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Kizuna no Allele

  • ️Mon Jul 29 2024

Kizuna no Allele (Anime)

Kizuna no Allele is an anime by Wit Studio and Signal.MD. It is loosely based on Kizuna AI. The production was announced during the "Hello, World 2022" concert. The first season aired on April 4, 2023, and second season aired on October 5, 2023.

The legendary Kizuna AI is inexplicably never heard from again after performing at Virtual Grid Awards. 5 years after her disappearance, Miracle, an aspiring "virtual artist", aims to become just as famous as AI, but barely gets any viewers. Still, she attends the designated classes at ADEN Academy Theta to hopefully become popular.

Kizuna No Allele features the following tropes:

  • 20 Minutes into the Future: The anime is set in 2035 where Cyberspace and AI are commonplace. Kizuna is explicitly described as an Artificial Intelligence. Even some songs are entirely AI-written, but original lyrics are always received better.
  • The Ace:
    • Kizuna AI is described as effectively a historical figure, who is still considered to be the best "artist" in the industry despite not being a human and being missing for years.
    • Ada is currently treated as good as Kizuna due to winning the Lapin d'Or award, despite then being a relative unknown, before she retired to become a staff member at VGA and ADEN.
  • Achievements in Ignorance: In the Ultimate racing, Miracle messes with her hoverboard and it launches her in the sky. Marumaru notices the arrow on the start sign points up and not forward, meaning almost all other participants entered the fake track and got disqualified, while Miracle accidentally took advantage of the race's 3D element.
  • Advertised Extra: Despite being an anime heavily featuring Kizuna AI in promotions, aside from her status as Famed in Story and being a motivation for Miracle, she doesn't appear outside of OP and ED themes and Imagine Spots. Her disappearance is also never brought up despite her heavy influence on the world.
  • Aesop Amnesia: Miracle is told to use original ideas as early as Episode 3, but because of her chronic Writer's Block, she falls back to finding an easy way and it takes her up to Episode 10 to actually follow the lesson.
  • Ambiguous Situation: It's not made clear if Kizuna AI talking to Miracle in Episode 21 is Imaginary Friend or a Spirit Advisor. In Season 2's finale Principal Auris appears to react to her.
  • Ambiguous Gender Identity: Quan is revealed to be male in the real world and female in The Metaverse. Miracle doesn't question it despite finding them attractive in their first meeting, and Noelle also doesn't comment on it after meeting them in person. The official episode summary uses "boy", while the subtitles use "they" in Miracle's dialogue in the real world before Episode 14 and "she" in one later appearance, but Quan rarely appears in real world. Quan is also Marumaru, a genderless Ridiculously Cute Critter. Why Quan has a two Digital Avatars that don't match their appearance, nor how they view themselves in the real world, has not been clarified.
  • Ambiguously Gay:
    • Chris admits that she likes Miracle and even kisses her once, but doesn't do anything outright romantic. When Sofia tries to hang out with Miracle, Chris clinges to Miracle and acts like an angry dog.
    • Niska invites Miracle to a boat ride, tells that she always found her unpredictability attractive, takes her hands, and asks if she's not good enough for her. Miska means for a collab, but it sure startles Miracle.
    • Members of VICONIC and 3DM8 are really close to each other even off-stream.
  • Ambitious, but Lazy: In Episode 3 Miracle asks around if there's some trick for good performance. She's non-subtly replied to if she really thinks the work of other artists can be reduced to figuring something out, and it'd be a more productive use of her time to work on the flaws of her previous stream. Noelle additionally scolds her for going for the help right away instead of trying to think about the task by herself.
  • Arc Words: Both Kizuna and Miracle say "in this world you can do anything", which gets told to other characters.
  • Art Shift: The stage performances and streams are done in 3D, compared to the rest of the anime being done in traditional shaded animation.
