Androids, dolls, artificial intelligence… whatever you want to address it as it remains my second most-loved genre of sci-fi right behind time travel. It was the sole reason why I absolutely LOVED the game Detroit: Become Human. Here, in Prima Doll, we have android dolls that were once used in war as weapons that could interfere with and shut down weapons. Now, after the war, they are being reprogrammed to adapt to everyday life. Can this offering within one of my favorite genres provide a high level of entertainment?
Let’s Go!
First Episode Synopsis
The first episode centers around an android named Haizakura and a human girl named Chiyo. Haizakura recently awoke after being reset and finds herself walking upstairs into a café where she meets Nagi Touma, the boy that was responsible for resetting her.
Nagi wants her to work in his café and has the other androids there try and train her but… Haizakura is pretty useless. She can’t cook, she can’t pour tea, she can’t even present a menu properly. So, they assign her the one task that anyone should be good at… remedial labor… aka… cleaning. While cleaning, she meets Chiyo who has fond memories of an android who saved her in the past named Yuugiri. Chiyo presents a photo of her to Haizakura and it turns out to be the android in the basement of the café that is broken and will no longer turn on.
Here, we discover Haizakura’s power. When she sings a certain song, her eyes glow and she can send some sort of hacking signal into other machines. She unknowingly does this with Yuugiri and she awakens. Even though Chiyo is overjoyed to see her long-time friend back, Yuugiri still can’t remember anything from her past. She is on borrowed time as Haizakura’s power only lasts for so long. Our first episode comes to a close when Yuugiri says goodbye and gets locked back in the basement after powering down… which is right before Mysterious Female Military Person A arrives to add a bit of a cliffhanger to the end.
Worth Watching?
MAYBE – I knew going in that this wasn’t going to be a dramatic struggle like in Detroit: Become Human, or even other anime like Plastic Memories, Vivy: Flourite Eyes Song, or Violet Evergarden. I knew that this was going to be a more light-hearted slice-of-life show but I have to say… this first episode felt more like a final episode than anything.
It spent a little bit of time setting up the premise to where you got the idea that these are decommissioned war androids that are trying to find their place in society but the whole ‘finding your place’ aspect was really just left up to interpretation. We literally jumped from the setup into Haizakura waking up in a café with our only nod to what happened is Nagi telling her she had been restarted. I guess it’s enough but I would have liked a bit of a better setup than that.
The rest of the episode felt like something you would expect out of a second episode after everything had been established. Then, they set up a short story between Yugiri and Chiyo with a ton of forced emotion. I didn’t feel anything when Yuugiri had to go back to sleep because there was like 15 minutes worth of content here to try and get you attached to these characters. Not only that, but Chiyo’s voice felt like nails on a chalkboard to me so even if this little story played out over the entirety of this show and this was the actual ending, I’d probably feel joy at Chiyo’s pain of losing Yuugiri again because I just hate the way she sounds so damn much.
Even the sad music that played wasn’t enough to get me to feel anything because it was such a rushed story and served as an absolutely pitiful method to introduce a viewer to a brand-new series. Adding the random female military character at the end was supposed to make the viewer go “Uh oh… the military is here to prod into their former weapons! What is going to happen in the next episode” except it didn’t. For me, it was like “okay… new character. That’s the hook? Ugh.”
Overall, this isn’t how I would have spent my first episode when trying to tell an original story. With Prima Doll having no source, it’s open season as to what you can do with this but if this is the best they’ve got, this might be a show I end up dropping. I will give it a chance in hopes that things pick up a bit. I hope to see some more struggling as Haizakura adapts to civilian life and I don’t mean in the comical way as was depicted in this first episode. I’m not expecting a full-on drama here as I know this show is meant to be light-hearted but it can do better than this and I’m holding onto hope that it can.
