I accept this as an ending and yet part of me wants more.
This episode is almost entirely about Sudo and Risa working out their feelings as Sudo prepares to leave for a war-torn hellhole to search for his mother’s copy. Anything about searching for or finding the copy, or the upgrade to Michi that precipitated all this and for which Michi clearly wants Sudo to have this experience for (or die trying) is left out of the content of the show.
But, at the end, I feel like that kind of fits Gene of AI. It’s not a show about the big picture the way Beatless was, it’s a show that told small and human stories about the interface with this technological world. It probably could have started to properly address Michi, but it didn’t have to and so stayed germane to itself rather than trying to go big.
As for the exact content, Sudo takes the time he needs to transfer the clinic over to his friend/rival and arrange his affairs before his mortally dangerous trip. During this phase, he has several talks with Risa after the one at the end of the date that turned out to hurt her feelings pretty bad. When the time has come to finally see him off, they’re more at peace, but that conversation really sees him apologize and accept that there’s a bond between them that’s important as well as the bond he’s obsessing over chasing, suggesting that he’ll at least want to come back and start things off right between them.
Along the way, Sudo gets training from agents of Michi in skills he’ll need to survive in the war-torn hellhole, like marksmanship and close quarters cobat, and also advice and insight from various individuals he’s bonded with over time to get a perspective on what his life means, including his incarcerated mother, the support AI Jay, that friend/rival taking over the clinic, and the family (especially the daughter) from episode 1 who have come out the other side of the crisis we saw back then. They’re all little, human scenes. Even the scenes between Michi and his attendant don’t have the force and mystique of a larger work, but again that was what Gene of AI mostly did and mostly was good at.
At the end, this is no Isaac Asimov… but it’s quite acceptable at being itself, enough that I think I would rate Gene of AI about a B. It knew how to ask questions or provide scenarios that felt real, and where and how to provide answers – sometimes coming down firmly without being too hamfisted as message fiction can be, and sometimes leaving it up to the viewer what’s right or what to take away from it. At the very least, you always felt like you knew what the show was talking about, because the scenarios were presented clearly and cleanly and did their best to be consistent with the world we know and that the show, I think, was trying to comment on.
A B might not seem like an amazing grade, but for a heavily slice of life, rather sedate work that borders on message fiction sometimes, it took a good deal of care and grace to get that much out of me. If you’re the kind of person who is going to be turned off by the fact that this is an anthology and it isn’t really interested in any sort of “main plot”, even the one it teases, this show isn’t going to be for you. Beatless would probably be the go-to substitute in that case. If, on the other hand, you’re happy watching a collection of short stories set in a science fiction near future, Gene of AI is pretty alright, and I’d certainly recommend it well enough.