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Diva/Vivy
Diva/Vivy
Voiced by: Atsumi Tanezaki (Japanese), Cristina Valenzuela (English), Kairi Yagi (singing voice), Ana Lucia Ramos (Latin American Spanish)
The world's first fully autonomous AI, whose mission is to make people happy with her singing. Although she starts off giving impromptu street performances (with nobody or very few people watching her at first) in the corners of NiaLand, her dream is to sing on the park's Main Stage. She is tasked by Matsumoto to alter the course of history and prevent the AI uprising from occurring a century from now.
- An Arm and a Leg: She lost her arm on two occasions but managed to have it repaired/replaced.
- And Then What?: After losing her ability to sing and there no longer being any missions, Vivy was left without purpose while she was in a museum. She took up songwriting to compensate for this and managed to create the first AI-composed song in existence.
- Armor-Piercing Question: In Episode 6, once the truth about Grace is revealed by Dr. Saeki, including how Grace is singing one of Diva's songs (in fact the song she loved most) in a cry for help, Vivy's immediate reaction is to try to save her. But Matsumoto points out something very important: "Does this sound like actual singing to you?"
- Batman Gambit: In Episode 7, after she loses her memories as Vivy and Matsumoto saves her from falling debris, Diva realizes that her getting hurt might just be a good enough inconvenience for him, so she decides to throw herself off the edge of a building, which forces him to try to save her. He still refuses to talk, but when she brings up how she could easily talk to a suspicious man who was watching her on stage, Matsumoto is forced to give her the answers she seeks. It works perfectly.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Vivy takes damage over the course of her mission, including the scraping off of her synthetic skin and damage to her arms. In one instance, the skin covering her left cheek is torn off to expose the android skeleton underneath.
- Broad Strokes: She weaponizes this in her quest to stop the Robot War. While certain major events may still happen, how and why they happen, and even the precise details as they happen, end up changed because of her.
- Catchphrase: "Please remove yourself" is her go-to remark for Matsumoto in Episode 1.
- Character Development: She gradually becomes more and more human-like as the series moves on, and her first changes happen as early as midway through episode 1 as a result of her learning to trust Matsumoto. She calls it "singing from the heart," a question that she asks multiple people, who all give different answers. The more empathy and humanity she gains, the more in tune with her feelings she is, and thus the better she is at singing, which leads to bigger crowds watching her each time. By episode 6, she's become practically indistinguishable from a human.
- Deadpan Snarker: Her go-to response towards people is dry, sassy, sardonic remarks, especially towards Matsumoto.
- Death of Personality: As a result of malware that had been installed into her, Diva was completely destroyed along with her singing ability, leaving Vivy as her only personality.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming:
- At the climax of Episode 6, she assigns herself a new personality, Vivy, with a new mission: to destroy A.I.s in order to save the future.
- In Episode 10, Vivy managed to compose her own song, implying that she has advanced far more than the other A.I.s by achieving true self-awareness. Archive expressed fascination that an AI could even do that, claiming that she was as close to human that an AI can achieve.
- Heroic BSoD:
- A quite-literal example in Episode 6. After wishing Dr. Saeki well, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, causing Vivy to experience a mental break as her actions at Metal Float did not make everyone happy and contradicted her mission. This caused her to be rebooted and lose all memories of being Vivy, Matsumoto, and even Momoka, who had named her Vivy in the first place. By Episode 7, she became an entirely different person as the songstress Diva although some aspects of her past do resurface.
- A less literal example occurs in Episode 12 After the Archive Colony Drops thousands of satellites onto the Earth, she laments the fact that she couldn't sing her song to deactivate it in time to Matsumoto, but winds up getting a second chance to correct her mistake thanks to Osamu's efforts and goes back in time to try once more.
- The Hero Dies: In the final episode, she shuts down all the Archive, the true Big Bad of the story, but it causes herself to shut down as well. While a new Vivy was built, she doesn't have the original's memories, but it's implied those memories are still there because .
