Digging Into Yurei Deco - Episode 2

Hello and welcome back to my watchalong of Yurei Deco! The show's first episode was about as good as a premier can get, with dense worldbuilding that's already doubling as a strong critique of the modern internet and social media. Beyond that, the show's just enthralling from moment to moment—the visual style's great, Berry's a charming little rascal of a protagonist, and the worldbuilding is hitting the perfect balance between the plausible and the fantastical. I spent much of my time after the first episode just wanting to know as much as I could about this world, even though I'd never actually want to live there.

With the basics having been established and a confrontation with the enigmatic Phantom Zero brewing, I'm excited to see what's next. Let's get back to it!

Episode 2

We open some time after the Phantom Zero/"glitchy-witchy" confrontation to find that Berry has fallen asleep on the porch. My back would never survive an entire night on concrete

"Did you fall asleep while logged in again?" The weird day-to-day life of having the internet in your eyeballs

Berry wonders if it was all a dream, but she has one of Hack's flowers (now purple) in her hand

We flash back to revisit the attack. Hack snaps at Phantom Zero a bunch as if to dispel the Hyperverse space, like they did to Berry last episode, but nothing happens. They're relatively powerless here

Hack flips out because there isn't an obvious exit. "Just what I'd expect from a high-def custom Hyperverse space," says Berry, who thinks this is all part of the Phantom Zero game 

This whole Hyperverse action scene honestly falls a little flat for me, despite being visually inventive, and it's in part due to the stakes being vague. Think Indiana Jones running away from the boulder for an example of great stakes: there's a very specific win condition—Indy escapes—and a very specific consequence if he loses—Indy is crushed by the boulder. It's basic, but it's extremely functional because the audience can parse it at a glance

In contrast, this Phantom Zero conflict has a clear win condition established by the show—Berry and Hack have to find the the Hyperverse exit—but we don't know the consequences of losing at all. The floating zeroes from last episode dissolved Berry's eyepatch, but we have no idea if they'd do the same to Berry or Hack themselves. Would they get stuck in this Hyperverse forever? Would their Decos short-circuit? Would they lose all their Love? And for that matter, what happens if they fall off a ledge? I think the show wants those answers to be a mystery, but that neutralizes the scene's tension in the process 

The actual back-and-forth of the action is similarly vague. Hack throws a ton of paper airplanes, and Phantom Zero blocks most of them, but what would the airplanes do if they hit? Everything here is a digital construct, as far as we know, so does getting hit cause damage in a tangible way? Hack seems to have an infinite amount of airplanes—are they hacking this Hyperverse to create them, or are items like this carried between Hyperverses as part of Hack's user profile? And if Hack can generate a billion paper airplanes out of nowhere, why not infinitely spawn them until an attack gets through?

The end effect is that it feels like we're playing on Calvinball logic—Hack says "I throw paper airplanes," Phantom Zero says "Well I have a paper airplane forcefield," Hack says "Well then my airplane splits into a hundred airplanes as a sneak attack." There's no tactical satisfaction, just some flashy cartooning, like when shounen heroes develop new powers mid-battle. It's not bad, just a little unsatisfying, like watching someone else play a video game when you don't know the rules

The one bit that does feel satisfying is Hack reversing their paper airplane to hit Phantom Zero and steal some data. That plays off two things we already know: Phantom Zero seems to block attacks it can see from the front, and Hack's origami can track other users' data

The slide whistle as Berry falls into the exit portal is very good

Hack has brilliant blue eyes, which is a good contrast to their own outfit and Berry's pink-and-red design. Given that this is anime, the blonde-hair-blue-eyes combo could also be shorthand to signal them as a "foreigner" (and specifically an American or European)

When Hack returns to the real world, the police arrive on the scene—or as they call themselves, the "Customer Center's Special Eval Committee Task Force." Law enforcement by way of Silicon Valley customer service speak

There are peacocks on their Deco visors. It feels more and more like the giant's fable from Episode 1 was a real-world event that no one in power learned from 

Love how globular they look in motion—very Kaiba

The cops are after Hack for unauthorized Love score modification/fabrication and pin Phantom Zero's handiwork on Hack unjustly. This is compounded by Hack having no citizen registration data, making them a "Yurei." This could go a lot of directions, but I wonder if it's aiming for an immigration allegory

Hack throws digital smokebombs that fry the cops' Deco visors. This feels much better than the Hyperverse fight just by virtue of its conflict variables being clear. Stakes are in place (Hack has to get away or presumably go to jail), and Hack's smokebombs are a specific and logical counter to pieces of technology (the Decos) that the show's already explained. Much more grounded than "magical fake paper airplanes that can damage programming constructs"

