Digging Into Yurei Deco - Episode 7

Hey there, and welcome back to my writeups on Yurei Deco! Even though I'm ride or die for the show at this point, it's been hard to get a sense of how much the public is keeping up with it—it doesn't rank highly on places like MyAnimeList or Anime News Network, and Reddit episode comments have slowed to a trickle. I've also seen a few discussions about people disliking the show because it's too much of a kid's show, and... man, maybe my brain is broken by years of watching cartoons, but I honestly never made that leap. Is it family friendly? Sure. But there are enough deep ideas here that I can't imagine it being conceived of and targeted towards literal children in the same way as something like Super Shiro. Also, let's not forget that Yurei Deco literally airs at midnight in Japan. A bright color palate does not a kid's show make, and anime can be mature without grimdark violence and cynicism. 

But kid's show or not, I'm committed to writing up this whole shebang, even if it tanks. Not that I'm expecting it will—last episode felt a little sterile compared to the others, and missing some of the themey-wemey stuff that I like, but the show has been remarkably consistent otherwise. My bigger worry is that Science Saru's tight production schedule is going to lead to Yurei Deco losing polish or compromising on its vision. I love me a good cartoon, but I'd gladly take fewer anime if it meant creators didn't burn out over them.

With all that rambling out of the way, one thing last episode did do was set up a whole bunch of future narrative threads, which I'm hoping will lead to some nice payoffs. Yurei Deco's been building up to some big revelations, and I'm interested to see what this one has in store!

Episode 7

We open with Hank sunbathing on the roof of the detective club, accompanied by our resident silent cat-man, Mr. Watson. The way this show's been going, we're probably due for a focus episode on both characters, but I genuinely hope they never explain Mr. Watson's deal. Him being an inexplicable cat being is way funnier than any backstory they could give him

Mr. Watson holds a circuit-laden peacock feather that he found. Hank jokes about peacocks hitting it off in the sky, a joke that contains at least three separate misunderstandings about peacock behavior, but more importantly, peacocks are the mascot of the Customer Center. This is obviously an omen

Hack and Berry laze around wishing for a case, then see Mr. Watson "talking" to a bunch of townies about a rumored mystery ramen cart 

None of the townies have actually visited the ramen cart, but of course their friends say they have, and all of them say the ramen tastes great in different ways 

Our thematic focus this episode seems to be internet rumors. Although they've mutated in our current social media age, these were legitimately everywhere back in the day—I'm still salty about posts I saw in middle school saying I could unlock Raichu and Goku in Super Smash Bros. by beating Multi Man Melee difficulties in a specific order

The ramen cart is also a rumor on the main city of Tom Sawyer, not just among the Yurei citizens. Even though this particular rumor has been around for a long time in the show, this also kinda speaks to how certain trends or claims (and especially slang) can start in a specific bubble, like queer spaces on Twitter, only to later get co-opted by the public at large

Mr. Watson apparently asks questions by holding up a sign with a question mark. Beautiful creature. Never change

One guy Watson interviews says the ramen cart made his friend sick, and he thinks it's run by an AI that wants to kill humans. Any good rumor generates counter-rumors and conspiracies

There's no information about the ramen cart on the Deco-Gourmet because it only exists via word of mouth. So we're looking at an old-fashioned, non-internet rumor—an important distinction, since social media tends to complicate these things in how it platforms baseless claims alongside verifiable truth

Smiley has thankfully put her gas mask back on for this episode. May it never leave her face again

Watson "collects" rumors and has a database of a bunch of random stuff, like affairs, relationships, theories that Madam 44 is dead... Much of it is straight-up gossip, some of it obnoxious, some more harmful. All of the social speculation detritus washing up on the shores of Mr. Watson

"Someone went to the moon once." "That moon trip is apparently a lie." Whoa—if both of these are considered rumors, then either this is an alternate universe, or the Customer Center is seriously repressing history. It is funny to think that moon landing hoax believers still exist even in a world where the moon landing isn't taught in schools

Mr. Watson isn't looking into all the rumors he collects, just the ramen cart. Finn says "a wonder lasts but nine days," meaning most rumors fizzle out quickly. This rumor surviving for so long makes it more interesting than most 

Also, Watson just wants some damn ramen. His first appearance in Episode 1 was at an outdoor ramen shop, after all

Hack isn't interested in investigating rumors. Pointing at their eye, they say, "Until I see it with this right here, it ain't real." This is good, consistent character work after Episode 5, where they freaked out about Berry investigating their past. The verifiable, immediate truth and living in the moment are more important to Hack than speculation

Also, it's perhaps relevant that Hack is focusing on their (non-Deco-augmented) eyesight here—to them, the AR glam of Tom Sawyer Island and oddball rumors are likely equally inauthentic, artificial inventions

Berry decides to track down the townies' friends-of-friends who ate at the ramen cart, but she quickly realizes that no one who says they've been has actually been. Rumors like this tend to spread partially due to people misremembering stories they were told, and partially because people will tell white lies to avoid feeling like they're being left out of an in-group. Not at all dissimilar to people making up stories on r/Relationships for clout

This episode is making a fairly important point, perhaps unintentionally, that the real world absent of internet still isn't perfect. This show is very skeptical about AR, VR, and the internet at large, but lies and rumors existed for millennia before that just fine

Berry finally tracks down an old man who's visited the ramen cart, but he tells her to visit "Mark Twain," and points to the sky when she asks what district that is

Okay, so. Extrapolating outward, this show is about characters cheekily named after Huckleberry Finn on an island called Tom Sawyer. If we take the island to be named after The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (the book, not the character), then Mark Twain would be the creator of Tom Sawyer Island

