This sci-fi story, which focuses on some philosophical considerations of artificial intelligence and humanity, set amidst a plot with action and romance elements, began as a serial novel written by Satoshi Hase and illustrated by Redjuice, which was serialized in the anime magazine Newtype from 2011 to 2012 and compiled into a single volume. Later, related manga works were published, including Beatless: Dystopia and Ptolemy's Singularity, and most recently, a two-cour anime series was released in 2018. (The release of the anime series was a little messed up, resulting in including four recap episodes and then a delayed four-episode finale, but at least now you can watch it without waiting.) An official translation of the novel series is is available online at Tokyo Otaku Mode
, though you need a subscription to read past the first chapter. It has also been licensed in English by J-Novel Club.
Beatless provides examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: It has been mentioned the most advanced AI's have surpassed human intellect for over 50 years.
- Almost Kiss: Between Arato and Lacia in episode 7, interrupted by Yuka entering the room.
- The Assimilator: Snowdrop has been seen consuming other robots through her dress!
- Beware the Nice Ones:
- As kind as Arato normally is, he's capable of beating the tar out of a kidnapper who took Lacia.
- Lacia, because she's perfectly capable of trying to execute someone that threatens her or her owners.
- BFG: Lacia wields a cannon shaped like a coffin that's much bigger than she is.
- BFS: Kouka wields a sword that is much bigger than she is.
- Big Eater: Yuka has got quite the appetite, and warms up immediately to Lacia once the hIE confirms she can cook.
- Boy Meets Girl: Arato and Lacia's meeting in a nutshell. This trope name is explicitly invoked in-universe, too, in the form of a fashion company's marketing idea. Curiously, though, the novel's chapter names and anime's episode names play with this trope — one of the episodes involving the fashion marketing campaign is "Boy Meets Pornography", while "Boy Meets Girl" is actually the name of the very last episode; both titles are meaningful with regards to the context and the narrative structure of the story.
- Broken Ace: According to Shiori, after an incident, Ryo stopped caring about life.
- Casting Gag: Peter MacNicol knows his way around a painting. (Comment: can someone please explain why this trope citation is relevant?)
- Chekhov's Gunman: Two of them in Episode 13: The first being Marina Saffron, the hIE that Lacia helped to secure during the airport battle, and the second being a hIE boy that Arato meets in a shopping mall early in the episode. Both of them return to help Arato and Lacia later in the episode.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Shiori is secretly in love with Arato.
- Combat Stilettos: Applies to all of the Lacia-class hIEs with the exception of Snowdrop who is barefoot.
- Conflicting Loyalties: Methode actually wants to invoke this by offering Shiori to become her second owner after Watarai. In case Watarai gives an order she doesn't like, she can make Shiori give another order to avoid having to answer to him.
- The Cracker: Snowdrop is capable of creating rains of petals that mess with other robots.
- Disappeared Dad: Arato and Yuka's father is a scientist who rarely comes home.
- Driven to Suicide: hIEs can't commit this action unless directly ordered to by their central computer, so when several of them start doing this for no apparent reason, is quite clear they're being hacked.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Yuka may be rather dimwitted, but even she can notice her brother is showing signs of attraction towards Lacia.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: At the end of the story, Arato finally reunites with Lacia who is able to get a new body so that she could live with her lover for all time.
- Enemy Mine: In Episode 9, Lacia teams up with Kouka to fight Methode.
- Fantastic Racism: Many people hate hIEs for various reasons, like taking jobs or looking too human.
- Far East Asian Terrorists: The Antibody network, a domestic terrorist group that intends to destroy hIEs. Arato's friend Kengo is part of this group.
- Fiery Redhead: Kouka, also known as 'Crimson Fog', has red hair and is the most eager robot to fight.
- Gambit Pileup: After going rogue, Lacia and her sisters each start acting on their own accord. Sometimes their actions coincide with each others' interests, but it's unclear how much of this was planned beforehand or even if they are really working together. And of course, the scientists that created them want to bring them back. Gets even more complicated when Methode goes back to them out of her own will only to start plotting behind their backs.
- Hypocritical Humor: Yuka continuously persists in mocking her brother for being "stupid" and a "moron", despite the fact that she is the only one who's dumber than a pile of bricks in the family.
