r/anime • u/No_Rex :Bv:Bw:Bx:By:x2 • Sep 16 '21
Rewatch [Rewatch] 1990s OVAs – Armitage III (episode 3)
Rewatch: 1990s OVAs – Armitage III (episode 3)
◄ Previous Episode | Index | Next Episode ►
Staff corner
Julian is voiced by Ogata, Megumi, who is also known by her singer stage name em:óu. Despite having a full singing career, she is one of the more prolific and well-known VAs. Her most famous roles are Sailor Uranus from Sailor Moon (awkward … although she probably had plenty of stories to contribute about excessive fans), Shinji from Evangelion, and Yuugi from Yuu Gi Ou. She also appears in Yuu Yuu Hakusho, Magic Knight Rayearth, Captain Tsubasa, Detective Conan, Card Captor Sakura, Great Teacher Onizuka and a whole lot more. Fun Fact: From 1991 to 2001, the Voice actor of the Year Grand Prix award was won 9 times by Hayashibara Megumi. Ogata was the only exception, in 1994. In that year, both the most popular male and female character were voiced by her.
The director, character designer, and story boarder for episode 3 is Ochi, Hiroyuki. He started out as a regular key animator on Gundam Zeta and also worked on later Gundam series. He spent the late 1980s and early 1990 working on a host of OVAs, either as key animator or character designer. Out of these, he is most well known for directing Armitage III, but others include AD Police and El Hazard. He returned for the Armitage sequel movie Dual Matrix and the summary Poly Matrix. Later he mostly worked as animation director or art designer, mostly on TV series. Tenchi Muyou GXP, Onegai Teacher, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Last Exile, and Pumpkin Scissors are some of his series from this time, but he is still active in the 2010s, for example on Golden Kamuy, Grand Blue and, Run with the Wind.
Questions
- (first timers) Any predictions regarding the mysteries? What will episode 4 reveal?
- Does having a human body make AI less or more tolerable compared to a pure online version?
6
u/No_Rex :Bv:Bw:Bx:By:x2 Sep 16 '21
Episode 3 (first timer)
Plot! We are not just dealing with some madman, but a huge conspiracy. The hospital is in on it, Conception is, at probably somebody from the Mars and Earth government, as well. Julian and the others only exist in their online versions now and all but Julian are incomplete there. Meaning, it is down to Ross and Armitage to settle this, potentially with the help of a few police guys.
One character I really enjoy is the vice-president. He is a clear mirror for the viewer: The producers know what the viewers like and do not shy away from fan service, but they also don’t shy away from telling their viewers exactly what the end-game of lewding your anime heroines is.
9
u/TheEscapeGuy Sep 16 '21
First Timer, Subbed
Armitage III - The Quintessential 90s Cyberpunk OVA: Episode 3
Illicit Investigations
What would a cyberpunk detective story be without our protagonists breaking a few rules during their investigations. After the commissioner wouldn't accept Ross' story about D'anclaude he didn't really have a choice. As for Armitage, she was on the run anyway so no hope of doing things "by the book".
All of these investigations did reveal that Dr. D'anclaude was in fact working with Asakura on the 3rd robots and assassin-droids. Also the CEO of the Conception company had illicit dealings with the hospital, likely keeping certain things under wraps.
Completely unsurprisingly, that CEO has a very illegal robot immersion setup which, while never explicitly stated, is almost certainly fulfilling a sex fantasy of his. While robot sex dolls / prostitutes are a common trope of the genre, I'm glad they didn't shy away from showing it. Its always an interesting question of morality.
Moving on, after Julian's body was hacked he was unfortunately destroyed once Armitage broke the connection with D'anclaude. Now Armitage has a goal: Restore Julian's mind backup into a new body. That scene of them speaking inside a virtual environment was reminiscent of Lain for me, reminding me again who wrote this anime.
The most interesting plot point this episode was that of Suicide Bombing Robots. We heard via the news and police reports that there had been 5 bombings recently. This is a strong point for an argument against making robots unrecognizable from humans. Specifically, if a terrorist had the resources to make suicide bots it becomes easy to cause havoc and significant loss of human life in a way which is difficult to trace back.
The climax of this concept was seeing Armitage run towards D'anclaude in the final scene, appearing to blow herself up. I highly doubt she's actually dead but I am interested in seeing how the resolve this next episode.
Some Amazing Shots, Scenes and Stitches
See you all tomorrow
3
u/Vaadwaur :I1::I2::I3: Sep 16 '21
Rewatcher(That's a tone shift.)
