16bit Sensation: Another Layer

Episode 11

I've been mightily engaged by 16bit Sensation: Another Layer's takes on the gaming industry's art, creation, and evolution. Still, my whole body seized up for the first few minutes of this episode as the script swiveled to entertain Mamoru's elucidations on an amazing alternate-future technology called "AI." You see it coming even before the OP kicks in this episode. Konoha bemoans her inability to produce a revolutionary game all on her lonesome, and Mamoru pipes in to offer a possible shortcut. After all, the anime has already touched on the advent of things like multi-layer digital art and Live2D, so why not also entertain the latest so-called advancement sweeping sites like pixiv and DLsite?

Another Layer's attestation of AI art is blunt. Mamoru is nothing if not matter-of-fact about technology (that isn't the PC-98), and his description of these kinds of modern models is similarly descriptive. AI art is fast, efficient, looks impressive…and is utterly devoid of passion. It's a curt quantification apart from any qualms about the technology scraping and amalgamating data from creators without their consent; the model that Mamoru demonstrates for Konoha is entirely private, trained only on her works, yet the process is still dismissed as inferior to human-crafted creation. The simple inability of an AI model to question its art and the reason for making it means it inherently lacks the intrinsic inspiration that makes art connective in the first place. It might sell as vapid "content" alongside the bulk of releases, but it could never be truly expressive or revolutionary in any medium.

It's a relatively short, dry segment of an episode that's otherwise primarily procedural. But it's resonant because it connects to Another Layer's previous treatises on the creative process. It tracks that Mamoru can immediately clock the lack of passion in something he claims to create through pure algorithmic mimicry since he encountered the same limitations in the Echoes in the eighth episode. Those beings' process of tracing intangible inspiration from luminaries seems to loom large over the future plot. And Konoha herself is dragged into that scheme via the dastardly technology of AI voice deepfakes. The most ethical uses of this tech are banal at best, while its malicious applications are downright megalomaniacal.

On either side of those escalations, Another Layer is happy to marinate in the more mundane stretches of the creative process. Having just created a game that genuinely changed the world, Konoha struggles to come up with her next big thing. Creative burnout is bad enough, let alone when your original World Line is at stake! There's also the question of how she and Mamoru will even make this work once they do get the game developed. Publishing is another matter entirely, though it's pretty easy to guess that Toya and the massive, merged company she's heading up in this timeline will be involved. But then that's only an opportunity for the anime to throw more curveballs at the audience.

That aforementioned AI voice deepfake point results in Konoha being kidnapped from her writer's block plot and into something wilder than she ever could have written. Yes, we did already get multi-layered time-travel and friggin' aliens out of this anime. Yet, our humble heroine being shoved into a plugsuit and whisked away to a building full of sci-fi corridors and human-powered computers still rings as another layer of insanity. What's one more bonkers escalation as this show gears up for its ending?

When Konoha questions her stalling creative process, she reminisces about her time in Akiba and how its culture and creations inspired her. She's always technically been aggregating ideas the same way Another Layer unabashedly references properties like Kanon or Evangelion. But it's consistently been a transformative application of that reverence, a league apart from the mere acknowledgment of more shallow nerd-reference media, to say nothing of the autotuned imitation of AI models. If 16bit Sensation was always going to celebrate art and its specific evolution in Akiba, then it would have been scathing enough if its assessment of AI had merely ended early in this episode with that disinterested dismissal. But it looks like this anime might have even grander theses to articulate as it continues to pursue its celebration of the human passion for creation itself.

Rating:

Bonus Bits:

• No specific year is given for Konoha's flashback to her first formative trip to Akihabara, but if you look at the clues, you can figure it out. Persona 5 being launched on the PS4, the current Love Live! installment being Sunshine, and Re:Zero being up to its eighth volume all indicate that this is taking place during the ancient year of 2016. I am trying not to feel old.
• Mamoru oversees the demolition of the Akihabara Radio Kaikan building in this new timeline. A symbol of the district's otaku appeal (you can also catch a glimpse of it in Konoha's flashback), its dismissive destruction demonstrates how drastically things have shifted in this new future. However, it's worth noting that even in our home time, the building was closed for demolition in 2011 and wasn't fully rebuilt and reopened until several years later. Either way, it's an appropriate reference point, given the Radio Kaikan's relevance in the shenanigans of famous time-travel VN Steins;Gate.

16bit Sensation: Another Layer is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris mostly knows many of these VN game characters from the fighting games they popped up in. You can catch him meditating on any amount of game, anime, and manga subjects over on his blog, as well as posting too many screencaps of them as long as Twitter allows.