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The Spring 2015 Anime Preview Guide

the new opener and closer do not impress much

Maybe I should have gone deeper into that.

Basically what I'm getting at is that I don't like it when people or works of fiction try to portray death as necessary or beneficial just because it's inevitable. The reason I don't like that is it fosters the kind of attitudes that make people want to reject life extending technologies as being 'unnatural'.

For example, a few years ago, in the context of whether to allow certain kinds of biotechnological research, the U.S. presidential bioethics advisor stated that mortality was not an evil but a blessing and that "The Finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual, whether he knows it or not." So this is a dude in a position of power that's deliberately opposing efforts to increase human life expectancy. Now, we don't need to open this particular can of worms, so let me say that my main point here is that whether or not one thinks people should disagree with this kind of research for other reasons, this is obviously not a good reason.

Back before smallpox was eradicated, when innoculation was beginning, there was some opposition due to those kind of rationalizations of it being part of the natural order. Surgery was initially opposed because people thought it was 'unnatural' to cut into and interfere with the body. The issue here is that those kind of rationalizations may just serve to make people feel better about inevitabilities they can't control now, but if a future time comes where we can actually deal with things like heart disease and cancer, those rationalizations will serve as obstacles to us. The solutions will indubitably involve altering the body in some way, like and unlike vaccination and surgery, and because this particular way is novel, people will initially oppose it and deem in 'unnatural'.

I mean, it just isn't right that these androids can't go past a decade, just as it isn't right that most of us don't go past a century. I don't want to see Plastic Memories take the stance that it's bad for people to not want the androids to die because 9 years is their natural life span and you have to accept that.

Let it be said that I'm not saying Plastic Memories has gone to this territory or even that it will, but I can foresee that it might, and if it does I won't be happy. On the positive side, if it takes something like the other track I can see it ascending to great heights in my books.

The key difference is between "this is bad but I accept its inevitability" and "I'm going to rationalize why this unpleasant but inevitable thing isn't bad."

As the Hunchback said to one of Notre Dame's gargoyles, "Why can't I be made of stone, like thee?"

So having actually seen its first episode is anyone else bothered by that image of Seraph on the "sponsored by Funimation" thing or is that just me? I know nothing about the source but that seems like an annoyingly big spoiler to have planted there.

To me a first episode is a critical one. It can either make or break whether a fan watches that show. Whether or not it catches your attention or not.

One twist that I can potentially forsee is that spoiler[Maybe the 9 year lifespan isn't really an inherent problem to making these people, and is intentionally introduced by the corpration, or maybe it doesn't exist at all, and these androids are being murdered for the company's profit from planned obsolescence.] That could be kind of interesting.

I haven't seen it yet (nor do I intend to, after these reviews), but I wanted to say something about Gunslinger Stratos. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's probably not entirely accurate to call the source a lightgun game (in the sense of one like Virtua Cop). As far as I can tell, it does use one, but it's an entirely multiplayer TPS. So... they likely had even less source material to stick to, and still did nothing good with it.

Boy, I really, really hope you're wrong, as I think a cheap gimmick like that would destroy what the first episode establishes. Besides, given the tone of the first episode, I suspect that this is going much more in the direction of Tsukasa's interactions with Isla, and their termination assignments, help Isla come to terms with her own impending demise. I can see the series using that to examine how people confront and deal with their own mortality in widely-varied ways, and I think that's a great approach for a series to take.