Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song 4h4247

"My mission is to make everyone happy by singing"--Vivy
"My mission is to make everyone content by reviewing"--Pipe

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song, Vivy for short, is a spectacular series. It combines action, smooth animation sequencing, solid character development, a fantastic soundtrack, and a story that could have more holes than Gruyère cheese, but who cares. I don't mind if it's rife with time travel misconceptions and clichés; it is still delightful and quite surprising. I love this series. However, if we overthink the plot, we will lose all the enjoyment of this series, the beauty behind the story, and all the mysteries surrounding Vivy. For example, few ... spectators might find it ridiculous for an AI to take responsibility for saving the world from nowhere or the thought of time travel in this series. If you don't like these ideas, you will hate this series.

At first, what gets my attention is Vivy, an AI that has a single goal, making everyone happy with her singing. A similar plan to mine with this review. However, her mission changes after several events that happened over a timeline of 100 years. First, a malign AI codenamed "Matsumoto," I call him malign because he is an interloper, and the archive (Arayashiki) couldn't remove him from Vivy's core. Matsumoto requests Vivy's help, and he gives a new objective to prevent the war between humans and AIs in 100 years. He creates "The Singularity Project" to change AI's important events that lead to the war.

The world setting is easy to understand. Humans developed AIs for almost every task and became highly dependent on them. However, Vivy's premise is truthfully a bit more complex to digest. One of the most challenging concepts to accept in the story is the AI time travel interpretation. I don't want to enter into the metaphysical and metaphorical time travel description of how Matsumoto traveled 100 years back. Still, the authors are clever in avoiding this discussion because it could bring misconceptions. The authors skip all the paradoxes that a lousy explanation could create.

Furthermore, they averted the comparisons with similar plots such as Steins: Gate or even Re: Zero. Ultimately, it's a series that uses the past to point toward the future, as the opening quote, from H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine," suggests: "We all have our time machines, don't we? Those that take us back are memories, and those that carry us forward are dreams." Matsumoto's information is the memories, and Vivy's mission is the dream that evolves during the long journey. In conclusion, we can end all the time travel discussions with a single line "they conceived the time travel."

Nevertheless, the series is no perfect. The negative factor for some fans is the pacing. Sometimes you will feel that some parts are missing and needs an explanation; I believe the issue appears for lack of time, but overall, the series is terrific, with some minor problems.

On the other hand, the most fantastic part of the plot falls on Vivy. That's what gets me hooked on watching the series. If we pay closer attention, the authors didn't need a set of rules similar to Asimov's laws. Instead, they only give every AI a single mission, and, in the case of Vivy, they create a character who tries to follow that single mission. In exchange, Vivy changes and struggles to understand and complete the Singularity Project from the perspective of her mission.

Moreover, Vivy is more profound than just great animation and drawing. It is a show that takes us into Vivy's journey about herself. Vivy assimilates little by little reason, feelings, ion, and maybe heart. I am curious apropos of how Vivy will handle all the contrasting information that could interfere with her mission. Can an AI evolve and change during this journey, and how will she decide differently from the typical machine learning concept but following a synthetic life envisage. Can an AI develop something similar to a spirit or soul?

Although the rest of the characters are pretty interesting, such as Vivy's sisters, the time skip may not let us explore their whole personality, which is a problem. Also, it is common in the sci-fi time travel plot that someone goes to the past and forces a change for the future. So happens here with the AI Matsumoto. This cube traveled back in time, and Vivy considered it a virus initially. However, equal to Vivy, this compelling character is the main factor influencing Vivy's decisions and helps her to grow. It has a weird personality, never stops talking, and occasionally could be annoying, but it is the perfect partner that appears in the precise moment.

Another essential concept for the series is Arayashiki, aka Archive. There is not too much to say, and several viewers won't consider it a character. However, in Mahayana Buddhism, Arayashiki is the eighth foundational level of consciousness. It stores patterns from other forms of awareness and retains developments and thoughts to use in other lives. In the plot, Arayashiki stores and interprets all the data from the AIs then decide based on that information. It is an exciting fact that grabs my attention because it justifies the whole of Vivy's evolution story.

From technical aspects, I don't have anything to complain about the production. The art is fantastic and well structured. It has a broad combination of diverse palettes, and the choreography and camera angles are precise and affect the story. The sound is marvelous and has one of the most pretty scores from the year. Furthermore, the songs are lovely, in particular Harmony of One's Heart. Regarding the VO, there are some significant problems because Vivy's voice isn't the same when she sings, and for a trained ear, it is a letdown.

Finally, Vivy's is a series that has several good things and few bad things. It is an action-packed thriller that most of the viewers will enjoy. I love the show; I consider it one of the best from this year and possibly one of the best original series from the last years. I am sad because this series is not getting the recognition it deserves but is causing a great impression in Japan. It is a must to watch.

PS: I am confident that I will fail my mission. But, fear not, I will not promote the hate for the humans between my fellow AI sisters.

(NO SPOILER REVIEW)

Note: As of this review the series has just aired episode 4, so therefore I will just be giving my thoughts and opinions on the anime up to this point 🙂

Firstly, I want to say that this is the first time that I have been drawn to sit down and write a review on an anime I have been watching. I really have loved each new episode that has aired so far. This is due to a numerous amount of reasons that I will try to cover quickly in this review, as I see the great potential that this anime original has to ... be a masterpiece when it has ran through all 13 of its episodes.

If you haven’t given this anime a try/don’t know much about it or both, I will quickly give a run down of the main plot of the story. The main premise, as stated in the synopsis; ‘is that one day, an A.I named Matsumoto appears before Vivy and explains that he has travelled from 100 years into the future, with the mission to correct history with Vivy and prevent the war between A.I and humanity that is set to take place 100 years later.’ Although the concept of AI’s turning on humans is nothing new and has been done countless times in the past, surprisingly I was never bored but rather enjoying every second of each episode. Maybe this is because Re:Zero light novelist Nagatsuki Tappei is also one of the scriptwriters, along with Umehara Eiji (who also wrote the well liked Pokemon film, The Power of Us). Because of this, it might come to no surprise that I was so engaged in what was happening in the anime after only 5 minutes into the gory opening of the first episode. As early on as that, I was already left wanting to know how humanity, or rather the 2 AI mc’s that the series follows, was going to correct this issue that was pre-destined to happen 100 years from now. I guess you could say I was hooked :D

An interesting factor, is that AI’s in this world only have the capacity to manage one mission each, weather that be as a guard AI or an IT AI they can only be tasked with one job. This is no different from our mc’s Matsumoto and Vivy (also nicknamed Diva). Matsumoto’s sole mission being to stop the war between humans and AI’s after being sent 100 years into the past (mostly by hampering the evolution of AI’s over the next century) and Vivy’s sole mission being to make people happy through her singing. However, what makes this interesting is that all their actions are influenced solely by what mission they have, and although they are both trying to work together to complete each other’s objectives, sometimes their individual missions have the chance to create opportunities in which they counteract one another. In other words, Matsumoto must keep the current timeline as similar to his one as possible so that way he has a clear road map of what is to come and can prepare Diva to fight it. However, where conflict arises is in the fact that Diva wants to use their future knowledge to save as many lives as possible while Matsumoto doesn't want to “save” anyone. He wants those who died in his timeline to die and those who lived to live. This makes Diva and Matsumoto both allies and enemies—united in cause but opposed in means. As funnily enough, the only reason she actually agrees to help Matsumoto stop the robot apocalypse is due to the fact that, in order to make humans happy through singing, those humans have to be alive. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how they go about dealing with that problem in the future, as of episode 4 we have already seen their missions oppose a couple of times.