  • Be Yourself:
    • In Episode 4 Miracle's stream fails because she imitates the Talk topics Kizuna did despite not being an expert herself. Instead of trying to be like her, Miracle then uses Kizuna herself as the next Talk topic because it's something she's at least knowledgeable about, which almost works out if not for the sudden technical failure. In Episode 5 Noelle calls Miracle's song emotionless because she's just going by the lyrics even if the mood is correct, because she's not putting her own interpretation into words. In Episode 8 Miracle asks the boy to help her with the designs, and while they give her some guidelines, they remind her that if she doesn't want to go with the default option, she needs to think for herself what she wants. She compromises to doing the sketch and letting Marumaru finish the artwork.
    • In Episode 6 Miracle pushes Noelle into writing an original song even if it's imperfect, instead of trying to please her family.
    • In Episodes 7 and 15 Chris distances herself from Miracle to find what she's good at aside assisting someone else. Quan also temporarily joins BRT5 in the second season to see a different perspective.
    • Despite being told early that digital artists are valued for their originality, Miracle continues to not work on her skills or research what the job even involves other than "being like Kizuna AI", instead defaulting to getting her friends help with her own homework. In Episode 10 Riz calls Miracle out on this. After which Miracle goes to imitate videos from other channels and even titles them as such. Naturally, this results in people unsubscribing instead. After some pep talk, Miracle manages to finish her original song.
    • In Episode 11 Marumaru decides to not hide behind a cute mascot and joins the group with the new body as Quan.
  • Bifauxnen: Niska has short hair, low voice, and is the only girl to wear a male idol uniform.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: Ada and Principal Auris are often shown to ominously watch over students' performances, but aside implications of giving PathTLive unfair advantage, if they ever did anything during ADEN Seed competition if left unclear. In Episode 23 Ada accuses Auris of using ADEN to set "connections" as a new trend at the next Virtual Grid Awards with a biased tournament, despite being biased toward the "individuality" theme herself and proceeds to hack ADEN.
  • Born from Plants: Quan gets a new Digital Avatar from a giant flower.
  • Break the Cutie: In Episode 10 Miracle's chronic lack of creativity results in her already abysmal ranking get lower, after which she starts Hearing Voices and considers quitting ADEN altogether. Her friends snap her out of it.
  • Brutal Honesty: In her first appearance, Noelle drills Miracle for basing her stream of the hints instead of going with an original idea, telling her she'll only embarrass herself in the future. In Episode 5 Noelle gets so frustrated with Miracle going with the first idea she has and blaming the content for low views, she drags her into a training herself.
  • Butterfly of Transformation: An NFT butterfly Miracle won at the collab concert inspires her to do a proper unit concert, with Quan providing new costumes.
  • Butt-Monkey: Marumaru is often abused by Miracle as a toy despite being intelligent. In Episode 7 she accidentally throws him right into the Dragon Vanity's attack.
  • Bystander Syndrome: In Episode 22 as PathTLive got locked out by Ada, Sofia ask other artists to petition to reschedule their performance, to which they all initially respond that they have better things to do, before The Power of Friendship speech brings them over one by one.
  • Central Theme: There's a balance between changing yourself for great performance and remaining true to yourself, with Ada and Principal Auris unable to find the middle ground. Each of PathTLive initially believes that everything will be fine if they just stick together, but later realize that they need some time for self-improvement first before figuring out how they'll work as a unit.
  • Character Catchphrase:
    • Riz consistently says how whatever she's doing provides her with more data.
    • Ximena really likes to insert "unbelievable" in English whenever she's surprized.
  • Chekhov's Skill: Miracle is shown to apparently know how to "connect with the music". Later, in the Rhythm Game portion of the Ultimate race she gets the second place despite screwing up in the beginning.
  • Cliffhanger: Season 2 ends right when Principal Auris is about to announce ADEN Seed winners. The credits scene shows PathTLive in new costumes, implying they get to perform at Virtual Grid Awards after all. Ada remains Karma Houdini despite trying to trap PathTLive in the Cyberspace and Kizuna AI is implied to be a Not-So-Imaginary Friend.
