Episode 8 – Your Forma

This week, Your Forma confirms that, until proven otherwise, all fictional French women are evil. Harold’s new partner Raissa being unmasked as the cybercrime department’s leaker doesn’t come as a huge surprise, considering her somewhat suspect actions over the past couple of episodes. Harold entraps her using less-than-ethical means, posting
fake messages on evil 4chan (though has there ever been a “good” 4chan?), mimicking her own actions.

Turns out that Raissa’s message-board missives masquerading as “E” were what led to the attacks on our heroes, and led to the apparent death of Ganache the cat. I say “apparent” death, because up until now, the anime has failed to explain that the cat was, in fact, an Amicus droid all along. Presumably Totoki just conveniently 3D-printed another cat and uploaded its memories from the cloud or something. It’s probably only a matter of time until we get similar Alexa/Siri/Grok-controlled-cats in our own world, faceless megacorporations staring at our sleeping bodies through the ever-watchful glassy eyes of cute, fluffy, digital pet replacements. What a disturbing thought.

Raissa’s motivations are at least vaguely understandable – something to do with her ex-cybercrime-inspector brother and how brain-diving turned his brain to mush. I don’t really understand what his deal is, because it all seems related to the totally unexplained (in the anime) “perception crime incident.” I feel like I keep harping on about the director’s insane
decision to skip adapting Your Forma’s first novel, but considering how every episode has hinged on important plot details from that missing story arc, this adaptation feels more and more ill-considered as it progresses.

Anyway, Raissa’s brother is in some kind of persistent vegetative state, for reasons we anime-only sub-species of viewers don’t deserve to know, though he suddenly, sort-of, gets better as soon as Raissa threatens to gut Harold with a butter knife. Yes, that most terrifyingly dangerous of life-ruining kitchen implements, the bluntest of blunt butter knives, is what miraculously spurs the poor brain-mush man into action. Sigh.

Raissa’s guilt proven beyond reasonable doubt, she’s taken away to wherever cyber-cat murderers are incarcerated, seemingly tying a nice bow around everything. Harold becoming a sinister master manipulator seems to endear him yet further to Echika, who reunites to brain dive with him once more, her abilities returned with the use of another Bigga-produced cartridge. It seems Raissa improved her abilities with a cartridge enough that she could replace Echika, while also being the one who masterminded the decline in Echika’s abilities. If these cartridge things can be used to increase or decrease one’s brain-diving skill like a yo-yo, I’m not entirely sure why there aren’t more “genius hackers” like Echika. Not that Echika acts like much of a genius, though at least this episode she’s kind-of useful.

Inside Raissa’s brother’s brain, Harold and Echika discover the truth behind “E” – it’s really “Tosti,” an AI program designed to profile personalities and copy their actions online… I think. Honestly, this show’s explanations are very poor. Unfortunately, the program’s registered creator “Allan Jack Lascelles” doesn’t seem to exist, this mystery presumably
acting as the starting point for the next arc that will probably run until the season’s end. This is an interesting hook, or at least it would be in a better, more competently-made show.

With Bigga’s asshole dad fully rejecting her with the heartless words “You’re no longer welcome in my home” and Harold’s admission to Echika that “Realizing you’re my friend was the sole merit of this case” leaves the show’s main relationships on good resolution points. In a perfect world, this episode, which was better than the average Your Forma installment, would have been the end of the first season, with the first book comprising the first four or five episodes. Instead, we presumably move on to an adaptation of book four. It had better be spectacular to make up for the narrative mess that precedes it.

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Your Forma is currently streaming on Samsung TV+ in the U.S., YouTube, and other services worldwide on Wednesdays.

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.