While “undead” series have returned from beyond the blogging grave before, at this point I think Kyokou Suiri is the last real bubble series of Winter 2020.  I was really hoping this week would be the one to close the deal, especially after last week’s episode was the strongest of the series.  But while I can’t quite put my finger on why, this one never clicked for me.  In/Spectre is the sort of show where it’s always going to be hard to quantify a reaction, just like Zetsuen no Tempest was.  But in the end it either works or it doesn’t, whatever the reason.

Certainly, having Kuro’s back-story “fleshed” out helps in the big picture.  And it’s a pip, too – his family is seriously messed up.  The whole mermaid flesh thing is a ten generations-old family obsession, but immortality wasn’t the point of it – divining was.  This, surely, is the definition of greed – immortality itself is a secondary effect, only important because it allows the holder to predict the future and in doing so, build on the family’s fortune.  The divining part comes from another youkai, the kudan, a well-known creature of Japanese folklore with the head of a human on the body of a cow.

Why was Kuro the first in those ten generations to be able to survive eating kudan flesh – and why do so many of his relatives die young?  You can’t learn everything all at once even in a series as talky as this one, I suppose.  This new information certainly casts Kuro in the light of a victim, though he seems to have rather forcefully acted on his cursed abilities.  And his continued association with Kotoko has made the bakemono accept him despite his (to their eyes) grotesque appearance.  That’s what got him involved in his confrontation with Steel Lady Nanase, though he’s only in town at all because of Kotoko’s request.

It’s striking how muddled so much of the story is despite the fact that there’s barely a dialogue-free moment in the entire series.  So is Kuro really Kotoko’s girlfriend, as she keeps repeating on loop?  He admits it – sort of – but he sure doesn’t act like it.  And what are we to make of Saki’s inability to accept him, for which Kotoko judges her harshly even as she relishes the opening it provided her?  Is she justified, or not?  I’m not going to call Saki a bad person over that because what she saw would freak the average person out, and besides which she doesn’t seem like a bad person generally.  But my feeling is that it was a test, and if she really did love Kuro it wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker.

Given the pedigree nothing much plays out in conventional fashion in Kyokou Suiri, and that certainly applies to Kuro’s fight with Nanase.  It’s stilted and almost feels like watching slow-motion, and in point of fact Kuro is literally waiting for the right moment to die so that he can use the information to predict the future and win.  But “win” is a loose construct here.  Given his twin abilities he can eventually get the better of Nanase in a physical battle, but he can’t “kill” her because she’s not alive or even undead – she’s a creature of the mind.  Our minds, that is.

The whole “creature of the imagination” thing is hardly a novel construct even if Shirodaira used it in a novel – it’s been a staple of science-fiction almost since the term was invented.  Nevertheless it’s deployed in an interesting fashion here, and how Kotoko and Kuro choose to go about dealing with Nanase should be interesting to watch play out.  But something still isn’t firing on all cylinders here for me.  I’m trying to remember when it was that Zetsuen really clicked for me but I think it was around Episode 6 or 7 – but then, that was a two-cour series with a little more runway at its disposal.  Next week is the halfway point with In/Spectre, which means it’s pretty much do-or-die time.