I’ve been speculating for a while
whether or not the show would pick up when we got into Iwanaga’s
solutions, and believe it or not it actually does. I’m not sure,
though, whether this section being better is going to be enough.
This episode is dedicated to Iwanaga’s
first solution, lie number 1 out of 4 that she’s telling in order to
convince people to believe in literally any other option than “Steel
Lady Nanase is a Ghost”. This time, she’s focusing on the death if
Terada, and creating a theory based entirely around it.
The basic idea is that the killer
created Steel Lady Nanase in order to get Terada’s attention, and
then used the figment in order to lure Terada to his death.
Iwanaga’s solution speculates that the killer called Terada to the
gas station under the presumption of reporting evidence of Steel Lady
Nanase. They then rig up an elaborate booby trap: a pendulum at
exactly Terada’s head height, intended to swing through a perfect
spot, with a remote-control release and a heavy payload that, when
released, would properly cave in Terada’s skull.
Of course, Iwanaga is presenting her
solution to a hostile audience: a group of fourmites dedicated to
Steel Lady Nanase, with Rikka among them driving the zeitgeist
onward, with an interest in the ghost theory maintaining its
strength. Both she and Kuro are willing to die to force the future
into shape (though in Kuro’s case it might be less of a choice). As
such,she has to address problems with her solution.
She also ends up framing Saki in all
but name with this one, because Iwanaga is a class act. And has an
excuse.
The visuals for the Solution are
effective and fitting. Like Iwanaga’s earlier explanation to the
Guardian Serpent, the imagery is not a literal “What really
happened”. Some information is presented as generic or redacted
when the scenes play out, such as the alleged killer, being a black
blob person for most of their deeds. While the style is at least
somewhat familiar to the manga, it still very much works when it’s
fully animated, and gains a good deal by the better pacing of
Iwanaga’s information delivery.
On pacing, this episode still seemed
like it had a little fat, taking its time to present some of the
solution. This is good, because we’re spending one out of four whole
episodes on solution one and they only get more complicated and
twisted from here, meaning that the pace will naturally have to
increase in order to accommodate the material. So it’s good that we
have somewhere up to go from this.
It’s not unreasonable that Iwanaga’s
first solution didn’t take, though; it’s true crime rather than the
supernatural, a factor that Iwanaga will almost always be fighting
against, and it isn’t even particularly salacious, with generic brand
Saki being given no firm motive or psychology for the absurd deed of
creating Steel Lady Nanase and killing Terada. Not that Iwanaga
fails to answer the question of motive, but she doesn’t really focus
or dwell on it. In at least some of the following stories, that may
well change.
This is in every way what I wanted to
see about In/Spectre. It’s the most interesting stuff and the stuff
that is actually taking some benefit of the animation, seeing both
Kuro’s fight and the “facts” of the solutions to the Steel Lady
in motion. There’s room for additional visual creativity, and I
think this was the part the creators of the anime cared about and
wanted to depict as well. At this point, I do basically know how the
rest of the show must go, but with the pace remaining a question,
I’ll continue to report next week (and to the end. Stopping was
never an option.)