Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song's premise is a combination of beloved stories and Hollywood films about sentient robots solving humanity's problems, whether intentionally or coincidentally—Ghost in the Shell, Terminator, Blade Runner, iRobot, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, to name a few. Vivy may not rank among the classics, though it's impressive audiovisuals will inevitably land it a place on "Best Sci-fi Anime" lists. Written by Tappei Nagatsuki, of Re:Zero fame and produced by none other than WIT Studio, it was bound to create ripples throughout the anime community. Doubtlessly, the premiere episode caught fans' attention. It begins with a clichéd cold open. A city full of humanoid robots sing a horrible melody out of tune, plumes of smoke rise above the futuristic architecture, people run through the streets screaming, and ounces of blood cover the pavement. Then it ends—this is the future ahead of our titular heroine, Vivy. One which she is asked to prevent.

50 years in our future, Vivy prepares to sing in front of a small audience. Her stilted performance and hollow singing left the citizens underwhelmed. After all, Vivy is “the first autonomous AI” ever created; Her purpose is to sing for the entertainment of citizens. While preparing for her next song, a robotic stuffed bear, given to her as a gift, suddenly calls out to her. The bear, who introduces himself as Masamoto, was sent to warn her about the future apocalypse. Once she comes to believe him, she is swept into a whirlwind of government conspiracy, a gang of criminals, murderous robots, terrorism, and more.

Masamoto's plan to prevent the apocalypse is known as the Singularity Project. He revisits her throughout the years to stop 'Singularity Points'. These are the significant events that cause the disastrous future, and it's Vivy's responsibility to prevent them from happening. All of this information is explained in a lengthy exposition dialogue during the first episode. "Telling" rather than "Showing" is the frustrating pattern of this show's script. Vivy was chosen because, in the apocalypse, she is the only autonomous AI left uncorrupted. Masamoto reprograms her to have combat abilities during combat, which somehow gives her the power to shield bullets with her bare hands, dodge bullets, and run as fast as a train. If that sounds stupid, well, it kind of is, but the animators make it look badass.

At its core, this is a thriller anime with a splash of music. Vivy's programmed goal is to be a singer, and it shows. Vivy's singing and mannerisms change as time flies by, visualized with brief performances. The song reused the most is the opening, which is fantastic on both visual and audio fronts. When the show focused on her music career, her dreams and passion showed she has a heart: music and an audience her sole motivations. Yet, we don't see it enough. It would be offensive to claim she has "no personality" because it's OK not to present your emotions outwardly. Writing Vivy in such a way detracted from the story it attempted to tell. Whether Vivy accomplishes an outstanding performance or fails to get a crowd, she has very little response. Happiness, pride, or dismay are hard to tell, though we can infer her emotions. Her face is nearly expressionless, her voice is constantly monotone, and she has little to no body language indicating what she's thinking. This is not uncommon for films starring AI characters—after all, Arnold Schwarzenegger only had 17 lines in Terminator. However, he wasn't the main character, and Vivy is. Her subdued personality isn't the problem. It's how she lacks autonomy in the series named after her.

Rather than being a heroine, she was more of an interchangeable pawn being guided through the plot by an obnoxious robot man in her head, rather than a heroine with her own autonomy. The few times she rejects Masamotos orders, there is a glimmer of hope she may regain agency in her own story. Then the moment ends, and the script is thrown back into Masamoto's court. All of their excursions in reshaping history are planned by him. He does everything for her with future robot abilities, no matter how illogical, and Vivy does the fist fighting. Her hero's journey was more like a long video game tutorial played by someone else.

Masamoto, an irritating AI that takes the form of a teddy bear and a flying cube, exists to guide Vivy through the plot. Imagine if you combined Jarjar Binks with a sarcastic supercomputer. That's him. His voice is grating, like nails on a chalkboard—and the actor has a history of good voice acting, the screenwriting and directing are entirely to blame for wasting a good voice actor. Jun Fukuyama previously voiced Koro-sensei in Assassination Classroom, which he performed exceptionally. The world-building is reliant on Masamoto's exposition. He's not a character. He is a mouthpiece for the writers to hold our hand through the complicated story. There's plenty to criticize about Masamoto because he, unfortunately, was given the majority of the dialogue.

