Title: Plastic Memories
Genre: Slice of Life, Romance, Scifi, Comedy
Release Date: 2015
Studio: Doga Kobo
Length: 13 Episodes
Overall: 32/35 91% A- “Excellent Anime For Girls”
Story: 10/10 Plastic Memories is a 2015 anime series about a futuristic society aided by companion android like creations known as Giftia. The giftia live together with humans, and often as an integral role of their family. More often than not, they serve as children for couples unable to conceive on their own, or taking the place of children who died.
Imagine what you would do to protect your child. Now imagine if you knew that your time with your child was limited. You knew at best you’d have 10, maybe 15 years together. You knew this before agreeing to purchase the android – but you didn’t know how attached you’d become and how human-like they’d be. Giftia also have feelings and emotions – or at least artificial intelligence has advanced so far that they perceive some type of understanding towards human emotion.
But technology still has it’s limits. It always will. Technology does not last forever – and Giftia are no exception. They will break. It’s just a matter of when. And when a Giftia breaks, they can become very dangerous, and they may even attack humans. Because of that – there’s a special task force that is sent out to retrieve Giftia who are nearing the end of their life.
This is no easy job. Imagine what you would do if someone showed up on your door step with intent to effectively kill your child?
These special agents only use force when absolutely necessary. They try to spend several days reasoning with the families and making them understand, that it’s much like when you put down a beloved pet. You don’t want them to suffer. You do it as an act of kindness and out of love.
Once reclaimed, they can be reprogrammed and sent back to their owners – but none of the memories of the past 15 years will exist. They will view you as a stranger. It won’t matter how much you talk about the past, or even if you showed them photos, or videos, their memories are lost forever.
Characters: 10/10 The story of the Giftia is just one component, and not even the main focus – the main focus actually is on the team which must retrieve the Giftia from their owners. To do this they work in pairs. One human, and one Giftia make up one pair. The task force has about 5 or 6 pairs working in the office. The story focuses on their newest recruit, a young man named Tsukasa. He is paired up with Isla, a broken Giftia who is nearing the end of her life span. She is aware that she has very little time left and that she has begun to slow down both in mental and physical capabilities. However her team members hate seeing her so sad, so they decide to put her back out in the field – for a long time she has been “out of action” after failing to prevent an accident that occurred and failing to recapture a rogue Giftia. Being given a second chance, she trains hard every day to not be a burden to her team members, especially Tsukasa. The team is worried about Isla pushing herself too hard, so they make the two of them live together so that Tsukasa can help watch over her mental and physical well being. Initially Isla is very cold and almost inhuman like. She is worried about getting attached to anyone when she knows she will soon pass away and cause pain to herself and everyone who cares about her. She has seen far too many times, the painful goodbyes when she has herself reclaimed a Giftia from the people that loved it (and that the Giftia also loved them). Unable to bear the sadness, Isla would rather isolate herself and just await her gloomy fate. — But that slowly changes with Tsukasa in her life. She finds herself wanting to please him, wanting to make him happy, and most of all, just wanting to be near him.
And the story doesn’t just solely focus on them either. The other team members also have interesting back stories. However, what I thought was even more impressive, is how they can make you cry and feel attached to a very minor character within 1, 2, or 3 episodes, before killing them off. All of the Giftia in this series… I really felt for them and their families. I really found myself crying in nearly every episode. The amount of character development, back story, and emotion put into even the tiniest characters who are only there for an episode or 2, that is some seriously good writing!
Artwork: 5/5 – The artwork is very nice given that it is a 2015 anime, using the latest animation techniques and drawn in the current modern style. Isla is cute, especially if you love Tsunderes or TsunTsuns. I still don’t think she’s as cute as Chii lol but she is still none the less adorable. And the production values are much higher than say Chobits or Time of Eve. The bright colors and flashy animation really make this one stand out.
Voice Acting: 5/5 – I really enjoyed the voice actors in this anime. They had so much raw emotion that was necessary to tell such a sad tale. Even the “extras” who were only in one or two episodes at most, they all had so much emotion. There’s no way to watch this anime without crying lol.
Music: 2/5 – The music is just sorta average in my opinion. It’s been less than a year since I watched this and I can’t really even recall the ending theme (I recall the animation that went with it, but not so much the music.) — On the other hand, the opening theme is very catchy. Background music fit the mood and theme of each episode well as well. It’s average to above average, but not as memorable as many other anime soundtracks out there.
Overall: 32/35 91% A- “Excellent Anime For Girls”
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