In the West, narratives about AI tend to have certain connotations built into them, in that these AIs tend to be malevolent, or they grow beyond their programming to annihilate humanity (whether with malice or not, that's beside the point.) In the context of AI defeating humans in sports, Western films and documentaries are lowkey horror stories about the relentless march of computers in the race to best the best human minds (such as 2017's AlphaGo) or conspiratorial films looking at the "human element" involved in the use of such machines (such as 2003's Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine.)
All that said while Atsuhiro Yamada's Awake, also based on a true story, seems similar to Game Over, it's actually a coming of age story about two people who view the game of Shogi (basically Japanese chess) in markedly different ways. For Eiichi Yokota (Ryo Yoshizawa), the game is something to be mastered; the purity of a perfect move that can beat even the best human masters is his ultimate goal. For Riku Asakawa (Ryuya Wakaba), it's simply winning and facing strong opponents. They've been on each others' minds for a while now (Eiichi more than Ryuya) and this leads to an inevitable showdown as Ryuya faces off against Awake, a computer program designed by Eiichi.
What follows is a relatively low key state of affairs as Eiichi and Riku train and deal with their own personal and sports-related problems to prepare for the final showdown. It's not as energetic as other sports movies, even Japanese sports movies - closer to Fumihiko Sori's 2002 film Ping Pong (though not as good). The AI here is more of a tool (and in a way, an avatar for Eiichi himself, as Eiichi's own character flaws are reflected in his creation). Ultimately, like most films of its kind, the journey is far more important than the destination.
Unlike their humanity-eradicating siblings in media both domestic and otherwise, the A.I. in Yasuhiro Yoshiura's Time of Eve are benevolent and benign, only wanting to live their lives in peace. They follow Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, and are fully devoted to their masters, even if they are treated with indifference or even malice. To allow them to operate without restrictions and prejudice, cafes were created so that they can express themselves and interact with others. After growing suspicious of his family's android servant, high schooler Rikuo comes across one of these cafes: Time of Eve.
Yoshiura has a knack for attentive worldbuilding, tending to sprinkle little details about the world that rewards the repeat watcher. Not only that, he also inserts many small references to the science fiction works that inspired the work itself.
The movie is stitched from a series of original net animation videos, and despite attempts to make the movie flow better by adding new scenes, its stitched-together nature shows. The film feels more like a series of vignettes about the people Rikuo meets inside the cafe and their relationships with fellow androids and other people, and Rikuo's own relationship with his android Sammy. The vignettes are generally good, but the film egregiously fails to let its characters have a genuine moment by inserting comedy in some of its most serious scenes.
The film doesn't have a true dramatic arc; it ends with a lot of questions unanswered. Ultimately the whole affair feels like a slice of life more than anything else, and while that approach isn't bad per se, there are some elements to the storytelling that Yoshiura has done better in his other, subsequent works.
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