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 a 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 sooner 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 the ability to travel back in time over and over again. And lest you think that Yuri can point to the (obvious) answer this time, the ending theme suggests it's 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 setup 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.

Episode 2 Rating:

I wish I could put my finger on what annoys me about this show so much. Is it the insistence on pronouncing the “g” in “Gnosia?” The utter predictability of who the Gnosia was in both of these episodes? The fact that everyone's clothing looks incredibly uncomfortable and/or impractical? Those are all issues for me, but none of them seem quite up to the task of making twenty-five minutes feel interminable. As a critic, that bothers me, but I suppose there are just some otherwise innocuous shows that fall into the category of “inexplicably and emphatically not for me.”

Yuri's second loop aboard the D.Q. O. goes very similarly to their first: Setsu wakes them, they attempt to figure out who the Gnosia is, and ultimately fail, with disastrous consequences. This time they pin their hopes on Jina, mostly because Setsu is voted into cold sleep rather than Racio. Yuri's uncertain whether they should trust Jina, who seems inherently suspicious, or SQ, who may just be annoying, and a large part of their decision is based on the fact that in the previous loop, SQ's obnoxious qualities were hiding her unfortunate truth. That seems to be a key to finding the Gnosia: a person's inherent characteristics are enhanced to near parody, as if the creature wearing their skin is trying too hard to hide. In SQ, that was her annoying traits. In Jina, it's an overreliance on philosophical “goodness.” When it gets to Racio's turn to be the Gnosia, we're all in a lot of trouble, because he's already nearly a parody of himself.

It's not surprising that Yuri would struggle to solve this game of Space Werewolf. It's only their second loop, and among their missing memories appears to be the series' version of multiverses. This isn't ERASED, where everything has a set path until someone deliberately changes it. Perhaps that speaks to the Gnosia's methods and insidious nature. But Yuri's going to have to be a whole lot cannier if they want to figure this out and break the loop. Since they appear to have gone further back in time upon their third awakening, things may get much more complicated on this front.

I can't help but think that this probably worked better as a game, where players have the power of choice. But maybe not – but whatever the reason, this is just irritating me on a narrative level. I'm out.

The first thought that struck me about Gnosia when I began watching its premiere was that it reminded me of a GoHands Production… except done right. We've got wild, multi-colored characters 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 its very nature, I think the interesting direction is key to Gnosia's success. 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 Danganronpa-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 episode's final twist put the whole show into a broader context, but Setsu's final gift to Yuri is what really hooked me and made me desperate to see what happens next. In addition to Danganronpa-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 the other bizarre freaks who 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.

I'm completely unfamiliar with the source material for Gnosia, yet still, only a couple of minutes in, I was confidently asserting, "This whole thing smacks of a visual novel!" The anime isn't shy about its sources and influences at all, though, directly dropping descriptions of the Werewolf game framework it's built on and pretty strongly evoking Among Us if only incidentally in its spacey framing (and dropping in some allusions through the dialogue, I see you subtitlers). That's fine—make clear to the audience what they're getting into, and if the series can present it slickly enough, it should still work.

Gnosia does craft a competently compelling mystery setup in its first episode, too. It presents just enough of the basic rules for even those who haven't played Among Us to grasp, and properly pieces out clues and hints throughout. For now, the denser sci-fi backing doesn't super matter, but stuff like Setsu's questions about the nature of humanity can bear fruit as the story gets deeper and denser. For now, I was impressed by how the writing made me question how much of, say, SQ's overt actions were meant to be red herrings to throw off viewers (and Yuri), and how much was just obvious hinting, since, hey, it's the first episode and all. As someone who hasn't played the game, it also got me questioning just how much it would be able to get a full season out of this setup that seemed hurtling toward a conclusion before the end of the first episode, but Setsu granting Yuri the amazing power to save and load the game made clear where that was going.

