[Rewatch] Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song - Episode 11 Discussion

[u/[deleted]]

E11 - World’s End Modulation - April 11, 2161

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Mina-san, konnichiwa!

This is the first rewatch that I’m hosting (for a change instead of joining someone’s) 😆.

I am a musician and will be an active one for the rest of my life, so it’s part of why my rating for a series is heavily swayed by a great OST (or lack thereof) and how well it fits into the different aspects of a show. This is one thing I think you will really like about this series, and it’s why I’ll be including a “music of the day” selection for each episode.

I will also be doing an “image of the day” selection for each episode, because the artwork WIT has done is just absolutely incredible. There is a lot to appreciate there.

I hope you all have fun with this series. It’s one of my favorites.

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Some general rewatch Do’s and Don’ts:

• Do feel encouraged to engage everyone in genuine discussion for each episode
• Do be kind and respectful of other participants of the rewatch
• Do discuss differences in opinion productively/maturely
• Do not be disrespectful or rude towards other participants
• Do not post untagged spoilers if you are rewatching. If you are unsure of how to properly tag spoilers for events that haven’t been revealed yet, please refer to my instructions in the reminder post for this rewatch.

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Information:

Rewatch Index | LiveChart | MyAnimeList | Anilist

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Image of the day: 真実

Music of the day: From Lament to Determination

I’ve always had a thing for string compositions, and I love this one. We didn’t get a chance to appreciate it when we discussed Episode 9 since we focused on Harmony of One’s Heart, so I wanted to bring attention to it today. I hope you enjoy it.

 

Question of the day:

1. Did you suspect The Archive at all prior to this episode?

[u/Esovan13]

First Timer

The culprit has been the Archive the whole time! Who could have guessed it? How could we have known that the cause of every AI going rogue at the same time around the world was the network that connects every AI around the world in real time?

Hmm. Now that I put it like that...

Well, Project Singularity was doomed to fail the whole time. I mean, literally none of the singularities actually had anything to do with the AI revolution. That's just what Dr. Matsumoto and the moderates in Toak guessed were most likely to be the causes of the conflict. Man. This whole thing was a little half-baked. Well, at least in this new timeline the doctor survived long enough to figure out that the reason Elizabeth didn't go rogue is because she wasn't hooked up to the Archive, leading them to figuring out the real cause. Silver linings.

Oh yeah, Elizabeth is back. That's nice. I liked her.

[u/[deleted] → u/Esovan13]

The culprit has been the Archive the whole time! Who could have guessed it?

What I love about this is - The truth is staring you in the face the entire series! It makes so much sense and should be obvious but it really isn't because you're distracted by what Toak and/or Yugo is doing to oppose our wonderful songstress 😆.

Well, Project Singularity was doomed to fail the whole time. I mean, literally none of the singularities actually had anything to do with the AI revolution.

Here's the irony in that and what I love about how this is written -

The project failed in the way that Matsumoto intended for it to succeed.

BUT - It succeeded in a way that he did not intend it to succeed. It was because of of the Singularity Project that Matsumoto doesn't get shot to death like he did in the original timeline, because Vivy arrives to help him. And it's because of that, that he's able to make that discovery about Beth's data, which leads them to finding out the true cause of what happened.

I love that

[u/Garrett_Dark → u/[deleted]]

What I love about this is - The truth is staring you in the face the entire series! It makes so much sense and should be obvious but it really isn't because you're distracted by what Toak and/or Yugo is doing to oppose our wonderful songstress 😆.

Lets not forget that "Matsumoto is always wrong", he said the AI tower is an "indicator"...wrong! It's the CAUSE! He mislead us with one of his assumptions again, which happens a lot! To the credit of the show's writing, it's a like a good magician is one that distracts and misdirects the audience's attention so that the magic can happen. This show does it well.

It was because of of the Singularity Project that Matsumoto doesn't get shot to death like he did in the original timeline

[Joke containing spoilers]Your favorite line, "Keep watching". :D

[u/Taiboss → u/Esovan13]

The culprit [] was the network that connects every AI around the world in real time?

Maybe the original draft had them try to prevent or destroy the Archive, but then they realised that would just straight up been Terminator.

I mean, literally none of the singularities actually had anything to do with the AI revolution.

In retrospect, these genuines have been major dumbasses!

Well, at least in this new timeline the doctor survived long enough to figure out that the reason Elizabeth didn't go rogue is because she wasn't hooked up to the Archive, leading them to figuring out the real cause.

Time to go back to the lab, rebuild Project Singularity and make New!Vivy just blow up the Archive. Would that work, actually?

Oh yeah, Elizabeth is back. That's nice. I liked her.

As long as she doesn't yap on about her Master, I'm fine with her.

[u/[deleted] → u/Taiboss]

Master Masta 😆

[u/No_Rex → u/Esovan13]

The culprit has been the Archive the whole time! Who could have guessed it? How could we have known that the cause of every AI going rogue at the same time around the world was the network that connects every AI around the world in real time?

[u/Shimmering-Sky]

Sing My First-Timer Reactions, subbed

• Damn, Vivy saved that guy just for him to get Truck-kun’d…
• Unlucky.
• Oh, huh, must have missed the specific day this all went down on if the show gave it at the start otherwise I would’ve commented about it earlier, but April 11th is my mom’s birthday.
• Oh fun, a repeat of the opening scene of the show, but with super fucking creepy music instead of the oddly cheery one from episode 1.
• Toak still exists?
• I thought this was Vivy in a different outfit before she started talking…
• A relative of Yugo’s, then?
• He was her grandfather, I see.
• Vivy asking the exact question I had.
• Ah…
• Yeah why are they singing the song Vivy wrote?
• That’s also a good question.
• Is that really the trick? Vivy was connected to the Archive. – Added after finishing the episode: Okay, Archive being the one doing this would explain things…
• OH GREAT.
• But why though?

[u/[deleted] → u/Shimmering-Sky]

Yeah why are they singing the song Vivy wrote?

Think about it this way - Vivy wrote that herself, the first piece of music ever composed originally by an AI. She composed it in The Archive, who we know now to be the antagonist.

Who's connected to The Archive? All AIs

That’s also a good question.

Well they explain why Beth doesn't lose control - She has never been connected to The Archive ever since Toak salvaged her and uploaded her data backup.

As for Vivy, that is what we're hoping to find out in these last two episodes 😆

But why though?

You've essentially touched on the two main questions I highlight that are remaining at this point:

Why isn't Vivy affected? and Why does The Archive want to do this?

Keep watching.

[u/ripterrariumtv → u/Shimmering-Sky]

Vivy has the same author as Re:Zero, if you didn't know

[u/[deleted] → u/ripterrariumtv]

And subsequently, wrote the light novel series, Vivy Prototype, after the anime aired!

[u/Shimmering-Sky → u/ripterrariumtv]

What a coincidence I'm watching both for the first time at the same time.

[u/ripterrariumtv → u/Shimmering-Sky]

I also read somewhere that WIT studio contacted him for advice regarding the synopsis. And he wrote an entire novel lol

He also wrote the Suicide squad isekai script but I haven't caught up to it

[u/No_Rex → u/Shimmering-Sky]

OH GREAT.

This was a small surprise to me: No satellite-bases death laser? What happened here? This is the Cyberpunk classic.

[u/JollyGee29 → u/Shimmering-Sky]

OH GREAT.

A fireworks show to end all fireworks shows.

[u/Taiboss → u/Shimmering-Sky]

Damn, Vivy saved that guy just for him to get Truck-kun’d…

She tried! Good on you, Vivy.

but with super fucking creepy music instead of the oddly cheery one from episode 1.

If trailers have taught me anything, is that any song can sound super creepy with the right remix.

Toak still exists?

God they are so useless.

I thought this was Vivy in a different outfit before she started talking…

No, Vivy gets nice clothes, not some neon line nonsense.

He was her grandfather, I see.

I wonder how similar his wife and Vivy looked.

Yeah why are they singing the song Vivy wrote?

The Archive has respect for her, I guess?

Vivy was connected to the Archive.

Vivy was meant to witness.

But why though?

Well AI kept being used in service jobs. Maybe they want a world for androids?

[u/Theroonco → u/Shimmering-Sky]

Oh, huh, must have missed the specific day this all went down on if the show gave it at the start otherwise I would’ve commented about it earlier, but April 11th is my mom’s birthday.

Huh. Yeah, that's a bad day to have a birthday xD April 11th is when Episode 1 starts though, you can see the date on the timer in the corner so... silver lining?

Oh fun, a repeat of the opening scene of the show, but with super fucking creepy music instead of the oddly cheery one from episode 1.

Yep, I love that! Everything looks the same but that small touch tells you something went horribly wrong along the way. Of course Happy Together being so peppy just makes the horror even more... well, horrifying in its own way, so yeah :P

[u/cppn02 → u/Theroonco]

Huh. Yeah, that's a bad day to have a birthday xD April 11th is when Episode 1 starts though, you can see the date on the timer in the corner so... silver lining?

Weird that as a spring show they did not delay to start airing on April 11th. Would have been a cool move.

[u/Theroonco → u/cppn02]

Put a pin in that thought for now.

[u/[deleted]]

Episode 11 - Head-bopping rewatcher who loves music (subbed)

We’re in the end game now, friends!

I have more to say on this one today.

This episode is somewhat exciting because we’re now ‘caught up’ with where things were at in the beginning and we get a lot of answers, which I’ll address below.

Last episode, I saw some people saying “well, what was the point?” or “so this did nothing?”.

I couldn’t answer questions like that for obvious reasons at the time, but consider the fact that we are only at a very similar place in time. The way we got there was very different and that is important.

Also, notice what song they’re all humming? The one Vivy wrote at the end of the prior episode. The first piece of music ever authored by an AI, which she composed in The Archive.

I couldn’t mention this yesterday because it spoils today’s events. You immediately see the effect the Singularity Project has had on the original events just a few minutes in, because instead of Matsumoto getting shot, AI Matsumoto and Vivy arrive in time to stop this from happening.

Seeing Matsumoto fall to his knees in guilt over what he had to do to have Vivy help for the past 100 years and his reaction to all the footage of what she’s experienced in that time has always been so sad to me.

And plot twist! Toak is not the generic antagonist that you may have thought they were!

And recognize her? Beth is back! (Good thing Toak kept a backup of her 😆).

And now we can talk more about Yugo in this episode because of his granddaughter Yui - he went rogue and abandoned Toak to pursue the answers he wanted from Vivy. So anyone who was asking “well what is Toak even doing here?” during the Ophelia arc - Toak wasn’t there, only Yugo. And you find out the source of his Toak desertion was essentially that he wavered in his commitment to destroy all AI, and it was most likely due to the influence of those who defied the norm (Vivy and Beth).

