English Dub Review: ID – Invaded “Jigsawed I/II”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Sakaido, a self-proclaimed “brilliant detective” awakens in a virtual world full of rooms without walls with his body breaking into little pieces. After composing himself both mentally and physically, he finds a girl (who is surprisingly whole) killed by a knife in her chest, and realizes he has been put in this world to solve her murder. Outside the virtual world, Sakaido’s team work to uncover what they can about the girl’s killer by watching his progress. The world is known as an “Id Well” which acts as a window into the unconscious mind, namely the killer’s mind and his urge to kill. One can only enter an Id Well if they’ve killed someone before, as well as be smart enough to play the “brilliant detective” role that Sakaido now holds.

Sakaido enters a room that’s full of people, people who turn out to be the killer’s victims, who have all been represented as being part of a devoted family. Like the detective, they’re all missing pieces, but more than him. As he does this, two “field analysts”, Matsuoka and Hondocmachi, use a device to track the killer’s murderous intent and find his house. Said killer is identified as Tamatsu Fakuda, and he makes his presence in the Id Well known to Sakaido when he reveals to have been hiding his pieces (few though they may be) on the girl’s dead body. What’s stranger is that Hondocmachi also appears within the world despite also being in the real one, indicating that she has become Fakuda’s next target.

Indeed, she was kidnapped when he escaped his house and is taken to one of his hideouts for his own twisted methods, namely to drill a hole in her head to match his, which he thinks will clear up their view of the world. She then puts his theory to the test by forcing the drill into herself, somehow activating her own ID Well. Sakaido’s investigation is briefly interrupted by a visit from “John Walker”, an infamous suspect in gentlemanly attire, but is quickly disposed of. He’s then taken to Hondocmachi’s well, which is filled with drills. The team use the well to pinpoint her location in order to capture Fakuda, closing the case and getting her to recover. Sakaido, or rather his real self, Akihito Narihisago, awakens in the real world and is brief on the rest of the case.

OUR TAKE

Right up front, I have to say there is a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT to unpack in this series, even from just these first two episodes. Most of it I honestly still don’t even know how to describe despite watching this a few times now. There’s a virtual reality setting used to investigate crimes by looking through someone’s mind, a whole team of police who use these findings to search for dangerous using equipment designed to detect killing intent, a guy who believes drilling holes clears people’s minds, and a mysterious gentleman who might be behind these killers’ existence. Already there have been claims of this show taking elements from popular existing series such as “Sword Art Online” (for the virtual world) and “Psycho Pass” (for the police who detect intent to do crime and the shadowy boss killer), but I would also throw in Satoshi Kon’s “Paprika” in how the memories of the user of the VR world are used to center them.

Funimation and the show’s studio, NAZ, released these episodes as a sneak peak last month, so everyone’s probably had that time to really get a handle on what they think of this show and whether it’s right for them. I haven’t had that luxury, so I pretty much went into this series totally blind and grasping at ANY straws for some sort of comprehension. And what I’ve gathered is that this show seems to be doing something in regards to exploring themes of human behavior and how that is formed. Through these mysteries that Sakaido has to solve, he helps his team put together the pieces of the subject’s worldview to better understand why they act the way they do, even when that person is another member of said team. I’m still not super clear on what these proper nouns like “Id Well” or what the device that detects killing intent is called, but I’m hoping that will become clearer with time as they’re used more. They’re probably the most interesting thing about this show so far, seeing how most, if not all of the cast is pretty bland to start with.

The choice of studio doesn’t give me much confidence either, seeing how they were responsible for one of if not the worst anime of 2018, My Sister My Writer, but the choice of director does give me reason to hope. Among Ei Aoki’s previous works, I’m a huge fan of Fate/Zero and have heard plenty of great things about Re:Creators, though Aldnoah.Zero ended up bombing pretty hard with me. At best, all I can tell you for certain is that this guy sure likes his odd punctuation marks in his show titles. As for ID – Invaded, I’m sure it can only go up from here.