Forum - View topicQuality Assurance in Another World (TV).
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Quality Assurance in Another World (TV) Source: Manga (ongoing @ 11 volumes, by Masamichi Sato) Demographic: Seinen Animation Studio: 100Studio Studio Palette Genres: adventure, comedy, drama, fantasy, mystery, psychological Themes: artificial intelligence, gaming, gore, isekai, magical items, medieval, monsters, moral dilemma, sorcery, superpowers, tragedy, video games, virtual world Plot Summary: Nikola is just a village girl working at the inn...until the day dragons invade, and she meets Haga, a scholar of everything around him. He's a part of an elite society called "Seeker," created to address a series of maladies plaguing their usually peaceful world. But both Nikola and Haga have secrets they hide...ones that will change each other's very existence... Air Date & Platform: July 5, 2024 (Friday) Available on: Crunchyroll Episode Count / Runtime: Pending Last edited by Tony K. on Tue Sep 17, 2024 10:26 am; edited 5 times in total |
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smurky turkey
Posts: 2664 |
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And that is the second pleasant surprise this season after I Parry. At first it seemed like a relatively normal fantasy adventure yet the end really sold me on the premise. Having to file bug reports is one thing, when said bug reports means seeing innocent people/code? die over and over is another. I have so many questions in regards to the setting and whatever happened to mc's colleagues in that they have been removed/killed.
The whole thing makes me think back to Deca-Dence. |
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Edjwald
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I agree. This one has the potential to be my hidden gem of the season. I really wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did just based on the animation style and the fact that so many mediocre or less than mediocre anime get shoe horned into fantasy settings (it's not the genre's fault dammit).
It did make me wonder...why is it that the automated haus frau in My Wife Has No Emotions left me creeped out, but the idea of AI people who don't even know they're AI being inserted into a virtual reality in this anime is poignant? It's not just the AI constructs that are blurring lines here either. The real flesh and blood people are basically being dehumanized and treated like soulless possessions too. The corporate forces that put the "Kingseekers" into play were bodiless and speaking with a mechanized, emotionless voice. Good stuff. |
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smurky turkey
Posts: 2664 |
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Given the second episode I am not even sure whether the people trapped inside the game are alive anymore outside of it, for all we know they may be very similar to the npc's in that they are simply pure code now (or maybe a fun twist if they were never more than code). Furthermore, it has been a year so it makes sense that most of the Seekers have stopped working and have split into various groups. One of said groups being deviants sadly fits with how humans often are.
So yeah, the main mystery is really selling the show for me. For example, do the reports that Haga writes actually get read? If yes then it means that there is still someone in control of the whole project or maybe it has all been one big experiment from the start. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Yeah, after episode 02, I feel like the show took a somewhat dark turn. My gf was commenting that it reminded her a little bit of Westworld S1, where the visitors/players to the park/game were the actual villains, and the host/NPCs would eventually become self-aware and revolt. Although, I feel this'll be more along the lines of Free Guy (2021) where the NPCs become self-aware, but without violent revolution of the former.
This is one of my big gripes about these trapped-in-a-game isekai titles. The body in the real world can only sustain itself for so long (assuming nobody is there taking care of it). And if the body dies, the brain/mind obviously can't function, so they should, at least, set some kind of precedent or plot device (absurd or not) to answer the question of: how is their body still alive after a year or more of virtual wandering?
That is a great question. Since the debuggers have to report to a "higher power" of some sort, are these reports actually being logged and displayed to the higher-ups. And did the higher-ups possibly stick them in there on purpose as some crazed sadistic experiment. I feel like this is crossing-up some elements of Shangri-La Frontier (big virtual world with not-quite-normal NPC interaction) and Solo Leveling (a big mysterious system in place, though without the interaction, at least so far), only the show does seems to have enough of its own quirks to make it unique. |
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Edjwald
Posts: 1586 |
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Welp, I see four basic possibilities here, with each allowing some variations ::::::::powering up smart chart and getting out digi pen:::::::::: (1) The physical bodies were given coma protocol while still helmeted (2) The physical bodies are dead, and their thought processes are living on as electrical impulses within the game since that's basically what thought processes are. (3) As Smurky posited, there's some kind of Blade Runner thing going on where the De-buggers are actually AI's themselves, and this whole thing is a psychological case study. (4) Since the human brain can process information at insane speeds...for example, that whole life flashing before your eyes, or dreams that seem to go one for days only lasting a minute, there might be some time dilation. To their unmoored minds it seems like a year, but in actuality, it's only a few seconds. An example of a variation would be a sideways take on (3) where our universe is really a simulation, and by creating a similar simulation, the game company unknowingly created a game that is some kind of reality bug itself.. Which is my way of saying that I'm really digging this anime. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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So basically: (2) Transcendence (2011) (3) Blade Runner (1982) (and its sequel) or (The) Matrix (1999) (4) Inception (2010), but for a video game, instead of a dream construct. I like your choices! |
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Edjwald
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I'm liking this series more every episode, and I liked episode 1 a lot.
