Artificial Intelligence and human-like androids is always an interesting topic. The concept of "humanity" or being alive always fascinated me. Plastic Memories is not original in that aspect. As we know, this cow has been milked a lot in the recent years. For example, movies like Ex Machina or I, Robot and even the relatively recent video game Detroit become human tackles these psychological concepts and try to put yourself in the position of the androids and make you empathize with them.
What i mean with this is that the psychology of the show could be deeper than you expect when you first look at the tags or the synopsis, because this is known for being a tear-jerker romantic slice-of-life anime. Let's start with some context:
The history sets up a world in the near future where androids and humans live together in harmony. The main point of the show is that humans developed a new technology-advanced model of android that can manifest human emotions, the so called "Giftia". From this point, the anime shows interesting concepts about how Giftias interact with humans and how they interpret their own feelings. However, an element that makes the plot goes on is revealed in the first episodes:
do you prefer to live to the fullest? accepting the fact that, at the end, the pain will be harder and the persons around you will suffer more because, after that, you will no longer exists. Or do you prefer to live on your own to get through your life the most painless possible way?
Our male human protagonist, Tsukasa, joins the company that is in charge of recovering the Giftia before their time ends, because when it does, well...
I have a theory about this error. Could it be possible that this error is related to the interference of the accumulation of memories (because they can't forget) with the emotions? damaging the OS. At certain number of hours a fatal error occur, intensifying the level of the emotions and losing reasoning. This would explain the fixed lifespan. But they never gave an official explanation or what the researchers are doing to fix it. It's just an accepted fact.
Sadly, this example allows me to highlight one of the most important flaws of the show: They never dig into the details of what is proposed. It is an interesting world, but underdeveloped in favor of the romantic relationship. The possible reason: the low number of chapters acts against the quality of plot.
But one thing they did well is the development of the recovery process. Teams of two people (a Giftia and a human) will go to the client house and spend time with them, trying to understand the feelings of both sides and make the recovery the most friendly possible way. That's the reason, i think, they always make this duet team. To try to show the both points of view of the situation to their clients.
At the end, the shows wants to deliver an important message: live your days like there is no tomorrow. Journey before Destination. Make the most beautiful memories with your people and accept the bad ones as part of yourself. As the history progresses, Isla understands the reason of living, changing her opinion and accepting what she is and how she want to be remembered.
With its flaws, i will save a little part of my heart to Plastic Memories. Because, when the years go by, it will be part of my own memories.
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