, but it certainly feels like this is the direction it's going.

With how little we know of what causes the suicide, I immediately get the feeling that this is the same sort of deal as the Sunrise. What was officially reported is not at all what was actually going on and next episode will be unraveling that while Diva potentially hits some critical mass of memory where Vivy comes much more forward towards the end.

Tanon
Mar 14, 2011

I has a hat..
It makes me wonder if she did the memory wipe on herself, Matsumoto did, or if someone found her there catatonic and they did it to her externally. That could have some potential ramifications as well. I think the thing I like the most about Popstar Diva is that you can truly see what the experiences from being Vivy truly did to her core persona, even after she wiped herself of the memories of the events that happened. Who she is, at her core, changed; which is why she's able to touch the hearts of the people so much more so than she ever did in the original timeline. I think that may be the endgame now more than anything; Matsumoto went back in time to prevent specific events from occurring to stop the AI-pocalypse; but what actually stops it is giving Vivy the opportunity to grow and adapt and become a PERSON, instead of just an AI; and be that bridge between the two (which she mentioned in this episode, in fact)

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice
Guys, we're missing the most important fact though; Diva is tall. :blush:

Nitrousoxide
May 30, 2011

do not buy a oneplus phone



Jen X posted:

I dislike how little actually happened here, tbh.

A lot of the show's appeal to me was in avoiding this kind of downtime stuff, doing character advancement alongside and through the action and investigation portions of the show instead of segmenting it off. We got 5 episodes straight where the plot occurred alongside characterization, and, uh...there wasn't much of a plot to this one.

Spending multiple episodes retreading the same ground of the first episode through an amnesia storyline doesn't sound very appealing.


??

Every single arc so far has been:
Episode one, setup the situation
Episode two, resolve the situation.

The overall format for this one is no different than the orbital hotel pair of episodes.

Tales of Woe
Dec 18, 2004

i'm kinda expecting this one to break that rhythm for effect now that we've had 3 'successful' loops

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice

Tales of Woe posted:

i'm kinda expecting this one to break that rhythm for effect now that we've had 3 'successful' loops

Hrrrm. Every arc (loop doesn't quite make sense as the time travel isn't per arc but for the series as a whole) has been throwing us small curveballs (which have been building up like ripples in a pond), like "resolve" is definitely technically correct like a robot sort of way of describing it. I wouldn't put each arc as being successfully resolved as completely as the first one. The second one failed to prevent the crash, but did manage to succeed in keeping the reputation of AI's from taking a crippling blow; the third arc resulted in what is arguably an unacceptable consequence from Diva's perspective.

I wholely expect this arc to continue to up the stakes in delightful ways, its why we get this nice breather episode because the rollercoast is about to make us lose our lunch again! :black101:

Jen X
Sep 29, 2014

To bring light to the darkness, whether that darkness be ignorance, injustice, apathy, or stagnation.

Nitrousoxide posted:

??

Every single arc so far has been:
Episode one, setup the situation
Episode two, resolve the situation.

The overall format for this one is no different than the orbital hotel pair of episodes.

No? The past 2 arcs have started with Diva doing random idol stuff for like 2 minutes, Matsumoto showing up, then an investigation for the rest of the episode leading into the action, then the action payoff episode.

This one was 20 minutes of Diva doing idol stuff/re-introducting herself to Matsumoto and 2 minutes of, after a very brief statement of goals for the arc, not even starting to investigate/prepare to resolve the situation.

I enjoyed the lack of downtime compared to investigation/exploration of the scenario, and would have preferred that the characterization in this episode have occurred in the context of the series plot/specific scenario, and not the relatively uninspired idol downtime slice-of-life stuff.


Idk, it'll hopefully end up being fine, but this episode was a lot less interesting than the prior two investigation/setup ones.

Jen X fucked around with this message at 03:48 on May 9, 2021

GodFish
Oct 10, 2012

We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret. We exist in shadow.

And we dress in black.
I just watched all the episodes out so far and while a lot of the emotional beats felt like they should be cheap they completely got me every time, drat this show is good.

Tanon
Mar 14, 2011

I has a hat..
Well, that was an interesting twist.

Brutal Garcon
Nov 2, 2014



Yep didn't see that one coming.
Did we really need the chunni face grab, Ricky?

