After finishing up with the Guardian
Serpent and getting confirmation of how Iwanaga works, we move to the
meat of what we’re likely to be seeing, Steel Lady Nanase. The time
is two years later, and a busty, faceless ghost is appearing and
causing trouble.
We start out with the police characters
Saki and Terada. Saki you might remember is Kurou’s ex. She’s still
having trouble with the breakup as it happened, blaming herself and
haunted by the memories of the incident with the Kappa. Terada is a
veteran who might have a personal interest in Saki but is absolutely
interested in her as a fellow officer, given that he’s coming to her
with a troublesome case he’s looking into: the incidents surrounding
Steel Lady Nanase.
The story around town is of assaults
committed by the ghost of the idol Karin Nanase, who’s head was
crushed by a steel beam towards the start of the year. Now she
appears in her idol outfit, wielding the beam that killed her as a
weapon, frightening townsfolk. Saki is concerned because, after the
incident with Kurou, she knows supernatural things are real. Terada,
on the other hand, is concerned because the reports flooding in are
far too elaborate for a prank, and so he’s convinced that the
sightings are covering up some other kind of crime.
It’s a fairly basic concept, but one
that does kind of underline a lot of the goings-on in In/Spectre: the
divide between belief, disbelief, and knowledge. Terada doesn’t
believe in things that most folks can’t see, things that defy reason.
In a sense, he’s a voice for ‘normal’ people, who would naturally be
fairly skeptical about such claims. And, in Iwanaga’s perspective,
he’s not without his place. Despite the fact that she knows
absolutely that all sorts of supernatural things exist, she has no
vested interest in causing others to think the truth. Indeed, in the
full run she’s more like an alien explaining UFOs as weather balloons
than she is like a Mulder type.
No, if anything that role goes to Saki.
Saki has had an encounter with the other side, but it’s just the
one, and is something she’d rather forget. She’s on the line of
belief, where she knows that logically some things shouldn’t be, but
what she’s faced in her life tells her that logic can’t always apply.
She has neither Iwanaga’s familiarity with the supernatural nor
Terada’s ability to dismiss it, which puts her in a pivotal position
as the observer for this arc.
At the end of the episode, Saki has her
second encounter. This time it’s with Steel Lady Nanase… and
Iwanaga. The humor kind of comes back here, at least for a moment,
as Iwanaga’s filthy mouth delivers what might be its most stupendous
line. Even knowing from the manga it was coming, I still cringed.
After a brief exchange of blows, Steel Lady Nanase vanishes, and
Iwanaga learns just who ended up fighting alongside her… much to
Iwanaga’s horror. She’ll have some explaining to do, but not this
episode. We spend enough time with the Guardian Serpent that we
don’t get a ton in the city.
I will say, though, I’m remembering how
much In/Spectre is properly a member of the Mystery genre. There are
a lot of little details that are right now addressed very quickly,
and end up being important later. If you’re watching along… try to
catch and remember them. See if you can get a step ahead of Iwanaga;
that’s part of the fun of a mystery, even if you don’t really manage.
But we’ll see it start to unfold next
week