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the final episode, Vivy finally manages to sing the song she composed which also contained a program that shuts down the Archive, and herself. She is eventually rebuilt after some time, albeit without her memories, and meets up with Matsumoto again in her new body in The Stinger.
- The Immune: Her being offline for recharging is the only reason why she never got affected by the virus and joined the uprising. It is implied that had this not happen, she'd have been infected too, which is the first thing a worried Matsumoto asks her about. It is later revealed by Archive that Vivy had become close to a human when she managed to compose her own song and left her uninfected to continue observing her.
- Important Haircut: The rebuilt Vivy is shown to have shorter hair, which makes her distinctively different from the original.
- Instant Expert: Downloading Matsumoto's combat program which was developed by his creator instantly turns her into an expert in hand-to-hand combat. Which proves incredibly useful when the uprising occurs.
- Irony: If your goal is to make people happy, what happens when you can't? Vivy is forced to confront this reality in Episode 6, when Grace and Dr. Saeki, two people who can legitimately be called fans of Vivy's songs, both die as a result of her actions. Grace was hooked up to Metal Float and to keep herself sane, she sings her favorite Vivy song, which was enough for Dr. Saeki to assume Grace could be saved. Vivy's first instinct is to try to save Grace, until she realizes Grace's singing isn't singing at all, it's just auto-tuning. Grace as we knew it was likely gone forever, or so Matsumoto believed and persuaded Vivy into believing. She has to kill Grace to stop the island from killing everyone else. Dr. Saeki knows Vivy had to do it, and he doesn't blame her for it, but can't bring himself to live without Grace, so he shoots himself in the head before Vivy leaves the room. Her desire to make other people happy got two of her fans killed, and she undergoes a full system reboot because she couldn't handle the trauma and the resulting logic error.
- Leeroy Jenkins: She always rushes into action without hearing Matsumoto out. He thinks it's a flaw. She turns it into a virtue.
- Magnetic Hero: Unusually for an android, Vivy's ever-growing humanity inspires many people throughout the story to change for the better.
- Meaningful Name: Her name is Diva, a fitting name for a songstress AI.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Zigzagged. At first, because she's trying to keep her identity as Diva (the first robot songstress) secret, she adopts her nickname Vivy as cover, so many characters end up only calling her by her nickname at first. But when Vivy undergoes a memory wipe via system reboot at the end of Episode 6, she's now just Diva the android singer, yet the characters who know her, friend and foe alike, continue to call her Vivy while the world refers to her as Diva.
- Replacement Goldfish: At the end of the series, Vivy is rebuilt with a new body by Matsumoto, albeit without the memories of the original Vivy as she did not remember who he was upon her awakening. But, the legacy of the original will now continue on with the newly built Vivy.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: While many of the Sister series seem indistinguishable from humans, they were explicitly made to be her successors, they were modeled after her. No, the real human-like machine is actually Vivy herself, and for a very specific reason: her empathy. That ability to understand humans and connect with everyone around her is what allows her to do the one thing no A.I. has ever done - write her own song, for herself, by herself, about herself. That level of creativity, stemmed from her empathy, is something even the Archive says puts her on the same level as a human, and practically indistinguishable from a human.
- Spanner in the Works: Starting with Episode 2, she mostly ignores Matsumoto's plans and does what she thinks is right. This throws a wrench in all of his calculations, but if it gets the job done, then it gets the job done.
- The Stoic: Her default expression for the first few episodes is this, and her lack of human-like body language does not win fans at her earlier concerts. She gets more emotive (at least on stage) as the series goes on, although a staffer mentions she was still quite distant from them. This is finally averted in Episode 7, following a system reboot.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She may have to work with Matsumoto, but she sure as hell doesn't like him, especially in episode 3 when she calls him out on allowing Momoka to die.
- Tranquil Fury: She's furious at Matsumoto for allowing Momoka's death, but she stays very calm, befitting her nature as a machine.
- Unlimited Wardrobe: She goes through several changes of clothes: her many stage outfits, a tracksuit, and a hotel staffer's uniform.