  • Competition Freak: Sarah makes winning Lapin d'Or award top priority and tells BRT5 to not practice anything but singing, not letting them even bond with each other. When at the Festival she gets dragged into a tag game, despite not wanting to at first, she boasts how she'll beat every other participant. This is because she was the top girl in school until Zoe appeared. She learns to have fun by the end of the episode.
  • Cool School: ADEN Academy (Artist garDEN) exists in The Metaverse, with the staff being populated by Artificial Intelligence, and has branches across the world. It has classes from cybersecurity to digital design, but the series focuses on idol streamers. There's no schedule, and students are free to take whichever class interests them if it's available at the time. The surrounding Linkverse is also a digital city where anything can happen.
  • Cuteness Proximity: Miracle finds a digital fairy she calls Marumaru and returns to its location specifically to hug it or use it as a pillow.
  • Digital Avatar: 50% of ADEN students use fantastical avatars, but Miracle's looks exactly like herself (and almost all of the named cast do the same). It's also mentioned that digital costumes need to be acquired and registered, but Miracle doesn't have another and admits having no talent in designing.
  • Early-Bird Cameo:
    • Miracle's first performance has a lot of comments from "guests", but only Noelle and Chris are named. Both join her team later.
    • Some of the costume references in Episode 3 appear later as their own artists, mainly Niska.
  • Enraged by Idiocy: Noelle always gets angry at Miracle for her goofy attitude and tries to flick her.
  • Epic Fail: The first Free Talk stream becomes a complete disaster because Miracle can't come up with neither questions nor answers, showing no preparation as well.
  • Exhausted Eye Bags: In Episode 23 Miracle looks aged because she pulled an allnighter writing the lyrics. She actually intentionally modified her Digital Avatar to show how hard she worked.
  • Exotic Eye Designs: Miracle has star patterns in the corner of her eyes.
  • Failure Montage: In Episode 4 since Miracle is too bad at Free Talk, she tries other stream ideas that involve talking, which similarly don't work out.
  • Fangirl: Miracle is certainly devoted to Kizuna AI and doesn't like when people make assumptions about her. Whenever Miracle is deep in thought, she watches the same Kizuna's MV to get inspired. In Episode 21 AI talks to her directly, but it appears to be an Imagine Spot.
  • Festival Episode: Episodes 18 and 19 feature the Cheer Up Culture Festival, with games only possible in The Metaverse.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • When Noelle shows Miracle and Chris the emotion bubbles, her "Family" one gets blue cold, which she quickly throws away before the other two notice. The next episode is about Noelle having a hard case of having a family of perfectionists, at least according to her.
    • In Episode 7 the boy tells Miracle that many people choose to use a modified Digital Avatar for personal reasons and it's insensitive trying to find someone in the real world without asking them. Later it turns out that they presents as Marumaru and later as female Quan in The Metaverse.
  • Friendless Background: Chris says she had no friends before Miracle.
  • Friend-or-Idol Decision: In Episode 24 Miracle refuses to sacrifice Marumaru's world to escape the cyberattack, until Quan deletes Marumaru avatar herself and tells that memories are forver.
  • The Gadfly: Miracle decides to take a nap in the Linkverse before her next class, long enough for Chris to sneak in and take embarrassing photos of her. Then, Chris kisses Miracle in the cheek. And also records how awkward Miracle looks during it and asks if she can upload it.
  • G.I.R.L.: A virual artist Quan is actually male in the real world. It's not shown how they refer to themselves, however, because the real world is kept Out of Focus.
  • Gratuitous English: When Vanity explains some English terminology, it uses a mechanical English voice pack instead of the standard Japanese one.
  • Harsh Word Impact: When Noelle tells Miracle that singing with emotions is just the first step, Miracle gets literally crushed by her words.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation: Despite helping Miracle a lot and both managing to get into qualifying rounds, Quan continues to think she'll only drag Miracle down and needs more practice.
  • Idiot Hero: Miracle has a negative habit of starting streams and only thinking of what to say afterwards. She's also not very knowledgeable in artist or cultural topics, and reacts with open mouth when something excites or upsets her.
