Deep Insanity The Lost Child

Deep Insanity well and truly earned its place as the anime I was most disappointed by after feeling somewhat excited for it prior to the season beginning. I blame a solidly intriguing promotional video that is absolutely nothing like what you will get in any episode of the show.

But I’ll save the full rant for when I’m reviewing the whole anime. For now I’m supposed to be talking about the train-wreck that makes up the final two episodes of Deep Insanity only I’m going to struggle with this. Largely because with Shigure now in the time loop because of the magic and unexplained gizmo a lot of episode 11 is a repeat of what we’ve seen before and it wasn’t that interesting to begin with. When they do change the script it is only to throw in some baffling revelations before the whole anime ends in a monster fight and I genuinely have no clue how that resolves anything.

Deep Insanity: The Lost Child remains ridiculous to the end.

Because I am almost certain no one is going to watch this anime after the season has finished airing I am going to throw a number of spoilers in here so be warned.

You know that weird disease they mentioned way back at the start of episode 1 and how some guy exploring the Abyss turned into a monster and all of those other intriguing things that were happening back when there was still hope for this series? Yeah, turns out none of the writers of Deep Insanity remembered any of that either and so they just didn’t address it. Not a single mention of it in the entire final episode and no explanation. So if you held on for twelve episodes hoping somehow it would all make sense you have tragically wasted your time.

Also, the revelations we do get in the final two episodes here don’t explain any of the real questions. For instance why could Vera go back in time. Sure, she had the mystic what-sit thing that she gave to Shigure but what is it and why did it allow her to turn back time? And where did it come from?

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More importantly, we learn that Vera is actually El-Cee so her whole plan has been to kill herself but even if she’s in a time loop how does that explain her being a child and an adult in the same time line? I get why Vera couldn’t kill El-Cee but none of the rest of it makes any sense.

And after Shigure does his whole hero thing, where is El-Cee?

Seriously, about the only part of these final two episodes for Deep Insanity that you can really kind of get behind is Shigure gives himself a new hair-cut. Yep, its the standard I’m now resolved so I need to cut my hair trope only I’m not sure how he managed to cut it like that by himself or why you would bother when you are in a time loop and in all likely-hood your locks are just going to revert to the way they were on failure. Still, he looks better.

The overall motive of the villains, other than destruction and ending the world, is also not really explained or explored and in fairness I couldn’t care less anyway. Deep Insanity has proven it has no interest in its own premise and stuff is just going to happen so let stuff happen and let it end.

With that the final two episodes of Deep Insanity end with the not-so-tragic death of a character we never really began to care about because he is the single most forgettable entity anime has every thrown force as a protagonist. You can read the full review here.

Images from: Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. Dir. S. Oonuma. Silver Link. 2021

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Karandi James

Deep Insanity seemed to change its mind about having one chance to assassinate El-Cee. Or maybe it didn’t and they’ve now just clarified. Apparently Vera’s information gave them three opportunities to assassinate the girl. Too bad it didn’t tell her that Shigure was going to be hanging out with her in asylum before the mission even began because that could have saved them a lot of trouble. Assuming of course that Shigure could ever pull the trigger.

And that’s what really makes me wonder about the entire plot of Deep Insanity. We now know the Commander has tried again and again, with three chances in each time line, to kill El-Cee and yet apparently this many repetitions in and she’s still allowing Leslie to be killed on a failed mission and she’s still entrusting the actual sniping to Shigure even though it is clear that even when he has a shot he’s not going to take it.

I’m really failing to see Vera’s logic on this one.

Just a heads up, in case anyone cares, there are spoilers below.

Deep Insanity has bigger issues than plot holes.

Then again, it probably doesn’t matter whether Vera’s plans and motives make sense or not at this point. These two episodes of Deep Insanity were deeply boring and even with potential assassinations, magic gizmos, betrayals and conspiracies, we spend a large part of one of these episodes with the three stooges (Shigure’s platoon mates) planning a BBQ (another one) and blocking their commander from assigning anything that would get in the way of meat and fireworks.

