I have a tangental idea here. It's always assumed, by everyone from Kokone to the readers, that the Alpha series was all about increasingly humanlike robots. Certainly the A7 is a very humanlike artificial being, but I have to wonder something else: Was the initial idea of the Alpha series to design an artificial human, or was it from the start the more general idea of preserving human knowledge, emotion, and experience as the species fades?
I thought of this to start upon first seeing the A-2 record. Is it some sort of recording made from the A2? Used in making the A2? Or is the record itself the A2, an earlier attempt to capture human experience in sound alone? It seems to have much that effect, though how vivid the impression is depends on who listens to it. Maybe it's so powerful for Kokone because later Alpha series were based on the same psychological principles only increasingly more complete until the A7 ultimately was a true artificial human, capable of carrying human existance on in itself. For that matter, maybe the Tarpon, as a giant transatmospheric library, is part of the Alpha series itself.
It's just pondering, though. Is there anything in the manga to contradict my thoughts?
- Kunou-chan
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
I can't believe I misspelled the title. Is there any way to fix such things?
- Kunou-chan
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Howdy,
Interesting thoughts. There is slight evidence for the pre-A7 series being humanoid. First is the memorial.
http://ykk.misago.org/Volume6/45.html
Note that there are flowers on the memorial. I doubt anyone would leave flowers unless they were humanoid.
The second is when Sensei refers to Director alpha as Kokone's "sister".
http://ykk.misago.org/Volume9/84.html
So the A7 models are "related", and it may be that they consider the earlier models as ancestors. However, there isn't enough evidence to do much more than speculate, which is part of the fun of YKK.
Best,
Dave
PS - There isn't any way for you to fix the title.
- dDave
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Could it be that the records are backup copies of the original emotional program load? They look like hand-made samples.
On the memorial subject, to me it means that the research team considered the prototypes living beings. One can't die, unless alive.
- Z
Friday, December 31, 2004
I've never been sure what to make of the memorial. Obviously it's to the Alpha series, but....what of them? A6 possibly, but I rather took it to be a memorial of the A7s that have been lost. We later found that most of the males died young for some reason or another, but even that aside it stands to reason that some were lost. And given Kokone's youth and limited life experience, it seemed plausible that robots' mortality hadn't really crossed her mind before, and the memorial would be as strange a thing to contemplate as if it had been to some unknown former Alpha series model.
As for Director Alpha being called Kokone's sister, that never struck me as a suprise at all. All A7s are siblings in a sense, all creations of the same "parents." But I never saw any real implication that there were definite ancestors mentioned in such terms. If Kokone had ever found anything about previous models of robots she might have made some similar sort of analogy, admitted, but the only relationship terminology I recall is another A7 being her sister, and of robots being humanity''s children.
- Kunou-chan
Sunday, January 2, 2005
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