Apparently, according to the anime friend I met at CONvergence, The Gene of AI / Ai no Idenshi is one of this season’s new anime on Crunchyroll. As the first volume is available via scanlators, I thought I’d check it out.
SPOILERS
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This award-winning manga was first serialized in Weekly Shounen Champion in 2015. I suspect the anime got greenlighted because Yamada-sensei has gone on to write several spin-offs, including the most recent one (2020) AI no Idenshi: Blue Age, which is on-going.
My point being that I find all of this popularity a trifle baffling. The art, as you can see from the panel above, is very simplistic, almost retro. The stories themselves, at least in the first volume, are… moderately interesting? But, so far, there have been none that have blown my socks off.
The manga’s stories, which are a series of episodic chapters, take place in a world where humans and perfectly-passing android-AIs, called humanoids, co-exist more or less peacefully. Humanoids have all of the same rights as regular humans, though they operate under some extra restrictions–for example, we learn in the first chapter that it’s illegal for humanoids to make back-ups of themselves. Humans, too, are modified in many ways, so the line between “robot” and “human” has become a very thin line, indeed. Though in one chapter we learn that not all humanoids are created equal. Some have biological bodies and others, mechanical. The mechanical bodies can’t taste, feel hunger, etc. So, there is also a wide range of humanoid experience.
Our main character is a medical doctor named Sudō Hikaru, who has a secret life as “Moggadeet.” As Moggadeet, Sudō treats humanoids who maybe need a bit of help outside of the law.
What is weird to me is that this set-up should make for some super-fascinating scenarios, like, an underground doctor? Dealing with outlaw AIs? YES, PLEASE. Sign me up, right? Except… I think the problem is that while we see Sudō treating humanoids with complicated problems, so far–in the manga at least–we have never experienced (or even really learned what) the consequences would be if Sudō were caught doing this extra legal work. So, like, I sympathize with the situations, but I don’t get a sense of urgency? Like, what’s at stake for Sudō by doing this work illegally? Would he go to jail? Be executed? What happens to the humanoids who’ve hired him if they get caught? I mean, this is made even murkier because at times, in various chapters, it seems that Sudō can bring these illegal patients into his clinic and operate on them there.
So, for me, at this point, the story lacks a certain amount of tension. Like, a lot of the chapters tell very lovely, slice-of-life problems that get fixed by the end, but I’m left feeling like this world is oddly toothless?
I can’t imagine, however, that this series, which spawned so many spin-offs, including one that has our white-haired hero, Dr. Sudō, sporting a GUN, is going to stay so calm and collected….
So, maybe it’s worth sticking with?
As far as my recommendation goes, I would say that if you are a fan of science fiction that explores the intersections between machine and humans, this might be for you. The art is very crude? But, in some ways, that helps the reader focus entirely on the story. As I’ve said, my initial impression of that story is kind of ‘meh’ and it has been categorized as ‘slice-of-life,’ but the set-up promises something that I suspect will be delivered at some point… even if I’m not sure exactly when.
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