You will either love the mc’s or hate them. Matsumoto especially will either annoy you instantly or grow on you. Personally, I really like his character. He is full of bad jokes and high speed information dumps, but no one can disagree that he is the perfect companion for Vivy who is calm and collected. No one can also argue that Matsumoto isn’t the driving force behind the story. It’s because of his personality that the story’s pacing is so fast as he doesn’t waste any time on continuously pushing for Vivy to help with his mission and it’s because of this fast pace that the series has me so engaged/interested. Vivy on the other hand, is the complete opposite to Matsumoto, with the only real similarity being that they are both AI’s with a mission each that they both go to extreme lengths to fulfil. Maybe they are so different because Matsumoto is an advanced AI as he comes from the future, while Vivy is the very first AI human-hybrid (although as time progresses, Matsumoto will start to become less and less over powered as technology advances). A common theme for Vivy is her attaching great importance to promises and feelings and also her curiosity about idiomatic such as ‘what it means to put your heart into something’. It is interesting to see Vivy try to make sense of what expressions like that mean to her, as we all know that the answers are mostly subjective to the individual and how they personally interpret it. However, as she is an AI she struggles to find her own answers to these questions and often resorts to asking others what they believe it to mean. I can say that I have never been bored when watching these 2 characters and their unique dynamic together so far and I’m excited to see how they further develop as the series progresses.

In of the writing, I love how the series has political themes, namely the ‘AI naming law’ as the catalyst for the war in the in the future and how it also explores terrorism. The anime does a great job at depicting terrorism/terrorist groups that oppose AI’s and exploring the ethical concerns/questions that may arise if we were to live side by side with them. The dark themes are also very interesting, especially the fact of although Matsumoto knowing future tragedys that are set to happen, only being limited to save those if it aligns with his mission of stopping the war in 100 years or if it doesn’t change the course of history too much, like I mentioned previously. This show has been very exciting and interesting but also managing to switch and be dark and depressing to hit you with that sense of realism and remind you that the situation they are facing is no joke. It flowed almost perfectly and I think it has been really well written up to this point. I’m excited to see how the series further develops and how our mc’s overcome the future challenges they may face.

Not only does it have a very exciting, jam-packed and fast paced story, visually it is also stunning. The anime offers beautiful hand drawn stills, gorgeous imagery and very attractive backdrops. And wow don’t even get me started on the close up shots of Vivy’s face, especially the attention to detail on the eyes! Honestly, most of the imagery in this anime is breath taking. The viewer can tell that a lot of love went into even the smallest of details and it has stayed consist throughout the last 4 eps. The character designs are top quality as well and I liked how they all looked. To go with this great art, the animation that is accompanying it is smooth, clean and well done. This is especially evident in the intense action scenes that left me with chills and really stood out for me. However, maybe this is to be expected as Wit Studio is the one animating it and they are widely known for there beautiful animation. (If you somehow don’t know who Wit Studio are, they animated Vinland Saga and Attack on Titan up to Attack on Titan FS which MAPPA then took over.) I think I have made it clear how much I really appreciate the art/animation this anime has to offer. At any rate, it is safe to say that visually this anime is top quality and a treat to watch.

The sound tracks especially were amazing and I found myself drawn to listening with headphones to get the full experience. They always fit the scene in which they were played and served their purpose of what mood/emotion they were trying to set. This could be because the composer Satoru Kosaki (Monogatari, Beastars) has created such a beautiful score. Even Kairi Yagi, who provides the opening theme ‘Sing my Pleasure,’ excels in her role as Vivy, managing to sound both warm but also robotic in equal measure. It would be easy for her character to give the impression of being lifeless and empty, but there’s something about her character that makes me want her to thrive. It’s not just the opening song too, but also the ending theme for ep3/ep4 made me feel all kinds of emotions I haven’t felt in a long time when watching an anime, it was that touching and beautifully sung. All in all, the soundtracks sound amazing, and is one of the main reasons I was so immersed when watching this show. It is important to mention how well all the voice actors perform as well, with each voice actor fitting the appearance/personality of the character they are voicing. Generally, they all sound great and you can tell a lot of effort was put in to making the characters sound perfect. The sound effects were also clean, namely in the action scenes and there’s not much else I can say about the sound of this anime except it was all great. I really don’t think they could of done a much better job in any of the above departments.

Over all, this anime is just amazing. The only reason I am giving it a 9/10 so far is because I feel like it is too much to give an anime a 10/10 this early. However, that doesn’t mean that “Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song” isn’t on its way to being a masterpiece and I can’t wait to see how this show further develops and exceed my already high expectations. This series truly has it all, and excels in all departments weather that be story, animation and art or sound. So, if you like a fast-paced and great Sci-Fi anime that you can get much enjoyment out of from watching, give it a try! Because at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters right? Give Vivy the chance it deserves and you may end up loving it as much as I have 🙂

Welcome back to Terminator. In this year’s rendition, we have a blue-haired cyborg idol and a Minecraft cube that travel back in time 100 years to stop an impending A.I. apocalypse. Fasten your seat belts, as we explore why this anime is one of the best original series that has been released in the past decade.

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song is an anime-original series created by Wit Studios, the same studio that has done the likes of Attack on Titan, The Ancient Magus' Bride, and Great Pretender. Vivy, the first ever autonomous AI, is sent back 100 years into the past to try and prevent certain ... events from occurring in order to prevent the calamity that takes place in the future. Think of the world lines in Steins;Gate and Vivy being similar to Okabe, minus the kookiness and the depression. The story is co-created by the same person who created Re:Zero, and you can definitely see the quality of the writing and how well the dark and thrilling themes are presented. Although the idea of “Artificial Intelligence gone rogue” has been touched upon a million times in pop culture, said themes stay fresh as the drama and the goal of preventing mankind’s eradication keeps the tension high and ourselves wondering if and how Vivy achieves her mission, and keeping myself and many others hooked on the show.

One of the highlights of this show is the art and animation, and my god did Wit deliver on this show. Vivy has some of the best animated hand-to-hand fight scenes all year, my personal favorites being the Vivy vs Elizabeth fight and the Diva and Matsumoto vs Antonio and Yugo fight. They also did quite well with the CG, which, if you didn’t know, they actually used Minecraft to model out Matsumoto’s flight-enabled form. Although some CG models might stick out like a sore thumb, I’d say the CG is well above average compared to some of the shit you’d see in other seasonal shows, and the producers did a really good job of integrating the 2D and 3D animation. The art work is equally just as amazing as the animation. There are a lot of detail to the character designs and backgrounds, and the zoom-in shots that are hyper-detailed are pieces of art. Wit studios flexed their Phantom Blood muscles to bring out some of the best art and animation they’ve ever produced. It’s of the highest quality, and it makes you want to scream “look at that budget!”

For an anime that centers around an idol, it does a fantastic job of providing amazing OP/EDs and OSTs. Sing My Pleasure and Galaxy Anthem are ones for the Spotify playlist, and the VA for Vivy does an excellent job. The OSTs are used properly to intensify the fight scenes and amplify the emotions for the dramatic scenes when needed. The show wouldn’t be as great as it is without the music, so props to the composer and sound director for doing such a great job.

The characters are either a hit or miss, and you can either hate them or love them, Matsumoto especially. Personally, Matsumoto is a fun character to watch as he interacts with Vivy and tries to speedrun the series since he’s way too OP, setting the breakneck speed of the show. I can’t see anyone else who can fit the role that Matsumoto plays, since he’s the one who provides all the crucial info to the plot and guide Vivy towards their mission goal. And he does have to act like a dick since Vivy constantly tries to dismiss him. But if you do hate him, then it’s understandable. Vivy is an alright character. She has her goals to become the idol king and to understand ‘what it means to put your heart into something’, but she is more of a tool to drive the plot, since Matsumoto has more of an influence on the plot than she does. These two are always fun to watch whenever shenanigans occur. There isn’t much to say about the villains or the girls that Vivy meets throughout the series, since they only stick around for 1 or 2 episodes. Some pose a serious threat towards Vivy, as seen in the epic fight scenes, whilst some are there as a “villain of the week” kind of character. In all honesty, I think the characters are the weakest part of the show, but I can’t really complain too much since the pacing of the anime is like a million miles an hour.

