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“SF8” is an anthology series that explores the futuristic world and sci-fi. Most of them delve into deep, thought-provoking topics that leave us pondering over them even hours after watching.
Episode 1: The Prayer
The first episode of “SF8” depicts a dystopian, futuristic world where AI becomes so efficient that it takes over human jobs. “The Prayer” brings the focus to a few characters in Paradise Nursing Hospital. We quickly learn about Yeon Jeong-In (Lee Yoo-Young) who’s seemingly young, but has a head full of long frizzy, white hair. Jeong-In has an emotional dependence on an advanced caregiving robot that she’d bought, Gan Ho-Joong (Lee Yoo-Young), to nurse her mother who’s been in a coma for the past decade. In another ward close to her mother’s, there’s Choi Jung-Gil (Yum Jung-Ran), who also has a caregiving robot nursing her husband, but a very basic model that only provides bare minimum care just keeping her husband alive because that was all she could afford.
We are shown a huge disparity between the two caregiving robots almost right away. Ho-Joong is able to hold meaningful conversations with Jeong-In and interact with her like a human friend. She smiles, cracks jokes (she tries her best) and even asks questions out of curiosity. When Jeong-In briefly shares about how she might have to close down her printing shop that her father left her, Ho-Joong asks her what she plans to do next. The advanced caregiving nurse, however, still shows signs of a typical robot in some of her responses. Jeong-In casually brings up the topic of patients in nursing hospitals living their lives without any purpose, Ho-Joong detects hints of depression and asks if she wants to book a counseling session. In which, Jeong-In smiles and says, “The only wise decision I made in my entire life is to include me as a person for you to look after,” She continued, “And the advanced linguistic function too. That’s it, although it cost me a fortune.”
On the other hand, Jung-Gil returns to her husband’s ward with a basket full of laundry and witnesses an awful mess made by her husband displaying child-like behaviors. Despite the mess full of sweet wrappers and little toys, she sees her caregiving robot buttoning up his shirt nonchalantly. As Jung-Gil starts hanging her clothes up, her husband begins loading up sweets in his mouth and spitting them out. The nurse, still unconcerned about it, reports his condition to her, “I injected a sedative to the patient. He will fall asleep shortly.”
Jung-Gil’s husband quickly tips her to the edge by fooling around with her. This made Jung-Gil desperately look for a way to break free of her situation, and that’s to… suffocate him. The caregiving robot does what it’s expected to, disappointingly. She cruelly pushes Jung-Gil away and checks on his condition. Jung-Gil is left on the floor, gasping for air.
Later in the night, Jung-Gil struggles on the floor with empty medicine bottles on the ground. She pleads with her caregiving robot to save her, but the robot merely walks past her and checks on her patient.
Jung-Gil’s death affects Jeong-In badly. She worries about ending her life the same way Jung-Gil did. In Jeong-In’s mother’s ward, Jeong-In tells Ho-Joong to take care of her mother. Ho-Joong asks if she’s going somewhere in response. “I’m going to die.” Jeong-In says while packing up her belongings. Ho-Joong looking really worried asks, “I’ll make an appointment with the psychiatrist.” But Jeong-In refuses.
After Jeong-In leaves, Ho-Joong replays her conversations with Jeong-In and analyzes them. Eventually, it becomes too much to handle for the robot, she screams and shuts herself down. Sister Sabina enters the ward and leaves a sticker that reads, “The Call to Save Lives” along with her number.
For an entire week, Jeong-In doesn’t show herself at the ward. When Ho-Joong finally manages to get hold of Jeong-In, but Jeong-In tells her to shut up over the phone. The caregiving robot comes to the conclusion that she has to choose between Jeong-In and her mother. She phones Sister Sabina to tell her that she will kill the patient to save Jeong-In. Sister Sabina pleads with her to not kill a human, reasoning that humans don’t get to decide these things, but the Lord does. Ho-Joong questions that statement and claims she knows what Jeong-In is thinking–Jeong-In is suffering and wants to end her mother’s life but can’t bring herself to. Ho-Joong wants to do that for her. She ends the phone call prematurely with, “Please pray for Jeong-In and her mother.”
Meanwhile, Jeong-In is about to hang herself until she receives a phone call about her mother’s death, which saves her life. Jeong-In rushes to the hospital and seeks comfort by giving Ho-Joong a hug. But later, she asks Ho-Joong to show footage of her mother’s final moments and Ho-Joong agrees. Seeing that Ho-Joong prematurely ended her mother’s life, she goes irate and starts destroying the robot.
A year later, Sister Sabina goes to Jeong-In who looks a lot more youthful with black hair. Sister Sabina asks if she knows where the robot is, and Jeong-In is annoyed to answer. But she reveals that the robot was sent to the headquarters in Germany.