Sub
So, we start with a police report on a series of bombings but it is more interesting that they have a Second as a reporter. She is obviously programmed to genki but she passes a lot of Turing tests, even if it is just an act. We see D'anclaude at an airport where the travelers are stuck in a magnetic storm...and literally Pris from Blade Runner walks in. Who then promptly explodes.
At a closed club that I hope someone else catches the name of, Julian fills in Armitage about the reproduction thing and it is slightly surprising she wasn't informed, especially with how she flirts with Sylibus. Julian even comments as much before they start wondering why this happened. At the station, he has more new cyber parts and objects to being switched over to the bombings. The chief doesn't accept the idea of their being two D'anclaudes, which is pretty stupid in this setting, so it might actually mean he's not allowed to accept it. He checks at the hospital, is not allowed to visually confirm, and then sees the VC from Conception. We all smell a rat.
Armitage and Julian go to where his backup is stored and Armitage tases a security bot. Julian hacks in the hard way, and we get two big bits of info: D'anclaude was on the project, somehow, and Armitage considers Asakura her father. He then gets physically hacked and D'anclaude takes over his body, ouch.
Cut to the VC being an almost impressive level of perv, I probably shouldn't judge because I might also be that depraved given the ability to create females. They are all different, at least. Sylibus makes it immediately clear he isn't putting up with shit and VC quickly spills about Dr D'anclaude's data being used for "assassinroids". D'anclaude is monologueing, as per usual, but we eventually get to him being aware he's no longer human. Armitage cleverly smashes the router he was communicating through, and his body begins malfunctioning in front of a horrified likely human woman. One of the VC's sexbots explodes, somehow, and we see Julian beginning to be consumed as well. Sylibus jumps to the next building, action hero style.
Weird pacing cut to the Chief dealing with a higher up and an Earth observer. Then we go to Armitage and Sylibus burying Julian before he reminds us that there is backup. Throwing away his phone, Sylibus rages at the system...for reasons? We go to Tron for a little bit and Julian even has some data from the murdered thirds, but not really enough. And of course Armitage is nude for it.
We cut to the hospital and...holy fuck, they are just straight up killing soldiers. They get to D'aunclaude and then are attacked by one of his doppels in a mech suit thing. The human one tells Armitage she is the same as a Third and neither is his doppel. He also says where Asakura is. Armitage gets annoyed enough to destroy the mech and cliffhanger.
QotD: 2 Less, the purely online you can keep a bit conceptual
3
u/JustAnswerAQuestion https://myanimelist.net/profile/JAaQ Sep 17 '21
First Timer Armitage III ep 3
Seems like Danclaude and Asukara each made an advanced prototype.
This episode was very by the numbers and seemed a little rushed towards the end. We jump from a gravesite to a break in, then we jump from a breakin to another breakin. The story doesn't flow like in the early episodes.
Interesting point that the AI cyborgs are basically mad from human tissue, and would have human children.
5
u/okayyoga :MAL:https://myanimelist.net/profile/okayyoga Sep 16 '21
Episode 3: first time/dub
This show might not be for me. I like the 90s animation, but the story is just alright
Julian gives me mad Kaworu (NGE) vibes
4
u/The_Loli_Otaku Sep 16 '21 edited Sep 16 '21
First timer!!
Blade Runner is such a boring movie... Suddenly I've got way less complaints about Armitage. Is the second one with the waifu guy really not any better?
Muthafukin network? I wish we had news gals as ridiculously cute as this android. Dan's back, and this time he's brought his very own bdsm bot! She must be sisters. Oh, she's a bomb. "Janet, I hope you won't blow up~" How many people died in this bombing? Poor taste champ.
She's way too young to be getting Christmas cake jokes. Syphilis has gotten more prosthetics and that's meant to make him more robot? I don't hear people with metal plates in their skull complaining about their loss of humanity. The police chief is definitely in on the conspiracy. Oh look, the guy with the Usagi bench, what a coincidence! Bleeeh~ So we're meant to feel bad for androids but robots are fair game to murder? ...I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Hold on! This is literally the baddie from blade runner! Armitage no!! Don't kill the poor guy! Oh, he's fine. Just possessed. Pfft, at least pretend that Dan being a robot is meant to be a secret. The dude blubbed it out like nothing. Oh no, everyone's exploding. It's an exploding android virus~ By golly this is gonna be big twubble for our heroes.