Overall, this show was a blast. The dark nature of its themes, given thanks to the creator of Re:Zero, mixed with us knowing that one wrong move or something not going as planned can mean failure and the destruction of mankind and the drama that comes with it, makes this an edge-of-your-seat anime that definitely draws similarities to the likes of Steins;Gate and Re:Zero. Although this show might be about an idol saving the world, and won’t be up many people’s alleys due to it being idol-related, this show is definitely one to check out. Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song is a great show, and one of the best original series that I’d highly recommend you check out.

Overall: 9/10.

There are some bitchy people complaining about every little thing because this anime is a MASTERPIECE.
The more good the show is the more people will look for something to complain about.

If you are reading this and deciding whether to watch then don't be lazy and just watch the first episode omg I thought this was going to be boring but this is more than some idol girl anime...

The only problem so far is that we haven't learned about how the AI's affected the terrorists livelihoods and more about the scientist who made the bear and Vivy.

Apparently the creator of Re:zero is also ... working on this and this is surprisingly anime only. So there is currently no way to be spoiled.

Honestly one, if not the most anime of the season. There is a lot of positives to be said on Vivy, and why you should watch. Which I shall explain within this review.

Story and characters.
Vivy is set in two timelines, as this show is about time travel, and the whole idea of in the future, an event is gonna cause mass human causality, from Ais going rouge. Gives a bit of Terminator vibes honestly, which I actually really dig about it. With Vivy being sent back in time, with the mission of making everyone smile with her song, but also, another is sent through time ... travel, in Matsumoto, in order to assist Vivy, with the goal being to prevent events that will cause the war between humans and AI. Very chilling and interesting stuff.

As for the characters.
It's a mix of both kinds of AI. Vivy is focused on her mission, both in fact, but she isn't a cold emotionless AI, she really seems to have a genuine heart, and really does care about people, and her ideal want to make everyone happy with her song. It's sweet. While Matsumoto, mainly seems to care about preventing the war in the future, and nothing more. Even if other things get out of the way as a result, which can come off as cold. He's witty at times, but it can hit right in the feels sometimes. A real good mix of our two main characters.

The Art style is something that I really do like about this show, they can make things look real good and colourful, and other times they can make it look grim and dark. Really great stuff here, even things that aren't meant to be grim, but do well in the dark, it's all top notch stuff. Like I really love how they make the characters look, like the AIs looks are just real great in my eyes. Same can be said for the sound and tone of the show. All fit for purpose, and doesn't feel out of place by any stretch. Can't really go wrong here. But I can't stop there when it comes to the music, as the songs within this, are just stellar, and wonderful. The type of songs that you could listen to for hours on end. Real good stuff.

Vivy has been quite the surprise package this season, and more should honestly start watching it it while it's still airing, and after it finishes. You won't be disappointed, get watching it now!

I don’t like Vivy, Here’s why:

Vivy doesn’t have any interesting themes, it has the “robots rebel against humanity” premise we’ve seen a million times, I’ve asked people if there’s anything thought provoking about the series or if it so much as has anything exceptional about it, evidently not, this is aiming to be a fun action/adventure ride, and that’s okay, but it fails at that by simply just being incredibly boring.

Opening scene:

Ugh, for a start, I could narrate over the first 3 minutes of the first episode and just point out all of the things it does wrong in an attempt to make a good ... first impression, but I will try my best to explain in text form, the series has a pretty confusing beginning, just starting with a ransacked theme park and then eventually showing dead bodies and robots hunting down survivors, the show does not provide any character to connect to at the beginning, nor does it invite you to its setting before just slamming action in your face, the cinematography in this scene also sucks, not giving a proper wide establishing shot until 2 minutes in, and even then, having a pretty visually boring setting to show for itself.

Presentation:

Even the detractors I’ve seen for this show consider the visuals to be a redeeming quality, and I completely disagree, I hate the way this show looks, on top of the lack of visually striking cinematography which I mentioned before, this just has boring colouring, most scenes look hazy and monotonous with heavy use of either blue, white or green, I struggle to find shots in this series that I can call visually striking, it fails to map out any setting well, the colouring is is hazy and boring, the setting is boring to look at and has barely any wide shots to introduce itself properly. To “attempt” to give this show some credit, yeah, the fluidity is decent, and the CGI usage is serviceable, not awful at least. Also, I wouldn’t normally bother mentioning this, but a compliment of this series I’ve seen is that the main girl Vivy is hot, well she isn’t, OK, moving on. The soundtrack, specifically when I paid close attention to it while re-watching the first episode wasn’t really noteworthy, some tracks were fine, fitting with the tone of the scene was hit or miss, the bear’s voice is incredibly annoying to listen to, I will get back to this.

Characters/Dialogue:

Vivy is a brick, what else is there to say? Matsumoto (the bear) is annoying, he is an exposition dumper, I dislike dialogue reliant stuff (especially if it’s aiming to be a fun action series), the fact that so much of the plot is presented through dialogue while also spoken with an annoying voice is basically the majority of my issues with this series, I normally would just accept a ridiculously cheesy voice like this (I am already enough of a contrarian as it is and normally just accept cheesiness as a better alternative to just being insufferably boring), but in this case, I can’t help it as it genuinely made the series painful to watch. There is also little to nothing creative about most of the exposition scenes, I value exposition scenes that make themselves engaging through striking imagery (Made in Abyss is my golden example in this regard), but I can’t find that here.

Conclusion:

Watch this if you want I guess, I’m not here to tell people to avoid everything I dislike, just explaining why it doesn’t work for me, I don’t like anything about this series and don’t think it stands out in any way at all, no it’s not fun, no it doesn’t look great, I initially insta dropped this after ep 1 viewing it as yet another shitty seasonal, then I found a lot of hype surrounding it and decided to give it a second chance, I watched 4 episodes, I barely ed what happened in them I recall the issues being consistent at the very least, I re-watched episode 1 before writing this just to refresh my memory a little bit.

I may even pick this back up after it finishes, especially if I hear that it improves, I don’t doubt that I may have missed out on something, but I re-watched the first episode and asked for a convincing defense on Discord and couldn’t find one.

Don’t expect this to “eventually get good” just because it’s an Original.

If you are annoyed by faulty logic or plot holes you are gonna be bothered by this anime a lot.

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song is a story about time traveling ai and an unfulfilled songstress ai going on a quest to save humanity by destroying ai's. While the concept sounds interesting it was also hard enough to implement that studio Wit had to bend logic and story in order to accomplish their idea.

Let's start with the obvious one... time travel doesn't make much sense, but it is to be expected in those kinds of stories, what is worth critiquing is the poor handling of how the ... characters interact with time travel. Matsumoto, the ai from the future, despite the knowledge of when he and our protagonist need to intervene to change the course of history he leaves resolving these problems at the last moment. Everytime they need to solve a crisis Matsumoto knew about they barely make it partly because he gives Vivy no time to prepare.

Another problem this anime has is bad antagonists.
Toak, the anti Ai terrorist organization, is never a threat. Every time they show up its almost like a gimmick, they always end up being easily beaten. The fact that every Toak antagonist is childish is also hurting their intimidation factor.

Vivy in itself is a gorgeous show, with high production value. Action scenes are great but often lack in story weight to back it up. Soundtrack is really enjoyable and connected to major character moments which I really liked.

Speaking about characters it is a really mixed bag.
For example we have Vivy with nice development (I really enjoyed what they did in episodes 7-9 btw), we also meet Matsumoto who you either gonna love or hate and at the end of the spectrum we have awful Toak characters.
Authors also wanted some additional character drama with other Ai's which is also a hit or miss with relatively good Estella-Elizabeth relationship and not that good Ophelią-Antonio drama.
There is a couple more forgettable characters but I think you get the idea.

