Eve no Jikan: Time of Eve

[Buffalobiian]

So it seems this so called Suppression Circuit that's used to keep robots robotic is beginning to wane. That or androids are beginning to adapt and overcome it. Good show that provokes some interesting thoughts, and it looks like they'll get even more deep with the notion of robot love.

As for the actual episode, did it play alight for everyone? For some reason, it won't play with the .ass file in the same folder. I had to encode the file in as a hard sub before it would work. I remember the same thing happened with the Appleseed EX Machina Xvid torrent Yuki posted up before as well.

[Kraco]

It played normally for me. Although I packed the video (and audio) and the ass into an mkv container so that I don't need to keep two files for an episode in the folder. I don't like loose subtitle files much, especially for series.

[Buffalobiian]

I chose to redo it into a mp4 file, and it popped out at 48MB with no visible quality loss. I was rather happy, though it was not skill on my part.

The loophole about lying as interesting. So if you think that telling the truth will harm a human, then it's okay to lie, even if you're ordered to tell the truth.

[animus]

Sammi was pretty darn cute with a pony-tail.

[Buffalobiian]

Sammi was pretty darn cute with a pony-tail.

Can't agree more. I was thinking it was her at the bar, but then I didn't see her come in, and she looked much cuter.

I'm interested in knowing exact who is human in that place. I have a feeling one of the couples is human.

[masamuneehs]

watched the first episode. i'm in love with this one.

it might be a little too pressing with the ethics of humanoid slaves and their treatment, but it's an interesting concept for me (i never saw Chobits), and i love the style in this one. long awkward pauses and quick, sudden cuts/changes (violent and subdued), plus the occasional use of first person view really makes it grab hold of you. feels really well thought out.

edit - aw hell, it's only 6 episodes long? why do all the good ones end up getting the short end of the budget stick?

edit again - ONCE EVERY TWO MONTHS?!?!
GODDAMN IT!!

[Buffalobiian]

Oh man. Finally.

It airs once every 2 months.

[masamuneehs]

so an android walks into a bar.

it's given a direct command "don't discriminate between androids and humans here. that includes yourself". it turns its halo off. it walks into the bar and interacts with the other entities there.

Now the question is this: does the android now see itself as a robot? Does it see the other people in the bar as humans? As androids? Because, folks, now we have an issue on our hands. Let's review the three laws.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

There are only two core elements in these laws.
Androids != humans and Androids < humans

So an android walks into a bar, gets a direct command that well, if it didn't come from a human, it was given to a robot by a human and is like one robot saying to the other "yo, this is what your master (humans) are telling you to do". The command is "don't distinguish between humans and androids here"

Now right away some people would say that the android can't obey this command. It violates the first law because, if an android can't tell what's human or android (let's assume they can't without the halos), it can't guard against inaction that might lead to a human being harmed. It might even try to defend itself on the premise of the 3rd Law and end up causing harm to a human, not knowing it was a human. The command to not differentiate between android and human is in fact a command to initiate inaction regarding potential harm to a human.

but clearly they do follow the command and turn off their halos. so, either A) They're still able to differentiate between haloless androids and humans, B) they now must assume anyone and everyone is a human (and then there goes the 3rd Law in regards to self-defense) or C) they must now refrain from doing anything that could cause harm to anyone.

Now, we're going to throw out A and B. It's been mentioned before that there's no outward difference between humans and androids. They can't assume anyone in the bar is human, because they know they themselves are not, and then they'd have to obey commands from anyone in the bar (which they don't) and this would nullify the command to 'treat everyone the same'. So all we're left with would be C. And I have a feeling that's not exactly what's going on here...

So what does an android do? It can't possibly rewrite it's programming to believe itself human, because it wouldn't be bound by the laws, and that's a direct opposition to the inaction clause of Rule one. It can't obey the command to "don't differentiate between humans and androids here" while believing the others to be human, because it would still know itself to be an android and then be forced to take orders from all of them. We're back to the beginning of the problem again, and i'm running out of energy.

Help.

Also, something that caught my eye in the first episode and that the comment on 'individuality' and 'suppression circuits' makes me think of.

