Hi everyone! This week, I decided to take a bit of a break since it’s a week before Spring Break and my teachers managed to fit four assessments and an essay into a four-day week. In any case, in my downtime, I watched The Perfect Insider. Since nemoulysseus has taken over the political category of this blog and I haven’t been able to write a science-oriented article, I’m subbing the usual article in with this anime review. Let’s jump in.

No Spoilers Ahead! No spoilers in the comments either please.

Characters

Let’s start from the top. One of the main characters is a rich orphaned college girl. Her name is Moe. First off, I dislike Nishinosono Moe. She’s clingy and annoying and her backstory didn’t make me sympathise with her at all. Out of all the characters, she was the most boring to me. On contrast, she is also the most fleshed-out and energetic of all the characters. She should be the most relatable to the audience but since I’m INTP, I find her totally unnecessary instead. She gets jealous all the time and her pouting took away from the enjoyment of the show. Frankly, one of the reasons why this show gets a slightly lower rating from me is because she was the main character.

The one in the middle, Saikawa Sohei, is a teacher at an engineering school and he is more or less moral support for Nishinosono. He is my favorite character from this show. He’s not prone to bursts of emotion nor is he completely emotionless. He is in his own world a bit but he’s a good person and he’s the one that solves the mystery at the end. That said, he does smoke way too much. He smokes literally in almost every scene he’s in. His character is quite simple but to know what I’m really talking about, it’s better to just watch the show.

Last but not least is Magata Shiki-hakase. She is the catalyst for this whole murder mystery and she has a backstory befitting of the atmosphere of this anime. She is the genius scientist that contributed to the era of modern technology greatly but due to a past incident, she is confined in a laboratory on an island. Her cryptic words was the main catch for me. It was during Nishinosono’s interview with her that I got really invested in this anime. At the end, when the phrase “Subete ga F ni Naru” (aka Everything Becomes F) was explained, I got shivers. This may be due to the fact that I’m a computer science student but the mystery and the unravelling of said mystery was definitely worth seven episodes’ worth of drivel and nonsense. However, Magata-hakase herself was really disappointing as a character. The show had flashbacks to when she was still a child, explaining the circumstances around her current situation but when we “meet” her as an adult woman, it was quite unsatisfying. She doesn’t have a strong motive and her character pales in comparison to the main characters even though she is the centre of the story. That took major points off for me because it dramatically lessened the impact of the ending.

Plot

This anime doesn’t take long to get into the action but once most of the action was over, it goes into a slow contemplative sort of pace, which at times was kind of boring. However, it does pick up the pace at the end for a brilliant finale but fizzled where it mattered most; who was Magata Shiki? The pacing generally could use some work but the way the anime laid everything out was also perfect in a way. We get bits and pieces of the characters at the time. Especially Magata. This makes for a slow building up of tension and anticipation which is always good for a mystery anime. There were certain plot points that were brought up early on but was dismissed as insignificant later on which was disappointing because you’d think that all the hype around a certain word or phrase would lead to something profound.

In any case, the story is very decent and the mystery, as I described in Magata-hakase’s character profile, is worth any shortcomings.

Aesthetics

The Perfect Insider uses a rather drab palette but it fits in with the overall tone and setting. Most of the anime is set in a sterile lab anyway so the muted colors would make sense and the message and the events of the anime are rather sobering as well so the neutral colors, in this case, work quite well. The anime doesn’t generally use fancy animation techniques but there are noticeable instances where the animators decide to use CGI (like with the P1s or Saikawa’s cigarette smoke). I have nothing to critique in this category so let’s move to the final impression.

Final Impression

I definitely recommend it. It’s only 11 episodes and can serve as anime-to-tide-you-over-until-a-new-season-of-a-bigger-anime. I’ve kept all the secrets of the anime so you’ll have to find out for yourself what I lied to you about on this article. Believe me, there are quite a few twists in this anime and that’s one of the reasons I liked this show so much. There were major detractors from this show, however (the main one being the existence of Nishinosono), but they don’t take too much away from the impact of the show overall. You may have different tastes and disagree. This is one of those animes that people will judge differently based on their own personalities and experiences so my rating isn’t going to be your rating. I highly recommend you to try to watch the anime for yourself before you judge too much. Also, there’s a lot that constitutes as a spoiler in this anime so I’m sorry I couldn’t go too deep into analysing everything. In any case, the final verdict is:

6.5/10

The trailer video is below if you want to check it out (I couldn’t find an English version). I’ll talk to you on Sunday.

P.S. For those that already finished the anime, what do you  make of the thematic naming of each episode? Why colors? And although some of the episodes have fitting names (like Crimson Resolve), some of the others don’t make much sense. If you guys have any thoughts on that or anything else related to this blog, leave a comment or drop us a line at whentheskyisovercast@gmail.com.

P.P.S. Then there is also the resident doctor at the lab. He just casually walked up to “Magata” and checked her vitals even though the power just went out and she looked so creepy in the middle of a narrow hallway. What’s with that?