Beatless Final Stage

Note this review covers both the prequel series of Beatless and its sequel Beatless final stage as I see both as one series as the Final stage is essentially the last four episodes of the base series. While care has been taken to minimize story related spoilers there may still be spoilers within character analysis. You have been warned. Based upon a popular novel of the same name that was written by the veteran novelist Satoshi Hase Beatless is an action, sci-fi and romance anime that gives us the opportunity to enter a world where thanks to the creation of an advanced AI mysterious but highly advanced beings known as HIE’s have appeared within the world that begin to integrate themselves into human society. As the HIE’s and humans get to grips with each other and both learn to exist along with each other differences of opinion, old prejudices and paranoia of HIE’s eventually starts to create tension between those humans that welcome HIE’s and believe that they will be an asset that would complement humanity and those that see them as a threat to the individuality of the human race and see them as beings that desire nothing more than to subvert them. In the midst of all this, a teenage boy has a fateful encounter with a mysterious HIE that saves his life from an early end and ends up becoming not just her owner but also take up custody of one of the keys that could affect how this world would change. While anime’s that make use of robots aren’t anything new considering the popularity of giant robots that are used for military purposes in the form of the mecha genre of anime the use of androids that are resemble humans and the look into the kind of effects that they could have on human society in terms of social effects is a concept that’s unique to Beatless. This unique premise and its usage of themes that are rare within animes was what ultimately drew me to Beatless and I was impressed enough by the first episode that I decided that watch it to the end a decision that I felt was the right choice. Taking place in the near future the world of Beatless is a world that while similar to the modern world is vastly different thanks to the creation of advanced AI and its widespread integration into human society not just in terms of calculations for government and private industries but also by the military for predictive analysis of combat scenarios. As part of this revolution futuristic vehicles and equipment that are considered fantasy in this era such as home automation, self-driving cars and advanced uniforms that regulate heat are now a reality. However, the most obvious form of this change was not the above mentioned three but rather the creation and deployment of advanced androids called HIE’s beings that while looking near human have none of the weaknesses that humans have and as a result have become an integral part of human society where they serve in roles ranging from home-based ones that clean and cook to ones that manage stores on the streets. However while certainly useful HIE’s rather than help take off the burden that humans are bothered with instead have the opposite effect of creating tension and the belief that they were replacing them. The overall story for Beatless follows the life of Arato Endo a teenage schoolboy who after taking a stroll out one night to run an errand is saved from certain death by a mysterious female HIE called Lacia who unexpectedly requests that Arato become her owner. After becoming her owner Arato and his new partner Lacia are soon thrust into a struggle to not just stop the machinations that are enacted by not just her fellow Lacia class HIE’s but also by the many human organizations that stand to gain by influencing public opinion against the HIE’s. However in the midst of all this Arato and Lacia discover that while the people are certainly divided over the issue of whether HIE’s should be trusted or not there are many people that simply act because of the distrust that they have towards HIE’s that cause them to take such rash actions and that if they are able to convince them that such distrust is baseless then perhaps a world where humans and HIE’s can learn to coexist with each other will become a reality. Though the struggle will be a tough one this is one struggle that Arato and Lacia must triumph in as while both are different species they both aspire to change the current world and create a world where mutual distrust between HIE’s and humans are gone and that both are able to live in a world where they can respect and support each other. Joining in this grand undertaking is a host of characters that would both assist him and oppose him which includes the calm and composed Lacia, the arrogant and manipulative Kouka and the elegant and understanding Shiori. In a struggle that would shake the very foundation of society to the core today's allies could be tomorrows enemies but in a struggle to change the world Arato and his allies would fight their hardest in order to realize their dream. Lacia Lacia voiced by veteran seiyuu singer Nao Touyama of Kanon and Classroom of the Elite fame is one of the main characters of the series and is one of Arato’s allies within the series. A mysterious HIE that Arato encounters early within the series Lacia at the start of the series is shown to be someone that is calm, composed and logical while at the same time being polite, kind and utterly gorgeous in Arato’s eyes. Like most HIE’s Lacia is someone that’s not just intelligent and fast thinking but also someone that’s also perceptive and understanding of someone’s feelings a fact that I felt was surprising for her. As a result of her fast thinking nature Lacia is someone that can change her plans relatively quickly and able to provide Arato with new solutions based on new data a feat that become increasingly useful as the series went on and Arato and Lacia encountered the first of their adversaries. Despite her nature as HIE Lacia is not someone that’s too hung up on doing what’s been programmed into her and rather Lacia is someone that’s not just curious but also willing to learn about new experiences something that I felt was interesting and matched well with her development as she learned from Arato. At the same time unlike most HIE’s Lacia was someone that was considerate of others feelings and was one that understood the animosity that she creates on humans. At the same time, she also understands that despite appearing almost human she is not a truly human and is merely replicating the actions of one showing that Lacia despite being an HIE can also feel and understand the feelings that a human should have. While a kind and understanding person by nature Lacia was also shown to be a very capable combatant that while possessing high-level close combat and ranged abilities also showed an impressive talent for hacking and making use of electronic warfare something that I felt contrasted well with her kind and caring personality. As the series goes on however and more of Lacia’s personality is revealed Lacia’s personality gradually starts to change. While still remaining caring and kind towards Arato as the series progresses Lacia gradually tries to maintain a distance between the two despite Arato’s reluctance to do so as she believes that she is merely a tool whose only purpose in life is to allow her owner to expand the knowledge that they have on the world by interacting with her as the medium. While this view itself is a logical one it can be seen that it’s a view that both are not comfortable with despite the former’s insistence on its usage. As a direct result of this path that Lacia willingly took this created within Lacia two distinct personalities that correspond to the personalities that Lacia adapts for Arato’s sake. The first is the one that Arato is most familiar and arguably the one that he’s most comfortable with which is the perceptive, warm and kind Lacia that does her best to help …

