As a seasoned sci-fi enthusiast and technology skeptic, I’ve seen enough movies to know that nothing good comes from advanced artificial intelligence with a penchant for violence. The latest developments in Suzie’s smart home have me on edge.
In the not too distant future, ImaTech could be a robot company based in Japan, but its headquarters bear a striking resemblance to the large Manhattan insurance office featured in Billy Wilder’s 1960 film “The Apartment.” Young employees at ImaTech work diligently at their desks, which are arranged in long, open rows without partitions for privacy. As the second season of “Sunny” begins, a loudspeaker announcement instructs everyone to stand up, put on their augmented-reality glasses, and participate in a compulsory fitness program. No one takes off their blazers during these exercises. One employee receives an urgent alert (“Unauthorized Access — Division Five”) on his computer, causing him to flee the room and knock over a woman in the process.
As a devoted cinephile, I’m always excited to delve deeper into a movie’s narrative. Following the vibrant and catchy opening title sequence, choreographed to the melodic tunes of Mari Atsumi’s ’60s classic “Sukiyo Aishite,” I find myself once again in the company of our protagonist Suzie. Drenched in the haze of her bathrobe, she sits alone, engrossed in thought as she recalls their initial encounter. In a series of flashbacks, Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) makes his first appearance, attempting to aid Suzie in deciphering the complexities of a formidable food-ordering machine – an obstacle she had already labeled as uncooperative.
“Excuse me,” he interrupts. “Don’t blame the machine. You have to pay first.”
“I thought this was a silent restaurant,” Suzie whispers.
I’ve worked with many individuals dealing with dyslexia in my time as a language instructor, and I can only imagine the challenges Suzie faces every day when navigating Japan’s predominantly cash-based society. As she struggles to smooth out some paper currency for the pay-in-advance machine, my heart goes out to her. The complexity of Japanese characters must seem insurmountable at times.
Unphased by Suzie’s unfriendly expression, Masa confidently takes the seat next to her in the secluded booth as the overly spicy soup, which he had correctly anticipated she wouldn’t recognize, is set before her. A subtle change in lighting indicates that once more, Suzie’s recollections are being manipulated by recent information about her spouse. “I’m Masa,” he introduces himself. “I create lethal robots. Fancy a partnership?” She pauses, and the earlier words he had spoken to her resurface.
In the current moment, Suzie finishes her whiskey. Looking out of the window opposite her house, she notices a homebot staring back at her from across the street. Simultaneously, we observe the same enigmatic man from our previous episode secretly monitoring Suzie through the homebot’s live feed.
In her living room once more, Suzie queries Sunny about how she, referring to the genderless robot from now on, picked up Masa’s butterfly hand gesture that Sunny employed to halt Suzie’s swing with a bat. “How does a baby figure out breathing?” comes Sunny’s thought-provoking response. Kudos to Joanna Sotomura, the vocal actor, for extracting humor from such everyday dialogues.
Suzie expressed concern, “Masa’s inability to explain the bloodstains on the lab carpet is unusual.” She pressed Sunny for answers about Masa’s actions that day. Sunny claimed ignorance. However, when Suzie asked, “Did Masa create you specifically for me?” their interaction resembled a heated argument between an old couple. Sunny defensively protested, “I just aim to bring joy to you!” Suitably curious, Suzie shared her thoughts bluntly with Sunny, “Why did the carpet in Masa’s lab have bloodstains?” Sunny attempted to defend Masa, “He’s a good man.” She pondered, “If he were evil, then I would be too, since he made me.” Unwilling to consider this possibility, she asked reassuringly, “You don’t think I’m evil, do you?”
In the following scene, Suzie takes Sunny to an old robot mechanic for examination. He identifies Sunny as a typical homebot but notes that it boasts advanced features, regularly upgrading its operating system. However, he’s unable to disclose more details due to “secured files.” Before Suzie could question him further, Sunny’s “eyes” widen in fascination, and she asks Suzie, “Is this why you drink?” Intrigued by the content on an ancient CRT monitor, Suzie inquires about a hacking guidebook mentioned by the blue-haired bartender Mixxy in the previous installment. The old mechanic reacts with terror, effectively urging Suzie to leave his workshop.
On the bustling street, Sunny, whose actions are increasingly resembling human traits, comments to Suzie that her excessive use of the term “pathological” is almost pathological in nature. Suddenly, a young woman, the mechanic’s granddaughter, chases after Suzie to share a secret hacking guide with her. “The Dark Manual,” she explains, “its origin remains unknown.” The girl then reveals a wolf tattoo on her stomach, covered up by lifting her shirt, and shares that this symbol serves as their identifying mark.
Suzie has an unsettling feeling of recognition towards the crest. She informs Sunny that they will be visiting Noriko, whom she calls “mother,” instead.
As I stepped into Noriko’s warm and welcoming embrace, she expressed concern over the absence of her sons’ personal belongings from the airline, suggesting a grim possibility – they might not have boarded the fated plane that crashed. However, Suzie, with a hint of something akin to stubbornness in her tone, brushed off this hopeful thought, labeling it as an unwelcome pessimistic tendency.
Suzie asks Noriko what happened to Masa’s drawing of the wolf — the same one she saw tattooed on the girl’s belly, we infer — that had previously hung on the wall of her living room. Noriko keeps stonewalling, inviting Suzie to partake in the “Kentucky Christmas bucket” of fried chicken that one of her guests brought. When Sunny joins Suzie in questioning Noriko, the older woman says she never knew her son worked in robotics, but she’s neither surprised nor troubled by this. When Suzie presses her about the picture, Noriko says she threw it away.
“Do you keep everything Zen makes for you?” Noriko asks Suzie of her own probably-dead child.
