There are two things I unequivocally love about the Winter 2020 anime In/Spectre (Kyokou Suiri): the aesthetic of the opening and closing animations. Maybe that's technically one thing but seriously, bear with me. These are some of my sincere favorites of the season and good uses of the medium. There's all this quirky yokai energy bursting out of a rock n' roll-jazz package that strikes an odd balance between pulp and class. There's this mirroring going on with the main girl, Iwanaga, being left alone in the opening animation and the main guy, Sakuragawa, being left alone in the ending animation, implying the events of the show in between are pulling them away from each other or some kind of dramatic tension. The closing song gets stuck in my head and leaves me with a great vibe, reigniting my curiosity despite what I’ve just watched. Every time I watch the opening I think maybe okay this is the episode where things really start to happen.
And the I watch another episode. Or rather, I listen to the show explain itself while staring at pretty character models and the occasional action scene devoid of stakes. Like its leading man, the show is something of a chimera. It's like if an author like Christopher Nolan tried to write pulp fiction. Critics easily accuse Nolan of being so focused on the themes of his film that he loses the heart of his characters, but even if that's true the guy clearly knows his medium and also happens to have some really cool ideas sometimes. Nothing against writer Kyo Shirodaira, who is probably a much smarter person than I am, but ostensibly the author is so in love with their idea that these characters are about as well-rounded as textbooks. They spend most of their time revealing information. For all I know the novel might be a fun read, but as an anime it's plodding and static.
At first I thought this was a monster-of-the-week show. I was clearly wrong as it is a monster-of-the-season show, which is admittedly a cool change-up. Then I thought it was a supernatural romance. Also wrong. At the time we did our quick-look at the first few episodes I was put-off by the way Iwanaga increasingly seemed defined by her immaturity – and that hasn't changed. She's ridiculously devoted to an emotionally unavailable guy who gives her no sign of approval. She's intimidated by his ex because Yumihara is a fucking adult. Then there's the doll-like wardrobe. Aside from her robotic goddess-of-wisdom mode, her insecurity is her most defining feature and it makes her younger age seem not incidental to her attachment but a defining aspect of it. The awkward combination of adolescent omniscience goes unexplored, and just comes off as pure fantasy.
Believe me when I say that as potentially problematic as the relationship is, I wish I could see more of it. Whatever curiosity I nurtured about the chemistry between this immature teenager and haunted man completely dissolved in a series of expositional chains of logic. This story isn't really about them, it's just about its premise: What if a girl who could talk to ghosts met an immortal man with quantum future powers and they killed a ghost by trolling the internet? Maybe that's just too many ideas for one story to explain without turning its characters into cardboard wraiths.