Forum - View topicPandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn (TV).
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Really? I actually am not even entirely sure on the brain thing, because we actually got mentions of "digitising the brain". It has not entirely explained what this is, but it has apparently been done to Nene and another person who has a mostly organic body, spoiler[her aunt]. Nene character is specifically shown through the series that she doesn't care about the brain thing. Nene tries to make friends with the various robots that get mentioned as not having high enough artificial intelligence to have a sense of individuality. The show pretty much says that although it has futuristic stuff, a lot of the technology is still in its infancy, where people are more concerned that safety that robots cannot harm people and must respond in a certain way when told a commonly known code. An exception to the AI situation is BUER, which the series has pretty strongly implied to be illegal, and its nature allows it be a very effective interface to a dangerous weapon beyond what a brain could probably do. The series at this point has not gone too in to how androids act beyond expectations people have of Nene and Clarion when first seeing their body, and the recent episode somewhat showed some androids in somewhat malfunctioned state. And actually, the series has repeatedly said that people are actually pretty bad at controlling robotic limbs, many of them can barely use them with Nene being a big exception. And it is what makes her so special, that not only can she control a prosthetic limb, but an entire robotic body, and even beyond that, the series is not saying that humans are automatically better. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 8
Okay, update on "biology", although there is probably a better fitting word for that. Apparently Nene does require oxygen as part of her cyber body, but paying attention one would notice that Clarion does not require it, we don't see her use any and Nene just assumes she will use internal oxygen. We continuously see a battle between Nene and Clarion as part machine and human. It is kind of reversed past what you would expect at first as Nene's idea of helping the chairman by making him relax really was not helping in the situation, while Clarion simply opening the doors did help. Clarion of course does the best work at helping them get out of the burning building, but it is Nene who shows the human side in helping others even if it made her own safety more at risk. It was taken again to another end that Nene just jumping in almost got herself killed, her human nature was almost self destructive, but Clarion comes in to save the day, her own "human" side recognising that risking yourself to help another is the right thing. There is not entirely a one side wins over the other, but that both parts should work together. And Clarion does not have to work alone either as she can get help. What about the chairman? I have been seeing him in the OP and wondering when he will pop in. There is something really retro about his design, actually it looks just like a character from Excel Saga, the time period that does have some influence of the designs in this show. I actually quite enjoyed this character because he did not really fit an obvious archetype. Yes he looks a little goofy, he likely was living a bit extravagantly, with possible some misappropriation, an ego, and a dislike of robots, but he actually was not such a bad guy. Despite all that he was worried about Nene and Clarion upon learning that despite their robot bodies that they are human, he was not ready to backstab them and he wanted them to make it out too. It probably would have been pretty easy to make such a cheesy looking character who is a politician a bad guy, but this show is not so negative. Talking about negative, I don't think I quite noticed that butt monkey reporter never actually says her full name. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1796 Location: South America |
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I am reading the Manga for this. I am surprised because I though there was very little Manga out so far.
This is the logical culmination of the cyborg doll concept in a way: now the characters even have the mechanical joints clearly visible to look even more doll like. And perhaps due to Madoka's influence it even includes some magical girl elements. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Not sure about the manga, but the anime has a distinctive early 2000s retro style going for it. For that reason I don't think the magical portion has much to do with Madoka, but rather a call back to some of the other old magical girl tropes, specifically that she uses the power to solve a problem rather than it mostly used to battle some enemy. It is actually the older form of magical girl series, Nene's dress is kind of different from the usual kind, and her ability being her changing clothes to fit the role she needs makes me think along the lines of Sailor Moon, but there are probably others. |
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Stark700
 Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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So we actually got a semi-serious arc now. (I bet 2 episodes by the pacing of it)
"Don't get involved" huh? I bet Nene will get involved in some way because there's no way she'd abandon Clarion when she risks her life like that. On another note, technology in this series seems somewhat impressive. I mean, that plasma particle cannon packs some serious firepower even if they claim it as somewhat unstable. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 9
Never underestimate a young girl with cat ears and a maid outfit. I kind of liked through all the serious nature of that scene there was an extended bit about how crazy it is. One would guess that a thing that a thing Clarion is very proud of is her cat ears, I too last episode noticed along with Nene that they had got singed and damaged. I liked that we saw the fallout of damage through to this episode, and it is kind of cute how Clarion acted so serious about it in wanting to do it herself and no one see. I think it is a cute side of Clarion that the show shows that has nothing to do with her real maid looking appearance. While Nene is usually shown as a girl, Clarion is very often shown as a blob that looks at her personality representative that she may not be a born human. It is cute. Back to the fallout from damage last episode thing, we saw got mention that indeed what Nene went through did a number on her with some different tests. I really do like to think of the general charm of the show being a life of a cyborg through the eyes of a girl like Nene. If there was one thing I would like to linger a bit, maybe a good OVA material, would be maybe focus on her gamer side, a scene I was fond of earlier was when she was "distracted" by a game. Extra points for cat prince bit. Nene will hopefully do something. I am kind of thinking that Uzal might be inside BUER's main body. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 10
