In/Spectre is not a normal show.
Knowing the source material, I was
never expecting it to be. The pacing and story structure aren’t
particularly cinematic, even if the ideas are strong and fascinating.
So seeing where and when it works or doesn’t as an anime is actually
an interesting dive.
This episode is more about the facts
and groundwork. We establish what really happened to Karin Nanase,
what people think might have happened to Karin Nanase, and what
Iwanaga needs to do in order to unmake Steel Lady Nanase: craft a lie
both more believable and more sensational than the idea that there’s
a vengeful ghost out there stalking.
A lot of time is given to this establishment, to the point where the vast majority of the episode is taken up sitting in Saki’s room talking about the facts. Sadly, they skip out on the best example of the “rational fiction” displacing a Monster of the Imagination from the Manga (with both the monster and the fantastical false story), but the idea gets across all the same. We learn the details of the police report and, from a ghost who was on scene, the actual facts. We also have the truth of the Kudan’s prophetic ability (that being, fixing a certain future out of many possibilities at the moment of its death), which I covered in my episode 5 write-up explained.
Then, towards the end of the episode,
we actually get plot movement. Kuro asks Iwanaga if she told Saki
about “her”, to which Iwanaga says no. It’s implied that the
“her” figure might or might not be involved in the case.
Considering that the very end of the episode shows a twiggy,
dark-haired woman interacting with the Steel Lady Nanase site, I
think it’s safe to say that our antagonist (in as much as she’s the
active force pushing for Steel Lady Nanase to exist) is clearly
revealed… but nothing about her nature or motivation is brought up
for the time being, so I’ll avoid spoiling future episodes as well as
current ones and say no more.
The penultimate scene, though, is very
relevant for where we go from here: Terada confronts Steel Lady
Nanase at a desolate gas station and gets himself killed. In
addition to the fact that, you know, a man (and a fairly likable one
for as little screen time as he got. And a cop.) has died horribly,
this also throws a pretty clear monkey wrench into Iwanaga’s already
uncertain ability to dispel Steel Lady Nanase. No longer is the
ghost purely the domain of rumor and hearsay; there is a victim, and
a murder that has to be accounted for and explained if we want to
stop the Steel Lady’s internet-fueled rampage.
However, all of that is concentrated in
at most five minutes at the end of the episode, and probably more
like two, the conversation about “her”, Terada’s death, and “her”
reveal. We’ll get fallout next episode and on, of course, and I’m
still quite pleased with the anime specifically as a faithful
adaption of In/Spectre’s manga form, but I feel like a lot of
viewers, looking for higher drama and less esoteric mechanics and
logical problem solving, will probably be getting bored about now.
If you’re into thinking-heavy
Speculative Fiction, I’d encourage you to stick it out. Iwanaga’s
going to be cooking up some fascinating and sordid tales on the
surface, and the dealings going on “under the hood” (especially
regarding “her”) become engaging in their own right. If the show
does well, we’re through the slow setup of In/Spectre and more or
less into the battle of wits and logic we want to see. But that’s a
topic for next week.