***SPOILERS*** Komorebi no Nostalgica: Why I think this is the best AI VN out there.
Entry posted by Clephas
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Komorebi no Nostalgica is one of the more interesting VNs I've read in the past three years. I occasionally go back and play one of its paths when I want to restore my faith in VNs, and one of its primary themes is artificial intelligence. There are a number of different viewpoints represented in the VN about AIs, ranging from classic horror stories and instinctive repulsion to acceptance and/or affection.
Cinema, who is the source of most of the central conflicts of the VN, is a humanoid robot created before the big war that basically wiped out the internet archives and a lot of humanity's knowledge of its own past. She was apparently customized immensely by the man known only as the 'Store Manager', who ran an underground video rental shop with her as the clerk. She isn't a heroine, but it wouldn't be incorrect to state that she is the focus of all the major events of the story. In many ways, her personality and setting resemble that of the heroine from Planetarian, and those who played that ancient will probably be able to easily recognize the earnest, almost childlike nature of the two.
The generation of humanoid robots after her eventually developed a self-determining will and intelligence, becoming fully sentient, sparking a pogrom (of humans slaughtering robots that were suddenly seen as a threat) that led straight into a war that shattered human society as it existed at the time. The war was... a draw, though a draw that turned out more to the advantage of the robotic Metasera than to that of humanity. During the war, Cinema was put into hibernation and hidden by her creator, until she was awakened by the protagonist and his hare- *coughs* friends.
The Metasera, having gained the right to self-determination in exchange for forfeiting their right to aggressive self-defense, live in small arcologies based in just about every major city of the planet, learning from and aiding humans as they seek to evolve their budding intelligence and emotions further. One of the heroines, Fluorite, is a Metasera, and it is through her that you get the writer's insight into the idea of the results of a 'naturally occurring' AI.
Cinema, on the other hand, presents an entirely different path to the same goal... she is a low-spec virtual intelligence that is designed to grow into full sentience and in the end gains a far wider spread of emotions than the Metasera... while also showing off a surprising degree of emotional development, even before she gains that sentience. The idea of an AI that develops intelligence before emotion and causes a war (the Metasera) versus an AI that develops intelligence after emotion and is a friend to humanity from the beginning (Cinema) is one of the many hidden themes of the VN.
There were innumerable times in the VN that I felt intellectually stimulated or driven to express raw emotion. The story is just that powerful, after all. Moreover, the protagonist and friends are of the first generation to grow up without knowledge of the world prior to the Metasera, and it is the writer's portrayal of this aspect that is frequently the most interesting.
- Deep Blue, Narcosis and Darklord Rooke
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