It is not until you see Nene alone that you notice that Clarion and Nene have been together so much, and I guess she did not see it until now that she has become a bit dependant. My favourite part of the episode was the return of "Cat Prince Clar-ring" as seen in Nene's delusions, which was funny. It even took centre place in the ED where the session was replaced with a Nene delusion, I really like these goofy little bits in the ED every week. Things are looking a bit grim, of course bunny would cause trouble, and it would be from forcing Clarion to protect her. |
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Stark700
Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Episode 11:
I find Nene's reunion with Clarion to be adorable. This episode reminds me of being a kid messing around with video games. The way Nene navigated with her cute avatar was funny. This show has gotten better now. I expect a big fight next time to conclude the show especially with that cliffhanger. Surprisingly entertaining episode. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 11
I like how the villain of the series is doing his big monologue about what he and his organisation stand for, about his ideals and the moral standing of what he is doing, while Nene and Clarion are not listening to a thing of it. It kind of felt like a play on the idea that such trying to be deep and pessimistic points of view, are not really much in the view of more optimism. Also, she was in a mansion where she hacked into the base by moving a model, and rearranging painting by youngest to oldest. She said it was like a game, and to be more specific it felt like something from Resident evil or Silent Hill, not always the standards of kind of parodying game segments. The whole game thing is something that humours me with the charm of Nene in general. Also being a bit of a dork with despite her high tech prowess she kept trying to open panels with brute force. Funniest accidental walking in on changing scene. Nene is a girl and she walked in on men who seemed to have the usual reaction (and possibly underwear. And the villain being given a description when right in front of Nene. Also funny bit that "Vli-" got Takumi's robots (Gertsecommas) acting as her camera crew. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 12 (finale)
Well that was a kind of odd reveal. All the hacking the villain was doing only managed to break into BUER's collection of thigh images, all the work only managed to reveal his collection to the world. They were not even close to controlling him. Sounds like good news, but things kind of went down hill after that, BUER (The intelligence) fell into despair for his secret on display to everyone and started to rampage. This sounds totally ridiculous, it is not serious at all that a character would try to destroy many lives just because of his voyeur images got out. But there are some pretty choice hints that continue with the running theme. Uzal is weird, she creates things that seem to be kind of pervy, an android that dresses as a cat eared maid and a powerful piece of technology that is runny by a pervy little robot. That does not look deep, rather than scientific it is more.... human, and that is exactly it. After it all Uzal mentions that the experiment was a success, but what experiment. Clearly it was AI, Uzal was not only trying to create AI that would think like humans, but would really feel like a person, that it would have desires, that it could feel emotional pain, and that it would be comforted. She makes creations quirky so they are unique like a person might, this is the case of Clarion's ears, but it was still not complete, Clarion was still bound by programed rules, and BUER himself was also unstable. The answer to bring AI a little closer was Nene, she was a human that had moved quite close the computer side, she had a brain quite adaptive to her new situation, but still kept the emotional parts that made her human. It cause Nene to treat cyber beings as also human, and she showed the way for them also evolve. Clarion started to actually disobey orders because she actually cared about Nene, and Nene was able to calm BUER down. If I had to guess it could be along the lines Uzal was trying to make AI that could sympathise with people by being "people" themselves. Following the themes the show I think it might be the idea that a powerful machine that could sympathise with humans might be able to bring about world peace. Nene was actually working towards her goals without knowing. There are some rather interesting things that were hidden around too, like there seemed to be a room that had pods that were also Clarion, that maybe Clarion was not the only one made. One of things I really liked in this show is that there is a heap of hints that things are happening just out of view. I am not even entirely sure if the significance of the Pandora Drive being where Clarion's womb might be had any significance rather than the kind of too obvious answer of seeing Clarion skimpy underwear. Interesting to not is we do actually see them without their clothes in the show and there really is not anything under the underwear. I quite liked how that "shower scene" went in kind of playing against what the expectations of such a scene would be, but I don't know if I share this thought with anyone. I talked about this episode quite a lot already, and I should talk about the series as a whole. I really liked this show, I don't think everyone is going to like it, and I think it is that not everyone is going to get it. On the surface it is a "girl meets girl" anime with dated servicey images that had quite inconsistent animation, that was all cute stuff and would suddenly throw in something a bit more serious. But I think the show is much deeper than it appears, that art shifts are actually an effective use of the medium's traits to sell different moods, that is actually almost too busy beyond also being a funny little comedy. I am in love with the charm of this show, it sold itself to me straight away and I have actually been very satisfied with it. There was bit of a change in tone towards the end when it had to switch fully from the using technology to solve daily life issues to BUER the giant laser ball, but as seeing it all as one narrative as I wrote above, I think it did quite well. I might praise it more than the average person would, but I also think that in general it is going to be very underrated, so I give a rating of Excellent (9/10). It might not have been the best comedy of the season, but I think it had enough going for it elsewhere without it actually feeling like it was being bogged down. I would super like to watch something like this again. |
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