English Dub Review: Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song- “Ensemble for Polaris – Our Promise”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Diva/Vivy meets Momoka’s younger sister, Yuzuka, but before they can continue their conversation the spaceship rumbles. Estella informs staff of the malfunction but the communication channel is cut off. Vivy encounters Estella in the hall, but she notices that Estella isn’t wearing her bracelet. The fake Estella attacks but with Matsumoto’s help they escape. After going to a safe place Vivy requests that Matsumoto transfer the combat program to her. They find Estella and learn from her that she has a twin sister, Elizabeth.

Meanwhile, Toak prepares to evacuate the quests and crash Sunrise for their agenda. However, Elizabeth knocks their leader and her master out gets them to evacuate. Elizabeth reunites with Estella and Vivy. Vivy fights against Elizabeth and Matsumoto uses a reformatting virus on her. They manage to neutralize Elizabeth, but the ship can’t stop. Estella makes the decision to detach all the parts of the hotel. The ship will burn before it crashes into a coastal city. After a heartfelt farewell with Vivy and Estella on their missions, the evacuation is complete. Elizabeth wakes up without her memories and the twins meet each other once more. The sisters make an announcement before singing to the sunrise that the guests see from the evacuation ships.

Our Take:

This episode concludes the Sunrise Incident with an interesting twist as Estella (Erika Harlacher) has a twin sister, Elizabeth (Allegra Clark) who is working for Toak. The episode starts with Elizabeth’s life and her disposal from the experiment. It might be jarring at first, but it makes sense as the episode continues with more details from Estella.

Now the animation is amazing in this episode. Some shots in the episode are beautiful like when Vivy (Cristina Vee) takes off her glasses after the combat program transferred over. I did like the addition of Vivy’s perspective when using the combat program as she takes out the Toak members. There’s also Vivy’s fight with Elizabeth which was cool with electricity crackling around Vivy. Vivy’s headbutt to knock Elizabeth was effective in more ways than one. It parallels her forehead touch with Yuzuka as she explains how AIs communicate data or in human terms emotions with one another.

The voice acting is good, especially when Matsumoto’s virus infects Elizabeth. Her voice becomes distorted like a malfunctioning robot and that effect was great. There are also the songs in the series and it really hits at the end with the twins singing their last song. The final scene of the two white birds flying in space as a symbol of their souls flying freely worked to emphasize their bond. Furthermore, the soundtrack really emphasizes those emotional scenes like Estella’s goodbye with Vivy and Estella getting news of Elizabeth’s disposal.

The episode delves deeper into AIs and their missions. For starters Estella’s backstory with Elizabeth and their promise with each other to keep on smiling were bittersweet. It’s a tragedy that the twins never got to carry out their mission together until Elizabeth lost her memories. It implies that their shared consciousness worked after Elizabeth loses her memory and that adds salt to the wound. Meanwhile, Vivy carries out the Singularity Project with Matsumoto and they do complete their objective to some extent.

Now let’s talk about Vivy in this episode and her development as the episode progresses. Estella and Elizabeth made an impact on her with her sorrow at Estella’s decision to stay behind and her jealousy towards the twins continues to progress her search for placing her heart into her singing. Furthermore, her decision on downloading the combat program in order to secure Yuzuka’s safety was a decent show for her growth. She needs more skills to continue her mission with Matsumoto. Although it may appear like Vivy can do everything now with the combat program, just a reminder that she is the first autonomous AI. She still has flaws like not fully comprehending what it means to put your heart into something.

Overall it was a good conclusion to the second turning point. Elizabeth and Estella’s story was tragic and kept up with the tone of the anime. Even though Vivy and Matsumoto changed the original timeline’s result of the humans onboard the Sunrise Hotel. There’s still the result of the Sunrise Hotel crashing in the first place, hopefully, it won’t change the main reason for the Singularity Project: the quick progression of AIs too much.