It’s all just so inane and even though Shigure uses the cover of buying ingredients for the BBQ to sneak back into Asylum, again, nothing particularly interesting happens.

And then, weirdly in episode 10, Shigure is actually given a consequence for illegally sneaking into Asylum, something that all of the characters seem to do regularly. Deep Insanity finally removes him from his platoon which of course means the rest of the platoon members now need to take him for a drinking party…

Wait, is Deep Insanity’s entire plot just an excuse to watch boring characters eat and drink?

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Anyway, when Shigure steps out of the bar for air he hears gunshots and rather than alert his team mates, or anyone, he runs unarmed toward the sound and finds a wounded man who essentially tells him to warn his commander.

By the end of the episode the commander has led the last of the team down into Asylum and gotten them all killed or severely injured and Shigure turns up just in time for the whole thing to be too late and then gets shot through. Then he wakes up. I’m assuming the implication is he’s now gone back in time though why and how I guess is due to the magic gizmo his commander gave him earlier though there’s no clarity on this and more to the point, I was kind of happier that these characters were all done with because they really are just dull.

So there are two episodes left and I still don’t know who is plotting what or why and I’m not even sure what El-Cee is other than a great plot device. None of their missions have made any sense and the entire set-up with the exploration of Asylum because of some disease spreading around seems to have been utterly abandoned. Deep Insanity is probably an apt title. I really should have dropped this one much earlier in the season and yet now I’m kind of committed to seeing it through to the end.

You can read the full review here.

Images from: Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. Dir. S. Oonuma. Silver Link. 2021

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Karandi James

Deep Insanity decided to address my chief complaint of episode 7 where I pointed out there had been no consequences for Vera’s failure despite the dire threats prior to the mission beginning. Problem is, the only real consequence were the toothless people sitting at the table making noise and the occasional threat but it signified nothing. Even Vera didn’t seem to take anything they said as meaningful and then she just went on doing what she planned to do anyway.

It all kind of makes everything happening feel meaningless. Couple that with the lacking explanations for anything and fairly poor world building and Deep Insanity has some fundamental problems that it just can’t overcome in the time left to it.

And having one character ask another if they know what the death of El-Cee would mean is just frustrating because, let’s be honest, nobody knows and even if you give us an explanation it won’t feel authentic at this point. It won’t be built on anything. You could tell me her death would lead to the end of the world and I’d probably just shrug at this point.

Deep Insanity – Watching the Rest Of This Anime And Expecting It To Maybe Get Better

Anyway, Deep Insanity again has Shigure trying to dig up some info on the XO and so he talks to the woman at the bar he met exactly once and also helps his teammates go through some old pictures. By weird coincidence, the seemingly pointless string of numbers Leslie left Shigure refer to a photo, that Shigure had never seen, and direct him to the place where this episode’s assassination attempt will happen.

I don’t mean to throw rocks at dead characters but why would you give the one person on the team who wasn’t in the photo and didn’t know the location that clue as to where to go? That seems like a severely flawed plan.

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Meanwhile, El-Cee is being taken by her guards through the Asylum to be handed over to someone for some reason and the now one-armed guy who killed Leslie is in pursuit and Vera is also going to lead her team down to intercept. I’d say Deep Insanity was heading toward an exciting three way conflict but the whole thing is just messy and again, we don’t have a clue what significance any of this has or for what purpose one group are protecting El-Cee, another want to kidnap her and the third want her dead.

Those key details missing make it difficult to care.

Also, I’m still not understanding the white haired guy accompanying El-Cee. He’s got a really obnoxious way of speaking and doesn’t seem particularly useful and yet there he is plodding along and making weird pronouncements. I’m actually surprised the people with him didn’t shoot him just to be rid of him because literally he just seems to be there to fill some screen time and have a character who doesn’t talk in monotone.

Glasses guy serves a much better purpose being the one leading El-Cee’s defence. Though again deep Insanity doesn’t give us really anything to connect with him. He’s just good at his job and working to protect El-Cee from threats that exist… because?