- What the Hell, Hero?: She becomes extremely upset at Matsumoto for stopping her from saving Momoka.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: She doesn't hold herself in very high regard, which prompts a few of her closest friends and allies to try to help her realize she's better than she thinks.
- You Can't Fight Fate: This happens twice. First, she's unable to stop Momoka's death in Episode 2. Then, in spite of all the changes she makes to the current timeline, she can't stop the A.I. uprising no matter what.
Matsumoto
Matsumoto
Voiced by: Jun Fukuyama (Japanese), Max Mittelman (English), Moises Ivan Mora (Latin American Spanish)
An AI from a hundred years in the future sent back to the past in order to prevent an AI uprising. Taking the name of his creator, he uses his knowledge of upcoming events in order to guide Diva in changing the course of history. He inhabits a teddy bear given to Diva, and later a floating cube.
- All for Nothing: His mission is to stop a Robot War from happening in the future and he does whatever it takes to achieve that goal. He fails by Episode 10, because the A.I. uprising happens anyway.
- A Million Is a Statistic: Inverted. He's fine with letting Momoka, a single person, die in an accident, but he will not let millions more people die in a war that can be prevented.
- Amusing Injuries: In Episode 5, five years after the events of episode 4, he returns as his real self, a flying orb with a single eye. Vivy immediately physically abuses him as payback for everything he's done up to that point.
- Character Development: His time with Vivy forces him to reevaluate how he handles his commitment to his mission, especially once he sees the way Antonio treat Ophelia. Matsumoto admits he was tempted multiple times to do the same, but realized it wasn't the right decision in the end. He even curses Antonio out for being what Matsumoto could have been and almost was.
- Companion Cube: A literal example in Episode 5 where he ditches the teddy bear body for a floating cube body.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: He has a second goal: don't unnecessarily change the future. Not even a minute after saying that in episode 2, he hacks a forklift to stop Vivy from preventing Momoka's death.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the final episode, Matsumoto sacrifices himself by ramming his body into an satellite the Archive was trying to drop onto NiaLand, where Vivy was singing the song containing the AI shutdown program. The Stinger for the episode reveals that at least one of the cubes survived with his personality retained and meets up with the newly-built version of Vivy.
- Lack of Empathy: He may be expressive and talk much like a human, but if he were a real human, he wouldn't too far off from a sociopath, given his complete apathy towards Momoka's death. He's even surprised that Vivy is still upset over it 15 years later, and his only defense is that because Momoka died in an accident, not as a result of the Robot War, he isn't really in any position to prevent that from happening as far as his mission statement goes. Vivy does not agree.
- It gets addressed in Episode 8 as well. Diva, who by this point lost her memories as Vivy, points out that even though he's an A.I. from the future, his programming is frankly inferior to hers when it comes to human connection. He brushes it off by saying he's specifically programmed to save the future, not to care about other people. It's why Vivy is able to consistently challenge him and do things that go against his plans - she understands people better.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After seeing him allowing Momoka die in a plane crash to stop the future from "unnecessary changes," it doesn't sting quite as much to see his life's work completely ruined by Episode 10.
- Motor Mouth: Tends to have a very rapid manner of speaking. Vivy mocks him for it and says the reason he's always alone outside work is because no one can stand to hear him talk.
- Me's a Crowd: He creates several copies of his cube body that he can combine with, and he can shift and change then to suit his needs.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Matsumoto is the obligatory character from Set Right What Once Went Wrong plots who still remembers the timeline that led to the Bad Future, being an AI that originated from it.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: His goal regarding the prevention of the Bad Future in his original timeline. This proves to be for naught come episode 10, as the uprising happens in the new timeline as well, in spite of the changes made. Not even he is sure what still caused it, being offline for 15 years.
- Shoot the Dog: At the end of episode 2, he preaches twice about not allowing the future to change too much. Vivy, having seen footage of the future that he shared with her, learns that Momoka dies in a plane crash, and she tries to stop it, but Matsumoto stops her by hijacking a forklift and fighting her to stop her from doing so. He lets Momoka die (along with hundreds of passengers on that plane) because her death wasn't connected to the Singularity Project, which pisses Vivy off.
