First Impressions / Robotics;Notes

「今でもロボットが好きですか」 (Imademo Robotto ga Suki desuka)
“Does She Still Love Robots?”

I can’t emphasize enough how quickly events have escalated in the past weeks and I’m sure everyone watching with me will agree. The story has gone from a group of high school kids building a giant robot for fun… to a group of high school kids building a giant robot to save the billions of lives from a villain who “technically” isn’t even alive. I would legally say this guy is as dead as can be, but if he can find a way to survive over the virtual web – then I have no right to judge or criticize. Kimijima Kou has just lost all my sympathy and yes – he was murdered, but the guy totally deserves it for testing his projects on children and trying to destroy the world. I still have no idea what his motive is and it drives me insane that he seems to be bad for the sake of being bad. What does he have against the world anyway? Or is he trying to prove something of himself and his experiments?

I hate to admit it as well – but Aki’s optimism is starting to rub me the wrong way. I still it’s a great trait of hers and everyone needs to stand up to the bad guy and not give up, but her selling point was robots. Giant robots. As much as I like the series, I still can’t get over the fact that their solution to stopping the Committee of 300 is to build a giant robot to combat their SUMERAGI model. How does this prevent Kou from firing this rocket into space? How did they deduce what Kou’s plan was anyway and where everyone is situated? I can only guess that JAXA gave them a huge helping hand (and Nae as well) in order to help the group create this elaborate plan to save the world. All of it could’ve seemed a bit believable – if not for the fact that they’re building a giant robot just because Aki believes it will be a justice robot. I honestly don’t want to say that her dream sucks or that I’m crushing it because I’m not a mecha fan… but I think it’s fair to say that there’s a very loose thread that ties her love for justice (and robots), her sister’s loss of mind and Kimijima Kou’s diabolical plan to destroy almost the entire human race.

I’m glad that Aki has stood up to Kou, don’t get me wrong. I think the series depends a lot on her optimism and her honest belief that she can make a difference – but I still don’t think this is the best plan out there and it’s the only thing that’s preventing me from loving the series. Perhaps they’ll even launch the robot into space (I’m sure they will – given the premiere episode showcased this) but how does this stop Kimijima Kou and the Committee of 300? So many questions and so little time left…

The first couple of minutes of the episode really had to be the jaw-dropping moment for me. It is revealed that Misa actually knew Kou (who knows how or why?) and tried to stop his plans and experiment on the S.S. Anenome. Unfortunately, Kai and Aki still ended up with side-effects, but nevertheless, healthy and alive at least. It turns out that Kou was indeed murdered but not without seeking revenge on Misa by playing with her guilt. If anyone’s ever read/watched Macbeth – this is where you can infer that blood stained hands can never truly be washed away. I’m not sure how this necessarily “brainwashes” Misa (a lot of people in the comments mentioned this), but I think it does traumatize her enough to let Kou walk all over her. I think it’s the same case with Airi; both were very broken people and vulnerable and Kou just waltzes in to claim control of their physical body. Anyway, I think the background story between Misa and Kou ended up being a more tragic one that I imagined – including the small appearance from Mizuka. Kou is clearly not the great man that we’ve been seeing in flashbacks.

If there’s one last thing that I want to mention… it’s the ending. I understand why the robotics club would get together after seeing Aki’s speech. It’s an inspiration speech for everyone to group together and prove that Aki’s dream can be made a reality. On the other hand though, I think it got really out of hand when the principal showed up, the students came, Mitchie’s uncle showed up with his company, JAXA was there and finally – what’s the deal with Subaru’s father? Your son broke his leg because of robot-building! Even though I’m all for “following your dreams”, as a parent, I wouldn’t encourage it anymore – at least not while he’s still on crutches! Anyway, I’m not a fan of the setup for the finale, but if this is what works, it better be worth watching. I’m really only interested in how Kona is going to work with Sawada’s program and how Misa’s going to snap back to reality (probably as a result of Aki’s blood, sweat and tears into building a giant robot to stay bonded with her sister). 2 episodes left!