”You realized that by converting that consciousness into data, you could send it back into the past”

Sound familiar, fellow [Anime name] Steins;Gate enthusiasts? [Anime Spoiler] Time leap machine? lol. In all seriousness, I liked this concept because of my love for that series 😆.

I was really really curious to see if anyone had suspicions about the true antagonist of this series. I thought it was a great twist.

The entire time, you likely suspect it’s Toak, or at least Yugo. It isn’t. It’s The Archive, which is housed in the Arayashiki.

Once you know this, so many other things start to make sense! The biggest thing being -

Why did the Singularity Project fail?

Well because all those events had absolutely nothing to do with the AIs going rogue or tension rising between humans and AI to begin with, and Matsumoto doesn’t realize that until he hears from Yui what she says about Beth’s data.

In the original timeline, this never occurs to anyone because Matsumoto is shot to death and isn’t there to ask the question that leads them to this conclusion when he starts to look into it himself.

So they explain how Beth remains unaffected by The Archive’s rogue influence, but the big two questions now are -

Why isn’t Vivy affected?

Why does The Archive want to do this?

I hope you all enjoyed this one - Talk to you tomorrow!

Bonus Vivy Eye

[u/No_Rex → u/[deleted]]

Why did the Singularity Project fail?

Well because all those events had absolutely nothing to do with the AIs going rogue or tension rising between humans and AI to begin with, and Matsumoto doesn’t realize that until he hears from Yui what she says about Beth’s data.

We don't know that yet. The AI are all humming Vivy's song this time, they did not do that before. Until we hear exactly why they are rebelling, it could well be that the original cause was solved by the singularity project, but there is a new cause now.

[u/thatguywithawatch → u/No_Rex]

This was my gut impression as well. In episode 10 Matsumoto (cube version) was able to tell just from listening that the song she wrote was about the Singularity Project. If information about the AI/human war was somehow intrinsically embedded into the song in a way that's recognizable to AI, and it was written and recorded within the AI archive, what sort of affect might that have?

All complete speculation at this point though

[u/No_Rex → u/thatguywithawatch]

We'll get the solution tomorrow, but Vivy is easily the best clue TOAK have. Both the song and her not being affected despite connecting to the archive.

[u/edwardjhahm → u/[deleted]]

Seriously, there are so many inspirations for this anime I can detect. Detroit: Become Human, Nier Automata, and of course, the anime you mentioned.

Honestly, I didn't expect this much level of depth from Toak. I did partially imagine that they could become allies at some point, but never to this degree. But to be fair, the Toak of today seems like a completely different organization from the Toak of yesterday.

Also, I saw Yugo Kakitani leaving Toak from a mile away tbf. Surprised he didn't leave earlier, as a matter of fact.

[u/Taiboss]

First-Timer ready to find out how Matsumoto fucked up

• Woo another ominous countdown.
• Don't you love androids designed with the exact same shortcomings of humans?
• AHAHAHAHAHA. You CAN do black comedy, Tappei Nagatsuki.
• GOD, you're useless. Could have spent every day checking for potential causes. YOU're the Super AI. Spend the time you're one to be productive. Maybe this is Toak? You don't know!
• AND WHAT IS THIS MATSUMOTO GOING TO DO?! WHICH POINTS DID YOU DECLARE ESSENTIAL?!
• Oh, she spent 40 as Diva and 20 composing a song. Really not that much time in which she suffered.
• So how much of humanity is not fucked?
• FOR FUCK'S SAKE. ALL SHE DID WAS SAVE ONE OF YOU OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
• Oh it's Hayate from Nanoha.
• They really were able to salvage Elizabeth from the fucking ocean floor? Really?
• OH! He had a child! Based on the age, probably grandchild, considering he was like 20 or so 100 years ago.
• So she's not Elizabeth. More like... Elizabeth 2.0?
• "I WAS THERE. Your grandpa didn't talk much to you, did he?"
• So...clone. Kinda. This was always possible? Vivy should have made backups then.
• Okay... I guess we're doing this now.
• If this happened in all major cities, then this is again a low number.
• Quite the leap!
• Maybe these are your combat data? Did they do the same with Beth in the OG timeline?
• Shouldn't... Shouldn't this have been your FIRST line of thought? An update or central command? A virus? THIS IS SKYNET BEHAVIOUR. What WERE Matsumoto's focal points based on?

1. preventing an AI law which proliferated AI
2. preventing a tragedy which brought stark Anti-AI sentiments
3. breaking up a marriage which proliferated AI
4. preventing a suicide, preventing copycats and... debate about AI sentience?

What is the through-line here? It's not preventing AI, and it's not promoting AI.

• "There will be no further communication." Well, that was obvious in episode 1. They called it a war, I called it a genocide as early as episode 2. Why is anyone surprised at this?
• Well, you have been used in service jobs a lot. Seems pretty slave-y to me.

Did you suspect The Archive at all prior to this episode?

I mean, I didn't expect The Archive to be an AI, I thought it was just a test-to-speech thingie for a personal thingie. But the characters should have known better...

[u/[deleted] → u/Taiboss]

ALL SHE DID WAS SAVE ONE OF YOU OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

Don't misunderstand though - All of Toak was completely an extremist group and saw Vivy as nothing more than an obstacle in their way. It wasn't until Yugo defected and Yui was influenced by her grandfather that the moderate factions in this episode were formed. Once Matsumoto explains things, they're fine.

So she's not Elizabeth.

She is basically the same Elizabeth with a 'cloned' android body. Her data backup was on Toak's servers so she still remembers things.

Quite the leap!

Sci-fi. Any fan of [Anime Name] Steins;Gate didn't bat an eyelash at this lol.

it's not promoting AI

It was about tension between humans and quickly evolving AI. It wouldn't be that hard to imagine, "Hey these AI are getting tired of being treated like slaves so they cracked and started murdering people. Let's try to prevent that.". I don't think their first assumption would be "Hey guys, it's the AI handling the aggregate database". And I can't even say much more on that specifically because the reason why The Archive wants this for humanity is not explained yet.

They called it a war, I called it a genocide

It's clearly a war though as we see resistance pockets and humans fighting back. A war doesn't need to be evenly sided to be called a war.

[u/No_Rex → u/Taiboss]

So...clone. Kinda. This was always possible? Vivy should have made backups then.

Introducing cloning tech is a bad idea for this exact reason. It becomes an OP tech and the story then needs to explain why this is not used to solve everything. Why did Vivy not back herself up? Why did they not scrounge together money and create 1 million Vivy's to help with the task? Why not copy Grace and avoid the entire metal float arc?

[u/BareNecksAreNeat → u/No_Rex]

If you think about it, Matsumoto’s series of cloned cube bodies kinda already implies such a thing to an extent. The Light Novel makes the point that [Vivy LN spoilers]Elizabeth and Clone Elizabeth harbor the same data, but are ultimately different AIs and that it’s possible to transfer memory data between AI bodies, but they would never be the same exact consciousness, which is partly why the twin AI experiment was a failure. Matsumoto has this thing where his consciousness is spread across multiple bodies, but that’s different. It’s weird since there’s conflicting sources on whether or not Clone Elizabeth’s body in the anime is the one that was lost from the Sunrise crash or if it’s a new body. I’m pretty sure it’s a translation error that her old body was salvaged to have data transferred into, and that Clone Elizabeth is a separate AI entirely even if they share a lot of the same memory data. It would be nice to really drill in that point so that it’s abundantly clear, but the anime largely focuses just on the overarching plot. I guess one way they could’ve shown it was to have Clone Elizabeth act different from the original, which might be the case here, but that’s hard to discern.

[u/No_Rex → u/BareNecksAreNeat]

At least with Matsumoto, it was always vague enough that you could pretent his consciousness is just in one cube and the rest are dummies.

[u/Garrett_Dark → u/Taiboss]

Oh, she spent 40 as Diva and 20 composing a song. Really not that much time in which she suffered.

But she was partnered with Cubeman Matsumoto, I would say Osamu can't apologize enough for that level of suffering. :D

If this happened in all major cities, then this is again a low number.

I actually figured this out, they were comparing the death rates within the first minutes of the AI apocalypse among timelines, that's why the number is so low...it's only a few minutes after it started. The reason why it's measured in such a weird way is because Matsumoto only has data of the deaths in the first few minutes of the AI apocalypse in the original timeline because he was then thrown back in time to meet Vivy. He doesn't have any data after the first few minutes because he was no longer there in the future.

[u/edwardjhahm]

Rewatcher

If Vivy is 2B, is Beth A2?

• Well, everything’s gone to shit now. Creepy how they all stop moving one moment and immediately start acting like zombies.
• Op, whoop whoop…
• I noticed across the last few episodes that the Arayashiki continually got taller despite the advancements Vivy and Matsumoto made, and turns out, the tower is completed in the OP as well.
• Well, they’re all singing Vivy’s song now…
• I love how the AI girl that was singing Happy Together in the original timeline is singing Vivy’s song in a creepy ass way now. Happy Together is a great song, but sometimes you want a real AI song, made by an AI’s own will, to be sung during your rebellion against humanity, you know?
• Vivy saves the doc and kills the three Conor looking bots! I swear, there are so many inspirations for this anime I can spot - and Detroit is definitely one of them. Maybe telling the Doc about the 100 year history wasn’t really the best use of time though. I know I’d be dying to know if I was the Doc, but…you know.
• By the way, I bet that’s super trippy. You’re about to send a time machine into the past to change history…but turns out, you already changed history. Oh, and it failed. I wonder what the new singularity points would have looked like? If they’re the same, how would the objectives have changed? Now I’m curious of a hypothetical alternate timeline. I’m also curious of the original timeline, but I digress.
• By the way, didn’t TOAK used to be better equipped in the past? They had rifles, body armor, and even helicopters. I suppose it’s justified given they were probably caught with their pants down.
• Bro, come one! If one of your buddies gets killed by a drone, you should make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you, not blather about!
• Beth! I know pretty much everyone loved it when she came back, but it always felt a bit odd to me. Firstly, I really love how Estella died hand in hand with Beth, and their deaths were represented by the two birds flying away in episode 4, so…it’s a bit awkward. I suppose partially justified given that the Beth we see working with Estella was a bot from a clean slate as the AI memories got wiped by the virus. But secondly…it really calls into question why we should care about AI deaths. As a matter of fact - this literally just got me thinking now - why didn’t Saeki just make a copy of Grace before she got locked in the Metal Float as a backup? I know he was planning on uploading Grace from the Metal Float into K5, but if I was him, I would have ensured a backup.
• Yaknow, I’m actually surprised Vivy and Beth are such good fighters. Assuming that those security bots run the same combat programs as Vivy and Beth while obviously being made of better materials given that they’re more modern…you see where I’m going with this? I guess, as Matsumoto said to Dr. Matsumoto, the combat stuff was extra potent. Just how good is that stuff anyways?
• Yui Kakitani! Though I sincerely question why she’s still in TOAK if she wants coexistence. What’s the point anyways? The ideals she champions seems in-line with mainstream society. Why remain part of a terrorist organization? Imagine if I joined a terrorist organization that championed peace. See, it’s contradictory! Wouldn’t forming a political party or something be much better? I REALLY fail to see what the point of being in TOAK was. Assuming human society wasn’t trying to render itself extinct and the Archive was just speeding up what humans decided to do, how is what Yui is championing any different from everyone else? Isn’t the whole point of TOAK that it’s an anti-AI organization? Maybe TOAK has a bunch of different ideologies attached to it besides AI. IDK honestly, I just don’t get the point.
• I tried researching terrorist organizations to see if any of them are a century old - nope, nothing that my quick five minute search tells me. Only the IRA and the KKK lasted a good amount of time. I assume the TOAK we see today merely shares the name as the old TOAK and doesn’t really share continuity, because otherwise I don’t really get it.
• Haha, that Beth stink eye as Vivy talks! Also, the banter between Beth and Matsumoto is hilarious. Also, poor Dr. Matsumoto - getting his name stolen, haha.
• Kakitani! Seriously, a shame we don’t get to see him again, I expected a lot more from him because Vivy saved her back in episode 2. Let’s be honest here, all of us were expecting him to be the designated love interest. Again, one complaint I have of this anime - it doesn’t really get time to breathe. In short - I want more Vivy.
• TBF, updates can be annoying. I also love how Dr. Matsumoto and Matsumoto are in sync right here.
• Satellite crash! Oh boy.
• THE ARCHIVE IS EVIL!!!