Honestly, if I wasn’t this far along, I’d probably drop Deep Insanity. It has well and truly proven it isn’t going to flesh out this world, the characters are poorly constructed, and the plot might come together but it would be too little too late. It just isn’t enjoyable to watch except that much like an unfolding disaster there’s something about it that prevents you from looking away.

I’ll hope that by the end of the season I at least know what El-Cee’s purpose is other than being a MacGuffin.

You can read the full review here.

Images from: Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. Dir. S. Oonuma. Silver Link. 2021

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Karandi James

Deep Insanity episode 6 did in fact see the death of the only character with any personality in the entire show. I’d wondered if the fact that he ‘fell’ to his death meant they were going for a fake out but nope, we have a coffin and the collection of his personal items. The XO is dead and with it any small amount of personality or interest that may have existed in this cast.

That would be frustrating enough except that Vera was warned of consequences for failing the mission including having her platoon disbanded and as far as I can see, other than the death of a team-member, absolutely no consequences have been applied to anyone. Instead almost as soon as they are done packing up the XO’s belongings the team simply return to the Asylum and realise the guy who killed Leslie is still hanging around and has taken a whole pile of party guests hostage.

Why?

Something about finding the god child but given none of them know where she is mostly he seems to just be standing around waving a gun with the one arm he has left (oh yeah, because you can totally function as normal after having your arm shot off without seeking serious medical attention) until our team of bland characters show up to fight him (also for reasons unknown).

In case it isn’t clear, Deep Insanity is just not very interesting.

From the practical side of things, Deep Insanity initially sets up an episode that seems like it is actually going to look at grief as the younger cast members are genuinely stilled by Leslie’s death. However all too soon the plot whips away from that and has Vera telling Shigure that the assassination plot is still on and he’ll be given a new time to carry it out later.

Why she thinks he’ll actually pull the trigger this time when he couldn’t last time is seriously questionable.

For a brief moment Shigure actually asks some decent questions but all too soon simply decides to passively ‘think about it’ and then they all go on the mission that I’m still wondering how they even knew about.

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Why were they sent back to that village? Why did the other guy stay there when it was clear the god child was no longer there? And why do the monsters just kind of suck? Also, why are they carrying guns and weapons that don’t effect the monsters? And why do bullets not work but swords and scythes apparently cut through the monster flesh like scissors through paper?

Oh Deep Insanity, if just one thing about you was interesting or made sense.

On that note, I’ve mentioned before that characters shouldn’t review their own shows. Equally though, characters shouldn’t say something that is obviously completely rubbish. One-armed guy tells Shigure that he could see why Leslie was interested in him because he’s interesting.

Has he met Shigure? The guy is the single most boring character to ever exist and he hasn’t gotten any more interesting over the past seven episodes. He’s still just kind of there and wandering through the plot like a sleep-walker. Even his decision to continue with the assassination plot (even though he so isn’t cut out to be an assassin) is simply to not let Leslie’s death be in vain. Only when he inevitably fails and more people die, won’t that be worse?

Anyway, Deep Insanity remains deeply flawed and has really failed to do anything interesting with its premise or setting. Again, the whole disease thing seems to have vanished from the plot’s radar, the fact that this base is meant to be in Antarctica is more or less meaningless, and inside the Asylum is so generic as to be completely forgettable.

Basically, it really doesn’t matter what this anime does with its final 5 episodes. There’s pretty much no salvaging this anime.

You can read the full review here.

Images from: Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. Dir. S. Oonuma. Silver Link. 2021

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Karandi James

What to say about Deep Insanity episode 6?

Hmm…

A simple recap would go along the lines of leaders give Vera the go-ahead with her ‘plan’ which is more or less just shoot El-Cee during a party (not exactly the conspiracy of the century) using an assassin who is never (and I do mean never) actually going to pull the trigger. So the whole thing is doomed to failure even before outside interference comes in to play.

The team infiltrate the party (a party inside asylum mind you) dressed as maids with Daniel in some building somewhere set up to snipe El-Cee as soon as she comes to a window. Interestingly enough, before the infiltration she was outside the building on a swing. Prior to that Daniel and Larry ran into her just walking around. Pretty sure this party is the most difficult time ever to actually access El-Cee so naturally that makes it the perfect time to actually try and kill her.

