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[Review] Ingress Season 1 Episode 4 "Separate – Together – Pursue" is a Buddy Cop Comedy

Published Wed, 01 May 2019 10:35:20 -0500

Niantic's Ingress is a Video Game-Anime Fusion That Works — credit// Netflix

In a complete 180 from the previous episode, Ingress Episode 4 "Separate – Together – Pursue" starts off with a fight and moves to a chase scene, but this time our heroes are the ones in pursuit. It's also the makings of a great deadpan buddy cop comedy.

The episode manages to get the show completely off the rails, as there's little exposition left to do. From here, the show's narrative can fully take off without stoping to explain anything else about XM or portals. And indeed, it doesn't. There are no moments of rehashing knowledge. Once a thing has been learned in Ingress, the show expects the audience to remember from then on. It's the kind of Western writing that's often missing from anime, which tend to hound the same points over and over for emphasis and to remind the viewer, often assumed to be children, of things established several episodes back. Because Ingress has a more mature audience in mind, the show can dispense with that. And it leaves us with a very tight, intelligent narrative.

[Review] Ingress Season 1 Episode 4 — Credit// Netflix

There are minor reveals, like Jack's connection to Christopher Brandt, and Makoto's past as a hacker, but these are all treated simply as facts and accepted. No back and forth or "wait but what?" moments that need to slow things down for unnecessary explanations. So it lets the relationship between the jaded agent Jack and naive rookie hacker Makoto develop along familiar lines. While they're both essentially in a comedy sketch about unlikely allies, neither character is goofy enough for the typical buddy comedy rules, but the relationship works by contrasting Jack's cynicism with Makoto's enthusiasm.

Which makes the comedy moments, like the scene of Jack reading through 13 issues of a shojou manga and deadpanning "I can't wait to see what happens next," hilarious and fittingly on-point.

"Separate – Together – Pursue" should feel like a complete mess, and it should derail the show's momentum by falling into a few villain cliches, but the newness and authenticity of Jack and Makoto's relationship saves the episode and makes it something far better than it should be.

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