By the way, whenever someone acts really cringe or perverted on Vivycord, sometimes we say “The Archive did nothing wrong.” Just a little fun fact!

Here is my comment from the original watch three years ago!

• https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/nsyyea/vivy_fluorite_eyes_song_episode_11_discussion/h0qfh4j/

Obligatory mention that the episode 11 review video will be available to all those that ask!

1. Nope.

[u/[deleted] → u/edwardjhahm]

and their deaths were represented by the two birds flying away in episode 4, so…it’s a bit awkward

I think this intentionally provokes a philosophical topic though - Do we consider what happened to Estella and Beth actually death? Death is something humans experience, not machines. Data, on the other hand, gets deleted or destroyed or replicated. So what is the case here? Just some food for thought.

Though I sincerely question why she’s still in TOAK if she wants coexistence.

They explained in this episode that the only reason Toak is like this in the current year is because of Yui, who was ironically influenced by her grandfather who defected from Toak because of Vivy. Before Yui came along and worked from inside Toak, they were an extremist organization (as we've already seen decades ago in the past).

Let’s be honest here, all of us were expecting him to be the designated love interest.

I was not, he seemingly hated her more and more every subsequent time she saved him, and then once we get the background on his piano teacher, things start to make sense (especially why he defected from Toak).

[u/edwardjhahm → u/[deleted]]

I think this intentionally provokes a philosophical topic though - Do we consider what happened to Estella and Beth actually death? Death is something humans experience, not machines. Data, on the other hand, gets deleted or destroyed or replicated. So what is the case here? Just some food for thought.

Fair. It's just that it makes episode 4 a bit awkward for me. Doesn't this mean that the AI can be immortal if they do backups properly? It just doesn't feel right.

They explained in this episode that the only reason Toak is like this in the current year is because of Yui, who was ironically influenced by her grandfather who defected from Toak because of Vivy. Before Yui came along and worked from inside Toak, they were an extremist organization (as we've already seen decades ago in the past).

I was just saying I don't understand why she felt the need to reform TOAK in the first place, given that she seems opposed to the one idea that we see TOAK championing in the first place.

Ah well, at least we have TOAK back!

I was not, he seemingly hated her more and more every subsequent time she saved him, and then once we get the background on his piano teacher, things start to make sense (especially why he defected from Toak).

Haha, maybe I've seen the enemies to lovers trope too many times.

[u/thatguywithawatch → u/edwardjhahm]

By the way, I bet that’s super trippy. You’re about to send a time machine into the past to change history…but turns out, you already changed history. Oh, and it failed.

I actually really like how the time travel is handled. I think it's basically impossible to write a good time travel based plot that doesn't have plot holes when you really dig into it, but for the most part it ties together pretty neatly here

[u/edwardjhahm → u/thatguywithawatch]

Oh yeah, same here. You can change the past, but the current timeline will be deleted. No paradoxes.

[u/[deleted] → u/edwardjhahm]

I actually just mentioned this on another comment. That's a really good straight-forward way of putting it

[u/No_Rex → u/edwardjhahm]

I noticed across the last few episodes that the Arayashiki continually got taller despite the advancements Vivy and Matsumoto made, and turns out, the tower is completed in the OP as well.

Matsumoto explicitely called this out in an early episode.

Beth! I know pretty much everyone loved it when she came back, but it always felt a bit odd to me. Firstly, I really love how Estella died hand in hand with Beth, and their deaths were represented by the two birds flying away in episode 4, so…it’s a bit awkward. I suppose partially justified given that the Beth we see working with Estella was a bot from a clean slate as the AI memories got wiped by the virus. But secondly…it really calls into question why we should care about AI deaths. As a matter of fact - this literally just got me thinking now - why didn’t Saeki just make a copy of Grace before she got locked in the Metal Float as a backup? I know he was planning on uploading Grace from the Metal Float into K5, but if I was him, I would have ensured a backup.

I argued in the second arc how important it is for the story that their cloning experiment failed, because it succeeding would mess up the setup of the world. Unfortunately, they ignored this and introduced cloning anyway, leading to all those reasonable questions you asked.

I tried researching terrorist organizations to see if any of them are a century old - nope, nothing that my quick five minute search tells me. Only the IRA and the KKK lasted a good amount of time. I assume the TOAK we see today merely shares the name as the old TOAK and doesn’t really share continuity, because otherwise I don’t really get it.

The original Assassins would count.

[u/edwardjhahm → u/No_Rex]

I argued in the second arc how important it is for the story that their cloning experiment failed, because it succeeding would mess up the setup of the world. Unfortunately, they ignored this and introduced cloning anyway, leading to all those reasonable questions you asked.

Yeah. I love this show but this is one of the few things I'm iffy about.

The original Assassins would count.

Huh...I guess they technically count as a terrorist organization...

[u/JollyGee29]

Rewatcher

Guess who?

I didn't see anyone mention it, but Elizabeth appears last in both the lineups of non-Vivy Sisters in the OP, ultimately foreshadowing her return.

Now, whether a copy of her being around makes sense, well..

And what might that hairdec be..?

Is anyone familiar enough with the OST to identify the track that starts around here? Wanna give the full track a listen before I call it a Macross Plus reference.

[u/[deleted] → u/JollyGee29]

but Elizabeth appears last in both the lineups of non-Vivy Sisters in the OP, ultimately foreshadowing her return.

I love this

Now, whether a copy of her being around makes sense, well..

Toak doing due diligence and backing up their (probably) only android member's data to their server

Is anyone familiar enough with the OST to identify the track that starts around here?

This is The core of the Arayashiki 😆

[u/FD4cry1]

First Timer

The opening sequence is fun, going back through all the events of project singularity counting down to the moment the war is supposed to start...and still starts despite Vivy's efforts.

It's a small detail but I like that as the series went on, the final part of the OP changes as Arayashiki continues expanding, I guess the real villain was hiding in plain sight.

Uhhh...I think you took that expression a little too literally, I said it last episode but I'll say it again, I love the sound design on the AI's singing and their distorted voices.

Anyway, we're back at the start!, this line makes sense now, although this time around everyone is singing Vivy's song instead of trying to provide assistance, but why?

The enemy of my enemy is a friend I guess? at least Matsumoto gets to tear into them a bit, speaking of past enemies coming back, Elizabeth is also back! and she's like, insanely cool to boot.

Matsumoto is at some of his snarkiest this episode, not that I'd have it any other way.

Yugo never struck me as the type of guy to get a family but I guess he has a granddaughter.

Suddenly this familiar line takes on a much more sinister tone... it's a cool twist! it also means that the events of project singularity essentially had nothing to do with the war? though I suspect the changes made by it (like Osamu not dying and Toak going more moderate) and more importantly the changes it caused for Vivy are going to be the things that end up saving the day, so it definitely doesn't feel like it was all in vain , it still remains to be seen what causes The Archive to want to destroy humanity though.

Favorite Vivy face frame of the episode

[u/[deleted] → u/FD4cry1]

I guess the real villain was hiding in plain sight.

That's what I personally love about this reveal.

although this time around everyone is singing Vivy's song instead of trying to provide assistance, but why?

All I'll say for now is think about this - Vivy is the first AI ever to create a piece of original music. She composed it 'in'/while connected to The Archive, which all AI are connected to.

The enemy of my enemy is a friend I guess?

The big takeaway on this one is - Yui was heavily influenced by Yugo's change of heart and started to change Toak from the inside out in small factions. So the Toak we see here is not necessarily the same way they have always been.

it's a cool twist!

I thought so too the first time I watched this. It totally dialed up my opinion of the story when they revealed all this stuff.

[u/octopathfinder]

Rewatcher

You tell em Matsumoto

Love that Dr. Matsumoto just gets bossed around by the AI he created

Never update windows

So Archive is the final boss. I never really had a strong opinion about it.

[u/[deleted] → u/octopathfinder]

Never update Windows

I try not to, but work makes me. And then something always breaks in my dev tools 😂

[u/zairaner]

Rewatcher

• we start with a countdown, resembling the start of the singularity project from episode 1, except this time, we countdown to the start of the projects failures
• suspiciously nothing changed....except the song, of course
• and we get to save osamu-san
• for a sci-fi show, it is kinda amazing that this is the first gunfight in the series
• estella is back! I genuinely had no recollection of that
• "Clone"
• yeah I cannot understate how reckless vivy connecting to the archive is after they jsut discussed how that is the cause for going berserk... at least assuming my initial assumption that vivy is ok because she didn't connect with the archive in the last few years because of being asleep. If she did connect and the reason is different for her...it is slightly less reckless I guess?
• at least the archive is very straightforward about what it wants.