53 Comments

  5. Wait, what? Subaru’s father doesn’t want him to follow his dreams, to the point that he abused him for even being in contact with robots. He’s never encouraged him; he wants him to be a fisherman instead.

    And I can’t say I understand why everyone(people all over the internet) is so bothered by Aki’s speech this episode. She’s always been the super genki girl.

    Mormegil
    Reply

  6. I also feel a bit uneasy at how everything is being resolved. It was a couple episodes back that Kai called Aki out for being incredibly selfish wanting to build that giant robot after everything bad had transpired. Then he gave in to her and helped build that big robot… And now everyone’s ok and everything. I felt that confrontation where Kai called Aki out could have been something better, and maybe Aki realizes life ain’t about her just pursuing her dream. Oh well. Maybe I’m just being too harsh.

    J_the_Man
    Reply

    1. I totally understand where you’re coming from and that’s why I think there’s still a lot of questions to be answered. It’s almost like everyone is too naive and don’t understand the full context of the story. A lot of these people just want to help Aki complete this robot but don’t see who Kou is or what they’re up against…

      Cherrie
      Reply

  7. It probably wasn’t Kou constantly showing his face that led to Misaki’s brainwashing. It was probably his threat of hurting Kai and MIsaki which led her to allow him to brainwash her. Not giving into guilt is admirable, but the way Kou isolated her from anyone who could help her (Irei) was tragic. Rather than die, I hope she is saved.
    As for Aki, her single minded focus is a little odd, isn’t it? The best idea I can come up with is no one know what the heck they’re supposed to do to stop Kijima, so they see Aki and, “Hey, it’s something, right?” Plus, whatever you say at gunpoint is about ten times more awesome than normal.
    Lastly, it’s too bad Subaru didn’t get a character episode or two. He’s pretty interesting, and we know nothing about his dad. Not why he was against Subaru working on robots, and not why he’s okay with it now. In Subaru’s defense, he manages to have a lot of character presence even without the backstory

    CTT
    Reply

  9. Well, there was probably more explanation to the actual development but that is clearly VN exclusive material. That said, writers had no choice but to speed up rush the plot.

    Helvetica Standard
    Reply

  10. “I still can’t get over the fact that their solution to stopping the Committee of 300 is to build a giant robot to combat their SUMERAGI model. How does this prevent Kou from firing this rocket into space?”

    Well they’re not going to get much of anything done if the bad guys are defended by a giant spider death bot, you have to get rid of it first before you can even get close and do anything else.

    qwert
    Reply

    1. I understand that… but then what happens afterwards? What happens when they’re in the building and the rocket still gets launched (which will probably happen) and Kimijima Kou is still floating in virtual space? I don’t believe they’ve thought that far out…

      Cherrie
      Reply

      1. Isn’t it obvious, after beating the Spider-bot of doom they will just use the Pile-Bunker to punch the space-rocket before it’s lunched Mr.Pleiades or rather M45 style .. a giant robot can do a lot of damage to the lunch-pad, buildings around it and the rocket itself.

        HunterWulf
        Reply

  11. Kimijima Kou and his relation to the Misa-nee was really shown now. “I know what you did last summer” meets “Ghost in the shell internet”, meets Lady Macbeth. Airi probably was “programmed” to be taken over by “possessing” when he has frozen her.
    “Parrot ex machina!” – this is my biggest gripe, it was just ridiculous.
    “to fight an evil giant robot you need a giant robot (of justice)!” – well this series revolves around the trope of giant robots, so I believe we had no choice of weapon in this duel.
    Last but not least, I will never get tired of Frau going full mode otaku – her claiming of airi as 2D waifu that materialised in 3D was priceless! (BTW is waifu of my waifu my waifu too?)

    ewok40k
    Reply

  14. Aki’s optimism doesn’t bug me at all. Its probably because I’m a huge fan of the Super Robot genre where this is pretty much par to the course. Its a very sentimental and good feeling I think shows need more as opposed to so much dark and serious lately. Of course I couldn’t guess that GunPro-1 would figure into this, because its a long shot to make that clunky POS even move well but I can’t wait to see the results.

