Gnosia

Episode 4

In the world line that Yuri now finds themself warped to after seemingly winning the Gnosia Werewolf hunt last week, Jina apparently never even made it onto the ship. We still don't quite know exactly what circumstances are causing different crew members to pop in and out of the narrative whenever Yuri makes a jump. Still, the pattern Gnosia is establishing at least sets us up to expect a brand new cast member to shake things up and add even more ambiguity to the proceedings. This time, Yuriko takes the stage as a supposed shrine maiden from another ship who carries herself with haughty indignance. You can tell that she sucks because of how she waves that holographic sensu fan around like a conductor's baton and manipulates the others into following her lead. I like her.

Here is something interesting I have realized about Gnosia. Despite being a whodunit fueled by a cast of shifty characters with unclear motives, the way it marries the structure of the Werewolf social game with its time-loop structure means that the inherent surprise of the villainous reveal has been eliminated. For one, we are only just getting to know this ever-expanding band of weirdos, so it isn't like we can feel any real shock or anguish over this or that person's betrayal. More importantly, though, is the simple fact that we can basically guarantee that everyone will be revealed as the Gnosia by the time the series wraps up. I think the only character who we can truly “trust” to make it out of this with their humanity intact is Yuri, and even then, I wouldn't be surprised if the end twist of this story is that they were the real Gnosia all along, and that this whole situation is an elaborate test to evaluate the alien's motives and capabilities.

(A note for future prosperity: If this really is a big twist that comes up later in the story, I swear that I have absolutely no foreknowledge of the game's plot as of this writing. I was playing a bit of Arkane's Prey not too long ago, and it struck me that Gnosia could go down a similar route. )

Anyways, the point is that all of the real twists and turns are going to come from what we learn about this futuristic setting and the Gnosia themselves, and those answers are doubtless going to be saved for later on. From the moment this episode began, I honestly didn't give a damn about whether or not Yuriko or any of the other returning faces ended up being the Gnosia or not. I am much more interested in finding out why Yuriko seems to know so much about what Yuri is going through, where Yuri and Setsu's world-line hopping powers even originated from, and just what kind of eldritch tomfoolery is going on whenever the ship goes into warp speed.

Right now, we're still in the story's opening stages, so it makes sense that we're only being given some of the answers. The time-leap powers, for instance, come from the “Silver Key” lifeforms that implant themselves onto people for…well, outside of the basic fact that Silver Keys just want to learn about people, we still don't know why any of this is happening, but it's nice to know a bit of the how for now. We're getting just enough to keep the world-building from going stale while the story is working through what is essentially the game's tutorial phase.

All of this is to say that you honestly shouldn't pay too much mind to the score down there. It's always difficult to apply ratings to single chapters of a serialized story that is still in progress. Gnosia was not designed to favor individual, episodic experiences outside of the context of a larger whole, so the fact that it is working even this well is commendable. Sure, this episode wasn't quite as thrilling as the first few, and I am eager to get to the point where Setsu isn't the only other character that is allowed to have meaningful development when Yuri isn't busy being exposited to, but I have faith that we'll get there before long. Until then, we'll have to enjoy the game one bite at a time.

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.