Digging Into Yurei Deco - Episode 6

Hey there, and welcome back to Yurei Deco! This show has been my favorite of the summer 2022 anime season by a long shot, and never moreso than in its excellent fifth episode. That last episode's exploration of how internet mistruths can become viral trends that eventually fade into social media background noise really spoke to me—not only in its gesturing at the morally gray state of social media and the way even the most harmless-seeming fabrications can escape their creators, but also in the way it explored Berry's desire to do the right thing in a situation that had no right answer. Berry's young, and one of the central challenges of growing up is experiencing the murky, infinitely complex waters of adulthood, and realizing that there are some things that have no easy solutions, and some mistakes that can't be perfectly righted.

My rambling aside, I'm curious to see what this next episode is about, given that the preview mentions our mysterious, gas-masked Smiley. This show's side characters haven't had much opportunity for anything but surface-level development, so I'm intrigued to see if it'll dive into her personal history, use her as a springboard for more internet thoughts, or a little bit of both. Let's find out, shall we?

Episode 6

Smiley digs through a trash heap by the river and finds a drone with a goofy face that says "Doron" a bunch

This is immediately accompanied by a melancholy piano soundtrack and narration by what sounds like Madam 44, but the show visually frames this with long held shots of Smiley and the drone staring at each other. It unintentionally feels like a Titanic-style framing device, where an older Smiley reflects on her sordid love affair with this goober-ass drone

"We all have a dark side nobody else ever sees," says the narration as we pan down the Tom Sawyer Island plateau, past the Yurei shantytown that's walled off from the main city, and to the trash heap on the river. That sentence applies to this island's hidden Yurei underclass as much as it does any personal narrative

Smiley and Madame 44 are grouped together in the opening. Interesting

Berry, Hack, and Hank are training by playing hide and seek in one of Finn's Hyperverses. Berry asks Finn to join, but he refuses

"When building a world, you need clinical objectivity to reinforce it where needed." Might want to slow your roll there, Finn. Your world is a series of disconnected Garry's Mod shipping containers on a flat surface that looks like the textures didn't load in

It's still not exactly clear how this particular Hyperverse is working—what exactly is Finn doing that he can't actively leave his post?—but it's clear enough character reinforcement. Finn takes his Hyperverse construction very seriously

Smiley interrupts to introduce Doron, the "General-purpose drone," to the rest of the group. Doron has lost his memories and wants to get back to his owner

I was wondering what prompted Smiley to help this robot, and then Hank asked it for me. Seems like she thinks the owner has lots of Love based on this being a unique drone model. Too bad—her sole personality trait so far has been "motivated by Love," so it would've been interesting to see something else motivate her

Doron doesn't have a registration number, so they can't look him up. When he short-circuits, Hank takes him apart and finds a production number, then tries to view his data

The only memory Hank can recover is a short video from the Phantom Zero Nation game, where a silly-looking dude in goggles is facing up against the Phantom Zero fox. This guy probably thinks his avatar is so cool, but he looks like a caricature of a feminist from a shitty conservative political cartoon

Doron being "illegal" but cobbled together from legal parts could tie into some of our existing themes, depending on how it plays out. Did his owner build him that way out of financial necessity, or to skirt around Customer Center restrictions?

Doron pinpoints a guy named Kearney as his owner, whose location points to an old folks' home. This triggers some sort of reaction in Smiley. Hm

Berry and Doron go to the Sunflower retirement home together. Very simple, colorful trees dot the landscape here. Tom Sawyer Island's general aesthetic is very evocative of actual hospitals and retirement communities—a fake veneer of cheer trying to mask what is ultimately sterile, utilitarian architecture

Berry rotates her hat to reveal her most vexing and sophisticated disguise, Blueberry

She tries to investigate Kearney at the retirement home, but no one by that name lives there now. The attendant robot gets very suspicious when seeing a picture of Kearney, too

Berry sees Smiley skulking around in the community and follows her to what is clearly Madam 44's residence

Oh god, Smiley's horrifying. Put the mask back on please

Seriously, I love me a good toothy grin, but her tomato-red eyeliner and orange lipstick somehow clash horribly with each other and with her purple hair. A rare character design miss for this show

