It’s occurred to me on more than one occasion while watching it that Kyokou Suiri is definitely the oddest show of the season.  But then I remember that it comes from the same pen as Zetsuen no Tempest and that almost seems like a given.  I can’t stress enough how worrisome it is that this show is only 12 episodes, because I’m hard-pressed to think of one that needed two cours to fully close the deal more than Zetsuen (maybe Hyouka was close).  Shirodaira Kyou is a quirky and idiosyncratic writer, and his words seem to take a good while to really weave their spell.

And boy, are there words.  A lot of them.  I’d forgotten what the experience of Zetsuen was like but In/Spectre is really bringing it all back.  Frankly I feel like all that mannered dialogue should annoy me more than it does, but for whatever reason with this author it seems to click.  One could be forgiven based on the first time we see Kotoko out on a job that her entire role as a goddess of wisdom is to bullshit youkai, and indeed she does a great job of that with the snake God (who’s played by the excellent Miyata Kouki, by the way).  But as we’ll find out, there’s more to Kotoko than that.

The funniest part about the whole Nushi no Oroshi incident is how OCD the snake is about everything, but to her credit Kotoko never misses a beat.  And hey, there’s no guarantee that all of what she sells him is BS – the genius here is that she came up with a story that was internally consistent and didn’t contradict anything the Kami observed and heard (I’m going to assume she thought all that up in advance).  In classic Shirodaira fashion the truth of what actually happened is totally irrelevant, and never gets so much as a mention in the narrative.  Kotoko and Kuro hop in a taxi and head back to town, and the next thing we know two years have passed.

I certainly wasn’t expecting a two-year timeskip, one in which Kotoko has apparently been busy.  We actually pick up the story with Yumihara Saki (Fukuen Masato, one of my favorite seiyuu), who we know of course is Kuro’s ex-fiancee.  She’s busy fending off the advances of an older detective (Kotoko isn’t the only one in the cast who can spout bullshit on demand).  And she’s altered witness testimony in her report of an incident where a college student went off the road after seeing what was clearly a supernatural creature in his path.  Her history is obviously guiding her hand here.

“Steel Lady Nanase” is another story that’s going to require multiple episodes to sort out.  Kotoko and Saki both run into the apparition at the same time, and we get the chance to see Kotoko in non-verbal action here.  She can take care of herself pretty well too, though she does benefit from a helping hand when her leg gets dislodged in her struggle with Nanase.  The analogy she uses – that it was less painful than her deflowerment – implies that Kuro and Kotoko’s relationship has advanced considerably in those two years, but given Kotoko is already a confirmed liar I’m not ready to take that statement at face value (though it certainly won’t bother me if it holds up).

How to close the episode?  With another extended Kotoko monologue, obviously, liberally intercut with Saki’s reactions.  Their relationship is already off to an amusing start, and Saki comes off as an appealing weird person herself.  The fact that the protagonist here peddles lies as a vocation certainly slips her into unreliable narrator territory, which lends an interesting shading to the story.  The thing about Zetsuen no Tempest of course is that it had a rather compelling central plot buttressing all the strange character dynamics, and I don’t see anything on that scale with Kyokou Suiri yet.  I’m fine without it for now, and maybe at one cour this series doesn’t really need anything so grand to succeed.