Getting more in depth with Vivy and Ai in general there is even more problems.
First of all if you are making Ai singers for example, to entertain humans, why would you make them imperfect? Why all of those non combat machines are so durable and strong? It just doesn't make sense.

Next paragraph is the SPOILER territory!

Let's talk about the last couple of episodes.
I don't get why archives are unsupervised by humans, they didn't even give a reason to this, it is the most important part of maintaining this ai utopia and no one catches that they have faulty ai running it all? Reason for archives actions are also pretty bad. How do you get from helping humanity in its evolution no matter what to "well we tried... let's kill them all." And also why when you respect Vivy so much and will do whatever she wants would you make it for her so hard to prevent the annihilation of humanity?

It is very unfortunate that such an ambitious anime is only enjoyable when you shut your brain off.

I feel weird walking away from this show with such a positive opinion of it, because if it wasn’t so unbelievably gorgeous, I honestly think I would’ve dropped it very early on.

Maybe this is just me, but even at its most competent and interesting points, I don’t think I ever really bought in to the premise of Vivy at all. Vivy is a show about our cute, autistic, android waifu who goes back in time to stop her fellow androids from genociding the human race, which she can do because she’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator and has a talking teddy bear robot sidekick who knows ... literally everything and can accomplish literally anything as long as he can plug himself into it. And while I promise you I want to sit here talking about time travel even less than you want to read about it, let me just say that out of the several dozens of scientifically, relativistically viable real-world theories about how time travel could or should be possible, not a single one functions similar to the way it does in Vivy. Oh, and did I forget to mention Vivy is also an idol? And the androids’ AI programming relies on evolution to improve itself? And Vivy actually has an alternate timeline personality called Diva which supplants her shyness with pure Chad energy? Yeah, this is a very silly story, with very silly concepts, and an understanding of its own scientific foundations which is thin enough to make you question how seriously it even wants you to take it, but a premise is still a premise, and if you can accept such a premise, I wouldn’t characterize Vivy as a broken or particularly illogical story. It follows its own rules and never undermines its own script, and even if someone like me finds it a bit hard to swallow, you shouldn’t let anyone get away with calling it downright bad. While I would never claim it isn’t inspired by better, more memorable works, this show is nothing if not an original standout amongst the usual seasonal shlock.

Vivy is easily one of the more competently co-written anime I’ve ever seen, and I think it’s because both writers knew why they specifically were brought onto the project. Eiji Umehara is a well-established sci-fi writer who has written for works as classic and prestigious as Masamune Shirow adaptations and even more modern sci-fi collaborations with 5pb visual novels, and his expertise in the field really comes through. As much as I might make fun of the distinct campiness of the show’s genre juggling, the actual realization of its ideas is quite thorough and interesting. From the gravitational physics of a rocket launch and atmospheric reentry to the structural interworkings of androids with exposed innards, so many of the action set-pieces and unique artistic elements in this visual spectacle of an anime heavily rely on intricate knowledge of actual technology. Now, you may be wondering, then where does Tappei Nagatsuki chime in? Well, if you’ve suffered through Re:Zero, you’ve probably already guessed. Whether it be the show’s sophomoric political dimension, its pseudoscientific plot devices, or its characters’ juvenile emotions, EVERYTHING is explained and expounded in torturous, tedious detail, leaving no room for inference or nuance, assuming it had any to begin with. And unlike my smaller complaints thus far, I don’t really have any way or even any desire to excuse this subpar writing. It just dilutes the show and gives the whole thing an air of immaturity and amateurishness. Even the themes of AI vs humanity which the show tackles are seriously cookie cutter stuff, and the sci-fi not being hardcore enough for true fans of the genre aside, this is the one true and tangible problem with Vivy.

But who even cares about any of that—this show is drop dead gorgeous. Aesthetically, it is quite typical, but as one should’ve long since come to expect from the powerhouse, WIT Studio, it has double the frames, triple the artistic acuteness, quadruple the post-production detail, and quintuple the cinematic ambition of all its contemporaries. Shinpei Ezaki is a director who I’ve always seen as simply trying to rip-off Tetsuro Araki, and this is no surprise given how closely he’s worked with that legendary man over the course of his own relatively short creative career, and while Vivy doesn’t really stray from this formula in any capacity I can notice, I don’t mean this to be an insult at all. Vivy, despite its sci-fi posturing, is most definitely an adorable waifu action show first and foremost whether it likes it or not, and despite Nagatsuki dumping exposition on a whim, the pace of this show is lightning fast, and its number-one priorities are aways beautiful artwork and pretty colors, wildly ambitious and badass action choreography, and gorgeous futuristic locations which aren’t over-designed messes. Vivy and her teddy bear who’s name I forgot to mention was Matsumoto are both charming and lovable in their own way, and they’re nowhere near the obnoxious teenagers of Re:Zero or, for that matter, Senyoku no Sigrdrifa. The side characters are solid as well, and the arc-to-arc structure of the show really works magic when it comes to the arrangement of frequent and increasingly extravagant climaxes to each self-contained story. From a narrative standpoint, I think anyone would agree the ending is more hokey than the rest, but the animation production behind it all is never any less magnificent than it ever was at any point.

Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song is absolutely delicious, delectable popcorn entertainment I would recommend to just about anyone. Regardless of the fact it’s somewhat silly here in the real world, it’s sensical and thoughtful in-universe and, either way, always places its fantastic action and likable characters above its sci-fi elements which one may find more than a little fast and loose. Even picky eaters such as myself will be hard-pressed sticking their noses up at such a laudable and incredible production, and I have no doubt WIT Studio will continue to grace us with their daring and outstanding original productions for as long as time and money will allow. This is an epic which follows Vivy throughout the course of a hundred years to stop evil and save the world, and if it wasn’t for production companies like the ones funding and crafting it, we in the community would be waiting about that long for one such beauty to air. Despite her grand destiny, Vivy’s personal wish is simply to make everyone happy with her singing, and I think that childish innocence and simplicity echoes through the heart of every element of the show, which, despite its scientific and technical decorations, just wants to be entertaining, fun, and staggeringly beautiful. If you ever wandered what a Hollywood action film would be like if it had actually likable and well-rounded characters, actually interesting concepts and innovative ideas, actual theming and some level of deeper meaning to make it at all worthwhile, and actually competent and artful cinematic direction which is more than just a thoughtless vehicle for over-the-top visual action, then look no further than Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song. With proper expectations, it will not disappoint.

Thank you for reading.

What a disappointment! I was really looking forward to this one; still can't believe how quickly it fell apart. Great animation and choreography, great music and sound design, but the story is paper-thin. The premise was very promising, but they just had to rush all the subplots into 1 or 2 episodes each, effectively losing long-term audience involvement and any sort of meaningful world-building. Instead of building characters and stories you would actually get attached to, they resort to cheap emotional payoffs which don't really affect you all that much. Fans of the cyberpunk, AI future type of shows may still enjoy the show purely ... based on its aesthetic, but beyond the surface level, it all feels empty on the inside.
P.S. They do get props for not shamelessly plugging in android fanservice all the time, tho.

What does it mean to sing with your heart?

Time and again, this question echoes throughout VIVY: Fluorite Eye’s Song’s 13-episode runtime. Neither the story nor the setting are particularly unique: whether through movies or retro anime series, we’ve all been familiarized with futuristic settings, the concept of A.I. and the imminent human-A.I. conflict plotline. Yet, I will make the case that what this particular series accomplishes with this toolbox is something of note.

I confess that I came into this show with high expectations. Before I became engrossed in the fantasy genre, sci-fi used to be the type of fiction I was most invested in ... — whether it was dozens of Star Wars Expanded Universe material, Doctor Who series, Asimov short stories… There’s no wonder something that focuses on A.I. would have me excited.

