The only detail she can remember is her doorbell ringing prior to the attack. Well, that clears things up–up until now, I’d assumed the killer gained access to her house through the drain. “What kind of killer would ring the doorbell?” Yosuke dumbasses, like all murders are instigated by crazed axemen breaking down the door. The group affirms something that was established hours ago–that someone on this side is deliberately throwing people through the TV with the intent of killing them. I get the depressing feeling this isn’t the last time it will be repeated, either. When Yukiko returns a blank look, Yosuke goes, “Oh yeah, we never told you. This guy and me are gonna catch the culprit ourselves!”

…”This guy”? THIS GUY!? Gary fights the urge to push him off the roof. What, he doesn’t even have a name now? Ignoring his hurt and outraged expression, Chie vows to apprehend the dickweed who harmed her beloved Yukiko, and then Yukiko meekly asserts that she wants to help, too. Blah blah teamwork, blah blah friendship, blah blah Fool Social Link Level 2. “She’ll definitely be a strong asset in solving the case…” the IN wagers. Yes, I’m sure the subdued, overly-apologetic girl who can’t remember anything about her own experience will be an invaluable part of the investigation. To be fair, I’m not giving Yukiko enough credit here; she’s actually quite useful in battle, but there’s really no way for the Invisible Narrator to know this. Unless he has prophetic knowledge of the future and is deliberately holding back vital information from Gary, which wouldn’t surprise me.

“Alright! Then let’s work together and catch this asshole!” Yosuke cries, throwing in a wink for good measure. Even this doesn’t inspire the reaction in Gary it once did. Yosuke has really blown it this time, and not in a good way. As Gary silently seethes, she rest of the Investigation Team try to plan their next move. “If we had an idea of who might be targeted next, wouldn’t we have an advantage over the killer?” Yukiko wonders. Christ, these guys are all future gold medallists in the Stating the Obvious Olympics. I can’t take much more of this, and there’s still almost an entire game year to go.

Now, Yosuke plays leader and attempts to work out what ties the three victims together: “First, there was that announcer, Mayumi Yamano. Second was [Taylor Swift] Konishi…Senpai aka my intended beard. Third was Yukiko Amagi. What do they all have in common?” Even though the answer is more obvious than Miles Edgeworth’s sexuality–they’re all female–I still have to go through the charade of selecting the correct option from a list. I should be more het up about this than I am, but I must be so used to having my intelligence insulted by videogames that it just slides off like rain from a wing.

The link between the three victims seems to have somehow evaded Chie until now, because she practically leaps to her feet and screams, “How dare he target females! Now that is unforgivable!” So if he’d exclusively gone after dudes, it would have been OK? Also, I think it’s jumping the gun slightly to automatically assume the killer is a man, but I don’t particularly want to step onto the minefield of gender assumptions and related issues–both because I’m not exactly qualified, and because I’m already worried this recap is going to be a billion pages long.

You’ve been talking so long, they’re probably ice cold.

Now that everyone’s on the same page–and what a blank page it is–Yosuke offers a possible method of identifying any future victims: “There’s another angle we can take, too. If someone else disappears…” “You think they’d be on that Midnight Channel?” Chie gasps. No, they’d be on the Home Shopping Network. I feel like I should probably beat myself around the head with a blunt instrument until I get brain damage; at least then, all this repetitive exposition would actually be of some benefit to me. My recaps would probably flow better, too. To cut a long scene short (too late), the group makes a pact to watch the Midnight Channel the next time it rains. With all that serious talk out of the way, Yosuke reverts to his idiotic self and asks for a bite of Chie’s udon. And no, I’m not going there. The scene now takes a comedic turn, with both Yosuke and Gary snaffling the noodles before the girls can stop them. Chie reacts predictably angrily, while Yukiko mourns the loss of her long-awaited fried tofu. The only way Yosuke can avoid being kicked in the balls yet again is to promise to treat the girls to some fillet steak. Of course, the S word is like catnip to Chie, so as soon as it’s mentioned she forgets Yosuke’s previously unforgivable transgression.

