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Last edited by Tony K. on Thu Apr 11, 2024 12:16 pm; edited 6 times in total

(The) Gene of AI (TV)

Source: Manga (completed @ 8 volumes by Kyūri Yamada)

Demographic: Shounen

Animation Studio: Madhouse

Genres: comedy, drama, mystery, psychological, science fiction, slice of life

Themes: androids, artificial intelligence, contemplation, cyborgs, medicine, moral dilemma, robots, technology

Plot Summary: Hikaru Sudo is a human doctor who specializes in treating humanoids who come to him with various problems and worries. Although humanoids suffer from “diseases” like humans, there are “treatment” options available only to them. In a world where humans, humanoids, and robots live alongside one another in daily life, the protagonist is a human doctor who treats humanoids.

Air Date & Platform:
July 7, 2023 (Friday)
Available on: Crunchyroll

Episode Count / Runtime: 12 episodes
----------------------------------

Madhouse-made sci-fi about A.I.?

Yes, please.

Episode 1

I can be a sucker for "medical themed show with a twist" premises and this one is no exception. Theme of the episode was "identity" and the show found a clever way of dramatizing the whole "what's the difference between a copy and an original" in a small but very telling way. I was moved.

Episode 2

I gotta tell ya peeps that I'm pretty flippin' impressed with this show. It's finding interesting ways to examine the implications of technology on things like identity and societal attitudes. Couldn't be more timely. Sadly, my solo presence in this thread may be an indication that the show is not getting much love. I hope that's not the case.

I can only speak for myself, but my anime time for the week is kind of filled with like 30 or so shows. If I want to watch this then I will have to drop something else and the premise is not grabbing me as of now.

I understand the pressures of a bulging anime schedule all too well, smurky turkey. But I am dying to have somebody else to discuss this show with so I throw down the following challenge to you:

Just watch the first episode at some point this coming week. I'm only asking for 24 minutes and 27 seconds of your time somewhere in that 168 hour period. We generally seem to feel the same way about most shows. I feel confident you'll like the show enough to either make it your 31st show or cut one of your current titles to make room.

DO YOU ACCEPT THIS CHALLENGE, SMURKYTURKEY??? Or are you a wimp? (hee hee hee) Wink

I have been multiple days behind on anime for a few weeks now, so really doing much to discuss anime for a bit would have cut into other time, but hopefully able to catch up as I can more confidently pick what I am watching, or really pick what I am not watching.

I was actually kind of planning to drop this show after the first, as the whole mum plot felt kind of dystopian in a way that I might not be too into continuing. But I was really picking up transhumanist elements in the second episode, and its somewhat relevance to queerness.

Specifically I saw the connection of the whole sports thing to the trans sports, where there is that whole discussion about fairness of fairness in sports when you involve trans people. Although I was kind of surprised that the topic took the stance of the robot/android being at a disadvantage, because he would be unable to keep up with the body of a human boy being able to improve with their body. It is not normally the sort of thing you see in the discussion of the non-standard one being disadvantaged, and I kind of wonder how one could relate it to an athlete who has taken hormones or hormone blockers that could affect how they might be able to improve compared to their peers.

And similarly I did pick up on the queerness of Kaoru. Based on the way they spoke about changing their body more femininely, how they spoke and even the subtext of not being able to pass on genes, I picked up pretty quickly they were trans. My fear though was based on the almost harassing way they reacted to the cis-woman and the desire to be able to manipulate men by their organs and in general their way of speaking , I thought maybe they would just turn out to be a joke of a predatory trans-woman. So I was actually pretty happy with the reveal that they are non-binary, firstly that the Japanese character in at least subtitled asked what they identify as. As well as non-binary being a thing, where it might not be obvious in looking masculine or feminine.

And I would be lying if I don't actually identify with what they talked about. As fellow enby, I have been trying recently (and a while) to find some games where I can roleplay/live as a feminine babe, in a more than shallow experience. Kind of sucks that Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the few games I can dress up and play as a glitzed up feminine character. I had been thinking about for a while about how I could choose to look if less boundaries were taken away. There is only so much I can get across with what I can get away with long hair, hair accessories, nail polish, and a couple pink shirts. If I could more easily alter my body, such be with advanced tech, I probably would.

So, I have watched the first episode and I can see some of the selling points of the series. It tackles interesting possible future issues with technology and makes one think about how they feel on the subject with no clear answer given. My only/main issue is that I watched Ghost in the Shell: stand alone complex for like the third time last year. That series does all the things this series does better in my opinion, so I would sooner rewatch that again than continue this.

I've been lagging too Dusky., and it's all because of Blood and his pesky "You should try out every anime per season blah blah blah" :wink. I decided to try it after almost missing out on Otaku Elf last seson. and holy crap, it's a task. I saved this anime and the sunshine/mirror anime for last because they seemed like the ones I would be least interested in, but crap, this anime turned out to be interesting as hell. It shoots out so many ideas and implications and questions per episode that I hardly even know where to start.

For example - are "humanoids" androids or clones that are more technologically compatible? If they're androids, how can they age? If they're clones, why is age something that's programmed into them? Are they bio-androids? Gene engineered to the extent that they can develop a certain way? Does this mean that they don't evolve?

Here's another question...where do humanoid rights begin and end? To some extent they seem to have been designed so that they wouldn't be a threat to humans. Their iQ's are arbitrarily limited (How much would it suck to know that you could have photographic memory if you hadn't been crippled before you were born?

