The Perfect Insider

Episode 6

Not a whole lot happened in this week's Perfect Insider. And not even in the usual, slow-burning narrative sense - I'm pretty sure you could have cut out all but five or six minutes of this episode and not lost anything of value. In a show that's already methodically paced and only has eleven episodes to work with, that's not a great place to be, but apparently there just isn't quite enough story to fill all of these minutes.

Yep, this was a recap episode. A recap episode in a Noitamina series, no less, where I'm pretty sure the only other recent recap (from Gatchaman Crowds) came about because the show's production more or less imploded on itself. Perfect Insider didn't even really try to hide the recap-ness of this episode - while I was initially happy to see the setting shift from the lab's murky interiors to bright exterior daylight, that feeling only lasted for a brief couple minutes. There was one nice gag before the recap began, as we got to see Moe tempted out of her tent by curry and plied with non-alcoholic beer, but from there on, it was a good eight minutes of Souhei and Moe monologuing all the various elements of the mystery so far.

After that regrettable sequence, Souhei was propositioned by Yamane, who wanted the professor to keep Magata's death under wraps for long enough for the lab to secure a contract with NASA. Souhei declined their offer, but after another pep talk from Moe, he decided to relent and spend more time at the lab in order to figure out the truth behind Magata's death. This segment wasn't strict recap, but it might as well have been - it was only at the end of last week's episode that Souhei mentioned he was giving up in the first place, and his relationship with Moe has never felt meaningful enough for the two of them making up to have any emotional weight. In fact, it almost seems worse that the two of them are growing closer together - Souhei sucks, and only feeds into Moe's worst insecurities. It's Moe and Magata's relationship that is the interesting one here, and this episode offered nothing interesting on that front.

Mercifully, the episode's last minutes actually featured reasonably interesting stuff happening. Having returned to the lab, Moe and Souhei's review of the security tapes led to Moe figuring out that someone had been moving the elevator from the basement to the roof as Magata's body left her room. And upon looking over Magata's suite one more time, Souhei realized that all her books cut off at volume fifteen - a number matching the years Magata spent in the laboratory, and a very likely candidate for the meaning behind “Everything becomes F.” Then we finally got to see the deaths of Magata's parents, which played out more or less as you'd expect - Magata killed her mother, and then she and her uncle together put the knife through her father's chest. The only new piece of information there was the fact that Magata's aunt knew the truth, something which will hopefully lead to more revelations soon.

Overall, this was a deeply disappointing and largely superfluous episode. What didn't qualify as strict recap either tied off conflicts that weren't compelling in the first place or played into the consistently frustrating relationship between Moe and Souhei. Hopefully the show gets it back together next week.

Overall: D+

The Perfect Insider is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Nick writes about anime, storytelling, and the meaning of life at Wrong Every Time.