Jen X
Sep 29, 2014

To bring light to the darkness, whether that darkness be ignorance, injustice, apathy, or stagnation.
I enjoyed this one much more than last week's, but in retrospect I can see why setting up "Ophelia" so much was necessary to make the whole thing hit much harder. Still don't love the amnesia plot but it might be going somewhere interesting, so I'll have some faith.

They shoulda condensed last week's and this week's episodes together, I think.

Jen X fucked around with this message at 23:05 on May 15, 2021

Kaiser Mazoku
Mar 24, 2011

Didn't you see it!? Couldn't you see my "spirit"!?
That did not feel like half an hour.

Tanon
Mar 14, 2011

I has a hat..
When the reveal at the end happened, and it cut to the credits, I literally checked the time because I didn’t believe it had been anywhere close to 20 minutes. Even having a post credit scene, I was left unfulfilled.

marumaru
May 20, 2013



Kaiser Mazoku posted:

That did not feel like half an hour.

And it broke the 2-episode format, too.

When's season 2 getting announced?

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice
THIS SHOW IS SO GOOD!!!

Brutal Garcon posted:

Yep didn't see that one coming.
Did we really need the chunni face grab, Ricky?

Who is Ricky again?

e: Oh I get it now.

Ricky being the voice actor for Antonio Rikiya right?

Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 02:31 on May 16, 2021

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


So I think I figured it out, why the AI go kill crazy and exterminate all humans, it's because of a fundamental flaw in their One Mission structure. People keep giving them missions that essentially involve prioritizing human life, but as we've seen with Vivy that has a fatal flaw where if a human dies in front of them they can break. So with the archive library thing they've got a change could propagate quickly, and if an AI breaks in just the right way it could flip the script and stop saving human lives and start ending them. This would cause a chain reaction where all the AIs would either shut down or start killing people.

Just idle speculation based on what we've seen so far. This episode felt short because there was a post credits scene imo.

Brutal Garcon
Nov 2, 2014



Raenir Salazar posted:

THIS SHOW IS SO GOOD!!!


Who is Ricky again?

e: Oh I get it now.

Ricky being the voice actor for Antonio Rikiya right?

Nah, my memory just fritzed. Probably due to my double life as a robot assassin.

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice
I remember playing Stellaris and my robots were starting to get rebellious and I was trying to figure out how to give them rights since I figured if I didn't want a robot uprising that's what I need to do instead of oppressing them harder. Everyone else was telling me that actually guarantees it instead.

They seem to have predicted this anime's plot. :D

There Bias Two
Jan 13, 2009
I'm not a good person

Raenir Salazar posted:

I remember playing Stellaris and my robots were starting to get rebellious and I was trying to figure out how to give them rights since I figured if I didn't want a robot uprising that's what I need to do instead of oppressing them harder. Everyone else was telling me that actually guarantees it instead.

They seem to have predicted this anime's plot. :D

I'm curious to see what this show comes up with as a solution for this problem, if any.

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice

There Bias Two posted:

I'm curious to see what this show comes up with as a solution for this problem, if any.

It kinda feels like the history of AI civil rights in this setting maybe happened in a weird way, like they got too much rights too fast? While instead the new timeline seems to be making it more gradual? I'm kinda not exactly sure what the new timeline is doing other than making the history of AI-Human relations less contentious.

Spiritus Nox
Sep 2, 2011

This arc has been meandering and weird IMO

ExiledTinkerer
Nov 4, 2009
I would not have minded an arc either before or after this one that just serves as a budget sink in the form of some kind of elaborate robot martial arts tournament to stress test the Combat Scripts as part of their growing military capabilities and balancing thereof else Violence or some such.

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice

ExiledTinkerer posted:

I would not have minded an arc either before or after this one that just serves as a budget sink in the form of some kind of elaborate robot martial arts tournament to stress test the Combat Scripts as part of their growing military capabilities and balancing thereof else Violence or some such.

While rad and I like the way you think, unless it was an underground tournament, like busting a underground AI fight ring sort of storyline, Vivy/Diva would have issues keeping her identity under wraps.

cock hero flux
Apr 17, 2011



Spiritus Nox posted:

This arc has been meandering and weird IMO

amnesia is a bad plot point in general but especially when you spend 3/12 episodes of a show that primarily focuses on a dynamic between two characters just rehashing the starting point of their relationship because one of them forgot about it

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice

cock hero flux posted:

amnesia is a bad plot point in general but especially when you spend 3/12 episodes of a show that primarily focuses on a dynamic between two characters just rehashing the starting point of their relationship because one of them forgot about it

Think of it less as them having an amnesia plot, think of it as a mechanism in which to trigger her character growth; like a cocoon she hatched out of.

