Episode 112
I’d be lying if I said this episode didn’t disappoint me. In fact, even though the voice in the back of my head was telling me to keep my hopes and dreams for Aoi in check, I still ended up becoming overly optimistic the potential direction it seemed she was finally going in. So as anyone could imagine, when Aoi was told to stay with her brother who has already lost his consciousness, it seriously ticked me off. What good would it do for her to stay by his side? What’s done is done! Ugh honestly… it soured my mood, especially since she seems to be handling it a lot better than most people probably would. I would like to hope she isn’t going to be benched for too long, and that Yuusaku and Takeru are just having their turn now to dealing with Robopoppi and/or Ai in-person as the others had, but I’m definitely lowering my expectations again.
At least the boys went to see her and Akira though. Yuusaku’s pained expression of what had happened to Akira killed me.
Why not just ripped my heart out?
Besides my qualms with Aoi’s situation, the episode as a whole didn’t really do it for me. And to be certain of that, after I determined I needed to do this as a double-post, gave myself a few days to reset, rewatch and settle on what I felt. And frankly, the whole episode felt really sloppy and terribly boring. As much as I adore Robopoppi, the humour between him and Ai just wasn’t doing it for me. I also wasn’t particularly happy about seeing them nose-dive into yet another duel, especially after being burnt out from the recent duelling streak. More than anything right now, I would like to see the characters finally interact with each other PROPERLY in the offline world. As much as I adore this series, one of the things that is really bugging me is the lack of proper interaction among the characters. We see them have quick meetings here and there, which more often than not served as an information exchange, so it leaves a lot more to be desired in regards to the friendship development. Hopefully there will be able to get to that opportunity sooner than later, because we are starting to run out of time.
That being said, even the episode as whole was disappointing for me, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some crucial and ominous things brewing in the mix. The first one is Ryoken’s bizarre way of dealing with Pandor. Honestly I can’t understand it very well, the whole thing seems really weird to me. Ryoken is constantly sending mixed signals and it’s making it hard to pinpoint exactly how he truly feels and what his true intents really are. So I get why Pandor is super confused right now about what her role is supposed to be since he just left her to her to make her own decisions.
There is also the matter of Ai’s behaviour, while it may had initially looked to be part of a comedy gag turns out to be more of a coverup of his actual feelings. He is separating himself from Robopoppi, sending him to his own domain where he is entrusted the responsibility to protect it. Interestingly, Robopoppi shared with us this bizarre dream he had, something about becoming one with the universe of the sorts, where then Ai told him it must be a sign to become a ‘Conquerer’, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean in his mind. Well, to some extent Ai himself has already concurred SOL Technology, having successfully kicked out all the employees, running the place with SOLtis security, and made LINK VRAINS into “Ai-Land”, delivering free content for all the players— I know this is totally like Ai to do this (not to mention, was also freaking hilarious!), but given what we have seen so far, but I can’t help but worry as well. All of these things just lists plenty of reasons to be nervous about what is to come in the future.
Episode 113
I think we can all agree that Robopoppi is superrrrrr creepy now. At first it was cute and funny, especially with the witty dialogue in beginning of the episode, but not anymore. We don’t know what Ai gave him last week, and we haven’t exactly seen any signs of what that was supposed to be yet. It’s hard to say whether the gift was a good thing or a bad thing, as I am having a very difficult time reading Ai’s intentions right now. He is quickly to flip back and forth between his signature goofiness, to his new and more complex solemn mood.
However what we do now for certain, is that while Robopoppi is rapidly growing more intelligent, his emotional development hasn’t been able to do the same. Similarly to Bohman, we are witnessing struggling how to cope with his newfound emotions, and it’s heading in a very dangerous direction. His unwillingness to compromise, and his stubborn refusal to listen and understand that due to the circumstances, it was impossible to prevent the tragedy. It also doesn’t help how Robopoppi’s anger towards the Human’s failure (claiming they are the reason for Ai’s torment) is also misplaced. But because the true culprit behind this mess (Lightning) no longer exists, this inconsequentially means the anger and frustration Robopoppi feels about Ai’s despair has been channeled towards Ai’s ‘former’ allies instead. He blamed Takeru today for his failure to protect Flame, which isn’t fair at all considering just as Yuusaku said, Robopoppi doesn’t understand what had happened. Flame’s loss was without a doubt the most tragic of them all, when after being attacked by Windy, he had no choice but to take him down with him, leaving Takeru to continuing fighting Bohman alone.
