Yurei Deco

Episode 8

I'm beginning to realize that there's something…off about Yurei Deco. It's not enough to tank the whole project, mind you. The show still has a great sense of style, it's got plenty of charm, and as Berry herself makes note of this week, the Detective Club is really starting to gel as a team. It's just that, with all of these ingredients in play, Yurei Deco should be coming together as an absolutely scrumptious meal, but recently the best I can describe the flavor of the show is that it is…pretty good. A fine time, all things considered, but it's just not hitting as hard as it could, and I'm having a difficult time pinning down why.

Once again, we find in “Reach for the Heavens” an episode that ostensibly contains everything I want from the show. Hank gets (some) narrative focus as the show does more to expand our understanding of the Club's dynamics, and we also get a story that ties directly into the Phantom Zero hunt with the crew's mission to catch the “pop fly” of an ejected satellite capsule that contains data critical to understanding some of the encrypted files that Hackitt kept hidden in his own Phantom hunt. On top of all that, we get a fun trip through the HyperVerse with Hack and a return of Doron in a very cute montage that sees Madame practicing her outfielder skills for the mission. Did I mention that the barely relevant side-character Puddn'head is yet another character that is inexplicably named after a Mark Twain novel? It's a very solid episode of Yurei Deco, all around.

Yet, when the final twist came and Berry led the group to discover Finn's apparent betrayal, the emotional impact just wasn't there. I don't even mind the cliché of the scene where the trusted mentor callously reveals that he was just using his crew all along, nor do I especially care that there's at least 60-40 odds on Finn just trying to protect the club from the dangers of his “righteous” mission, or whatever. I simply can't find it in myself to become especially upset at Finn's maybe-for-real-but-probably-not heel-turn when Finn himself is such an enigma within a cast that is already stretched thin over its members' fairly shallow personalities. It's the kind of plot twist that makes absolute sense to include within the context of the show, even though it doesn't feel right, at all.

I don't want to give the impression that Yurei Deco is in some kind of tailspin, or that I hated this episode, because that's not the case. I did end up feeling something when we got that closeup of Hack's tear-filled eyes when Finn gave his bad-guy speech; I'm just sad that a show with so much potential has to work so hard to earn such little investment, in return. I like Yurei Deco, but I want to love it. More and more, I find myself almost forgetting that the show is even airing, in between episodes. Every time I sit down with the Yurei Detective Club, I'm fairly happy with the time we spend together, but I am starting to fear that, once the show is over and done with, they might really disappear completely into the mists of yester-year's anime, just like the ghosts they are named for.

Rating:

Yurei Deco is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.