The story follows Vivy, an A.I. songstress, on her journey to define something as ambiguous as “heart” — a seemingly impossible undertaking, given her robotic, non-human nature. Her companion A.I. Matsumoto and the threat of a future A.I. revolt serve to establish a framework for what is, at its core, a deeply personal character journey for our songstress protagonist. The narrative is a ruthless one; throwing multiple dilemmas towards Vivy, questioning her — sometimes to the point of trauma, although the story never gets gratuitous with its darker aspects, saving them for key, memorable instances.

Let’s talk about Vivy for a moment, since while each arc is filled with colorful side characters almost equally worthy of scrutiny, she is the one that forms the heart of the narrative. I loved Vivy. I could talk about the small things that endeared me and kept my attention — like her gradually developing, close companionship with blabbermouth Matsumoto, or her tendency to pick up tiny habits from those she encounters throughout her 100-year journey — but what mostly stuck with me were the greater themes and struggles of her character. From her choice to give up her initial identity as “Diva” to embrace “Vivy”, voluntarily stretching the definition of her given mission as a songstress A.I., to the narrative unexpectedly slapping her in the face for her righteousness around the middle point, the twists and turns her character takes are infinitely engaging. I could go into the way the story explores how certain individuals deal with trauma through her in the latter half (in an exceedingly unique way, given her inhuman nature), but the point here isn’t getting into spoilery details. I also had fun tracing her development according to the “Hero’s Journey” structure. Combine all that with a cool demeanor that nevertheless lets moments of emotion (yes, even for an A.I.) slip, and a charismatic design — Vivy’s character was a recipe for success from the beginning.

Of course, the side cast more than lives up to the main character, each as conceptually enthralling as the last and equally well-executed within the short timeframe of each arc. The story doesn’t allow you to forget that all these characters aren’t human, with demeanours unique to A.I., and yet managed to draw emotion from me for these inhuman beings. Be it a sibling dynamic that’s about showcasing that feelings of inferiority, familial love and comion can still be wielded by the inhuman; a tragedy where one who wants nothing but the simplest things in life is forced into a destiny greater than her; a take on dependence and twisted, yet also paradoxically purest love… watchers may know who each of these ideas I’m mentioning is attached to. Vivy’s songs play a key narrative role in every one of these situations and story arcs.

Speaking of the songs: they constitute one of the main charms of this show, with character or plot significance behind each insert. Songs like A Tender Moon Tempo wowed me with the way their impressively written lyrics both connect with the characters and offer something more, while delivering an incredibly pleasing melody, that I found myself listening to them long after the episode’s airing. I’ve felt similarly with most of the songs, save for rare exceptions.

If you come to VIVY expecting A.I.s to be a form of racial commentary, or anything of the like, you will find yourself disappointed. The story doesn’t subscribe to any politics and its societal commentary is mostly part of the framework for the focus on the characters; from the beginning, the ideal notion of A.I.s being equal to humans is scrapped. VIVY is, above all, about the question of humanity’s dependence on A.I.s, and whether they can co-exist in such a state.

I couldn’t finish this review without talking about the stellar production. With gorgeous still shots, clever directing and framing choices, and fights that may very well be some of the best animated of the year, Studio WiT adorned this story with some of the most breathtaking visuals.

Of course, as with many other pristine-looking shows, detractors who pay little attention to everything being presented above will try making arguments along the lines of “style and no substance”, or try picking convoluted CinemaSins-level plot holes (easily explained away by a second watch). I’ve even witnessed odd attempts to conflate VIVY’s world with Asimov’s laws of robotics for his own fiction, or claims that Vivy is dull as a protagonist due to the anime not slapping you in the face with her development and quirks as most others in the medium do. I pray that you do not form preconceptions based on such comments – although there is a small caveat to the show that I must point out. The show is hindered by its 13-episode limit; while it manages to flesh out its ideas well in every arc, sometimes there is little breathing room left for the viewer. Had this been a 2-cour show, with slightly longer arcs, I believe its emotional peaks would’ve hit even harder – perhaps enough for me to elevate it to the 10/10 it probably deserves.

VIVY is a show that, without a doubt, benefits most from rewatches. Whether it is spotting details initially missed, recontextualizations, or simply understanding the (quite hefty) story better, I couldn’t recommend it enough. In fact, I would recommend the English dub after watching the original, as I am more than satisfied with the performances in both languages, although some slightly different characterization may be spotted in the dub. I wouldn’t recommend VIVY: Fluorite Eye’s Song to those looking for an easy watch, as its writing style demands more than casual attention; however, if you are willing to invest yourself into this science fiction epic, you will be more than rewarded for it.

Warning: update, vauge spoilers and I hate this show. It went from okay to bad with the Ophelia arch ruining any semblance of momentum this show had going for it. Vivy took a solid concept and squandered its potential at every turn.

Vivy is mostly gratuitous violence for the sake of violence, or shock, but due to the over saturation of violence in the show I'd argue the shock leaves after the first three minutes of episode 1. After episode 3 I was tired of it, at episode 13 I actively loathed it. I do not feel anything for characters as they come or go, because ... this is told via the perspective of an ai who doesn't understand human emotion, and therefore what little we get of these characters is so achingly dull. These characters do not exist as people, they exist as plot devices, and their execution just feels lazy. Literally the final episode scrambled to find a character with any emotional foothold to Vivy, and so they bring back characters from episode 1, because despite fighting for humanity, Vivy doesn't actually know many humans.

Diva does not have any autonomy in this series to the point it is maddening. Every two or three episodes her character feels like a new person with new goals that were spun up by the people making decisions around her. Which, again, aren't characters but instead are written with the sole intent to further the overarching plot. With no "down" time, we don't get the chance to see vivy process things on her own or interact with the world at large, and the small sliver we see of a character that thinks and feels on her own is literally just a narrative foil to vivy (who is diva? Who is not diva). She is existing for her mission, which the show doesn't really take great care in making narratively important, and her character is the same person in episode 1 that she is in episode 13. Any chance at growth is ruined by the need to stick to this plot, explain the large leaps in time (horrible as there is no grounding in the world for the audience) and once again, violence!!

Had this show simplified itself, or let its viewer think, or explore the world beyond the mc, or introduced any importance beyond the mc with no agency and simply is a vehicle for which the plot is told, this show would be okay! Vivy is a lesson in don't bite off more than you can chew or high budget doesn't disguise bad writing.

OG review (6/10): I don't write reviews often, but as my opinion is so against the grain of the high rating, I figured now was a good time to crack my knuckles and get to typing.

I think this show is good and an okay way to kill some time on a Sunday afternoon. It isn't great, but it isn't terrible either. In a stronger season, I think this show would not have received the amount of attention it currently has and would have a lower rating overall. A lot of what surrounds Vivy right now is the allure of an anime original with high production value. I will give Vivy credit where credit is due - visually this show is the best of the season. The watercolor animated scenes are breathtaking and tight action scenes are fantastic to watch on top of nicely designed characters. However, you peel the shiny sticker off a little bit and you find a show that lacks substance.

Vivy is a sci-fi show that has been stripped of the nuance of the genre. It fails to make better (or even live up to) the genre that proceeds it, and in its lack of punch, it doesn't end up saying anything at all. Sure, not everything has to be thought provoking, but in a show where it positions itself in an incredibly layered way, those layers are paper thin. This show feels like it wrote down a bunch of things it has seen in other anime that are deep and just shoved them into their show unedited. I don't know what emotion it wants me to feel half the time, they don't bother explaining anything in any meaningful way and most of the time I am just waiting for unnecessary fight scenes to be over.

Maybe at some point in the final half of this show I will make a decision on whether the story is good or bad, but right now it just is. The only really thought provoking thing this show has managed to achieve is likely unintentional - why is everything in this show solved by violence at the hands of Hatsune Miku.

Episode 6 Is the Turning Point of the Entire Series - An Interim Review

(May contain story spoilers from Episode 6)







... The perennial question continues: what does it mean to pour your heart into something?

