Time of Eve Is a Series of Tubes
Not only you should watch Time of Eve on Crunchyroll (really, there’s no excuse to pirate it), but you should give this question a thought. I excepted from the Crunchyroll contest for the below:
In your opinion, what’s the significance of Time of Eve’s (the cafe) existence within the story?
I am going to post my answer (300 words or less!) below (at least one of them). Feel free to share yours should you choose to compose one. For what it is worth, it’s as good as any other topic to discuss (for general blogger circlejerkery). Eve is packed with all kinds of interesting things, but this is a pretty good way to approach the crux of it from a side angle.
The Time of Eve (the café) to me is an allegory for the way people socialize on the internet. While it may be a cyberpunk cliché, but the ability to examine the same social constructs within different, futuristic settings highlights the innate contradictions of modern life. The internet is ubiquitous and a necessary part of modern living, and while that in itself is present in the story, the café adds a physical and visceral representation without evoking the additional science fictional baggage that may come with, for example, VR.
What make me think specifically of the internet, in regards to the café, were its house rules. A door that locks and unlocks according to timing rules to protect privacy seem an annoying and hazardous thing to put in a real life café, but it is easy to protect a user’s privacy on an online forum or BBS without much inconvenience. An anonymous internet forum also masks obvious indication of rank and status, much like how the android café patrons disabled their halos to hide themselves, and the human-android equality rules that Nagi enforces inside the café.
To me this is what Time of Eve (the story) is about. It is perhaps about Time of Eve (the café) as it is about the stories and issues that each episode of the show explores. Considering what the café means to its patrons, maybe Time of Eve’s existence is even more important than the rules and stipulations of both Nagi’s café and society enforces on the café’s patrons, and more important than the robotics technology that distinguishes an old robot like Tex from a modern model like Sammy.
Remember the contest deadline is a month from October 1, so you’ve got some time to get into the bones of it.
[...] ended up not deviating much from the original– In trying to answer the question, I thought of some ideas of what the Time of Eve cafe could [...]