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Some pretty intense scenes of children experiencing bullying and abuse in this Episode, it was well handled but distressing enough that I went through some sections at 2x speed.
This is only the a partial post because I very suddenly felt like stopping my summaries and working on my Theory instead, and want to post this part while it's fresh in my head.
Before I start: After Episode 3, the LPer Felix posted his theory on the solution to the Epitaph. It seemed, and seems, incredibly plausible, but doesn't answer many larger questions.
Also I am SO bad at keeping track of the difference between Purgatory, the witch's tearoom, and the meta-layer. Or whether people's names are in all caps.
Gameboard: Ange watches as her family departs for the Island, unable to interact with them in any meaningful way.
Purgatory: Ronove tells Beatrice that Battler is too catatonically depressed to start the game. She greets him in a cheerful way to cheer him up, but then she sees that he's energetically fighting a Sister for a croissant and Ronove was messing with her.
(I'm going to copy the wiki using "Sister" for the human forms of the Seven Stakes of Purgatory)
But he's still pissed, and says they will never be anything but enemies.
Ange appears, and even though she's too old Battler suspects her identity. She says her name is Gretel and coldly chastises Battler for not taking his fight against Beatrice seriously.
And now for Ange and Maria's upsettingly sad interwoven backstories! This is told in a very effective non linear way which builds like a horror movie despite being far less horrific on paper than many other events in the game.
In highschool (eg the early 90s WAIT ANGE IS THE SAME AGE AS ME) Ange is an unhappy, isolated, weird girl. Her only "friend" is the diary and grimoire of Maria she nabbed from Maria's effects after the Incident on the Island. Ange thinks of Maria as an older sister type figure even though Maria will always remain 9, the age at which she died.
As Ange reads the diary, she talks to Maria and her stuffed toy Sakatarou with "magic", which is powered by belief.
In 1998 Ange talks to Okonogi, an associate of Eva's who was always moderately decent to her, and now runs the Ushiromiya Group after Eva's death. Ange thinks Eva killed everyone, but Okonogi says she would never have killed George and Hideyoshi, and that "without love, the truth cannot be seen". He points out that Ange is so biased that no evidence would convince her of Eva's innocence, and thinking that way makes it impossible to perceive the real truth, whatever it is.
If Ange dies before setting up a will, the money will go to Kyrie's snooty yet shady estranged family, the Sumaderas. Kyrie's younger sister, Kasumi Sumadera, wants to meet with Ange, but it feels like a trap, and Okonogi helps Ange get away with the help of Amakusa, a thrillseeking guard/mercenary who used to work for Eva but was fired for being too lax towards Ange.
Bernkastl tells Ange that the truth of the future wins against the truth of the past.
Nanjo tells the siblings that Kinzo has only 3 months to live and refuses to meet with them, which he's been saying for over a year. The others accuse Krauss of hiding Kinzo's death to cover up his embezzlement, and try to blackmail Krauss into agreeing that if Kinzo dies or disappears in a shady way the money goes to Eva.
Meta-layer: Battler considers whether Kinzo is dead and thus there could be an extra person on the island without bringing the total above 18. Beatrice refuses to answer this with red text, saying that she's been helping him too much with red text. She introduces blue text, which lets people make suppositions in a more formal way, I guess? It's like blue is the theory, red is the proof.
Krauss and Natsuhi ask Kinzo to come down to dinner and he chokes Krauss by the collar for being weak but agrees. People get choked by the collar a lot, not sure if that means anything.
Uuurgh. Rosa keeps leaving Maria alone for days at a time, giving the excuse of work though theres evidence she's taking holidays. She comes home with gifts like the handmade Sakatarou (a lion cub) and a collection of ceramic bunnies and other animals.
Maria describes all this as a happy loving life in her diary, Ange says she's in denial but Maria says that the world is full of happy and unhappy Fragments and she's creating happiness out of misfortune with the power of magic. If Ange will only be satisfied with a world of purely happy fragments, she'll be searching forever.
Beatrice says that while beloved children's toys often have spirits, the fact that Sakatarou can move on his own is impressive. She proclaims MARIA to be the Apprentice Witch of Origins and gifts her a fitting magical girl outfit for a witch.
1998: Ange meets with Professor Ootsuki, an expert on occultism. Eva had to sell off some of Kinzo's effects while the inheritance was being decided. Here or elsewhere it's mentioned that the real world seven stakes were fakes created in the US in the 1960s, not ancient as they claim. After the Incident, two messages in bottles were found with two different versions of events (implied to be Episode 1 and 2) They were signed "Ushiromiya Maria" but seem to have been written by an adult and don't match her handwriting. They do match the especially neat magic circles in Maria's Grimoire that she claims were written by Beatrice.
In her hotel, MARIA helps Ange summon the Sister Mammon, whose physical form she managed to nab during the investigation. Right now, Ange's magic isn't strong enough to summon all of them. It's implied that something happened to weaken her power, that she regrets.
In highschool, Ange has learned to summon all 7 Sisters as company. Ange wants to resurrect her whole family one day, but the only one she has a connected item for is Battler, who won her some cheap hairclips at a carnival.
