In/Spectre Premiere Event Report

Note: This article contains minor spoilers for In/Spectre.

In/Spectre made its North American East Coast premiere at Anime NYC 2019. Thanks to Crunchyroll, many eager attendees were able to catch the first two episodes of the show ahead of its January 2020 debut.

The anime is based on a series of novels by Kyo Shirodaira and follows a young girl named Kotoko Iwanaga (voiced by Akari Kito). She’s a so-called “God of Wisdom” for the yokai (Japanese supernatural beings), who was kidnapped as a child and asked to be their messenger. In the present, she meets and becomes infatuated with a mysterious young man named Kuro (voiced by Mamoru Miyano). Soon after, they become involved in a series of cases involving the worlds of yokai and humans.

This dark fantasy, mystery anime promises a handful of dark twists and turns and I was glad to have been at the premiere. Here’s a couple of things I got from watching the first two episodes.

The anime’s first episode begins as a simple intro for our two characters. Kotoko lies in a green field and is later hanging out with other cute little yokai. The next thing she knows, she’s asked to become a “God of Wisdom” for the yokai. Afterwards, Kotoko is found by some people in the real world, having lost her right eye and left leg.

In the present, Kotoko and Kuro’s encounter with each other starts out like any other typical boy-meets-girl story. They first bump into each other at the hospital, with the latter falling in love with him at first sight. Although it’s a chance encounter, the episode suggests Kotoko may have bumped into him on purpose. There’s some funny, cute reactions between them and their opposite personalities spark interesting chemistry. Though Kuro is not interested in romance at the moment, this doesn’t stop Kotoko’s advances.

As the episode progresses, we’re given more information on Kotoko’s role as the God of Wisdom. She basically acts as a guardian between the yokai and human world. The yokai and ayakashi (another word for yokai) live at peace with humans for the most part because of their limited interactions. They come to her for help with certain cases and place great trust in her.

On the other hand, they’re scared of Kuro because he once consumed yokai flesh and was granted regenerative powers. Due to a certain incident involving a kappa, his ex-girlfriend Saki becomes aware of his true nature and breaks up with him. Kuro demonstrates his ability later on by letting his arm get eaten by a rogue beast. Soon after, the beast combusts. There’s not a lot given away as to how he gained these powers, other than that he ate mermaid flesh.

While the first episode highlights some of Kotoko’s genius intellect and deductive skills, the second episode applies it by taking a more mysterious, procedural stance. Kotoko is called in to help a serpent yokai figure out who dumped a corpse into his lake and why.

Her narration in this case essentially takes up the bulk of the episode. Kotoko’s deduction skills reveal many layers to the mystery of the corpse, bringing additional context to light and reasons on how the situation ended up as it did. The motives of each person involved are gradually unveiled and while the mystery slowly unravels, the intrigue keeps building.

The episode ends somewhat on a cliffhanger with Kotoko set to reveal the real truth. Overall, it was an excellent episode that built off the first by introducing a multilayered mystery and twist. It kept me guessing and wanting to see more.

Aside from the mystery, the episode also showcases more romcom antics between Kotoko and Kuro. I’m rooting for these two to become an item because they both play off each other very nicely. The anime promises a great dynamic between these two as they tackle new yokai cases. In/Spectre ultimately knows how to balance its dark and light-hearted material in its well-told story.

Before the panel finished, Crunchyroll host Tim Lyu gave away five copies of the first volume of the In/Spectre manga adaptation. Winners had to answer trivia questions related to the anime’s episodes. Unfortunately, I couldn’t grab one, but five lucky winners did.