uncaringbear

The theme of artifical life created by humans has been a staple in the world of scifi, particularly when the artificial life are androids that closely resembles its creator. It's these near-humans that provide an expansive world of possibilities in story telling that reflects back on what it means to be human. In Plastic Memories, this is the starting point for the story of the relationship between Tsukasa and Isla, a young man and an android, both of whom struggle to understand their feelings for each other while under the shadow the technical limitations of artificial humans in the story universe.

The story wastes no time in establishing the plot framework for the androids called “giftias”. Purchased by individuals to be used as companions and servants, the giftias are manufactured by the same massive corporation that has employed a down-on-his-luck Tsukasa in its retrieval department. With an operational life span of nine years, Tsukasa learns that giftias must be retrieved from their owners before their expiration date, the risk being that their artificial minds will quickly degrade with potentially disastrous results.

The limited lifespan of the giftias is the underlying plot mechanic that progresses the story as Tsukasa's relationship with his work partner, Isla, develops. With her expiration date rapidly approaching, both characters face a situation where their growing feelings for each other is constrained by the unmovable limitations of the giftia technology.

It's the premise of this story that originally attracted me to this series, which seemed to be rich in opportunities for further exploring a much-loved scifi theme. Unfortunately, I felt that it came up well short in this regard. The giftia concept worked nicely in relating to the contemporary issue of the development of artificial human companionship, modern Japan being a prime example of these efforts. But in Plastic Memories, it feels more like a secondary plot mechanic to kickstart Tsukasa and Isla's relationship and drive it to the conclusion of the story.

There is some effort to explorer the human-android relationship implications through the clients of the retrieval service, but those are all too brief and really only touch briefly on some of the issues without raising any substantial questions. In this respect, the world of the giftias and its technology felt under-developed and seemed more like a simple background setting for establishing the framework for the couple's relationship.

In contrast, the romance side of the story does succeed. Isla and Tsukasa's characters effectively work well together in the story to portray two young lovers caught in a hopeless situation. A weak point is  that Tsukasa's character is rather generic in design, Like many male leads in a romance, there's never really any doubt that his seemingly limitless reserves of optimism and dedication will ever waver. Of the two, we see the most progression with Isla. I found her rather offputting at the start of the series, as she felt like a mishmash of well-worn traits designed to pull in the audience, but as the story developed she gained a lot of depth. The supporting characters were serviceable in advancing the story, but none of those characters particularly stood out or were memorable.

In the visuals department, the animation was quite nice overall, particularly the animation for the characters and their facial expressions. Nice background art tied everything together visually. However, there were numerous times when it felt like the studio had focused their animation efforts and budget on key scenes. There were far too many still shots and static montage scenes that were immersion-breaking. It was those moments where I kept getting the impression that they simply didn't have the resources to fully animate some scenes and had to take shortcuts as a result.

Is it a show that I would recommend? The first few episodes were particularly weak. If anyone is going into the show looking for a good romance, they need to know that they should stick it out to the end. For anyone going in looking for a compelling story about androids and artificial life, they may be disappointed. A lot of opportunities to explore some really interesting ideas were not taken. With these caveats in mind, Plastic Memories is still worth a watch. It comes up short in the scifi, but does deliver on the romance drama side.