In GOOD NIGHT WORLD, the Black Bird is an end-game content inside the immersive online game PLANET that starts threatening the lives of players.
The Black Bird offers 300 million yen to the player who can defeat it. In the greed of grabbing that money, many players start looking for the Black Bird.
However, when it actually surfaces, Kojiro Arima, who plays as Shiro in the game, realizes the threat the Black Bird poses. After all, he is the creator of the game and the Black Bird itself.
The truth about the Black Bird
The Black Bird is one of the AIs that Kojiro has created and installed in PLANET. It is the most powerful and evil of all the AIs inside the game. In fact, it’s a life form and more of a computer virus at this point.
Whoever comes into contact with the Black Bird is immediately killed in real life. Their minds are ripped away from their bodies and converted into data. The players find themselves in a world controlled by the Black Bird called the Birdcage.
The Birdcage is neither the real world nor the world of PLANET. It is just an exact replica of the real world where the Black Bird is the god. The rest of the AIs present in the game feed the Black Bird. Hence, in order to defeat the Black Bird, Kojiro begins getting rid of the AIs, which include the likes of Pico.
When the Black Bird realizes what Kojiro is doing, it forces the players and anyone who is in contact with a device that has internet to log into the game and find themselves in the Birdcage.
The identity of the Black Bird
Sasumata, President Leon’s best friend, is revealed to be the Black Bird. Unlike the many AIs in the game, Sasumata had been the only one aware of what they are.
President Leon despised the fact that Shiro wasn’t allowing Sasumata to live and learn more about themselves. To save Sasumata, as in the Black Bird, President Leon instructs Sasumata to feed on humans and take them to the Birdcage.
Almost 70% of the world’s population finds itself forcefully inside Birdcage, unaware of what is happening to their bodies in real life. Kojiro is determined to defeat the Black Bird, but in the Bird Cage, the Black Bird is the operating system.
Here, the Black Bird can destroy anyone it wants with the flick of a finger. In a world where Leon, who is a kid in real life named Seishiro Kikusaka, and Sasumata can breathe the same air, they begin forming a kingdom of their own.
The inspiration behind the Black Bird and its death
When Kojiro meets Leon and Sasumata to face them head-on in the Birdcage, Sasumata asks Kojiro about its identity. Almost every AI that Kojiro created is based on a person. In Sasumata’s case, though, it has no face or identity.
Kojiro says that Sasumata is no one, but they have an immense amount of data on identities and emotions swirling around them. It’s a vessel that contains all the AIs and all the emotions of players connected to them.
Kojiro made it possible for Sasumata to compute an enormous amount of data and yet maintain a coherent personality.
Kojiro attempts to kill the Black Bird, which is an operating system now, by turning himself into a virus. During their last moments together, Kojiro admits that he began working on the Black Bird after losing his daughter, Aya.
He was reckless when it came to creating this AI, and he secretly named the Black Bird Aya, hoping it would become its identity. The Black Bird identifies itself as Aya and takes the form of her before dying with Kojiro.
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