Look, In/Spectre, I’m running out of
things to say about you while you’re laying groundwork. Could you
please do something new for the audience?
That’s not entirely fair, but these
episodes are feeling rather… padded out. I’m honestly wishing that
they did more side stories and compacted Steel Lady Nanase just a wee
bit more. In this episode we learn that Terada was killed by Steel
Lady Nanase (which we saw at the end of the last episode), go over
the facts of his death (which we witnessed), and consider what this
means for the attempt to ‘disprove’ Steel Lady Nanase (which we were
pretty much told last episode would be bad). We get some alright
character scenes with how Saki is torn between her knowledge of the
supernatural and her equal knowledge that it can’t really intersect
with her police work (which we’ve seen out of her before), some
decently paced and blocked humor with Iwanaga being jealous (which
we’ve seen out of her before), and some scenes where Kuro shows
Iwanaga a little actual affection (which… oh, actually though it’s
low key it’s kind of new).
We do get some new facts. The
mysterious figure that might be behind Steel Lady Nanase is said to
be absolutely behind her, and also to be Rikka-san. Rikka is
introduced, right at the end, as Kuro’s cousin who he was visiting in
the hospital and who Saki believed to be dead.. The show leaves off
promising (essentially) we’ll get more about her next episode.
And that’s about it. True, more of the
structure of the fight against Steel Lady Nanase is revealed/decided
on over the episode (such as Iwanaga being prepared to offer not one
but four solutions to the problems facing them, and the fact that
they’re going to challenge Nanase that same night before she can kill
again) but they’re not things that should have taken a full episode
to get out. If it took so long because we were getting loads of
good character growth and movement, and they were talking about (or
expressing through their words and actions without directly
addressing) their feelings, but most of the talk is essentially
exposition and the characters are (as is often the case in mystery
fiction, especially for the Detective and any Assistant) essentially
static characters so we’re not seeing them grow, change, and develop
as the story goes on.
So what else do I talk about? I’ve already been on about how sometimes being faithful is not the sole arbiter of a good adaptation and how In/Spectre may have been a good story that was best left in the world of text. And unlike the show itself, I don’t want to knowingly go on repeat. Do I just use this time to talk about some tangent? I guess since I’ve got space I can talk about the Intro and Outro sequences. The Intro is… alright. The song has a good sound and a good beat to it and some of the images (particularly the darker ones of Iwanaga and the shot of Karin Nanase turning into Steel Lady Nanase) are really good, but there are also a number of shots and sequences that are a little sparse, and they don’t fit together to form a cohesive, narrative whole that expresses the show you’re about to watch. Some of the cuts look like they belong to Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs. Others look like they belong to Mirai Nikki. Those two don’t go together and the fast, active opener doesn’t really represent that this is at its best an atmospheric, thinking-heavy mystery. It needed the anime equivalent of the X-Files opening to really introduce us to what’s going on.
The Outro, meanwhile, is… just so
dang random. It’s cohesive with itself and connected to absolutely
nothing else. I have no idea how anyone even got the idea to do
this. Why is this sound and this imagery even remotely connected to
In/Spectre? The opening might somewhat misrepresent what the show is
(looking like it belongs more to an action anime), but at least each
individual image I can connect to In/Spectre The Outro, I’ve
honestly got nothing.
For now, though, all I can do is wait
for next week to see if the pacing gets any better.