In/Spectre Season 2 - What We Know So Far

In early October, the wildly popular anime movie "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train" was added to Crunchyroll, one of the premiere destinations for streaming anime online. The "Mugen Train" film is now one of countless popular anime available through the streaming service, which also features megahits like "Naruto" and "One Piece" in its catalog. In recent years, though — in addition to these and other licensed offerings — Crunchyroll has also become a producer of original anime. The service announced its first eight original series in February of 2020, including shows like Korean WEBTOON adaptation "Tower of God," the post-apocalyptic "FreakAngels," and fantastical romance series "In/Spectre."

The first season of the "In/Spectre" anime includes twelve episodes in total. Though relatively little information is currently available about it, a second season of the series is confirmed to be on its way. Here's what we know about "In/Spectre" Season 2 so far.

Crunchyroll first announced a second season of "In/Spectre" in a blog post shared in November 2020. In full, the announcement includes reactions to the series' renewal from the author of its written source material, the author of its manga adaptation, and one of its lead voice actors, in addition to a trailer for the season. Rather than showcase scenes from Season 2, though, the trailer is largely a summary of Season 1. Its only the voiceover, rather, that's new — recounting some of the key events in the first season.

At the trailer's conclusion is an announcement that Season 2 is in production, with no further details as to when the season might be released. Given that the ongoing pandemic has affected anime as it has virtually all other forms of entertainment, and that seemingly none of its animation was completed as of November 2020, the next season of "In/Spectre" will most likely not be released until mid-to-late 2022 at the earliest.

Kotoko Iwanaga is the protagonist of "In/Spectre." At 11 years old, Kotoko was kidnapped by yokai, who live in a sort of self-contained society within the series' fiction. Yokai are a fixture of real-life Japanese mythology — the term refers to a type of monstrous spirit, including, for example, the turtle-like Kappa and the long-nosed Tengu, the latter of which is the basis for the "goblin" emoji (via Emojipedia). As a child, yokai society decided that Kotoko would be their "Goddess of Wisdom," acting as a sort of yokai representative in the human world. However, while this affords her an exalted status among yokai, it cost her an eye and a leg.

Opposite Kotoko is Kuro Sakuragawa, another young adult with connections to yokai. Whereas Kotoko is privileged within yokai society, however, Kuro is feared, as a result of an incident from his childhood where his grandmother fed him yokai flesh. That said, the yokai he ate grant him a variety of superpowers, including the ability to see the future and the power to heal virtually any injury to his person.

"In/Spectre" revolves around two main sources of plot tension: Kotoko and Kuro's involvement in the world of Yokai, and their budding romance with one another. The biggest development in the latter plotline that will impact Season 2 is the fact that, as of the end of Season 1, Kotoko and Kuro are officially a couple, rather than merely courting one another.

Much if not all of the material in Season 2 is likely to pull from the second "In/Spectre" light novel, given that the first season was based on the first volume in the light novel series by author Kyo Shirodaira (via Anime News Network). Author Patrick Frye, for the blog Monsters & Critics, compared the first season of the anime to its source material and found it largely identical. They recounted that the second volume in the light novel series sees Kotoko and Kuro investigating a mystery in a seaside tourist destination called Totomizu. Furthermore, as in Season 1, Kuro's cousin Rikka remains an antagonistic presence. More details about the plot of "In/Spectre" Season 2, and how it may resemble or stray from the light novel series, should be detailed in the leadup to its eventual release.