‘Girl From Nowhere: The Reset’ Episode 2 Recap – I’m Still Not Convinced

Nope, still not convinced. Something still feels off. Girl from Nowhere: The Reset doesn’t feel as discordant in Episode 2 as it perhaps did in the premiere, which was a bit performatively “new” to live up to the title and draw attention to the casting change, but it isn’t like “Panty” has a great deal to offer on its own terms. Here, instead of using another student as an avatar in her revenge games, Nanno takes centre stage to foil a hilariously sophisticated up-skirting operation that she nonetheless avenges in oddly tame ways.

Having voyeurism as the theme is certainly a defensible choice, and there’s nothing more enduring than the capacity of boys to be creepy weirdos, but leaning really heavily into the salacious tone is a bit of an odd choice and makes what should be a really shocking subject feel damagingly silly. I’m just not getting the sense of a dark avenging angel from this version of Nanno, and the overall impact of the show is suffering as a result.

You can’t blame Becky Armstrong for this, by the way. She’s doing what she is being instructed to do and working with the material she’s given, and it’d be a mistake to just point an accusatory finger in her direction because she’s the most obvious way in which the production is different. It’s the material itself that’s largely the problem, since it doesn’t have the same ghoulish quality that characterised the first two seasons.

Anyway, “the forbidden triangle” is the subject on the docket today, and if you need any prompting to figure out what that’s referring to, “Panty” has you covered with more lingering shots of crotches than any episode of television in recent – or indeed distant – memory. This particular high school is being terrorised by a group of three boys – led by the irredeemable Doi, who luckily isn’t quasi-humanised in the way the bully in the premiere was – who have set up a wide-ranging upskirting operation to violate the privacy of the volleyball team. The boys are cartoonishly awful little creeps, and the school faculty not only refuses to address the issue but actively blames the girls for it, claiming their skirts are too short and they aren’t conducting themselves with appropriate decorum. Charming.

Initially, it seems like a student named Mook is going to be the stand-in for Nanno, like Sky was in the first episode, but Nanno takes over herself and begins taking down the operation. She helps the girls to find the main camera in their locker room, and begins taunting the boys, who try to elevate their game by planting cameras in compromising positions all over the place. But Nanno is wise to them all. As she walks over each of the cameras in turn, they short out just as they’re about to capture the goods. In a pretty effective montage – effective in how it plays with the idea of the victim-shaming about skirt length – Nanno keeps touring the hidden cameras in increasingly tiny skirts, exciting the boys with the potential of having snapped her, only for them to be crushed when they once again end up staring at static.

Girl from Nowhere: The Reset Episode 2 feels like it’s going to go darker once Nanno starts turning the tables, disseminating pictures of the boys and even siccing a dog on Doi’s junk. Even this injury, though, barely seems to trouble him, and being the butt of the joke doesn’t dissuade the lads either. They’re determined to get the pictures of Nanno, by force if necessary. Of course, this is playing right into her hands. In their moment of “victory”, she forces them to take a bunch of upskirt shots of her, and they celebrate by pleasuring themselves to the – incredibly chaste – image.

This celebratory tug of victory doesn’t last long, though, since in Nanno’s grand finale, she reveals that the crotch shot the boys all thought was hers was actually an upskirt of Peck’s mother, one of the teachers. As far as Mother’s Day celebrations go, this is a pretty good one, exposing the boys and trapping them in a recreation of the “forbidden triangle” they seem to love so much. The final shot evokes A Clockwork Orange, with Doi’s eyes forced open so that Nanno can reveal her branded underwear. He’s getting what he wants, I suppose, but not quite in the way he expected.