Vivy -Fluorite Eye's Song-

Episode 10

This week's episode is all about Vivy and her being forced to do something no AI before her has had to do: some serious soul searching.

Most AIs have a mission which they dedicate their lives to. However, upon her birth, Vivy was given not only a mission, but a means required to achieve it: “Your mission is to make everyone happy with your singing. To accomplish that, you must sing from your heart.” Before the events on the Metal Float, Vivy was improving as a singer and starting to learn what it meant to sing from the heart. After the Metal Float, however, the Diva personality was in control and completely solved the puzzle.

Unfortunately, Diva and Vivy don't share memories so Vivy lacks the answer Diva found. All Vivy knows is that she is not capable of singing from her heart like Diva was and has no idea how to go about fixing this. Thus, seemingly in contradiction to her mission, she stops singing altogether—or rather, she can't seem to make herself sing. This is likely a mental block of sorts: Vivy has no idea how to sing with all her heart and has determined her past path towards that goal to be a fruitless one. Her only choice is to find a different path.

Not unexpectedly, Vivy's first instinct is to fall back on her true mission—the one she chose for herself. She is the AI that destroys AIs in order to stop the robot apocalypse, after all. However, when Matsumoto shows up after five years to tell her that they've completed the Singularity Project, she loses even that meaning to her existence. With the robot apocalypse averted, all she has is her original mission as Diva, which she has no clue on how to go about accomplishing.

Luckily, her meeting with Osamu inspires her to find a different approach: if she is unable to sing any existing songs, perhaps she'd be able to sing a song she wrote herself. After all, what better song to try and sing with all her heart than one she knows everything about?

Of course, this proves to be easier said than done. Vivy is the first AI not designed for songwriting that is trying to write a song, and while this is not the first time Vivy has gone outside of the box for a singing AI, she lacks a partner like Matsumoto to show her the way this time around. She is left hunting for a muse without even knowing that is what she is searching for.

Luckily, Vivy's AI nature proves to be a massive boon. In her eyes, time is a non-issue—she has literally an eternity to spend on writing her song. She also has an infinite amount of patience and is willing to work as long as it takes. Yet it is once again Osamu who gives her the inspiration she needs. By witnessing the trajectory of his life, she is able to see that the joys and pains of her own journey culminate in a song just waiting to be sung. She has crossed paths with so many people—and she may be the last “living” person to remember them and their legacies, however inconsequential. Certainly, no one in this era remembers an unremarkable girl who died in a plane crash nearly a century ago.

And so in one cathartic revelation, Vivy puts her life on the page, creating a new song that can even move Matsumoto's robotic soul. Unfortunately, even this is not enough to get her to sing—though it's certainly a good first step.

...if only the robot apocalypse didn't happen to show up and ruin everyone's good time.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• The montage of Osamu growing up, making friends, finding love, and losing his wife was surprisingly effective. Then again, I have a weak spot for purely visual storytelling.

• I like that Matsumoto challenges Vivy to a contest he cannot win—which inspires her to challenge Osamu and create their life-long friendship.

• The whole situation is sad from Osamu's point of view. His best friend has been struggling for decades to find her voice again. And while she has helped him more than she could ever know, he has been unable to help her.

• In Matsumoto's original timeline, Vivy never got famous at all and was put in the museum—left endlessly thinking of how to accomplish her mission and failing. Using her for the Singularity project was probably the original Osamu's way of trying to not only save the world, but help Vivy find a way to complete her mission as well.

• Back in the first episode, we see that Osamu carries a picture showing Vivy in the museum with him. However, there is one big difference between that picture and what we see now: Vivy is now listening to her song.

• How sad is it that none of the people Vivy saved came to see her in the museum? Surely some of them were still alive at that point.

• Why is Vivy the only unaffected AI? Perhaps it's like a Windows 10 virus trying to infect DOS.

• Did the enemy in the future change their plans (and not cause more AI suicides) to lure Matsumoto and Vivy into a false sense of security? To make them think they won?

• Since the AI virus seems to be a song, I wouldn't be surprised if Vivy's “Singularity Project” song is going to prove to be the anti-virus—especially when you remember the opening scene of the entire series.

Vivy -Fluorite Eye's Song- is currently streaming on Funimation.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.