Rei Toei

Last updated

Rei Toei is a fictional character in the Bridge trilogy of speculative fiction novels by William Gibson. Rei is introduced as the title character in Gibson's 1995 novel Idoru , as an artificial intelligence, an embodied agent simulating a human female idol singer. [1] A personality construct which adapts and learns from her interaction with humans, she irresistibly attracts data analyst protagonist Colin Laney. [1] [2]

Contents

Design

The Toei film and music company is a well known studio in Japan, with a well-deserved international reputation. William Gibson imagined that by the time of his Bridge Trilogy, Japanese companies with a determined research direction would be producing products much like Rei Toei, given suitable funding through customer demand.

Rei Toei is a database composite from the wireless broadband internet of Japan, and the world. She has been programmed to remind viewers of their favourite J-pop idols, which in Japanese are known as aidoru (アイドル) (sounding like the English Idol). Her singing voice and performance styles are composites as well, giving her the ability to encompass the viewer's preference as well. In this way, her AI agent form is very similar to user accounts on a group-sharing mainframe.

Implicit in her design is that she is not one Idoru, but many. Individual viewers and fans will have a personalised Rei Toei album, video, and collection of images, as 'she' can be and is customised according to the tastes of viewers.

Projection

By the time Rei Toei has become a commercial entity, commercial in-space animated full-colour holography is also a commercial reality. As noted above, a personalised Rei Toei exist for individual viewers with Net access. However, for public concerts, Rei will take on an appearance that is a group consensus based on the membership of her audience.

Literary analysis

The character has been described as one of Gibson's "most original, interesting characters". [3]

In Deus Ex: Invisible War, the fictional game character NG Resonance is an international pop star who uses a network of AI kiosks to attract customers, so as to appear very empathetic and personable. However, the game portrays the “real" NG Resonance as being an extremely arrogant and entitled person, for whom the AI is nothing more than a gimmick designed to increase profits.

See also

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Matrix, Sidney (2006). Cyber Pop. New York: Routledge. p. 105. ISBN   0-415-97677-4.
  2. Rapatzikou, Tatiana (2004). Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson. Amsterdam: Rodopi. p. 200. ISBN   90-420-1761-9.
  3. Tom Henthorne (29 July 2011). William Gibson: A Literary Companion. McFarland. pp. 117–119. ISBN   978-0-7864-8693-9.

Related Research Articles

<i>Neuromancer</i> 1984 science fiction novel by William Gibson

Neuromancer is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy. Set in the future, the novel follows Henry Case, a washed-up hacker hired for one last job, which brings him in contact with a powerful artificial intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Gibson</span> American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist (born 1948)

William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans—a "combination of lowlife and high tech"—and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sailor Venus</span> Fictional character in Sailor Moon

Minako Aino, better known as Sailor Venus, is a fictional character in the Sailor Moon and Codename: Sailor V manga series written by Naoko Takeuchi. Minako is her sailor form's alternative human identity as part of the Sailor Guardians, female supernatural fighters who protect the Solar System from evil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sailor Mars</span> Character from Sailor Moon

Rei Hino, better known as Sailor Mars, is a fictional character in the Sailor Moon manga series written and illustrated by Naoko Takeuchi. In the series, Rei is her sailor form's alternative human identity as part of the Sailor Guardians, female supernatural fighters who protect the Solar System from evil.

<i>Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon</i> (2003 TV series) Japanese television program

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon is a Japanese tokusatsu superhero television series based on the Sailor Moon manga created by Naoko Takeuchi. It was produced by Toei Company.

The Sprawl trilogy is William Gibson's first set of novels, composed of Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rei Ayanami</span> Fictional character from Neon Genesis Evangelion

Rei Ayanami is a fictional character from the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise, created by Gainax studio. In the anime series of the same name, Rei is an introverted girl chosen as the pilot of a giant mecha named Evangelion Unit 00. At the beginning of the series, Rei is an enigmatic figure whose unusual behavior astonishes her peers. As the series progresses, she becomes more involved with the people around her, particularly her classmate and fellow Eva pilot, Shinji Ikari. Rei appears in the franchise's animated feature films and related media, video games, the original net animation Petit Eva: Evangelion@School, the Rebuild of Evangelion films, and the manga adaptation by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Japanese idol</span> Type of entertainer

An idol is a type of entertainer marketed for image, attractiveness, and personality in Japanese pop culture. Idols are primarily singers with training in other performance skills such as acting, dancing, and modeling. Idols are commercialized through merchandise and endorsements by talent agencies, while maintaining a parasocial relationship with a financially loyal consumer fan base.

