In/Spectre Season 2

Episode 20

Is Kotoko a diabolical enough detective to frame a man for a murder he actually did commit? Obviously yes, and I'm going to have so much fun watching her do it. This week's episode kicks off a new arc for In/Spectre, and it's exactly what I asked for last week—a twisty and twisted spin on mystery tropes that situates itself smack dab on the division between fact and fiction. I had a huge insufferable grin on my face for the entire runtime. This is, in a phrase, my kind of bullshit.

The premise alone delivers what I want from In/Spectre. Hotel mogul Otonashi's problem is that he wants to confess to a murder for which he has an airtight alibi, so he enlists Kotoko to help his scions come up with the most plausible solution. Irrespective of the paranormal's involvement, that's a wonderfully wry setup for a detective case. It's a gamified howdunit. It's like trying to win at Rashomon. And it fits perfectly into the series' modus operandi, where the power of the truth always plays second fiddle to the power of a compelling narrative. Otonashi believes that only a fabrication can save his family, and he's undoubtedly recruited the right woman for the job.

It's also beneficial to consider all of the layered frames in this plot. For the picture in the center, we have the murder of Sumi, a known and reported cold case 23 years removed from the present time. Surrounding that, there's the story Otonashi tells Kotoko about enlisting an ayakashi's help to off his wife. Around that, we hear Otonashi's rationale and regrets, mostly concerning the fate of his children. Now, we pick up all those frames, hide them behind a couch, and start drawing a new frame around Sumi, where Otonashi is still the man behind the murder, but a different and more attractive explanation obscures everything else. Also, Kotoko is drawing all of these frames with one of those novelty nudie pens. This is very important.

As he's the focal point of all this (the living one, anyway), we should turn a critical eye to Otonashi before we do anything else. The way he tells it, murdering Sumi was not only a net good for both his family and business, but it also had no ill aftereffects. It was a perfect crime both in execution and concept. And that bugs him because murder is wrong. He craves absolution for a sin that God declared a mulligan. On its own, this premise is wicked enough for me to believe that this is In/Spectre's main angle in this story—"corrupting" a perfect crime to assuage the conscience of its perp. However, I'd keep it in the back of your mind that Otonashi is the one telling us how Sumi's murder went swimmingly for literally everybody involved. At the end of the day, he's still someone who decided to solve a problem by killing it. Kotoko, correctly, thinks he's sus just for reaching out to her.

However, Kotoko still accepts the job because it falls squarely under her purview of mediating the border between humans and yokai. As we've seen in the other arcs this season, she doesn't believe the two sides need to be separated at all costs, but she draws the line at one faction utilizing the other for cutthroat business politics. I also enjoy that she explains everything to Kuro as they toss money into a sleazy crane game. As far as In/Spectre's dialogue setpieces go, this one resembles a Monogatari Series scene more than most. I just love it when characters do something that symbolically parallels the subject of their discussion—utilizing the full breadth of a visual medium and all that. While I wouldn't mind seeing a version of this show with a visual identity comparable to Monogatari's arthouse idiosyncrasies, I'm glad even this modest adaptation finds space to have fun.

And you gotta love how the episode ends with the bald-faced lie that Kotoko will judge the contestant's theories “based on truth and order.” The whole thing's a sham! During his first interview with Kotoko, note that he explicitly says that he wants to teach his children a lesson, yet only one of the three people invited is his actual child. And that's not to mention how the question of his inheritance is tied up in all of this too. There's more going on here, and this episode does a hell of a job of enticing me to see what secrets this arc has hidden. I do not doubt that, with Kotoko's help, this crew will be spinning tons of amusing yarns about how Otonashi could have plausibly killed his wife, but I'm most interested in pulling at the strings linking them all together.

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In/Spectre Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Steve is on Twitter while it lasts. Please send him any good pictures of Kotoko in funny hats that you find. Otherwise, catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.