Your Forma

Episode 12

Just when I thought Echika Hieda couldn't be any more useless, she gets herself kidnapped. Again. Once is unlucky. Twice is getting silly. Three times is borderline absurd. But four damn times? There are no words for this narrative idiocy. After Harold rushes to the scene where Echika had etched a baffling clue on the ground in her own blood, Bigga assists with some unbelievable leaps in logic involving the art history of Montmartre, of all places, to deduce that Echika was abducted by forensics guy Shubin. Who? Are we supposed to know him? As far as I can tell, he's never been mentioned by name in this anime adaptation, but perhaps my eyes had glazed over during any scenes he'd previously appeared in. It wouldn't be unprecedented.

Cut to Echika trussed up on the floor, an isolation unit attached to her Your Forma port, preventing location services and internet connection. Incredibly, Sozon's brother Nicolai is still alive and similarly restrained. Our mac-wearing suspect wanders in, threatens both captives with a circular saw… but doesn't do any actual sawing, which, I'm not going to lie, is pretty disappointing. The only decent episode of Your Forma so far featured graphic dismemberment, so I've been thinking a bit more that that could be just what the show needs to pep things up a bit.

Serial Killer Cosplayer Shubin mutters to Echika, “You're an excellent detective.” Now we know he's crazy, because not a single instance of good detective work has ever been demonstrated by Echika since the show began. His words immediately conjured the meme image “Press X to doubt” in my mind, which I don't imagine the director intended. Quite why Shubin says this in his synthesized Bigga voice, I'm not sure, but I suppose it makes him even more of a weirdo.

When Harold bursts in all white knight-style, Shubin absconds, with Harold in hot pursuit, abandoning Echika. Again. Despite my comments to the contrary last week, it does appear Echika is aware that Harold may not be subject to the Laws of Respect, hence her worried look. She knows he's capable of Old Testament-style divine retribution. Also, bizarrely, Bigga hands Echika the gun she lost earlier, found at her abduction site. Now, I don't know if I'm overthinking things somehow, but how is a non-police officer, a mere consultant, permitted to carry a police firearm? This show's logic is a disaster. It doesn't matter anyway, because Echika gets disarmed and kidnapped off-screen again shortly afterwards. Sigh.

For once, Your Forma's soundtrack attempts to infuse some urgency into proceedings, as Harold hunts down Shubin and causes his car to crash. Upon retrieving his prey from the wreckage, he confronts him with completely stable, sane police robot dialogue: “You killed Sozon, didn't you? You destroyed our happiness! I finally found you!” It's only when Harold fails to contact both Inspector Napolov and Echika that he realizes Shubin isn't his true prey, and he must rescue his useless partner. Again. Echika is the poster child for why AI will eventually usurp and replace humanity upon this Earth. We're all doomed. It's a wonder Harold hasn't lost his rag with her yet. Perhaps once the inevitable robot uprising slaughters everyone else, he intends to keep her as a caged pet or something.

So the real Nightmare of St Petersburg killer turns out to be the shifty Inspector Napolov. I thought for a moment the show had once again failed to introduce a suspect, but then I remembered he appeared in Harold's big flashback episode a while back, and he was just as shifty then, too. Ok, Your Forma. You managed a bit of foreshadowing on this one instance. Well done. It seems Shubin was merely an apprentice or something? Do serial killers normally have apprentices?

In a repeat of the episode's earlier identical scene, Napolov prevaricates while explaining to Echika his Evil Plan, brandishing a threatening power tool, giving Harold ample time to burst in and threaten him with a gun. To give Napolov some credit, he doesn't expect Harold to be capable of shooting him, which he then does, twice. We're then left with Echika threatening to shoot Harold if he doesn't stop his completely understandable rampage of violence.

I'm still not entirely sure what Napolov's motivations are here. Did he murder Sozon to try and break Harold's programming, and now he's targeting his beloved partner to ensure his success? If that's the case, why does he seem surprised when it appears to have succeeded? I'm just about ready to give up expecting this show to provide a coherent story. At least this episode is fairly tense, with great chunks of plot lubricated enough by some rare action that its contents are a little easier to swallow. Thankfully, there's only one episode of Your Forma left, the conclusion the director and producers felt was important enough that they sacrificed the entire beginning of the story. Somehow, given the evidence of their past poor decision-making, I don't expect their choice to be vindicated.

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Your Forma is currently streaming on Samsung TV+ in the U.S., YouTube, and other services worldwide on Wednesdays.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.