© Petit Depotto/Project D.Q.O.

Given how up front Gnosia has been about challenging and subverting traditional expectations surrounding gender and sexuality, Yuri suddenly beginning a loop with a brand new set of boobs and (presumably?) other novel bits and bobs that they didn’t have before is one of the least shocking developments that has occurred on this show. I understand that the original game takes advantage of the player character’s inherently ambiguous identity by leaving Yuri’s physical characteristics completely up to individuals’ imaginations. That is obviously not possible in a television show, and I have to admit that just tossing Yuri into a new body with a new voice (but the same inner monologue) is a creative way to keep the spirit of the game intact. Shout out to the localization team for making the very funny choice to have Yuri use California Valleyspeak to differentiate between the Japanese dialogue’s use of masculine and feminine pronouns. There’s just something about the thought of Yuri chirping, “Like, yeah, totally!” and batting those big anime-girl eyelashes that I find exceptionally hilarious (and adorable).

As the episode began, my only confusion about all this mostly had to do with why the change even needed to occur, beyond simply throwing a bone to the players who always imagined that their Gnosia avatar was stacked with a more curvaceous figure. I had been under the impression that the whole point of Yuri’s androgyny and the use of non-binary pronouns was, in part at least, to preserve the open-ended nature of their interactions with the crew of the D.Q.O. When I realized that the episode was picking back up with the focus on Sha-Ming, Yuri’s new look made a lot more sense. The Silver Key needs to keep gathering all of that data by observing Yuri’s continuing adventures, after all, and we previously learned that Sha-Ming has that whole “skeezy womanizer” persona that he uses to fend off the likes of Setsu and the other members of the crew who don’t play into typical gender norms. So, Yuri’s alien overlord simply tweaked a few sliders on the character creator and made a version of Yuri that could pass the proverbial (but also very literal) skill check and advance to the next options on Sha-Ming’s dialogue tree.

It’s an interesting route for Gnosia to take, and it gives the show more opportunities to use characters like Racio to comment on all of the different ways a universe filled with different alien cultures could shatter the old gender binary into a million little pieces. To be honest, I’m still not sure what Gnosia is trying to say, exactly, when it uses Racio, Setsu, and others to act as representatives of non-gendered and non-sexual identities, but I’m fine living in that ambiguity and just letting the show take advantage of its science-fiction setting to give its audience a new way of looking at people and the relationships they have with each other and their own bodies.

The only major criticism I have with Gnosia’s storytelling approach this week is that it is trying to cram a whole lot into just one episode. It ends up working more on an intellectual level. For instance, in addition to everything going on with Yuri, Racio, and Sha-Ming, we also have a sub-plot involving the mysterious nature of Jonas and Kukrushka’s roles on the D.Q.O., and then the whole ship gets attacked by Comet’s slime mold when it separates from her body and goes rogue. On top of all that, the episode then tries to speed-run an intimate, almost romantic connection between Boobs!Yuri and Sha-Ming, which feels very rushed indeed, seeing as the guy has only ever been a character for, what, a couple of episodes?

To be clear, I liked “Citizen Slime,” but it very much felt like an abridged summary of a visual-novel route that probably plays a whole lot better with more time to pace itself properly. I’m the kind of sap that would honestly kill for more cheesy romance to break up Gnosia’s usual pattern of tension and mystery (the nonsense with Shigemichi and Stella was funny, but c’mon, it doesn’t really count). With how Yuri’s misadventures have gone so far, I don’t expect them to find a love that will last any time soon, but I’m not foolish enough to act like anything is certain at this point. Lord knows that the show has proven that it is nothing if not full of surprises.

**Episode Rating: **

• Gnosia is currently streaming on Crunchyroll. *

*James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast. *