The Perfect Insider

Episode 4

Continuing with its color-themed episode titles, this week's Perfect Insider was called “The Rainbow-Colored Past.” The significance of that title wasn't quite as direct as last week's Red Magic, but there were some clues, and one significant color reference. That reference came from Moe, as she returned inside to face Magata's body for herself. Raising the corpse bride's veil with one hand and a kerchief to her nose with the other, she stared down the body, before being pulled back by Souhei and muttering “purple… a very important…” When Souhei brought up those words later on, Moe went still, just like when she first mentioned her parents last week. It was only at the episode's end that we got some clue as to “purple”'s significance, when in a dream Moe opened Magata's veil in a purple sea, only to turn and walk down a long line of body bags. Prompted by the smell of a human corpse, Moe's thoughts apparently drifted back to her dead parents. As far as rainbow-colored pasts go, hers is clearly not a happy one.

If Moe's past reflections bookended this episode, its center was consumed by the here and now. With both Magata and the director dead and the helicopter's radio destroyed, the cast finally decided to investigate Magata's room. This was the most classically mystery-oriented episode yet, and somewhat less engaging for that - the show is a fine mystery, but the big investigation here was basically all plot, with dialogue more focused on conveying information than doing that while also building the characters. But the mystery being constructed here certainly has plenty of intriguing variables!

For one thing, Magata's suite is a sterilized, off-putting wasteland. The appearance of a seating room and two kitchen chairs only emphasized her apparent loneliness, while the bare walls and awkward hints of personality made the rooms feel designed more as a puzzle box than a home. The idea that Magata set up her own “death,” and that this was a test similar to the one Moe once used on Souhei, was only strengthened by the appearance of an awkwardly narrow-purposed personal robot, and by the notes apparently left on Magata's computer by three of her many personalities. That cliche twist (seriously, multiple personalities?) did lend some significance to Magata's conversations about dolls, and about seven being the loneliest number. If Magata wanted to design this entire mystery as a reflection on how her genius isolated her and made her feel more like an object than a person, than she certainly succeeded.

The last clue left by “Magata” turned out to be the show's subtitle - “Everything becomes F,” hidden as an appointment on her calendar for yesterday, clearly intended to be found. Moe briefly poked at Souhei for feeling disturbed by this message (“because it came from Magata?”), but so far, we don't really have much more to go on than they do. Our only significant pieces of evidence are the “diary” entries from the man positioning himself as a helpless participant in Magata's past. His reflections this week once again framed him as someone who was “seduced” by a thirteen-year-old girl, one who had to let one of her more aggressive personalities talk her into sleeping with him. His memories and motives are wholly unconvincing, like a super-Nabokovian combination of Lolita's narrator and Pale Fire's framing device, but his position next to Moe's memory of her parents implies he's just as key to Magata's identity as Moe's secrets are to hers.

There were segments of this episode I found a bit weaker than the previous ones (the investigation of Magata's room, some of the banter between Moe and Souhei), but overall the show seems to be succeeding in moving into more dedicated mystery territory without sacrificing its interesting ideas or character focus. This episode wasn't a highlight, but The Perfect Insider is still threading its strange needle of mystery, character, and theme.

Rating: B

The Perfect Insider is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Nick writes about anime, storytelling, and the meaning of life at Wrong Every Time.