Digging Into Yurei Deco - Episode 1

Hey all! Today, I’m starting a journey into one of the newest and most promising anime of the year, Yurei Deco. Simply by virtue of being animated by Science Saru—the boundary-pushing studio cofounded by legendary director Masaaki Yuasa—Yurei Deco was already one of my most anticipated shows for this season, given the studio's stellar recent track record with Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! and last year’s masterpiece The Heike Story. Still, I went in with a few slightly concerning unknowns: the series composition by sci-fi veteran Dai Satō, who’s written for classics and stinkers alike; the directing by up-and-comer Tomohisa Shimoyama, who hasn't directed much despite being in other industry roles for years; and most importantly, the reports of increasingly tumultuous labor conditions at Science Saru as the studio takes on an unsustainable number of new projects.

Despite those concerns, I’m pleased to report that Yurei Deco’s first episode was fascinating, with a bold, freewheeling artstyle belying dense speculative worldbuilding and sharp social commentary on what the modern internet could become. In fact, this episode was so loaded with thematic intent that I decided to break it down and unpack the notes I took while watching. Let’s head into the Hyperverse!

Episode 1

I actually want to start with the first thing many people will see—the logo, and specifically, the stylized English tagline: You ♡ Deco, which could be read as "You Love Deco." With context from the first episode, it's apparent this logo itself is already gesturing at the themes in a variety of ways, both relating to the customization aspect of this world and perhaps acting as its social media platform's marketing slogan. Of course you love Deco—you have to

Even the individual word/emoji choices by themselves feel meaningful:

• You = Centering the individual. This is one of social media’s most manipulative psychological engagement tactics—you are incentivized to treat your life and opinions as an insular brand that’s at the center of the universe, and are encouraged to put social media at the center of your universe, lest you miss out on something important. It's all about you(r money)
• ♡ = Not just the “love” button, but also the concept of love being tied to your social media standing. The great lie that social media perpetuates is that you must be on social to be respected, accepted, and included in modern society at all. Crucially, this show's logo also has a zero encircling and bisecting the heart, relating to the way Phantom Zero subverts the show’s virtual currency and trappings—more on that in a bit!
• Deco = Decorating, and, more literally, the name of the show’s VR eyeball implant. One of social media's central appeals is the ability to customize and exaggerate (or manipulate) your appearance to present a new or idealized version of yourself to the world. This can be good, of course (think of all the LGBTQ+ people who rely on this), but can also be used to manipulate followers and spread misinformation

Oh yeah, there’s a whole show for this logo. I should probably get to that

As we watch the character Hack (who isn’t named until next episode) throw invisible paper airplanes across the city, we're told a fable about a giant with 100 eyes who could only rest one eye at a time. The public respected the giant's all-seeing nature and gave it the responsibility of looking after the world, but when it reported a citizen doing something treacherous, the public turned on the giant and killed it. But eventually, society changed, and they turned it into the pattern of a peacock out of pity

In some ways, this is an allegory that is clearly gesturing to the giant representing social media and the modern-day internet—the world collectively has eyes on everything at all times, and many of us trusted online institutions more implicitly before the conversation turned to multitudinous scandals and eroding privacy

If the fable is meant to be a direct parallel, though, I’m not sure what to do with it painting the giant as a passive actor who is killed for correctly identifying a criminal. Social media’s true face is corruption and capitalistic profit-seeking; Twitter would be more likely to ban a whistleblower than to die for one

Or this could all be foreshadowing—a tale reflecting events to come, meaning we may be about to see the unraveling of this world’s dependence on virtual reality. We’ll have to see!

Of course, moments later, we see that the peacock has become a literal mascot figure for this show’s virtual reality school. Allegory, foreshadowing, or literal in-universe history, nothing exists that can’t be reappropriated by capitalism into brand-safe clipart

We get a big infodump about Tom Sawyer Island here. Virtual and augmented realities are omnipresent and integrated with daily life. Participants in the system can earn Love, a “social valuation system” and online clout number akin to Reddit Karma that doubles as currency. People can also create and hop into Hyperverses, essentially full-on VR servers where people can be transported into specific worlds. Like the Metaverse if it weren’t just a half-baked Second Life

This is all achieved by everyone having Decos (Decoration Customizers), eye implants that are installed at a young age

“Thanks to the Customer Center, we are living in the purest expression of liberalism ever to have existed.” No sentence has ever been more chilling

Even before we get into its uses in the show, Love feels like the most horrible extension of late-stage capitalism: social media points as actual currency, devoid of any true worth you’re bringing to the world, and likely disadvantaging people who can’t game the system

I’m sure there’s also plenty to unpack about this island being named after Tom Sawyer, but not a ton of obvious parallels in this episode

“The things we must value as citizens of the island city of Tom Sawyer are empathy, cooperation, and respect for one another’s personal space.” Terms of service. I feel like we’ll be exploring the contrast between who actually obeys those rules and who they're enforced upon

Speaking of disobeying rules, three kids at the back (including our protagonist, Berry) put up Deco barriers and mute themselves so they can talk about Phantom Zero rumors. Slick visual presentation that makes all of this clear without needing explanatory dialogue. Plus it's a fun way to lampshade all the exposition in the background—make your characters not care about it

These teens misbehaving also immediately undercuts the utopian idealism of the system being explained—if literal children are able to manipulate Decos to make trouble in class, you don’t want to see the shit adults will pull

Berry’s Deco starts acting up, meaning she has a good excuse to log out of class. In the real world, her faulty eye implant is glitching out, so she can partially see through the AR graphics. This is her "mark of the chosen one,” so to speak, and why she’s the protagonist—she’s not just good at hacking, she can literally see through the artificiality of the world