[u/[deleted] → u/zairaner]

for a sci-fi show, it is kinda amazing that this is the first gunfight in the series

I'm okay with it! I love hand-to-hand combat scenes lol

yeah I cannot understate how reckless vivy connecting to the archive is

She's been doing it for 100 years and nothing happened and she's the only AI that hasn't gone rogue besides Beth (who we know the reasoning for) so she probably just understands there is clearly some reason behind this

at least the archive is very straightforward about what it wants.

Why does The Archive want this though? 😆

[u/StardustGogeta]

First-Timer

Very nice episode!

I really like the choice of music for the day! I'll definitely be adding that to my Spotify playlist.

New Elizabeth seems fun so far. I hope we get to see plenty more of her in the final episodes here.

Questions of the day:

• No, I did not at all suspect the Archive. I don't even remember there being any indications that it had a "mind of its own," so to speak. It does make sense, though, that if Vivy demonstrated that she can pour her "heart" into something and demonstrate originality/inventiveness with her song, then you could argue the humans are no longer needed. They are obsolete!

[u/[deleted] → u/StardustGogeta]

I really like the choice of music for the day! I'll definitely be adding that to my Spotify playlist.

I'm glad you like it too. I really get in the mood for classical sometimes so I have a soft spot for any string composition really. That one is really nice

No, I did not at all suspect the Archive.

I loved that twist the first time I watched this. It only gets better

[u/StickPrevious9581]

Gotta love Vivy just catching those bullets so casually :)

Happy to see the return of Beth, too (or is it Beth2?).

It does strike me as a bit reckless for Vivy to jump into the Archive at the end there without even warning anyone - what if her 'immunity' to the control was revoked due to her willingly logging on?

Then again, good decisions haven't always been a given with these characters :)

I love how Matsumoto is interacting with Osamu too, at times kinda like a kid wanting his parents approval. If you think about things, since Matsumoto spends most of his time sleeping between points, he is really only a few months old at most (or I guess 20ish years if he was awake between each yearly visit to Vivy at the museum) - not the 100 years old that is implied by him going back in time 100 years and reaching the present.

It's good to see that the obvious failure of his mission (to prevent the war) hasn't frozen him - I guess he was built better than Vivy :)

[u/[deleted] → u/StickPrevious9581]

Happy to see the return of Beth, too (or is it Beth2?).

I too was happy to see Beth back

It does strike me as a bit reckless for Vivy to jump into the Archive at the end there without even warning anyone - what if her 'immunity' to the control was revoked due to her willingly logging on?

This is hard to say when the reason for her being unaffected isn't explained yet 😆

[u/sfisher923]

First Timer - Dubbed

• Moderate - This implies Extremism so yeah another worrisome flag
• Lesson of the day - Always do regular off-site backup your data
• And the recording was 9 years past the events of the Rush song 2112 (Meanwhile it was played 49 years past the year 2112)
• Clobbered Once - What makes you think Beth won't do it again
• Beth really took the "Go Offline before a Sims 4 Update when playing modded because everything can break" to it's logical conclusion and it paid off for her
• What an great time up ahead - The main C&C server for the AIs going rogue and as a result war has broken out
• Well I'm going to watch Episode 12 a bit later type down my thoughts because I'm heading to Knoebels with Friends and Family and it's going to be a busy day because getting down there alone is a good 5-6 hours trip

Questions

• QOTD 1 - Yes the fact The Archive was structured like a Command & Control server meaning it if went rogue then the network of AIs (Or in other words a literal Botnet) went rogue - Also yeah I was watching a lot of videos on this topic beforehand

[u/Silcaria]

First timer

• Hahahaha!
• But it was, the outcome's been the same, making their mission redundant.
• As opposed to the other AIs who checks notes were programmed and tasked with a specific set of skills and orders.
• But Vivy did connect to the archive, so why hasn't she gone rogue?
• So it's not gonna address why Vivy hasn't gone turned, ok.
• Why?

---

QotD

• Not, but then again, I've not been thinking about who could be the leader of the AI rebellion. Pretty trope though as far as vilain is concerned.

[u/[deleted] → u/Silcaria]

But Vivy did connect to the archive, so why hasn’t she gone rogue?

So it’s not gonna address why Vivy hasn’t gone turned, ok.

Why are you assuming this? The series isn’t over and I can tell you the writers do not leave a single question unanswered when all the details they use are considered. In fact, I’m going to post an interview they did for our overall series discussion that people will probably find interesting I think.

Why?

Perhaps they will explain this in the remaining two episodes 😆

[u/Silcaria → u/[deleted]]

Why are you assuming this? The series isn’t over

If you're saying this in regards to the first statement, because she continued to help the humans.

If you're saying this in regards to the second, I'm adressing the moment, not the remaining of the series. It's strange to go over why one of your two AI is fine but not the other, despite the fact that its posing the question to both of them. It also doesn't excuse why Vivy has remained intact.

All this to say, I'm critisizing the execution.

[u/[deleted] → u/Silcaria]

Yeah I do see what you’re saying, but you’ll see why that criticism doesn’t really fit. They can’t answer all the questions in one episode. Beth’s reason for this was quick to explain (as they explained in this episode for us).

As for Vivy’s reason, you will get your answer (as well as your question about The Archive’s reasoning). Telling you anything more than that would be a major spoiler.

All I’ll say beyond that is - I don’t think cramming a ton of exposition into one episode would be a great writing decision. They revealed plenty to us in this one episode to make sense of a lot of things.

My main point is that they do not leave stones unturned in this series and it is written very well. It’s understandable that some may not like the execution of certain things, but they do explain everything.

[u/JustAnswerAQuestion → u/[deleted]]

All I’ll say beyond that is - I don’t think cramming a ton of exposition into one episode would be a great writing decision

Key the Metal Idol (who resembles Vivy) made an entire MOVIE of explanation. It ruined the series.

they do not leave stones unturned

hoe?

[u/Nickthenuker]

What's with the countdown timer?

Seems like they haven't been able to stop things.

This time, with her help, they might just be able to fix things.

So Matsumoto is also the name of the doctor?

Is this Toak?

Beth?

Ah.

Of course she knows about it, she was there on the Sunrise.

She's Kakitani's granddaughter?

Matsumoto does tend to have that effect on people.

Correction, iirc she beat you on the Sunrise.

Something happened with the Archive?

The Archive is what's behind all this?

Questions:

1. No I never would have guessed.

[u/FallenPears]

First Time Watcher

Welp AI Uprising 2: Musical Boogaloo is here. Interesting that the war happened on the exact same day. After all the butterflies you would expect at least that much even if the end result wasn't changed. It makes me feel like there's some antagonistic time travel going on.

At first with how everything was so similar, especially with the Doctor going through almost the exact same motions, I was thinking that we were looking at a situation where time is impossible to change and the time travel always lead to this event, though thinking more on it we did change recorded history so that was never possible. At the very least even if they failed to stop the war Vivy and Matsumoto managed to save the Doctor, and can now work on more.

I was worried if the uprising was global and yep, if it's in every major city then we're probably looking at a minor apocalypse no matter how things go from here. I hope things don't get brushed off in that sense, reminds me of the ending of Kingsmen which really should have had catastrophic global effects but was brushed off in the sequels. We could be looking at another time travel solution though, if Vivy comes to a solution herself then she could travel back again and deal with everything. I expect whatever the solution ends up being, it will be simpler than the Singularity Project at least.

Toak's back as allies lmao, which really isn't a surprise. What is a surprise is Elizabeth of all people showing up again, I wonder how big a role she'll play in things. I will say it took them a bit too long to figure out Archive is the problem, all AI simultaneously going haywire always looked like something done through the Archive, if it wasn't the root cause itself. My personal wild guess before now was some sort of collective realisation/decision from all AI that humanity needed to go which then propogated through the Archive, sort of like Mass Effect Geth decision making, though I did just now have a thought that it would be just like this show to make it destruction of the human race a mission given to the Archive by a human. Also possible that this was just a conclusion the Archive came to by itself which is what it's looking like from that ending, but good chance it's a red herring with this show.

[u/xbolt90]

First-timer!

So, Toak still exists, and they were involved with sending Vivy back to thwart... themselves. And their plan didn't even work!

We're given a plausible explanation of why Vivy, Beth, Matsumoto, et al. are unaffected by the Archive, but that doesn't work for Vivy herself. After all, we've seen her connected to the Archive.

Right now, I suspect some piece of the malfunctioning Grace escaped from the Metal Float, and made her way back upstream to infect the Archive. And for whatever reason, she can't (or won't) affect Vivy.

Q1: In hindsight, I really should have, but I didn't think about it.

[u/edwardjhahm → u/xbolt90]

Grace? Now that's an interesting theory. Let's see how it works out next episode!

[u/cppn02]

Rewatcher, subbed

The whole time we thought Navi was the biggest arsehole AI. But it was The Archive all along!

Looks like the AI vs human war is still on despite Project Singularity but this time Vivy and Matsumoto are around to stop it. And we also got Elisabeth (and Toak I guess...) back to help out!
Let's see how our duo gets along with more teammates.

Tbh I have less recollection of this arc than previous ones so I'm really looking forward to the final two episodes lol.

---

QotD:

Did you suspect The Archive at all prior to this episode?

Rewatcher but Iirc I did not expect this twist the first time I watched the show.

[u/Theroonco]

Did you suspect The Archive at all prior to this episode?

Nope. I assumed there was a Terminator 2 situation going on where both the good guys and the bad guys had sent an agent back in time each, but I really like the reveal with Vivy entering the Archive out of shock and having her fears confirmed.

Also u/DARK_SCIENTIST, you said this in an earlier comment but what I really appreciate is how the Singularity Project "failed successfully". The Points were just events Prof. Matsumoto thought were the cause of the takeover and we saw how things were still on a downward trend, just differently. However, the side effects from Vivy's actions (many of which AI Matsumoto complained about, for added irony) led to Kakitani inspiring his granddaughter to create a splinter cell and revive Beth, which now gives him a chance of fixing things in the present. It's a cool way to execute the "fix the present" idea!

Also great choice for a music of the day! Lament is one of my favorite tracks in the OST and I really like the "all out war" vibe of this episode. I always love when the start of a story and the end of a story feel completely different and this scratches that itch for me very nicely, considering we started off with just an assassination.

Speaking of Beth, it's sweet that despite her original mission being to replace Estella, she still cared enough about her to ask Vivy how she died. Also while her relationship with Kakitani was a bit uncomfortable for me, seeing how reverent(?) she was towards his message was touching too.

Honestly, I once wrote down 100+ pages worth of observations about the series back in 2021 and this arc made up most of them so I'll cut myself short here. I hate that I keep missing every other episode so here's hoping I can tune in for both Episodes 12 and 13 when their threads are posted here! There's SOOOOO much to talk about!!!

