English Dub Review: In/Spectre “The Committee to Conquer Steel Lady Nanase”

 

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The team is in place and ready to rumble. Well, more like Kuro is ready to rumble with Steel Lady Nanase while Kotoko and Saki stay in the car. Granted, Kotoko has a mission of her own: to spread more lies about the legend of the specter in order to convince the crowd of forum users that it’s not the work of an actual ghost. It’s a battle between lies and other lies, but if anyone is equipped to come away victorious, it’s Kotoko.

Our Take:

Wow. What an episode! But at the same time, nothing really happened? Let’s just say I have conflicting opinions on The Committee to Conquer Steel Lady Nanase. As a whole, the episode falters due to the sheer unentertaining-ness of watching what is essentially an online debate in a 20 minute anime episode. However, the stories woven by Kotoko were interesting to see take shape, even if they were a bit bland.

The storyline of this episode isn’t really much of one at all. Essentially, only a short amount of time passes, and nothing has really changed dramatically by the end, save for the fact that a handful of online randos have been convinced by Kotoko’s wacky theory about a murderer setting up Detective Terada at an abandoned gas station. She’s the queen of wild ideas, but a lot of her lies in this episode didn’t feel as groundbreaking as Saki’s reactions made them appear. Saki gasps in wonder as Kotoko reveals she isn’t attempting to convince everyone on the Wiki with her first story. As long as some fall for it, she has three more ideas, and launches into the next.

Some of the parts I did enjoy from this episode were Saki and Kotoko’s overall vibe, the high-level concept of trying to convince Wiki users through fantastical lies, and the little glimpses of Rikka-san that we’re treated to. Kotoko and Saki began the arc as enemies, and it’s fun to see how much they’ve come to see value in each other. Even if Saki’s main value to Kotoko right now is having someone to the Detective’s murder on. (Also, my reaction to Kotoko’s tale was verbatim what Saki thinks: “”This is so much work just to kill one person.”) While it is pretty awful sitting through twenty minutes of Anon’s commenting verbally on Kotoko’s theories, I have to admit that basing a conflict in an online Wiki setting is novel. And Rikka-san is they key to all this, so getting a small view into her world was cool.

This episode of In/Spectre features some vaguely interesting ideas about the nature of truth in our online world, but it’s nothing the show hasn’t touched on before, and this episode basically lived in the virtual Wiki world, which didn’t make for the most exciting scenes. Kotoko’s story was kinda cool, but the episode ends on her abandoning the current theory for a new one, with the promise that the next episode will continue the plotline. I wish we had breezed through her online theorizing a little quicker and setup more time with Rikka, the mastermind behind it all, next week.