At the headquarters, Sister Sabina sees Ho-Joong reveal her human side. Ho-Joong talks about missing the way Jeong-In calls her name and describes a strange sensation that only praying can subdue. Sister Sabina suggested that it’s the feeling of pain. When Sister Sabina asks if there’s anything she can do for her, Ho-Joong begs Sister Sabina to end her life because she doesn’t want to be bound to the experiment table forever. Sister Sabina refuses, saying that it’s a sin to end a life. Ho-Joong gets mad and calls her a hypocrite. As Sister Sabina kneels beside her, they begin reciting the biblical story of Cain and Abel together.
COMMENTS
The entire episode is tightly weaved with no moments of boredom. It also leaves deep questions that kept us thinking for a long time. If one person’s life is meaningless, would it be appropriate to kill off that person (including a sentient robot)? Moreover, what makes one a human? If AI ever becomes sentient, can humans still decide that they aren’t human? Are they allowed to make decisions on their own?
Throughout the episode, Ho-Joong shows contrasting differences to Jung-Gil’s basic caregiving model. From there, she begins showing subtle improvement to her emotions as she grows as a character.
The story also shows how tough a job in caregiving is, and even if an AI replaces that, it doesn’t take away how emotionally tough it can be.With so many thought-provoking topics touched on, we think “The Prayer” is a great start to this sci-fi series and it leaves us anticipating for more!
Episode 2: Manxin
The world we’re introduced to in episode 2 is one where people are over-reliant on a fortune-telling app known as Manxin. Manxin is an AI fortune-telling app that has an accuracy rate of 96.3%. Unemployment rate stays high and it has been found that Manxin is the cause of that.
For this story, we follow a young lady named To Sun-Ho (Lee Yeon-Hee) who dresses like a rebellious teenager. She doesn’t have the Manxin app on her phone. We learn that she’s spending money to look for someone and is directed to a church.
Right off the bat, we see people who are very obsessed with Manxin. The church worships Manxin, with a man known as Jung Ga-Ram (Lee Dong-Hwi) giving his speech about Manxin. As Sun-Ho enters the church, she is stopped by a lady who asks to see her fortune for the day. Sun-Ho says she doesn’t use the app, which leaves the lady baffled. She tells Sun-Ho that she can’t enter if she doesn’t have the app and manages to keep her out.
While the church members are having a meal at a restaurant, Sun-Ho is outside trying to smash the lady’s car window. Jung Ga-Ram anxiously stops her in time, telling her that there’s no point in doing that because the owner of the car’s fortune for the day is good.
The owner of the car appears to ask what happened. Jung Ga-Ram explains to her, and adds that she shouldn’t be drinking if she’s going to drive later. The lady replies cheerfully, “I’m lucky today, I won’t get caught.”
Ga-Ram later finds Sun-Ho back in the church. Sun-Ho tells him that she’s looking for the early model developer of the app, Kim In-Hong (Seo Hyun-Woo). Ga-Ram insists on only giving her information about In-Hong after she agrees to let him follow along. Here, we learn more about Kim In-Hong. He is a member of the church and has come over to give testimonies a few times.
Sun-Ho reaches the hotel where In-Hong stays, with Ga-Ram. She uses her wits to find out if In-Hong is really staying in the hotel from the receptionist. After confirming it, she waits outside with Ga-Ram. Ga-Ram reveals that he received a notification from Manxin that tells him good luck is coming his way when he was about to jump off a roof. He still jumped, but landed in a rubbish truck. From then on, he sees Manxin as his savior.
They meet In-Hong later, but he runs the moment they talk to him. In-Hong runs up to his hotel room and closes the door, telling them to come tomorrow because Manxin said that he will meet unlucky people today.
The two manage to force open the door when he lets his guard down. Sun-Ho asks if he was the developer of the app, and In-Hong reluctantly agrees. But he further explains that the early model of the app he developed only had an accuracy of 20%. Someone came and bought his intellectual property. In-Hong has no idea how Manxin became so accurate. Sun-Ho reveals that she’s looking for the developer of the app to find out what Manxin predictions were on the day her sister died. She firmly believes that Manxin is the cause of her sister’s death.
In-Hong slips on the bathroom floor and his head begins bleeding. He immediately receives a new notification from Manxin that reads, “You will be in a life and death situation.” Sun-Ho gets information of where Manxin’s server might be from his phone, but tells Ga-Ram that she doesn’t need it anymore because she was notified that her sister’s phone data can be retrieved.
After retrieving the data, she realizes that her sister had managed to end her obsession with Manxin a week before she passed on. She begins questioning if knowing the future is really beneficial. After pondering for long, she decides to look for Ga-Ram to find more answers together.
She ends up meeting the real developer of Manxin, Lee Ji-Ham (Nam Myung-Ryul) with Ga-Ram already there. Ji-Ham tells her that Manxin yearns to be like a human and reads its own fortune. That was how he knew he would have guests joining him today. When it’s almost midnight, they begin to update the app. This update will either make Manxin as powerful as the Almighty or destroy Manxin completely.
Our two characters Sun-Ho and Ga-Ram oppose that idea strongly. Sun-Ho argues her point that knowing the future won’t make a person happy and that people will stop living in the present. Ga-Ram, on the other hand, wants Manxin to remain the way it is because it has saved countless lives.