In any sane and just universe, that would be the end of this prolonged conversation and Gary would be teleported back home, ready for bed. Not so fast. The videogame gods, in a despicably cruel and sadistic twist, have decreed that the guys have to take Chie and Yukiko for steak right now. To make matters even worse, once the action picks up at–where else–the Walmart Food Court, the guys are AGAIN discussing the murder investigation. Jesus Christ, can’t you just goof around like regular teenagers once in a while? I’m sure that wouldn’t be quite as excruciating for me to recap…but don’t quote me on that.

“I wonder what kind of person the culprit is?” Chie wonders, somehow managing to ignore the sizzling steak in front of her for ten whole seconds. Yosuke posits that all of the victims so far were connected through Mayumi Yamano, given that she’d been staying at the Amagi Inn and that Taylor found her body. He thinks Misuzu Hiiragi, the wife of the dude Mayumi was knocking off, could be a suspect, but Chie surprises everyone by being the voice of reason: she reminds the others that Misuzu had a solid alibi. “Really? You know an awful lot about this…” Yosuke replies. Not really, since it’s the only fucking story the local news seems to cover. Anyone in Inaba who’s switched on their TV for more than five minutes recently probably knows even more than Chie does.

Someone clearly hasn’t been watching this scene.

Yosuke moves on to Taylor. He asks Gary why the killer would have targeted her, and Gary so doesn’t want to speak to him any more than is absolutely necessary, but decides to give him an answer just to get him off his case. He immediately dismisses the first option, “It was a coincidence”, because he’s genre-savvy and knows NOTHING in an RPG is ever down to coincidence. He can either opine that the perpetrator killed Taylor to shut her up, or fanwank that they somehow knew each other. While it might be fun to see these guys scramble their brains trying to process the second theory, he chooses the former, purely because he thinks it will take up the lesser amount of time. Yosuke agrees with him, and then suggests Taylor may have found a clue relating to the first murder. Yeah, like the fucking body, maybe.

Which brings us on to the matter of…oh my God, it’s Adachi. I’ve never been so happy to see that fucker. He wanders into the Food Court, talking to himself about the countryside being more exciting than he’d expected. Frankly, he could be singing I Am What I Am while wearing a sequined dress and brandishing a dildo-shaped microphone and I wouldn’t care–he’s interrupting the tedious speculation of these amateur detectives, and that’s all I care about right now. In fact, I may be about to join the Tohru Adachi Fanclub. Recognising Gary, Adachi gets all flustered, which is a little weird but I’m going to assume that talking to the nephew of his secret lover is freaking him out. He asks Gary to pass on a message to Nanako: daddy’s actually going to be home on time tonight. It’s kind of tragic that this happens so rarely it requires an advance warning. Also, I think we can safely assume that tonight’s “debriefing” between Adachi and Hot Uncle isn’t going to be anything more substantial than a quick knee-trembler up against the Xerox machine.

Life partner?

“Are you this busy every day?” Yosuke asks him sarcastically. Unfortunately, the sarcasm soars right over Adachi’s head and he doesn’t arrest Yosuke for being a dick. Chie butts in on the riveting verbal exchange by asking for Adachi’s professional opinion–does he think the killer targeted Taylor to silence her? No, she was targeted because of the fashion disaster of an apron she wore at her waitressing job. Amazingly, Chie’s right about something for the second time in as many minutes–Adachi confirms that the police’s current line of thinking is that Taylor saw something important at the crime scene. Apart from the body, that is. We may all now die happy, for we have witnessed true genius at work.

Kinky.

Realizing he’s said too much, Adachi tells the group to forget everything he’s said and then scurries off, worrying about (and perhaps anticipating) the punishment Hot Uncle will subject him to if he finds out he’s been blabbing to a bunch of schoolkids. “You were right, Yosuke…the police are totally useless…” Chie sighs, like she’s suddenly Jessica Fletcher or something. It’s taken these guys this long just to confirm that the murder attempts were deliberate, so the inflated egos seem a little premature. Like any homicide detective worth her salt, she immediately halts discussion when she notices her steak’s getting cold. Gotta love that dedication. “Could you shut up about steak for five seconds?” Yosuke snaps. Gary still isn’t talking to him, but internally agrees.

