In / Spectre – 24 (S2 Fin) – Naked Lunch

In/Spectre’s second season concludes with a wry and clever “quickie” episode—a case that doesn’t seem like a case at all, but simply two good friends regarding a doll-like young woman eating alone at an extremely pricey unagi restaurant. She’s a mystery, and mysteries keep Kajio up at night. He hasn’t been sleeping well since his wife Yukie died.

His bespectacled friend Jujoji serves Kotoko’s role for much of the lunch, theorizing about how rather than the victim of a random mugging, Yukie was actually murdered by Kajio. In fact, Jujoji feels oddly compelled to prosecute his friend because of the presence of the tiny mystery woman eating unaju alone, suggesting she may even be the avatar of Kokuzo Bosatsu, bearer of the sword of wisdom, keeping a slippery criminal (i.e. an eel) from slipping away.

The two friends laugh off their exchange, drink more, and part ways, but unbeknownst to Jujoji, Kajio chose to have lunch at a fancy unagi restaurant because he was actually going to turn himself in to the police for murdering Yukie, so no one else could have her. It is only after they part ways that Kotoko confronts him, and when he addresses her as Kokuzo Bosatsu, she assures him she has no connection to that particular deity.

No, she is confronting Kajio at the request of Yukie herself, who is now a ghost and thus able to communicate with the Goddess of Wisdom. The reason Kajio has been sleeping so poorly and felt a great weight isn’t out of guilt or regret—he’s incapable of that—but the actual physical haunting of his dead wife, who told Kotoko to tell him that turning himself in won’t relieve him of these symptoms.

Suddenly dispossessed from the illusion that he was on the mend, Kajio begs Kotoko to exorcise Yukie from him. But since Yukie isn’t breaking the natural order of things, but is merely exacting righteous retribution upon her asshole husband, Kotoko is disinclined to acquiesces to his request (as a fine pirate once said) and bids him good day.

This makes Kajio angry and resentful to the point of actually considering killing Kotoko in the same manner he killed his wife. However, before he tries anything, he makes the mistake of asking Kotoko what she was doing in a fancy unagi restaurant on her own, which she maintains was a mere coincidence.

So she tells him, in so many words, that she went there to eat unagi because it’s an aphrodisiac, and she’s staying at her boyfriend’s that night, and wants to have lots of great sex  with him and maybe get pregnant. Yes, the Goddess of Wisdom and Horniness disarms Kajio with her naked crassness.

Kotoko ends up surprising Kurou by showing up at the end of his shift, and after a stop at the grocery store, head to his place hand-in-hand. She tells him about her day, he calls her ruthless as usual, she says he’s working too long and hard, and it’s high time he give her something long and hard, hopefully tonight. It’s Iwanagi Kotoko at her most raunchily charming best, and as good a way as any to close the book on what is hopefully not the last season of In/Spectre!

In / Spectre – 23 – The Merciless Protector of Order

Kotoko’s Columbo-style “One More Thing” involves the remainder of her interrogation of Fubuki, the yoko with whom President Otonashi contracted to murder Sumi. At the end of their chat, Kotoko deduces that Fubuki didn’t actually kill Sumi. He was about to, but someone beat him to it. He kept this secret from Otonashi so that he’d hold up his end of the bargain.

Fubuki also transformed into Sumi to scream out that the killer was a man in black in order to obscure the true killer: Kaoruko. She was able to fake the time she broke her leg after all, and made it look like a burglary. She now points out that Koya knew about Kaoruko’s role in the murder before this meeting, which is why Kaoruko wasn’t present, and yet Koya was willing to let his father-in-law take the fall.

When Koya scoffs and reminds Kotoko that Sumi screamed that a man attacked her. Kotoko can’t mention that a yoko actually screamed that, but it’s just as plausible that Sumi was protecting her daughter and the Otonashi brand. As Koya gets more agitated, Kotoko gets him to slip up and confirm Kaoruko wasn’t able to confirm Sumi’s death—a combination of her inexperience with murder and the gloves she wore that wouldn’t have been able to detect a pulse or faint breath.

As all of this unfolds, Rion realizes Kotoko guided her to the wrong answer in order to corner Koya and Kaoruko. Now that she has achieved this, awakened the truth, and protected the order of things, Kotoko starts to take her leave. But then Koya pulls a gun, and when Kurou approaches him, he shoots him in the head then aims for Kotoko’s. He can believe his family won’t tell a soul, but doesn’t trust her or Kurou.

As you’d expect, Kotoko doesn’t flinch for a moment. The following exchange is a standout of this arc:

Koya: Now there’s no turning back for me. You and that boy were wrong.