In the first episode, when the boys are at school, we see an android walking through the hall. It's ring is red (task mode?). Suddenly the ring turns green and the android stops, moving to the side of the hallway, allowing several human children to pass by it. Soon after we see the android enter the room, then leaving while carrying a stack of something. The halo is red again.

At the entrance to Eve no Jikan, the boys are stopped and staring at the door. Suddenly, there's an android behind him. He is standing still. After a moment he shoulders past both of the boys. His halo is red the entire time.

Clearly this is an incident of the Suppression circuit breaking down, as the android has failed to give way to the humans, even bumping into them (what if one of them had fallen?) as he continues with his 'Task' (which, we ask ourselves, how did going to the cafe become a Task in the first place?). This points to the phenomenon going on inside the cafe as being one where the actual android's definitions of human and android are being cancelled out by the command on the sign.

On the issue of the halo being red and going to the cafe being a Task, we can only assume that whenever Sammi goes out to do shopping (and goes to the cafe), hers is red as well until she gets to the cafe. However, as we learn at the end of episode one, she was never given the Task of 'get coffee from Eve no Jikan'. Most likely, it was never stated what kind of coffee she get (the Task being "buy coffee when we're low"). This forces the android to make a decision as to what kind of coffee to buy. It has to buy coffee, that's a command, but in order to do so it needs to decide where and what to buy, and that's indivduality (which, ironically is something forced on the android by vague, imperfect commands from humans), and so the Task "Get coffee from Eve no Jikan" is both an individual decision and the following of an order at the same time.

One can only wonder, however, if all other robots at the cafe (the two being intimate with each other, for example) are rationalizing their "Go to Eve no Jikan" Tasks as part of a command. Either way, in the case of the guy shouldering past the humans outside the cafe, his Task was taking priority over their being there, and that, my friends, is stepping all over the 2nd Law (with soccer cleats if you decide to think he's going there out of a Task he created with his own individuality)

Akiko, for instance, seems to believe that she can serve her master better by getting to know others, and thus she might have one day simply wandered out of the house in order to do this. We are approaching Zeroth's Law here... and that's a mess for another day...

Finally, an observation on the episode: the guy reading the book seems all kinds of suspicious to me. Methinks he's the guy on the phone call to the scientist at the end of the episode, and that some sting shit is going to go down. Also, the book he was reading was about Android Codes and Laws which, if he were an android, he wouldn't need to read because it's already be programmed into him!

Also, consider these two morsels:

A human master takes a robot to a well and gives it a big stone. It tells the robot to throw the stone into the well. At the bottom of the well, where the robot can't detect it, a human victim is tied up.

A human master takes an android to a darkened room and tells it to destroy another android. To the android receiving the order, this other android appears to be an android and the master says that it is.

Can a robot/android perform these orders?

[Kraco]

Your logic there has a few flaws. One I have mentioned before: If they are truly intelligent, the laws would need to be observed by an external (to their core intelligence) subprocess because otherwise they could turn off the rules at will, rendering them meaningless - after all, in most countries you aren't allowed to kill your neighbour but still people do that all too often, demonstrating how weak such voluntary rules are.

A minor point would be that we don't know what manner of senses those androids possess so they could very well be able to instantly recognize each other by some WLAN/Bluetooth or whatever means, or by sensing EM outside of the human visible spectrum.

And lastly but by far not leastly they don't need to obey commands from all humans. That would be insane. An adroid like that probably costs as much as a good car if not more. It would be utterly stupid if it took commands from every human who told it to step into the car or open the door. It suffices they obey commands from their registered owner or people appointed by their owners (or by default some commands from guests). And likewise it's strange to assume the bar would be intensely hostile place where all hell would instantly break lose the very moment the androids turns off their halos. It's not like they would feel a sudden urge to destroy each other and slay humans. Not even bars for humans are like that even if some drunkards cause troubles every now and then.