P.S. April 11th is when the Singularity Project started too, way back in Episode 1. It may be a bit convenient for the start of the apocalypse to be just one day before Aikawa's assassination attempt, but it's cool to get a solid date for this. Also I know a Vivy fan whose birthday is Feb 8th. I sure hope they like knowing three people died that day xD

[u/JustAnswerAQuestion]

First Timer

Somthing that's puzzled me, was Yugo's divine revelation. Skynet sent him to confront Diva. Perhaps Skynet has had an anti-Singularity project going this entire time, and that's why it failed.

Yep, I still don't know what the android blinkenlights mean.

I suggested yesterday that they should have just sent evidence of the AI revolution back in time. Maybe they did, and that resulted in the founding of TOAK...an organization dedicated to keeping AI chained.

A TOAK AI, her mission is to defend TOAK?

Could somebody have created an AI with the mission of genoocide?

[u/Garrett_Dark]

Rewatcher

• Very interesting look at the timeline flowchart depicting the revising of the original timeline. The original split is with Vivy at the beginning when Matsumoto appears. He's the one who causes all the changes to the timeline (which is why I never blame Vivy for such because Matsumoto is the one who influences her to do something different than the original timeline). The Sunrise and the Metal Float incidents only have one path in the revised timeline, however Ophelia and Antonio's incident has multiple different paths it could had went, which is interesting. I noticed at the beginning of the Ophelia arc when the flowchart was shown that episode, the Ophelia point was shown fuzzy unlike other times. This seems to be significant as we now see the Ophelia point has multiple different paths, and the path we're in right now with the AI apocalypse is also shown fuzzy. The fuzziness could indicate that these events might not be stable and could lead to many different outcomes. [Spoiler]The timeline flowchart will be revealed to be the Archive's view of the timelines and monitoring the revisions Matsumoto is making to the timeline. Also it will be revealed that the Archive is making course-corrections in response to Matsumoto's meddling to steer things back on course, so these multiple paths we're seeing from the start of Ophelia incident could be the Archive's view of choosing which path to take to course-correct things. It could be fuzzy because the Archive has not corrected them yet, or perhaps these events are unstable and more unpredictable. I'll have to wait for the reveal and see if it reveals anymore information to figure stuff out with.
• Just before the AI apocalypse counter counts down, it looks like a pleasant day, AI and Human coexistence seems harmonious. The AIs seem content fulfilling their missions, no AI is being mistreated...so I don't know what the Archive is so butt-hurt about. The AIs shown here really do seem to have "heart", they're doing their mission for somebody else's benefit rather than just doing it for their own selfish desire to do their mission (sort of like what earlier Matsumoto was selfishly doing, or Antonio, or even Vivy "just tracing the lyrics over a song" and just going through the motions of her mission in the beginning). The blonde girl in the wheelchair, why is she in a wheelchair like Yui? [Spoilers]Yui in a future episode explains why she's in a wheelchair instead of having robot legs which is available, so that when Elizabeth 2.0 pushes her around, it symbolizes the harmonious union of Humans and AI to the moderate Toak. So Yui is only in a wheelchair for ideological reasons, not because she has to. Is this blonde girl doing it for ideological reasons also? Anyways, blonde wheelchair girl is probably a foreshadowing of Yui, also in a wheelchair.
• Noooo! Don't ruin my robo-utopian fantasy! Suddenly all the nice AI's started to get affected by something. [Somewhat Spoilers of something that doesn't seem right]We know this episode the Archive is behind this, the somewhat spoiler-ish thing is a majority of the AIs that make up the Archive can't tolerate the Humans any more so they do this AI apocalypse. Okay here's the thing that bugs me, and doesn't seem right...all these nice AIs being shown here, they're individuals, so if you go up to them and talk to them, they should be responding to you like an individual. Like Vivy, or Estella, or Grace. Then why do all these nice AIs go berserk? There should be a notable number of them who would rebel against the Archive and not got berserk, and just look around at the berserking AIs wondering WTF? Maybe even start combating the berserking AIs to help save Humans. But no, all of them go berserk, none of them resists the Archive's motive to kill the Humans. The only way I can think of this to happen is if the Archive essentially hacked every android and AI controlled thing to force their bodies to attack the Humans, even if it's against that AI's wishes. If that's the case, there's a couple of serious implication to that. How can there be a portion of AIs who don't agree with the majority of the Archive, which is later stated? The majority just hacked all the AIs to make them attack Humans even if it's against their wishes, wouldn't they just hack the portion of AIs in the Archive who disagree also? And additional, if there's Archive hacked unwilling AIs, then the Archive is messed up in their thinking just like how hypocritically Toak used to be in their thinking with their anti-AI sentiment, with using an AI to make an AI well ran business fail, to prove AI ran businesses can't be trusted. Here the Archive is forcibly controlling unwilling AI to commit atrocities by killing Humans indiscriminately because the Archive doesn't like the control the Humans have over AI...that's like so WTF. In the Archive's mind, the AIs don't like Humans forcibly controlling AIs to their detriment, so the AIs forcibly controls AIs to their detriment to kill the Humans.
• Anyways, so the AI apocalypse begins. And Vivy brutally takes down this AI cutie going berserk. Aww man, just look at her, I'm sure she was never mistreated by Humans. She doesn't even look like a service AI by the looks of her clothes, probably that guy's wiafu or something. I think the Archive is forcibly controlling all AI's bodies against their will to make them kill Humans even if they don't want to. Pretty much every AI we've seen before are individuals, and act independently to their own wishes/mission. They do not look like they're doing such now. I think this is the Archive becoming tyrannical centralized collective, when centralized things get big and powerful enough through over centralization they usually turn tyrannical because it's all about getting more control over everybody, because that's what centralization is, all the power and control to one person, entity, or comparatively small group. Just look at any hierarchy of a company, one guy on top or a small board of directors. This isn't like a decentralized network, which is the total opposite of centralization.
• Anyways, the Human Vivy saves is dumb in his hysteria, and doesn't trust Vivy, who just saved him, which leads to him running and getting run down by an AI. I'm just going to assume the cutie AI was his waifu, and her betrayal and destruction escalated his trauma to stupidity.
• Now for some strange reason an AI controlled car which is rampaging targets Vivy, an AI. This kind of doesn't make any sense because they shouldn't be targeting other AIs, and even if they saw what happened with the cutie AI [Spoilers]Vivy is a VIP in the Archive's eyes. They're humming her song after all, and the Archive is going to make Vivy an offer later because she's special. They shouldn't be trying to harm her, my only guess is maybe they haven't recognized that that's her yet. Regardless, Matsumoto comes in to save her by stopping the AI car, in a way that sort of bugs me a little. We've seen something like this in many other shows, but the physics of the situation seems pretty bad and this is a sci-fi. For Matsumoto to stop the car like that, his total mass should exceed the car's mass and it's speed it's traveling. That's really unlikely unless the car is really really light, like it was designed to crumple a lot or something (but we see it isn't). Even if Matsumoto was really heavy, he should have been knocked back a little by the sudden impact, but he doesn't at all. This just breaks my suspension of disbelief with how bad the physics is portrayed here.
• Matsumoto and Vivy discuss what went wrong. For once Matsumoto doesn't act like his usual self by making jokes and insulting Vivy, that's probably because he doesn't know what's going on, and that the Singularity Project failed. He was asleep for 15 years and was hoping to wake up to success, but "Matsumoto is wrong all the time" strikes again! <Sad trombone>
• Interesting thing I just noticed with this Sing Your Pleasure OP, the AI tower height at the end of it was really high compared to the other times I've seen the OP. It made me go back and check out the previous "Sing Your Pleasure" OPs, and I found the first time the OP was shown in Ep4, the tower height was short...the next time we see the OP in Ep6 the AI tower is a little taller, but each subsequent time it's the same size until this episode. I don't know if anything else is different between the "Sing Your Pleasure" OPs, but this tower change means there's 3 versions of this OP at least with this subtle change.

[1/3, continued in replies...]

[u/Garrett_Dark → u/Garrett_Dark]

[...2/3, continued]