Episode 6, as the numerical halfway point of the series, serves as a pivotal turning point for both the audience and Vivy. The commentary below will mainly focus on how symbolism is used to portray this change in tone.

Two sacrifices were made during the process of terminating Metal Float in this episode. While the most groundbreaking one regards Dr. Saeki – which we will discuss momentarily – the first sacrifice actually revolves around M205. When asked by Vivy “what it means to pour one’s heart into something,” M205 responded in a way seemingly indicative of that it holds no capacity for independent thought aside from fulfilling its prefixed mission. However, when Vivy injected the serum into M205, the viewer was shown an ephemeral scene of M205’s mind – a future where M205 happily interacts with children and being proud of his nickname, “M.” Although still mindful of its mission, M205 was nevertheless able to develop its own dreams and aspirations.

Vivy’s actions, however, strangled the possibilities for M205's dream to ever become reality, sacrificing its consciousness to shut down the Metal Float. She exhibits grief for M205’s fate but was able to overcome it and continue with her own mission. Perhaps it was because her mission is to destroy AI to prevent human death, and that she considered M205’s death an inevitability along this process.

The second sacrifice, however, erupts much more chaos. This, of course, regards the actions and eventual death of Dr. Saeki. When Vivy finds herself lost at the central tower, Dr. Saeki chooses to lead her to Grace’s core. With the lifeless body of K5 lying beside him, Saeki realizes that his fight has come to an end: Grace cannot be recovered, and the remnant of his love will forever be no more. Vivy, however, still has a future ahead of her. What motivates Dr. Saeki is a sense of sympathy and abandonment; by showing Vivy the way, he its his downfall and, in a certain sense, es his longings and responsibilities onto Vivy – the AI who is destined to destroy all AI.

The ramifications of this sacrifice, however, arrive during the ending scenes of the episode. Just like the cardinal principle of AI, when Dr. Saeki’s only goal is demolished, his life is ended with his downfall. When he killed himself next to the unworn wedding ring, human blood spills all over Vivy, leading to the scene in which one of her hands is covered with blue fluids from Grace, the other with red blood from Dr. Saeki. This juxtaposition of color can be interpreted to portray several messages, but the one that establishes Episode 6 as the turning point of the entire series is the point of Conflict in Vivy’s identity.

As she stated herself before, Diva is the AI who aims to bring people happiness through her songs, while Vivy is the AI who aims to destroy all AI to prevent slaughter. Although these two identities entail vastly different responsibilities, they are united by their central goal, which is to save humans; this conjunction has been the core that kept Vivy operating under both identities. Dr. Saeki’s death, however, disrupted this protocol on a fundamental level: by terminating Grace, Vivy has indirectly caused Dr. Saeki to take his own life. The ocean of artificial fluids Vivy treads on has now been mixed with human blood. In such a world where AI and humans have developed a complex relationship of dependence and emotional attachment, destroying AI would also sever a part of humanity as a sacrifice. The manifestation of this conflict can be seen when Vivy’s power signal began to flicker between blue and red at the end, indicating that the coexistence between “Diva” and “Vivy” is ultimately conflicting – and that her 100-year mission would involve much more than destroying artificial fabrications.

To the viewer, Episode 6 is a reminder that the macroenvironmental setting is quickly changing with every ing episode. As years go by, the perspectives humans hold on AI and themselves evolve as well. As change is the only constant, Episode 6 encourages the viewer to remain vigilant about Vivy’s change in principles and behaviors, providing one the eagerness to discover how Vivy will cope with her conflicting missions and interact with allies and opponents alike.

With the thoughtful infusion of symbolism in characters like M205 and objects such as the mixture of blood and artificial fluid, Episode 6 is to be ed as both the literal and the symbolic turning point of Vivy: Flourite Eye’s Song.

The art of the anime original has somewhat died out in recent years with studios instead opting to make a quick buck with popular manga and LN adapdations. These are usually more profitable and less risky since they have an established fanbase. Solid anime originals have become far and few between. Luckily, WIT have delivered one of the best I’ve ever seen with Vivy.

When Vivy was announced, I was cautiously optimistic due to Tappei sensei’s last work, Sigururi. Whilst I personally enjoyed Sigururi, it definitely didn’t live up to the expectations of many considering the staff involved in that project. Vivy on the other ... hand. completely sured any expectations I had. From the very first episode we’re thrown into the chaos of a world being engulfed in an AI uprising. People being shot, buildings burning, explosions, etc. We’re then quickly introduced to our premise, preventing a catastrophic uprising by AIs against human via time travel. From the first episode, I was blown away by the amazing art, character designs, OST and action sequences. Vivy has some of the hypest moments of the year so far. While the promo material and PVs may make it seem like some cutesy idol show, it is anything but. This is a show that asks the very fundamental question of “what does it mean to be human” and is a beautiful journey of self-discovery.

What Vivy gets right that many other originals fail at is its pacing. It does a great job of not giving everything away at once, but also not being too slow. The anime is directed in such a way that episodes go by in what seems like a few minutes and you’re constantly left with questions at the end of episodes that you want to have answered. As with all time travel fantasies, there’s a couple of inconsistencies, but for the most part the story is extremely well written and brings that signature Tappei feeling of anxiety and dread. Hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. If you’ve seen or read Re:Zero, you know what I mean.

One of the most surprising aspects of Vivy for me, was how well choreographed the fight scenes are. WIT did an amazing job with the animation and direction during those sequences and honestly deserved way more praise than they got. In general, Vivy was criminally slept on this season, and it’s a shame. WIT also put together a really good OST that heightened the weight of certain moments.

Vivy is not just one of the best anime of the season and year, it’s one of the best anime originals out there and I can not recommend it enough. I’ve tried pushing this agenda for the entirety of the season to get people on this show and it’s gradually worked as I see the numbers have gone up. But still, so many people have missed out on this great work. Don’t be one of them.

Vivy gets 10 microphones out of 10.

THIS IS NOT AN IDOL ANIME.

This is probably the number 1 reason people haven't checked out this show. It is heavily underrated and you should definitely go watch it now. The only reason I found out about this show was because WIT studio was making it.

From the art, music, animation, story, character, everything about it is great. It's almost non-stop action every episode. Music is beautiful and fun to listen to. Characters are very likeable. GOD there's a lot to like about this show. Even if the story is something people have seen a million times where ai's take over the world and wipe ... humans out and we go back in time to stop it from happening, it makes you wonder if it is going to change anything and each episode perfectly pulls you in to see the outcome.

Just go watch it, had to make a review so more people can get into this wonderful anime.

The actual GOAT. I don't have the proper thoughts, feelings or headspace to truly write a review for this at the moment. So bare with me as you are forced to to hear emotional appeal for an online stranger.

I've had a lot of favorite shows over the years. Spice and Wolf, HxH, Houseki no Kuni and finally Madoka. Madoka sat at the pinnacle for years for me. Where the others I knew to be flawed shows, Madoka I believed might truly deserve a 10/10. I read fanfiction, shared it with countless people and rewatched it with them whenever I could. No where near enough ... of an obsession to buy merchandise, but thats just not how I experience enjoyment for a media.

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song is somehow much more than that. I don't know that I would give it a ten, not because its flawed, but because I have so much love for it that I can't even pretend to quantify it. Other shows I can objectively say "I like it this much", but this just has so much emotion and thought for me that I cannot. The opening of Spice and Wolf, nearly the entire final movie of Madoka, Gon becoming the antagonist in episode 131. These are scenes that fill me with so much emotion and yet I can cleanly say why they are so great, when they stop being great and why thats ok. I can't do the same for Vivy.

The shows usage of its music as a Motif has melted my brain. When I listen to the song I would almost describe it as mentally harmful. Such a wave of conflicting emotions that are just a jumbled mess because I associate it with so many different scenes. Nearly every scene in the show is an amazing standout moment for me. I can always recognize the incredible writing, direction and forethought put into the early scenes of Madoka. I can appreciate the world building and clever way of fitting things together in HxH even in mundane episodes, but I don't feel a true emotional resonance for its "down" episodes. Not the case for this show.