Dusky, in regards to your post, I'd be curious to know whether the humanoids carry over prejudices and biases against each other, just like humans do. It seems likely since the track runner had self-loathing and insecurity, etc. They can alter their bodies, but can humanoids be made to look like other specific humanoids or have their voices changed? Wouldn't that be identity theft in a way, or make crime easier? Are there humanoids who commit violent crimes on their own free will?

The back-up thing is creepy because it involves/ignores the question of the soul. Anybody here read The Prestige? Or...think about Star Trek. Ever heard that question about Star Trek transporters? Transporters are basically Xerox machines.
They work by destroying the human body and recreating an exact duplicate, complete with the chemical disks and electric signal combinations that contain a person's memories. But is that back-up really you? Or did you kill yourself when you stepped in that transporter bay so that a doppelganger of you could be created somewhere else?

And there have to be anti-humanoid, anti technology movements out there, right? I mean, having seen the initial terminator movies, the initial Matrix movies, etc, I'd be worried.

Hell, I am worried. One of the reasons writers are striking in Hollywood is because they're trying to make it illegal to have AI's write scrips. Warners is going to try having an AI pick their movie and TV projects. The less expensive AI art is now starting to replace human art in advertisements and book covers. I just heard about a Skyrim innovation where NPCs can be interactive AI's that the player can have real (sort of?) conversations with.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop there for now. I have to say, this is one of the most poorly marketed anime out there. The description doesn't make it sound very watchable or fun (and it definitely isn't a pure entertainment anime. This is more in the Serial Experiment Laine category) and I heard zero hype about it. I'm finding the mother/son framework particularly sad. [/spoiler][/i]

*steeples fingers together evilly*

Excellent. My plan to burden Edjwald with ever increasing amounts of anime until he is an empty husk without time to eat, sleep, shower or drink coffee is proceeding perfectly.

I kid, I kid! Glad you are finding it worthwhile. @ smurkyturkey: thanks for at least trying it out. I look forward to continue reading your comments in other threads.

@ DuskyPredator: I'm kind of embarrassed I didn't pick up on the transpeople in sports parallel but it makes sense. I was confused why humanoids and humans were clearly competing at the school level when it was stated that normally they are not allowed to compete against each other.

I know that I am being a bit unfair. It is just that ghost in the shell is so good in selling the setting and many bits of questionable technology/morality in it, that I always compare new series that try to do something similar to ghost in the shell.

I don't think that's unfair at all. If GitS satisfied a particular thing you enjoyed why would you want to spend time watching something that does that thing less well in your opinion? Life's too short and there's just too much damn anime to waste time on something that ain't doing it for you... regardless of the reason(s).

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that anybody interested in the whole human/android milieu should definitely check out the excellent Time of Eve if you have not already done so.

Anime about Androids and the like are up against a history of stuff like Time of Eve, and I would say that it is set to be seen if this show will live up or look good in comparison.

But with the mentions of classic android shows like Ghost in the Shell, I will throw in a quick mention of Pandora in the Crimson Shell. I would say that it was a mostly ignored and now forgotten anime, as a trashy yuri-bate show with androids, but I stood by it as deeper than it first seems on the topic of what makes a person/human. And I remembered there was supposedly the chance that Pandora could be in the same setting as Ghost, only slightly earlier and filtered to be a bit trashy.

Not to get too off-topic, but cyberpunk stuff with artificial people is always open to those comparisons of how different stuff want us to view things like humanity to things that are questionable on a biological level.

Episode 3

Once I realized that this episode had a teddy bear robot with a cute voice I was like, "...this is gonna end up with me getting a swift kick to the feels, ain't it?" I was not wrong even if the swift kick came in a way I didn't foresee. Oh, Yuki-chan. But yeah, they got me. Tissue City. But extremely MANLY tears, let me tell ya.

I guess it says something about where I am in regards to the whole AI thing that even though I thought the teddy bear wanting to know what happened to its former owner was poignant, I found those last shots closing in on the teddy bear's soulful/soulless pupils disturbing. Just like I found the robo-boyfiriend's eternal half smile creepy.

Have you heard of the Uncanny Valley phenomenon? From what I understand, it's about how some people get creeped out when an artificial creation (wax statue, CGI construct, etc) is too life-like. Life-like, but not quite life.

Anyway, I'm late to the party here, but this is where I officially realized that this is probably going to be an anthology series, with lots of one episode stories about artificial life. The MC and his search to put his Mom's hijacked consciousness to rest provide a framework. That's cool.

I was wondering why the show needed to focus on robots when it already has humanoids, but if the aim is to focus on the subject from lots of different perspectives, it makes sense.

The stories have been very well done, and I'm liking this show more and more. It's always good to have a lot of options on the seasonal menu.

(I'll have a topical issue with a spot of bleak, existential crisis please).

Like dogs in a JoJo's episode, you know if you see a teddy bear it's going to end up mutilated, burnt or trampled. I think I've seen about 4 of those so far just this season (plus one a couple weeks ago on an Adult Swim Naruto rerun). smh

So I was thinking that the humanoids had goat/sheep eyes so humans could identify them as such, but then here we have robots with human pupils that only seem to be identifiable by their collars. Not sure what to make of that, but I can't shake the feeling that the Doc isn't human, despite blurb and in-story claims to the contrary.

I'm still not clear on what Hikaru needed that forced his mom to let them copy her for the money to edit his genome. I'm also unclear on the reproductive capabilities of humanoids, since Sudo's mom was apparently humanoid (was the humanoid woman with her at the meeting her partner? Smile

). That being the case, how is he human when his mother isn't? Was he adopted like the girl in the first episode? Was that what she wanted the genome editing for?

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