Dimension W – 04

I was initially intrigued by this week’s change of setting and mansion murder mystery theme, but Kyouma and Mira end up caught up in a frustratingly convoluted web of plot that features a little bit of everything presented with a “more is more” philosophy that turns out muddled and unfocused. It doesn’t help that this episode was mostly setup for a part-two payoff next week.

You have a mysteriously drowned horror author, a mansion full of random people who would normally be the suspects, you have Albert tagging along on this one, being all buddy-buddy with Kyouma while bringing up their shared Dark Past. There’s even a gothic lolita collector who doesn’t really do much.

Then you have Mira (who Kyouma seems to have nicknamed Ponkotsu, or “piece of junk”) seeing “ghost” that could really be people involve in the past disaster that claimed many lives 21 years ago, being layered onto the real world due to the use of a Number delving into Dimension W.

While ostensibly a soft sci-fi anime, one can feel the strain of combining so many different genres. Mira’s ability to build the world of the author’s book she can perceive in three dimensions in order to find clues is a neat idea, but somewhat overshadowed by the fact she’s either naked or in a little towel at the time; the camera’s fetishization of her body continues apace, and she ends up in a pretty standard horror movie chase.

There also seems to be a recurring trend of Kyouma leaving Mira off on her own with mixed results; it worked out when she found the robotic pigeons, but last week she was almost exposed (which would have likely meant Kyouma, Mary, and Koorogi’s deaths), and this week she becomes a chained damsel in distress. At some point you hope Kyouma will keep better tabs on his partner.

As for the trio of suspicious characters from the lobby when Mira and Kyouma first arrive – they are operating under the assumption the present owner of the hotel’s dreams are connecting one world to the other, so they kidnap her, perhaps in hopes of retrieving the Numbered coil for themselves (or their client). So throw heist and a competing collectors themes into the mix! This DimW threw a lot of pasta at the wall, but not a lot of it stuck. Maybe the resolution will be more satisfying than the setup…