Seeing how the emotional turmoil is making Robopoppi terribly unstable, it leads me to wonder if Ai is trying to see what does it take for A.I. to undergo proper emotional development? They could become the most intelligent beings in the universe, but the ability to understand and grasp emotions is an entirely different matter altogether. All of the Ignis, with the exception of Lightning were able to undergo a steadily healthy emotional growth thanks to their connection to their origins. But right now, just as we had seen with Bohman, we are witnessing Robopoppi is struggling how to cope with his newfound emotions.
So it’s an understatement why both Takeru and Yuusaku are quite chilled by Robopoppi’s behaviour. Takeru had tried to be merciful with him, and Yuusaku tried to explain why it’s important for Humans and A.I. to coexist, but Robopoppi doesn’t share that sentiment. He is quite set on becoming a ‘Conquerer’, as Ai encouraged him last week.
Overall, I would say this was definitely a much better episode than last week. I liked that it set the tone and gave us a better idea of where things appear to be heading by bringing the A.I.’s emotional development to the spotlight. Robopoppi’s declaration of A.I.’s superiority over Humans circles back to same issues that were brought about by Lightning who sought to enslave and eventually purge the Human race. I don’t particularly mind that it appears we are going back to that, as it has been left unresolved due to the outcome of the battle against lightning and Bohman. This is could also be another thing Ai is looking into, trying to gauge whether or not the existence for coexistence is truly feasible. If so, it just goes to show that Ai’s has more going on than just being consumed by his grief and loneliness.
Gotta agree about Aoi. I also noticed now that most of her duels in which she played great, she always ended up losing. In a duel she’s able to actually won, it didn’t give much impact on me to be honest.
Rather than creepy, Roboppi has grown more annoying to me. The whole taking over the universe and all no longer looks cute. And his arrogance in these episodes ticks me off. At this point I don’t mind if Soulburner beat him to a pulp. Although, I’m quite touched by how loyal Roboppi is to Ai. Seeing the preview, looks like Roboppi will become creepy like Sora in next week’s episode. That smile is definitely not good.
I’m worried if the thing that Ai gave Roboppi is a program that will erase Roboppi if he lose. I don’t want Roboppi to disappear, but I’m more worry for Ai becoming more and more like Lightning. If the thing Ai gave is as I suspected, then it’ll be no different from what happened to Windy. The way Ai say bye to Roboppi after giving him that program pretty much sounded like a farewell to me. I hope I’m wrong. At the same time, on the other hand, if Roboppi continues to be like this and goes overboard, it’s understandable that Ai feels responsible for making Roboppi that way and so taking matters into his own hand.
I really hope they don’t try making Robopoppi into Sora 2.0. They already look really similar, we don’t need to have them share personality as well. Let Robopoppi be his own character. I also agree, the arrogance is really getting out of hand. I miss the cute days.
Yeah that’s another thing I am worried about. That farewell was really ominous, but Ai’s constant flip back and forth between moods is making sooooo hard to pinpoint what he’s thinking!
To be fair, Aoi staying behind does make a little sense. Yusaku, Takeru, and Ryoken only dueled copies of Ai, so they still have plenty of energy left to spare in going after him, whereas Aoi had just lost to him, so she’ll need some time to recover. Maybe staying by Akira’s side could help in thinking over what Ai said to her.
As for Ryoken, I’m getting the feeling him leaving Pandor to her own thoughts might be his way of conducting an experiment to see if Ai with free will could coexist with humans. He must have been aware of Pandor trying to give Ai a chance to escape, but said nothing of it.
