AI is my second favorite form of science fiction, right behind time travel so any show dealing with AI is an automatic add to my “to watch” list. Here, we have Ai no Idenshi which had a pretty interesting premise but since it is rooted in one of my favorite genres, I’ll be holding this one under a microscope. How did the first episode fare?
Let’s go!
First Episode Synopsis
We open to a woman with some pretty weird-looking eyes. She’s talking to some people who claim that they can help her with her son’s condition. After a bit of convincing, we go right into a time skip. Years later, we meet Sudo… a doctor of sorts who looks after Humanoids. Humanoids are machines that look, act, and sound just like humans… in other words, our A.I. characters in the series.
Sudo is more than just a practicing A.I. doctor… he also performs under-the-table procedures and house calls. So, he’s also an underground doctor of sorts. We meet two Humanoid lovers who adopted a human daughter. They end up making a backup of the mother’s neural network… which is illegal… and she catches a computer virus called Sloth. They hire Sudo to perform the backup but they decide against it at the last possible second. The virus claims her… and then they do the backup anyway,
We also learn that Sudo’s mother from the beginning was also a Humanoid but now she’s in prison. It is revealed that Sudo is looking for the copy of his mother… which strongly hints that she performed an illegal backup and was sent to prison… for 30 years.
Worth Watching?
MAYBE – I’m going to be honest here… it’s an interesting premise but the first episode didn’t do enough to hook me. It was a pretty bland episode that you would normally find in the ep. 3-5 slot after the major hook for the show settles down. If this was the major hook then it needs some work because everything felt a bit flat. I understand that Sudo is looking for his mother’s copy while his Humanoid mother is in prison; however, I’m guessing the patients he helps are going to act as one-off side stories while he performs his search.
I’ll give this a few episodes to see if they can make it more interesting than it was but, so far, I’m not too terribly impressed by it. It just feels like it’s shaping to be an average show but while the first episode was dull, it wasn’t abysmal enough to warrant dropping hence why I’m going to give this a chance.
I’ve been proven wrong before. Here’s hoping this show can do just that.