  • Idol Singer: Virtual artists are idols in everything but the name. They often do free talk streams, but mainly for publicity.
  • I Have This Friend: In Episode 11 the boy asks Miracle on behalf of their non-existing friend what to do when they're unsure about something, then when Miracle suggests speaking up the boy slips that they'll try.
  • Improbably Female Cast: Despite ADEN having male students, almost the entire large cast is female. The only prominent male student turns out to be Quan, a female-presenting artist.
  • Instant Expert: Quan manages to get to qualifier rounds despite debuting near the end and doing only two streams.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: After spending the entire day looking for Chris, wondering if her Digital Avatar doesn't match her real appearance or if she's not even connected from the same faculty, the team finds her right in the next seat at the cafe.
  • Internal Reveal: In Episode 14 the boy shows Miracle that they have been Quan the entire time, something the viewers knew since Episode 8.
  • Lame Pun Reaction: When checking Chris's stream, Noelle finds it filled with ant puns and difficult to understand.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Sofia and Riz play a Concentration game where all cards are randomized on each turn. Both become the first in history to even get a pair on hard difficulty, because they spot a certain algorithm for the shuffling and Sofia gets the rest of the cards for herself.
  • Malicious Slander: During the Ultimate race, someone sends Miracle a letter that the track has a secret boss one can defeat for extra points, with a note to send it to others. Good-hearted Miracle shares it to other racers and everyone believes the boss is her due to her incredible luck. Riz gives Miracle a dedicated lecture about factchecking news sources before sharing them. It's heavily implied Principal Auris sent it as an experiment.
  • Meaningful Name: Miracle is noted for often doing improbable things.
  • Memetic Mutation: In-Universe. Miracle's stream suddenly got its audio cut off at the most inconvenient time. This provoked an entire competition of people adding their own voice lines of what motivates them. It doesn't help Miracle's subscriber count by much, however.
  • Me's a Crowd: Sofia programs a couple of digital clones of herself to optimize 3DM8's training.
  • The Metaverse: The streams and classes happen in the digital space Linkverse. Miracle has to physically go to the ADEN Academy facility, then use her watch to "jump" into the virtual version of it where everyone from across the world gather.
  • Moon Logic Puzzle: The final part of the Ultimate race has a puzzle with two trap tracks and a sign "at the same time". The solution is that two racers need to be on both tracks. Good thing the other participants who've arrived earlier before Miracle and Riz have decided to stop and take turns, instead of all going forward.
  • Ominous Visual Glitch: Episode 23's stinger has a lot of technical difficulties with Ada's stream after she hacked ADEN, with her slipping that she likes when the world agrees with her artistic vision.
  • Order Versus Chaos: Principal Auris desires performance that highlights sync and harmony, while Ada prefers everyone showing their individuality and was initially against everyone forming units.
  • The Perfectionist: Noelle's family are known for being great performers and writers. When young Noelle tried writing lyrics, her sister said that there's no point showing it to anyone until it's perfected. This gave Noelle a complex that she'll never do anything right unless she ranks #1. Episode 16 confirms that the family values personal growth over objective success and never had hard feelings for her.
  • Plagiarism in Fiction: ADEN has a class about avatar design, where students have to write a report about a costume from a selection. When Miracle asks about it, she's reminded that copying the design for herself would be a copyright violation.
  • Please, Don't Leave Me:
    • Despite it being made clear everyone is free to perform with others for 2 weeks as practice and everyone else agreeing with it, Miracle insists that PathTLive continues training together. When Quan leaves for BRT5 to find new strengths, Miracle gets absolutely heartbroken. It takes a pep talk from Niska for her to understand that their paths aren't always linear.
    • Jessie doesn't take well Niska leaving BRT5 to focus on drawing career, hoping they'll be together forever. Jessie confesses her feelings and apologizes by the end of the episode, and Niska decides to return.