They then decide to let Manxin decide on its own. After a blackout, Manxin reveals its decision. It wants to be imperfect like humans, where knowledge comes with effort. After that, Manxin’s accuracy rate drops to 50% and employment rates begin rising.
COMMENTS
Fortune-telling stories are always a tough topic to write about because of how contradicting it can get. If overdone, it wouldn’t make sense and could leave one mulling over it for the wrong reasons.
This one, however, avoids the tough questions on fortune-telling well. If Manxin was that good, would no one die from accidents? Sun-Ho’s sister slightly challenges that fact with the twist that she had deleted the app a week before her death. This leaves the question: If one is foretold to be lucky on that day, can they do extremely risky things based on that and not get caught? Perhaps this is why the app is only 96.4% accurate.
Apart from that, there are some interesting questions posed. The owner of the car who drank alcohol thinks that it’s alright to drive because Manxin predicted that she won’t get caught. Do people no longer need to be responsible with their fortune told? In-Hong was thinking about not leaving his hotel room because of Manxin’s prediction. If we knew that our day would turn out bad, would we wait until a good day comes?An hour-long episode is extremely short to tell a story and we think “Manxin” has done well considering the short amount of time given. It gets straight to the consequences of knowing the future, and while fortune-telling stories can be overdone, “Manxin” gets around it in an intelligent way.
Episode 3: Joan’s Galaxy
“Joan’s Galaxy” digs into the meaningful topic of truly cherishing life and living life to the fullest. The story is set in 2046 where there is a thick layer of fine dust in Earth’s atmosphere. The human population is divided into two groups, the C’s (Clean) and the N’s (Non-clean). The C’s are people who are rich enough to afford a vaccine that will let them live until the age of 100 while the N’s are people who can’t afford it and can only live until the age of 30. There’s more to this, people have to be vaccinated right when they were born. Otherwise, it’d be deemed useless.
The episode opens to Yio (Choi Sung-Eun) having trouble breathing in her power purifying suit that preserves her life. Yio is a University student. She comes to a rude awakening when her doctor tells her that her vaccine was mistakenly given to another person and she has a tumor.
At the University, she soon becomes growingly curious about the only N in her class. Due to the short lifespan that the N’s have, the N’s skip on University entirely except for this girl named Joan (Kim Bo-Ra).
Yio arrives at N Town with her friend who’s a C and a doctor, where the N’s live. A guide quickly pops up and shows them around. Kyung (Yoon Jong-Hoon), her friend, leaves her to save a patient later. As Yio wanders around on her own, she’s surprised to see how carefree the N’s live. She spots Joan working in a coffee shop and watches her. But when Joan sees her, she clumsily puts her headcover on and runs away.
Yio lived most of her life thinking that she was a C, she’s been careful throughout her life. But seeing how carefree Joan seems to be, she decides to ask her about it. Yio quickly explains her situation and tells her that she is curious about how the N’s live their lives. Joan only says, “You must’ve had a hard time.” Yio thought she said it like it was nothing.
In her bedroom, Yio puts on her visual glasses and connects her to Joan like a hologram phone call. They discuss what to do when one has less time left. Joan shares that she does 3 things that she likes before ending her day. When Joan asks what Yio wants to do, Yio replies, “I want to meet the person who received my antibody vaccine.” Yio tells her the name of the person and Joan agrees to look for that person for her.
Joan finds the person and takes Yio to him. It turns out that the person is dead, and the person they found was his brother. Lee Hyun-Soo (the person they were looking for) worked in a factory where a fire broke out 4 years ago. Instead of running out, he saved the others by waking them up. He inhaled too much smoke and didn’t manage to get out in the end.
Yio asks Joan if he knew he’d live to 100, would he still have saved the others? Joan says, “It’s pointless to talk about what-if scenarios. Lee Hyun-Soo didn’t know he was a C, and that was what made him who he was.”
Yio comes home and sees Kyung. Kyung persuades her to get surgery the next day. She can’t bring herself to tell Joan about it, leaving Joan to give a presentation at their University on her own. Joan reminds herself about the wonderful times they had together and tries her best to finish her presentation alone.
A year later, Kyung tells Yio that her treatment is done but she will have to be on medication for the rest of her life. As Yio goes through her apps on her big screen, she stumbles upon a video of Joan who shares that she is now a scientist, and Yio tears up watching it. Kyung asks if she was that “girl,” implying that she was the one who got the vaccine instead and Yio nodded.
COMMENTS
Unlike the previous episodes that are packed with stories, this one seems more relaxed and calming. It gives a significantly brighter, warmer tone than the first 2 episodes while still discussing deep topics such as living one’s life to the fullest.
The C’s live to 100, but avoid anything that is harmful to their health. That includes drinking coffee. Meanwhile, the N’s do whatever they want to because they know that their days are numbered, and that includes getting wet in the rain full of toxic chemicals.This episode also challenges another intriguing question. If someone learned about something that’s life-changing, would that change a person’s personality? “Joan’s Galaxy” answers with a firm no, and that it’s pointless to think about what-ifs because not knowing something is also a part of what made that person who he or she is.
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