Back at the detective club, Mr. Watson stops by and prints a map from his mouth. Angelic creature

Hack is now interested in the case because the cat man barfed out a map. To be fair, this would also make me interested

They follow the map into the sewers below Tom Sawyer, where Mr. Watson's eyes are revealed to work as flashlights. So glad they're using him for a series of increasingly surreal jokes

They seem to be climbing through/along the walls that separate the city of Tom Sawyer and the Yurei shantytown. The ramen cart could be said to act as a connecting force between the two classes, or at least a thing that exists in the space between them

Hack is now hungry for ramen from the ramen cart despite not believing the place existed hours earlier. Their belief in the rumor is motivated by their wants in the moment

Mr. Watson's head is too big for all these sewers and he keeps banging it on pipes. Delightful

They wind up in a place with no GPS location details and actually find the ramen cart, manned by an AI chef, just like that one guy said earlier. So it is a real place with a really bad business model

The AI chef asks why they went through the trouble of following this rumor. Hack just shouts the word Ramen a bunch

More nice food animation. Some specific animator at Science Saru must be hungry. Also, didn't Dai Sato write a ramen-centric episode of Space Dandy? Man loves his noodles

Also, I should mention that the animation and storyboarding this entire episode has been great. Lots of thoughtful shot compositions and fun background gags. Last episode hopefully was just a fluke

The chef was originally an engineering AI for the island. Now he's investigating the systems for humans' belief in rumors, so he deliberately set up this shop off the grid and deletes any references to it the moment they're posted online 

Not only would the internet verifying this place's existence keep it from becoming a rumor, but there's an implication that the web would alter the way people talk about it and interact with it. The internet has changed the way we socialize, and therefore how rumors spread

"Rumors are neither fact nor fiction. They are simply rumors. But the people who find their way here are often upset or disappointed that the ramen isn't what they believed it was. What is it that leads them to have such faith in these ephemeral rumors?"

A port opens in Mr. Watson's head so he can shovel ramen into his mouth. Where it goes, no one can say

"Humans sometimes believe things they can rationally tell are completely untrue."

The AI has been studying humans since the city of Tom Sawyer was originally founded, which was apparently very long ago

Berry says she believes in rumors because they're fun, the same reason Watson collects them. It doesn't make sense, but there's a simple excitement to flights of fancy for her

Berry gives her name and information, then says she wants to come back, which seems to touch the AI. A personal connection getting through the deluge of hard data

The AI's name is Analytica, and he apparently created Mark Twain

Before we can learn what Mark Twain is, the Zero Phenomenon happens around them, and they're pulled into the glitchy-witchy's Hyperverse for the first time since Episode 2

The floating zeroes attack Analytica, who collapses

Mr. Watson runs up vertical walls to confront the glitchy-witchy. Weirdly enough, him confronting her kind of fits with what we know about Watson—of course he'd want to know more about her, because she is the ultimate rumor

Hack tries to collect more data, but the airplane filled with glitchy-witchy's data zaps their hand when it returns. Glitchy-witchy's learning their tricks

Analytica creates an exit door for them. He built this whole shebang, apparently

Ooh, glitchy-witchy redirects a paper airplane to collect data from Hack, flies up close to either observe or taunt them, and then disappears. We're learning more about our antagonist—glitchy-witchy attacked Analytica but doesn't want to kill Hack as much as collect information about them

Shit, Analytica's actually fried in real life. Five episodes later, I guess we finally know the stakes of that first encounter—they would've friggin' died

"Diary, the mystery cart really did exist, but now that it's gone, I guess it really is nothing more than a rumor." This is the flipside of Hack's "only what I see with my own eyes" philosophy of living in the moment—everything experiential is ephemeral. Now that the ramen cart is gone and no one else can visit, our protagonists' word about visiting it holds no more weight than that of the people who lied about going

This is a constant, even with the internet. There's a sense nowadays that we're able to document everything permanently—information, media, experiences—and that those records will exist theoretically forever on the internet. But important stuff, even big stuff, is lost every day—look at the recent stories about HBO Max purging cartoons that can't be streamed anywhere else. And even in the best case scenario, with enough time, the internet will die or transition into a new form and old data will inevitably be lost. So at the end of the day, what does truth actually matter if it all fades away?

Wasn't expecting Yurei Deco to bring out my inner nihilist, but here we are, lol

This is also another side of the nue story from a couple episodes back. In that case, the fiction caused some harassment for the professor, but it also brought him some joy. Was there truly any harm to the lie itself? Is there substantial difference between the fake creature that was presented as if it was real, and the real ramen cart that seemed like a fake?

Berry and Hack are now being super annoying together, which is pretty cute

Watson examines the feather that was inside Analytica, which matches the one he found elsewhere, and then looks to the sky, where there appears to be some sort of floating city. The plot continues to thicken!

Post-episode notes

Now that's more like it! In addition to spending our runtime with the increasingly bizarre Mr. Watson, this was a nice return to form for the show's thematic side, diving into some interesting sociological spindles of this weirdo future world and looking at how human behavior mixes with technology—or in this case, how it exists in its absence. I also enjoyed the new hooks we got about our central plot, and especially the return of the glitchy-witchy. She's been absent for a while despite being our theoretical antagonist, so it was compelling to see her again, get that threat reestablished, and even get a couple clues about what she might be trying to do. 

Now if you'll excuse me, this episode made me ravenous, so I'm gonna go make myself a bowl of chili ramen and wind down my day. Until next time!