Rakuen - Oneshot

[MangaDex]

 

[websterq]

What a great oneshot. A ending I expected but was still surprised by. I wonder what the first level looks like.

 

[Kamui]

What a great oneshot. A ending I expected but was still surprised by. I wonder what the first level looks like.

Probably nothing. It is a carrot for the second level's dwellers.

 

[Lynkaster]

dystopia at its finest

 

[ghostkun]

to be a bug.

but honestly, that second level probably would be... maybe not paradise per se, but a pretty good deal for a lot of people in the world. you can eat and drink and fuck in endless variety.

of course, there's that whole data degradation thing, but, yeah.

death is a gift, men know it not.

 

[z99]

I love this, reminds me of a korean webcomic one shot where people who went to heaven would just repeat the same actions praising God for eternity, which makes you wonder about the sinners of that world.

 

[AsianThonk]

Theres an implication of currency, so you have to work still? some lousy paradise it is.

 

[Kamui]

Theres an implication of currency, so you have to work still? some lousy paradise it is.

It's not an implication. You are outright told so.

The system is designed to fuck you over. You start your "paradise life" with debt. Not only that, but your new data body also has a calorie intake requirement that you need to pay for. You are also told that you need to save enough money to be able to go up to Level One. Then, the system makes sure you are never able to save enough money to leave Level Two. All the pleasure and shit is a distraction so you don't think too much and the degradation takes care of the rest.

Honestly, is a really on the nose metaphor for our shitty hellscape of a world.

 

[JoeKerr]

Ok I'm dumb and need to have it explained to me.
What exactly is going on in the third level

 

[darkhawk196]

This just reminds me much of Blame's Netsphere.

Man it's rare to see a manga with this kind of sci-fi horror, especially with this kind of art style.

I love how we don't know what happens on the lowest floor or the top floor, leaving much to your own imagination.

 

[Valle_reading_manga]

I wasn't expecting a futa

---

Assuming what she said here is true

and she really took part in creating such a messed up system, I feel bad for the assembler for taking the fall to into whatever that level 3 is for liberating someone like her

---

Thanks for the chapter!

 

[Valle_reading_manga]

Ok I'm dumb and need to have it explained to me.

Same honestly. But here's my take/speculation.

What we know (assuming the person who got deleted by the assembler was speaking the truth):​

This society has achieved "immortality" by uploading a human's conscience to the Paradise System via a chip, to outlive a mortal body. After death, this conscience is placed in an artificial (?) body (Why not do so from the start? The artificial body still seems to be mortal/somewhat biological in nature?) to experience "paradise". This paradise, as it turns out, really is just an exploitative system designed to keep one working even after death, with the false promise of an even "better" life at a higher level.
Interestingly, both assemblers don't seem to have ever recognized a person from before their death.

The Question:​

To me, the biggest question is whether a life prior to the system truly exists. Since conscience data can be manipulated (as seen when introducing the artificial illness to keep you stuck at level 2), memories prior to death could just be fabricated entirely. This would also explain why they can't recognize anyone from before their death (another explanation could be that the conscience is simply altered too extensively).
On the other hand, people don't seem to reproduce in the Paradise System. Why go to the trouble of dealing with mortality and "resurrecting" people after their death instead of creating artificial life to begin with?
Why allow new inhabitants into the Paradise, when resources are apparently limited?

Here's my conclusions from this:​

I think it makes sense to have Paradise's inhabitants work, as the system needs to sustain itself somehow.
Existence seems to be fundamentally coupled to data, more specifically, the conscience data collected via the chip. This data is prone to both degradation (over time and due to damage to the chip/death) as well as manipulation.
This Paradise System is bound to produce massive amounts of data, which need processing and storing. This is where I assume the third level comes into play, reducing former paradise inhabitants to living (?) computers/datacenters.
Speaking of computers/datacenters: The woman who gets deleted mentions calculations multiple times. It seems highly likely the people on the second level are performing calculations for some purpose as well. Level one? The people who built the Paradise System?
Which brings us to the second key aspect, degradation: Degraded consciousnesses can't fulfill their purpose on the second level anymore, leading to banishment to the third level, presumably performing simpler tasks/calculations. This also has the nice side effect of stopping the population from growing infinitely.
If you're a bit interested in informatics, you'll eventually discover that randomness is a very tricky thing to achieve with computers. This is where I assume mortals come into play: You need humans outside the Paradise System to generate fresh data. This is also why you can't have people reproduce inside the Paradise System: You would basically create a cesspool of degraded data...
Thus you end up with

humans -> level 2 Paradise inhabitants -> level 3 -> ???

creating a cycle of fresh data that's harnessed for processing power until it eventually gets discarded after exceeding certain degradation levels.

