It’s time for a music focused anime which is always fun. You can bet that there are some solid tunes here and the anime has a bunch of fun time travel in it too. So you’ve got a good story going with fun characters and better than expected fight scenes. All in all, this made for a winning combination. I remember seeing this one around quite a bit back when it was airing so it’s cool to have been able to check it out.

In the future, AI are evolving at a rapid rate. There are still barriers keeping them from going into every industry but they can at least sing and perform concerts as well as do basic security. The show revolves around an AI named Vivy. Every AI has a mission, a purpose for which they exist. Vivy’s purpose as you may guess is to sing her songs and reach the hearts of the masses. She must continue to hone her skills until she has gotten everyone to hear her music. Unfortunately this is difficult because her music may seem perfect objectively but it has no heart. How can an AI put heart into her music? Less and less people are bothering to listen to her anymore. Well, one day her life is turned upside down when an AI named Matsumoto shows up. He confirms that he is here to save the future.

See, in the future AI continues to evolve but it gets to a point where the world is destroyed. The AI go absolutely crazy and murder everyone. Based on readings from the future, they will be able to avoid this future if Vivy can protect someone from being assassinated. She is reluctant because this isn’t related to her mission but if everyone dies then she can’t clear her mission by default right? So she thinks this through and decides to help. Now she will have to quickly download some combat moves and save the day but can she really trust this Matsumoto? Also, will these missions help her establish some heart within her music?

That’s sort of the basic plot but there’s so much going on here that it’s hard to compress this. Another way to think of it is that Matsumoto goes back to the future after each episode to see if things have changed. Every time the future hasn’t gone any better so he goes back to Vivy with different missions to keep trying until the day is saved. You can only pull this off so many times before running out of energy though so it won’t be easy. Meanwhile Vivy tends to be reluctant most of the time but for good reason. She tends to get the short end of the stick here.

In a lot of media involving time travel, a common theme is that certain tragedies are completely inevitable. I never bought into this, but the show definitely takes the approach that it is extremely difficult to stop the dark future. Every time Vivy saves the day, a new trigger appears to keep on making things rough. Also she goes through so many different traumas in the show. It felt like just about every episode Vivy would have to watch someone close to her get destroyed and there’s no way for her to go back in time.

Matsumoto gets to head off for years and even decades at a time while she has to continue living life. It’s definitely a rough deal, one of these moments in particular really shook her to the core. So Vivy gets a ton of credit for continuing to fight despite all of these struggles. At one point she basically has to create a second personality entirely to deal with the trauma which feels like a very logical thing for an AI to do. I suppose if you are scared of AI taking over in the real world you may have a bit of a tough time with the show as well.

Like I mentioned earlier, the animation is really sharp here. There is the occasional CG that slips in, but for the most part we’re talking high quality levels of hand drawn here. The fights move at an incredibly fast pace and have some really great hand to hand combat featured within. I wouldn’t say this is an action show first and foremost so you shouldn’t expect a big action scene in every episode but they definitely show up often enough to keep this moving at a high level. We get some cool aerial fights, grounded fights, etc. The non action moments look great as well and so the series really spared no expense here. This is well above average with the animation.

As for the soundtrack I wouldn’t say that it particularly stands out but the opening is pretty solid and there are a few other lyrical songs that pop up. When the show is going into full concert mode then it works really well. The rest of the tunes will just end up blending into the scene so they’re not bad but won’t really kick things into the next level. I suspect a lot of the budget went into the opening and the different song variations though so that makes sense.

As a main character Vivy is very solid. She may be hesitant to help out most of the time but again, I’d say that it’s pretty reasonable considering everything that she goes through. At the end of the day she does help out which is the important thing. That said, I actually preferred her alter ego Diva. As Diva she is incredibly confident the first one to run onto the scene when anything is happening. I have to give her a ton of credit all the way through. If she was the main character from the start I dare say that the heroes would have won a lot quicker. Now granted, it’s easy for Diva to talk tough when she didn’t experience the tragedies directly. It’s totally possible that she would have ultimately had the same issues as Vivy otherwise. It’s only a guess though so I choose to guess that she would have stayed strong.

Matsumoto may be more logic focused but he definitely gets some emotions as the series goes on too. He’s a solid sidekick and the banter between the two characters is a large part as to why the show is very fun. Matsumoto will get sarcastic quite often and since he is far more advanced than any AI of Vivy’s era, he is able to slip past any and all barriers. Definitely not someone you would want as your enemy. He proved himself more than enough times so I was glad to have him around.

