Gnosia

Episode 14

At my day job as a teacher, my colleagues will often inquire about my work as a critic while we're passing the time during lunch. Mind you, only one or two of them have ever watched an anime not directed by Hayao Miyazaki, and even then, I'm not about to throw anything more complicated than a passing Dragon Ball Z mention their way. This is why, when my buddy asked what I was going to be reviewing this weekend, I went for a much more relatable reference to a guy his age: Classic 1980s sci-fi.

“Oh,” I said. “Um, I guess it'd be like…well, you know The Thing?

“Sure, I do!” my coworker said, clearly excited to be talking about media that he understood for once. “Kurt Russel, man. Really gory, too.”

“Yeah, well, the show I'm watching is kind of like The Thing, with a bunch of people trapped on a spaceship knowing that some of them are being impersonated by an alien.”

“Oh, cool! So this is a horror show, then? Someone gets picked off by the monster every week?” Shit. He was trying to talk about genre, now. Goddamned English teachers, I swear.

“I mean…kind of? It's really more of a science fiction type of thing. There's a whole time-travel angle, where the main character is constantly looping the same chunk of time again and again.”

“Huh…” my colleagues muttered. Damn it, I could see the glimmer of mischievous skepticism in his eyes. This is what I got for dangling a bizarre storyline with the potential to be picked apart in front of this professional nitpicker like a carrot tied to a stick. “Wait. If the main character is in a time loop, then can't he just easily figure out who the alien is and save the ship?”

I'm just going to assume you can all understand why there was no chance in hell I was going to drop the “world line” concept in a casual lunchtime conversation, so I tried to quickly explain that “it's more of a multi-verse thing” and how the characters had to play a bunch of games of Werewolf to try and suss out who the alien was every time. This is where another colleague of mine jumped in, excited to participate, because even though she's never watched an episode of anime in her life, she's young enough to have played plenty of drunken Werewolf games in her college days. All of this is to say that, eventually, the conversation led to my first colleague looking mostly confused and maybe even slightly regretful of opening this can of worms in the first place.

“So, basically,” he said, at last, “This show you're watching is mostly about watching a bunch of cartoon characters play this Werewolf game?”

“Sure,” I replied, just glad to be on the verge of changing the subject. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“...that doesn't sound like a very good show, James.”

Now, obviously, I was unable to give a comprehensive understanding of this very strange Japanese cartoon to a man old enough to be my father who spends most of his spare time coaching high-school baseball, so you will hopefully forgive me for not going on about the show's excellent artwork and direction, or its genuinely impressive narrative ambition. The point I really wanted to make with this anecdote is that, when you boil it right down to the bare essentials, “Watching a bunch of cartoon characters play Werewolf” is not the most impressive pitch for a TV show. Sure, I realize that Netflix has that The Traitors show that is apparently pretty popular, but it's different when the Werewolf game is an actual competition played by real people, and not a bunch of drawings trapped within the confines of a predetermined narrative. Thankfully, with how busy Gnosia has been unfurling the spider-web threads of its tangled mystery plot, we haven't had to spend too much time on the Werewolf angle, which I think is easily the show's weakest core element.

Of course, this week's episode with Yuriko telling Yuri that she totally plans on telling our hero everything they want to know about all of the madness they've been caught up in across the last fourteen episodes, but only if Yuri can win the biggest and most complex game of Werewolf yet. Folks, if you could hear the yell that escaped from my mouth as this scene caused me to reflexively pause the episode and take a 30-second cooldown walk across my living room and back. What did I say last week? I just knew that Gnosia was going to pull a stunt like this before giving up the goods. I can't blame a story based on a video game for including what I presume is the “final boss” equivalent challenge of the story, but still, man. I just want to be done with the Werewolf games, already.

To its credit, Gnosia makes a valiant effort to spice things up with the inclusion of every single member of the cast, three hidden Gnosia lurking about, and the addition of yet another new “job” to the proceedings. This final wrench in the game's gears is the “Anti-Cosmic Follower” (“AC Follower” for short) that represents a completely human element that is nonetheless committed to sowing chaos and ruining things for everyone. This naturally makes Yuri's job even harder, since you can't even take common sense or comprehensible motivations into account with an AC Follower.

Alas, there is only so much that can be done to make an extended game of Cartoon Time-Loop Werewolf dramatically compelling, because regardless of how much we all want Yuriko's promised answers, the well of tension has been poisoned by counterintuitive repetition. Plus, there's the fact that so much of what makes Werewolf fun involves actually participating in a game, or at least getting the chance to read the minute expressions and subtle tells of flesh-and-blood humans. All Gnosia can do is have an obvious weirdo like Jonas overdramatically deliver lines like “I trust you all remember? The fact that there is only one Engineer aboard this ship? I am that Engineer. Let me repeat myself. I am the true Engineer.

Even if this were true (which it isn't), it makes the rest of the crew just seem like idiots when all they can respond with is, “Well, clearly someone is lying!”

Or how about when Yuri reveals that they used their for-real Engineer powers to investigate Prurushka, which Racio tries to out as being a totally suspicious, Gnosia-like move, and the show pretends like Yuri has to think on the fly to justify why they would investigate the most unknown element on the ship who cannot speak for themselves in the first place. In any real game of Werewolf, Racio's amateur ploy to paint Yuri as the sneaky one is the kind of gamble that would only work half the time if your party was already toasted on tequila shots and cheap beer.

So, when Racio finally gets outed as a Gnosia when the episode closes with another frustrating cliffhanger, I'm not thinking, “Wow, what an expertly crafted and compelling little puzzle for us to solve!” I'm thinking, “God, thank you, now we can get on with the story—wait, what do you mean we're rolling credits now? Yuriko promised us all the answers, damn it!” Once again, I am left feeling like Gnosia is a game about playing a game that would be much more fun as a game to be played instead of a show to be watched. It still looks great, I'm still interested in seeing where it is all going, but c'mon, now. We've all got places to be. Let's see a little more hustle out there on the field next time, okay, Yuri?

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.