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NeverConvex
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I don't think I'll ever warm to the "Actually, it's a virtual fantasy world" concept; however, I do really rather like how the take on debugging here makes being, effectively, a god, a lot more dangerous and intriguing than just being infallible and omnipotent. The debugging gods' powers are so unpredictably unhinged that they actually create dangers for themselves; on a kind of meta, world-building level, that's a lot more interesting to me than gods as an untouchable ideal or a simple improvement in every way from mortals (/NPCs).
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Episode 03 was a neat twist. Previously, we had two groups: our mains and the bad debuggers. But now, we've got a rouge-ish meta AI, which is potentially a whole new can of worms on its own! I really thought this was gonna' be a fairly cookie-cutter kind of show, but it's managing to pile on lots of intrigue with each episode. Color me surprised.
It's almost like a "who watches the Watchmen" situation. You'd think debuggers were so beyond the programming of the game, they could do anything they wanted. But we see there are obviously those who were corrupted by their own power or inadvertently getting themselves stuck into infinite loops/glitches. This is great cautionary tale kind of stuff. |
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Edjwald
Posts: 1586 |
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I kept thinking of all the old Bethesda games where my character would wind up falling through a floor and getting stuck inside an enclosed square, especially building settlements in Fallout 4. Or all the times in Skyrim I'd be trying to force hop my way up a cliff face and wind up getting stuck between rocks, unable to escape. Imagine being stuck in that situation without being able to logout and without being able to die.
I wouldn't use the debug tablet either. |
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Cryten
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When the Meta-AI turned up it was pretty much on O-F*CK moment for me thinking about the story. There is no way that all bugs can be cataloged and fixed, especially in something 10 times more complicated than our Deep RPG's of current day. That is one impossible task for an AI to set as its goal, and even more impossible for the flawed humans under its purview.
Though I am not against the thrust of the story being removing the debugging tablets from rogue players. That is a sensible thing to do, to reduce the debuggers back to normal players. I just do not see any way this can end well for anyone involved. Especially with our semi sentient companion AI accompanying the main character. This is probably my favourite fantasy series of the current set of shows, because it feels like its got a serious idea of what it wants to do and how to do it. And it isn't content with simple power fantasy. I also wonder how he is meant to fight people using debug mode. Unless all of them will be stupid enough to do a minotaur charge. |
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smurky turkey
Posts: 2664 |
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QA in another world is truly one of those shows that does not look all that great but is carried hard by the story and setting. The first three episodes really managed to set up one hell of a setting. I agree that those debug powers should be avoid if at all possible, getting trapped in a revival loop for a year must be maddening. I do wonder if they abuse said debug options hard enough if the overall stability of the game is in danger. If we take Skyrim as an example with the use of console commands than some of those can go beyond what the game is capable of handling.
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smurky turkey
Posts: 2664 |
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Hmm, this week's episode adds even more questions to the pile. The biggest one concerns the presence of the developers. Given how quickly the t-pose issue was fixed the devs are very much still active, this means the debuggers being stuck in the game is not an unknown fact or the devs are somehow still unaware (though that seems a tad unlikely). I also wonder why Nikola and her town came back to life many times while npc's are stated to be unique and permanently gone once dead.
The episode itself was fun and cheerful until it was very much not anymore. Given that both Amano and the AI want to deal with the debuggers Haga is probably forced along for the ride. |
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Cryten
Posts: 1142 |
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Damn. That got dark.
I also wonder about that. The whole thing has been running off game logic of quest resets and restoring npc's based on bugs, but now all of a sudden a dead npc is just fully dead? Is this a game world or not? It contradicts itself, especially with Nicola being in her 11th incarnation just from Haga's debugging. If it was game logic then the village would reset itself for newer incoming players within an in game day / night. |
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