Madam 44 appears to be Smiley's grandmother. When they ask her about Kearney, she says the line from the beginning of the episode. So that's all it was—not some weird narrative framing device with Smiley reflecting on her past, just an oddly placed voiceover for foreshadowing

Kearney's goal was to "create a world nobody had ever seen before. By his side, I could become a princess, a witch, a thief, or just about anything. It was wonderful. But during the revolution he instigated, he handed me his bag of tricks and vanished." Interesting—Madam 44's gimmick is telling tales that might be made-up mumbo jumbo, but there's probably something to this revolution she mentioned

The retirement center drones spot Berry and chase her out of the building. Her moves have gotten a little better—she dodges the taser lines from the other drones easily

"I'm going to change!" Madam 44's bed turns into an exosuit that can camouflage her identity and drive up vertical walls, which begs the question of why she would ever not do that

"Damn, Grandma." Hahaha

Madam 44 and Berry get far enough away to rest by the water and talk. Really lovely shots of this yellow moonlight on the blue water. A bit of natural beauty that this show doesn't get to indulge in much

Also, this is the second time water (and reflections) have come up this episode—Smiley discovered Doron on the river after all

Berry asks if Madam 44 and Kearney were in a relationship, and if she joined the detective club to look for him, but she's evasive. "I've forgotten my reasons." The real question is why she's choosing not to answer—perhaps it's a painful secret, or she's trying to protect Berry from a truth that would put her in danger

Madam 44 chastises Berry for poking into everyone's business, but then says that Hack has changed and opened up after Berry arrived. Berry blushes. I'm all for a good ship, but let's be real—Hack 'n Berry would be either a disaster couple or a force of chaos strong enough to accelerate universal entropy

"You can have more than your fair share of sorrow all on your lonesome, but to truly experience joy? You need the help of others for that. That's why I joined you all."

Back at the detective club, Finn examines Doron's restored data and hooks him up to his SOS Hyperverse for testing. They're able to get a Phantom Zero avatar to come into their Hyperverse and start attacking. "He's a security block to erase the contact logs"

A somewhat thinly justified action scene as Hack and Berry dodge Phantom Zero's video-game lightning bolts while trying to catch him. Also awkwardly animated—Berry clearly has lip flaps animated for dialogue that she doesn't say. Between this and the rest of the episode's animation mostly going through the motions, seems like this episode got hit with production troubles  

Hack grabs Phantom Zero's mask and reveals his true identity. Kearney was actually a famous Hyperverse game designer who went by the moniker Hackitt, and who made both the Phantom Zero Nation game and the old folks' home from this episode. He was also Finn's teacher

Also, he's super dead

Doron, Smiley, and Berry go to pay their respects to Kearney and see Madam already there

Finn found Customer Center records suggesting Kearney was offed. The plot thickens!

Between these revelations and the information Madam 44 gave about Kearney taking part in some sort of revolution, it seems likely that Kearney's tied to the "giant with a hundred eyes" poem from the first episode. Perhaps he was the giant itself—he created significant parts of this world, tried to point out some sort of fatal flaw or evil deed, and was killed by the Customer Center for his trouble 

Post-episode thoughts

Welp, Yurei Deco can't win 'em all! Unlike the past couple episodes, which balanced self-contained narratives and progress towards our central storyline, there wasn't a terribly rewarding emotional or thematic throughline that guided the narrative arc here. Most of the episode was composed of characters sitting around talking through the Doron mystery, we weren't given much reason to care about Doron or Kearney themselves, and what little we learned about Smiley and Madam 44 didn't really deepen their characters. Even beyond that, there weren't any new worldbuilding facets about Tom Sawyer Island or the Yurei's world that felt rewarding to explore. This episode felt more like table setting for future mystery developments than a statement in and of itself. 

Plus there was the production—outside of a couple key scenes, this episode's animation and storyboarding felt lighter and less motivated than usual, so I'm hoping this was just a temporary blip or an outsourced episode rather than an indication of future trends. Still, Yurei Deco going through the motions is still a decently fun time, and with another clue to the Phantom Zero mystery now on the table, we may be in for some big revelations soon. Onto the next one!