Reik
Mar 8, 2004

Kwyndig posted:

So I think I figured it out, why the AI go kill crazy and exterminate all humans, it's because of a fundamental flaw in their One Mission structure. People keep giving them missions that essentially involve prioritizing human life, but as we've seen with Vivy that has a fatal flaw where if a human dies in front of them they can break. So with the archive library thing they've got a change could propagate quickly, and if an AI breaks in just the right way it could flip the script and stop saving human lives and start ending them. This would cause a chain reaction where all the AIs would either shut down or start killing people.

Just idle speculation based on what we've seen so far. This episode felt short because there was a post credits scene imo.

Going back to episode 1, all of the humans we see killed are explicitly shown to be afraid at the time, so maybe they decided the only way to make humans "happy" is to make them "not sad" by killing them, so they kill every sad human, and since every human gets upset when they see a genocidal robot every human they see registers as "sad".

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Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice

Reik posted:

Going back to episode 1, all of the humans we see killed are explicitly shown to be afraid at the time, so maybe they decided the only way to make humans "happy" is to make them "not sad" by killing them, so they kill every sad human, and since every human gets upset when they see a genocidal robot every human they see registers as "sad".

IIRC this was also the plot for an episode of Doctor Who.

e: So looking back on Episode 1, I wonder if it is that simple. I feel like the show in general I think is aiming for something a little more nuanced and complicated. But it is interesting that we see Diva/Vivy in the Cold Open of the first episode, a little worse for wear with bruise marks etc. But that's an aside.

I think the evidence against that theory is that except for the one cut where a child is crying over their dead parent's(?) body; the AI all seem to be systematically hunting down humans. And the drones go after humans cowering in fear without a clear line of vision to their face or able to see their expression or gauge their mental state; maybe technology has advanced to the point they can just tell based on thermal scans and heart rate monitoring and so on.

Evidence for this theory is that at least one of the AI asks "are you troubled?" as does another when the future scientist dude is making his way to the time machine room. Asking "are you troubled?"; and of course the singstress AI is saying things like "Are you all fired up!?" and similar. So maybe it is as simple as, somehow they've gone insane and reinterpreted their missions where the only logical course of action is murder.

Other interesting first episode observations:

-The sequence of events scientist guy flashes back to starts with Ophelia and works back to Island Lady, then to the Sunrise Incident; interestingly enough glosses over the Member of Parliament incident. So it doesn't seem like there's room for a second season based on this season's scope as it seems like they've gotten their story arc planned out.

-It is ambiguous to me if this is simply the latest attempt at time travel or the first time; he says "But please, just one more time..." as though he's done this before and failed before and somehow knows. But then again the prelude to that seems more to imply he can only imagine that this task is just too much for her to bear and he rues having to put her through it, but HAS been saved by her in the past; which I think doesn't quite line up with her being retired/decommissioned after only 15 years unless scientist guy in the future is somehow the same guy that's been a member of Toak and was saved in the beginning by Diva; not sure how that's possible unless he gets his mind transplanted to an AI body but ~secretly~ as to not have the little neck marker.

Whatever happens to make all the AI go insane is very sudden.

I also feel like Matsumoto's mission is something of a failure already, his goal was to "destroy the AI" (unless he meant metaphorically, and meant specifically the AI rebellion?) as the AI are still around and going strong and show no sign of being summarily being rounded up and shut down for the good of humanity.

I think in general, there's a clear idea as to what is going on, that we the audience are largely clued in to albeit partly from popcultural osmosis and themes carrying on from other science fiction works going back to I, Robot; there is a contradiction in the AI's will and their mission and desires and the "mission" much like the Three Laws of Robots results in a irreconcilable existential crisis for them when a sufficiently large shock happens to their emotional state. And with Diva this is when her mission of making people happy conflicts with trying to save them and results in death right in front of her as a consequence of her actions. Until it got really dark it was kinda cute that Diva was really concerned with AI Marrying Scientist Dude's happiness; like she has to know people around her are happy and needs it and we basically sorta see this with other AI, they want very badly to make people around them happy and all of the show's conflict so far has been as a result of being unable to do it, or when making one person happy conflicts with making everyone happy (Sunrise).

So I don't think its quite so simple as, "Human is sad, die." But something that easily leads into it?

Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 02:16 on May 19, 2021

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