Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song- episode 4 is already out, and this anime continues to prove it’s one of the best shows this season. This episode started with an unknown AI who seemed broken, but a certain human group found her, and their leader gave her a new mission. Jumping back to the story, it’s the Estella we saw destroy Leclerc, and she calls the Master by his name as she decapitates the AI. Then we got to see the beautiful opening for the first time, with Kairi Yagi singing “Sing My Pleasure” (note that Vivy is normally voiced by Tanezaki Atsumi).
The episode revealed the sad story of two sister AIs. Estella was allowed to move freely as her sister Elizabeth was left for half a year and expected to be able to copy Estella’s experience afterwards. However, they decided it was a failure and to scrap Elizabeth, telling Estella that the AI was destroyed. And that’s the same AI we saw at start, while the group that found her was the anti-AI Toak. Since the twin AIs were built to be identical, they used her to try and crash the hotel with Estella’s ID, which explains why Matsumoto was convinced the Estella they met first was to blame for the incident. When Vivy met Elizabeth, she barely avoided fatal damage and managed to escape with Momoka’s sister, promising to get her back to Earth.
She denied that she knew Momoka, but was still determined to keep her safe. In order to do this however, she had to get the Combat update from Matsumoto, and she didn’t hesitate now. As soon as she saw the bear, she asked him to install it, and we got a bunch of really cool scenes when it finished!
The visuals were expectedly amazing, but the music and sound in general this episode were especially stellar. Starting with the OP I had to repeat at least 15 times before moving forward, the soundtrack throughout the episode was also perfect. Most notably in the Vivy vs Elizabeth fight. Add the breaking voice of the villain AI after Matsumoto injected her with the virus, and the scene had me at the edge – especially when she screamed for Estella! It felt sad knowing her story and seeing her want to get her master to evacuate as the only human she cared for (and it was coincidentally the same person Vivy saved 15 years ago too!), but obviously she had to be stopped. The animation in the fight was also great, and Vivy’s headbutt and transition to her looking at the sky in the past felt powerful.
The damage was already done, and the only way to save the situation was for Estella to stay on and detach the hotel piece by piece and perish with it. Vivy wanted to stay but was convinced to leave and focus on her own mission. As she seemed to fail, her sister Elizabeth came up with her memories reset. This is the part that probably broke some of us, particularly when she said she felt like it was their first and last task together. They went to the terminal together, and we got to hear the beautifully tragic song as they managed to save everyone with their sacrifice, with Vivy making a beautiful smile at end with “I think I am jealous”.
At the end of the mission, Matsumoto shut down and will wait for the next moment in time when they need to make a change. This means we might get another time-skip next week, and the episode “Sing My Pleasure – To Make You Smile Again” will premiere next Saturday on April 24. You can watch Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song- episode 4 on Funimation, and you can also vote for it as the best of this week on our weekly poll (it ranked outside of top 10 last week!). The anime will have a total of 13 episodes, and we’ll see how much suffering Natatsuki Tappei and Umehara Eiji have prepared for this story.
All images via Funimation
Official Website: vivy-portal.com
Official Twitter: @vivy_portal
©Vivy Score / アニプレックス・WIT STUDIO