Kotoko: I am correct, and you can still turn back.

When the resurrected Kurou comes from behind and disarms him, Koya, like the others, is somewhat shocked. Kurou’s half-assed period drama explanation doesn’t hold water, and Kotoko saying they’re “people who live in a daydream” for which normal laws and reality don’t apply, isn’t any more reassuring.

Some time passes, and Rion narrates the aftermath of Kotoko’s awakening of a long dormant truth. An always guilt-ridden Kaoruko tried to take her own life, but failed, and Koya remains steadfastly by her side. Her father and Susumu have become closer, something she deems to be a saving grace.

Her grandfather the president’s health took a turn for the worse, as he deals with both his cancer and wrestles with his own guilt and doubt over whether it was the right thing to even approach Kotoko. She and Kurou actually visit him at his bedside, where he admits he’s always both believed in and been fascinated by the supernatural. That’s how he came into contact with the person who referred him to Kotoko and Kurou: none other than Sakuragawa Rikka, who told him they’d be able solve his problem.

This new kernel of information irks Kotoko, who wonders if Rikka was merely trying to bully her. Kurou thinks it could be Rikka wanted Kotoko to get all tangled up in this case to distract her from whatever Rikka was planning. He also believes Rikka wanted him to see Kotoko at work, and in particular how jealously and mercilessly she would protect order by revealing a truth, no matter the cost to her audience.

Kurou silently recalls Rikka telling him he still hasn’t realized how “terrifying” Kotoko is, and as he remembers this, Kotoko falls asleep beside him, looking like the very picture of an innocent angel. Whether this case was meant to be a diversion for Kotoko or not, it is true that Kurou learned more about his girlfriend. But I don’t think it hurt his opinion of her like Rikka probably wanted.

Quite the contrary: it’s surely better for one’s partner to be terrifyingly just than boringly corrupt!

In / Spectre – 22 – Squirrel Lion

During a brief recess when Goichi’s heirs get some air, Kurou lies down, but doesn’t get to rest long as a frisky Kotoko pounces on him with the full force of her 90-ish pounds (which is to say, not much). It’s another fun reminder of how close they’ve become, and it’s also a prime opportunity for Kotoko to confer with Kurou on her progress baiting the heirs into admitting their murder plans, which adequately prepares them for the false solution she’s prepared.

Of the three “contestants”, she believes Rion will be the first one to come upon that conclusion, as early as that night, and that proves to be exactly the case. While Susumu and Koya were successfully baited, the genuinely innocent Rion was also given everything she needed to craft a solution. A phone call with her dad is the catalyst that helps Rion organize and connect the clues swimming in her mind.

Missing from the meeting’s revelations is the true nature of Otonashi Sumi’s motivations. She wasn’t simply a tyrant bent on success at any cost, but was herself a puppet of her father Denjiro’s machinations. Denjirou laid out an intricately detailed plan, Sumi carried it out, and it resulted in the company’s success. Under that kind of pressure, it was virtually impossible for Sumi to disobey Denjirou even after he passed, even if she knew his plans were fracturing her family and eventually even the company.

That’s when Rion remembers how Kotoko phrased it—success sometimes harms people and leads them to their own destruction—and eureka, she has the solution: Sumi committed suicide. Trapped between her family’s happiness and the success of her company on one side an Denjiro’s orders on the other, Sumi took herself out of the equation.

Rion even surmises that Sumi made it look like a murder knowing her family had alibis to avoid harming the brand or their reputations. Kotoko looks happy with Rion’s answer—not necessarily because it’s the correct one, but because it’s the one she wanted Rion to come upon. Kotoko even softens the tension between them by saying her name is cute and brave, like a squirrel and a lion.

I like how that led to Susumu saying if Rion were a boy she’d be named Reo, since his big bro loved lions. It’s enough to suggest that amends between the brothers is possible. When the time comes to deliver the group’s answer to Goichi, Rion is the one to present it. Not only does Goichi accept it, and accept the even distribution of the inheritance, but laments that he didn’t do something like this sooner.

To do so would have saved his children undue guilt. While Susumu, Koya, and Kaoruko feel they’ve sinned, Goichi points out that there’s a very wide space between wishing to kill someone—and even holding a knife to someone’s neck—and actually going through with it. In doing his part to manipulate Sumi into commiting suicide, he believes himself the sole culprit in her death, and plans to pay for it by foregoing medication and dying a painful miserable death.

In this way, Goichi hopes to powerfully impress upon his heirs the lesson that one should never expect success as a result of murdering someone. The cost may have came late for him, but it will come all the same. That would wrap things up, except that Kotoko isn’t done. She rejects Rion’s theory of suicide, and provides valid reasons why.