[masamuneehs]

i'm still not so sure about the androids being able to refuse a command from any human. if it doesn't conflict with a higher priority Task (you have to assume there is some kind or priority list for Tasks, and who the commands came from should be a part of that) or one of the Laws, it would seem that the android would have to obey those commands as part of the 2nd Law.

in episode 2, at the cafe, this also happens:
Rikuo: "I have a question. Um, where's the ring on top of your head?"
Akiko: "It's off. If I don't look like a human, it'll be a violation of the rules."
Rikuo: "But robots have..."
and the conversation gets cut off there.

Now although Masaki convinces Rikuo that Sammi lied to him, you'll notice that since she got coffee from the cafe, none of her answers are actually lies. She doesn't say "i went to a place that was out of the way to get the coffee, which was part of my Task", but she doesn't need to volunteer that information.

(there's also an evasive answer around a question by Akiko in episode 1, to Masaki's "Don't you have androids at home?", and she doesn't lie there either.) So far we haven't seen a confirmed android lie about anything.

Like the old man said, you can hide things from people, but that's not the same as lying. He even says "although i'm not saying i won't lie to her either." so, maybe he would lie to her, but there seems to be circumstances attached to that (the 1st Law, perhaps?)

Of course, if Chie-chan is a robot like I think she might be, she's been lying this whole time with her "I'm a cat" statements...

Also, can anyone figure out why the guy reading the book in episode 2 calls Masaki "Blade Runner" ? I've never seen the movie (although I think I will after reading a bit about it on wikipedia), but this is a very strong statement for the guy to make, considering the setting of this anime.

I'm sure as hell that he's the guy on the phone at the end of the episode (mentioning how careless the person shadowing him was and therefore not part of the Ethics Commitee), as Masaki tries to follow him out of the cafe, he's reading a book on robot laws and even says "Violate the rule and you won't have any fun. No, rather, it would be meaningnles to be here. ... or so I've been told." and, that's a map of the area around the cafe at the very end, am i right?

[Kraco]

Also, can anyone figure out why the guy reading the book in episode 2 calls Masaki "Blade Runner" ? I've never seen the movie (although I think I will after reading a bit about it on wikipedia), but this is a very strong statement for the guy to make, considering the setting of this anime.

A guy who hasn't seen Blade Runner? What has this world come to...

Anyway, I think the man called him that because those two were investigating androids in a cafe, whose idea is to make humans and androids equal and indistinguishable from each other. And since Blade Runners in the movie are people hunting androids, it's a perfectly valid thing to call him.

[Buffalobiian]

New release:
[MiniTheatre] Eve no Jikan 3 (40mb X264)

As the name suggests, it's probably got a really low bitrate, resolution, or both. Then again, it could look fine, since I've re-encoded the Pireze episodes to .mp4 at around the 50MB mark with not visual loss in quality.

I'll most likely download both this and Pireze's episode 3 and make a comparison.

[shinta|hikari]

Amazing episode. Will comment more later.

[Buffalobiian]

*bump* MiniTheatre looks fine. Only complaint would be the timing of the subs. Some stuff just flashes past way too fast. Maybe it's a good representation of how fast the convos are going, but it's making me hit the pause button. As for accuracy, I'm assuming it's the official subs from crunchyroll.

This episode explored the relationship side of things quite a bit. Most surprising thing for me was how Sami responded at the end, bending the rules (sort of), even outside the cafe.

[animus]

That's all the development Sammi got, =(.

[Pandadice]

thanks for the link. downloading it now.

edit:

ug. it feels like a waste to watch it in such low quality. this show has such amazing visuals, I can't wait for an hd version to come out. I did the samething with Candy boy...

But still, it was such a great episode. man, it said the next episode is gonna be in spring '09 >.<..

[Kraco]

I guess they don't have any wireless functionality after all, or they can completely turn them off when entering the bar. Kind of interesting even the androids don't know who is a robot and who is a human.

I have to share animus's sentiment, though. With so short episodes so rarely released, it's kind of cruel we got no more Sammi than this.

[shinta|hikari]

I think the following episodes will focus more on her, so it should be fine.

[Buffalobiian]

If we do, I demand the ponytail version.

[Buffalobiian]

Eve no Jikan ACT 03 [pireze][yoshiness]

Pireze release.