Good morrow!

Today, we will be taking a look at a show that tackles a specific future: AI and the destruction of humanity.  Did you guess right? It’s “Vivy ~Fluorite Eye’s Song~, a series that has one hell of an opening scene, and even more hell of a story!

A little look at the plot synopsis, created from my own mind:

The story follows the beginning of artificial intelligence’s rise to commonplace, as AI begins to grow in both popularity and usefulness.  Specifically, a musical-type AI named “Diva” struggles to gain an audience, though she is “encouraged” by a human child to aim for the big stage.  Her coding is suddenly intruded on by another AI named “Matsumoto”, that tells her she is the key to preventing an AI apocalypse.  As she tries to ignore him / get rid of him, she becomes more aware of how true his mission is – for better and for worse.

And for once, I will ACTUALLY be spoiling some major points, so SPOILERS AHEAD!

Good God, this anime doesn’t play around! Right off the bat, we’re introduced to a vision of the endgame: AI running around kindly decimating the population, by bashing heads in, stabbing, shooting, and slicing.

If you haven’t guessed by now, this anime is a little more than emotionally intense.  It’s gritty, violent, and shocking at times, so please be aware that you probably shouldn’t watch this with children in the room.  Not to say teens can’t watch it, but use discretion.

Now then, how do I feel about this series?

Plot / Story: 9.5/10

As I just said, this show starts with the violent destruction of Humanity by the AI collective, and we get some hints as to what exactly is going on in the end from this flash-forward.  As the first scene ends, we get two important pieces of information: the scientist Matsumoto (who is named later in the first episode) sending a program to the past to change the future, and a quick shot of the only non-responsive AI of this timeline, a famous AI named Vivy on its plaque.

We then push into the main story, where Vivy is performing on a small stage with a minimal audience.  She gets hit with the program from the future (which also goes by “Matsumoto”) and tries rather unsuccessfully to recruit Vivy into saving humanity, until Matsumoto correctly guesses that an AI supporter is being targeted and forces her to act to save him.

The four or five arcs provided are pretty straightforward, and for a 13-episode series, it resolves each arc without feeling rushed.  The big twist at the end is actually pretty good, and I think that this one is better experienced than explained.  There is one point that really hit hard for me in the AI Island arc, where the plot-centric character for the section has a very clear suicide in front of Vivy, causing a huge shift in the mission Matsumoto is trying to achieve.

As a lover of AI apocalypse stories, this one was incredibly well-done, accompanied by great easter eggs and interesting story devices.

Character Development: 9.0/10

As with many one-cour series, the character development for both main characters (Vivy and AI Matsumoto) has to be done alongside the storybuilding, and I think Fluorite Eye’s Song does it extremely well.

Vivy has clear moments of breaking her programming, and each time compounds the next.  The suicide of the scientist from the Island arc creates a shift in her character starting in the next episode, which plays heavily into how Vivy / Diva changes the future (yes, the naming is important).

Matsumoto, on the other hand, is powerfully driven to save the future, sometimes going so far as to push Vivy away to try and fix it himself.  He has moments that he seems entirely too pushy, and conversely, moments where he’s clearly hiding his hand to see if Vivy actually has what it takes to do the mission.  Between Diva’s birth and Vivy’s reawakening, he struggles to trust the sort-of-friend that he’s made, but by the last chapter, they have a really good rapport and connection that finishes the story really well.

Art / Acting / Music: 10.0/10

Since the main character is a musically-inclined individual, you’d expect the series to have great musical direction… AND IT DOES!

We’ll go in order, though: first, the art.  As an anime-original series birthed in 2021, the design of the characters and environments are expected to be somewhat high-quality.  Each character and environment seems to be drawn with great care, and there are specific points in each episode where the art quality jumps up for a really good screencap… which I forgot to do while I was watching.

I feel like the acting wasn’t a primary concern for the series, in contrast – there were no poor performances by any characters that I could tell, but to me, that’s part of the problem, at least in the first few episodes.  The first section of the story focuses on AI with very restrictive rules, so I think that at least some of them should have more monotonous voices, though I can understand why they didn’t do that.

Now, the music: I LOVE THE WHOLE SOUNDTRACK FOR THIS SERIES!  Not only are the opening and ending themes bangers, the musical direction done by Satoru Kousaki for the inserts and BGM was incredibly well-done – I shouldn’t be surprised, because he also did the direction for Monogatari Series, Beastars and The Apothecary Diaries.  I can’t stress enough how high I want to rate just the music, but it’s probably below Frieren and above Monogatari.

Rewatch Value: 9.5/10

While the final plot twists of the show can’t be unseen, I think I’d watch this series a couple of times in a row before getting sick of it.  It has mystery, suspense, action, science, and like I said, an awesome soundtrack.  I have to admit, some of the scenes hurt my heart still, but the series is impressively good, since anime originals can be very hit or miss for me.

Overall Rating: 9.5/10

I really like this series, and when I thought to review it, I had only seen up through episode 4.  I think that many series like this burn out near the end of the season, lacking good conclusions or building up to an end that (unfortunately) never gets made.  I highly recommend Vivy ~Fluorite Eye’s Song~ to anyone looking for an emotional journey that doesn’t have the two-to-ten cours of buildup.

Vivy is available currently on Crunchyroll in the US, though it may be on HiDive in other countries.

Total Score: 47.5/50

Grade: A