  • Plot-Based Voice Cancellation: When Miracle tries to say what she thinks about Kizuna, the audio happens to glitch out. This spawned a lot of comments responding with memes. It's not clarified what she intended to say.
  • Positive Friend Influence:
    • In Episode 6 Miracle can sense that Noelle needs time alone, and forcibly prevents her from leaving until she smiles, so Noelle has to get over her insecurities about her family.
    • In Episode 7 Miracle tries to stalk Chris, but only to see if she's doing okay alone. Chris herself calls Miracle right after regarding being inspired to find her own niche.
  • The Power of Friendship:
    • Even as collab streams got penalized, PathTLive does a group concert anyway, getting enough attention to get each member to the qualifier round.
    • In Episode 24 VICONIC, 3DM8 and BRT5 repeat their concerts at the same time and somehow get PathTLive out of the glitched void.
  • Present Absence: The premise is set after Kizuna AI has disappeared for reasons unknown, with Miracle trying to become like her.
  • The Quiet One: Chris speaks in short replies and usually only when asked. While she's supportive of Miracle, she generally cheers on her instead of coming up with an advice.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Jua of VICONIC is hyperenergetic and doesn't like planning, while Thea puts a lot of effort into practice and cares about her reputation.
  • The Reveal: Episode 8 shows that Marumaru, Quan and the boy Miracle keeps meeting are the same person.
  • Ridiculously Average Guy: One of the voiced issues with Miracle as a performer is that she's too "ordinary", and aside dancing there's nothing she's good at. This becomes a noticeable problem by Episode 10, as when the tournament is coming to a close, Miracle struggles to do any content unless she copies someone. Her being The Heart is eventually set as her strength.
  • RPG Episode: In Episode 7 the cast spends time in a game world to help Chris with her confidence.
  • Running Gag: In the first season Miracle regularly uses Marumaru as a plush toy, despite its constant complaints.
  • Skewed Priorities: In Episode 22 PathTLive are more concerned about not being able to perform in time than a cyberattack locking them inside the Cyberspace with no way out and corrupting the Linkverse. Principal Auris also compromises to letting BRT5 perform in their stead instead of putting the competition on hold entirely.
  • Soda Can Shakeup: In Episode 6 Miracle passionately talks to Noelle while holding a soda bottle and drops it. When she opens it, the contents explode in her face.
  • The Stinger: Each Episode has an after-credits stream of girls talking about something related to the Episode.
  • Tea Is Classy: Miracle meets a boy who relaxes at the greenhouse with elegance and doesn't talk much, and they have a full portable tea set with them.
  • Terrible Artist: In Episode 7 Miracle needs to find Chris in the crowd. Instead of using her channel as reference, she draws her portrait, which looks like a child's sketch. Her hoverboard artwork is similarly only good as an idea.
  • To Be a Master: Miracle's goal is to win the Lapin d'Or award at VGA just like Kizuna AI did.
  • Tournament Arc: For an ADEN student to enter Virtual Grid Awards, they first have to compete for ADEN Seed with each other doing various activities, with channels below top 15 getting disqualified.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Miracle loves fortune takoyaki, to the point where its smell is used to lure her into the greenhouse for a talk.
  • A Twinkle in the Sky: Noelle dismisses a Vanity unit dressed like a monster in an RPG game and gets blasted into the sky with a sparkle.
  • Virtual Sidekick: Vanity is a holographic AI that acts as Miracle's pocket assistant, and also serves as ADEN's mascot. Students of ADEN can customize their own, but Miracle likes the default settings.
  • Virtual YouTuber: Almost all characters are "virtual artists" who do chatting livestreams in the Cyberspace. The ADEN Academy even has a course for becoming one, with the primary focus on live concerts. Artists can use a Digital Avatar, but half of them don't change it from how they normally look.
  • Vision Quest: In Episode 7 Chris leaves on "a journey to find herself" in an RPG game.
  • What You Are in the Dark: Despite vocally not liking Miracle, Noelle tries to be helpful through the comments, before joining her.