In an effort to achieve perfection in every sphere of life, humanity has allowed technology to have free reign over basically everything, but in the process, it has lost its soul and created a fragmented, isolated existence where the miseries of the real world can be forgotten in the alluring virtual one. Along with the advent of AI, the combination of two synthesized Reality is already dominating the world, which gives rise to the inevitable questioning of identity, reality, and conception of truth. Mangaka Uru Okabe’s masterpiece Good Night World, adapted into a Netflix anime series, meditates on the aforementioned questions and additionally alludes to some profound notions about the nature of humanity itself.
Revolving around a terribly dysfunctional Family, the story of Good Night World goes to dangerous lengths while measuring up the ugly skeletal form of reality with the paradise land of simulation dedicated to wish fulfillment. There are noticeable shades of classic sci-fi anime like Serial Experiments Lain and Paranoia Agent all over the series, even in the ambiguous ending, but it retains originality by balancing lightheartedness and darker themes, unlike the aforementioned grim-toned ventures.
Spoilers Ahead
A Perfect Family: The Arimas And The Akabane
As Good Night World begins, viewers are taken into the world of an extreme recluse, cynic teenager, Taichiro Arima, who, much like a major portion of the world population, is morbidly addicted to an augmented reality simulation game world named ‘PLANET’. Taichiro used to be an easygoing, bright kid who shared a strong bond with his family, especially with siblings. But his genius father’s obsession with order and perfection became so oppressive for the rest of the family that Taichiro grew distant. The last nail in the coffin of their relationship was wedged when, despite Kojiro’s strict conduct being part of the reason for Taichiro’s younger sister, Aya’s horrifying death, Kojiro remained as apathetic as ever. The harrowing incident resulted in Taichiro completely shutting himself away from the outside world, his mother, Miyabi, becoming mentally unstable and partly abandoning the family, and only the younger son, Asuma, trying to mend the broken relations between the family members, to no avail.
Taichiro finds everything that reality never granted him—a happy family, recognition, and a sense of purpose—in the world of PLANET, as in that world of virtual reality he is a member of the Akebana family, the strongest four-player group in the game. Assisted by other members of his virtual family, May, Shiro, and AAAAA, Taichiro’s virtual character Ichi has accomplished everything that he himself was unable to do. However, unbeknownst to him, the game was designed by Tojiro himself, and all the members of the Akebana family are virtual representations of Arima family members. None of the members are aware of this fact, as all of them are addicted to the game to gain the sense of closure their real-life family could never provide.
BlackBird AI Takeover: Did Kojiro End The Crisis He Himself Created?
During his initial days at PLANET, Taichiro’s character Ichi formed a bond with a character named Pico, but after forming a family, the duo gradually separated from each other. Pico went on to form a pirate guild—the largest community of the PLANET—and, taking the advice of her second-in-command Shigatera, she attacked the Akebanas to take Ichi into her community. However, as she relinquishes the guildmaster position to Shigatera in order to pursue Ichi, his ulterior motive is revealed: to capture ‘Black Bird’—the endgame artifact of PLANET, which will allow a player to win an exorbitant cash prize in real life—and he betrays the pirate guild to initiate his plan of doing so.
In reality, the BlackBird was designed by Tojiro to be the most advanced sentient AI system in the game, which eventually grew unstable and posed a serious threat as an omnipresent being that could wreak havoc on the real world. In order to prevent its uprising, Tojiro used his character Shiro to hunt down all his power-source AI characters, one of which happened to be Pico. Meanwhile, in PLANET, Granada Guild President Leon and his assistant Sasumata manipulated events to create a chaotic situation in the virtual world, and eventually it was revealed that Sasumata is the prime form of the malevolent AI, which seeks to take control of both the virtual and real worlds. Tojiro and his assistant Hana Kamuro desperately try to seek out the source of malice when Asuma gets into contact with a BlackBird-affected creature and gets trapped in a limbo in between virtual reality and the real world, known as Birdcage, by the AI. Taichiro saves his younger brother by sacrificing an AI replica of himself with the help of Kamuro, and the brothers eventually bond over an emotional reconciliation.
As Kojiro returns home to check up on his son, demons of the past start haunting the family, and an altercation ensues between father and son. However, they soon realize that the BlackBird started its occupation in the real world as soon as it dominates over Earth’s technology via the internet, transforming the the Birdcage into an augmented reality where the consciousness of the majority of the populace gets sucked into. Kojiro fails to stop his creation; instead, the BlackBird incarnate Sasumata reveals the truth about the Akebanas’ real identity to Taichiro. He makes him aware of the fact that Shiro, the father figure he always admired, was none other than Kojiro himself, who had also killed Pico and brutally killed Kamuro in front of the family, and the chain of incidents shocks Taichiro beyond comprehension.
Did The World Transform Into A Virtual One?
Almost thirteen days later, the scene shifts to the Arima household, where Asuma and Kojiro are trying to pick up the pieces while living in a changed replica reality mimicking the mechanism of PLANET. Before making his last stand, Kojiro entrusts Asuma with a messaging device and asks him to hand it to Taichiro, as he has recorded a message for him to see when the time is right. Coming face-to-face with his creation, Kojiro reveals that the failsafe protocol that he had integrated inside him will end BlackBird, just like a virus does to an operating system. As he pulls Sasumata inside a digital cyberspace in the face of impending doom, the AI reveals its inner conflicts.
Kojiro learns that Sasumata always suffered from an identity crisis, as being a sentient AI with no higher purpose plagued its psyche and turned it against the creator. Kojiro reveals that he conceptualized BlackBird during the most vulnerable phase of his life, after the death of his daughter Aya, and he modeled Sasumata on her image. Meanwhile, the messaging device gets activated and shows that Kojiro assigned his elder son, Taichiro, to end his life as a form of penance, as he gave him access to ‘uninstall’ the failsafe program after the deed is done. Unwilling to let his father have such an easy escape, Taichiro almost manages to rescue him but refrains from doing so after an emotional reconciliation between father and son as Sasumata completely adopts the personality of Aya, triggering both their PTSD. Kojiro disappears into the inner recesses of cyberspace, taking the remnants of Sasumata, seemingly dying in the process as well, and the world restores to normalcy thirteen days later.
Eight years later, viewers see two different versions of reality, each extremely intriguing and puzzling at the same time. The first is either a modified version of PLANET or Birdcage, where a transformed AI Ichi meets Hinaka, the real-life representation of Pico, and the two cry tears of joy after an unexpected reunion. The other reality, supposedly the real world, showcases a timeline eight years from the events of the Black Bird infestation as a grown-up Taichiro and Asuma discuss the similarity between a particular Japanese countryside location and Twilight Hill, the Akebana family residence in PLANET.
As the duo take leave, Taichiro momentarily notices flashes of the virtual world in this one and shrugs it off, considering it to be a silly mistake on his part. However. As the series ends, the screen glitches, indicating that it might not be the real world after all, thereby leaving the fate of the characters to be speculated through the open-ended conclusion. The existence of the first reality is really mind-boggling, to say the least, as there should have been no way for Hinaka, who was a virtual construct inside the mind of Pico AI, to come into any form of virtual world, and the same goes for Ichi, who seemingly sacrificed himself while saving Asuma. Whether it was another augmented reality designed to suit the wishes of AI constructs themselves or an occurrence in the real world, the confusion might never be clarified, as the mange ended on the same note as well.