The cops track Hack back to their apartment, where they've created a hologram decoy. Hack then sneaks up from behind to hack into their Decos and make it look like they're on the beach. More using the system to game the system

Just realized that Hack is probably a pun on Huck, as in the prankster from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. God

The next day, Customer Center employees go around and manually restore the zeroed-out Love with hose-like devices, as if they're power washing graffiti. A fun detail, even if it doesn't make much sense—anything to make the virtual more tactile is probably helpful in a show like this

Back in class, Berry's friends don't believe her about Hack and say she's acting weird. A classic school problem compounded by this world's omnipresent state-controlled narrative about Decos—if your experience exists outside the norm, you're mocked

We get a Phantom Zero lore dump characterizing Phantom Zero as a magician from a fairy tale. Berry's unimpressed—the thing she encountered yesterday was way more dangerous than a shitty wizard, and therefore way more interesting

So it appears that Phantom Zero Nation is some sort of official (or semi-official) game played within the Tom Sawyer system—or if it's not official, the SEC approves. I wonder if the game was created by officials to cover up the real Phantom Zero wreaking havoc in a way they can't control

Berry goes to the eye doc. The cat on her eyepatch (which fell into one of those floating zeroes) is gone now. Perhaps this is what Phantom Zero's real powers do? Deletes/removes customizable AR data from real objects?

She keeps the eyepatch on while she walks to the doctor and questions whether or not her experiences with Hack were official game lore. Symbolically blinding herself to the truth

All citizens are required to use Deco, and Glasses Decos are available for those who don't want eye surgery. Not to CinemaSins this too much, but I feel like this contradicts the worldbuilding just a tad. If you can just take your glasses off whenever, Decos would be effectively optional, Berry's broken eye would be less special, and plenty of people would see Hack running around like a little gremlin

The doc says her Deco's broken and immediately moves to operate without Berry's consent. Now we discover the true agents of dystopic fascism: ophthalmologists

A real "accepting the call" moment for Berry as she's forced to choose between literally seeing the truth and playing by the system's rules, mixed with some Aeon Flux eye horror. She runs out when she realizes she can't see Hack if her Deco is fixed—she can't unsee what she's seen, and she can't go back to the way things were. Good stuff

Berry sneaks into her parents' work Hyperverse space and disguises herself as her dad. The office is filled with endless cubicles where employees are approving and rejecting posts. Modern social media rejects plenty of posts, too, except it's often automated in a way that's easily abused by bad actors—not that human reviewers are much better, as we find out

Berry walks by a woman deleting a pic of a family crying in front of a fire and a man getting assaulted. It's called Tom Sawyer Island, but the vibes are Orwellian

This points to one legit benefit that social media has brought: the ability for users to post anything at any time. People can upload videos of police violence or call out abusers and have an immediate global audience to witness the proof. It's not all roses, obviously—unregulated posting also means that outright lies are platformed on equal footing with the truth, and plenty of shitheads abuse the system to harass and ban those who speak out—but this is one important way where the Decoverse differs from something like Twitter

That being said, having human employees do the deleting makes a lot of storytelling sense. Makes it immediately obvious that humans (and society at large) are directly culpable for repressing this information, in a way that can't be blamed on an algorithm. That all reinforces the dystopian vibe

And then we see a woman rejecting videos of Hack causing trouble and running from cops. A police-state coverup. The same employee also rejects a pic of a traditionally-dressed Japanese person with a conical hat, nicely seeding this new character

Berry gets caught by her parents. Great lighting for this lecture scene, with unusually (for this show) heavy shading to reflect the tense atmosphere

"We make it so people don't have to see things that would make them worry." Her mother is worried and trying to explain, but her father is just angry and grounds Berry from Hyperversing outside of school. Two believable parenting styles, as well as two accurate ways systems like these try to oppress dissent—concerned rationalizing and outright banning the topic 

Berry runs away from home but is super taken in by all the bright lights and food at night. She finds a weird cat person at a bar and then gets hit on by a drunk. Getting lost in the world of adults is exciting—she's been a troublemaker before, but she's fully crossing into the forbidden for the first time

Berry finds the building that Hack's flower pointed to, and then runs into the hat person, whom she recognizes from the deleted pic

"Where is Hack?" A fine enough cliffhanger

Post-episode thoughts

Another solid episode! This one performed a pretty reasonable move for a show like this—with so many of the story's basic variables already set up by the premier, the show had a chance to dive right into the action and spend more time on moving the plot forward. Even though I felt mixed on the action scenes, the second half came through with more of the dystopian worldbuilding and satisfying character moments that I so crave, especially with that reveal of widespread government censorship. I'm glad the action isn't overshadowing the show's thematic bite, and I'm even happier to know the first episode wasn't a fluke. Here's to meeting the rest of the crew next time!