The most important of these reasons is simply that making a suicide look like a murder carried far too much unnecessary risk and complexity. Engineering an accidental death, on the other hand, would have precluded the need for any alibis and prevented any police investigation.

Also, Goichi can claim he’ll pay for his crime, but the fact his family was protected by this solution means he doesn’t regret the choice he made or the success it led to. No, Otonahi Sumi didn’t commit suicide, she was murdered, and next week Kotoko will reveal the identity of the true killer. The question is, will that really be the fox ayakashi, or still someone else?

In / Spectre – 21 – Clearing the Air

Of the three Otonashi family members gathered, Rion (voiced by Iwami Manaka) is the only one whose thoughts we’re privy to. She rightfully wonders just what the hell she’s gotten into, and also realizes she’s underdressed for the occasion. Kotoko breaks the ice with another vulgar remark involving her an Kurou, before leaving the three to decide on an a singular narrative for how the president murdered Sumi, and a mutually agreed-upon order of inheritance.

It takes Susumu, Kouya, and Rion less than three minutes to come to an agreement, which is so fast that Kotoko wonders if it’s an agreement that they came upon in advance. She then reiterates that both the president, his sons, his daughter, and her fiance all had cause to murder her, but since everyone had solid alibis and no further evidence, her death was deemed a random burglary and murder.

Rion picks up on the semi-accusatory tone as Kotoko describes the ways Sumi’s children’s alibis were all too convenient, timely, and fortunate—even her daughter Kaoruko breaking her leg. Kotoko further prods her by calling the theorizing entertaining. Rion speaks up for her older relatives, telling Kotoko she’s completely devoid of taste. In this moment I felt bad for Rion, because I knew Kotoko was so many steps ahead.

Kotoko makes clear that the president was adamant that “the crime get the proper punishment”. This is the opportunity for everyone assembled to come clean, and Susumu is the first to avail himself of that opportunity. To Rion’s shock, both he and her father Ryouma plotted to kill their mother, but someone simply beat them to it, while they were still planning. While Rion points out that her uncle and dad hated each other, they also both standed to gain from Sumi’s death, so they collaborated on a murder plot while remaining at odds about everything else.

Susumu even posits that his brother sent Rion to the meeting in his place so she’d learn of the crime, as a way of atonement. Before Rion can catch her breath, Kotoko gently prods Kouya, who also confesses that he and Kaoruko also plotted to murder Sumi so they could get married. The plan involved Kaoruko pretending to break her leg for the alibi, only to break it for real before she could do the deed.

Now that “the sins of the successors” have come to light, Susumu believes they’re all done there. But Kotoko doesn’t care about their past sins. She’s there to hear them give their explanation for how the president managed to murder Sumi before any of them could. She assumed that all the secrets flying around would disorient Rion, so thought it best to take care of all of those first, and then give everyone a chance to arrive upon a satisfying answer.

In effect, Kotoko proves that she is not someone to be trifled with, as she played everyone in the room like a fiddle. Everyone except Rion, the sole innocent, to whom Kotoko helped reveal her family’s dark secrets. Rion seems like an otherwise easygoing person who didn’t mind being ranked last in the inheritance. Will that change now that she knows the truth?

In / Spectre – 20 – Paranormal Succession

Kotoko’s next case is brought to her by her parents, and the client is Otonashi Goichi, the president of a successful international hotel and hospitality chain. He ascended due to the murder by stabbing of his wife Sumi, who was detrimentally controlling the lives of their three children and about to drive the company off a fiscal cliff. The timing of her death was no accident; Goichi comes right out and informs Kotoko that he is the culprit. Kotoko’s reaction is classic Kotoko: cheerfully sardonic!

While Goichi didn’t wield the blade that killed Sumi, it was Goichi, who had cloistered himself in a mountain villa, who turned to the supernatural to solve his company and childrens’ problems. Specifically, a fox ayakashi known as a yoko came before him and offered to kill Sumi for him if he agreed to acquire and develop the next mountain over, where the yoko’s rivals lived. Within ten days, Sumi was slain by an unknown assailant, and Goichi was president.

He held up his end of the bargain, and not only did he back the company off a cliff, he shored up its finances to ensure long-term survival and success. Similarly, with the influence of their controlling mother removed, Goichi’s two sons and daughter could pursue their own life goals. His first son became a successful chef; his daughter married the man she loved (who was also successful); and his younger son became the heir apparent to the company.

Goichi waited for the consequences for turning to supernatural means to kill his wife to arrive, but the never came until recently, when he has been diagnosed with cancer and given about a year to live. Before he dies, he wants his children to know—and believe—that he was the one responsible for their mother’s death, and that what he did isn’t something that should be repeated lest they invite the wrath of the universe upon them. That’s where Kotoko comes in.

