Forum - View topicPlastic Memories (TV).
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Stark700
 Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Plastic Memories (TV) Genres: romance, science fiction Themes: Plot Summary: In a future not too far away, androids that look exactly like humans begin to spread across the world. The android production company SA Corp. produced Giftia, a new kind of android that has the most amount of emotion and human-like qualities out of any other model ever seen. However, due to problems in technology, the androids have a service life, and once they pass that, it gets pretty bad. For this reason, SA Corp. creates a terminal service in order to retrieve Giftia that have gone past their service life. A new employee at the terminal service named Tsukasa Mizugaki forms a team with the Giftia Isla to retrieve the other androids. ---------------------------------- Newest key visual came out recently. The premise actually sounds refreshing with a bit of slice of life-like story with science fiction. I'd expect relationship building from a series like this with world fiction as well. From the PV I saw, this seems to have a good amount of themes to go with. Character designs looks vibrant as well. |
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Raftina
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Perfect imitation of human appearance is the point of these robots, though I'm not sure being visually indistinguishable is a good thing for purposes of the story. It seems to even lack a difference in eye design that is relatively standard for these types of shows.
But hey, robots with human-like emotions and an expiration date. Sounds like a good premise. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9829 Location: Virginia |
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It sounds like a recipe for heavy drama and tragedy. Imagine having a friend/co-worker/lover simply terminated in the prime of life due to an expiration date. Since they have human emotions, I doubt the robots are very happy about it either. Imagine yourself with a stated expiration date.
I've never seen the point of robots that exactly imitate people. One thing people are very good at is making additional people. |
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Stark700
Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Episode 1:
Well, it had an atmospheric setting with sci-fi/slice of life themes, good comedy, decent production values, and diverse cast of characters; and not to mention, the way it sets up has a host of potentials and possibly hidden secrets related to Isla. Great start so far though. It has a lot of potential and ways to go about with the themes. Excited for more!! |
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Beltane70
 Posts: 3877 |
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Out of the new shows that I've seen so far, this one is my favorite first episode. I really do love the mix of comedy and drama that this first episode provided.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23743 |
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I guess I'll have to make sure I have a supply of tissues when I watch this. I like it but I really hope I'm not going to be sobbing like a little bitch every time.
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Yamstarch
 Posts: 62 Location: Virginia USA |
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I'm right there with you. I'm already an emotional guy as it is. First episode already hit me right in them feels. |
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WhiteHairGirls
 Posts: 4713 Location: New York City |
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Damn i don't know if I can handle a tearjerker so soon after YLIA.
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ADM20
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Now, I'm a big fan of Philip K. Dick and all, but I'm pretty tired of sci-fi taking so much from Blade Runner all the time. This one does do something different by having a sense of humor, which is refreshing for this kind of thing, but the entire premise seems too unoriginal for me to really be grabbed by it. Furthermore, there was just way too much of an exposition dump in this first episode that made it all feel a bit stiff and, well, robotic in its writing. Not to mention the unfortunate mood whiplash it suffered from in going from the really serious scene with Nina's memory retrieval to Isla comically having to go to the bathroom-- by all means, mix comedy and drama, but at least pace it a bit more so this issue doesn't come up. On the bright side, though, it looks quite pretty in both its animation quality and art design, and it did do enough differently to warrant some intrigue. I'll watch episode 2, but I'm not sure if I'll finish this series yet.
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Raftina
Posts: 3282 |
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It's kind of weird that I'm fixated on this aspect of the show when it involves something as far out as robots with souls, but...
The talk of their memories degrading upon hitting expiration reminds me of a recent SSD endurance test I read recently. It turns out that the SSDs had actual write endurance of somewhere between 3 to 30 times the rated write endurance: A ludicrous amount of over-provisioning. I believe this is common practice in engineering: To build significant fault tolerance. So I found it rather odd that the giftias expire so precisely after 81920 hours. This makes me suspect the memory failure is the result of an artificial kill switch, not a limitation of the system itself. But despite the nagging suspicion, it was an enjoyable episode: Far more so than the other two shows I watched this season. It hits the right degree of emotional tones, and the relationships they chose to illustrate the the problems with giftia are particularly poignant. I think this episode perfectly answers Alan45's objection: spoiler[These robots are built with human emotions precisely because they are sold to people who want/need emotional crutches.] I am eager to see the direction this show pursues.
