Gnosia

Episode 6

There's a skit by the comedy troupe Aunty Donna that maybe sums up the particular frustrations of this arc of Gnosia better than I ever could. It's called Explaining a Board Game, and it perfectly captures the unique experience of being stuck at a party with a group of enthusiastic friends and an impossible amount of pieces, rules, and jargon to follow, even though you really have to be somewhere in, like, thirty minutes. My favorite line of the video is probably when the host casually acknowledges that the game he has set up for his two friends is really meant for eight people, only to trudge forward without hesitation.

I am still enjoying Gnosia, so far, but you can maybe imagine the face I made when I realized that, in addition to another pair of new characters and an increase to three Gnosia that are hiding amongst the D.Q.O. crew, we also have another brand new player role to toss into the mix on top of the Engineer and the Doctor. As Captain Jonas and the mysterious Kurushka join the roundtable of werewolves, we are informed that there is now a “Guardian Angel” amongst the crew who has the ability to save one member of the ship from a Gnosia attack…except, of course, they cannot protect themselves. Naturally, this makes for yet another reason for players to either refuse to identify their roles and for saboteurs to lie about them, which is a conundrum that you can bet Yuri will agonize over for the vast majority of the episode. Nevermind that the fundamental complications of this new stage of the game are, essentially, pretty obvious.

We're going to get dozens of minutes of diagrams and models to meticulously explain it all in excruciating detail, and Gnosia seems like the kind of anime that will hold us hostage at the proverbial dinner table until every scrap of exposition has been licked clean from our plates. Then, if we're really lucky, we might get the chance to watch the characters interact in a dramatically engaging way, or we might learn a little bit more about the universe beyond the hull of the D.Q.O. You know, as a treat.

I'm being a littler hyperbolic, here - the show's production values are still good enough to keep everything at a solid baseline of functional entertainment, and the added complication of two additional Gnosia does increase the stakes of the alien hunt in a meaningful way. Plus, for as little as we know about them, our cast of weirdos continues to at least inspire intrigue. I watched this episode of Gnosia immediately after checking out this week's chapter of To Your Eternity, and you can bet that I got thrown for a loop to immediately hear Kenjirō Tsuda's inimitable baritone delivering all of those bizarre, poetic aphorisms from Jonas' mouth.

Still, I would be lying if I said that Gnosia isn't beginning to test my patience for all of its endless tutorializing. In fact, I have a confession to make: For as much as I try to go into anime adaptations as fresh as I can, I could not help looking up how many characters and player roles we have left for the show to introduce to us, because I am really eager to get this show on the road, already. The downside is that we have at least another week or two of this opening act to go. The upside? We finally get to meet that sentient beluga whale from the opening! That is enough to keep me on board the Gnosia Express, for now.

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.