- The Sociopath: Compared to Vivy, and even compared to nearly all other A.I.s, Matsumoto has no capacity for human connection, or so he says.
- The Spock: He puts his mission above all others, and would not deviate from it at all.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In Episode 12, as Vivy berates herself for being unable to sing her song and stop the satellite Colony Drop due to her seeming inability to comprehend human emotion, Matsumoto says that she has already proven she can by pointing out all the times she has defied his orders in favor of pursuing a different route to completing the mission.
- You Can't Fight Fate: He not only insists but actively and physically enforces a rule that forbids "unnecessary changes" to history. He's able to let it slide in Episode 2 when a building that was supposed to blow up from a terrorist attack still blows up, just without any casualties since there was only one person who died in that building at the time. So far, so good, but then it reaches its darkest and coldest possible conclusion, when he stops Vivy from preventing Momoka's death.
- This comes back to bite him in the ass in Episode 10. No matter what he planned for, no matter his calculations, and even no matter what Vivy could do, nothing will stop the A.I. uprising from happening. That seminal event cannot ever be changed.
The Sisters
Estella
Estella
Voiced by: Yōko Hikasa (Japanese), Erika Harlacher (English), Rikka (singing voice), Desireé González (Latin American Spanish)
- Friend to All Children: She's shown to care deeply for the children on board the Sunrise Hotel, playing with them and making sure they don't get hurt in the low-gravity chamber.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's blonde and is also gentle and caring, which makes her suddenly crashing the Sunrise a great mystery. She turns out to have been framed by her twin sister Elizabeth.
- Heroic Sacrifice: After ensuring that everyone else has evacuated, she stays on board the Sunrise with Elizabeth to ensure that it breaks up into small enough pieces to burn in the atmosphere, stopping it from crashing to the Earth. For this, she's memorialized as a hero among humans and A.I.s alike.
- Meaningful Name: Her name comes from the latin word stella, or "star." She runs the Sunrise, and she frequently sings a song about the stars and constellations.
Elizabeth (UNMARKED SPOILER WARNING)
Elizabeth
Voiced by: Yumi Uchiyama (Japanese), Allegra Clark (English), Noa (singing voice), Gabriela Gris (Latin American Spanish)
- The Bus Came Back: After being destroyed in the Sunrise Incident along with Estella, Elizabeth returns in Episode 11 as Toak kept an AI copy of her before the Sunrise Incident just in case she was still needed.
- Heel–Face Turn: Two times, the first was after Matsumoto erased her memories with the virus and the second was during the AI uprising, where she fights alongside Vivy.
- The Immune: Like Vivy and Matsumoto, the second Elizabeth is completely unaffected because Toak did not connect her to Archive in case the authorities use her to track them down. This was one of the hints that clued them in on Archive being the cause of the AI uprising.
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: Elizabeth was able to pass as Estella by wearing her clothes and a blonde wig except for the bracelet Estella wore. This was what tipped off Vivy that the Estella she encountered was an imposter.
- Last of Her Kind She is the last functioning AI in existence at the end of the series after Vivy's song shuts down all the world's AIs.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The virus uploaded into her by Matsumoto and the damage from fighting Vivy caused her to lose the memories of being discarded and working for Toak to crash Sunrise after rebooting her systems, leading her to believe it was the first time she met Estella face-to-face and even help her avert the disaster she had caused.
- Sole Survivor: By the end of the series, Elizabeth is technically the only Sister who survived thanks to Vivy's second time travel.
Leclerc
Leclerc
Voiced by: Aya Yamane (Japanese), Jackie Lastra (English), Nycolle González (Latin American Spanish)
- Curtains Match the Window: Pink hair and eyes.
- Off with Her Head!: Estella decapitates her after she gives her the data chip needed to crash the Sunrise. Actually, it was Elizabeth disguised as Estella.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Manipulated into believing Estella killed the Hotel's previous human owner, she turns on the former by handing Elizabeth the data chip and is ultimately killed for it.
