Time of Eve: Us and the Other

How does Time of Eve portray the Other?
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How do we deal with the Other? How do we interact with the people who are both the same as us, but also very, perhaps unacceptably different? This is the question at the core of Yasuhiro Yoshiura's (吉浦 康裕) 2008 6-episode anime series and movie Time of Eve (イヴの時間). Through the interactions of the protagonist Rikuo and his friend Masaki with the androids and humans that frequent the café 'The Time of Eve', we see them and others struggle with this question. Ultimately, Time of Eve concludes, we can overcome our differences and learn to enjoy our interactions. However, this positive message is built at least in part on a reification of toxic power structures left unexamined.

fig:{An anti-android advertisement, androids with rings:right:33:image1.jpg:image3.png}Our protagonists find themselves in a society where androids are virtually indistinguishable from humans, aside from a halo-like ring above their heads. Androids are as a matter of course denied personhood, a stance reinforced by constant anti-android advertisements by the 'Ethics Committee', and serve mainly as domestic servants. So too does Rikuo's houseroid (the name given to android domestic servants), Sammy. However, Rikuo discovers that she has been frequenting a café called 'The Time of Eve', where - as he discovers together with his friend Masaki - the house rule is that one may not distinguish between androids and humans. Consequently, their ring is turned off, and our protagonists are left guessing who the androids are.fn:{In so doing already breaking the house rule}

Here, then, Rikuo slowly learns that androids can love, be caregivers, care about their memories and their appearances, lie for the benefit of others, be in relationships based on false premises and struggle with learning as much as him - in essence, he learns that they have just as much a claim on personhood as he does. He overcomes the trials of accidentally and intentionally hurting the members of this community, learns how to overcome his envy of their real or supposed advantages, and how to deal with his affection for persons that his society does not even consider such. In essence, Rikuo goes through trials and tribulations similar to those he would face encountering any 'other', and especially those challenges that result from joining a community of such people. In this way, Time of Eve is able to and aims to serve as a canvas for the viewer to project and reflect their own such experiences. The conclusion Time of Eve arrives at and invites its viewers to embrace is one of general inclusivity: We can learn to understand and love each other, despite our differences. Repeatedly, Time of Eve asks: Are you enjoying the Time of Eve? By the end, Rikuo's answer is a resounding yes.

fig:{Are you enjoying the Time of Eve?:center:50:image4.png}

In all likelihood, this - Rikuo's growth into acceptance - is the intended message, and other reviews bear this out.fn:{c::MalTimeEve;;, c::PompaTimeEve;;} However, national and international reviewers seem to prefer asking the question How realistic is it? fn:{c::BCHEve;; c::AmazonTimeEve;;} Here, the central mechanism, Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, is much-discussed, as is the realism of androids being so similar to humans, amongst others. Amongst all this innovation, the protagonist owning a flip phone seems conspicuously out of place. The fact that this material culture seems so out of place highlights the cultural assumptions that are taken as given: The houseroids, property of their owners, all appear to be women.

Not only that, their portrayal is very telling: Outside of the café, houseroids are only ever seen doing household tasks, making the lives of their human owners better without complaint or challenge - reflecting Confucian and Buddhist ideas of the obedience and silence of women, especially wives.fn:{Nakamura (2014), p. 45ff} Produced in 2008, about one year after sitting Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Hakuo Yanagisawa called women 'birth-giving machines', and also one year after a committee of the LDP-Government suggested robots as a solution for the falling birthrate and envisioning a role for them as natural helpers of the housewife,fn:{c::MihaTimeEvePosthuman;;} this sort of vision is seemingly reified in Time of Eve.fig:{Rikuo about to rip the hair ties off Sammy's hair:right:33:image6.png}The most our protagonists have to do in relation to their houseroids is to accept their love: Rikuo grows to tolerate, then enjoy the individuality in how Sammy makes his coffee and her learning the piano to encourage him, and Masaki learns to accept that Tex (his own houseroid, albeit a non-human shaped one) can only show his love through actions, since has been forbidden from speaking. This love however is presupposed and does not need to be earned, essentially an idealized, inalienable version of motherly love, with the subservience and lack of agency that that entails. When Sammy rebels, it is only for Rikuo's benefit. And in a hard-to-watch scene near the middle of the series, Rikuo rips the hair ties off Sammy's hair. While part of his character arc, this action remains largely unexamined. Are these portrayals of women reflective of the biases of the author, or the society, or both?

fig:{Love between robots, androids and humans:left:33:image8.png:image9.png:image10.png}Such a reading is perhaps too simplistic: Time of Eve does not challenge such patriarchal ideas, but neither does it revel in them. The café, the setting for a vast majority of screen time, is with few exceptions not the scene of female subservience to men, and our protagonists frequently get told off by the owner of the café, Nagi, as well as others. Time of Eve is in many ways about love, and beyond the patriarchal view of love mentioned above and embodied mostly in the characters of Sammy and Tex, features other forms of love as well, ones open to more subversive readings: Nagi shares a farewell-scene with a houseroid completely unable to 'pass' as a human - in so doing taking seriously a being deemed ridiculous by Rikuo, Masaki, society and probably by the viewer as well. Indeed, hints of a possible romantic relationship between Rikuo and Nagi (for whom it is never revealed if she is a human or an android) also exist. The most striking example perhaps are two androids, in love with each other, both thinking each other human, and both in romantic relationships with their owners. The viewer might connect these scenes to many things: From purchased human interaction, relationships with virtual characters, up to fujoshi and other forms of playful and (perhaps) non-conforming relationships and sexuality. Importantly, these scenes, along with many others like them, are given room to breathe. Criticism of these relationships is present, but not treated as correct. Watching a conversation between the two androids in love, Masaki comments: Fake love. But as their conversation plays out and the scene ends, Rikuo only smiles.

It would be easy to judge Time of Eve as a reflection of a culture promoting acceptance while ignoring deep structural inequalities, to be flirting with subverting social attitudes [...] but offer[ing] no promise of [...] emancipation. fn:{c::MihaTimeEvePosthuman;;} And while that is certainly true, the fact that this is not the only love on offer, that some of the love displayed is bound up in patriarchal power structures but perhaps not all is, can make us pause. As viewers not from Japan, it can be easy to essentialize our preconceptions through our reading of a piece of media. In that way, however, we too become outsiders looking upon an 'Other'. Perhaps Time of Eve can help us complicate that picture.