Secret Santa Review, Time of Eve aka Eve no Jikan

This holiday season there is a wonderful anime blog community event organized by those smart people at Reverse thieves called Secret Santa. Everyone involved chooses three anime recommendations to another anime blogger involved. Among the anime recommendations that I have received is an Oav called the Time of Eve (Eve no Jikan). Even though there is a movie version of this media I have watched Time of Eve as the six episode Oav on crunchyroll.

Misunderstanding are almost necessary in anime

In the near future robots have become commonplace and androids now live in many households. Rikuo is a normal student in such a house. He suspects that his houseroid is going to places that it is not commanded to. He and his friend Masaki become interested in this and end up learning about a cafe called the Tme of Eve. The cafe has one rule, that there is no discrimination between humans and robots and the holographic ring that denotes robots is invisible while inside the cafe. This is the story of what Rikuo and Maskai learn when they are in the cafe.

Now that's why she works here for eight bucks an hour.

The Time of Eve is by genre classification a pretty hard science fiction Oav and by usual assumption is one of those smart people kinds of shows. While oftentimes such material is often used to pad the ego of those who claim to watch it I found that Time of Eve is one of those Oavs that really walks it's walk in terms of being material that makes the viewer think. In this I think I chose rightly to watch this as a six part series and viewing each part separately as most of the parts are kind of short, being just long enough to give you something to think about. While The Time of Eve is usually about topics about questioning our assumptions but is slightly vague about the conclusions the viewer is supposed to reach. Thus it is a thought piece asking you to think as opposed to propaganda of some sort that tells you what to think.

Don't look and maybe tin can won't notice us.

Another point in the shows favor is the tone of the piece. While some of the more artistic shows might be a bit dry in order to bolster it's intellectual credentials I found that this is not the case with Time of Eve. The show knows when to crack a joke or two or go for an emotional appeal. The animation for Time of Eve leans heavily on CG but I found that it works in the show's favor given that it is a science fiction show.

Overall one of the taglines for the show is "Are you enjoying the time of eve?" The answer is I did and if you like science fiction in any medium you should really watch this.

Rating The Silver Motorad (Kino's Journey) for being a very enjoyable and enlightening anime show.