After meeting with the mountain yoko Fubuki, captured by his rivals, Kotoko works out a deal: he’ll tell her everything there is to know about his arrangement with Goichi, and she’ll use her stature in to ensure the severity of his punishment for his crimes is lessoned. From there, Goichi gave Kotoko free rein to create whatever plausible lie or web of lies is necessary to get his kids on board with the idea that he killed their mom.

After Kotoko completes her preliminary investigations, she brings Kurou up to speed, and Kurou is characteristically reluctant to be roped into this, even if he knows full well that’s what Kotoko is going to do. Over several rounds of a crane game to win a pack of naughty pens packed with fantastically adorable reactions, Kotoko lays out the basics of the plan.

It’s the classic In/Spectre move of spicing up what is otherwise a scene of exposition by having Kotoko/Kurou engage in something interesting. There’s a fair amount of suspense in whether they’ll nab the pens or not, and when they finally do, it’s because Kotoko is mad that Kurou tells her there’s nothing sexy about her…not even her paisley underwear. Rude!

When Goichi’s second son Susumu, the daughter of his first son Rion, and the husband of his daughter, Koya, are invited to a meeting with Goichi, Kotoko, and Kurou, they are tasked with coming up with their own explanations for how Goichi killed Sumi.

Kotoko, assisted by Kurou, will judge their explanations, give them a chance to amend them over the two-day-period, and will be the one who decides who has the best one based on truth and order. The winner will receive precedence in Goichi’s inheritance, so there is no small incentive for them to take this seriously.

While largely a table-setting episode, the GF/BF interactions between Kotoko and Kurou and the supernatural Succession-esque tale of corporate intrigue make it a table for a meal I’m looking forward to tucking into, especially once we get to know the three contestants.

In / Spectre – 19 – Meteorite Boy

Update: This review was initially labeled episode 18 – it has been corrected to episode 19.

Kotoko meets with Tae about the details of the case, and Tae informs her that Zenta infused a meteorite into the right arm of the wooden doll. The same meteorite that fell right in front of him when he was contemplating suicide, and seemed to improve his health, was included so that the doll would have a weapon with which to exact revenge when Zenta died.

I believe this is the first time outer space or a “cosmic” supernatural  phenomenon has come up on In/Spectre, and it’s a neat and thought-provoking thing to bring up. For all of her amassed knowledge and wisdom of Earth-based youkai, Kotoko’s guesses about their space counterparts are as good as yours or mine. She also works a virginity joke into the discussion, but Tae is not amused!

Considering the wooden doll’s extremely regular timing and route, all they need to do is set a trap. That night, Kotoko organizes the youkai into two groups on the beach and tells them not to move. Kurou is employed as the one that will block the doll’s path and get it to divert to a pre-arranged spot. This requires that Kurou die a couple of times, but he’s eventually able to grasp the future thread needed for them to capture the doll.

Note that I say capture and not kill, because Kotoko believes Zenta made the doll relatively easy to destroy on purpose. She theorizes that the doll is essentially what’s colloquially known as a voodoo doll, and any violence exacted upon it could well befall, say, the four college students in the car that killed Zenta’s grandson.

In this way, Zenta would be able to get revenge on the entire town without dirtying his hands, since the townsfolk would technically be responsible for the college kids’ deaths. So before they can consider harming the doll, they have to capture it. That’s achieved once Kurou diverts the doll to the spot, and it falls into a concealed pit and its right arm immobilized with rope held by the two groups of youkai.

On closer inspection, Kurou finds names of the college students carved onto the doll—along with the names of townsfolk, including Tae’s. Tae posits that they can lift the curse—if there is one against everyone named—by simply scratching the names off the wood. When Kurou does so to her name first, Tae feels nothing. In the end, Kotoko was likely mistaken; the curse was strong enough to move the doll and produce electricity, but there was no “voodoo” effect.

With the matter resolved, Tae explains why she thinks Zenta carved her name on the doll. Zenta long resented her for living what looked like a happy and carefree life with all her money. Turns out she only has that money as reparations…for when her children were killed in a car accident.

Any attempts to rid herself of the excess cash resulted in even more cash coming in, whether it was a return on investment in a friend’s company, or damages paid when her husband died. One could call her both blessed and cursed.

As Kurou and Kotoko depart by car, she says it’s entirely likely Tae also contributed to the power of the wooden doll. If Zenta’s sense of resentment and revenge gave it some power, Tae’s own contemplation of death gave it more power; the power to become a threat to the town that she’d have to sacrifice herself to defeat.

Naturally, Kotoko doesn’t tell Tae the whole story, and it’s arguable if she needed to be told, as she’s probably already aware of that on some level. Kotoko then changes gears and whips out brochures, telling Kurou they should do touristy stuff. Considering the role tourism played in this case, it’s a wonderful, darkly comedic line.

In / Spectre – 18 – The Pinocchio of Port Totomizu

Ms. Tae is a woman pushing eighty who doesn’t just walk every day, she jogs. In other words, she’s a badass. When a starving orange cat showed up on her doorstep she nursed it back to health.

When the cat saw her pouring sake and spoke, asking her to give him some, revealing he was no ordinary cat, but a bakeneko. Tae is not one to get overly spooked by such an occurrence; in fact, she decided to keep the cat as both pet and drinking partner.

Tae lives in a once sleepy fishing town of Port Totomizu that suddenly got TV drama famous and started attracting huge numbers of tourists—more than its infrastructure could handle. One of the townsfolk, Zenta, was hosting his son and his family during once such tourist crush, and some inattentive college students hit his grandson, Tsubasa. There was so much traffic, Tsubasa died in the ambulance before reaching the hospital.

Zenta died of heart failure shortly thereafter, but not before finishing an odd Pinocchio-style life-size wooden doll. It is for this reason that the town’s mayor and others suspect that the recent mysterious fish kills now harming revenue and tourism are somehow Zenta’s curse, carried out not by him but by the wooden doll he left behind.

Tae says this is all a bunch of malarkey, but if the fish kills continue the town should consider bringing in someone to spiritually purify the waters. But those opinions of the mayor and co. turn out to be spot-on, as the bakeneko takes Tae to the beach below her house, which is full of yokai all concerned by the cursed wooden doll, and ready to do something about it.

Tae witnesses two of the strongest local yokai, Master Shojo (a gorilla-lke yokai) and Okani-dono (a giant crab), execute a coordinated pincer attack on the wooden doll when it appears, only for it to disable Okani and Shojo’s club with electricity. It then walks into the sea and proceeds to emit electricity that kills still more sea life. The yokai—and the town—are at an impasse. They need outside help.

Of course, we know where this is headed: the bakeneko asks Tae if she’d be kind enough to host the yokais’ “elegant yet fierce” one-eyed, one-legged Goddess of Wisdom when she comes by to assess the situation and offer a solution.

Tae assumes this goddess will be another freakshow, so she’s surprised to learn that Kotoko is a tiny, beautiful young human woman with a polite and strapping companion in Kurou. When scolded by Kotoko for revealing his existence to Tae, the bakeneko tells her if Tae told anyone else anything, they’d simply think she’d gone senile.

Of course, Tae is far from senile, and is in fact a much appreciated elder character of strength and agency. One could also say she’s more attuned to the supernatural since at her age she is closer to the afterlife than most, despite her continued vitality. But this wood golem with an electro-beam might be the trickiest problem Kotoko and Kurou have faced this season. We’ll see if they can wrap it up before they have to head back to college!

In / Spectre – 17 – Stigmatized Property

It’s been a year since Kurou’s cousin Sakuragawa Rikka went into hiding, and finding her remains a priority for him and Kotoko. When we see her, she’s cheerfully interacting with her new property manager Konno Kazuyuki and his girlfriend, Oki Marumi, having moved to her new apartment just a week ago.

Rikka’s trip to the horse races is interrupted by an unannounced cameo by Truck-kun, smacking her head-on and sending her flying thirty meters. A mother tells Kazuyuki and Marumi that she saved her son from getting hit. Marumi calls an ambulance while Kazuyuki checks on Rikka…and is surprised to find her completely uninjured. Rikka even jokes about it being like a TV drama.

She thanks Kazuyuki and Marumi with a six-pack of beer, and they invite her for drinks and a light dinner. Turns out the apartment Rikka has moved into has a dark recent history, as the last three tenants committed suicide within three months of moving in. Rikka offers explanations for the first two when she hears the circumstances: an overworked office drone had a nervous breakdown, and a spurned young woman couldn’t get over a bad breakup.

The third tenant is the strangest, as it was the boyfriend of the woman that was dumped. Rikka understandably isn’t concerned by whatever conditions the apartment might serve up—like Kurou, she’s effectively invulnerable. When asked why she moved in, she tells them the story of her beloved cousin and his truly awful girlfriend, and is determined to break them up before she hurts him.

Rikka suddenly leaves late in the night, again thanking Kazuyuki for his kindness and leaving him her key and some cash for his trouble. The next day, just a hair too late, Kotoko and Kurou arrive. Initially, the couple sees the doll-like Kotoko and wonder how she could be so awful, but then she makes joke about Kurou drinking sake out of her crotch, and then they get it (to be fair, Kurou started it by calling her hairy).

Kotoko’s visit had been foretold by Rikka, since she knew Kotoko is looking for her, hence the need to skedaddle. And sure enough, Kotoko offers logical explanations for all three suicides. The third, which was the one that vexed Kazuyuki and Marumi the most, was simply a matter of the ex-boyfriend moving in to confirm that something about the apartment led to his ex’s suicide. When nothing happened, he became consumed by grief for his role in her death.

She surmises that may also have left no note as a small kindness to his own family, so they could explain his death to the apartment. Once Kotoko and Kurou leave, Kazuyuki and Marumi are satisfied by the explanations. Kazuyuki also thought that while Kotoko may be somewhat awful, he could tell Kurou cared a great deal for her. Marumi says that may be the case for now, but Rikka was concerned about their future together.

On their walk home, Kurou asks Kotoko if she told the pure truth, and she says she instead did exactly what was necessary: tell a believable story with the available info she had that could put Kazuyuki and Marumi at ease. She is also certain there are no supernatural beings in the apartment, as they’d be just as scared of Rikka as they are of Kurou.

That brings us back to a chat between Kotoko and Rikka a year ago when Rikka was staying at Kotoko’s house. Rikka asked what she fears, and Kotoko simply made a joke about a rakugo routine. When Kotoko wonders if Rikka told Kazuyuki and Marumi that she was some kind of awful woman, Kurou tells her that could be the impression some people get of her, considering she doesn’t seem to fear anything.

Kotoko says there actually is something she fears, but when Kurou asks, she simply gives him another Rakugo joke. But as fireworks start to explode in the sky above them and Kurou lifts her up for a better view, Kotoko’s eyes shimmer. I imagine the thing Kotoko fears most is losing Kurou, but is too proud to get serious and say so.

Instead, not knowing what the future holds for either of them, and Rikka still out of pocket, she tells Kurou that relationships between a man and woman tend to go better with a secret or two, then brings his lips to hers for a romantic kiss.

As with the Yuki-onna story, Kotoko and Kurou don’t show up until later, but with Rikka involved in this new “case”, they’re a lot more involved, since Rikka rejects them as a couple. Kazuyuki and Marumi are a nice realistic couple with a cozy, lived-in relationship. This season has shown that the more time we spend getting to know the folks Kotoko interacts with on her travels, the more fun and compelling those interactions are.

In / Spectre – 16 – Honeymoon Period

Kotoko tells Masayuki and Yuki-onna that she knows precisely who the culprit is, and furthermore, that the police aren’t really seriously suspecting him at the moment, which explains why they haven’t been hounding him of late.

The reason? Evidence indicates that the victim Mahiru didn’t have any of her effects taken, and there’s every indication that she and the murderer had time to converse. In that time, she would have surely warned the murderer about the formal accusation she’d written up beforehand.

After all, Mahiru wasn’t trying to be killed, and would do everything she could to avoid that outcome. And if Masayuki killed Mahiru, he would have taken steps to obscure her identity and/or the location of her body. And the cops already all but ruled Masayuki out as a serious suspect after he was wishy-washy about his alibi, and unprepared to defend himself from the facts they’d collected thus far.

As for why it looked like Mahiru was trying to write Masayuki’s name on her hand? That was written by the true murderer after killing her. Before Kotoko says the name of the murder—Iizuka Nagisa—the name already pops up in Masayuki’s name as the only possible culprit.

Iizuka was the only one who sided with him when he was forced out of his company. She loved him, and murdered Mahiru and framed Masayuki so that he’d have no choice but to go to her for support. Sure enough, as Kotoko discuss this, Iizuka calls Masayuki, but he doesn’t answer.

Kotoko reveals that she didn’t deduce this from the mere facts of the case as they stand, but from the eyewitness ghosts who were at the scene of the crime when it occurred. They identified a woman that matched Iizuka’s description. If that’s “cheating”, Masayuki can hardly complain, as the information Kotoko gathered from the ghosts categorically clears his name.

With Masayuki’s name sure to be cleared and only a matter of time before Mahiru is arrested, Kotoko gives him and Yuki-onna her blessing—as long as they use protection! Kurou shows up shortly thereafter, terrifying Yuki-onna (as he tends to do). Kotoko then tells Masayuki and Yuki-onna to get lost and bone already, since they’re now in “the optimal mood.” Yuki-onna  scoops Masayuki up and flies them back home.

While riding a flying yokai home, Kotoko and Kurou talk about the case a bit more. Kotoko explains further how Mahiru had overplayed her hand. She wanted a suspected Masayuki in the palm of her hand, but ultimately didn’t go any further lest the consequences of framing him cause him distress. The two conclude that Masayuki has and may well continue to have horrible luck with women.

Even Yuki-onna, who has been good to and for him thus far, is still a thoroughly volatile yokai who could one day freeze him to death for a slight real or imagined. Kurou likens Masayuki’s plight with his own, not just where his ex and Rikka are concerned but with Kotoko. Kotoko is not amused by this remark!

In / Spectre – 15 – So Generous, It’s Creepy

This episode was an emotional roller coaster! It begins by rewinding from Yuki-onna’s request to Kotoko to the police detectives questioning Masayuki. Their reasons for suspecting him of murdering his ex-wife are numerous: Mahiru left a note accusing him should she die suspiciously; the beginning of his name scrawled on her hand; and camera footage of Masayuki with a woman that looks just like her.

The police have reasonable cause to suspect, but not arrest Masayuki, and his failure to definitively state he had no alibi doesn’t help his case. But what choice does he have? He can’t tell the police he was having tempura and drinks with a yuki-onna on the night of Mahiru’s murder. Why, they’d think he was nuts…even though it’s the truth! Days pass and the police don’t bother Masayuki again, but it’s still looknig bad.

Then Yuki-onna, who was present in rabbit form for the entire talk with the police, asks him if she looks like his ex-wife, and he admits that she does, so it was Yuki-onna in the camera photo. Hers was the face of the one person in his life who didn’t betray him, but he admits he felt bad for marrying for whom he was otherwise unsuited.

Masayuki decides he’ll head out and try to find the real culprit, but Yuki-onna tells him to wait, and when he keeps going with a full head of steam,. she freezes him in his tracks—literally! 

Yuki-onna correctly diagnoses this as Masayuki being impatient and restless and wanting to prove his innocence at any cost, but with no leads and nothing to go on, the best move is to stay put, eat some food, get some rest. Then she remembers that her Ladyship, the Goddess of Wisdom, is just the person to solve this case, so she reaches out to her.

Yuki-onna flies Masayuki deep into the mountains to a cave where Kotoko is waiting. Rather than her going right into the particulars of the case, Masayuki gets a better taste of who Kotoko is, namely someone still quintessentially human despite her status as a goddess to supernatural beings near and far. That’s because Kotoko is upset that Kurou blew her off and she had to get cold pork cutlet from the local konbini.

I was so happy to see my favorite goddess of wisdom meeting my new favorite human-yokai couple, about to dish out the solution to their problems. But that’s where the roller coaster starts hurtling down to the earth, as Kotoko points out that not only does Yuki-onna’s wishy-washy sense of human time make her a poor alibi, but Masayuki might have capitalized on that poor sense to manipulate her into trusting him implicitly.

With Yuki-onna’s unwavering trust, Masayuki could kill his ex-wife one night, have tempura with Yuki-onna, and say they were doing the latter on the night of the murder, thus making him look innocent in her eyes and persecuted by the police. He could even convince her to kill the business partners who betrayed him.

Kotoko is so precise (as always) in laying out this theory that it even had me questioning if Masayuki really did have such a diabolical plot in motion, and had pulled the wool over Yuki-onna’s eyes with food, drink, and companionship. But you know who didn’t suspect Masayuki, even after hearing all this? Yuki-onna herself. She prostrates herself, says Masayuki has a truly kind heart, and demands that her Ladyship reconsider her stance.

Kotoko responds to Yuki-onna’s display by making it clear she’s all too aware that Masayuki isn’t the culprit, and that everything she uttered about otherwise was a lie. Among the reasons she trusts Masayuki? He’s been refusing Yuki-onna’s sexual advances! If he’d wanted to gain her trust quickly, he’d have swept her off her feet.

While Kotoko’s theory of Masayuki being a yokai-manipulating criminal mastermind was harsh and at times cruel, it was still crucial for her to say what she said, so she could enlighten Masayuki to the fact that Yuki-onna trusted him so much, she was even willing to defy her goddess for his sake.

By underscoring the courage Yuki-onna demonstrated for him, Kotoko hopes Masayuki will make the effort to regain some of his own courage. Even if this criminal investigation is all tied up with a neat bow and he gets off scot-free (as he should), Kotoko suspects that won’t be the end of Masayuki’s troubles.

A new start is in order. Masayuki owns up to being terrified of interacting with people—that lack of interaction is why he doesn’t have a human alibi—and tenderly gathers Yuki-onna’s cold white hand into his to thank her for going to bat for him. As for the true culprit of his ex-wife’s murder? Naturally, Kotoko already knows that too!

In / Spectre – 14 – Youkai Alibi

In/Spectre can really spin a good yarn. This week we meet Muroi Masayuki, who is pushed off a mountain by his best friend. As he lays contemplating his imminent death, a spunky yuki-onna (Yuuki Aoi) pays him a visit. She’s not there to kill him, though she does think long and hard about it when he knocks her looks!

Yuki-onna subverts Masayuki’s idea of her kind by building an conjuring an igloo around him so he’ll last the night, then flying him down the mountain in a princess carry, all for half of the cash he’s carrying. Once back in town, he’s able to walk in on his former friend lying about what happened and finger him for attempted murder.

Eleven years pass, and Masayuki moves back to the town by the mountain where he met the Yuki-onna. As luck would have it, he doesn’t need to search far for her, as she’s enjoying soft serve in human form. When he tells her about the time he met a yuki-onna she’s initially furious he broke his vow of silence, but he’s sure she’s the same person, so he technically isn’t.

Masayuki is coming off a divorce from a woman who cheated on him and tried to kill him, as well as the hostile takeover of his company by another former friend. Understandably distrustful of future human interactions, he sought her out. Yuki-onna is eminently interested in human food and drink (and cars!), so he agrees to buy her booze and cook for her at his bachelor pad.

An adorable, mutually beneficial friendship ensues. The connection to the In/Spectre we know finally comes when Yuki-onna speaks glowingly about her lady and Goddess of Wisdom, Kotoko. Yuki-onna cleared befriending Masayuki with Kotoko, and even got approval for sexual relations with him should things go that way (as long as they use protection!)

The good vibes suddenly sour when detectives come to Masayuki’s door to inform him that his ex-wife has been murdered, but that’s where Kotoko comes in. Yuki-onna reports that she knows for a fact Masayuki wasn’t the culprit because she was with him at the time of the murder. The problem is she can’t go to the cops and Masayuki can’t say the source of his alibi is a yokai.

It looks to be a fascinating case, and one that has a lot more resonance now that I’ve come to know and become quite fond both Yuki-onna and Masayuki. They make a surpassingly cute and charming couple whose playful banter and cozy chemistry rivals Kotoko and Kurou, and if anyone can get this out of this legal dilemma, it’s the Goddess of Wisdom.

In / Spectre – 13 – Things That Go Thump in the Night

When In/Spectre last aired, I said I’d hope we’d get more of the adorable duo of Kotoko and Kurou as they investigate and resolve more supernatural cases. Thirty-three months later here we are. There’s a lot of expository dialogue between a ghost and two youkai that bring us back up to speed on what this show is about, and Kotoko and Kuro’s abilities.

This is the same old In/Spectre, which means it is absolutely packed with scenes of people doing nothing but sitting or standing and talking. If that was fine with you in the first season, it will be fine here, as it is with me. There are three things that makes this not only tolerable but enjoyable for me, and that’s Kotoko’s magnetic charm, Kitou Akari’s firm yet affable voice, and Manabe Akihiro’s beautiful accompanying score.

The spook-of-the-week initially seems to be artificial, Kotoko tells the ghost and youkai discussing it that the scary thumping in the night wasn’t a supernatural phenomenon, but the sounds of an escaped monitor lizard illegally owned by the building manager. The truth is that an ancien cursed sumo doll was making the sounds.

Kotoko not only works out a deal with the manager that gets Kurou a cheap new place for them to live, but she and Kurou take the doll out to the isolated woods. There, she instructs Kurou to fight with the four-armed, horned sumo demon that manifests. This doesn’t go well at first, with Kurou suffering a number of gruesome deaths.

Of course thanks to eating of both mermaid and kudan flesh, Kurou is immortal and can see and choose the future. In between death and revival, the future he picks involves basically pinning the sumo down, exposing his back and enabling Kotoko to stab him through the throat with her cane.

It’s a victory, but not an ideal one for Kurou, who had hoped Kotoko could have been kept out of harm’s way. But Kotoko remains steadfastly unafraid of dangerous situations, and knew she could score an easy blow against a being that would not attack her due to her goddess status.

All of the various supernatural beings that dwell in the woods come out not just to gaze upon their kawaii Goddess of Wisdom, but thank her for dealing with the sumo doll. They all still consider Kurou a terrifying monster, but as long as he’s by Kotoko’s side and she’s vouching for him, they’ll accept him.

As for me, I’ve long since accepted that this is one of the talkier anime out there, and that more often then not that’s an asset and not a liability. And with all the reintroduction out of the way, next week’s dialogue will be less about what we already know and more about what we don’t.