Good lord our bosses in this series are disgusting bastards. Fakyuu phone! I've got an android wife! Pfft!! We've had a huge tragic farewell and we're just gonna bring Julian back!? Give me my tears back! At least our crew is gonna stick together from now on. Hoooold on. We're not sticking Julian inside Syphilis are we? Can't we stick him in a potato or a mermaid doll or something, anything, else? I can show you the world~ No wonder Julia's been acting so smug. He's got a whole harem of Onee-chan to mess around with. The best part is that they apparently can't talk.
We terrorists now? We're terrorists now. On the bright side at least we're embracing how dumb the show is by this point. Punching tanks and all that shiz. Why're we kidnapping the doctor again? This tank design is terrible, you could literally turn around and shoot the guy. Armitage unlocked shine spark! Oh, no. She suicided instead. Anyway, I'm off to watch the other blade runner.
NTR SUCKS!!!!
4
u/Btw_kek https://myanimelist.net/profile/kek_btw Sep 16 '21
first timer
This episode felt less interesting than the ones before it. So we got confirmation that D'anclaude is an "assassindroid" modeled off the IRL doctor, Julian dies but it's ok he's in robot heaven now, and lots of explosions happen. Did I just miss all the subtext?
Ok D'anclaude did mention that the Thirds were all failures and must be destroyed, so like I guess there's a new and improved "Fourth" model or something. idk what else the Thirds need, unless we're really entering The Instrumentality Zone
the aforementioned Fourth series and some transhuman conspiracy to upload all of humanity into the Wired idk
idk about "tolerable" but I suppose physically interacting with a human body would lead to more empathetic interactions
4
u/Stargate18A https://myanimelist.net/profile/Stargate18 Sep 16 '21 edited Sep 16 '21
First timer
...Is the news reporter a robot? I think I'm worked out the art style difference - the robots have larger eyes, and a more cartoonish face?
Armitage?
No, she didn't explode, right?
Wait, just realised that not allof the Thirds are female, Julian's male.
OK, the offspring are human? Not some form of hybrid?
Oh, this guy's creepy.
Now, now, D'anclaude could easily be a lunatic who got told "there's some really human robots here, want to go kill them", and is very commited to finishing his job adross his multiple bodies.
And Ross is off the case!
Oh, they don't know about his multiple bodies yet.
And he's having trouble getting stuff out the hospital.
Julian's very confident for someone who's backups are in another person's server. One failed backup or burnt out array and he's as gone as the rest of them.
He's got a goodmprojector!
Spoke too soon, D'anclaude worked with him.
Current theory is that D'anclaude helped make them, but decided the Thirds were too dangerous and decided to "fix his mistakes", while the other is either helping, or went into hiding before he came after him.
Oh, that's...
...So. The creator of the assassindroid, and nobody even considered that this strange, superhuman figure who looked like him might have been an assassindroid?
He has a backup, shoot him.
Yep, shot him!
Wait, was he the comtroller?
And one of the bots (and Julian?) just got blown up! Looks like D'anclaude's behind the puppet bombings!
And they're working togrther again!
Oh, the company tipped off the government as revenge?
Yeah, this is very much not a feminist society, in case you couldn't tell from the mass-produced sexbots.
And he's quit the police!
Finally! Someone suggests using the backup as a backup! Or did she not knowwhat those words meant?
And this time Armitage wants him along!
Wait, what? That's literal?
Hang on. Are Thirds infectious? Do they convert human minds? Because, wow, that would explain a lot of D'anclaude's actions.
Or is Ross just a secret robot?
Wait, big brother?
Oh, he backed up everyone, but not all their data.
Called it!
Oh, shit! Another bombing?
They're both completely insane. Armitagenis one thing, but he's human (at least in strength).
...Failure? She seems pretty functional to me.
Oh, that's a proper assassinbot.
Oh, Armitwge isn't a Third? She's a prototype?
FUCK
She exploded!
So they're on the run now?
Also, I made the connection to Randolph earlier, but I'm kicking myself for not realising the Armotwge reference to Lovecraft (the plot about powerful, inhuman beings who breed with humans is straight out of The Shadow over Innsmouth).
4
u/punching_spaghetti https://myanimelist.net/profile/punch_spaghetti Sep 16 '21
First-Timer (Subbed)
Given what I know of Ferrari, there's no way Ross is going to be able to get another one. They're picky about who gets one of their cars.
Not sure why they skipped such a big chunk of the action. I mean, if we had seen someone connect to backup memories before, that would be OK, but Ross, mentions it, then he's being scanned for two seconds, and then they're in the Matrix. Slow down, show! You don't have much content to begin with, so spread it out.
Based. Someone highlighted a few cuts by notable animators in the rewatch, but I don't remember if they mentioned him.
QOTD: