KYOKOU SUIRI

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ONA ComedyKyokou Suiri Mini Anime
ONA FantasyKyokou Uranai
ANIME ComedyKyokou Suiri Season 2
ONA Slice of LifeChiyuki no Fashion Check
MANGA ComedyKyokou Suiri

REVIEWS

• 

  tsugan

  70/100
  In/Spectre is a supernatural crime noire with witty dialogue wrapped in an uninspired plot.

  Story

  Enter into the tried and tested, yokai-infested, setting of contemporary Japan, where adolescent girls get kidnapped and become goddesses by having a leg chopped off and an eye removed. Where women see their boyfriends scare off monsters and don’t fall more in love with them — in fact, they practice judicious social distancing and f*** off. In/Spectre is unambitious with its story, and several consequential plot points aren’t properly explained, which weakens it further. Were it not for its consistently top notch dialogue, the anime would be lost in the pile of thousands of others.

  In/Spectre initially presents itself as a run-of-the-mill action-adventure, yet it is undeniably a slow paced crime drama at heart. That isn’t to say no fighting occurs, this is anime after all, but what’s there is… unremarkable, perhaps a bit on the gorey side for shock value. The vast majority of the show is exposition about crimes — think of it as an anime version of the Hannibal TV series but not nearly as well written or trippy. That being said, the writing is quite engaging, if you let it take you where it wants.

  The crux of In/Spectre is that the main character, Kotoko Iwanaga, becomes a (the?) goddess of wisdom for the spirits/yokai/Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost’s of Japan. She does this by getting her leg chopped off and losing her right eye, which I’m sure is very symbolically representative to wisdom in Japanese culture (it’s minimally explained in the anime, good enough for me).

  What isn’t explained in the anime is, well, why is she so damn smart? She goes around investigating these crimes and intuiting the perpetrators extremely context-sensitive reasoning like a teenaged Will Graham. I understand, she often has yokai eyewitnesses and such to help her, but she’s casting outlandish theories as fact and everyone’s just like, “Yeah, I guess we voted her as Goddess of Wisdom so that’s that.” Did the limb subtracting, sensory organ losing, ritual, make her into some literal savant, or does it come down to a “woman’s intuition?” It’s never explained.

  Alright, so that’s one sliiiiightly nitpicky problem down, now onto the most glaring issue I have with In/Spectre. Spoilers Below.

  So the other two main characters are Kurou Sakuragawa and Saki Yumihara. They’re ex-lovers, portrayed as being a very good match for each other, but Saki abruptly leaves Korou because they encounter a fish man by a river. The fish man is terrified by Korou and screams out something like, “I can’t believe how terrifying humans are.” and then runs away. OK. Korou is completely unfazed by the encounter, and Saki puts together several other odd experiences she’s had with him (such as him getting his hand sliced up cooking and it insta-healing) and realizes that boy ain’t right.

  My question is: who witnesses their long term partner who they were probably going to marry scare away a literal monster, and thinks, “I gotta f** break up with this guy, pronto.” Who sees that their boyfriend can regenerate wounds spontaneously and isn’t relieved before any other emotion? Those aren’t the reactions of a soulmate-type person that they portrayed Saki to be for Korou — it makes her come off as a shallow idiot when she is clearly anything but. Also, why is she so consistently scared of the friendly yokai that Kotoko brings in, it makes sense the first few times, but Every. Single. Time? This woman’s a cop who tried to melee a steel bar wielding evil spirit, and she’s scared of an adorable cat ghost? Huh?

  Character

  In/Spectre is interesting solely because of Kotoko Iwanaga. Kurou Sakuragawa is the narrative equivalent of Plank from Ed, Edd, ‘n Eddy. He barely talks, rarely has anything interesting to say, and when he does, it comes out in such a monotone that one wonders why they bothered to have him voiced at all. The notion that he would be able to attract not just one, but two, attractive, intelligent, girls to his side with all the personality of beige carpet is laughable.

  Kotoko, much like Raphtalia in Shield Hero, makes Kurou somewhat interesting. Her endless frustration with his complete lack of emotion or affection towards her is a constant gag that never really got old. Their one-sided relationship is the lighthouse that keeps In/Spectre entertaining throughout its 12 episodes. Without this, In/Spectre would be a miserable slog.

  As noted in my spoiler section above, Saki Yumihara is the character I have most gripes with, even competing against Kurou’s Purgatorial soullessness. At least that’s somewhat explained by way of his F’ed up childhood. Saki is an undiagnosed schizophrenic. One scene, she’s a sure shot policewoman, the next, a barely hanging on hysterical mess. In the real world, a duality of personality like hers is common and interesting, but it is portrayed so clumsily here that you can’t tell if it’s meant to be a joke or if someone at the studio thinks women are manic idiots.

  Art & Sound

  In/Spectre’s animation is top notch. Little facial expressions on the characters (except for Kurou, he’s a necromaster’s vessel waiting to be filled) give even the banal scenes life. The action sequences are bareboned, but that was never the point of In/Spectre so I won’t judge them too harshly.

  The intro has a nice song, but other than that I didn’t notice the sound at all, which in many respects is kudos to the soundFX team.

  Enjoyment

  Ultimately, In/Spectre is a confused final product. A generally lighthearted theme conflicts with definitely-not-funny crimes. I just don’t think a silly anime approach to a grisly crime noir setting works well. There are better anime that do similar things, like Monster or Mushishi (though Mushishi obviously isn’t noir). I don’t regret watching it, but I can’t help but come away frustrated that In/Spectre could’ve been more.

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• 

  lonelyCheese

  65/100
  Decent story, but uninspiring as an anime adaptation. Go watch Hyouka instead.

  See last paragraph for TLDR.

  As a show almost entirely consisting of people sitting around somewhere and talking, what it does to keep the viewer's attention as the protagonist goes on ten, twenty minutes long monologues episode after episode can make or break the show. As another mystery show, Hyouka resolves this problem with its creative use of visual metaphors. While Kyokou Suiri does try the same visual metaphor approach, it is repetitive and feels uninspired. Another way it tries to avoid long monologues is to have a second character that forms a Watson and Holmes dynamic to share the expositions between the two characters and to make their dialogue feel more natural. To its credit, protagonist Kotoko's interactions with said secondary character Saki does occasionally add humour to the story, but such intermittent sparks are not sufficient to cover for the show's monotonous directing.

  The animation was mostly unremarkable, with the exception that the colors are so over-saturated that I thought there was a computer problem when watching episode 1. The occasional action scene looks nice for a mostly talking anime, but that's not what I'm looking for in a mystery show.

  The thing that originally attracted me to this show was the witty banter between the male and female leads best known in recent works by Bunny Girl Senpai. However, the male lead Kurou was quickly side-lined as the plot thickened and the spotlight became entirely focused on Kotoko. As the type that mostly silently take up the grunt work, Kurou did get his chance to shine in the last episode, but it does not make up for his inactivity throughout most of the show. Characters' in the show generally feel one-dimensional. For instant, all we know by the end about Saki's personality is that she is afraid of ghosts, and the gag got old quickly. This seems like a natural limit considering how much of the screen time has to be focused on the mystery itself, so I consider it another sacrifice to the seasonal TV broadcasting format that dictates shows must be multiples of twelve or thirteen episodes.

  The series' main gimmick is a magic system where the power of supernatural beings are proportional to how much humans believe in them. This is by no means original, as it is featured in many stories involving Japanese folklore like Noragami, Rise of the Youkai Clan, A Certain Magical Index, or even Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun which was airing in the same season. The twist of this series is how it incorporates this concept into a deductive mystery. The show slowly spirals into a meta-narrative on what makes logical deductions persuasive in a way that will likely disappoint anyone who was looking for a fair-play deductive mystery, but it does provide a nice twist at the end that makes it a worthwhile story for those who can appreciate it for what it is.

  This story felt naturally unfit for the anime medium, and it did not have a sufficiently talented director that can do what needs to be done to push it along. You should just go watch Hyouka. Perhaps the manga would have been a better experience, though I've not read it myself.

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• 

  Byrd

  47/100
  Not much ever happens and it makes for a boring show. Not worth the watch.

  One word I'd use to describe this anime is disappointing. There's just so much that they could've done better.

  The first problem I have with In/Spectre is that the cast of characters, which is comprised of about 6 main characters, has 1 interesting character. Kotoko is the only interesting character, and the rest look like Kirito ripoffs. To add on to that Kotoko is the only character that does anything remotely productive. The only other somewhat productive character is Kurou, even then all he does throughout the entirety of the story is get beat up.

  The second problem I have is that the pacing is all over the place. On one hand you have a pair of characters hooking up in like 5 minutes, and on the other hand the main character spends 3 episodes in a car making illogical arguments to try and persuade people to believe lies. Even then the car isn't even moving, there is practically nothing going on in the climax of the season. The story tried to make the climax more interesting by having there be a fight scene with Kurou fighting a spirit, but all Kurou did for the most part was get beat up which made for a pretty bland fight.

  The third problem I have is that the intended personalities of the characters doesn't line up with the characters themselves. You mainly see this happen with Kotoko. She's supposed to be this incredibly intelligent character, but in the climax she keeps her head above water by creating fallacies and building off of fallacies. Fallacies and smart people don't often go together very well, and they definitely don't go together in this case.

  The last problem I have is with the opening. It just feels sloppy. A lot of it seems like the flashing of a bunch of pointless colors, which do a bad job of trying to represent a dark show where most of the main events occur at night. Another thing that I didn't like about the op, is that at the end Kurou just kind of disappears. I assumed that it would have some kind of symbolism associated with it, but it wound up contributing nothing. I haven't read the manga and i don't plan on reading it either, but this seems like this would've been in a better place if it was put in during a later arc where Kurou is kidnapped etc.

  It's not impossible to create a good mystery anime, but there have to be enough dimensions to the anime to be able to keep a watcher interested. In this show when a mystery is being solved, the people/creatures spend all of their time trying to figure out the mystery in one spot. Good mystery shows like BBC's Sherlock and Hyouka, take you from place to place which makes the show seem like more is happening. In In/Spectre the exact opposite was done, and it practically ruined the show.

  5/10 - It's not really worth the watch.

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