    What can I say? I like optimism better than cynicism and its very in character for the show, where Aki always tries hard and draws others into her goals. Cheesy yes, but I like that kind of mood.

    fragb85
    Reply

  15. Wait all this time the one who was Airi on the pokecom might actually be Kijima Kou pretending to be Airi!!! Kai kissed her forhead already!!!

    Seems like before IRu-O people in Tanegashima used Android phones.

    Cybersteel
    Reply

  17. Aki is so out of touch with reality,i think kimijima kou should have been able to put a bullet in Airi’s head so it would give her some perspective about the gravity of the situation.That wasn’t optimism she displayed that was just plain stupidity,i think she has watched too much Gunvarrel(brainwashing achieved).I have seen plenty of corny speeches,thanks to Naruto,but this took the cake with a cherry on top,at least Naruto has abilities to back it up.There is a “thing” pointing a gun at me via someone else,I’m pretty sure for any normal person the first rational thought would be about how getting herself out of there but Aki..nooo “ain’t nobody got time for that”.

    satyr
    Reply

  19. Kimijima isn’t just “bad” for the sake of being bad. His reason is simple and you will surely
    find it out soon enough. You will feel sympathy and that alone will give you the shivers. All
    I can say is that he’s the “Abyss of the World”, just like everyone of us.

    Yeah, Aki’s speech is cheesy, but does everyone forget the nature of this show because of the
    grim development, that are friendship and dreams? In a recent interview with original writer
    Hayashi-sensei, he said R;N is a tale about the adults with broken dreams, and the teens that
    are chasing their dreams. The world is about to end, they just choose to cling on their dreams
    and try to fight till the very end. Or one can just cower in a corner, waiting for the
    inevitable. Aki’s speech fits her personality perfectly, it just feels out of place due to
    the fault on the anime part. In the VN, right before the speech, Kimijima PROVOKED Aki by
    boasting the vast resources they had in hands and how well they are armed, then asked how is
    she gonna do. It does make sense now, doesn’t it?

    And the GunPro-1 is their only chance. They can’t even get help from the SDF nor the police,
    the world is in chaos, all communications jammed – they are all busying to bring order in the
    panicked public. And I don’t believe they will listen to their story neither. The rocket could
    of launched already while they are arguing. Simply put they are out of time. They need the
    GunPro-1 not because one must fight a giant robot with another giant robot, it’s because it is
    the only thing they got. They are unarmed civilians, and the Committee has a whole squad of
    armed troops plus a freaking SUMERAGI guarding the launch site. Once they destroyed the
    SUMERAGI and reclaimed the launch site by force, JAXA engineers can easily disable the launch
    sequence, well, it’s their damn rocket in the 1st place. If things went to hell, the wrost
    scenario is that they destroy the rocket on spot, detonating the BHB and annihilating the whole
    Kyushu Region in the process.

    Kimijima clearly controls Misa-nee using the Noah Technology, if not her feeling of guilt. Bad
    things always happen when these diabolic brainwashing devices show up. Kai got a full box of
    Noah IVs from Sawada, and they are going to analyse them to see if they can be used in the
    final showdown. Is it really a good idea to use the weaponry of your enemy?

    Nothing to complain about Subaru’s father. As stubbon as he is, I don’t think that his pride
    will make him not see the gravity of the situation ya?

    And “DG297 3rd Edition ver.4.11″…
    Show Spoiler ▼

    Kansokusha
    Reply

      1. In the first couple sentences.

        “Kimijima isn’t just “bad” for the sake of being bad. His reason is simple and you will surely
        find it out soon enough. You will feel sympathy and that alone will give you the shivers.”

        Da5id
        Reply

      2. I was referring to his motive, not Kimijima as a whole. Although people can share the same
        motive, the same reasoning, how will one take action is depending on the mindset of each
        individual. People can feel sympathy for one’s motive but despise his/her action, and vise
        verse.