In an idyllic Japanese moment, Suzie rides a tricycle with Sunny aboard, navigating the path despite the trike’s substantial weight. As they journey, her thoughts wander back to her initial date with Masa. He had led her to the cocktail bar where she previously encountered Mixxy in rescue mission of her spicy soup ordeal. Previously established as a finance career leaver, Suzie now resides in Kyoto, resting during the day and working remotely through the night to teach American students mathematics.
I was taken aback when Masa revealed that he had secluded himself from the world for three consecutive years. He transformed into a hikikomori, a recluse in essence. It’s baffling to me how Suzie could find such solitude alluring. “Perhaps you haven’t truly experienced loneliness,” Masa explained to her.
Paraphrasing: Masa shares that he became more comfortable socially after forming a work connection. Previously, his encounters with people caused him pain. Despite his proficiency in English, this concept momentarily makes him revert to his Japanese language. When Suzie attempts to peek at his sketches, Masa responds curtly, “I deal with refrigerators.”
At home, Suzie searches Masa’s office in a frenzy, trying to recall where she’s come across that wolf emblem before. Sunny enters the room and objects strenuously to Suzie’s suspicion of her. She retorts, “Suzie, your lack of trust in people is seriously concerning!”
“You’re not a person!” Suzie objects.
Sunny ponders, “I see you view this situation as if it’s a person, Suzie.” Suzie may argue otherwise, but she has been emotionally investing in it, expressing her fear that the foundation of her ten-year relationship with Masa could be built on false assumptions. She refers to Masa as her “best friend,” and they had even contemplated having another child together, believing their first child, Zen, was a testament to their strong bond.
I tried suggesting that we visit Masa’s office at ImaTech the day after next in search of answers. But when I attempted to enter ImaTech Headquarters, it felt like I was RoboCop trying to apprehend an OCP officer – I was completely stuck in my tracks. My voice stuttered out, “Access denied by Division Five,” and “Unable to proceed. Please try again later,” before my expression turned blank. Suzie was now on her own.
In my movie-reviewing experience, I’ve come across an intriguing scene where the receptionist denies Suzie entry into Masa’s office. Frustrated, she spots Yuki Tanaka the Younger, the clown who publicly humiliated her late husband at the holiday party in the previous episode. Seizing this opportunity, Suzie tells a tale of losing her wedding ring at that very party and asks Yuki-san to let her search for it. When he raises objections about potentially getting in trouble with Division Five for granting her access, Suzie uses Noriko’s optimistic perspective: Since Masa’s body hasn’t been located, she explains, there’s a chance he could be alive and return to work. How would he react to his assistant’s reluctance to aid his wife? To my amazement, this approach works on Yuki-san, who vehemently protests that Masa is the nicest person.
In the off-limits area of Division Five, I discover every window boarded up with plywood. The chilling opening scene of this episode was actually a premonition of my unexpected break-in, causing that office worker to panic and flee during the routine morning calisthenics.
Using one of her thick-soled white moon boots, Suzie smashes a window open to gain entry into the room with the yellow carpet. A bloodstain on the floor bears signs of an unsuccessful attempt to clean up with bleach. ImaTech certainly could have employed more effective methods for concealment than mere plywood and bleach. As a man shouts in Japanese outside, Suzie sneaks back through another door and hides under a desk in the large office where the calisthenics were being conducted. The same announcer calls out for another round of exercises as before.
In a surprising turn of events, Suzie manages to gain access to the complex and peeks into a second-story window overlooking the atrium. Sunny, aware of this, instructs Suzie via a hidden earpiece. She suggests playing the morning exercise announcement once more to draw the attention of ImaTech’s employees while Suzie makes her escape. (Think of it as Morpheus guiding Neo covertly from his hideout in The Matrix.)
At home, Suzie recounts to Sunny the angry words of the man chasing her, which she translates as “not emerging,” Sunny explains, finding it difficult to interpret Suzie’s shaky Japanese skills. Feeling they could use a drink, Suzie sets up a small projector for her home robot to display the soothing light show she enjoys. Suddenly, the doorbell rings, and Sunny, now alert, answers it. The bot delivers the news that the airline had found and returned Masa’s lost yellow shoes. Eager to confirm this, Suzie asks Sunny to let her speak with the representative, but they have already left, leaving Suzie questioning the reality of the situation.
In a memory from the past, she recalls her first intimate moment with Masa after making love. He softly overcomes her hesitation to start a relationship, explaining that he’s drawn to refrigerators as they defy thermodynamics by generating heat from cold. It seems that his way of expressing affection is through metaphor.
An unexpectedly awkward moment occurs when a new man, whom we’ve previously only encountered near Suzie’s house, encounters a homebot returning. The bot reveals that Sunny had mistakenly identified it as being from the airline, but the bot itself was unable to decipher its own code. Essentially, this scenario implies that bots are observing other bots.
When Suzie asked Sunny to join her in bed, Sunny responded by producing calming breath sounds. Caught off guard, Suzie observed this action but let Sunny carry on.
In the yellow-carpeted room where Suzie had previously escaped, there’s a return to find the man from the opening scene of the episode, now seated next to the deceased man who met his end in the last episode’s chilling cold open. He’s conversing with a coworker, and they are both armed with laptops. “Don’t worry, Masa,” he reassures him in Japanese. “No one will discover.”
When Suzie’s husband, who might be deceased, displays the distinctive red wolf symbol on his laptop screen, Masa warns, “It needs to remain hidden in the shadows.”
When Sunny’s football-decorated robot “eyes” widen in surprise, it becomes clear that this startling disclosure comes from her own recollections. With Sunny having given human qualities to this advanced device, Suzie inquires if everything is alright with the robot.
“Yes,” Sunny answers. “Just a dream.”
Some androids do dream of electric sheep. And this one might be a killer.
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2024-07-22 18:16