Psyren Episode 2: Tavoo
Oshimeter
6 Ratings
EPISODE REVIEWS
**Episode 2 of *PSYREN* is twenty-four minutes of the universe looking Ageha Yoshina dead in the eye and saying, “You thought the mysterious phone card was a fun little adventure? Cute. Hold my ash.”** The episode wastes zero time reminding everyone that isekai only feels exciting when the other world has working Wi-Fi and a functioning hospitality industry. Ageha and a feverish, battle-damaged Amamiya get dumped back into the red-skied wasteland, and the welcome package is exactly what you’d expect from a post-apocalyptic death trap run by a sadistic phone company: abandoned ruins, no customer support, and a glowing red card that essentially says “Danger Zone — Free Entry, No Refunds.” They quickly meet a group of other players who all got the same cursed phone call. These people look at a monster-infested hellscape, see a ¥500 million reward for figuring out Psyren’s secret, and treat the whole thing like a particularly aggressive Black Friday sale. Ageha tries to warn them. Amamiya (when she’s conscious for five seconds) tries to warn them. The card itself is basically screaming “DO NOT GO THERE” in giant flashing letters. The group’s collective response is the emotional equivalent of “I have a coupon.” Natural selection clocks in for overtime. Then Alfred arrives. Alfred is a stitched-up humanoid Tavoo with one glowing eye, a crossbow, and a vocabulary that consists of exactly two words: “Agro” and “Abraham.” He is the most unhinged, terrifying, and somehow iconic villain introduction in recent memory. He says “Agro.” Someone dies. He says “Abraham.” Someone else dies. The man is a Furby that got into the knife drawer and somehow became a war crime. A horde of regular Tavoo piles in behind him, and the greedy crowd gets turned into a fine digital mist in under two minutes. Bodies pixelate and vanish. Cards turn to ash. No corpses. No evidence. No “I told you so” moment for Ageha. Just a wasteland full of people who treated a giant red flag like a treasure map and paid the ultimate price for their financial literacy. Ageha, being Ageha, refuses to learn the correct lesson. He saves one guy — Hiryu Asaga, his former elementary-school classmate who somehow spent the intervening years doing nothing but bench presses and trauma. Asaga is here looking for his missing friend Tatsuo, not the money. Instant upgrade from “background meat” to “actual character.” Ageha then makes the single dumbest / bravest decision of the episode: he trusts a guy he’s known for three minutes to carry unconscious Amamiya to safety while he runs back into the massacre. Asaga, to his credit, actually handles it. Ageha finds one survivor, Sugita, a kid who just wanted to help his mom. Ageha even kills a Tavoo (progress!). Sugita still dies and turns to ash, taking his phone card with him. Ageha is left staring at empty ground like the universe just personally refunded his hope. Meanwhile Alfred is already stalking Asaga and Amamiya toward the gate. Cliffhanger achieved. Peaceful afternoon canceled. The side characters’ survival instincts are somehow worse than teenagers in a 1980s slasher film. They watched a guy get murdered, saw a floating ghost thing, and still went “nah, monsters aren’t real, let’s get that bag.” Amamiya spends most of the episode as the world’s most expensive luggage. Competent woman? Benched for fever and wounds so the boys can panic dramatically. Alfred’s two-word vocabulary is pure comedy gold. “Agro… Abraham…” should not be as scary as it is. - Ageha’s entire personality is “I will fix this for money / moral reasons / both,” and the universe keeps handing him problems that come with no refund policy. The “bodies turn to ash and vanish” rule is genuinely sinister design. It isolates Ageha, makes every warning sound insane, and turns death into erasure instead of just spectacle. The atmosphere is oppressive, the sound design (especially that payphone ring) is nasty, and the episode never lets anyone feel safe for more than thirty seconds. Asaga’s arrival gives the story actual friction and a second character who isn’t running purely on greed or savior complex. Is the animation peak 2008 Jump with modern lighting? Yes. Are the unnamed players pure cannon fodder? Absolutely. Does Amamiya’s extended nap time feel like the show temporarily forgot she exists? Kind of. Does any of that stop the episode from being a tense, mean, weirdly funny half-hour of survival horror? Not even a little. Episode 2 is where *PSYREN* stops being “mysterious phone card anime” and becomes “stitched-up cyborg who only says two words is hunting you while your classmates keep speedrunning death for prize money.” It’s brutal, it’s ridiculous, and it’s extremely good at making you yell at the screen. Watch it. Just… maybe don’t follow anyone who only says “Agro” into a Danger Zone for half a billion yen.
At least it was better than last episode. I still don't really know what's going on, neither do very many of the characters. Currently, it's more so giving survival simulator even though this is allegedly a death game, so I don't know when/if the rules of this supposed game come in, because that's where the fun of a game is meant to come from. Nonetheless, we're adding some new faces to the party and very slowly learning more about the world; it simply doesn't feel like there's much of a purpose for what's going on, and that's what I really want from this show - to give a concrete purpose and let us know just what the characters are in for.
Episode ini berfokus pada Yoshina dan Amamiya yang berada di dunia aneh. Episode ini juga mulai memperjelas tone anime ini secara keseluruhan. Premise, misteri, dan alur ceritanya menarik, meskipun aku masih belum tahu bagaimana mereka akan mengembangkan ceritanya dari sini. Visualnya lumayan, tetapi animasinya terasa sangat kaku. Overall, still a good episode yang memperdalam misteri
10