Plenty of people at the party mention she’s the God-Child. I guess even the writers of Deep Insanity understand that no one knows what is going on or why and if they just keep telling us El-Cee is special they can at least justify the plot progressing even if their words don’t actually make it any clearer what El-Cee is or why she’s important.

Deep Insanity seems like it wants us to take this plot seriously but you just can’t.

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Then the guy who tried to kill Daniel and was beaten up by his boss for failing last episode shows up and has a tussle with Leslie before Daniel, set up to snipe someone else, shoots his arm off.

This naturally results in mission failure and the team run, pursued by a robotic thing.

And for a closing act, Deep Insanity decides to resolve this whole situation by most-likely killing the only character in this anime who actually has any kind of personality or is enjoyable to see on screen. Good move. Will make future episodes really entertaining. I do say most-likely killing largely because any character who dies by falling, when you don’t see the impact, is always suspicious. Poor writers have a tendency to later on ret-con a last minute save to bring them back even if it makes no sense what-so-ever to do so.

I’d be somewhat more concerned about this whole mission failure thing except that Deep Insanity never explained why it was important in the first place. The only immediate penalty the story has indicated is that Vera will lose her platoon (though whether they’ll all be killed, fired, or reassigned wasn’t really indicated) and I’m not really caring all that much about that outcome.

I don’t get Asylum and the exiles. Initially the thought that there were people in Asylum was kind of intriguing wondering how they survived in that wilderness full of monsters but now we see they just have villages and parties and it is more or less just like the surface only somewhat more medieval in clothing choices and weaponry. It makes it distinctly less interesting.

There’s also the added annoyance of Larry this week. For all his indifference to everything which was apparently medically caused, this week for whatever reason he acted scared and hesitant enough that even his co-worker called him on it. This kind of character inconsistency just seemed unnecessary right at this point in time and it isn’t as though it added anything to the episode other than making me wonder why we spent so many weeks meeting the team if they are just going to change personalities on a whim.

Basically Deep Insanity continues its trend of being pretty inept and not that much fun. Oh well.

You can read the full review here.

Images from: Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. Dir. S. Oonuma. Silver Link. 2021

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Karandi James

I watch a lot of rubbish television and movies, by choice. I’m pretty happy to sit through lame sci-fi, much like bad horror or action movies provided they keep me interested. Deep Insanity: The Lost Child isn’t keeping me interested and with episode 5 I was actively having to remind myself to pay attention I was that bored.

It isn’t any one particular issue but rather the fact that five episodes in I still have zero reason to care about any of these characters, still no nothing more about the setting, am not invested in the conspiracy and secret plan going on in the background (which two characters discuss opening in a communal space this week so I don’t think even they care that it is supposed to be super secret), and basically everyone in this show just feels like they don’t know what their role is either so they all come across as just kind of bland.

Deep Insanity: Underwhelming for 5 straight episodes.

I’d say I was going to call it after this episode and just drop Deep Insanity off my watch list except for one thing. And that is we’ve now had one episode with Daniel getting closer to or learning more about (what little shallow points there are to learn) another member of his team. He’s now done this will all the members of his team that he interacts with so maybe, just maybe episode 6 will finally do something worth watching.

Of course, if it doesn’t I’m pretty sure this one is coming off my watch list without any regrets.

This episode of Deep Insanity starts off with bad guy in suit getting into the glasses wearing bad guy in a suit’s face because of his failure to kill Daniel last week. And in the unsubtle way this show works, to demonstrate this guy is bad news he beats the crap out of his subordinate and his subordinate thanks him for it.

What follows is an uninspired and uninteresting walk through realising that Daniel is struggling to communicate with Kobato and so the rest of his team decide the best way to fix this is a BBQ.

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You know, I love that the people hired to investigate (or whatever it is they are doing in asylum) the world’s greatest mystery that might in fact be releasing a disease that could wipe out humanity, are all such clear and rational thinkers and come up with awesome plans like this. (Heavy eye-roll.)

