The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - Gnosia

The Gnosia lie. Pretending to be human, they'll get in close, trick and deceive, and then eradicate each person in the vicinity from the universe, one victim at a time. The crew of a drifting spaceship, facing off against a mysterious and deadly threat known as the "Gnosia" and having no idea who among them is really the enemy, formulate a desperate plan for survival. The most suspicious among them will be put into "cold sleep" one by one, in an effort to completely rid the ship of Gnosia. However, it is almost impossible to tell whether each person put into cold sleep was really Gnosia, or simply a poor, unfortunate scapegoat sacrificed by the Gnosia for their own survival.

Gnosia is based on game developer Petit Depotto's Gnosia sci-fi social deduction RPG. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

This is a textbook case of a show I very much want to like but just can't. From the clownish outfits to the claustrophobic (yet somehow predictable) story, Gnosia feels too much like the tutorial for the game it's based on, setting up a repeating loop of Yuri desperately being reborn again and again to try to find the “Gnosia” in the crew. It's like rainy-day recess game of “Werewolf” that never ends.

Or at least, that was how I was left feeling after twenty-six minutes of this. Yuri's unceremonious awakening from a medical pod is the barest of starting points, with their (his?) amnesia treated as a relatively natural jumping off point for plenty of explanations about the setting and the plot. Poor Yuri is no soon awoken than they are forced to take part in a vote to find the Gnosia hiding among the remaining people aboard the spaceship, with the most obvious person being chosen by the group. Just as predictably, they're wrong, and then wrong again, sending Yuri to what would have been their doom had not Setsu given them a strange cube with what appears to be the ability to travel back in time over and over again. And lest you think that Yuri can just point to the (obvious) answer this time, the ending theme points to it being a different Gnosia every time they loop back.

Is this loop we're watching even Yuri's first? That's the most interesting angle so far, although if each time they return to start they regain more pieces of their memory, that could be interesting. This kind of time loop, in the Higurashi: When They Cry vein, has a lot of potential for good mystery storytelling with a sci fi bent, and with the pesky set up out of the way, this could really take off next week. But this episode is filled to the brim with self-consciously quirky characters, in-world terminology, and the illusion of information that doesn't hold up when you stop to think about it. The art is interesting – I don't love it, but it doesn't give me a headache even if I find it overwhelming – but I'm left with the impression that this might be better played than watched.

The first thought that struck me about Gnosia when I began watching it's premiere was that the show reminded me of a GoHands Production…except done right. We've got wild, multi-colored characters that are being animated in traditional 2D while a virtual camera makes sweeping, conspicuous movements across the 3D assets that compose the sets and backgrounds. There are even all manner of constantly moving and flashing digital effects to add to the sci-fi vibes of the ship D.Q.O. Yet, thanks to the restraint and genuine cinematographic skill being demonstrated by director Kazuya Ichikawa and Studio Domerica, Gnosia gets away with the campy and ostentatious visuals that have derailed every GoHands anime I've been unfortunate enough to suffer through. Given how talky and exposition-heavy this episode is by it's very nature, the interesting direction is key to Gnosia's success, I think. The show is just fun to watch, plain and simple.

The good news is that the story is pretty damned good too, at least so far as this one episode goes. All I knew about Gnosia going into this first episode was that it was based on a popular visual novel that essentially had its characters playing the classic “Werewolf” deduction game in space against a mysterious alien invader. That is, in fact, exactly what we get in this premiere, though I was shocked at how quickly the show introduced its small cast of characters and careened our protagonist Yuri towards their bad ending. I am a sucker for Dangaonronpa-esque killing games, and that's what Gnosia ends up constructing with its AI-driven trials and cold-freeze punishments for whoever is voted as most likely to be an alien Gnosia in disguise. The handful of characters we meet on the D.Q.O. all fit into the classic genre molds, which is to say that they're all very broad red herrings. There's the overly antagonistic jerkwad that gets voted out early, the mysterious and quiet one who seems suspicious until she's killed off, the totally crazy and lackadaisical clown who is also incredibly suspicious, and finally, the stoic and headstrong mentor character who fills our amnesiac hero in on everything they need to know before getting taken out by the villains…until the loop resets.

I was already having a good time with Gnosia before the final twist of the episode put the whole show into a greater context, but Setsu's final gift to Yuri is what really got me hooked and desperate to see what happens next. In addition to Dangaonronpa-esque killing games, another trope I am a hopeless mark for is the time loop scenario. Yuri being able to relive events and presumably meet all of the other bizarre freaks that show up in the ending credits perfectly explains how this one episode could ice-out its entire crew in just twenty minutes. Did you all see the dolphin walking around in the special space suit? Even if everything about Gnosia's setup and execution didn't click for me, I would be on board for Episode two just to have the chance at figuring out what the hell is up with that dolphin.