Review: Gēmusetto: Death Beat(s) “Episode Three: B7+5; Episode Four: C Major”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Makasu and his new companions do battle with Josie, the tattooed former arm wrestler who he defeated as a youth back in Episode 3’s flashbacks, who has sworn vengeance after his defeat led to his death and left his mother alone. Dr. Legs tries teaching Makasu empathy to better bond with his robot frog, but this also helps him to beat Josie and help them team up against the undead forces around them.

OUR TAKE

We’re on the second week of seven with this new season of Gemusetto and I feel I’m in a bit of weird place. Not just because this show is still plenty bonkers as it is supposed to be but also because…it kind of isn’t? I mentioned before how this season seems more streamlined and settled in its design compared to the first, but that it also sort of feels like it goes against part of what made Machu Picchu the cult hit that it was, although Max Simonet has mentioned that he has worried people will miss how free that first season was. We still have his own “tender touches” when it comes to the writing, but it also feels like, paradoxically, that the more this show tries to be an actual show, the more it contradicts that it wasn’t an actual show. I’m still invested in seeing how things go in the coming weeks, but it is an odd phenomenon for me. We’ve got Makasu in an absurd as hell premise with an animal companion and mentally aloof “mentor” fighting deities in some sort of competition, but is it a commentary on how interchangeable these characters are to switch them out? Or does it matter?

Regardless, this episode brought us a surprise call back (at least a surprise for those who didn’t watch the end of last week) with the return of a flashback character into the main plot. Bringing Josie into things does help to tie this season more into the first one, which is great for continuity lovers like me, as well as add to Makasu’s supposed arc for the season which seems to be him reflecting on his past actions and repenting now that he’s dead, but I also still cannot quite tell if this is part of the joke or not. That seemed to be part of the humor of last season, though now whether something is a joke or serious is…even less clear here. Which makes it kind of more funny? Or not? I can’t really tell. Kinda like whether or not they actually care about the music theme as much as they seemed to pretend to care about the Incan mythology theme last time. This show is fucking insane and that is really putting me in a Schrodinger’s Cat space of how to view it, only that opening the box doesn’t seem to help me commit to one possibility or the other. Maybe I’ll be able to figure that out better as we continue through the season.