So Deep Insanity sends Daniel and Kobato shopping together to get ingredients which leads to a chance (?) encounter with the weird little girl from last week who sends her ineffectual evil bunny rabbits to harass the pair.

Seriously, there’s nothing funnier than watching too supposedly trained soldiers flee from a pair of blue bunnies.

Anyway Daniel and Kobato work together and overcome the menacing rabbits and then for whatever reason a weird blue smokey thing appears. At this point I just didn’t care. They run away, have a small heart to heart, go back and beat up the blue thing. Then we get the group BBQ and everyone is all happy because they’ve come to a better understanding of one another.

Meanwhile anything resembling plot is on hold unless you count the Commander lady confirming that it will happen in two weeks.

I could be fine with Deep Insanity diverting from this whole conspiracy plot for some character development focus is only it was in any way interesting. But it really isn’t. None of these characters, even on closer inspection, are more than one or two descriptors on a page and they aren’t interesting. Their interactions never seem authentic. What little conflict we are getting through the random bunny attack here feels superfluous and fairly pointless.

All and all, Deep Insanity has thoroughly unimpressed me across 5 episodes. It gets one more and then it may be time to say good-night.

You can read the full review here.

Images from: Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. Dir. S. Oonuma. Silver Link. 2021

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Karandi James

I was curious what other viewers thought of Deep Insanity: The Lost Child and so went looking for some posts about it on a variety of forums. The end result is that it isn’t being particularly well covered with a number of first episode impressions and then it just kind of goes quiet. Which more or less matches what I thought given I was trying to think which blogs I followed were covering this anime during the Fall 2021 season and I was coming up with very few options.

Now not having a lot of reviews doesn’t necessarily make for a bad anime. Some of my favourite anime were very sparsely covered for a variety of reasons. But in the case of Deep Insanity, which had quite a bit of buzz pre-season (or at least a number of reviewers were curious about it), it really seems like after people got a taste of these characters they decided it didn’t matter what the truth was about Randolph Syndrome or the random Asylum region that appeared in Antarctica.

And if I’m being really honest, now that I’ve finished episode 4, I’m feeling pretty indifferent to this series.

Deep Insanity: The Lost Child isn’t even bad, it’s just bland.

Episode three introduced us to the idea of Exiles or people who apparently live in the Asylum. You know the place filled with monsters and apparently the source of a disease that can potentially turn people into monsters. And we met the cute El-Cee who starred as damsel in distress in order to allow our dull protagonist Daniel to play hero saving both her life and Larry from his own recklessness.

But there was the twist at the end of the episode that I’ll now spoil in order to discuss episode 4 properly. You’ve been warned.

Yep, El-Cee is the target that Daniel was tasked with assassinating.

And episode 4 picks up right from this point with Daniel being told he can’t hesitate but needs to follow his orders.

Of course, not in this episode. We’ve got a month to kind of kick around first. Really have to give people time to uncover this conspiracy and try to stop it. Oh wait, that happened almost in real time and almost before Daniel has decided to actually carry out the mission someone is trying to kill him.

Deep Insanity seems to be under the mistaken idea that just leaving out huge chunks of explanation and leaving the audience in the dark makes for an intriguing viewing experience and will build some kind of anticipation and suspense. While it might be true that delaying an explanation or leaving out a key piece of intel might succeed at this, and delaying gratification can have a good payoff, you can’t leave out everything and expect us to just ride along with dull characters and wait for the exposition to drop.

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The characters do continue to kill Deep Insanity: The Lost Child as a viewing experience. We’ve had an episode where Daniel gets to know a bit about Sumire, which has added nothing to any scene she appears in and it doesn’t even look like Daniel has interacted with her since. Last week was a focus on Larry but again its added nothing to his few lines in this episode.

Part of this episode has Daniel asking the others about Leslie, the XO of the group, and doing some basic searches on his history but by the end other than a few random factoids we’ve really learned nothing about what is driving Leslie’s character. And while Leslie might be the most dynamic and interesting character in the cast, that isn’t saying much when everyone else could be replaced b a plank of wood with a name written on it.