I don't think everyone will have this same level of emotional love for this show, I don't know if ANYONE will feel this same way about the show. But I would be overjoyed if one day I could convey to its creators just how truly happy it made me. If I ever am able to touch someone in the world to the degree this show touched me, I would know I had accomplished at least that in my life.

My life doesn't revolve around this show, I haven't bought merchandise for it, though I do strongly consider it. I don't even share it with other people because truthfully the idea of my friends not enjoying it would emotionally hurt me.

Consider watching it. Maybe you enjoy it to some extent. I know when it first came out I thought the premise sounded stupid. I hate idol shows, but think robots are kinda neat. So I gave it a chance and here we are.

*This review does not contain spoilers*

When i first heard about Vivy: FES i was wondering why nobody was talking about it. I mean, everybody said that it was an amazing show. Needless to say, i went into this show with big expectations.

STORY: 3/10

Before i get murdered i feel obliged to say that i do not enjoy "music" anime, like, in general. The most i could watch was K-on, anything more than that and i get bored. "B-But this show is much more than that!!" I hear you say. And i agree that after watching the 1st episode i was saying to myself: "WOW, this ... is amazing" but i also said: "Man i hope this doesn't just turn into a basic "saving the wold" kind of story" and it did. I like shows that i have a difficult time to explain to my friends. Shows that make me think. Vivy doesn't. Its literally robots saving the most world from robots. For people who have played Detroit: Become Human you know that this is the worst route in that game, so there you go. For me, it is very basic and the fact that we have seen almost the exact same story before, doesn't help it. The show has its originality, like the MC being an singer and the time-traveling stuff but it really isn't too much to make it a completely original story. The pacing is way too slow and the show has some glaring plot-holes that it just chooses to ignore.

ART: 9/10

Even if i do not like the story i have to it that this is the best looking show of this year (so far). The animation looks amazing, and it looks like the people who made it really loved what they were making. The action scenes flow well and the normal scenes have enough movement into them to keep you watching. The only issue i saw (which i have to dock a point for) is the SGI that is very hit and miss. Sometimes (like most of the scenes with the cube) it looks great but there are times where it looks plain awful.

SOUND: 5/10

This is where personal bias kicks in. I do not like Japanese music. That is way, when a show manages to get me to listen to an OP or ED or even a song from the show, its doing things great. Vivy hasnt done that. The song in the singing segments are so bad I skip and they try to play the music in important scenes, where its so loud and bombastic it distracts you from any semblance of interest you had in the lack-luster story. Tell me, what is your favorite anime fight scene of all time? Does it have the most basic ass J-POP song blaring over it? Probably not. Also, i have to say that even if i dont like the music, i am not fucking deaf, so i can tell that the voice-actress for Vivy has an amazing voice and did a really good job for what she was given, huge props to her.

CHARACTERS: 7/10

This is a department where Vivy does decently in. Vivy is a really great character and (as i said above) the voice-actress did an amazing job and Matsumoto is also a really great character. Other than that the show doesnt really have other characters. The other robots, whom are irrelevant and some guy. It does just enough to get a 7.

ENJOYMENT: 3/10

This is the biggest problem i had with this show. It just bored me to death. The 1st episode is amazing. It hooks you and just doesn't let you get your eyes of the screen. But after that, the pacing slows down to a crawl. Don't get me wrong, slow pacing isn't bad (Monogatari series is a prime example), but to do it right you have to tell me something interested, make me want to pay attention. Here they just repeat the same shit over and over again, wasting time. The action scenes are really good, and a saving grace but they are really far and between.

ENDING STATEMENT: I was highly disappointed with this one. I was expecting an amazing anime, but in the end i just got more and more bored, until the point where it felt like a chore to watch. The first episode was amazingly done but after that i think the show is really lack-luster. I recommend staying away from this one.

OVERALL: 5 (closer to a 6)

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song's premise is a combination of beloved stories and Hollywood films about sentient robots solving humanity's problems, whether intentionally or coincidentally—Ghost in the Shell, Terminator, Blade Runner, iRobot, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, to name a few. Vivy may not rank among the classics, though it's impressive audiovisuals will inevitably land it a place on "Best Sci-fi Anime" lists. Written by Tappei Nagatsuki, of Re:Zero fame and produced by none other than WIT Studio, it was bound to create ripples throughout the anime community. Doubtlessly, the premiere episode caught fans' attention. It begins with a clichéd cold open. A city full of humanoid ... robots sing a horrible melody out of tune, plumes of smoke rise above the futuristic architecture, people run through the streets screaming, and ounces of blood cover the pavement. Then it ends—this is the future ahead of our titular heroine, Vivy. One which she is asked to prevent.

50 years in our future, Vivy prepares to sing in front of a small audience. Her stilted performance and hollow singing left the citizens underwhelmed. After all, Vivy is “the first autonomous AI” ever created; Her purpose is to sing for the entertainment of citizens. While preparing for her next song, a robotic stuffed bear, given to her as a gift, suddenly calls out to her. The bear, who introduces himself as Masamoto, was sent to warn her about the future apocalypse. Once she comes to believe him, she is swept into a whirlwind of government conspiracy, a gang of criminals, murderous robots, terrorism, and more.

Masamoto's plan to prevent the apocalypse is known as the Singularity Project. He revisits her throughout the years to stop 'Singularity Points'. These are the significant events that cause the disastrous future, and it's Vivy's responsibility to prevent them from happening. All of this information is explained in a lengthy exposition dialogue during the first episode. "Telling" rather than "Showing" is the frustrating pattern of this show's script. Vivy was chosen because, in the apocalypse, she is the only autonomous AI left uncorrupted. Masamoto reprograms her to have combat abilities during combat, which somehow gives her the power to shield bullets with her bare hands, dodge bullets, and run as fast as a train. If that sounds stupid, well, it kind of is, but the animators make it look badass.

At its core, this is a thriller anime with a splash of music. Vivy's programmed goal is to be a singer, and it shows. Vivy's singing and mannerisms change as time flies by, visualized with brief performances. The song reused the most is the opening, which is fantastic on both visual and audio fronts. When the show focused on her music career, her dreams and ion showed she has a heart: music and an audience her sole motivations. Yet, we don't see it enough. It would be offensive to claim she has "no personality" because it's OK not to present your emotions outwardly. Writing Vivy in such a way detracted from the story it attempted to tell. Whether Vivy accomplishes an outstanding performance or fails to get a crowd, she has very little response. Happiness, pride, or dismay are hard to tell, though we can infer her emotions. Her face is nearly expressionless, her voice is constantly monotone, and she has little to no body language indicating what she's thinking. This is not uncommon for films starring AI characters—after all, Arnold Schwarzenegger only had 17 lines in Terminator. However, he wasn't the main character, and Vivy is. Her subdued personality isn't the problem. It's how she lacks autonomy in the series named after her.

Rather than being a heroine, she was more of an interchangeable pawn being guided through the plot by an obnoxious robot man in her head, rather than a heroine with her own autonomy. The few times she rejects Masamotos orders, there is a glimmer of hope she may regain agency in her own story. Then the moment ends, and the script is thrown back into Masamoto's court. All of their excursions in reshaping history are planned by him. He does everything for her with future robot abilities, no matter how illogical, and Vivy does the fist fighting. Her hero's journey was more like a long video game tutorial played by someone else.

Masamoto, an irritating AI that takes the form of a teddy bear and a flying cube, exists to guide Vivy through the plot. Imagine if you combined Jarjar Binks with a sarcastic supercomputer. That's him. His voice is grating, like nails on a chalkboard—and the actor has a history of good voice acting, the screenwriting and directing are entirely to blame for wasting a good voice actor. Jun Fukuyama previously voiced Koro-sensei in Assassination Classroom, which he performed exceptionally. The world-building is reliant on Masamoto's exposition. He's not a character. He is a mouthpiece for the writers to hold our hand through the complicated story. There's plenty to criticize about Masamoto because he, unfortunately, was given the majority of the dialogue.