        Kansokusha
        Reply

  20. Now, I guess this is the adaptation’s fault, and Kansokusha’s comment seems to prove that this was carried out better in the VN…
    …but here the anime is starting to feel stupid. I mean, apart from the fact that it’s anime, so you can’t have the main characters break down and do nothing in front of world destruction, but the way they build the climax… I mean, come on, the whole population of Tanegashima has complete trust in this teen girl? I mean, is it really enough to justify this cheesy of a scene? And beside, I think it would be nice if the explained what happened exacty on the SS Anemone…

    One thing is sure: Robotics;Notes pales in comparison to the ever-thrilling Steins;Gate. Starting from the main characters.

    lorenzo
    Reply

      2. I agree… I don’t think people should be comparing two series so closely and commenting about it all. the. time. o_O
        I don’t think that R;N is as good as S;G (so far =S) but that’s like saying that I also enjoy a lot of other series more than R;N too… so I don’t see why people have to constantly bring up that fact when they’re two different series talking about different things (with slight overlap, but not enough to not enjoy the series if you haven’t seen the other two). Sure, they’re in the same universe and creator etc. but they can be enjoyed as individual anime (or VN) on their own. Similar to AW and SAO, or Onegai Teacher/Twins… they’re series that don’t need to be compared. And if people find themselves doing that all the time, it really takes away from your enjoyment of the show.

        Cherrie
        Reply

    2. I know that they are very different shows… It’s just that expectations were quite high after S;G, and it’s just kind of a letdown that the same people behind that gave birth to a series like R;N which is a very enjoyable series, but suffers, in my opinion, from some serious flaws in scriptwriting. That’s all. It’s not like R;N is bad simply because S;G was excellent.

      lorenzo
      Reply

  21. I think I see what the writers were trying to do. That being said, this is very much not the right TPO to be throwing in super robot tropes willy-nilly.

    Everyone else here has said all that needs to be said about the cheese factor of the Sunday morning cartoon-esque ‘everyone shows up to help! yay!’. Besides that, however, there is also the mildly rancid cream cheese topping of Kimijima Kou apparently not reading the Evil Overlord’s handbook and coming down with a huge case of Idiot Exposition Monologue. And here, it’s not even to a ‘fated rival’ or anything like that… but a pair of high school kids he used as patsies. Is he that hard up for someone to talk to? (And no, that bit about the VN version doesn’t make this whole exposition any better.) About the only part that I felt was positive about that whole scene was that Aki finally steps out of her sister’s shadow… albeit in the most painfully melodramatic way possible.

    Perhaps it’s merely in contrast to the other great shows this season. But at this point, the writing of Robotics;Notes is beginning to feel nearly insulting – in a season with Shin Sekai Yori, Psycho-Pass, Zetsuen no Tempest, and Sakura-sou, this show pales in the extreme. In fact, I’d venture to say that the writing is actually worse not just than Steins;Gate, but also in comparison to CHAOS;Head, which wasn’t exactly a paragon of good writing itself.

    Corin
    Reply

    1. And now that I think about it, for a ‘ghost in the machine’ that seems to be able to hack into all kinds of random computing devices seemingly at will and shows a great deal of awareness of the online world, Kimijima Kou… somehow manages to completely miss someone transmitting his entire Evil Overlord speech to the world at large.

      That deserves a deep, long facepalm with a deep, long sigh.

      Corin
      Reply

    2. R;N HAS the privilege to be cheesy. Building a gaint robot, to give chase to their dreams, these
      are the core of the story. When something bad happens, people tend to expect it to turn grim
      dark like some Urobuchi tragedies.

      Kimijima is a villain because we see his doings as wrong. I bet my leg that the Committee always
      see themselves as the savior of humankind in finding ways to preserve the whole race. Kimijima
      converted not only his memories, but also his personality. Yes, he still got human flaws. Can
      you blame one for having human flaws? Sometimes it’s stupid I know, but that’s Kimijima for you.
      He didn’t say he’s a villain nor some evil overlord, he’s just doing what he thinks is right.
      He might helping the Committee, but that doesn’t necessary mean it’s his goal. By the way, he
      exists only in the Iru-O network that has 1 billion user worldwide.

