ANI-MOVIES, *Time Of Eve: The Movie

A compilation movie of an ONA series is a rarity among anime releases, but the 6-episode Time Of Eve created by Yasuhiro Yoshiura who prior to this only did independent shorts was a fan favorite. Animeigo did a stellar job putting this out with a fundraiser that made over 1000% their goal for its American Blu-Ray release. The ONA came out in 2008, and the collected film was put out in 2010 which won several animation awards. This sci-fi slice-of-life takes the humans + robots premise and brings it a little more down to Earth away from the cerebral themes of cyberpunk anime like Ghost In The Shell.

Taking place in the foreseeable future, people own the generic model robots along with the more human-like types that are largely similar to humans aside from a large glowing ring projecting over their head appearing as an electronic halo. There is a bias from an ethics council committed to stopping human reliance on robots and mistaking them for actual people. One place that tries to keep off the ethics council's radar is a cafe for humans and robots called Time Of Eve, which is such a ridiculous premise on its own as robots aren't capable of consuming coffee but nonetheless attracts robots during their time off from being servants and can hang out to be accepted as equals. The one rule the cafe has is not to treat any patron different from a person whether they are really a robot as their halo disappears when they enter the establishment. Two curious high school boys find out about this place after one of them checks his robot's activity log and that she happens to be a regular at Time Of Eve. This leads to both of them learning more about human/robot relations, and how their lives have been enriched by the robot they themselves own.

It's interesting to see a 21st Century anime still incorporating Isaac Asimov robot laws and put it in a post-modern setting which this anime does in spades. The cafe regulars are an eclectic bunch that will surprise you who actually are robots, and the dub cast is well done. The only thing that works against this compilation movie is that there is one segment that continues directly after the other where the two main characters are suddenly wearing completely different clothes in the same setting, like they quickly changed outfits during a commercial break. The film edition is currently available on streaming and an uncommon feature whose subject matter about artificial intelligence was seriously ahead of its time.