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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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 Ggultra2764
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[series:3113#1552] |
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Perfect Insider is a mystery series focused on a college professor and one of his students attempting to solve a murder mystery on a remote island. The mystery is actually a rather engaging one as some twisted details on the backstory of the mystery's victims get revealed and there are some twists to the mystery that give it a good deal of intrigue and suspense. The interactions and history between our two leads Saikawa and Moe also get focused on as both are shown to be quite perceptive and intelligence in varying capacities, while having having their personal quirks, and have a past connection together that the show takes some time to explore. The great balance of focusing on our main pair and the mystery they attempt to solve in Perfect Insider's 11-episode run offers tight, yet immersive, storytelling that makes it a worthwhile watch if you are a fan of mystery anime titles.
Last updated Friday, December 23 2016. Created Friday, December 23 2016. | ||||||||
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[series:3113#628] | ||||||
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(All episodes watched): Well, learning from the synopsis above that this would be a murder mystery, not a show with some sort of supernatural element to it, was news to me even after watching episode one, because the murder hadn't occured yet. One would think that it would happen in the opening episode, to crystalize the premise, but what do I know? I was left wondering what this show was going to be about; like, what does the title mean? But it was clear that it was going to the trouble of introducing a sophisticated cast of interesting characters, which is almost always a very good sign. I decided that I would definitely continue watching. There still hadn't been a murder after two episodes, but this show was definitely feeling like a mystery as various clues about how security at the lab functions are fed to us, and we will surely need them in order to figure out how the murder is eventually committed. I didn't feel bored, but I also noticed that I had forgotten a fair amount about episode one, which suggests that the show isn't as engaging as possible. In episode three a bizarre murder is finally revealed, and it seems physically impossible and inexplicable. Based on what we had seen so far, I was confident that there wasn't going to be a supernatural element to this show, but I sort of wondered if there would ever be a plausible explanation either. Perhaps what bugged me is that a second murder is discovered before any significant progress is made towards solving the first. I worried that we viewers weren't going to get a chance to make sense of the various cases, and the solutions would all come in a rush and wouldn't be understandable. I was operating on the assumption that people would get picked off one by one throughout the series, but that didn't turn out to be so. No, our job from this point onward is basically to solve the original murder. Even worse, I mixed up the identities of two important characters, which left me unnecessarily confused about just what was going on. This is, or at least seemed to me, to be one where a lot of thinking is needed to solve the crime; but the way the story is being told seems frustrating enough that you're not willing to invest all that much brainpower into finding the solution. As a result I couldn't really formulate my own theory of who was responsible, which was a slight downer. All I could do is wait until the truth is revealed, but I wouldn't know whether it really made sense or not. At one point I was even tempted to abandon it. In episode six we got something we (or at least I) had been needing, namely a summary of the evidence so far. I didn't get the part about Magata having a twin; were they serious, or were they talking about some sort of dual personality situation? I dunno. I could still do some theorizing, though, which was sort of fun. Maybe Magata really is dead, but her mind has been preserved in some computerized alternate reality that she created. Maybe she killed herself, because she was perfectly happy with this. Maybe her robot did the chopping and rearranging of her body parts. As the show neared a climax, I really didn't know what to expect. The solution to the crime might be clever and fun, or it might be lame and I might have already figured the important parts out. The story so far had been modestly interesting but not good enough that I was confident that the conclusion would be great. It might be no more exciting than the story so far. Perhaps the problem is that the original story didn't have enough content to last for a dozen or so 23-minute episodes, and had to be stretched longer than it's optimal length. I kind of got the feeling that the story was only getting serious around episode ten, as we learn just how large a part virtual reality plays in the case. And, after just 11 episodes, I guess it's over. Episode eleven had a distinctly philosophical tone to it which suggested a conclusion, but I can't be certain because I'll be damned if I know what the moral to the story was or whether this was a happy ending or not. Magata seemed just as inexplicable at the end as at the beginning; was there any justification to her wish to escape? If it was so important, why did she do what she did in this final episode? Throughout episode 11 I was wondering if we were back in virtual reality or if this was the real world. I was sure that we'd get a sci-fi explanation that she felt most free in virtual reality and wanted to somehow transfer her mind there, but I guess not. I have to do a lot of guessing about this show, because not much was made clear at the end. I even had to find my DVD of episode ten and double check to make sure I hadn't missed something there, because this wasn't making much sense. Yet at the end I wasn't angry at this show, or terribly disappointed. Thankfully, my expectations hadn't been all that high, and the part of the show that I was able to understand had been fairly fun to watch, so I won't complain too much. It could have been much better if it had been made easier to follow, but The Perfect Insider (whatever that meant) was an okay show by me. Last updated Monday, January 04 2016. Created Sunday, October 18 2015. | ||||||||