Then do not think of them as taking from Blade Runner. Think, rather, that the author had assembled disparate elements from other works and real life experience to create his own original, though not first, story element. The ubiquity of computers today and reasonable familiarity with their limitations means any semi-serious science fiction writer of reasonable intelligence would have in mind the limits of hardware and storage when writing about computers--humanoid or not. As for the concept of robots with human emotions, that had been in use since at least 1938, when Lester del Rey's "Helen O'Loy" was published. And if Plastic Memories happens to later employ a test of physical reactions to a series of obscure questions to determine whether the giftia in question has hit an early expiration, do not think of it as taking the Voight Kampff test from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Think, rather, of Dr. Gerrigel's test of three laws compliance in The Caves of Steel, first published in 1954. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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No one else has mentioned this yet, but if you listened closely to when Tsukasa was describing what little he knew of of the Company, he mentioned that the Giftia contained "artificial souls" which *only* SA Corp. knows how to make. Hmm... HMMM...
Now how, do you suppose, these souls are created? Why is the end date set so precisely? I mean, that would imply that there are no variations in wear or memory storage or whatever parameters they're using in determining that date. What if someone had a very boring, leisurely life and another Gifta had a frenetic, turbulent one? In fact, what this show reminds me of, in a way, is Witch Hunter Robin. I have a sneaking suspicion that there are some very dark things awaiting us, but maybe I'm just being paranoid here. |
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Beltane70
Posts: 3877 |
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You probably will be! The first episode almost got me to that point. |
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ookamigirl
 Posts: 2274 Location: Croatia |
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Giftia's sure are intriguing.
This looks like an interesting story. Not the happiest one though.. but has its fun moments. Still... it's definitely something different. That Isla sure has some issues going on.. The story certainly has potential. Will give it a try. |
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Raftina
Posts: 3282 |
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The fact that SAI built a software kill switch into the giftia does not necessarily mean a sinister motive. If you read the article I linked while discussing the oddly specific expiration time in the post above yours, you will see that the Intel SSD contained a kill switch. Specifically, it was designed to shift into read only mode after wear exceeded the designed tolerance level, then brick itself after a power cycle. Compared to Samsung's practice of continuing to write long after huge numbers of uncorrectable errors have occurred--to the point of catastrophic failure and unrecoverable data loss--, a kill switch may very well be good engineering practice.
Remember that storage devices have limits to how fast they can read and write. The 81920 hours limit may very well be simply be design tolerance/maximum write speed, with the subsequent failures enforced by software as a public relations management technique. As to why they would use a time-based expiration, I can think of two reasons: First, giftias are physical things that move around on their own initiative--and from what we have seen thus far, unique objects whose users would not like to see cloned--, not a stationary device whose data is backed up in numerous other places. Ensuring recovery before failures occur is more important than in a standard computer. In "The Bicentennial Man", US Robots and Mechanical Men enforced a time-based obsolescence system because they greatly feared the negative PR associated with an actual failure of a robot. Second, a time-based system is easier to administer than a wear based system. In real life, there's a fair amount of controversy associated with smart devices phoning home. Recall that Michiru mentioned that privacy concerns was the reason the owner must be present when the giftia is erased. It is unlikely, then, that SAI would include a system for reporting wear level to headquarters. A time-based system would permit them to track expiration without needing to connect to the giftias. While these are ultimately motivated by the desire to protect the corporation, they are there to address public concerns. Even if the giftias expire so precisely because the company had included a kill switch unrelated to actual wear, the move need not be motivated by some sort of conspiracy. A conspiracy is certainly a possibility, but I'd like to see the story address the more mundane motivations for once. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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I think it would be incredibly evil to create intelligent beings with an intentionally finite lifespan regardless of any of those kinds of concerns. If the giftias could function well long past their expiration date, then to hell with SAI for artificially curtailing their lifespan.
Last edited by Galap on Sun Apr 05, 2015 2:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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