Vivy - Flourite Eye's Song

Vivy - Flourite Eye's Song is an original 13 episode sci-fi anime written by Nagatsuki Tappei and Umehara Eiji, produced by Wit Studio.  The anime originally aired on the Spring of 2021.

    In the 23rd century AI wages war on humanity, threatening its existence.  A scientist makes a desperate attempt to save everyone by transmitting an AI a hundred years into the past, to work with the remaining original AI to undo mistakes that he believes lead to the threat.  Diva is the first AI produced but she has been relegated to singing at a barely attended side stage in an amusement park, unable to touch the hearts of the human visitors.  In the development of AI, it was imperative that the scope of the programming was narrow enough to avoid complications and failure in their operation.  Each AI is given one task that their programming forces them to achieve above anything else.  Diva's task is to 'sing from the heart and make everyone happy with her songs'.  She struggles with the definition of this task and her inability to move the hearts of the humans around her.  

    The AI from the future, Matsumoto, comes to Diva and works to convince her of his intentions and understanding of the future.  His one goal is the success of the effort to work with Diva to alter time enough to prevent the war between humans and AI.  Using his advanced programming and technology he is able to update her abilities to match the tasks at hand.  Altering the past can be difficult when the record that you have does not change based upon the alterations made.  In order to make as little impact as possible outside of the scope of his mission, Matsumoto only appears at random junctures in the timeline to guide Diva with specific tasks.  Without understanding how their changes will effect the future, will they really be able to prevent the destruction of humanity at the hands of AI?   

The primary objective of the story is a cautionary tale about artificial intelligence.  Time travel by way of altering the 'past' plays a heavy role in the plot as well.  Attempts to halt the coming destruction of the human race at the hand of AI relate closely with an anti-terrorist organization as Diva and Matsumoto interact with them again and again, struggling to alter the world enough to prevent the future Matsumoto comes from.  The time jumps make some of the plot points hard to follow at first, particularly when passing dialogue references characters from prior segments that may not have stuck in memory.  Even with binging the entire series in one sitting I found myself having to reference past episodes to fully understand all the links being presented.  It seemed rather tedious and would distract from focusing on the story as it unfolded.  At times the story felt rushed as well.  Some points in time seem like there could have been a slower pace.  Though given the series filled up 13 episodes it's impossible to say that an entire second cour would have been justified.  It just felt like more time could have been spent on some portions of the story.

    With it's faults this was an enjoyable series.  It is pretty much a combination of standard Isaac Asimov classic sci-fi mixed with the feel and drama of Violet Evergarden.  The story is as much about trying to save humanity as it is building humanity into Diva.  What is an odd choice stylistically is how all other AI have emotions and motivations outside of their programing, yet the main character is presented as an automata.  Or perhaps this dichotomy is done purposefully to further underlie her uniqueness and lack of emotion.  She is one of the first AI if not the first...that part seems to be somewhat murky to be honest.  Yet, all of the other AI that have any level of interaction with the story have some level of emotion.  There is a lot of compassion for Diva from the viewer as she is witness to a series of personal tragedies through out her story, I admit it was quite emotional at times, particularly when a ballad would kick in to heighten the feelings.  It's not as compelling of a story as Violet Evergaden was but is was still worth the time.  Each story segment feels like an excuse to play around with different sci-fi tropes with only the end goal of Diva being the unifying thread.  Its hard to find truly original content with everything that but made, but comparisons to other well known franchises are hard to ignore, particularly The Matrix and Terminator.

The series is available in sub and dub format on Crunchyroll.