Watching again: Time of Eve

I first wrote about this short anime series over four years ago. Four years! That’s a bit scary.

Anyway, this time I decided to watch the film version. This is, essentially, the six TV episodes put together with a little extra material about some kind of government investigation into places where androids and people can interact socially. Because that is what the story is about: a world in which androids, created to serve people, are indistinguishable from humans.

In this world, this causes social tensions as people are suspicious of these android and equally mistrustful of people who prefer the company of robots to real people. When I wrote about it before, I compared the androids in this series to an underclass. This time, I considered the philosophical points that the film was making.

The debate about whether humans are beings whose consciousness alone demonstrates that part of them is spiritual or if we are simply the sum of our parts: purely physical beings, is a debate that touches a nerve with a lot of people. Time of Eve talks about a world in which, to all intents and purposes, the Turing Test has been passed. What would that say about ourselves? It’s one thing to state that a robot is incapable of feeling, but it’s quite another to say the same thing while a robot is looking you directly in the eye and telling you that you’re wrong.

Additionally, of course, there is the habit of people to given characteristics to certain objects. Two of the most affecting stories in Time of Eve concern robots who do not resemble people at all. I’m reminded of a blog post I wrote a while back about a machine devised in the late 1700s that could simulate human speech. One of the people who heard it ascribed certain emotions to it, even though it was little more than a box, a bellows and a rubber mouthpiece: ‘When its answer is not perfectly understood, it repeats it slower, and if required to speak a third time, it repeats it again, but with a tone of impatience and vexation’.

The film is a good way to see the series. Its directed by Yoshiura Yasuhiro, who also made Sakasama no Patema (which I still haven’t seen yet) and the animation is crisp and clear, and the episodic nature of the stories isn’t too obvious. It’s an intelligent and good-looking anime series that’s well worth a look.

Looking forward: Sakasama no Patema

I don’t watch much anime, but I do try to follow the career of director Yoshiura Yasuhiro. He created the series Time of Eve, which I loved, and most recently he’s been working on a film to be released later this year.

There's a lengthy teaser (four six minutes excerpts from the film) and it serves as an excellent introduction to the themes of the film. A colony of people live underground in a claustrophobic den of tunnels and rooms. There they look for food in long-since abandoned parts of the colony, and they daren't go outside. Then, one day, a girl is exploring in one of the forbidden areas when she is attacked by someone who can walk on ceilings. In fact, who can ONLY walk on ceilings.

And this is the basic premise of the story: two societies (one underground, one above ground) have different senses of gravity. One falls down, the other falls up. When the two meet... well, that's when the teaser ends.

It's an enticing idea, and I'm already impatient to see what happens next. The film revisits a previous theme of Yoshiura Yasuhiro work: The cramped living conditions and dreams of a better world can also be found in his short film Pale Cocoon.

Pale Cocoon

However, this feature film loses Pale Cocoon's bleak world view and replaces it with more acceptable themes of friendship and understanding. But despite this more commercial feel, and it's simple idea, the style of the film (so far) is excellent. I'm especially impressed with the way that the sky can suddenly seem so threatening – an endless pit into which you could fall.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

I wrote this ages ago and put it up on my other blog, ersby, but I'm having a bit of a clear out over there, so I thought I'd bring this one over rather than just delete it.



The first series of this anime (quick synopsis: a teenage schoolgirl is a god, but she doesn't know it. Her school friends: an esper; a time traveller; a super-intelligent alien; and an ordinary school boy, are given the task of keeping her occupied so she doesn't accidentally summon up a monster to destroy the world because she's a bit bored) had its episodes in the wrong order. Pretty annoying, frankly, as I watched one episode wondering where this guy had suddenly come from and why was he friends with everyone, only to watch his introduction the following week.

Anyway, the second series has been equally brave/stupid. This time it is a set of episodes, all called "Endless Eight" in which the same story is played out each time. Different animation teams and directors mean that the style and voice acting is different, but apart from a few minor details, the events play out the same way each time.