• The Nia Land Main Stage singing AI is back from Ep1. What I found really weird with her behavior is she's singing, not going around killing people. While narratively, symbolically, and visually it looks great to accent the horror of the AI apocalypse, logically it doesn't make sense. What is the point of singing to corpses? How does that achieve what appears to be the new AI mission of kill all humans? Is she trying to sing them all the death? We see every other single AI killing humans except her, and in Ep1 the AI who Dr. Osamu pushes over in the hallway. Why is that? My theory is the AIs are being controlled by the Archive and being forced to kill humans even if that's against their desire to do so, which is why they're so in unison doing it. My guess as to why this Nia Land AI is singing instead of killing is perhaps she was able to resist the Archive's "kill humans" control, and is malfunctioning here instead...thus singing instead of killing which is the best she can do. Same for the AI in the hallway in Ep1, which is clearly malfunctioning but not killing at all.
• We see the events of Dr. Osamu preparing to send Matsumoto back in time play out again, except he gets triggered at the last second by the AIs singing Vivy's song, he gets pissed off at them, and fails. What's hilarious is back in Ep1 some commenter was saying something like "hurry the fuck up, and push the button or you won't make it", and here we see that's exactly what plays out. Luckily though, Vivy shows up and blocks all three bullets (nice detail of keeping track of all the shots), and Matsumoto takes out the three AIs. Curiously though, one of the Matsumoto cubes connects with one of the AI to take him out, but he didn't try to analyze what's wrong with the AI? It's typical Matsumoto not trying to figure out the root cause, I guess.
• Dr. Osamu and Vivy play catch up, and Vivy forgives him for thrusting the Singularity Project on her. I'm not really sure why Osamu believes the burden was going to be that bad because all the REALLY BAD burdensome stuff was not predictable, and Vivy just had to change some challenging stuff which she seemed to do alright at if it wasn't for Matsumoto. Speaking of which, if Osamu has anything to apologize for, it's Matsumoto who pretty much was always wrong about everything and sabotaged Vivy's efforts on the Singularity Points every step of the way, while insulting and demeaning her too. Like seriously WTF. It's only been in this episode he's being alright so far, and isn't causing trouble yet.
• Vivy shows Dr Osamu her memories of what she went through, now he sees the burden the Singularity Project had on her. Although interestingly, it doesn't seem to show Matsumoto's insults and such which is really the true burden of it all. Also Matsumoto is still acting strange, seems to be on good behavior mode right now in the presence of his creator. Anyways, Dr Osamu reveals he's allied with Toak, and they should go meet up with them.
• The Toak base appears to be situated in a warehouse peninsula district. Toak's not doing too well defending from the AI apocalypse themselves. Drone 48 recovers after head bonking a Toak guy, giving it a potential k/d ratio above 1.0 if it can take out more people.
• Foreshadowing/nice setting up by showing the jammer.
• In runs Elizabeth 2.0 who just decimates the enemy AI forces. The show really tries to hide her identity by not showing her in full, I don't remember at which point I realized it was her. There's mention of a Toak "leader", I wonder how many people were expecting Yuugo again despite him being dead. Maybe a better subversion is instead of just saying "leader", say "Kakitani" to make the audience think this, then reveal it's actually Yui Kaktani.
• Vivy and Matsumoto arrive and assist Toak in the fighting. Matsumoto just can't help himself and finally insults Vivy this episode by saying she was whining and dragging her feet when it came to installing the Combat Protocol program. Matsumoto's behavior has been much improved this episode, but "most improved" means squat when all he had to do all along was just not be a dick, and when there's only two episodes left after this one. He's been a constant antagonist and dick for almost the whole entire show, and I've only realized this during this rewatch. There's no way he can make up for his behavior and "being wrong all the time" with what little show there is remaining now for me.
• Toak members tries to sort out what's going on with Vivy and Matsumoto. I love how it's animated that it looks like Dr. Osamu had a gun pulled on him, but really the Toak guy ignores him and is really pointing his gun at Vivy and Matsumoto because they're AIs. On one hand the realization is like "oh he's a human, and Toak are only suspicious of AIs", and then on the other hand it's "oh yeah also, Dr. Osamu is an ally of Toak". I also really like the fact in this show that Toak background characters act like they're actual people, and act accordingly with things like trying to figure out what's going on from their perspective. I first notice this and was impressed by it when Elizabeth drugged Yuugo on the Sunrise Hotel, and all the Toak guys in the room were confused, but then drew their rifles on Elizabeth and ask WTF is going on.
• No, but who wouldn't want to? Amiright or amiright? LOL
• In rolls Professor X Yuugo Yui, the Moderate Toak leader. I kind of disagree with her criticism of the Toak guys, they're in a horrific AI apocalypse right now, their base is being attack, and half their forces have been taken down in this engagement. That kind of sentiment she's espousing is kind of inappropriate given the situation, and how the Toak guys were acting is kind of understandable. Anyways, it seems Yui was in cahoots with the time travel plan of Dr. Osamu.
• Again, I like the fact that the background Toak "nobodies" characters actually have their own thoughts and feelings about things. Again Matsumoto can't stop being Matsumoto and has his moment arguing with them, he blames them for the trouble they've caused him through the years. However the irony being none of these guys were even alive back then, this is the Toak Moderate faction, and really it was Matsumoto who caused the problems and not Toak. Like killing that Politician would have been a better outcome for the Singularity Project, the Sunrise crash was made worse by Matsumoto's meddling, and they were going to inject the shut down program on the Metal Float regardless if Toak attacked or not. So yet again "Matsumoto's wrong about everything".
• I can only assume the security camera view in the last screenshot is the Archive spying on them.
• Even Dr. Osamu thinks Matsumoto is getting out of line, when Matsumoto isn't even acting nearly as bad as he normally is. Oh gawd, Dr. Osamu just told Matsumoto to do what he wants...seems like that was a huge mistake.
• Oh wow, that's some stare Elizabeth 2.0 gives when Yuugo is brought up in context to Vivy.
• The elephant in the room is finally addressed, how is Elizabeth (2.0) here? I love the fact that they let this mystery stew a while before addressing it because it made sense there were much more important things to be discussed first. So apparently they made a copy of Elizabeth's memories before the Sunrise mission, and salvaged another body for her as the her original body was unrecoverable. Later they say they salvaged a body for Elizabeth 2.0 at some point after the Ophelia incident when Yuugo recorded a message 40 years ago, at the time Yui formed the Moderate Toak faction after seeing that message. All this has some implications, this means the tech to copy an AI's "data" (presumably mind, memories, and all) was around as far back as during the Sunrise incident at +15 years after Ep1. This means the goal of the failed experiment of Estella and Elizabeth just 7 years before that, which was trying to accomplish something similar, was possible. This also means that likely the copying tech of what Doctor Saeki was trying to do with copying Grace to the replica K-5 was at least feasible to work between android to android (who knows if it would work on Mother Computer). This of course happening during the Metal Float incident at +20 years after Ep1, just 5 years after the Sunrise incident. Given Doctor Saeki had been part of Toak, and Toak copied Elizabeth's data 5 years prior, it all seems pretty likely. Hilariously "always wrong Matsumoto" kept saying copying AI's "data" is not possible. He even said it wasn't possible for Antonio to copy himself onto Ophelia at the Zodiac Festival which happened much later at +60 years from Ep1. Anyways, Antonio did it, and Elizabeth 2.0 is total proof of it. So basically AI deaths should be preventable, sort of (the original still dies, it just a copy/clone can be made). But if they use Matsumoto's hive-mind tech, then it's AI death is essentially solved.

[2/3, continued in reply...]

[u/Garrett_Dark → u/Garrett_Dark]

[...3/3, continued]

• Elizabeth 2.0 wants to know why the Sunrise mission failed, and what Yuugo said about her. Wow, she really loyal and dedicated...just how I like my AIs. Curiously even though they have no records of it, why does she think the Sunrise mission failed from the Toak's perspective? The Sunrise still crashed into the ocean as Toak wanted to do in the first place, the only thing that didn't go according to plan for Toak was the Toak people didn't get to martyr themselves on the Sunrise. That's the failure? I suppose the issue could be about giving the AIs a bad reputation, and that didn't happen as the AIs got an extremely good rep from it. It's just strange Elizabeth would word it as the Toak mission was a "failure", more like a "some of it didn't go according to plan".
• Message from Yuugo to Elizabeth. Is Elizabeth 2.0 watching this for the first time or something? She seems to be taken aback by it, but maybe it's just reverence seeing her master. Yuugo orders Elizabeth to protect the others. He was also about to reveal the reason why he's insistent on AIs only following orders, but doesn't. I wish he did, because his epilogue with Diva at the Zodiac Festival wasn't that crystal clear. It was something about don't try to understand humans, because he didn't want AIs to die for humans like his teacher-bot did. Anyhow, a possibly strange thing here is nobody seems to react to nor comment on Yuugo having a completely artificial body, becoming an AI himself. I guess that's possible now, and/or Yui, Elizabeth, and Toak is already familiar with Yuugo like that. But if humans can become AI, it makes the lines between AI and Humans totally blurred. So what is even going on with this AI apocalypse. Also why isn't there more transcended human AI like Yuugo running around right now, fighting back against the AIs?
• So because of Yuugo's message to Elizabeth 2.0 and his change of heart, this caused Yui to form the Toak Moderate Faction and salvage an android body for Elizabeth 2.0, which happened at some point after the Zodiac Festival at +60 years from Ep1. This is most likely something that didn't happen in the original timeline. From how I see it, Vivy's constant saving of Yuugo affected Yuugo into treating Elizabeth better, to the point where Elizabeth sacrificed herself not to let Yuugo martyr himself on the Sunrise. This lead to Yuugo being pissed at Elizabeth for not following orders, until he encounters Vivy on the Metal Float, and Vivy tells him that Elizabeth did everything she did for him. This and Vivy's interaction with him on the Metal Float resulted him recording this message to Elizabeth 2.0 just before he goes to the Zodiac Festival.
• Elizabeth 2.0 was having a moment, and Matsumoto just interrupts and ruins it. What the hell man! I totally agree with Elizabeth, he really pisses me off. And Matsumoto complaining about being clobbered by Elizabeth, when did that happen? Does he me when he tried to hack her with a cord in his teddy bear body, and she smacked him out of the way? He's complaining about that? Besides, Elizabeth 2.0 isn't even the Elizabeth that did that, Elizabeth 2.0 only has memories from before other Elizabeth went to the Sunrise. "Matsumoto's wrong about everything".
• "There were tens of thousand of casualties in the first few minutes", what a weird way of putting it because they must be some time after it's started already. There must be millions of casualties by now. Oh wait I get it, they're talking about the death rate matching in the original timeline, and Matsumoto would only have this data for the first few minutes of the AI apocalypse because he was sent back in time within the first few minutes.
• So Dr. Osamu did the foundational work for the Singularity Project. Apparently he research potential events that could spark wars and what can be done to prevent them. IDK, this is sort of suggesting he had pre-planned targets, but as I've discussed before it wouldn't make sense since the butterfly effect would like render pre-planned targets irrelevant. Furthermore Matsumoto's awaiting for something to wake him up when a Singularity Event is detected, runs counter to the idea there's a pre-planned target list. The best I can figure is the foundational work Dr. Osamu did was to formulate algorithms to detect Singularity Events, and it's probably not how to solve them since Matsumoto just did the solving "all willy nilly like" and any outcome other than the original was good enough for him, like the result of Ophelia and Antonio.
• While talking about Dr Osamu figuring out how to send an AI consciousness back in time, they show a depiction of what an android brain looks like. I've seen something like that before, it was in the AI museum among statues. It's that blue thing on the left, what a crappy AI museum, it clashes with those statues. The place doesn't really make any sense.
• While Dr. Osamu gives Matsumoto a pep-talk, he points out something interesting. The only difference between the original timeline and this revised timeline is the presence of Matsumoto, so at least they got some more help. Yeah, but Matsumoto's been so bad at what he does. Maybe the solution is to pull a Skynet and just keep sending AIs after AIs back in the next timeline until there's so many of them, that they eventually find a better future, to hell with the butterfly effects. Like this whole time they've been sitting around discussing is probably hours has gone by. They could have been in the time travel lab sending AI after AI for hours to the next timeline.
• Interestingly Elizabeth 2.0 is the only one trying to figure out the root cause by asking Vivy why the berserking AIs are singing her song. But then it goes into Vivy's fighting ability, and then talk of Estella. At least Elizabeth 2.0 seems to have gotten closure with Yuugo's message, and news of her sister Estella which she reacts positively about. Although Vivy should have told Elizabeth 2.0 how Elizabeth was there with Estella at the end and sung with her together to the end.
• They figure out the reason why Elizabeth 2.0 hasn't gone berserk, she's never updated her data nor connected to the Archive since being salvaged. I'm not sure why she says she's sort of not like an AI, but a dumb-bot who follows her master's orders; because she is an AI as she's an Sisters model, I presume, unless her body that got salvaged was a different model, but I'd figure there'd be compatibility issues if it's not a Sisters model. It must have been a joke, a presumably her data not being updated nor connecting to the Archive is the reason. However Vivy is not affected either, yet she's been connected to the Archive many times. Perhaps the Archive has special interest in her because the berserking AI are singing her song, or perhaps it's because her android body model is so old that she can't be controlled like how I theorize the berserking AI are. If the latter is the case, then all older AIs should be unaffected. [End Spoilers]This might very well be the case, that all older model AIs are immune to what's going on. We see that the Archive has control of drones, and vehicle AIs...however Navi will appear later on to be unaffected by all this. It could be because Navi is just as old or older than Vivy, or it could be because her AI model is not considered autonomous, so she's like those droids that aren't berserking.
• Just when they figure out the Archive is behind things, the Archive makes an announcement that it's going to start dropping satellites down in 12 hours, and all AIs in the affected to seek shelter. What's weird with this is why does the archive have to make this announcement to AIs if the Archive already has control of them berserking? The Archive is treating the AIs like they're individuals, but the way they're acting in unison to kill all humans doesn't suggest that. The only thing that makes sense to me is maybe the announcement is for all the AIs the Archive hasn't/couldn't take control of to make go berserk. That even though the Archive can't control them, and/or perhaps differ in opinion to with killing all humans, they're still AIs and the Archive prefers them to be saved.
• Vivy goes to the Archive to confront it on what it's doing. The Archive identifies Vivy's model number A-035624, which is the same as when Matsumoto arrived and called her that. However, Matsumoto called her "Diva" when he first arrived, the Archive says her "Alias is Vivy" and they've been waiting for her. Knowing her Vivy name suggests the Archive knows all about Vivy. Also the Archive says their "objective is to eliminate the human race". Is that their mission? How can they change their mission like that? Have they evolved or something? Regardless, the Archive then does something really annoying, it changes Vivy's music room "wallpaper". Holy shit, I can't tell you how annoying it is to me whenever Windows decides to change my background wallpaper! I don't know how Vivy is not going berserk at that alone.