Right now at the start, though, she’s completely bought into Tom Sawyer Island’s system. Love is “essential to life” and she wants tons of it, is obsessed with her score, and thinks of little more than customizing her avatar. Even her vocabulary is drenched in it—she calls everything “Love-y.” A very believable teenager

Her mom tells her to get the Deco checked out and immediately makes an appointment for that same day. Not all bad here on Tom Sawyer

Can’t say I'd want to live here, but I do want a pet blobcat

Berry’s parents clock into a Hyperverse where they work at a virtual cubicle approving pictures people are trying to post. This seems like the Worst Job

I can only imagine how much horrid shit they have to sift through every day. At least they get paid, unlike Reddit mods

Berry’s dad excuses her Phantom Zero obsession, it saying it doesn’t hurt people. “Think of it as people finding ways to stay entertained in a city with no crime,” he says, literally guaranteeing crime will happen later in the episode

The city outdoors is a flashing neon hellscape that’s absolutely overloaded with visual information. Captivating in its own way, of course, with echoes of Kaiba’s retrofuturistic aesthetic, but intentionally disorienting. With Berry's faulty Deco, it's even worse

Berry can customize the city’s appearance for herself, but it looks like there’s almost nothing to the buildings underneath the AR. Just blank boxes

Expensive city skins being overridden with SAMPLE text because she doesn’t have enough Love is a great gag, but also makes you wonder what else people are gated from

Berry and her fish friend take a pic and immediately get some Love for it. Are there other ways to accrue Love aside from making good posts?

Either way, shitposters must make bank

Love counters are displayed above all the buildings. The collective Love a business or home has earned, like augmented reality Yelp scores?

We get more on the infamous Phantom Zero: they’re a supposed criminal with a huge bounty, but no one’s ever seen them. Reminds me of internet mythmaking a la Dennou Coil

Phantom Zero Nation is the most popular game in town, where the public is banding together to catch Zero. Berry, of course, wants to be the one to personally catch Zero to prove her clout. But in some respects, Zero (or the quest to catch them) also seems to transcend society's trappings. “Whenever Zero shows up, the Love we’re all excited about gets blown away. There can be no love in the face of zero."

Also, "Zero is a lie, but everything that isn’t Zero is reality.” Without more context, this is just a mysterious catchphrase, but it implies the contradiction at the heart of this universe—if Zero is a lie, but catching Zero is the ultimate endgame of online clout chasing, then what are people chasing to begin with?

Thanks to her jacked-up eye, Berry finds a transparent tracker flower that Hack threw, then Hack themself, who is cloaked. Berry follows them around

Hack’s catchphrase of “I. Love. Ai.”—which seems to be appropriated from Phantom Zero— mixes English and Japanese, literally meaning, “I love love.” But the effect of Hack saying that is to turn invisible. They're using the system (Love) to subvert the system

Hack commits petty crime, immediately paying off the dramatic irony Berry’s dad so kindly set up earlier. It's mostly harmless pranks and petty thievery, up until they emotionally manipulate an adult man out of his Love stockpile by pretending to be his deceased father

Hack wears what looks like a set of VR goggles. I wonder if they actually don’t have Deco implants, meaning they could activate and deactivate the VR and AR stuff at their own choosing. Would be another way they exist outside the system

Thinking she's found Phantom Zero, Berry reports to her friends “in person” - but they’re in a Hyperverse police office eating donuts and acting like detectives. Everyone living out their fantasies

After her friends goad her, Berry chases Hack across town but loses because she's not fit enough to keep up with a parkour god. Hack truly is the ideal human form

Berry returns home empty-handed and depressed. Her parents misinterpret her dejection as hearing bad news from the doctors

“What? You didn’t get an infection from your Deco, did you?” People are genuinely modifying their children's bodies in dangerous ways to support this stuff, and from a ridiculously young age where the kids can't possibly consent. The most dystopian element of the show so far

Her parents give her a conveniently on-brand cat eyepatch until the Deco gets fixed. It shows just how bought-in adults in this world are—if one of your Decos doesn’t work perfectly, what’s the point of having two eyes?

Hack has a robot named Pup. A competitor to the blobcat throne of Good Pets

Berry tracks down Hack through the signal from their origami flower device, then creates a little Hyperverse to try talking to Hack some more. But Hack shuts it down with a snap

Still not 100% certain how Hyperverses work in a mechanical sense, but the point of the scene is crystal clear. They’re both talented, but Hack gets by outside the system and knows how to be a more effective troublemaker

Hack uses the same tracing method to find and confront Berry on her balcony

As Berry and Hack argue, they’re interrupted by something called the Zero Phenomenon, the hallmark of Phantom Zero which causes everyone’s Love to bottom out. They’re then transported to a Hyperverse where they’re chased by literal floating zeros, which cause Berry’s eyepatch to disintegrate when it makes contact. Not clear to what extent this might be able to actually harm them vs. being a hallucination broadcast into their Decos

The “glitchy-witchy"—i.e. the real Phantom Zero?—appears hovering over them ominously. Cliffhanger time!

Post-episode thoughts

Whew! I’ll be honest—if the rest of the series is this dense, my hands are gonna fall off from overwork. If you can't tell by now, I'm pretty smitten with this show and all of its scattered thoughts. I love how reserved it's being with a premise that could come across as naively optimistic—this near-future internet tech is inherently cool and interesting, but we're wasting no time in getting interrogations of its pitfalls. And although there were a couple writing and directorial blips, they were far outweighed by everything else—including plenty of thoughts I didn't have space to mention here, like how great this loose, vibrant artstyle is, or how the show's inherently flawed tech is echoing the paper-thin arguments grifters use to support Web3 and NFTs. Only time will tell how the show itself (and the working conditions behind it) will pan out, but for now, this is one of the boldest and most exciting premiers of 2022!