<i>Idoru</i> 1996 novel by William Gibson

Idoru is the second book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Idoru is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future. One of the main characters, Colin Laney, has a talent for identifying nodal points, analogous to Gibson's own:

Laney’s node-spotter function is some sort of metaphor for whatever it is that I actually do. There are bits of the literal future right here, right now, if you know how to look for them. Although I can’t tell you how; it’s a non-rational process.

The Bridge trilogy is a series of novels by William Gibson, his second after the successful Sprawl trilogy. The trilogy comprises the novels Virtual Light (1993), Idoru, (1996) and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999). A short story, "Skinner's Room", was originally composed for Visionary San Francisco, a 1990 museum exhibition exploring the future of San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual band</span> Real musical group with fictional members

In entertainment, a virtual band is a band or music group whose members are not depicted as corporeal musicians, but animated characters or virtual avatars. The music is recorded by real musicians and producers, while any media related to the virtual band, including albums, video clips and the visual component of stage performances, feature the animated line-up; in many cases the virtual band members have been credited as the writers and performers of the songs. Live performances can become rather complex, requiring perfect synchronization between the visual and audio components of the show.

"Skinner's Room" is a science fiction short story by American-Canadian author William Gibson, originally composed for Visionary San Francisco, a 1990 museum exhibition exploring the future of San Francisco. It features the first appearance in Gibson's fiction of "the Bridge", which Gibson revisited as the setting of his acclaimed Bridge trilogy of novels. In the story, the Bridge is overrun by squatters, among them Skinner, who occupies a shack atop a bridgetower. An altered version of the story was published in Omni magazine and subsequently anthologized. "Skinner's Room" was nominated for the 1992 Locus Award for Best Short Story.

<i>All Tomorrows Parties</i> (novel) 1999 novel by William Gibson

All Tomorrow's Parties is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, the third and final book in his Bridge trilogy. Like its predecessors, All Tomorrow's Parties is a speculative fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, postcyberpunk future. The novel borrows its title from a song by Velvet Underground. It is written in the third person and deals with Gibsonian themes of emergent technology. The novel was initially published by Viking Press on October 7, 1999.

<i>Love Me, My Knight</i> Japanese manga series

Love Me, My Knight is a shōjo manga created in the early 1980s by Kaoru Tada. An anime adaptation was released in 1983 until 1984, running for 42 episodes by Toei Animation. A live action adaptation was also produced. The manga is licensed in English by M'z Production for digital release on the Kindle and comixology.

Cayce Pollard is the fictional protagonist of William Gibson's 2003 novel Pattern Recognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Gibson bibliography</span>

The works of William Gibson encompass literature, journalism, acting, recitation, and performance art. Primarily renowned as a novelist and short fiction writer in the cyberpunk milieu, Gibson invented the metaphor of cyberspace in "Burning Chrome" (1982) and emerged from obscurity in 1984 with the publication of his debut novel Neuromancer. Gibson's early short fiction is recognized as cyberpunk's finest work, effectively renovating the science fiction genre which had been hitherto considered widely insignificant.

"Burning Chrome" is a science fiction short story by Canadian-American writer William Gibson, first published in Omni in July 1982. Gibson first read the story at a science fiction convention in Denver, Colorado in the autumn of 1981, to an audience of four people, among them Bruce Sterling. It was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1983 and collected with the rest of Gibson's early short fiction in a 1986 volume of the same name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aimi Eguchi</span> Fictional character

Aimi Eguchi is a fictional Japanese idol. She is a CGI composite of various features of seven existing members of the theater/idol group AKB48.