Gnosia

Episode 18

Okay, we can all agree that there's no way that this is the real ending of Gnosia, right? I'm not just saying that because of the ominous post-credits tease with Yuriko, either. Sure, this eighteenth episode of the show - which, so far as I can tell, doesn't have a title other than “Episode 18” - feels perfectly neat and tidy: Yuri solves the mystery of the Day 0 events that fills up his Silver Key and sets the stage for the end of the time-loop, and we even get an Animal House-esque series of end captions detailing what happens to the rest of the D.Q.O. Yet, even if we were to take all of this at face value and accept it as the conclusion to the story it is trying very hard to sell itself as…I mean, I'm not crazy to say that it just wouldn't be very satisfying, right?

To give the episode some credit, it at least gets us to this so-called “ending” smoothly enough. While I don't think the show's time-travel mechanics have ever been as coherent or compelling as they seem, the way that Yuri and Setsu's story wraps up works perfectly fine. It takes a mite too long for Yuri to figure out the fairly obvious concept of Setsu not recognizing the time loops because of being taken back to the day before the original loop began, but once we're all on the same page (thanks, Racio), Gnosia can barrel towards those end credits. Naturally, it's not quite so easy that we don't have to make one final sacrifice. To preserve the timelines and save Yuri from an eternity of looping, Setsu carts the original Yuri off to an entirely new dimension to prevent that silly duality paradox from exploding all of reality. It's bittersweet, but Setsu can surely figure out how to fill their Silver Key and find their own happy ending alongside everyone from Universe A.

Except…it is still pretty easy, isn't it? A little too easy, for my tastes. Or, rather, there's not quite enough emotional friction to make this have much impact as an ending, regardless of whether it ends up being a fake-out at the end. Thanks to the combination of Yuri being such a cipher and the plot preventing us from ever getting too close to any of these other characters, there's not a lot of genuine emotion to be found, even as the show throws all of those end-cards at us to go “Awwww, good for them” over and over. Comet apparently dooms an entire planet to ruin after selling her slime for a new ship; Chipie becomes a cat, finally; SQ moves in with Jina and becomes a private eye, for “some reason”; Shigemichi…um, disappears forever, I guess? And Jonas gets to die alone? And what's this about Remnan becoming a terrifying rebel leader and helping Racio build a nude statue of themselves as a revolutionary memorial? Seriously, though, why does it say that Sha-Ming opening a zoo where it really sounds like he molests all of the animals?

Okay, yeah, I'm calling it: Gnosia is taking the piss. We need at least one more episode, or a special OVA, or something that can bring this story to a more definitive conclusion that doesn't come across as literal self-parody. At the very least, would it be too much to ask to give ol' Setsu a proper sendoff? They're basically the only character I care about at this point, and it sure does feel like we're doing them dirty by shunting them off to another universe with little more than a pat on the shoulder and a meager, “Hang in there, pal!”

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.