- Irony: Kengo muses it's ironic a terrorist group that hates hIEs is being led by one (Kouka). The irony in this plot thread doesn't stop there — Kouka eventually martyrs herself for the group's cause, becoming a political symbol, as an AI who fought AI, to the public. But even beyond death, the irony continues..."clones" of Kouka are constructed and then deployed by the various super-intelligent artificial intelligences, to fight for them, thereby hijacking the previous instance of irony. It is interesting to note, however, that all of these events are consistent with Kouka's intention of being used as a tool to fight for dominance.
- Job-Stealing Robot: Some robots have replaced humans in managing street businesses. Some humans are upset at this.
- Just a Machine: Even the hIEs themselves point out that they are in fact just machines with personality-imitating programming. A human character (Erika Burroughs) makes a comparison with a cup with a Hello Kitty face on the side; people treat the cup differently because of the face of a character that imitates life, when it's still just a cup.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: After the rogue hIEs effortlessly eliminate their drones and nearly down their helicopter, the military team sent to contain the rogues' escape wisely retreats.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Yuka isn't aware of Lacia and Arato's activities, and that frustrates her.
- Loophole Abuse: hIE's are specifically programmed to not harm their owners directly. Indirect methods are another matter entirely.
- Meido: You can hardly have a Robot Maid without dressing her like this.
- Night of the Living Mooks: It happens during the day, but when Snowdrop hacks a bunch of hIEs, they start attacking each other and acting like zombies.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Shiori muses she's treated like a tool by those in the Memeframe Corporation, just like hIEs.
- One-Woman Army: The escaped robots pack enough power to destroy a small army of drones.
- Parents as People: While Arato's and Yuka's father truly cares about them, his work means they basically have raised themselves.
- Recap Episode: For a 2-cour anime, Beatless has a staggering four recap episodes — 5.5, 9.5, 14.5, and 16.5. This was probably related to scheduling difficulties that also caused the final four episodes to be separately released later.
- Rei Ayanami Expy: Lacia fits this, with her pale complexion, pale bluish hair, and, since she's a robot, not having a soul (a thing pointed out in the show's tagline), though she has a more expressive face (not to mention longer hair), and occupies a different role in the story.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: While most hIEs have very simple personalities, Lacia and her sisters have an AI that makes them act almost completely human.
- Robosexual: The story teases with the romantic part of this trope.
- Robot Girl: All the hIEs who we see interact with humans are female and cute; the male androids are security guards.
- Robot Maid: An obvious use for hIEs; one of the escaped ones even craves it.
- Shock and Awe: Saturnus seems capable of controlling lightning.
- Signature Headgear: hIEs have a pair of hair decks on their head. It later turns out that these are the control units that link them with the cloud AI.
- Spell My Name With An S: Erika Burroughs (according to the official Japanese site, and the light novel translation, which uses the official site's spelling) vs. Erika Burrows (according to the official subtitles). Some sources even spell her first name "Erica". Also, while there's more official agreement on "Mariage", one can find some databases that call that character "Marriage".
- Super-Strength: Needed to lift those gigantic weapons and jump between buildings.
- The Swarm: The petals Snowdrop creates can also take the form of tiny insect-shaped drones that swarm her foes.
- There Can Be Only One: Probably an unintentional instance of this (hence this trope being listed as trivia), but by the end of the story, the only Red Box hIE who is still alive in her original body is Saturnus, now renamed Mariage. Kouka dies first, then Methode, then Lacia, then Snowdrop. However, the trope is subverted by Lacia, whose super-intelligent AI unit ends up becoming the new cloud AI (replacing Higgins), and so she just makes a new custom body for herself.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Yuka signing Lacia to modelling without approval from her brother caused the hIE to be kidnapped by a stalker and later, her gossiping about Arato and Lacia's relationship pushed Shiori to accept the contract with Methode.
- Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: Lacia is the prototype of her series while Methode is the only truly completed model of her series. Their clash is even more serious than the former's against Kouka.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Most robots only do tasks, but Arato treats them like real people, above the objections of his friends. This is a particularly salient premise element in the story.
