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EP. REVIEW: BEATLESS


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Kaylee Smerbeck



Joined: 26 Jul 2017
Posts: 144
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:15 pm Reply with quote
Cautiously optimistic
I hope
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:19 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
The only thing even slightly unusual about this setup is that his little sister (who lives with him) is not only accepting but enthusiastic about the situation


Is this really such a big deal? I mean, if your brother suddenly came home with the latest video game console wouldn't you be happy about it?
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Chaos Wings



Joined: 05 May 2015
Posts: 277
Location: Your guess is as good as mine?!
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:23 pm Reply with quote
Really can't make my mind up about BEATLESS yet, it feels like it wants to be so much more but so far it just keeps towing the generic line.

Plus the whole cute robot girl calling the MC Owner-san thing (might as well be calling him Goshujin-sama!). Rolling Eyes
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rahzel rose
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:39 pm Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:
Quote:
The only thing even slightly unusual about this setup is that his little sister (who lives with him) is not only accepting but enthusiastic about the situation


Is this really such a big deal? I mean, if your brother suddenly came home with the latest video game console wouldn't you be happy about it?


I think we’ve all come to expect that the little sister would get jealous because someone else is here to take away her onii-chan, or something along those lines. I’m glad that doesn’t seem to be the case.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
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Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:47 pm Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:
Quote:
The only thing even slightly unusual about this setup is that his little sister (who lives with him) is not only accepting but enthusiastic about the situation


Is this really such a big deal? I mean, if your brother suddenly came home with the latest video game console wouldn't you be happy about it?

The default scenario these days in anime is that the little sister at least somewhat has the hots for her brother and thus would see Lacia as a rival. How completely the closer focuses on the little sister, especially with the sunset scene at the end, means that the possibility can't be entirely discounted.
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:01 pm Reply with quote
^And the ED is primarily focused on her and the camera seems pretty fond of her as well.

As for the show itself, it hasn’t been too bad, but I feel like they could be using the premise to explore more interesting ideas than they have so far. It definitely still has the potential to do that though, so I still have some hope for this show.
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Chaos Wings



Joined: 05 May 2015
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:13 pm Reply with quote
It seems pretty obvious lil' sis is only interested in her creature comforts and having Lacia around is a convenience not a hindrance. If insane jealous possessiveness over onii-chan isn't her style. The only rational reason she could get upset over would probably centre around the fact that her brother had potentially brought a glorified sex doll home. Pretty sure you wouldn't have to worry about that coming up if you were only bring a new games console home. Very Happy

Which begs the question if she doesn't exist to cause friction at home why does MC have a sister in the story, answer she probably serves a more important/greater purpose in the overall plot (hopefully). It would be boring if she's just around to give his home life a bit more color.
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#844391



Joined: 09 Sep 2015
Posts: 517
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:58 pm Reply with quote
One thing that stuck me weird about the main character, specifically in ep 1 is the main character's attitude towards hiE's. I know his kindness towards hiE's is supposed to be seeing as a good point but as his friends pointed out they are literally appliances that are simply following their programing.

To me he sort of comes off more as the weird guy who tries to have deep conversations with Siri or Alexa on their smartphone or the stereotypical otaku who falls in love with an anime character and marries their body pillow sleeve. I'm sure that Lacia and the other escaped special hiE's probably have actual artificial intelligence so his attitude towards them then becomes justified but he seemed more weird when I tried to think of what would happen if we did have robotic assistants in the real world.
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Key
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:18 pm Reply with quote
#844391 wrote:
To me he sort of comes off more as the weird guy who tries to have deep conversations with Siri or Alexa on their smartphone or the stereotypical otaku who falls in love with an anime character and marries their body pillow sleeve. I'm sure that Lacia and the other escaped special hiE's probably have actual artificial intelligence so his attitude towards them then becomes justified but he seemed more weird when I tried to think of what would happen if we did have robotic assistants in the real world.

This is an interesting point and one that may be worth looking at in a future episode review if the series does anything with it. Frankly, I'll be a little surprised if it isn't just hand-waved, though.
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Yttrbio
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:20 pm Reply with quote
It sort of goes to why I said elsewhere that I don't think the show is smart enough to take on the questions it's asking. The show wants to make him the one guy who is right about robot morality, when it's really just a coincidence that the way he was completely wrong about it happened to be compatible with the way the world was going to change. It's heavy-handed, wish-fulfillment writing that's impossible to take seriously as an intellectual exercise.
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Aerodynamic41



Joined: 20 Oct 2015
Posts: 223
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 6:49 pm Reply with quote
I can't take this show seriously when you have a company called 'Memeframe Corporation'
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DRosencraft



Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 9:16 pm Reply with quote
Some quick thoughts. First, Arato is fairly common for this genre. The general approach, as exemplified by seminal works like Battlestar Galactica, is that the majority of the world sees these humanoid robots as mere tools, while some "enlightened" individual recognizes that the pursuit of a more humanoid interface results in the creation of an artificial intelligence near indistinguishable from humans, or sufficiently such that the distinction proves problematic form the perspective of social morals. He's the "deviant" hero that counters the amoral or morally stagnant rest of the broader society. The fact is, because these humanoids are almost always designed to be beautiful, subservient, women (note that every major digital assistant is currently a pleasant female voice), this mold of MC is generally necessary to effectively tell a story with any worth telling. If you approach from the opposite tract, your MC is at a minimum going to be heartless, more likely to be some sort of criminal either evading being outed as such, or pursued as such throughout the story. Few shows approach any of their stories from the perspective of their MC outright being a criminal, unless that criminal activity is in pursuit of some greater social truth. It'd be hard to anchor a story on the perception that robots given human like appearance and capacity should be treated as tools, so I see this sort of MC in this series as, while common, mostly unavoidable.

I think the Analog Hack concept is an overly complicated way of explaining a plainly obvious aspect of the world - people will follow what's interesting. The expounding on the idea of people letting their guard down because a robot seems human enough, overly c complicates the fact that people will walk down the street to eye a posh new sports car if it catches their fancy. Pick your favorite actor or actress, and they start walking down the street while you're shopping, you're going to look and maybe follow them, especially if they're doing some super public and glitzy photo shoot. Narrowing it to some sort of marvel or novel idea relating to the fact that it's actually a robot is a gross over-specialization of a very basic and broad concept.

The sister's reaction seemed unnatural. If, as they say, these robots are as high-end and expensive as suggested, I would think there would be a bit more concern that your brother just brought home the equivalent of a Lamborghini or Ferrari, and you don't seem concerned enough to want to even ask questions, let alone get answers. In this regard his friends seemed a little more natural, though still somewhat... placid, might be the right word. There seems to be insufficient concern or worry. That Arato and his sister just go about flaunting their steal with minimal apparent concern is logically flawed. It makes me wonder if she perhaps has some sort of trauma whereby she is somehow both, apparently, socially well adjusted, but also incredibly flippant about seemingly everything. Not terribly sure where they're going with her, but, as someone else noted earlier, she is the main focus of the ending theme, so there is a suggestion she will be a major focus of the story going forward (though that isn't always the case).

If this show tracts normal fare for the genre, it's likely we'll find out that Arato and/or his sister are actually robots or androids. It's hinted in the opening that Arato was involved in some sort of incident when he was a child. It may prove to be that he died and his father, who we know was a preeminent force behind the hIMe wave, used that in some way to preserve his children. Or his wife, who I don't believe we've heard a word about yet. Otherwise, it might prove to be that Arato and/or his sister were present at the beginning of the project to create the Lacia-series hIMe. There was a manhwa I followed a while back called Nano List that has a similar story, though approaches from the perspective of nanomachines in addition to AI robotics (the MC finds out that his sister, who would be the equivalent of Arato's father, saved him by modifying him into an android with nanomachines, unbeknownst to the MC). My memories of that story are likely shading my perspective of where Beatless might be going.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 3:37 am Reply with quote
So...Arato's friend Kengo is helping the hIE-killers? Seems like that'd warrant a mention in the review.

And Ryo's family (?) manufactured her and Arato's father created the hIE programming? Isn't that convenient. Smile

Anyway, I'm kinda liking this (not to crazy about li'l sis). Despite the fluffy exterior, I get the feeling like it's got some dark places to explore.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:15 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
So...Arato's friend Kengo is helping the hIE-killers? Seems like that'd warrant a mention in the review.


I'm embarrassed that that blew by me, too. I didn't pick up on the significance of what he was doing. It was kind of an odd episode after the battle in episode 1. Like the whole thing of going to the school to retrieve Arato's tablet seemed pointless. We were told he could get into the school because there was a hIE there, but we never saw it. I kept on expecting there would be some kind of encounter there, but no... they just went to the school and picked up the tablet... er, okay.

I don't mind the show, but it's definitely not in my "zomg, can't wait until the next eppie!" pile.
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BlueAlf



Joined: 02 Jan 2017
Posts: 1493
PostPosted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:26 am Reply with quote
Since way back in 2012, I've been curious about Beatless. Seeing the development up until episode 2, I think I now understand how it's a series with an interesting concept, but doesn't exactly execute it in a thrilling manner.

I think the purpose of the little sister character is how she has a relationship with the little sisters of Arato's friends. It's an unusual idea, and I really want to see how this will go.
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