The oddest choice Plastic Memories made is the blending-or rather dicing-of emotional and poignant scenes with slapstick humor, the knife that cuts right through the show’s message. While I said we know what kind of show is in store from the first episode alone, that is more a reference to plot, as there is really no good judge of enduring quality from early snippets.
It pushes the simple idea of fate into something more technical and drastic than it has any need to be, and then subverts that for a good cry. But thankfully, the power of emotion and love breaks through the technological process they have spent the whole show touting, which comes very much across as a contrivance. One arc follows such a degeneration, including plots with black market Giftia recoveries and military brutality, but rather than qualify the world they seem to be shoehorned in to preserve the moral integrity of the characters, so rather than “withholding” the Giftia from recovery, it was “stolen” by circumstances out of their control. Note that part about the degeneration: the obvious place where a show with splitting friendships goes is some sad sap running away with his robot, and simply ending up with a dead shell of a friend didn’t quite have the tension as turning them into roaming killing machines. Oh, what could possibly be in store for them? And so we meet Tsukasa and Isla, a boy and a girl, a human and a Giftia, partners whose job is collecting the Giftias at their expiration date and ripping the bonds of friendship and love apart.
But all products have a lifespan, and the memories in a Giftia have a set expiration date of 81,920 hours, meaning that in a little less than 10 years of bonding it is time to send one of your dearest friends to the eternal abyss, to avoid the unfortunate consequence of the memories rapidly degenerating and the robot turning into a walking menace to society. Walking among the humans of a near-future Japan are robots called Giftias, which function not as helpers or servants, but as family members and close friends, and sometimes even lovers. As soon as the words “Terminal Service” come across the screen, we all know what kind of show is in store with Plastic Memories.
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