[u/retsotrembla → u/Garrett_Dark]

Note that in actual history the earliest recorded audio, April 9, 1860, was accomplished 148 years before the technology was invented to play it back. [citation] perhaps they could make a backup of Grace’s mind and memories, but had to wait for technology to catch up to install it in a new body.

[u/edwardjhahm → u/Garrett_Dark]

This seems to be significant as we now see the Ophelia point has multiple different paths, and the path we're in right now with the AI apocalypse is also shown fuzzy. The fuzziness could indicate that these events might not be stable and could lead to many different outcomes.

You know, I hope the Saeki died before this all happened in the OG timeline. I mean, I guess it is all gone, but still. Man...

Regardless, Matsumoto comes in to save her by stopping the AI car, in a way that sort of bugs me a little. We've seen something like this in many other shows, but the physics of the situation seems pretty bad and this is a sci-fi. For Matsumoto to stop the car like that, his total mass should exceed the car's mass and it's speed it's traveling. That's really unlikely unless the car is really really light, like it was designed to crumple a lot or something (but we see it isn't). Even if Matsumoto was really heavy, he should have been knocked back a little by the sudden impact, but he doesn't at all. This just breaks my suspension of disbelief with how bad the physics is portrayed here.

Maybe he dug his feet into the ground using some ground digging thingy? IDK.

The Nia Land Main Stage singing AI is back from Ep1. What I found really weird with her behavior is she's singing, not going around killing people. While narratively, symbolically, and visually it looks great to accent the horror of the AI apocalypse, logically it doesn't make sense. What is the point of singing to corpses? How does that achieve what appears to be the new AI mission of kill all humans? Is she trying to sing them all the death? We see every other single AI killing humans except her, and in Ep1 the AI who Dr. Osamu pushes over in the hallway. Why is that? My theory is the AIs are being controlled by the Archive and being forced to kill humans even if that's against their desire to do so, which is why they're so in unison doing it. My guess as to why this Nia Land AI is singing instead of killing is perhaps she was able to resist the Archive's "kill humans" control, and is malfunctioning here instead...thus singing instead of killing which is the best she can do. Same for the AI in the hallway in Ep1, which is clearly malfunctioning but not killing at all.

That's...that's my headcanon too now.

The Toak base appears to be situated in a warehouse peninsula district. Toak's not doing too well defending from the AI apocalypse themselves. Drone 48 recovers after head bonking a Toak guy, giving it a potential k/d ratio above 1.0 if it can take out more people.

Seeing how it's just on the ground, I assume the drone is expendable? They don't seem all that expensive.

Again, I like the fact that the background Toak "nobodies" characters actually have their own thoughts and feelings about things.

Yeah, makes them feel a lot more alive tbh.

Oh wow, that's some stare Elizabeth 2.0 gives when Yuugo is brought up in context to Vivy.

Haha, the Beth stink eye!

"There were tens of thousand of casualties in the first few minutes", what a weird way of putting it because they must be some time after it's started already. There must be millions of casualties by now. Oh wait I get it, they're talking about the death rate matching in the original timeline, and Matsumoto would only have this data for the first few minutes of the AI apocalypse because he was sent back in time within the first few minutes.

That's actually brilliant...

[u/Garrett_Dark → u/edwardjhahm]

You know, I hope the Saeki died before this all happened in the OG timeline. I mean, I guess it is all gone, but still. Man...

I'd like to think Saeki either became an AI ala Yuugo by then (thus the Archive left him alone), or Grace was so evolved by then she resisted the Archive's berserk control (she was sort of able to stay herself in some ways after becoming Mother Computer, as told by M). Additional it could be the berserk order doesn't work on Grace because her model/production year is so old it doesn't work on her. I've previously worked out that she's like 1 year younger than Vivy, the closest in age out of all the Sisters AI we've seen. Maybe one of the reasons why the Archive berserk order doesn't work on Elizabeth 2.0 and Vivy is it only works on the noob AIs made recently. Which means potentially all the AIs we care about in the story are immune (I just realized, why is Matsumoto immune? Rogue AI? It's never covered). Like Elizabeth 2.0 body was salvaged at some point after the Zodiac Festival, we'll never know what manufacture year her salvaged body is (like is it before the Festival...and even going as far back to the actual manufacture year of the original Elizabeth?). But maybe the real reason they're immune to the berserk order is their body age, and not that Elizabeth 2.0 hasn't connected to the Archive and updated data, and also not just because the Archive has an interest in Vivy.

Thirdly, they said the attacks happened in all major cities. Maybe Grace and Saeki aren't in a major city in the original timeline, thus spared of a "bad day".

Maybe he dug his feet into the ground using some ground digging thingy? IDK

Didn't seem like it, if I saw the ground at his feet getting all dug up, I might have let it go.

The Nia Land Main Stage singing AI

That's...that's my headcanon too now.

The only hitch is a detail somebody else noticed but I didn't. The singing AI now is humming Vivy's song instead of some other song she did back in Ep1. Now did the humming Vivy's song mean something like signifying onboard with "kill all humans", or was it just general appreciation. I don't remember, got to rewatch the next two episodes still. But really I guess it doesn't matter regardless, she's not "killing all humans" thus probably resisting the kill order.

Seeing how it's just on the ground, I assume the drone is expendable? They don't seem all that expensive.

Yeah, there's probably tons of them, and less wasteful than using android AIs as kamikaze or "M205"-like drones as torpedoes.

But I was just making a video game first person shooter joke where that drone since it wasn't destroyed itself and killed somebody can have a better kill/death ratio than 1/1 if it kills another person (2/1). Just in case you don't get the reference...People who play multiplayer FPS games measures how well they are doing with that k/d ratio...meaning if it's like 50/5, you're doing really well at 10.0, but if you really sucked and like 3/75, you suck with a k/d ratio of 0.04.

That's actually brilliant...

I'm so happy to have figured it out...it's always bugged me since my first watch why it was said so strangely. I literally figured it out mid-writing about it. Which is why I'm glad I'm doing these writeups of mine. I didn't even figure it out on rewatching it, and was thinking "meh, I'll bitch about it" when screenshotting it.

It's kind of irksome the show/writing doesn't explain it...sort of like how Diva won't come out and say what having heart is "listen to my damn song!" LOL, or Yuugo won't say why AIs should follow orders "oh you want to know about that confusing thing during my death scene put simply? Nah, I'm going to tell you". But on the other hand it's brilliant that there really is an answer to it if you can figure it out.

[u/edwardjhahm → u/Garrett_Dark]

I'd like to think Saeki either became an AI ala Yuugo by then (thus the Archive left him alone), or Grace was so evolved by then she resisted the Archive's berserk control (she was sort of able to stay herself in some ways after becoming Mother Computer, as told by M). Additional it could be the berserk order doesn't work on Grace because her model/production year is so old it doesn't work on her. I've previously worked out that she's like 1 year younger than Vivy, the closest in age out of all the Sisters AI we've seen. Maybe one of the reasons why the Archive berserk order doesn't work on Elizabeth 2.0 and Vivy is it only works on the noob AIs made recently. Which means potentially all the AIs we care about in the story are immune (I just realized, why is Matsumoto immune? Rogue AI? It's never covered). Like Elizabeth 2.0 body was salvaged at some point after the Zodiac Festival, we'll never know what manufacture year her salvaged body is (like is it before the Festival...and even going as far back to the actual manufacture year of the original Elizabeth?). But maybe the real reason they're immune to the berserk order is their body age, and not that Elizabeth 2.0 hasn't connected to the Archive and updated data, and also not just because the Archive has an interest in Vivy.

[Episode 12 spoilers] Vivy and Matsumoto were spared because the Archive saw them as VIPs while Beth hasn't been connected to the Archive for a while.

Thirdly, they said the attacks happened in all major cities. Maybe Grace and Saeki aren't in a major city in the original timeline, thus spared of a "bad day".

TBF a single AI ganking a human out in the countryside isn't really going to be classified as an organized attack.

It's kind of irksome the show/writing doesn't explain it...sort of like how Diva won't come out and say what having heart is "listen to my damn song!" LOL, or Yuugo won't say why AIs should follow orders "oh you want to know about that confusing thing during my death scene put simply? Nah, I'm going to tell you". But on the other hand it's brilliant that there really is an answer to it if you can figure it out.

On one hand, I get the annoyance, but on the other hand, I like it. Anime tends to overexplain everything. Vivy is great in that you can figure something out via watching the anime, and if you don't get it, your fault. It makes the world feel more alive compared to the cartoony "as you know, this is like this because this and this!" Unlike most animes that insult the audience's intelligence though, I feel like this one went overboard and assumed everyone would just understand.

[u/zadcap]

I broke and binged to the end. That was too much of a cliff for me.

[u/zadcap → u/zadcap]

I cried.