So El-Cee is being targeted by some faction that Vera and Leslie are clearly a part of and they are going to use Daniel, the new kid, as their patsy to carry out their plans to avoid problems if it all goes south. That much makes sense even if the reason why this is needed at all is still incredibly vague.

How any of this is connected to Randolph Syndrome is completely unknown and Deep Insanity doesn’t seem ready to try to answer that question.

Why the girl with the rabbits and the guy with the interesting hair-cut who eats nutrient supplements in a manner clearly not as directed on the label want to interfere with this plan is unknown other than they talk about a ‘star child’. How they get into the facility, recruit cultists from within the Asylum and get them into the base, and manage to orchestrate an attack on Leslie and Daniel is anyone’s guess.

More, why?

If you were just going to shoot Daniel why bother getting the cultists there? It seems less efficient and more likely to fail than just walking up to him in the bar and stabbing him.

Of course none of this answers the overwhelming world building question of just what are these companies doing in their exploration of Asylum and what do they actually hope to get out of it? Because we’ve watched the team go down, fight some random things, and come back a couple of times now and I still don’t get what the point of this facility is or why they keep going down there. They don’t seem to collect samples or do anything useful.

Anyway, all of this adds up to Deep Insanity being deeply unimpressive and while there’s still potential in the overall plot, even if it manages to answer some of the questions and fill in some of its world-building, the characters are going to need to really pull it together to make viewers actually care and so far they are coming up short.

You can read the full review here.

Images from: Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. Dir. S. Oonuma. Silver Link. 2021

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Karandi James

Deep Insanity: The Lost Child continues to put out puzzle pieces in this episode but has yet to offer any kind of satisfaction in terms of resolution or information for the viewers. Sure delaying revelations and building mystery can be fun but I’d like to know that this had a clear direction and then I’d be content to wait. Instead we kind of bounce between potential main plots and it really isn’t clear what is important and what’s just background noise.

Deep Insanity has so many potential plot points and yet seems content to develop nothing.

After being a little disappointed that the disease discussed in episode one seemed to cease to be a problem in episode 2, episode 3 starts us with a talk by some big-shot discussing how Randolph Syndrome might be the start of a mass-extinction event but that could be an opportunity for a revolution for humanity. Whenever guys in suits start preaching about revolutions or evolving humanity it’s always a sure sign that things are going to go very badly.

Honestly, I was kind of getting Gendo vibes from Evangelion, only clearly this guy is a little better at playing an audience which potentially makes him more dangerous. Let’s be honest, Gendo probably would have been more successful if he hadn’t had to fight internal battles continuously because everyone hated him.

Though, we still don’t know what this guy is actually up to or what his plan really is. He’s just one more moving piece in this story and after a few scant minutes we move on and he’s not seen again this episode.

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Instead we join Larry, Daniel and the rest of the team as they decide to go shopping in Cliff Town. Fortunately we’re spared a montage shopping trip as the gang all split up except Daniel and Larry and Larry swiftly leads Daniel into another plot that might not end up going anywhere but it was definitely more entertaining than watching characters shop.

Can I just point out though, that at least half of Daniel’s dialogue seems to be made up of repeating the last thing that was said to him and making it a question.

Larry: “Do you want to come to Cliff Town?”

Daniel: “Cliff town?”

If you’ve watched the last two episodes of Deep Insanity you already know that Daniel is an incredibly bland protagonist. He could take on every isekai and blank-slate harem lead for least interesting character ever and probably win that match up (which given he’s not operating in either of those genres just makes him real special).

Anyway, Larry and Daniel use an illegal entrance into Asylum (because sure, a heavily regulated space will just have a back entrance – and I just wrote Abyss instead of Asylum and had to fix it but seriously the setting is definitely giving me Made in Abyss vibes and I just keep wishing I was watching that because it was much better) and end up in a forest complete with cute anime girl exile El-Cee.

Naturally, Daniel ends up saving her.

