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[series:4894#628] | ||||||
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(Two episodes watched): I do not get to choose whether I will be in a highly enthusiastic or just moderately enthusiastic mood regarding the flood of new anime which appear at the start of a season. Since I was not eager to wade through the inevitably mediocre majority, I took a look at the 'Most Anticipated' list at ANN, and Your Forma was on it. Episode one left me kind of confused. There was no mention of Your Forma or how it came to be invented (does everyone have it?). It wasn't clear at first who was human, android, or somewhere in between. Androids are known as 'mechanical friends' or 'Amicus Robots'. Even an Amicus can have 'brothers' apparently, whatever that means. Actually, Harold's brother is the main suspect in the murder but he is under suspicion as well (he might have the same software flaw, I guess). Someone named 'Darya' (human, I think) rushes to London and is promptly assaulted herself, leaving her in a coma. There is talk of 'RF Model' Amicus robots and the Novae Robotics corporation. And it looks like a good deal of the story will take place in Russia, in St. Petersburg. In general I was left with only a vague idea of what's going on and what really matters. It sort of seems like someone forgot to properly introduce the main characters to us, or perhaps they assumed that we'd already be familiar with them from the manga. Indeed, this was feeling like a sequel to a show I hadn't watched, with a reference to an earlier crime wave in St. Petersburg. A good number of characters are introduced but being as confused as I am, I fear I won't be able to remember them all. Darya being in a coma doesn't prevent Echika from conducting a 'Brain Dive', which enables her to access all of Darya's memories and dreams (the trick is telling which is which). At the end of the episode she goes to interview the robotics prodigy Lexie Carter. This seems like a sophisticated show which unfortunately wasn't designed for new viewers with no idea of what the premise is. With so much confusion and unfamiliar characters I wasn't feeling all that much drama during episode one. The 'Laws of Respect' seem to be based on Isaac Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics. After reading the reviews of the more knowledgible critics at ANN, it seems that for some reason the makers of this show decided to skip the first arc of the light novel it is based on, which is why it feels like a sequel to new viewers. Not a wise choice, and I wonder if it will ever make enough sense to hook me. For one thing, Echika was once deeply distrustful of androids, something you wouldn't know given how she stands up for Harold here. In the whirlwind second episode Echika is kidnapped, rescued, and the murder case is solved--I think. The perpetrator was a human after all. But again, it was all very confusing. Was this person also behind what happened to Marvin, the main suspect? If so, why did he/she/it dismember him so badly? Was the idea to discredit androids in general? Echika performs another Brain Dive on the captured suspect but the person's motivations remained unclear to me. Harold took a chance using Echika as bait, and it worked but she is not amused. Harold's plan didn't seem very well thought-out to me. In general, this story didn't seem to have been told very skillfully; it was so confusing that it didn't seem worth the extra effort that would have been needed to keep track of who's who and what was going on, so I didn't. Little bits and pieces of evidence are dropped here and there but not enough and not in enough of an organized manner for the conclusion to really make complete sense. The overall theme seemed to be 'can these super-sophisticated androids really be trusted to obey the Laws of Respect?', but it seems that whatever doubts have arisen have largely been discredited by the way the case was resolved. So, what conclusions am I supposed to draw? Last updated Wednesday, May 14 2025. Created Friday, May 02 2025. | ||||||||