My interpretation​

Maybe that's just me, but I think this is oddly reminiscent of the current AI situation we're in:
Training AI on its own data leads to degradation (apparently, there's a term for it called model collapse). Our (current) understanding is essentially: more data = better model. At the same time, the data needs to be of high quality, and this is where humans come into play: Feeding vast amounts of human-generated data into all kinds of AI models.

So even though there's a future where AI (or in the case of the oneshot, the Paradise inhabitants) might seemingly make humans obsolete, they'll be harvested for fresh data to keep the system from falling apart.
And maybe the woman getting deleted is representing one of the people working on AI falling prey to their own creation...

---

Sorry for the rant lmao

 

[homogenized]

---

That was pretty close to my interpretation too, except I was too dumb to make the LLM connection, and I interpreted "Paradise" as entirely "virtual" in nature, after death the data recorded on the implanted chip is uploaded to it.

 

[Kamui]

That was pretty close to my interpretation too, except I was too dumb to make the LLM connection, and I interpreted "Paradise" as entirely "virtual" in nature, after death the data recorded on the implanted chip is uploaded to it.

The other poster is wrong. We are explicitly told, and shown, the bodies are data.

 

[Nylodale]

Shimeji Simulation if it was Evil

 

[onesnail]

Same honestly. But here's my take/speculation.

What we know (assuming the person who got deleted by the assembler was speaking the truth):​

This society has achieved "immortality" by uploading a human's conscience to the Paradise System via a chip, to outlive a mortal body. After death, this conscience is placed in an artificial (?) body (Why not do so from the start? The artificial body still seems to be mortal/somewhat biological in nature?) to experience "paradise". This paradise, as it turns out, really is just an exploitative system designed to keep one working even after death, with the false promise of an even "better" life at a higher level.
Interestingly, both assemblers don't seem to have ever recognized a person from before their death.

The Question:​

To me, the biggest question is whether a life prior to the system truly exists. Since conscience data can be manipulated (as seen when introducing the artificial illness to keep you stuck at level 2), memories prior to death could just be fabricated entirely. This would also explain why they can't recognize anyone from before their death (another explanation could be that the conscience is simply altered too extensively).
On the other hand, people don't seem to reproduce in the Paradise System. Why go to the trouble of dealing with mortality and "resurrecting" people after their death instead of creating artificial life to begin with?
Why allow new inhabitants into the Paradise, when resources are apparently limited?

Here's my conclusions from this:​

I think it makes sense to have Paradise's inhabitants work, as the system needs to sustain itself somehow.
Existence seems to be fundamentally coupled to data, more specifically, the conscience data collected via the chip. This data is prone to both degradation (over time and due to damage to the chip/death) as well as manipulation.
This Paradise System is bound to produce massive amounts of data, which need processing and storing. This is where I assume the third level comes into play, reducing former paradise inhabitants to living (?) computers/datacenters.
Speaking of computers/datacenters: The woman who gets deleted mentions calculations multiple times. It seems highly likely the people on the second level are performing calculations for some purpose as well. Level one? The people who built the Paradise System?
Which brings us to the second key aspect, degradation: Degraded consciousnesses can't fulfill their purpose on the second level anymore, leading to banishment to the third level, presumably performing simpler tasks/calculations. This also has the nice side effect of stopping the population from growing infinitely.
If you're a bit interested in informatics, you'll eventually discover that randomness is a very tricky thing to achieve with computers. This is where I assume mortals come into play: You need humans outside the Paradise System to generate fresh data. This is also why you can't have people reproduce inside the Paradise System: You would basically create a cesspool of degraded data...
Thus you end up with

creating a cycle of fresh data that's harnessed for processing power until it eventually gets discarded after exceeding certain degradation levels.

My interpretation​

Maybe that's just me, but I think this is oddly reminiscent of the current AI situation we're in:
Training AI on its own data leads to degradation (apparently, there's a term for it called model collapse). Our (current) understanding is essentially: more data = better model. At the same time, the data needs to be of high quality, and this is where humans come into play: Feeding vast amounts of human-generated data into all kinds of AI models.

So even though there's a future where AI (or in the case of the oneshot, the Paradise inhabitants) might seemingly make humans obsolete, they'll be harvested for fresh data to keep the system from falling apart.
And maybe the woman getting deleted is representing one of the people working on AI falling prey to their own creation...

---

Sorry for the rant lmao

There’s life before the system. Look at the final panel

 

[Valle_reading_manga]

There’s life before the system. Look at the final panel

That's precisely why I raised that question:
Is there a deeper meaning behind transitioning from level 3 to showing a newborn?
In any case, I came to the conclusion that real humans (likely) exist as well...