In the gameboard, Lamdadelta tells Ange that Benrkastl has manipulated her: even in the very unlikely chance Battler wins, he will return home to the Ange of 1986. So why not become Lambdadelta's piece and keep the game running for eternity where she can stay by Battler's side?
In highschool, Ange spent her study time playing word games with her magic friends, so failed a test, which brings down the class average. Her classmates "tutor" her for hours by making her write an apology for laziness to their satisfaction. In a fit of anger and frustration, Ange calls for the Sisters to kill her bullies, but the Sisters hesitate, saying there was too much anti-magic toxin in their gathering and they were incapable of carrying out any orders their master wasn't capable of doing themselves. Ange angrily declares magic a lie and her magic friends to be figments of her imagination, which causes everyone except MARIA to die one by one.
MARIA says this is a violation of the Mariage Sorciere. Flashback to 6 year old Ange and 9 year old Maria having an argument, where Ange said magic was made up, despite having vowed to never doubt magic when she was invited to join the witch group Mariage Sorciere with Maria and Beatrice.
Ange tells her bullies she wishes she had died with her family, and a teacher who heard the ruckus comes and helps her out. Ange vows to only rely on Humans.
Meta-layer: MARIA pities Ange but says she will remain by her side when the time comes and Ange asks for her help once again. Witches always stay by everyone's side, even when they can't be seen.
The past: Maria is still upset by the argument with Ange, and sad that both Rosa and the school say she's not allowed to carry her friends/toys round with her. Sakatarou suggests she brings some of the ceramic rabbits to school since they're easy to hide. When she goes out for food while her mother is away she always brings Sakatarou.
Urrrgh very upsetting section where thanks to a concerned shopkeeper, a social worker checks on Maria, and Rosa is so embarrassed and furious she freaks out and destroys one of the rabbits as well as Sakatorou.
Meta-layer: Beatrice tells a wailing Maria she is not able to revive Sakatarou because his creator, Rosa, denied him and destroyed his form, and only Rosa can bring him back. As anger and sadness wells up in Maria, her heart begins to grow dark and cold. Maria asks Beatrice to teach her the kind of magic that will get her revenge against 'the evil witch possessing her mother'.
1998: Ange has regained the ability to summon all seven sisters as well as Sakatarou and apologises for denying them. She decides that while she isn't sure if magic exists, if any one person believes in magic, it can manifest in the human world, as a different reality, similar to how two different truths can co-exist at the same time. But she wants to figure out what happened to her family without the use of magic.
Sakatarou says that watching his vessel be destroyed caused Maria to believe he was gone and so lose the ability to summon him.
Ange sees Amakusa with what is plausibly a bag of weapons.
Gameboard: Maria says Kinzo gave her the umbrella. Then he arrives in the dining room. He says none of his children are worthy to be his successor. Nanjo and the siblings argue that his grandchildren have that potential at least. Kinzo laughs and says he will test them then. And then announces that he's going to sacrifice 13 people to summon Beatrice. The only alternative is for someone to solve the epitaph, or one of the grandchildren to pass his test.
And then he summons the bunnygirl Chiester sisters 00, 45, and 410 who use golden arrows to shoot Natsuhi, Rudolf, Hideyoshi, Genji, Eva, and Rosa, as chosen by random chance. Their heads are half-smashed, which Beatrice had previously said was the best way to prove both death and identity. And then the others are swallowed by portals in the floor created by the demon Gaap, whose sexy outfit is somehow even more ridiculous than the others. Gohda and Kuwasawa run, but its not clear if they were simply allowed to escape.
At this point Felix had been speculating on what each demon and witch corresponds to in the mundane world.
Virgilia = Kuwosawa and Ronove = Genji are pretty obvious. The Sisters = the seven physical stakes. His theory is that Beatrice = Kanon AND Shannon, who are multiple personalities of the same base person. He has some compelling arguments though it's not clear how they could hide that from everyone living on the island longterm, and his revenge motive is shaky.
Felix: Oh and the bunnygirl Chiester sisters are...
Me: The winchester pistols!
Felix: Maria's bunnies! There's even a dead broken one if you check the character list!
Me: Huh!
They seem to be both, which implies others could also be multiple people/things combined.
Rosa wakes in a dark place, the side of her head numb and cold "probably from resting on the hard floor". Sakatarou helps her, calling her his mother, but her head hurts when she hears him say his catchphrase "Uryu". Rosa asks about Maria, Sakatarou says she isn't the same and urges Rosa to escape but Rosa tells him to dissappear and he is ripped apart again. Maria appears and she and Rosa blame each other for their pain while Maria kills her over and over with Beatrice's help.
After a while Maria asks Beatrice why she feels like she might be able to forgive Rosa. Beatrice says with the power of life and death, a true witch stops caring about petty human problems.