      And Mitchie boardcasted that speech to people on Tanegashima only.

      Kansokusha
      Reply

      1. …let me clarify. By ‘Evil Overlord’, I’m referencing the whole trope about how Evil Overlords constantly seem forced by the plot to do absolutely stupid things to give the hero the chance to beat them. Things like leaving the heroes alive in a ‘certain death’ trap… or revealing large chunks of your machinations to the heroes in a gloating monologue for absolutely no reason whatsoever. The very trope which is poked at in Watchmen, where the gloating monologue only takes place after the entire plan has already been carried out and cannot be stopped. The very thing which Kimijima Kou does here, again for absolutely no reason, to a couple of kids who really shouldn’t matter. (And come to think of it, where the heck did zombie-Airi get that gun from in the first place?)

        I’m not really sure what you mean by Robotics;Notes has the ‘privilege’ to be cheesy. To my mind, though, one of the few strengths of Robotics;Notes was always how it kept itself to a certain level of realism, even if it made the early episodes a bit plodding. This episode basically threw that one strength away completely, out of pretty much absolutely nowhere. I agree that ‘chasing dreams’ has always been one of the themes of this show – but in that case this episode did that same theme an utter disservice by reducing it to a cheese dispenser.

        And yes, Kimijima Kou may exist only on Iru-O (although he seems to exert quite a bit of influence on global media for someone that only exists there). The same Iru-O network that Mitchie was using to transmit that speech.

        Kimijima Kou: ‘Whoops.’

        Corin
        Reply

  22. I’m totally okay with the whole speech and people gather to help thing. Or is it a cultural
    difference, that Westerners lean more on the reasoning side and the Easterners spiritual?
    Don’t quote me on that I’m just making an assumption.

    And yeah I know the trope, that’s why I said Kimijima still retains his human flaws. If it were
    only an AI that gets info from Kimijima’s memories to enact the plan of the Committee, it would
    sound stupid for doing all these things. But this IS Kimijima himself. And those are not some
    random kids, Kai and Aki were his test subjects, and they will forever be his test subjects.
    “Clad in armor, the deceiver spirit has drawn its sword, knowing neither good nor evil.
    Deceiving those eyes of the 300, the wicked angel am I. The abyss of the world.”     If you
    really really really want to know the reasoning behind his actions, click on the spoiler.

    SPOILER WARNING! DON’T SEE IT UNLESS YOU ARE HELLBENT TO DO SO!
    Show Spoiler ▼

    Kansokusha
    Reply

  23. kimijima kou should take a lesson on charisma from makishima shogo…where shogo managed to be both stern and classy, kou ended up looking like a pussy hiding under a girl’s skirt (quite literally in airi’s case) and a despicable wretch…

    NierTevra
    Reply

  24. Unbelievable!

    Solar flare was causing havoc everywhere. Communication is down. Police/gov/army is in a state of panic to even deal with an armed take over of JAXA but the gang of school kids, JAXA engineers, school vice principle and whoever else can just assemble up with all those resources at that old hanger? Really????? Why were they able to stream video online earlier???? Sound like communication down/whatever is in panic is really just a convenient excuse to me……

    Novas
    Reply

    1. The solar flare is all but a lie. I said jammed in a sense that people can’t communicate
      with each other properly, with all the false information floating around and the effect of
      the Noah illusionary technology. Sawada said it best, when enough people believed in an
      illusion, it will become reality and spread like a wildfire. In this state of chaos, riots
      will soon follow. Authorities will eventually figure it out, but they still need time to
      clarify and bring order to this chaos, and by then they have already become piles of ash.
      Preparation for the launch has been completed by JAXA, all the Committee do is pull the
      trigger. And Mitchie only boardcasted the speech to the ones he knows, namely the people of
      Tanegashima, whom too know Aki well to be motivated.

      Kansokusha
      Reply

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