Plastic Memories

[MFauli]

Because something has been done, it cannot be done again???

[shinta|hikari]

What I'm saying is, if you want that kind of thing, watch those shows. Plastic Memories is fine as it is and ended quite differently from the usual anime style. You're barking up the wrong tree.

[MFauli]

What I'm saying is, if you want that kind of thing, watch those shows. Plastic Memories is fine as it is and ended quite differently from the usual anime style. You're barking up the wrong tree.

But I watched those shows 15 years ago. I don´t think it is wrong to have the same basic plot happen more than once in 15 years. Not to mention that presentation is the most important part, so even if you have 10 anime with the very same story, you can have 10 completely different experiences.

[shinta|hikari]

Talk about missing the point.

From the very start, it was obvious what kind of show this is, which is romantic comedy/drama/slice of life. You're expectations are quite baseless. It's like complaining about K-ON not going into School Days territory.

[MFauli]

You´re being intentionally obtuse. Nobody knew what kind of show School Days was before it actually aired, which is why it had such an impact on its audience - nobody saw it coming. Similiarly, I disagree that it "was obvious what kind of show" Plastic Memories was. Quite the opposite, I´d say it was to be expected that the drama keeps rising towards its finale ... but that never happened.

When I go into K-On, I expect a dumb girls group-anime. When I go into an anime about concsious androids that only get to live a couple of years, I expect ... more. You´re free to have your own expectations, but don´t call others´ "wrong".

[shinta|hikari]

I didn't say you can't have wrong expectations, but your expectations did turn out wrong. Insane twists do happen, but there's this thing called probability.

And did you just recently learn the word obtuse or something?

[Kraco]

Option 1 is different from trying to cure someone from a regular incurable disease. The show failed to address any details on the Giftia technology, so it´s reasonable to think there there might be an opportunity to do something. They´re highly evolved machines, robots, androids, artificially created by humans, so there should be more control over their well-being than over that of the biological human body´s.

That's why I said a few times the story had some huge weaknesses and plot holes. I mean, who on Earth would create a legal and financial nightmare for their company by releasing to the public civilian market a domestic android that pretty much instantly turns into a super human killing machine when the expiration date hits? Nobody, because the company would be sued to hell, assuming the country's officials somehow allowed such a deranged thing to be released in the first place. That's like a car that would automatically explode after a set number of kilometers/miles were driven. Instead of, like, not starting anymore or something.

So, when you have stuff like that, you just have to accept certain things - or drop the show. That's why there's nothing that could be done about the expiring Giftia. That's it. Like you can't do anything about an expiring human if it's terminal. Naturally there are a bunch of anime about dying humans as well, like the recent Shigatsu, to name one.

The point is, all of that would have been more exciting to watch. What we got was some super vanilla pseudo-happy ending without any high or low points. It could be questioned why this anime even exists haha.

It exists so that not every show would be the same. In my opinion, on which I agree with Shinta, this was established as such a show from early on. We had those typical (somewhat) Japanese company employees who are just cogs in a big machine, not the more regular world saving heroes (like school kids or mecha pilots). In addition, they were working for the product end of life department, which means we were seeing the same stuff happen time after time, only for some third persons. Under such circustances it's natural progress it will all finish with that continuous theme happening to the main character.

[Buffalobiian]

So the world invents artificial intelligence. The problem with emulating human memory is that it needs to be continuously written on, re-written on, and accessed at the same time. That's a bunch of read/writes and stresses the material out like crazy. In fact, they had to invent a very special material just for this application. It works, but it only lasts 9 years or some shit. Once it hits the failure point, the material becomes unreliable. Memories and functions are no longer intact. The androids suffer from symptoms similar to psychosis. When that happens, they get put down like a dog with rabies.

Despite this weakness, these androids sell like hot cakes. That's because AI has no real alternative, and people want an AI.

We publish this very special memory problem in the manual very explicitly to warn them beforehand. We call it Fatigue of Plastic Memory

[David75]

But we forgot to put some failsafes, like an auto-poweroff 1 hour (or day) before the very well named deadline

[MasterOfMoogles]

When this show started, I really wanted there to be some deeper plot and exploration into what the Giftias are and how they're being used after they're retrieved.
The whole "We have to deactivate them in front of the owner for 'data security' reasons" thing seemed very sketchy. Pressing this one button deletes all of your private data. We promise it does...

But it became pretty clear that this show didn't want to explore anything like that. It was just using the androids as an easy way to force dealing with death. Which is fine, and interesting to some degree, as most media doesn't really explore this. But I didn't find it too particularly interesting.

As a tech person, this show drove me a little nuts in some regards. Aside from all of the nonsense with how the Giftia's run out of time and go berserk (after 2^13 * 10 hours? Like, what kind of number is that?), the thing that bugged me most was the transparent monitors. Like, really? Nobody would want to use one of those!

[Buffalobiian]

Due to certain ethics laws in place to protect sentient beings, we can't put kill-switches in place like that. Sorry for your inconvenience.