Sorry that I haven’t commented in a while Eva, I just thought now was as good a time as any to give my thoughts on Season 3 of Vrains.
It was both of these episodes that caused me to begin to have serious doubts about where Vrains is heading, since they seem to be rushing through the story at light speed, which in turn is bringing up bad memories of the last third of Arc V. It just feels like certain plotlines end up getting dropped too early with no real resolution (The Lost Incident), or appear to be leading up to something big only to not amount to anything in the end (Sol Technologies as major antagonists). It almost feels like everything that should be in the foreground is in the background and everything that should be in the background is in the foreground and I believe that the main reason for this is that Vrains can’t seem to make up its mind about where its story is heading and since the seventh Yugioh series is set to air in March/April of 2020 I am starting to wonder if they have enough plot to cover another 30+ episodes after the battle with Roboppi finishes next week.
I’m going to reserve my final judgement on the show’s overall quality until we find out what Ai’s true motivation is, which definitely has something to do with this ‘truth’ that Lighting alluded to at the end of Season 2. If his reasons for doing what he is doing are strong enough to carry this show through to its conclusion then I think this show might be able to salvage itself, but until then all I can do is live in hope.
Apologies if this came off as a rant, that was certainly not my intention and as always I welcome your views on my thoughts as well as anyone else’s Eva. Until next time.
First of all, I went back to read some of the comments I have written to the last 10 episodes and realised that I have begun to sound only like someone who can write negative things. I try to see everything from multiple angles but I can´t say if it´s me being spoiled with better episodes or that the writing quality has dropped.
So last time with episode 111 I said that I currently stand to give Vrains 4 out of 10 on the scale, with these 2 episodes that has gone down to 3 out of 10. This setup they have going right now is something that dosen´t belong in a season 3 but would much better in season 2. While on that subject, with some changes here and there you could have set it up so it went like this and it would feel much better story wise: Season 2 -> Season 3 -> Season 1, please do tell if its just me with that thought.
Around this time in ARC-V is when the plot was sopposed to really take a notch up and deliver the best part of the series and as many can attest to the opposite ended up happening, and right now even though I know the summaries up to episode 117 I can say that these episodes need to deliver alot more than they allready do. We have about 30 episode left and this feels more like episodes where they are fooling around without advancing the plot.
So a few highlights:
– The writers seem to make Aoi calm down and collect herself before she reenters Link Vrains which define well how her characther have matured.
– Revolver seems to have matured a bit as well and decide to take a chance on Pandor and see what she will decide to do.
– Nice self-reflection from Soulburner.
– Kusanagi manages to make Robopys characther 3 dimensional.
Roboppi’s kind of getting annoying. I know that it’s because he’s emotionally underdeveloped but man, him blaming SB for Flame’s death really irks me. Like, you weren’t there. You didn’t experience such a thing. What do you know? I feel like Ai knows the consequence for his actions too. Like, making Roboppi develop free will is probably another guilty aspect of his conscience due to how…insane Roboppi has become. Since Roboppi is still lacking emotionally, he can still be easily manipulated due to his affection for Ai and that really shows in episode 112 and 113 where Ai “played” along with his dream and sent him out to LINK VRAINS. Roboppi is dueling with the notion that he’s a conqueror thanks to Ai’s words being latched onto his mind.
If Roboppi were human, he’d be considered somewhat of a sociopath.
SB vs Roboppi…THIS IS AWESOME FROM THE START!! You already know how I don’t like SB duels due to how lackluster they are, but this duel is releasing firepower from the start and I LOVE IT!!! I just hope it continues this pace and traction next episode. I don’t want this duel to become another episode 95…that episode still pisses me off to this day.
Also, I do like this is pretty much a duel of wits. Is AI intelligence smarter than human intelligence? This duel is a contrast between Strong Intelligence/weak emotions (Roboppi) and Weak intelligence/Strong emotions (SB).
Kusanagi: Thats Roboppi?
The Fans: Why haven’t you left town dude!? It’s gonna get real soon!