Eve no Jikan Gekijouban

Title:Eve no Jikan Gekijouban
Eve no Jikan (The Movie)
イヴの時間 劇場版
Overall:Buy
Keywords: , , ,
Notables: Music - KAJIURA Yuki
A feature-length movie version of the six-part web series EVE no Jikan. Reported to be featuring additional new scenes.

A new movie to be released (in Japan) in February 2010.
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Buy 10 9 9 8 10 10 Ggultra2764 [series:2253#1552]
Set in the near future, Time of Eve explores the interactions between humans and androids as the latter have come into common use for humanity’s conveniences. High school student Rikuo Sakisaka owns a home android named Sammy and realizes she has been behaving unusually independent as of late. Investigating Sammy’s activity, Rikuo and his close friend, Masakazu Masaki, encounter an unusual cafe called the Time of Eve where humans and androids are allowed to interact with one another normally without fear of prejudice.

Over a decade ago, my first exposure to Time of Eve was through its ONA adaptation released online. I will admit it was one of the very first titles of the ONA format that I developed a strong liking to between its visuals and the amount of storytelling and character exploration it was able to flesh out over its six episodes. This film version of the series includes a few new scenes that don’t necessarily add much new to Time of Eve. Still, this version retains every little scene from the ONA without anything cut from it, which is a plus over most compilation films I see based off any TV anime. I guess I can consider watching the movie as a refresher to explore what I think of Time of Eve after last seeing it over 12 years ago.

Time of Eve’s greatest strength comes from how much of its world it’s able to explore with human and android interactions in around 100 minutes of runtime for both its ONA and film formats. Rikuo and Masakazu’s time within the Time of Eve cafe makes both come to gradually realize how humans can take their androids for granted, as many people in their time tend to regard them no different from electrical appliances that serve a purpose until they break down, get replaced for the latest thing, and disposed of. Most episodes of the series explore Rikuo and Masakazu interacting with one of the frequent androids who visit the cafe and come to learn of their varying experiences interacting with humans. Each character focused on explores a different element of android and human interactions, and there is enough explored with them to build a connection to them in spite of Time of Eve’s tight runtime.

Outside of events playing out within its titular cafe, Time of Eve also offers some rather subtle details it explores regarding some major elements to its world. Limiting spoilers, the series is pretty subtle with dropping hints throughout its run that further flesh things out with a number of major elements involving the world and some major characters of the series that may require a few rewatches of the series if not spotted upon initial viewing. This adds a bit of rewatchability to Time of Eve for those interested in wanting to learn more about the series outside of its main focus on Rikuo, Masakazu, and the other cafe patrons.

Visually, Time of Eve is quite a great-looking production to see in action with believable looking character designs sporting a wide range of facial expressions, gorgeous and highly-detailed scenery shots, and a great deal of effort put into its animation with its believable character movements and depicting some unique robotic designs and actions animated at points throughout the film. The only low point I really have with the visuals is the camera’s occasional habit of focusing on up-close shots of characters during some tense moments in Time of Eve. It looked like this was an effort to try conveying the drama of some particular key moments in the film, though this use of the camera did look a bit awkward in execution.

Still for how large and complex its story is, Time of Eve is able to tell a tight and compelling story regarding human and android relationships within its limited runtime having complicated themes about these relations dabbled into and the characters being well fleshed out to explore how current societal views on human-robot relations affect them. If you’re looking for a sci-fi anime which does more to dabble into humanity’s treatment of robots besides using the latter as window dressing, Time of Eve is a title I’d highly recommend looking into.

Last updated Tuesday, December 06 2022. Created Tuesday, December 06 2022.

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