In episode 7, The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window got all the psychics, plus Erika’s yakuza bodyguard, together to… Well not really sure what their end goal is other than Erika wants out of the society, Mikado wants to unravel the mystery that is Hiyakawa’s personality, and Keita’s there because Mikado asked him to be?
Motives aside, we have a gathering of characters who are combining their psychic powers plus phone technology to infiltrate the mysterious sensei’s house. Turns out it is built on top of the old research society building that Hiyakawa was raised in.
Again, it is a little unclear exactly what they are seeking (Sensei’s weakness is a little vague) and they more or less leave before accomplishing much of anything, but it did make me think how much better we could make this story if we kicked it off right now with the five of them working with the detective to solve crimes rather than whatever the actual plot-line currently is.
Yep, I’m rewriting the plot for The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window
It is usually a bad sign when I start rewriting plots while watching the story for the first time. Largely because it means that I’ve lost interest in the plot being presented. It is weird though, because The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window does continue to have elements that I am strongly interested in and I’d love to see these characters interacting against a most interesting plot.
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Actually, I still haven’t quite figured out what Keita was doing while the others were breaking in. They did throw in some dialogue explainers about him being the safety net and being able to pull Mikado and Hiyakawa back to their bodies if something went wrong but it mostly seemed like you could have removed him from the caper without noticeably having any different outcome.
Meanwhile, Mikado and Hiyakawa do some random spiritual stuff inside the Sensei’s house before they kind of flee at the sight of a creepy black ghost thing. Why it was more dangerous and why they didn’t continue really isn’t explained so the whole affair ends with us learning little or nothing.
However, while the characters seems to be spinning their wheels, the audience then gets to spend the last part of the episode watching the society’s Sensei as he completes a job killing a would-be politician.
Here’s the thing though: Sensei works as an unknown. The creepy behind the scenes guy doing evil things from the shadows. As a character, he comes across more unstable and kind of ditzy than intimidating and by the end of this episode of The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window I didn’t really have much awe for this character, or really anything else other than hoping Erika or Mikado really sticks it to him before the end.
Definitely a case where less would be more.
Not to mention, the research society itself still has no clear goal or aim that the audience has been let in on. Sure, shady religious societies pop up a lot in supernatural stories and we don’t expect the most stable of motives or goals, but in this case there’s been no insight at all into what they are trying to accomplish (even if it is crazy).
Basically The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window hasn’t established why anything going on in this episode matters. If the society had some plot to overthrow the government or something and taking down sensei was the key to stopping it at least that would be something. Or maybe they are going to unleash some ancient evil force upon the world to cleanse the wicked? Something that at least gave us a reason to care about them at all from a plot point of view.
And Erika reiterates she can’t just leave but they haven’t established why not. Okay, maybe some curse will active or something. It’s all a bit nebulous.
Anyway, this week kind of marks the point where my interest in The Night Beyond The Tricornered Window waned a bit, largely because I kind of hoped we’d get more from these characters now that they’d all banded together and instead it was perhaps the weakest episode yet.
You can read the full season review here.
Images from: The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window. Dir. D Iwanaga. Zero-G. 2021.
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Karandi James
I agree, this wasn’t the best episode by far. Though I’m hoping that this is just a set up for something really big happening in an episode coming soon.
It would be good if this leads somewhere. I definitely wanted more from this episode since all the characters were finally together.