It's a decently scripted and structured take on a game-y narrative, and it doesn't look half-bad either. The neon-streaked character designs aren't necessarily my thing, but they stand out and complement the aesthetic well enough. There's a sense of overdirection in some of the simulated sweeping tracking shots, and the amount of movement and business characters get up to while they're dropping this expository visual novel dialogue. Again, I think that's necessary to keep the proceedings spruced up compared to what would be straightforward text in a visual novel.

So Gnosia looks nice; it's adapted and directed, seemingly, well, and…I think this anime might be a better ad for the game for me than a show on its own. Don't get me wrong, what's here works well enough, and I can see plenty of people (especially those who would make zero time for VNs) taking this as a fair way to experience the story. But I could still see so much of the game-y framework, and I could follow how that would be even more compelling within the mechanics of a VN narrative, so I couldn't help but wonder how much more I'd engage with this story in its "original" form. Maybe that's a curse of an adaptation that hews too effectively to what it's doing, and maybe it's something I'll keep following anyway, depending on what else I hear about it. Otherwise, it's got me adding the Gnosia game onto my Steam wish list, so that's gotta count for something.

Episode 2 Rating:

As someone who's still quite interested in Gnosia as an entity but hasn't pulled the trigger on that game yet, it appeals to spend a second week with the anime version just to glean more of how it works. It helps that even though the audience isn't directly playing as them in this medium, Yuri is still very effective at having viewers come along on their viewpoint as they also try to unravel this mystery. Being only two episodes in, they are still very bad at doing said unraveling, but that's the point in a trial-and-error structure like this. What is a time loop for if not watching someone die in increasingly funny and/or ironic ways? That attitude is why, while watching, I immediately called that Jina would be the funniest choice for the identity of the Gnosia this go-around, and wouldn't you know it…

It's easy enough for the kids playing along at home to figure out that the identity of the impostor among the crew will change from loop to loop. You didn't think it would be that easy, did you? So while Yuri works through their suspicions, Racio just blurts the point out in conversation later in the episode. It also introduces more material and mechanics, filling out the interactions, like Yuri and Jina attending to tasks that they can bond over before betrayal, and the games in the rec room with their hilariously alien understanding of rules. More importantly, though, is Setsu taking Yuri through more of the denser strategies and approaches to the votes themselves. It begs the question of how much input and agency Yuri/the player has into the goings-on at this point, while also painting the clear picture that Setsu is playing their own run of the game. And they are not winning.

That's a detailed way of saying that, to me, the Gnosia anime still soundly feels like a glorified demo/tutorial for the game. However, it is a very slickly produced, entertaining demo to watch. The second episode continues to show off the kinds of directorial indulgences one needs for adapting a talky, limited VN framework like this. There are calculated choices of character close-ups and details. Even as the initial base of backgrounds starts to blend into each other, how characters like SQ interact with them, or how they're filtered and laid out, it keeps the audience engaged and guessing. The new elements introduced, like the rec room, add a little extra flair, but the real standout is the space work scene between Yuri and Jina partway through. The open expanse of space is the opposite kind of threatening as the confined quarters of the ship, which means that Yuri being secured and held close by JIna works to give an opposite, affirming kind of intimacy than the threat of SQ cornering them close in their quarters inside. Which is the point, of course. Some of this setup is down to the game's original structure, I presume, but the anime is using its unique capabilities to sell this succession of perceptions to the audience in its own way.

It works great, even if the "twist" is one I saw coming and noted up in the first paragraph. That is, I thought that the red herring of who the Gnosia was would be the only twist for the first episode, but then the anime saw fit to throw additional curveballs. I'd wondered how the other characters in the OP would get looped in, so dropping some of them on Yuri in their next play-through, just as they'd confirmed how things could shift from the simple act of time-looping, was a great trick. I don't feel like I've even scratched the surface of what Gnosia's actually doing, but I am getting more of a handle on how it works, while still being very engaged with its story. That's the role of any good game introduction, whether I choose to get around to playing it for myself or just continue with this extremely lavish Let's Play video.