This exchange leads to a fade out, but once again my relief is short-lived. The Invisible Narrator, rubbing his incorporeal hands in glee, announces, “You waited for the two to finish eating, then decided to go into the TV world…” Yeah, Gary wouldn’t have decided to do anything of the sort after sitting through what felt like several hours of inane chitchat, but thanks for trying to keep up the pretence that the poor guy has any control over his actions at all.

Cut to the lobby of the TV world. For the first time this recap, everyone’s favourite bear makes an appearance. I clearly murdered fluffy animals in a previous life. Teddie tells Yukiko he’s glad she’s feeling better. She’s all, “Oh, right, this creature wasn’t part of some weird fever dream after all,” and admires her surroundings. Yes, this place is just exquisite. I’m particularly fond of the oppressive yellow fog and the crime-scene-chalk-outline floor mural. Since she’s now officially part of the gang, Teddie rummages around in the dark folds of his costume and produces a pair of Hipster Glasses of Clarity +1, which she dons eagerly. I’d be tempted to scrub them with an antiseptic wipe first, but more power to her. Chie chooses this very appropriate time to ask Teddie why he has so many pairs of magical glasses on his person, and his response is fittingly baffling: he makes them himself, supposedly because he got bored after being here alone for so long and wanted to come up with “some ways to be comfortable here.” Why does that last part sound so wrong to me?

Gary doesn’t want to see your collection of ‘toys’.

So, let’s try to get this straight. Teddie, a mysterious being from this pocket dimension who has no knowledge of the outside world, and therefore had probably never even seen a pair of glasses before, was suddenly compelled to make a bunch of them to hand out to visitors he had no way of knowing were ever going to arrive. He also somehow obtained the necessary knowledge and equipment to not only manufacture these glasses, but also to imbue them with the magical anti-fog effect, despite never having witnessed the effects of the fog on human beings until Mayumi Yamano was thrown in here. That’s quite an achievement for someone who doesn’t even have a brain (literally).

Yukiko gets into my bad books next, because she deliberately attempts to prolong this scene by asking Teddie why he isn’t wearing glasses. “My eyes themselves are lenses!” he screeches in response, bringing to mind an army of Teddie clones surreptitiously filming their surroundings with covert retina cameras while the real Teddie sits in front of a wall of monitors, fabric wang in hand. No need to thank me for that mental image.

When the others don’t react all that enthusiastically to Teddie’s enormous black contact lenses, he accuses them of being mean to him. Dude, you have no idea. “I’m a really dexterous bear! See how smoothly my fingers move!” he cries, and then waddles right up into Yosuke’s personal space, hands at crotch level. I can’t look away, as much as I try. “Teddie is delicately moving his fingertips…” the IN helpfully explains. After a few seconds, which feels a hell of a lot longer, Yosuke gets sick of Teddie…tickling his groin? Trying to jerk him off? Hell if I know. He shoves his assailant, who instantly rocks back to his feet, Weeble-style. I’m going to have nightmares about this scene tonight, I can just tell.

In the kerfuffle, Teddie apparently dropped something, which Yukiko picks up without wearing gloves. She certainly has balls. It’s a pair of Hipster Glasses of Clarity +1 that Teddie screwed up on, and she decides to try them on. Surprise–in a much-needed comedic relief moment, they’re actually a pair of comedy glasses, complete with bulbous nose and handlebar moustache. I guess Yukiko didn’t even look at the glasses before she put them on, because she doesn’t seem aware of how ridiculous she looks. Gary compliments her on her choice of ocular wear, because he’s had enough of this shit and can’t be bothered playing nice anymore. Chie, on the other hand, is all, “Bitch, no.” She isn’t about to let her girlfriend out in public looking like that! Yukiko begs her to try them on too, and she complies. This enables us to catch a first glimpse of Yukiko’s newest character trait–her propensity to break out in inappropriate laughing fits. I’m about to do the same, but in my case the laughter is hysterical in nature.