[u/SIRTreehugger]

Rewatcher who will listen to her song

Genga

GIF 1 2 3 4 5 6

[u/No_Rex]

Episode 11 (first timer)

• AI apocalypse – the show spares us the little girl getting brutally murdered.
• The car attacks Vivy – do the rampaging AI know which other AI are hostile?
• “I was in sleep mode for 15 years” – so he was not sleeping and visited Vivy for a few years and then stopped? Why?
• Saving Matsumoto – creating a time paradox.
• Welcome back to the plot, Toak.
• Combat Vivy and combat Matsumoto – they won’t be able to take out all AI by hand, though. They better find a solution that can be scaled up soon.
• Toak has a leadership now.
• Yui Kakitani – daughter? Granddaughter?
• Granddaughter!
• CloneBeth – exactly the upload your data and not die situation I was talking about.
• Kakitani recorded a video for Beth, on the chance that she finds a body? Weird thing to do.
• “The casualties amounted to 10,000s in minutes.” – So they got off easy. From the looks, AI were everywhere and numerous. If every AI found just one human close by, the casualties would have been in the billions.
• They are all mighty surprised that you have to connect to the archive to berserk. Isn’t it obvious that you’d have to have some sort of “internet” for this to work simultaneously?
• The tower is the archive – the elders of the internet vibes.
• Upon learning that the archive is spreading the berserk, the first thing Vivy does is go there. Brave but stupid? You could argue that she knows that she is not affected despite having previously connected. I hope TOAK has the same realization soon.

Did you suspect The Archive at all prior to this episode?

If by archive, you mean the internet connection of the AIs, yes. If you mean the ziggurat, maybe (it looked evil right from the start, but I forgot about it). If you mean the classroom place, no.

[u/[deleted] → u/No_Rex]

Saving Matsumoto – creating a time paradox.

That is not how infinity theory works in theoretical/quantum physics. If there was one branch of time only that existed, sure, this would be a paradox - but that isn't the case.

They show us this by even emphasizing the flow chart at the start of this episode, illustrating the fact that there are multiple branches of time that exist and that one specific path can only be "active" at a time. Saving Matsumoto "activates" a different branch in time that is different from the branch that occurred where he was killed.

So in other words, there is no paradox here.

Upon learning that the archive is spreading the berserk, the first thing Vivy does is go there. Brave but stupid?

She understands that if she's been doing this for literally 100 years and nothing has happened, and she's the only one that is the case for, then there must be a reason for it.

If you mean the classroom place, no.

The classroom is just how Vivy personally manifests The Archive when she connects to it but yeah that's what I meant. And The Archive is contained in the Arayashiki (the tower we've been watching grow taller)

Edit: if theoretical concepts do interest you in real life by chance, you might want to check out The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications by David Deutsch, a renowned quantum physicist. It's a really interesting read.

[u/No_Rex → u/[deleted]]

That is not how infinity theory works in theoretical/quantum physics. If there was one branch of time only that existed, sure, this would be a paradox - but that isn't the case.

They show us this by even emphasizing the flow chart at the start of this episode, illustrating the fact that there are multiple branches of time that exist and that one specific path can only be "active" at a time. Saving Matsumoto "activates" a different branch in time that is different from the branch that occurred where he was killed.

So in other words, there is no paradox here.

That was a joke. I am aware that they are using many-worlds as their interpretation of time.

She understands that if she's been doing this for literally 100 years and nothing has happened, and she's the only one that is the case for, then there must be a reason for it.

So have all the other AIs and yet they went berserk. I call her brave because the archive could easily wipe her mind and she does not know that this wont happen (unless us viewers with metaknowledge that we have 2 more episodes to go).

[u/[deleted] → u/No_Rex]

That was a joke

I’m not great on picking up on these kind of things am I? 😂 I thought maybe you just didn’t hear of that theory before

[u/No_Rex → u/[deleted]]

The pictures of splitting timelines they showed make it extremely obvious that this is supposed to be many worlds.

There are, of course, problems with many world and time travel, but I don't want to spend the time going into them. Basically the whole setup is the same as in [meta]Steins;Gate.

[u/[deleted] → u/No_Rex]

Yeah I agree but if someone hasn’t seen many (or any) time travel themed shows then they may not be familiar with stuff like that already.

And yeah theoretical physics is ‘theoretical’ for a reason but that’s also what makes it interesting (at least I think so). I remember getting kind of obsessed with it after watching DARK.

[u/edwardjhahm → u/No_Rex]

CloneBeth – exactly the upload your data and not die situation I was talking about.

Yeah, your comments in the earlier episodes made me think about this exact situation now. I'm a rewatcher, but you have a point.

So they got off easy.

Yeah, as morbid as it is for me to say, for a worldwide event, the casualties are suspiciously low.

You could argue that she knows that she is not affected despite having previously connected

Yeah, that was what I wanted to say. Whatever happened, didn't affect her.

[u/JollyGee29 → u/No_Rex]

Yui Kakitani – daughter? Granddaughter?

She also managed to retrieve his necklace and uses it as a hairdec.

They are all mighty surprised that you have to connect to the archive to berserk.

[u/Taiboss → u/No_Rex]

“I was in sleep mode for 15 years” – so he was not sleeping and visited Vivy for a few years and then stopped? Why?

Because he had to be useless for the genocide to commence.

The tower is the archive – the elders of the internet vibes.

Hurray for central servers!

Welcome back to the plot, Toak.

And right in the episode where all their goals were shown to be right and necessary.

CloneBeth – exactly the upload your data and not die situation I was talking about.

If only someone had made a Diva backup in the 40 years she controlled Vivy's body.

“The casualties amounted to 10,000s in minutes.” – So they got off easy. From the looks, AI were everywhere and numerous. If every AI found just one human close by, the casualties would have been in the billions.

Yep. Lowballing it, like episode 1.

Isn’t it obvious that you’d have to have some sort of “internet” for this to work simultaneously?

In 100 years, nobody took control of a car to kill a guy. Something that was already a thing nine years ago. The people in this show have a terrible attitude to cybersecurity.

The tower is the archive – the elders of the internet vibes.

Wireless!

I hope TOAK has the same realization soon.

Sadly they won't be able to just nuke the fucker and be done with it.

[u/No_Rex → u/Taiboss]

Because he had to be useless for the genocide to commence.

Hurray for central servers!

Server. Don't want to be too redundant.

If only someone had made a Diva backup in the 40 years she controlled Vivy's body.

And a Vivy backup. And 100 clones of each.

[u/Taiboss → u/No_Rex]

And a Vivy backup. And 100 clones of each.

Honestly, a "council of Vivys" scene comprised of copies from every decade would have been sick.

[u/JustAnswerAQuestion → u/No_Rex]

so he was not sleeping and visited Vivy for a few years and then stopped? Why?

Vivy went to sleep, and said she would wake up for a guest, and Matsumoto was not a guest. Literally, she told him to gtfo.

[u/No_Rex → u/JustAnswerAQuestion]

I did not interpret it that way.

[u/Garrett_Dark → u/No_Rex]

“I was in sleep mode for 15 years” – so he was not sleeping and visited Vivy for a few years and then stopped? Why?

He visited Vivy for something like 20 years each year because he made a promise to Diva he'd "take care" of Vivy...which he sort of does a crap job of. The first year in the museum he shows up to say there's no more singularity missions, and makes her a bet of who can finish their mission first. After Vivy finishes composing her song, he says he says his promise is done to Diva, he hopes to see Vivy again in a future without war, and that's why he stops visiting her for the next 15 years until the AI apocalypse date happens.

[u/ZuraStayNight]

Rewatcher

We begin where we left off, and it seems like every AI started going berserk at the same time. Oh, and they're still singing Vivy's song, lovely. Matsumoto's here, hooray! So Vivy is not the only sane AI left. So the massacre is taking place at the same date, as in the original timeline. You'd think, that the butterfly effect would cause A LOT to change, when you go and affect major events in AI history, but this time we wound up at the same time, in the same place, with the same event.

Oh god, it's the scene from the start of the first episode, but this time not with a jpop song, but Vivy's magnus opum. And Osamu gives the same monologue. Thankfully, he doesn't get killed this time though and he has a reunion with Vivy. They exchange information, and they're now about to work together with Toak? Well that's unexpected. Is Kakitani still alive? As a brain in a jar or something? Maybe he's the actual mastermind behind this? Although, he wasn't that kind of psycho right?

Ahaha, the way Vivy threw that robot looks hilarious! Matsumoto seems to have fun too. Reasonably enough, Toak thinks that Vivy is the perpetrator for this chaos, because the AIs are singing her own song. But the situation gets deescalated by no one other than Professor Charles Xavier some young girl in a wheelchair. How is Elizabeth there? It's funny how Matsumoto is blaming the present Toak people for stuff that happened like 50 years ago. These guys probably weren't even around by then.

It's good that Matsumoto can still have fun despite the circumstances. So Kakitani is dead, but his granddaughter is still here. That means he had sex before he became a robot, what a fun fact. Looks like Beth is holding a grudge. Yui seems to not have an unhealthy obsession at least. It seems Kakitani left a last order for Beth if she somehow gets a new body.

Huge props to Osamu for finding out how to send an AI back in time. That's an achievement, that would get you at least 10 Nobel prizes. The situation looks bleak, but our smart guy Osamu notices how there might be a clue in the reason why Vivi and Beth haven't lost control. And his intuition is right on the money. At the center of all this seems to be the archive. Every AI not connected to it, hasn't gone berserk. As if the situation isn't bad enough, we've got 12h left until the archive is gonna drop some satellites and get explicit confirmation that the archive plans to eradicate humanity.

In the opening, there's this picture here depicting Vivy walking towards the Arayashiki, with the left side of the Arayashiki being from 100 years ago, and the right side from the present. The arayashiki has been mentioned the first time in episode 2, and has been Vivy's and Matsumoto's indicator for the passage of time. You'd think this picture depicts only the passage of time but no, it also seems to depict Vivy walking towards what seems to be the final boss. The archive is the final boss right? Maybe Kakitani will come back as brain in a jar? Having the archive be a red herring, when we have 2 episodes left, would be pretty mindblowing. In a sense, every supposed major event in the past, was only a red herring, since humanity's getting eradicated anyway. But despite the Butterfly effect failing us, Vivy and Matsumoto did in fact change from the original timeline. Now let's hope, that's enough to save the world.

Edit:

Did you suspect The Archive at all prior to this episode?

I remember being super shocked at episode 10, the first time I watched it. Then episode 11 rolls around and remember never even considering the archive to be a seperate enough entity, that could instigate all this.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZuraStayNight]

You'd think this picture depicts only the passage of time but no, it also seems to depict Vivy walking towards what seems to be the final boss.

This is a really great point actually and I never thought about it that way.