I have heard of the show at the time it came out and pretty sure I watched one episode, I heard it was classic, but having actually watched it now, I'm just not impressed. It's not bad, it's just pretty average and not at all what was promised by the title and premise. It pretends to explore this is-fi world of life-like androids with limited life span but does not ultimately care about any of that, it is at core, just a romancon, which is again, not bad, just disappointing.
In the future where life-like androids are marketplace commodity, they have all the functionality of a human with the exception of a limited lifespan of 81920 hours, beyond which they forget everything and go insane. Since the androids are fully autonomous and conscious, they are protected by rights and freedoms including the prohibition to install trackers on them, so the terminal department where our protagonists work at, must track them down, negotiate with their owners and put these terminal androids to rest before they become hazard to their owners and society.
That sounds like an amazing premise, so much world building and moral grey areas to explore, but hold on a second, what do you mean by "owners"? Aren't the androids autonomous and legally free agents? Why would they have owners, and why would the owners need to sign for them to be terminated? Can't they just agree for themselves? Or maybe they're not really free but in fact, SLAVES?
That's the #1 problem of this show, it doesn't explore this world in any depth, it simply isn't interested in any of that. Instead, the only thing that matters to the plot, is the romance between protagonist Tsukasa and Aira, as well as romantic tensions between other hot women who also work at this supposedly low end job. This is just a romancon and nothing more than that. The termination jobs? They're background decoration with no lasting impact or depth, all the androids love their owners, all the owners love their androids, they all end up signing the papers. The only "conflict" we ever get is the "I hate you because how could you leave me when I love you so much" type, which are easily resolved with more demonstration of love.
In case you didn't smell this from 50 miles away, Aira is also an android and she's about to be terminated, this is all very obvious because they won't mention how much time she has left so I don't consider this spoilers. The only somewhat worthwhile question the show likes to explore, is whether the couple should still date knowing it will soon come to an end, but I think the answer to that is quite obvious. The writing on this theme is unfortunately also mediocre, I will give you one example, if the protagonists are worried about loss of memory after termination, should the story present a parallel case where termination means the end of a relationship? Or should there be a story where a parallel case shows that termination doesn't matter at all, you just get back together and date again? The show went with the latter and erased any tensions there might have been.
The romance between the two leads are also quite mediocre, it starts with Tsukasa meeting Aira in the elevator as strangers, and he basically experience love at first sight. Then she just gets assigned together with Tsukasa because the plot requires it, they have to live together because plot requires it, things just happen like that. Aira gets no say in any of this, she has no choice of other romantic partners, she just exists for the protagonist to try and conquer her heart. It's borderline objectification logic but since Aira is technically an object and don't have much time left anyway, I will let that slide and not deduct any points for unfortunate implications.
As long as you don't think too hard and turn off your brain, it's a watchable show. Aira's performance by Amemiya Sora is quite surprising, she is of course most famous as Aqua but I kinda think she's better in this super calm introvert personality, great performance. The rest of the cast are colourful and likeable, again just don't think too hard and enjoy the fun hangouts and you'll be ok.
Bonus point for Aira17.5 out of 22 users liked this review