Then we had Estella and Elizabeth who showed up during a space arc. They were both solid characters and it was nice to have a mini mystery on who the big villain was who planned to destroy the space station. While Matsumoto is from the future and knows the general events of what will happen, he knows the original records of them which may not be fully accurate. Since these two are sisters it is possible that the wrong one could be picked. Especially with the local terrorist group being around to help out as always.

It makes for a pretty interesting dynamic since the terrorist group are effectively right for the wrong reasons. The AI actually will go on to murder the humans like they fear but the group is ultimately still evil. So Vivy in a way is fighting for the same cause but it’s not like they’ll team up. If anything they are still trying to destroy her for being an AI. Their main leader in particular is really petty and keeps trying to destroy her even after she has saved him on multiple occasions. He just can’t stand the idea of being saved by an AI but it is what it is.

After that, the next arc involves taking down the big machine island that was set up. This is yet another tragic event that Vivy has to go through because this is supposed to be a bright day for AI. They are trying hard to learn how to take care of humans and make them feel comfortable while also having their own spot. This should be a day for celebration, not something to be destroyed. Unfortunately thanks to the future we learn that things won’t go very well. There is a twist about the true identity of the island’s AI too which makes things even rougher. Vivy is constantly put in a position where someone has to die in order to save everyone else and that’s not an easy spot to be in. It still made for an intense arc with a very solid climax though.

In dealing with the dark future, the show wasn’t afraid to get rather dark at times too. At some points, this did mean that the show would get rather violent with the different character deaths. I’d say the most shocking was definitely the little girl in the second episode. That was a pretty rough one, I was fully expecting there to be some kind of a twist the whole time. Then you have another character who couldn’t live with the tragedy of what happened and he ends up destroying himself right in front of Vivy. It’s pretty hard to to deal with all of the deaths but of course you never want to check out early like that.

In general I wouldn’t say that the show is all that violent though. Those were the two most shocking moments because it just didn’t seem like they were going to die though. The show really made the most of the opportunity though like using that for another time skip and introducing the new personality. That was petty interesting and a good way to move on rather than dwelling on the moment or the fall out. This show never had time for that as it kept on moving forward.

So the show overall had a light tone with a good amount of banter but it would sure get very serious at different points. In general you have a little less time for humor and everything in the second half. Although calling it a whole half may be a stretch. There were still a good deal of happy moments when Diva took control for episode 9 so a better way of putting it might be that there are fewer scenes with no baggage. Even when the characters are having fun later, it’s over the piles of corpses at that point. The next arc was to prevent the songstress Ophelia from destroying herself but due to how the time travel works and everything that wasn’t quite the scenario going on anyway. We actually have Antonio doing some body swaps and being rather desperate to complete his own AI mission but it felt like he was just being a contradiction at that point. If he left Ophelia to her devices then she may have at least had a chance.

The climax here was definitely really solid though, another great fight all around. After that we cut to the final arc which is a fitting climax. It definitely does suck for the humans who are really getting murdered and run over left and right. It can maybe get a little excessive at one point but for the most part the violence vanishes again after that. I did think the climax had a few stretches of disbelief for me though. The biggest was another time jump that didn’t really seem to make sense. I don’t see how it would have been possible here. The explanation was a bit iffy because to me then you could almost create a loop and do this forever.

The action and everything was good though, my main issue is the actual ending. Both Vivy and Diva get rather bad endings here. Diva’s is probably worse because of how sad it is but I’d argue Vivy also got cheated in the end. She should have gotten a much better ending and while the show may not paint it as being overtly negative, I would consider it as a “bad” ending. Similar to when you’re reading a book that has a good, neutral, and bad ending. I would expect to find this in the final category. It’s not like it’s bad enough to lower the score or anything but it’s just a harsh climax.

Overall, Vivy is a pretty fun show. It uses the time travel well and I like the idea of these constant time skips of many years between episodes. It’s something you can really only do with the main heroine being an eternal robot like this. The ending does fumble a bit though. You still have a lot of good replay value here but I would have really preferred a more satisfying ending. After all of the trials and everything that went on, you want a really good ending. Still, I would recommend this series if you are looking for a fun time and want some good songs. There is a lot to enjoy here and the show definitely goes by quickly.

Overall 7/10