This review includes the final stage of this series. First of all i'm reluctant to watch this Anime due to its low scores and some bad reviews however because i'm a fan of AI/Machine i still give it a shot because of its synopsis. Story: The story was all about artificial intelligent, which is great since we all know that the world is moving towards the directions of AI/Machine Learning/Cloud Computing and etc. Now for the story. The story was really unique in my own opinion; while this might not be the first anime to cover about AI, it's the only Anime i personally see which was able to tell its purpose to its viewers, of how corrupt humans can be in order to gained power in society. The Anime was also able to sent its message that sooner or later manual labor will cease to exist as machines are now capable of doing the same work as humans and to be more precise machines can finish all its task with given time as long as there's power running on it, not to mention its accuracy at its job. its also raises my awareness to question myself what makes humans differs from machines who doesn't have soul and heart? story is 10/10 for me. Art: Nothing to say here Lacia is beautiful <3 i totally get why she become so popular in the society. 10/10 Sound: The sound were fantastic...nope its actually amazing. the lyrics of the song were really for this anime specially the opening 2 (truth) where one lyrics is "Humans are just a visible shape". 10/10 Enjoyment: As a person interested in AI/Machine learning i can pretty say that i enjoy this a lot, to the point i feel not contented of how short the episodes this Anime had. Overall: Beatless was my cup of tea. so nothing to say here anymore 10/10

this is an addendum to this part of a show that is an addendum so about 3 months had past since the last airing of this show that had already been padded out by recap episodes. so what does it got to show for all that time? nothing, absolutely nothing. from at least a visual point of view you'd think that they would have made more of an effort to make the show at least visually satisfying, but no it still only achieves a base level of mediocrity like the rest of the show. it also doesn't help that a show that hasn't aired for a while would make viewers lose interest and harder to connect the plot points back, of course that would be saying that anything from this show is really memorable outside of its premise. despite this making the show finally conclusive nothing about the resolutions in this show have much weight or catharsis. I can only wonder why they postponed these episodes because nothing that was presented warranted these final four episodes to be delayed. this show can only be entertaining in an ironic fashion.

Let's take into consideration the kind of schedule we're dealing with here when it comes to Beatless.  Starting in January of 2018, the show ran for a total of 24 episodes.  During that time however, 4 of said episodes were made into completely skippable recap episodes, before announcing 'Final Stage', a set of 4 episodes to finish off the series.  Now I don't know what Diomedia's production issues were for Beatless, but just looking at the executive decisions makes everything pretty fucking stupid in retrospect. So here we arrive at the tail end of Beatless, a story about a boy and his supercomputer AI waifu attempting to change and reinvent the world to help and progress both humanity and the AI units known as hIe's.  The original had its fair share of glaring problems, suffering from massive info dumps each episode meant to give the audience information on how the world works, severe pacing and progression issues as some aspects just simply disappear off the face of the earth or vice versa and start out of nowhere, and lack of character, given how our wimpy protagonist is strung along by his robot girlfriend for the entirety of the series up till its reveal of 'Oh no, she's manipulating everything!' even though we already knew that.  And when we transition to Final Stage, not much actually changes. Beatless and Beatless Final Stage both commit the cardinal sin in storytelling of going against 'Show, not tell'.  Because so much of the show is given to you via monologues, the show only perceives itself as smart because it's spouting philosophy on humanity's future.  This in turn rips away any potential substance the show might've had, especially since in Final Stage, the show is STILL giving us vital information on the structure of the world without any rhyme or reason other than to complicate things even further.  My biggest issue however comes when some stupid shit like 'The stock market is crashing!' (Yes this actually happens) is happening but we don't see any adverse effects to it.  There's a supercomputer civil war going on, but we're stuck focusing on the idiots inside this underground facility and only hearing word of mouth that it exists.  There are forty hyper-intelligent AI that exist in this world!  We see two.   So much of this show is handwaved to seem like there's a lot going on, when in reality, what we get here is the illusion of supposed conflict with ham-handed philosophy with a bunch of smaller fights between sisters, and a crazy loli AI who does just wants full autonomy in the world.  Which surprisingly enough is the only thing this show gets right because you really can't really mess up a motivation like that.   Ultimately this culminates in a viewing experience that is simply not worth the price of admission.  Beatless was an ambition attempt at showing a version of the world where AI covers mundane/dangerous jobs to protect humanity, and the dangers that come from relying on artificial intelligence too much.  But in doing so, it intended to portray that using five different AIs each with their own way to pave the future, and an overly complicated plot that just kept feeding more and more and more and more details up to the very end.  Even minute things like Lacia stating that she's created 'countermeasures' for everything just add to the mad inflow of information this show floods its viewers with.  They basically made her so smart that she makes her own plot conveniences just so the writers can be lazy, showing just how abhorrent this piece of media is at being anything resembling a story.   In the end, nothing is satisfying except a cheap way to finish the apparent romance without any backing, nothing makes sense and going along with it just hurt my head, Diomedia stop doing this, don't watch this show.

