AI no Idenshi Episode 3 Discussion

phantomfandom said:
Scene in the beginning, is it just a dream? Or is it foretell the conclusion of this event? Does this sub-story even fully finished yet?

Anyway, this episode clearly inspired by Spielberg's film Artificial Intelligence, the boy and the teddy bear robot, even the male prostitute robot has the same name "Joe".

In the future the doctor maybe required both medical degree and engineer degree to treat patients.

Stink_Bug said:
I was confused at first and thought the animators made a mistake giving the lady rectangular pupils, but that really hammered home the point that in this universe humanoids are considered human for all intents and purposes. Apparently "robots" are allowed to have circular pupils though.

Fortress_Maximus said:
did she kill and bury Joe's previous owner?

Dickegrobe said:
If only the characters weren't mostly comically simple-minded and over-acting NPCs (and the art/animation wouldn't suck so bad at portraying emotions), this could be really decent.

ppalganppanda said:
This episode clearly shows that humanoids are, in a way, separate species and several points were in all three episodes to distinguish them from humans and robots. We still don't know why or how they were created but at this stage I highly doubt they were merely designed to 'help humans' or as 'tools'. There had to be some kind of a technological Big Bang moment that resulted (whether purposefully or not) in 10% of the population to be humanoids.

Why Big Bang moment? Because having humanoids AND robots refutes the 'AI evolution' theory - if humanoids advanced from robots, why and who applied limiters to make them human-like when it comes to emotions, build, learning and ageing. Clearly a hindrance in advancement. And why didn't they 'upgrade' the old robots to be more like them? From a machine point of view it would be logical as upgraded models would be better and more efficient.

WatchTillTandava said:
This is pretty easily the best series of the season for me (maybe only Shiguang Dailiren season 2 comes close) and one of the best of the year thus far (although granted I only have seen five other series from 2023 from before this season, but that's because no others appealed to me; at least none that I knew about the existence of, and I looked).

I love how down to Earth and sort of matter of fact, relaxed, methodical in tone like some aimless Slice of Life it is despite exploring existential ideas and topics. And how it does indeed jump around or branch off to spend time with and relay these kind of episodic stories, but it always returns to the main core of the doctor and his assistant and gives their perspective on events or shows how they were affected by them. I appreciate also how it does have very enveloping, poignant drama (and I saw it's listed as a drama on MAL), but the point is not necessarily to stay and wallow in the grief and sadness of any one or few characters, story, and situation for too long because it's making a broader overarching point.

Also how there is sometimes a humorous tone or comic relief (albeit sometimes a mild/dry/subtle humor) and even hints of romance, but doesn't go too far down those rabbit holes either. It doesn't necessarily try to be any one thing too extremely. It's well-balanced as a show that's essentially about exploring modern problems of daily living which technology can't magically resolve should be. Life is full of sweet, funny, scary, sad, etc. moments so it should do and showcase a little of everything to best encapsulate that.

I'm glad I randomly read about this series' existence for the first time about a week after it started airing in a thread topic on the Anime Discussion sub-forum about what seasonals people were watching and their opinions on them. I've felt like there's a serious lack of anime like this the past few years. It's not flashy, gimmicky, nor pandering in any way. It's plain in presentation, subdued, and probably will be boring to maybe a larger than average number of people as a result.

By the way, I think this society will end up fraught with at least some level of problems if they've gone about creating an entirely purposely devoid of consciousness (or in other words, "heart" or "soul") class of robots separate from humanoids. They don't have consciousness, or, at least are widely considered, believed, and understood not to have consciousness and are manufactured to serve as machines like a blender, electric shaver, or DVD player. Yet the ones who are built like humanoids and humans (such as the boyfriend model Joe, for example - obviously not ones designed like toys like the teddy bear) resemble humanoids so exactly as humanoids themselves do so resemble humans. Yet the general population is told to treat them like machines, this entity which mirrors humanoids who have been afforded societal rights and humans themselves.

It means that it will probably blur the line too much in a lot of instances and make it easier to inappropriately (from the perspective of the government and corporations who are presumably against this behavior) anthropormophize them or, conversely, to dehumanize humanoids who could be lumped in with them by association at a time when we should be in or relatively close to a transitional period where the state is trying to integrate humanoids properly into human society. 

Fantasylord2205 said:
Damn
This anime will be a reference in future as Serial Experiments lains
Or will be fiction like Dune or Star Wars

ONLY IN A FEW YEARS WE'LL NOTICE STAY TUNE

Tuliharja said:
Soo, the sub-plots "nightmare" never gets solved?  I kind of hope that isn't the case, because are we (viewers) just supposed to believe it was a simple nightmare to throw us off from the emotional rollercoaster that happened in this episode?