Sui Makihara’s father makes robots and has brought his two most advanced creations, Vermillion and Kira, home to learn about humanity from his daughter. Inspired by Makihara’s achievements, but far less scrupulous, his former colleague Sakaki has created AT-6, a robot who lacks the programming that makes it taboo for him to kill humans, to eliminate those people who get in his way.

In volume five, Kira is hired as a bodyguard for a journalist who is investigating a series of killings that he recognizes as AT-6’s handiwork. He ends up confronting Sakaki and nearly killing kim—the penalty for which would be disassembly—but is prevented from doing so by the timely arrival of Vermillion. Other chapters involve the (boring) kidnapping of a visiting foreigner’s daughter, a new scientist at Makihara’s company who thinks Kira is his dream girl, and an unrelated bonus story that’s a tweak on “Cinderella.”

A.I. Revolution is an episodic series, not unlike InuYasha in that most of the nefarious doings can be traced back to the same culprit. Some recurring characters have been introduced and their histories revealed, which is all well and good, but the story seems to be drifting farther and farther away from its original focus. When the series started, Sui was clearly the protagonist. Now she’s been overshadowed by the robots to such an extent that we know more about AT-6 than we know about her. No longer does she impart any lessons about humanity to the two robots; instead, they mostly appear in solo adventures foiling terrorists and kidnappers. It’s pretty disappointing, really.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

From the back cover:
Another robot has been created, but this one is designed to kill! That’s not the only complication—can Vermillion and his friends stop a programmed assassin, restore a widow’s memory and mend a broken family?

Review:
Take a good look at that blurb. They’re not even pretending that Sui is the main character anymore. Seriously, in one chapter, she literally does nothing but eat some cake.

Instead of being strictly episodic, the series now has some recurring characters and, in recent volumes, has been including flashbacks of backstory. This volume introduces AT-6, another robot created by the villainous Sakaki, who lacks the programming that makes it taboo for robots to kill humans. He’s envious of Kira, to whom Sakaki constantly compares him, and seeks to destroy him. Kira ends up removing one part the programming that forces AT-6 to obey Sakaki, but this doesn’t stop the latter from trying to please his creator. We get a glimpse of the possible goodness within him—courtesy of that old manga cliché of saving a child who’s about to get hit by a car—but he’s not redeemed just yet.

The flashback chapter deals with the first test run of Vermillion and the problems that were encountered. Sui’s dad had originally suggested that early on, Vermillion had a habit of coming on to men that necessitated some reprogramming, but this story reveals that it was actually his lack of understanding regarding the difference between living and nonliving creatures that was the real problem. This throws the “kitten rescuing” escapade from volume one into a whole new light. And, by the way, I love that the cat in question has stuck around and shows up, fully-grown, now and then.

Nothing in this volume really excited or amused me, and the less said about the last chapter, wherein someone’s mom (Gasp! A mom!) suffers a head injury and believes she’s eighteen again, the better.

From the back cover:
A trip to America turns dangerous when the plane is hijacked! Luckily, everyone’s favorite robots are on board to help out, and they make it to their destination unhindered. All is well until Sui decides to vacation in Hawaii… leaving her robot friends behind!

Review:
Now that I’ve read three volumes of A.I. Revolution, I’ve begun to notice some patterns. First is a prevalence of sickly teenagers. So far, three chapters have featured such characters, from a girl in need of a heart transplant to a teen genius with five years to live to a boy whose father had genetically experimented upon him. The second trend, more all-encompassing than the first, is a glut of motherless teens. I haven’t counted, but maybe six or seven different teen characters have been introduced so far, and though we’ve seen a smattering of dads accompanying them, no mothers have been seen at all. I’m not sure what to make of that.

The stories in this volume are entertaining enough, though I wouldn’t say I loved any of them. I thought it was weird that Sui, the nominal protagonist, played such an insignificant role, though. She appears a little in the first and last chapters, but only long enough to get her purse stolen (leading Vermillion to fall into the trap of a thief) or suffer from a fever while on vacation (leading Vermillion to go on the fritz and make many zany mistakes), and is completely absent from the middle two. Probably this is because Asami, the mangaka, realizes that the robots are far more interesting and compelling characters than Sui is, but it’s worrisome nonetheless. I’d rather the main character receive some development than read about the backstory of the thief who swiped her purse!

A bonus story, “Make-Believe Reality,” is also included in this volume. In it, an arcade owner, tortured by dreams of his suicidal father’s attempts to kill his family, takes an enthusiastic patron, the son of the man responsible for his father’s business failure, hostage in the belief that by exacting revenge, his nightmares will stop. The story is full of metaphors between video games and real life like, “Once you do something irreversible you can’t ever hit the reset button.” Unsurprisingly, it really isn’t very good.

From the back cover:
Explosions, rescues, time machines, mistaken identities and former loves all come together to complicate Sui’s efforts to teach Vermillion—and now Kira—about being human. Not that Sui has much time for the two hot robots, with her bad-tempered friend Aoi wreaking havoc on the city…

Review:
There’s something about this series that reminds me a little of Silver Diamond. You’ve got the gentle human, Sui, teaching two newcomers about humanity, and everyone becoming a sort of family. I can’t help but think that if the casts of these two series got together, they’d all get on fabulously.

The episodic nature of the series continues in this volume, with chapters about a teenage genius in astrophysics, a surly adolescent hacker, et cetera. These stories also deal with some deeper issues, though, like the fact that robots, no matter how much like humans they may seem or how much Sui may like them, are designed to do the things humans don’t want to or can’t do. When Sui protests that Kira and Vermillion are sent into a building wired with multiple bombs, her dad answers, “That’s what they’re for.”

Also like Silver Diamond, this series has a certain quirky sense of humor that I adore. In the story the about astrophysics genius, some of Kira’s long hair gets shot off while he’s protecting her from thugs who want the wormhole research she’d been conducting. He sports a shorter style for a couple of chapters until Sui’s dad, who is responsible for Kira’s bishounen looks, concocts a beverage that causes spontaneous hair growth in robots. After it works on Kira, Vermillion has to try it, too, and when he asks Sui how he looks, she shakes her head in mute horror. He and Kira then shuffle off, dragging their new tresses behind them. I don’t often giggle aloud, but even the memory of that panel is making me grin in retrospect.

I reviewed the first volume of this Go! Comi series—about a girl tasked with teaching a robot prototype all about being human—for Comics Should Be Good. You can find that review here.

A.I. Revolution is a bit of an older series with seventeen volumes total. Five volumes have been released in English so far.