Masamoto constantly condescends to Vivy, removes her autonomy, and provides painfully unfunny slapstick humor. The show has a habit of creating unintentionally funny situations: Imagine a random guy hysterically running into the street, only to get hit by an AI-controlled taxi that says, "Thank you for your patronage." It's hilariously foolish, even more, because the show takes it deadly seriously. Towards the beginning, I took it seriously due to the art direction. During specific moments, the frame will fixate on Vivy, and the visuals increase in detail to admire her beauty and convey emotional significance. Every feature on her expressionless face is maximized as if it was drawn to be placed in a museum. Then seconds later, we return to the same art style. These jarring shots remind us that Vivy requires artists to endear us to her rather than through the screenplay.

Due to Vivy's plot structure, side characters often last only two or three episodes, then they are forgotten. For some reason, every intelligent or character with power is male—with similar bland appearances. Unfortunately, their best designed characters aren't the ones who do the talking. Every named female character is given the role of singer, caretaker, spouse, all of whom are AIs following orders with little autonomy. The only odd one out is Vivy—solely because Masamoto reprogrammed her to do the fighting for him. Every sentient AI in this world is a beautiful woman. No men, which begs the question, why? Is it because people are more receptive to AI if they're women? Are the robot creators all men? Of course, this is left unexplored. All of these negative factors point to one answer; the show simply has a narrow view of identity. The best futuristic sci-fi stories challenge modern society's problems, such as social hierarchies. Vivy is more content with reinforcing them.

The utopian futuristic setting is rich with possibilities: There's no poverty, pollution, war, racism, or crime, except for the AI haters. But why? There's no further exploration. The world is essentially concept art. After each time, skip minor changes beyond superficial aesthetics: Holographic images, floating screens and keyboards, different dress codes, shinier buildings, and increasingly abstract architecture. These are set-dressing distracting from the real problem—this setting is a juvenile interpretation of society. A world like this might exist someday, but it needs to make sense. The writer doesn't even attempt to make sense of it, flat out ignoring history. No matter what time period, people of all backgrounds are dumber than ants. They make the dumbest choices possible in order to cause drama and conflict for Vivy to resolve.

Vivy's wealth of missed opportunities extends to its antagonists as well. Why do the antagonists despise robots? They insist they hate them, but for vague reasons. Metal bitch! Disgusting robots! Why? There are plenty of motivations based on other sci-fi stories: a fear of bots replacing human workers, drastic change is scary, paying AI wages, or whether or not AI should raise children. However, it's not our responsibility to write the villains' motivations. The thing is, there's no real reason why there shouldn't be robots here; this world is nearly perfect aside from rare malfunctions every few years. If the sentient robots revolted against the nation to gain equal rights to humans, then a reactionary movement would make sense. As far as we're shown, none of the sentient robots are paid, have the right to own property, or to vote in elections. There were plenty of opportunities to make this "Singularity" thoughtful, instead, they settled with “Malfunctioning robots kill lots of people.” To seriously consider this a cautionary tale is foolish. A multitude of better stories about artificial intelligence have already warned me. When robots eventually overthrow humankind, I'll be ready for them.

The production of Vivy: Fluorite Eye's is nothing short of incredible: beautiful character designs, top-notch voice acting, awe-inspiring fight choreography, melodic BGM, and professional insert songs. The culmination of skilled artists led to this anime's creation. Anyone would assume the storytelling, characters, and script would be on par with the rest with such a talented team. Sadly, that is not the case at all. Vivy lacks both intellectually engaging storytelling and character depth to stand with the greats of the genre. The overwrought finale attempts to tie the tangled plot threads and convoluted timeline together, but it rang hollow. The animators and art directors deserve praise for their effort, though the more time you think about the whole anime, the less it makes sense.