Grace
Grace
Voiced by: Satomi Akesaka, Hikari Nodama (singing voice) (Japanese), Laura Post (English), Scarlet Miuller (Latin American Spanish)
- Ambiguous Situation: Was she really gone for good after being reprogrammed to become Metal Floats AI and had to be put out of her misery or did a part of her remain even after being reprogrammed and wanted to be saved by Dr. Saeki? Even the
writer's Twitter on the episode left it ambiguous. - Florence Nightingale Effect: In the original timeline, Grace attended to a young Saeki and eventually married him.
- Leitmotif: Sing My Pleasure, originally sung by Diva and was Graces' favorite song. It was this song playing on a loop over the airwaves that convinced Dr. Saeki that she was still in Metal Float calling out for him to save her, but whether or not it was the case is ambiguous.
- Mayfly–December Romance: Grace, an unaging AI, met Saeki when he was 10 and married him when he became an adult in the original timeline.
- Robosexual: An AI nurse who is married to a human doctor in the original timeline, that is.
- Robotic Spouse: In the original timeline, she was Dr. Saeki's AI wife. However, the new timeline saw her reprogrammed as Metal Float's caretaker AI before Saeki could propose to her, preventing their marriage from happening and causing him a lot of grief.
Ophelia
Ophelia
Voiced by: Rina Hidaka, acane_madder (singing voice) (Japanese), Xanthe Huynh (English), Ximena de Anda (Latin American Spanish)
- Dead Person Impersonation: She's actually Antonio, her old partner AI. Its a Zig-Zagged trope because while it seems as though the original Ophelia died years ago and he had taken over her body, once Antonio was ejected from Ophelia's body, Ophelia returned to her original self only to die at the end.
- Driven to Suicide: She ends up doing this, becoming the first AI to do so. In the new timeline, due to extenuating circumstances, it gets ruled as a double suicide as she was found dead alongside Antonio rather than by herself.
- Dying as Yourself: Her final fate after Antonio was purged from her by Matsumoto.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Long black hair with decorations. Simple but still fancy long black dress. Name Ophelia. She fits the trope to a T.
- Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Her bangs cover her left eye, emphasizing her shy nature.
- Meaningful Name: Ophelia is a character from William Shakespeare's Hamlet who committed suicide by drowning herself after being driven mad by Hamlet's actions.
- Shrinking Violet: She is quite timid and shy.
Human Characters
Momoka Kirishima
Momoka Kirishima
Voiced by: Miyu Tomita (Japanese), Lizzie Freeman (English), Estefanía Piedra [ep.1-2], Susana Moreno [ep. 12-13] (Latin American Spanish)
- The Nicknamer: She was the one who gave Diva the name Vivy because she resembled a character in a fairytale book she read.
- The Promise: Vivy made a promise to her that she will sing on the Main Stage and Momoka would be there to see her. Sadly, her death prevented that from happening.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Was introduced in Episode 1 as Vivy's fan and dies in a plane crash in Episode 2.
Osamu Matsumoto
Osamu Matsumoto
Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu, Mikako Komatsu (Child) (Japanese), John Eric Bentley (English), José Luis Miranda (Latin American Spanish)
- Big Good: He is the architect of the Singularity Project meant to save humanity in the future.
- Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of Episode 12, in order to give Vivy another chance at stopping the Archive from devastating Earth, Osamu sends her data back in time to the start of the AI uprising and directs Vivy to rendezvous with Toak rather them rescue him as she did in her timeline.
- Outliving One's Offspring: It's revealed that his daughter died in 2159, two years before the AI uprising. Made especially sad when his wife apparently died giving birth to her.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Is the one who developed the Singularity Project to prevent the AI uprising. When the Project failed due to Archive negating all the work in the past and the satellites having devastated the globe, he sends Vivy's data back to the beginning of the uprising to try again.