Storming the Castle of a finale... Beatless Final Stage is the conclusion to Beatless and the majority of which is where Lacia and Arato storms the castle or in this case, reaching and shutting down Higgins in order for humans and machines to co-exist. Of course for such a finale, will ALWAYS mean the bad guys gets in the way. Beatless Final Stage at the very least gives us SOME development (what little) of the functions and the arbiters of the Lacia units and Higgins in the process and what their goals are, be it in order to help Lacia and Arato like the Kouka units or outright want them out of the picture in order for the reign of machines to be in place manifested in Snowdrop or those on the fence, being controlled by humans but NOT to the ideals of Lacia and Arato like Methode and Ryo, it's a huge clash of ideals all pointing to Higgins as a result and as much as this clash of ideals are interesting, it isn't helped by Beatless' endless expositions and the even jankier animation (especially from it's facial animation and some of the fight scenes as well). Each of the Lacia units themselves shows off differing views about the future they want in the process much clearer in Final Stage, like the Kouka units, being used by third party forces both wanting to stop or help Lacia and Arato as the original Kouka was something of a renegade and took no instructions from no one, the irony with Kouka is profound to say the least, Methode wanting to stop Lacia and Arato but being used by humans in order to deceive her way to her own way but being limited as a machine as a result, Snowdrop being the manifestation of the machine side wanting complete control over human society thus wants to stop Lacia and Arato, Marriage being the bystander and just watching the resulting storm and of course Lacia wanting humans and machines to co-exist. Lacia and Arato's sci-fi romance is at the end of this finale cemented in and everything but as much as this a "meet cute yet badass" situation and what it leads itself up to could change human society for what Lacia and Arato's goals are, the romance didn't really "feel" like it progressed, maybe because of how serious the situation had gotten but nonetheless as much as Arato says he loves Lacia and wants to be with her, it's not much as the final moments are anything to go by, yes the "romance" between Arato and Lacia is FOREVER, but come on, give us more than that...(and LA might as well throw in the same defense about Beatless being more about human societies views with machines more than relationships but this finale DID have something with Lacia and Arato and wasted it) Production value for this finale was as LA aforementioned, especially with the animation department, well the jankiness is even more apparent now, from derpy faces being the obvious with SOME ok battles here and there, but diomedea was barely getting fluid animation in this finale, voice acting would be the same as LA talked about in LA's Beatless review and Nao Touyama now being the ONLY two reasons to continue with this finale, the other reason being if Lacia and Arato gets to their goal or not. So yeah, production value for LA at least was rocky over the course of this finale as unsurprising enough. So what did LA say at LA's Beatless review closing statements? "LA will be waiting to see if the final arc of Beatless, Beatless: Final Stage and hope for a climactic finale with Lacia and Arato trying to reach their goal, but until then...LA will give Beatless a battered but hard earned "decent anime" status." If everything above is anything to say by then this statement didn't hold for LA, it's still not in the absolutely horrible anime or anything and as much Final Stage tried to bring in it's semi-janky fights, philosophical quandaries about humans and machines co-existing as well as Lacia and Arato's relationship, LA was "meh" about this finale but "almost" unsatisfied with it as well but weighing everything, the good, the bad and the ugly...Final Stage and Beatless as a whole was just..."meh" as a result. Great in concept and ideals, poor in it's execution...sad really.