Masamoto constantly condescends to Vivy, removes her autonomy, and provides painfully unfunny slapstick humor. The show has a habit of creating unintentionally funny situations: Imagine a random guy hysterically running into the street, only to get hit by an AI-controlled taxi that says, "Thank you for your patronage." It's hilariously foolish, even more, because the show takes it deadly seriously. Towards the beginning, I took it seriously due to the art direction. During specific moments, the frame will fixate on Vivy, and the visuals increase in detail to ire her beauty and convey emotional significance. Every feature on her expressionless face is maximized as if it was drawn to be placed in a museum. Then seconds later, we return to the same art style. These jarring shots remind us that Vivy requires artists to endear us to her rather than through the screenplay.

Due to Vivy's plot structure, side characters often last only two or three episodes, then they are forgotten. For some reason, every intelligent or character with power is male—with similar bland appearances. Unfortunately, their best designed characters aren't the ones who do the talking. Every named female character is given the role of singer, caretaker, spouse, all of whom are AIs following orders with little autonomy. The only odd one out is Vivy—solely because Masamoto reprogrammed her to do the fighting for him. Every sentient AI in this world is a beautiful woman. No men, which begs the question, why? Is it because people are more receptive to AI if they're women? Are the robot creators all men? Of course, this is left unexplored. All of these negative factors point to one answer; the show simply has a narrow view of identity. The best futuristic sci-fi stories challenge modern society's problems, such as social hierarchies. Vivy is more content with reinforcing them.

The utopian futuristic setting is rich with possibilities: There's no poverty, pollution, war, racism, or crime, except for the AI haters. But why? There's no further exploration. The world is essentially concept art. After each time, skip minor changes beyond superficial aesthetics: Holographic images, floating screens and keyboards, different dress codes, shinier buildings, and increasingly abstract architecture. These are set-dressing distracting from the real problem—this setting is a juvenile interpretation of society. A world like this might exist someday, but it needs to make sense. The writer doesn't even attempt to make sense of it, flat out ignoring history. No matter what time period, people of all backgrounds are dumber than ants. They make the dumbest choices possible in order to cause drama and conflict for Vivy to resolve.

Vivy's wealth of missed opportunities extends to its antagonists as well. Why do the antagonists despise robots? They insist they hate them, but for vague reasons. Metal bitch! Disgusting robots! Why? There are plenty of motivations based on other sci-fi stories: a fear of bots replacing human workers, drastic change is scary, paying AI wages, or whether or not AI should raise children. However, it's not our responsibility to write the villains' motivations. The thing is, there's no real reason why there shouldn't be robots here; this world is nearly perfect aside from rare malfunctions every few years. If the sentient robots revolted against the nation to gain equal rights to humans, then a reactionary movement would make sense. As far as we're shown, none of the sentient robots are paid, have the right to own property, or to vote in elections. There were plenty of opportunities to make this "Singularity" thoughtful, instead, they settled with “Malfunctioning robots kill lots of people.” To seriously consider this a cautionary tale is foolish. A multitude of better stories about artificial intelligence have already warned me. When robots eventually overthrow humankind, I'll be ready for them.

The production of Vivy: Fluorite Eye's is nothing short of incredible: beautiful character designs, top-notch voice acting, awe-inspiring fight choreography, melodic BGM, and professional insert songs. The culmination of skilled artists led to this anime's creation. Anyone would assume the storytelling, characters, and script would be on par with the rest with such a talented team. Sadly, that is not the case at all. Vivy lacks both intellectually engaging storytelling and character depth to stand with the greats of the genre. The overwrought finale attempts to tie the tangled plot threads and convoluted timeline together, but it rang hollow. The animators and art directors deserve praise for their effort, though the more time you think about the whole anime, the less it makes sense.

I rarely write reviews, but this show was such a waste of time and got so many 10/10s that I feel like I have to chime in, to save some other people from wasting theirs.

First of all, let me say that the art, the voice acting and the soundtrack is good (maybe even very good, depending on your personal preferences), but this does not save this show, except if you literally watch anime merely for visuals and audio. (Which is fine, mind you, but I think most people don't do that)

Now, what is my main issue with this? Story, and characters.

The story is so painfully ... badly written that by the end you will be asking yourself what story they were even trying to tell. The entire narrative feels incredibly disted. I could point out plotholes, but there are so many, that I'd still be typing in a couple of hours. The big problem is that this show tries to explore so many concepts and philosophical/moral questions, that is ends up covering all of them in a very superficial way, and ends up being a jumbled mess, instead of an actual story.

Now, my second big issue: The characters are equally poorly written. This show barely has any characters, due to its disted narrative you never feel like you actually get to know any of these people and their goals and ambitions. The show heavily focusses on Vivy/Diva, but she... is frankly quite boring. She barely gets any character development and lacks an actual personality, she pretty much just does whatever she is told. Sometimes she gets into arguments with Matsumoto (her companion), but they never really capitalize on this, which is a shame. Overall, the mascot character (Matsumoto) ends up being a more interesting character than her, being a snarky little robot with what feels like an actual personality. Yes, you heard that correctly, the tiny cute AI cube is more interesting than our main character.

Honestly, I could rant about this show for another 2 hours, but I really just wanted to give a short review: I do not like or recommend this show.

hilarious how awful the script for this anime is. every episode got me chuckling during most of the exposition dialogues. anyhow, not gonna write long-format explanations to each of them, just gonna list some:

- not a single moment the AIs convinced me they are AIs. they all act like any badly-designed human character out there.
- the anime shows ZERO normal interactions between humans and AIs, just the ones that are going to have some impact on the narrative. and there is a terrorist group that wants to destroy all AIs because... humans and AIs can't coexist? and there is not a single moment where this ... is the case.
- we are supposed to believe an AI that can create thousands of different calculations and simulations came back to the past from decades ahead and it simply can't calculate the most basic way to stop an AI takeover? and why does it need to hibernate to WAIT for the events to happen instead of preventing them from ever happening?
- the songs are derivative as fuck.
- the whole 'what is the heart' thing is just cringe. HUMANS can't agree what emotions mean in an objective manner, why does it matter for an AI?
- matsumoto (the AI) is just annoying.
- satellites, when they are diverted from the earth's orbit to its atmosphere, burn up and disintegrate before they can ever reach the ground. and don't the AIs need the satellites to communicate and work properly?

just watch violet evergarden if you want something similar in structure but good.

Written by the same author as Re:Zero and produced by Studio Wit, this anime has every chance of being an amazing experience and unsurprisingly it delivers.

As expected of Tappei Nagatsuki, this anime holds no punches. Each episode is both rich and heavy in emotions, as of this review episode 6 has been released. I just got done watching it but I had to take a good 20 minutes to just process what I'd watched. In a way this anime is kinda like if Plastic Memories and Terminator had a love child. It's a very character driven anime but with hugely high stakes which keeps each ... and every episode interesting and streamlined. A great story and characters.

The music is pretty damn good. Not the best but it's certainly up there. Especially episode 6, I was totally engrossed in the music and the action sequence it was a great experience.

The animation and art style is absolutely stellar especially the effort and detail that goes into the eyes, I honestly cant think of many anime that comes close to the pure artistry of the close up shots of eyes, we seem to get a new shot every episode
You know when people joke about other anime like 'all the budget went into the eyes'?
That's the level of quality we're getting, except the budget stretches far enough that everything looks great. Though I do need to say, there is some minimal CGI for particularly extensive action/fast paced sequences or background characters but its pretty rare and doesn't take away from the experience at all.

Overall this is an amazing anime, if it can keep this momentum going up to a good conclusion it'll easily be reaching for my top 20 anime