This means that the smallest details suddenly become very important and meaningful. An aspect that would pass you by if you saw it just the once suddenly becomes fascinating. Why does that guy pick up and read the list of things to do in the coffee shop? Which bits are important for the conclusion of the story and which aren't? Which bits are pointing us to clues, and which are just the director trying to find a new way to portray a certain scene? That they should carry this out for all eight episodes is a remarkable act of courage.

At the moment I've just watched the seventh of the endless eight, which means this story arc should be ending any time soon. There's a strong doubt in my mind that the finish can do justice to the superb build up, but I live in hope. And taking the philosophy of the journey not the destination being important, this is already a great success.

Death Note versus Death Note: FIGHT!

Minor spoilers ahead...

This is the first in a (very) occasional series in which I compare the same story as told by different media. This one compares the anime and the film versions of Death Note.

First, the good news. Both are excellent. Or, at least, the original story is excellent. The son of a police officer finds a note book in which he can write people’s names and they will die. He anonymously begins to kill criminals, becoming a folk hero and causing problems for the police. And sometimes killing them, too. Cue genius detective L who unwittingly asks the killer to help him, and the battle of wits begins.

The anime, being by far the longer, has more time to tell the story and fill in the details of the characters. This, it turns out, is to its disadvantage. The film version, even though it is split into two, has less time on its hands and therefore cuts out a lot of unnecessary filler.

The film's bravest move, and this is what puts it ahead of the anime, was the removal of the orphanage bit towards the end, with the arrival of another detective genius kid. While it kind of works as a plot line in the anime, the fact that the film keeps the two main protagonists against each other until the end with fewer distractions makes it more interesting.

The film faithfully represents the gods according to the original manga designs, and the actors too fill their roles well. Matsuyama Kenichi is a convincing L, but Fujiwara Tatsuya seems a little too nice to be a killer.

In the end, I think the live action version wins over the anime, simply thanks to leaving out that entire second detective genius from the orphanage. Actually now I think about it, in the anime there's a third too. The film is more focused and coherent than the anime and while I recommend both, when put side by side, the film tells a better story.

Recommended: Time of Eve

A lot can be written (and probably has been written) about the Japanese and their relationship towards robots and, from that, their relationships with each other. Time of Eve is a brief six-part anime series based in a future where robots and humans are distinguishable only by a holographic rotating disc over the head of each robot. The media of the time is full of stories about how terrible it is that some people are actually creating relationships with these robots, and the story shows many examples of people's indifference to the robots. Given that, the viewer has almost no option but to empathise with the robots as a class of underdogs, downtrodden yet noble.



In this scenario we find The Time Of Eve, a coffee shop in which robots are allowed to turn off their holographic identifier (an illegal act) and be treated the same as people in this one small space - an oasis in a desert of hostility. Two schoolboys stumble upon this place and find their prejudices against robots challenged - once their ability to immediately tell the difference between human and robot is removed they find themselves empathising with people who turn out to be robots, and fretting over the robot-ness or otherwise of other patrons.

There are many ways to interpret this programme. A treatise on racism, possibly. Or slavery, at a pinch. A comment on the rise of technology and its inevitable moral implications, of course. Perhaps even a commentary on people's need to anthropomorphise inanimate objects, since the two most touching episodes involve older, obsolete, clearly not-human robots yet people inevitably create bonds with them. How human do robots have to be before we start treating them as human? All these questions are deftly touched upon and more in this finely written series.



As an animation, it's beautiful. A seamless mix of hand and computer animation gives the world a clean solidity and yet also a softness and humanity that you don't often see together in animation. The series was broadcast over a long period, with just one episode every two months, indicating that the production company knew that it had something that people would wait for. And it was worth it. Certainly, its distinctive look and thought-provoking content mark it apart from most other series and make it essential watching for people who like their storylines to linger in the mind long after the programme has ended.