Toei Animation’s Expelled from Paradise sequel, Rakuen Tsuihō: Kokoro no Resonance, <a href="https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=31846" rel="nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>opens in Japanese theaters Friday, Nov. 13. Its setting, DEVA, houses most of humanity as uploaded minds, yet the field’s founding technical document, Oxford’s 2008 whole brain emulation roadmap, left the ethics and philosophy of that premise for later workshops, and a March 2026 fruit fly brain simulation shows how small real emulation still is.
Seiji Mizushima directs, Gen Urobuchi writes the film, as on the 2014 original. Ayane Sakura voices Gabriel, Saori Hayami voices Alma, Yoshino Aoyama voices Danel, Sally Amaki voices Raguel and Sumire Morohoshi voices Penem, while Rie Kugimiya reprises Angela Balzac. Toei Animation released the latest promotional video, and Japan is the only premiere in the Anime News Network database.
Promotional coverage says a new threat called the Fallen is a key term of the story. Thecle does not speculate about them
As LiveChart’s synopsis of the 2014 film tells it, the original follows an investigator named Angela sent to a ruined Earth in a prosthetic body. Wikipedia’s summary puts the population still living on Earth at less than 2% of humanity. Japan’s film database frames the film around the theme of human dignity. This analysis rests on those materials and the 2014 setup, not on footage of the unreleased sequel.
Oxford Roadmap Deferred Ethics Questions That DEVA Society Presumes Settled
Anders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom published Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap as Technical Report 2008-3 for Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. It ranks eleven levels of simulation detail, and a workshop consensus pointed to levels four through six. The report states that the workshop avoided socioeconomic and philosophical issues, ethics included, and left them for future workshops.
The document calls itself a first draft and stresses the long-term, speculative nature of the work. It also lists unfinished prerequisites, among them an automated scan, interpretation and simulation pipeline and a complete inventory of neural entities.
DEVA rests on the answer the roadmap postponed. A society that houses most of humanity as uploaded minds assumes those minds are the people who were saved, while researchers still list suffering and legal personhood of emulated minds as open concerns.
Do DEVA Residents Count as Survivors or Copies? Philosophers Disagree
Thomas Reid asked in 1775 whether a being formed from his brain’s material would be him. Susan Schneider argues that uploading at best creates a copy and that the original mind probably dies. Michael Cerullo proposes “psychological branching identity,” under which a person survives gradual destructive uploading as continuations of the original. James Hughes argues that if the self is an illusion, worries about survival are no reason to avoid uploading.
Older philosophy supplies the vocabulary. John Locke held that personal identity depends on consciousness, not substance, and Derek Parfit held that what matters is psychological continuity and connectedness. On Schneider’s argument, DEVA’s population is made of copies. On Cerullo’s branching view, it is made of continuations. Neither claim is an experimental result, because mind uploading remains almost entirely theoretical.
Fruit Fly Emulation Covers 125,000 Neurons Against 86.1 Billion in Human Brain
Eon Systems of San Francisco announced a simulation built on the connectome of an adult female Drosophila melanogaster, with about 125,000 neurons and 50 million synapses, according to The Register’s March 16 report. The virtual fly walked, stopped to clean its antennae, and extended its proboscis when given a signal resembling the smell of sugar.
A 2009 cell-count study estimated about 86.1 billion neurons, plus or minus 8.1 billion, in the adult male human brain. That is roughly 688,800 times the fly model’s neuron count. Connections diverge further: roughly 100 trillion connections in a human brain against 50 million synapses in the fly model, a factor of 2 million.
Steve Furber, co-creator of the ARM processor, said the simulated brain does not operate like a fly’s, describing it as machine learning constrained to the shape of a connectome. The Register reported that the model is not running in real time and that the virtual environment is very simple. It is not an uploaded fly.
Freitas: Heat Limits and Early Detection Constrain Runaway Nanoreplicators
LiveChart’s synopsis of the 2014 film says Earth was left in ruins following the “Nano Hazard.” It does not say what the Nano Hazard was, and thee name invites comparison with gray goo, the runaway self-replicating machine scenario K. Eric Drexler introduced in 1986, a term Drexler later said he wished he had never used
Robert Freitas Jr. published the first quantitative technical analysis of the scenario in 2000. He calculated that ecophagy slow enough to add about 4°C (7.2°F) to global warming would take about 20 months, and that faster replication runs hotter and is easier to detect. His main conclusion was that all scenarios he examined appear to permit early detection by vigilant monitoring.
Chemist Richard Smalley argued that chemistry makes such replicators impossible, and Drexler later conceded that no one needs to build runaway replicators. Physics therefore bounds how fast and how far a replicator can spread. It does not say what a fictional Nano Hazard left behind.
Light Delay Between Orbit and Surface Spans 2.7 to 239 Milliseconds
In the 2014 film, Angela travels to Earth in a cloned organic body, and LiveChart’s synopsis describes her using an exoskeletal suit called Arhan on Earth’s surface. Light needs about 2.7 milliseconds for a round trip to low Earth orbit at 400 km (249 miles) and about 239 milliseconds to geostationary orbit at 35,786 km (22,237 miles), before any relay or processing delay.
Real operators already handle long delays. Ground teams drove the Lunokhod-1 lunar rover in real time despite a 2.5-second signal delay. The HERRO concept proposes that crew in Mars orbit operate a surface robot in real time.
Visual Novel Expelled from Paradise: The Stellar Angel Launches Nov. 26 on Switch and PC
Studio51 develops the companion visual novel, which is scheduled for release Nov. 26 on Nintendo Switch and PC.
Readers who see the film Friday will carry a gauge into the theater: real emulation is a 125,000-neuron fly model against 86.1 billion human neurons, the roadmap behind the field set ethics aside, philosophers split on survivors versus copies, replicator physics caps speed through heat, and orbital light delay runs from 2.7 to 239 milliseconds.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does the Expelled from Paradise sequel open?
Rakuen Tsuihō: Kokoro no Resonance opens Friday, Nov. 13, in Japanese theaters, and Anime News Network’s database lists Japan as the only premiere. The companion visual novel is scheduled for Nov. 26.
Can scientists upload a human mind today?
No. Mind uploading remains almost entirely theoretical. The fruit fly simulation covered in this article runs about 125,000 neurons, and Furber said it does not work as a fly’s brain does.
Would an uploaded mind still be the same person?
Philosophers disagree. Schneider argues an upload is at best a copy, while Cerullo’s branching identity view holds that a person survives gradual destructive uploading as continuations of the original. The 2008 Oxford roadmap left such questions to later workshops.
Could gray goo really consume Earth?
Freitas’s 2000 analysis found that heat limits slow a replicator’s spread and that all scenarios he examined permit early detection by monitoring. Drexler later conceded that no one needs to build runaway replicators.
ⓒ 2026 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