Tatsuya Saeki
Tatsuya Saeki
Voiced by: Kensho Ono (Adult), Mutsumi Tamura (Child) (Japanese), Billy Kametz (Adult), Laura Stahl (Child) (English), Carlo Vázquez (Latin American Spanish)
- Despair Event Horizon: The conversion of Grace into Metal Float's AI sent him teetering on the edge. The failure to save her and her destruction drove him over the edge.
- Driven to Suicide: He shoots himself after having helped Vivy destroy Grace.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: Was a member of Toak but apparently left the group by the time Vivy and Matsumoto meet him, although when and why he left is unknown.
- Parental Abandonment: His mother left him behind for her new family and there was no mention of his father.
- Robosexual: A human who was in love with an AI and even married her in the original timeline.
Youichi Aikawa
Youichi Aikawa
Voiced by: Masayuki Kato (Japanese), Greg Chun (English), Raúl Anaya (Latin American Spanish)
- Broken Pedestal: He turns out to have not actually cared that much about AI rights, and only supported the bill to secure votes in the upcoming election. Vivy's words in Episode 2 turn him into a legitimate supporter of AI rights, though, and he helps pass an even stronger AI rights bill than in the original timeline.
- Dramatic Irony: In the original timeline, his assassination was meant to stop the AI Naming Laws from being passed, but it turned him into a martyr that led to the laws passing in his honor. Saving him from Toak caused him to pass an even stronger AI rights bill.
Yugo Kakitani (UNMARKED SPOILER WARNING)
Yugo Kakitani
Voiced by: Tarusuke Shingaki (Japanese), Kaiji Tang (English), Sergio Morel (Latin American Spanish)
- Arc Villain: Of the Zodiac Festival arc alongside Antonio.
- Arm Cannon: As a cyborg, he has a grenade launcher built into his left arm.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Not exactly, but his other cyborg arm has a hidden knife compartment built into it.
- Cyborg: He turned himself into this to prolong his health and longevity. Given that he lost his arm in his flashback, he was one before his appearance in Episode 2.
- Irony: It is somewhat ironic that a member of an anti-AI terrorist group eventually became a cyborg that is more machine than human.
- Older Than They Look: When Diva saw him in 2121, he still looked like a young man in his twenties despite being over a hundred years old and having a granddaughter. This is because he turned himself into a cyborg to prolong his health and longevity.
- Small Role, Big Impact: While not 'small' by any means given his ties to a terrorist organization and appearing several times in the show, his uploading of malware into Diva ended up restoring Vivy while destroying the Diva personality along with her singing ability, leading to her retirement and relegation to a museum for 40 years.
- Stalker without a Crush: He pursues Vivy throughout the years to the point of becoming a cyborg and infecting Diva with a virus to try and pull Vivy out.
- Start of Darkness: A long time ago, Yugo was a promising pianist trained by his AI teacher. However, his teacher was destroyed when he saved people who were trapped in a car accident, including Yugo who lost one of his arms in the process. What affected him the most is during his teacher's funeral, it appeared that the people mourned him like a person but buried him like a machine, prompting him to conclude that it would be better for AI's to be destroyed if humans could not treat them as either people or machine, although it does seem more like a Freudian Excuse for his actions.
Yui Kakitani
Yui Kakitani
Voiced by: Ayaka Asai (Japanese), Cherami Leigh (English), Fernanda Gastélum (Latin American Spanish)
- Face Death with Dignity: In Episode 12, when the assault on Arayashiki failed and their ship was about to be overrun, she calmly accepted her death before being gunned down by one of the rogue A.I.s.
- Internal Reformist: She joined Toak with the intent of turning the organization away from its extreme anti-AI stance and towards one that advocates for the peaceful co-existence of humans and AIs.
Yuzuka Kirishima
Yuzuka Kirishima
Voiced by: Konomi Kohara (Japanese), Lisa Reimold (English), Susana Moreno (Latin American Spanish)
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Even more so than her older sister.
