Gnosia

Episode 12

Last week, Yuri got the lowdown on SQ's tragic backstory and discovered a teensy bit about the secret connections that bind the crew of the D.Q.O, and SQ delivered a very sudden love confession before everything reset once again. Another week brings another loop, and this time Yuri gets the lowdown on Jina's tragic backstory - which provides some more nuggets of information about the secret connections that bind the crew of the D.Q.O - and then we end with a very sudden love confession before everything resets for Yuri once again. Next week, I am assuming we will get yet another tragic backstory that will intertwine with some lore drops and conclude with another crewmember volunteering themselves for Yuri's Harem Brigade. Maybe it will be Otome's turn! Or perhaps Comet and her killer mold parasite will get to make some moves on our hero…

I am pointing out the very obvious pattern to this middle arc of Gnosia episodes not necessarily to draw attention to an unforgivable flaw of the series, but to try and articulate the way in which I am having to actively bifurcate my experience of watching Gnosia at this stage in its development. There is the part of me that is taking in every individual twenty-three-minute-long chunk of the story week by week, and the part of me that is trying to decide how I feel about the complete and total experience of the series currently in progress. As you can probably guess, those two aspects of my brain are currently at odds with each other.

When you simply take “Allacosia” as a standalone half-hour of television, like any random airing of an old Star Trek or monster-of-the-week X-Files episode, it's pretty good. One of Gnosia's stronger entries, even; you could say much the same about last week's SQ-focused chapter. The show is even giving me some of exactly what I asked for, like using the holo-deck capabilities of the ship to show us some novel settings that take us out of the D.Q.O.'s tired old corridors. For her part, Jina makes a strong showing as the week's main character focus. In contrast to SQ's backstory focusing on existential body-horror and the question of whether her accidental consciousness will win out over the Manan personality that was meant to inhabit her lab-grown body, Jina's tale involves a mother who got swept up in the nefarious machinations of the Hoshibune cult (the very same that Yuriko represents as a priestess, as it turns out). It's sad, compelling stuff, and it definitely makes Jina into a more interesting character.

It is when I look at the bigger picture of the series that I can't help but be distracted by the nagging question of “Why this episode, right at this moment?” Last week, SQ's story teased the connection that this “Manan” woman has to Remnan, who remains one of the most elusive and underdeveloped members of the cast. Based on that, I expected this week to build on those breadcrumbs and explore more of who this Manan person is and what she has to do with the D.Q.O. and the Gnosia. Instead, we get this more-or-less completely unrelated adventure with Jina, which is fine, I guess, except now I have no idea to trust when - or even if - Gnosia is going to follow-up on the creepy cyberization cult that Yuriko belongs to, even though it's fresh in our minds now because of Jina's backstory. Even if the show does get around to paying off all of this setup in good time, that doesn't do much to alleviate how difficult it has become to emotionally engage with Gnosia's seemingly random structure and circular pacing.

Here's another example of what I'm trying to get at: I can't help but feel like the emotional impact of Jina giving up her status as a Gnosia would have had more weight if we didn't already have a two-part episode devoted to showing us that the Gnosia are very much capable of feeling conflicted over their deceitful and deadly mission. If the order of the stories had been reversed, it might have felt like a more natural progression that gave Yuri a stronger identity as a protagonist. First, we learn the shocking truth that some Gnosia are not the monsters that they've been made out to be, and then we hit the even more surprising development of turning our protagonist into a Gnosia themselves.

It's the inability provide any sense of emotional or thematic progression that is making Gnosia into a show that feels like less than the sum of its parts, and the unwieldy application of these time-loop and world-line scenarios is the big sticking point for me. Consider, if you will, two other famous examples of this plot device in action: Steins;Gate and Groundhog Day. In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors' complete inability to meaningfully change or escape the day he was trapped in didn't become tedious because the whole point of the story was his growth as a person. Even though everyone else in the movie remained static, Phil used what he learned about the residents of Punxsutawney to shed his obvious character flaws and reach a state of godlike enlightenment. Meanwhile, Steins;Gate benefited greatly from having a clear narrative objective that Okabe had to pursue and make constant progress in, even if all of the timeline shifting reduced every other character in the show into fairly simplistic archetypes. Not only does Okabe also meaningfully and permanently change as a character, but the show makes it very clear to the audience when he is making some kind of progress in his ultimate goal of saving the lives of either Makise Kurisu or Mayuru Shiina.

The point is, those stories use their respective bludgeoning of the laws of space-time to enhance the character development and emotional engagement of their stories. In Gnosia, however, Yuri is not even really a character; as a silent player avatar who has been given voice out of pure narrative necessity, Yuri's job is to be whatever kind of vaguely defined cipher that the episode needs them to be to match whatever energy the character-of-the-week is delivering. Hell, their entire gender presentation and personality flipped on a dime because it would appeal more to the chronically heterosexual Sha-Ming, only for that radical change to be completely undone the following episode. This week, Yuri is perfectly amenable to receiving exposition dumps and character monologues about the people that the audience is actually meant to find interesting. This works fine in a game, but it is completely anathema to strong writing for serialized television, which is why the weekly love confessions are becoming more ludicrous with every new addition to the time-displaced, polyuniversal harem. This is to say nothing of the Gnosia trials themselves, which I have honestly started to completely check out of.

All of this is to say that it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to judge each weekly episode of Gnosia on the same tier as I am having to actively judge it as a show that is still weeks out from concluding its season. As just one episode, “Allacosia” is pretty good. I was entertained, I was intrigued, and I was almost even a little bit moved. As a show, though, I can't even tell you if I think Gnosia is "good" or not, anymore. I don't know if I will have a proper answer for you before the whole thing is wrapped up, and we can finally figure out if any of this dimension-hopping madness added up to anything truly cohesive.

Episode Rating:

Gnosia is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.