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[series:4662#628] | ||||||
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(Watch- or Avoid) (All(?) episodes watched): I got a good impression from the first minutes of this clearly Chinese (produced by Bilibili) anime. The plot seems novel and the character designs are of good quality. Yuechu and Zhi find themselves looking for clues regarding how to get out of the building. Various doors and locks--some obvious, some hidden--must be opened. It all seems a harmless battle of wits until at the end of episode one Zhi finds himself at risk of falling victim to a rotary saw blade. Will it really cut him or is it a trick? It's not clear yet if this is all a game or what. But the episode seemed to go relatively quickly, which is usually a good sign, and I am curious. Episode two both clarified some things and left me confused about others. We get an idea of Yu Aiyou's past and how she got the money (but how did her not particularly wealthy father accumulate these riches?) to create this elaborate game. But some sort of possibly supernatural force is at work on Yuechu after he goes home, so I don't know whether this show is based on reality or magic. As a result I still couldn't be certain whether I really wanted to watch it. With as many shows as there are this season, one which remains ambiguous after two episodes is not in a good situation. But I suppose I do want to find out WTF is going on with Yuechu, so I'll probably watch episode three. Yuechu has several weird dreams in which his own bedroom becomes an escape game of a sort. He confronts Yu Aiyou about this but she is coy. We get the impression that she knows something, however. I noticed that the episodes of this show are around 17 minutes long. Weird, inexplicable stuff happens to Yuechu like having a dream of a dangerous escape room escapade, yet a real-word souvenir of it turning up. I wish the pace would accelerate a little; we still have no idea how in the world these things might be happening. In episode six Yuechu meets one of the first customers at X and Y, who has had similar but not identical experiences. He thinks Aiyou is the devil him(or her)self. Is this guy deranged, or is there some truth to his claims? More intriguing than the previous episode, I thought. But I remained frustrated by the lack of progress towards making sense of the weird events. They just happen, to anyone who has visited X and Y, but we get little evidence to help us figure out why. In episode eight a female coworker of Yuechu is apparently abducted, and he assumes that Yu Aiyou must have been responsible. It's hard to believe that she would intentionally do something like that, but maybe she has some sort of unintentional connection to these events. I couldn't help feeling that we really haven't gotten much closer to the solution than we were at the end of episode two. Bad stuff just seems to happen to people who have visited X and Y, but no really intiguing clues have been revealed as to why. It looks like this will be a two-season series. In episode 11 the kidnapped girl is found but not her abductor. Somehow what happened to her closely matches a dream Yuechu had. Yuechu is drawn into a strange escape room at Yu's business, and eventually makes his way out via unconventional (cheating) measures. What was the lesson behind that elaborate room (actually, a group of rooms)? Since he broke out, we never find out. We learn that inspector Peng(?) is still interested in him. I have been getting the feeling that this is a two season show which would have worked better as just one. I had assumed that Yan's friend Qingmeng (IIRC) was a woman, but apparently he's an effeminate man. What do you know? I had also forgotten (assuming it had already been revealed) that Yan has a form of amnesia and can't remember a good deal of his past. That is unusual, and must have been included in the story for a reason, but if it gets so little mention that viewers like me are liable to forget about it, something isn't right. We learn a lot during episode 15, which surprised me since this new information seemed to largely come out of the blue when perhaps it should have been revealed long ago. It turns out that Yan, Hu Zhi, Yu, and even Risheng (an employee of Yu's) went to the same college and were close friends before Yan developed his amnesia. His amnesia seems to be designed to prevent at all costs him from remembering something, which is odd and I'm not sure I can take it seriously. We learn that Yan was partly to blame for the death of Yu's father, and Risheng theorizes that she's trying to punish him. Ok, but how does this explain the abduction of Yan's coworker? I don't see much of a pattern at all to the plot of this show and can't help wondering if it will ever make sense. Episode 16 was so frustrating and disjointed that I quit watching the series for several weeks. When I finally checked to see if there were any new episodes, I was surprised to find that there had been none and apparently episode 16 was the last episode. What had initially made me throw up my hands was the bizarre theory that there is a second Yan roaming about somewhere. Are there literally two of him, or was this a reference to him before his memory loss? It wasn't clear. What is the significance--if any--of strange floral patterns spreading across walls during this episode? And what was with all the weird shit that occured throughout the show? Was there some sort of supernatural explanation? In the end, what was the point of it all? Has Yan's memory been blanked yet again? Was he really the bad guy and has gotten what he deserved? A final episode which just leaves you with unanswered questions isn't really a climax at all. X and Y was a show which seemed to promise an original mystery with an intriguing solution, but never really delivered. Last updated Monday, September 18 2023. Created Friday, April 28 2023. | ||||||||