Can I point out how random it is that this girl who lives in Asylum (so clearly has managed to survive this super dangerous place up to this point) suddenly has a life-threatening encounter and needs to be saved by our protagonist who as far as I can tell is pretty useless?

It just makes you question the validity of the statement that she’s living there, though Deep Insanity doesn’t really seem bothered by small details such as how has she survived up until now if one monster is enough to end her life.

While we’re on the negatives though, let’s point out that the monsters in this anime aren’t getting any better. The design, the animation, everything about them is ugly to look at and it makes watching the characters fight them just visually yuck.

However, I’ll be fair and also point out that this episode did have some decent interactions between Daniel and Larry. While they are both still pretty lame characters, I feel we actually did get a bit more insight into them throughout the episode.

Anyway, the episode ends with us returning to the question left at the end of the last episode and that is whether Daniel would take on his commanders super secret mission. Which leads to a terribly coincidental reveal which largely just makes the events of this episode seem even more contrived.

It did however succeed at making me a little curious so points for that to Deep Insanity.

You can read the full review here.

Images from: Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. Dir. S. Oonuma. Silver Link. 2021

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Karandi James

Even my significantly lowered expectations couldn’t make me like episode 2 of Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. While episode one felt a bit lost and like it was trying to just kind of move us to the point where Daniel was embedded in his team even if that came at the expense of atmosphere or world building, episode 2 just feels like it hasn’t got a clue what kind of story this actually wants to be. Or it does but it is just too inept to tell it.

What is Deep Insanity actually trying to be?

With the Randolph Syndrome mentioned once but otherwise completely unrelated to the episode and so the notion of a creeping illness more or less side-lined, episode 2 of Deep Insanity has Daniel stuff up a mission (more likely due to the fact that still no-one has provided anything resembling training) and then because his team’s Sanity Anchor blows her stack at him and asks him what he is good for he spends most of the episode wandering around asking other people what they are good for and poking at old wounds.

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In a story where the characters had been better established or the protagonist had any character outside of being a cardboard cut-out that kind of walks along and occasionally mumbles sorry perhaps this could have been an interesting character driven episode where we learned more insights about the team of heroes we were following.

Deep Insanity is not that story.

Instead we get wooden dialogue and unnatural exchanges leading up to the heavy handed discovery that the Sanity Anchor is bitter because she couldn’t become a Sleeper and so naturally is taking out her frustrations on the new kid. Turns out she decided to be a Sleeper after her Idol career was critically derailed and becoming a Sleeper was another chance for her to grab some fame except she didn’t qualify for the role due to incompatibility or some such nonsense that is also yet to be explained.

And yes, I do get they told us Daniel, our dull-as-dishwater main character was able to enter Asylum because he was compatible but what that means and what makes him compatible, as well as what happens if you enter Asylum when you aren’t, is all kind of vague.

Naturally, the episode of Deep Insanity takes us full circle and the team go back to the same spot to fight the monster from the start of the episode and this time Daniel doesn’t stuff it up. That counts as character growth, right? I mean, he didn’t actually train or learn anything more about the mission but somehow he is now working out as part of the team and it is all good.

Just in case that wasn’t ridiculous enough to make your eyes roll right out of your head, Daniel is then summoned to the leader of their team who so far has simply sat and glowered at things and she asks him to take on a mission that will give him a chance to be a hero. It’s all ‘dum, dum, dum…’ and episode end.

Sorry, Deep Insanity is one of those monumentally stupid stories that seems to think it is somehow deeper than it is and so far I’ve more or less tried to ignore the stupidity to pick out what little world building or characterisation they’ve given us but it is paper thin and held together only because the story doesn’t dare look at any one point long enough for people to realise how threadbare this plot is so far. Sure they might go back and build on some of these points and fill in the gaps but that won’t change how lame the characters have been or how disjointed these first two episodes have felt.

I’m still curious about where Deep Insanity intends to go and I’d like it to get better, but I’ll probably only give it another couple of episodes and if I’m still finding it this ridiculous I’ll probably move on.

You can read the full review here.

Images from: Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. Dir. S. Oonuma. Silver Link. 2021

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Karandi James