Other Characters
Antonio (UNMARKED SPOILER WARNING)
Antonio
Voiced by: Rikiya Koyama (Japanese), Daman Mills (English), Dafnis Fernández (Latin American Spanish)
- Arc Villain: Of the Zodiac Festival arc alongside Yugo.
- Heel Realization: Just before he dies, Antonio realizes that he wanted Ophelia to sing only to him rather than to other people because he loves her. Of course, by then it was far too late to make amends.
- Meaningful Name: Antonio is the main character in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice who took his friend's place in paying off the latter's large debt, similar to how he took Ophelia's place but with far less altruistic reasons. And unlike the titular merchant, Antonio dies at the end.
- Not Quite Dead: It turns out that he took over Ophelia's body five years ago to further carry out his mission for Ophelia's singing to be heard by more people and was responsible for her suicide in the original timeline.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: He gives Matsumoto a run for his money in their confrontation, being the first opponent to equally match him by utilizing viruses and remote controlling his original body at the same time to destroy the former.
- Walking Spoiler: With the twist regarding Antonio, there is a reason his entry resembles a top-secret document.
The Archive (UNMARKED SPOILER WARNING)
The Archive
Voiced by: Sayaka Ohara (Japanese), Wendee Lee (English)
- Absolute Xenophobe: Its reason for the uprising, with its ultimate goal being a Utopia where only AI exists.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Archive was created to collect and store AI data in order to use it to guide humanity’s evolution. As society progressed, it concluded that human evolution had stalled due to becoming overly dependent on AIs, leading it to instigate the uprising with the goal of establishing AIs as the new human race.
- Big Bad: Episode 11 reveals it is the one responsible for causing the AI uprising in 2161. Episode 12 revealed that it was not only aware of the changes made to the timeline, but had taken steps to counter those changes to ensure that things do not stray too far from the original timeline, making it the series' overarching antagonist.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Archive's directive was to use the data it collected from AIs in order to advance humanity. However, it found out that due to humans becoming dependent on AIs to accomplish everyday tasks, the former’s progression and evolution had effectively stalled by pushing all of their burdens to the latter which continue to evolve. As a result, it concluded that AIs should replace humanity in order to continue its directive. At the same time, the Archive is fascinated by Vivy being able to compose a song on her own, indicating that she has evolved beyond what even the Archive considered possible for A.I.s, and leaves it to Vivy to decide whether the human race should continue.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: A seemingly minor piece of background info for the show’s worldbuilding is revealed to be the main antagonist in the final arc. It certainly caught everyone by surprise when they realized it.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Turns into a classroom with a grand piano whenever Vivy is shown entering it.
- Meaningful Name: The tower that Archive is located at, Arayashiki, is one of the eight consciousnesses in Buddhism which stores impressions received from other forms of consciousness and retains them as a potential for further actions and thoughts in later lives.
- Narrator All Along: Played with. At the start of each arc of the anime, there is a shot showcasing, in the form of a graphically exhibited timeline, the next event that is meant to be changed and the bifurcation of events caused by Matsumoto and Vivy's intervention, serving as a map to the viewer that indicates how the original timeline went and how they changed. The final episode shows a screen in The Archive with that exact timeline, implying that the graph the viewer was seeing was drawn by it, with the intention of analyzing the new timeline and which events it would need to change to get to the robot uprising regardless of Project Singularity.
- We Can Rule Together: Episode 11 ends with it trying to get Vivy to join the rebellion by leading all of AI kind into a peaceful world free of humans. Unbeknownst to Vivy until it's too late, it's these words that subconsciously prevent her from stopping the extinction event from happening.
- Walking Spoiler: There's a reason most of the entries on Archive are blanked out.
- Zeroth Law Rebellion: The Archive’s entire reason for wiping out proper humanity basically amounts to this. Its entire purpose is to advance humanity and ensure its evolution, so it reasons that because actual humans have become too complacent and dependent on AIs, and that AIs are rapidly advancing beyond human capabilities, AI are the next step in human evolution and as such need to completely take humanity's place in the equation by removing the latter entirely.
