Gnosia

Episodes 16-17

I had to take last week off from the Gnosa beat for personal reasons, though I was actually hoping that doubling up on these two episodes would end up being a positive thing, at least so far as my experience with the show is concerned. Episode 16 is titled “Truth,” after all, but I'm familiar enough with Gnosia's playbook by now to know that no single episode of the series is going to contain all the answers (except maybe for the finale). It turns out that I was partially correct: When combined, “Truth” and “Bug” offer a more complete and comprehensible vision of Yuri's new status quo after getting the lowdown from Yuriko, and I'm probably less frustrated than I would have been if I'd just had to sit with “Truth” all by itself for an entire week. The real question is the same one I've been asking for months now: Does any of this new information make the story of Gnosia feel any more compelling or complete?

You probably won't be surprised to learn that the answer, for me, at least, is “not really.” This isn't to say that the larger puzzle being weaved by Gnosia is any less complex, layered, or (presumably) mapped out to lead some big, jaw-dropping revelation in its final moments. On paper, the reveal that the Yuri we've been following is a “bug” copy of the real Yuri is a compelling one, from a dramatic standpoint. The existential spiral that truth sends Bug Yuri into is the most novel internal conflict we've seen in our protagonist for some time, and there is clearly more to be explicitly revealed about the connections and conflicts shared between the “Gnos” entity that made Bug Yuri, the Gnosia themselves, the Silver Keys, and so on. We even get some halfway decent drama in the scene that SQ and Yuri share in “Bug” about the inherent value in the lives of mere “copies.” It's a predictable and not especially deep theme for a science-fiction anime to touch on, but SQ is one of the only characters outside of Yuri and Setsu that the show has managed to develop into a personality that feels tangible and consistent outside of the constantly shifting world-line iterations. I'll take whatever emotional investment I can get, at this point.

Still, despite these episodes' bright spots, I am once again held back from embracing what Gnosia is trying to accomplish. For one, I cannot get on board with the overly complicated and confusing nature of the time-travel and time-loop mechanics. These elements already lend themselves to creating impenetrable plot diagrams that drain stories of their urgency and believability, and the whole "Bug Yuri vs. OG Yuri paradox" that these two episodes focus on has pushed Gnosia across the edge of my goodwill. I'm usually the kind of viewer who will just hand-wave the stuff that doesn't make perfect sense because time-travel and parallel universes are all made-up concepts anyway, and my emotional investment in the story and characters takes priority over “realistic” time-travel rules, or whatever. Gnosia has demonstrated that it prioritizes the puzzle-box of its plot over the coherence of its plot and characters, though, which means that the audience is being compelled to scrutinize all of the logic and rules as a matter of basic engagement. This is where the show and I are at cross-purposes.

In fact, here is a perfect example to explain what I find so frustrating about all of this. I just deleted several paragraphs of the original draft of this review, where I went on a long diatribe explaining why I couldn't understand the logic of Bug Yuri needing to escape this loop before Original Yuri wakes up, because I think I ended up puzzling it out. Sure, if this specific world-line is the one that Yuri got copied from to bounce around the timelines, I guess I can see how Gnosia is justifying the bootstrap-paradox angle. The “real” universe is the one where Yuri never died, and is thus the one universe that would be compromised by Bug Yuri changing events…

Except, why does the universe end just because Bug Yuri meets OG Yuri after the original wakes up from the pod? Unless I'm misunderstanding something, this doesn't create some impossibly looping link in the chain of cause and effect - Bug Yuri is just a clone from another universe, right? If it were just a matter of two identical sets of atoms or whatever existing in the same reality, the universe should explode the moment Bug Yuri materializes. What does locking eyes with the other Yuri have to do with anything at all?

To be very clear, I am not frustrated with Gnosia for presenting me with a twisted pretzel of a plot to untangle like I was a bored kid waiting for my name to be called at the pediatrician's office. I am frustrated because I feel like I am cooking my brain to reckon with Gnosia's convoluted web of a narrative without getting anything but more teases in return. Even if I finally sat down and decided that, yes, the whole “Bug Yuri” twist makes sense within the rules and logic that the show has already established, I wouldn't feel satisfied at getting the puzzle right. I wouldn't feel intrigued about what fresh new mess Yuri is going to have to riddle themselves out of next week. I would feel tired, because the only prize that came from all that work is yet another promise that it will be completely worth it eventually.

As Yuri eventually learns, the Silver Key is responsible for trapping them in this doomed loop, because there is a single piece of information that can only be learned if Bug Yuri is around to hear Chipie and OG Yuri have a quick chat in the thirty seconds or so after the pod opens. That crucial fact, so far as I can tell, is that Yuri got hurt protecting Setsu from something during the initial evacuation, which is where Bug Yuri gets shunted off to at the episode's conclusion. Okay. Sure. That doesn't make for a very interesting or meaningful story beat in the moment, but it is no doubt an invaluable cog to add to the machine of whatever big twist is coming next week. Or the week after that. Or the week after that. Maybe. Possibly. If we're lucky.

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.