Kyrie, Krauss, Nanjo, Shannon and Kanon find themselves in an old jail cell with no way out. Kyrie's wristwatch reads 10:40 PM, approximately 10 minutes after the massacre at the dining hall. They find a phone but it can only use the internal lines, so Krauss tells the cousin what happened. Kinzo appears with Ronove, Virgilia and Gaap, and tells them they're at the basement of the secret mansion, Kuwadorian. He says to ring the cousins again and tell them to prepare for his tests. Virgilia acts very silly in a way she hadn't previously.
1998: Ange visits Nanjo's son, a doctor. He's initially hostile, having had bad experiences with "witch hunters", people fascinated by the mystery. She asks if he can really say he's suffered more than her.
He says his father seemed normal before the trip. But shortly afterwards the younger Dr Nanjo received a letter, ostensibly sent by him shortly before the trip but returned to sender because it had an obviously fake address: Rebun Island, Rebun County, Rebun City, 1-2-34-567, Hokkaido, Japan
Inside was a key number plate inscribed with A112, the number 07151129 (which we saw in Episode 3), and instructions in Beatrice's handwriting for a high class safety deposit box. When he visited the bank, he found millions of dollars in yen bank notes. This was all so shady he left it there and never told anyone.
She visits the son of Kumasawa, who says he got a similar letter addressed to Okinawa Prefecture, Yaeyama County, Yonaguni City, 1-2-34-567, Okinama, Japan. He never followed it up, but says his mother was trying to solve the epitaph. There's a photo of a door with the inscription "This door is opened only at a probability of a quadrillion to one. You will be blessed only at a probability of a quadrillion to one". Which matches Felix's theory!
Ange has a vague memory of receiving a similar letter, but being a mourning six year old she didn't pay it much mind, and it's lost now.
Ange visits Captain Kawabata, who drove everyone over to the Island back in 1986. He feels guilty for taking the family over when he knew a typhoon was coming, and agrees to take her, since most other captains consider it haunted and refuse to visit.
Ange sees something in the bedding shop his family owns that noone else can, and thinks this is fate.
Game board: Kinzo instructs that the cousins lock Gohda and Kuwasawa in the garden shed so they don't interfere with the test. He threatens that if anything doesn't go according to his exact orders, the test will stop and everyone will be executed.
In the dungeon, Kanon and Shannon feel it's too dangerous to use their powers to escape and despair about being helpless furniture. Kyrie wonders how many people are in on everything. Felix's theory is that she'd been in on a "fake death" scheme (since the surviving adults tell the cousins that magic was used to kill the others, and the whole mystery only makes sense if theres non-magic explanations for everything) but is starting to suspect she may actually be in danger.
He also thinks that at midnight on the second day a bomb goes off killing anyone left alive in the mansion or guesthouse. This explains why it's later seen as a mysterious "accident" with no survivors or even easily identifiable bodies, and why it's seen as suspicious that Eva was in the second mansion 2km away. It also fits various other things we see happen at midnight, like Rosa and Maria running from "a cloud of gold butterflies".
It wasn't in the summary but at some point someone, I think Kinzo, ponders the way you can never reach 24:00 but always reset to 0:00, and how this is a metaphor for human limitation. HMM.
Anyway. For her test, Ronove gives Jessica a piece of paper saying "Among the three mentioned below, in order to gain two, sacrifice one. 1) Your life, 2) Kanon's life, 3) Everyone else's life. If you do not choose one, all of the above will be lost." She is to answer with resolve and explain her reasoning.
Gaap hands George a similar question, but with Shannon instead of Kanon.
Kinzo asks the Chiester sisters what they'd answer, then criticises their answers. After they leave he says that there is no correct answer and the point is to answer "without hesitation, quickly, and with a resolute conviction and their own strong, unshakable will!". Kinzo alludes to his own test, where his answer led him to obtain gold, honor, and the witch.
The prisoners can see the tests on magic mirrors.
Jessica chooses to sacrifice herself, because she wouldn't want to live on with that guilt.
The Chiester sisters are so upset by Kinzo that Virgilia has to go comfort them, leaving only goat monsters to guard the prisoners.
George chooses to kill everyone else and go off with Shannon, because he promised nothing would keep them apart. Gaap is impressed and says that was Kinzo's choice, then tells him to start by killing Battler and Maria. He says that if he is supposed to act like the Head, he gets to choose his own actions.. and Gaap will be the first sacrifice.
Just as Ronove reaches out to stop Jessica's heart, she PUNCHES HIM IN THE FACE WITH BRASS KNUCKLES, saying that if she's supposed to be acting like the head of the family she's hardly going to give in without a fight.
George and Jessica are implausibly effective against the two demons. Gaap calls the goat monsters to help her, leaving the prisoners unguarded. They escape with the help of Shannon and Kanon's powers.
Just as it looks like George and Shannon are going to win, Gaap teleports them so that they land deadly blows on each other, and die.
Ronove revives Jessica long enough to ring Battler. She says George has been killed, she's already dead and that the enemy isn't human and can use magic.
The prisoners escape out of the well behind the mansion that turned out to be a secret entrance to the second mansion. But as they emerge everyone but Kyrie is shot by the Chiester sister's golden arrows, and Kanon's corpse falls back down the well.
Kyrie barricades herself in a room and rings Battler to describe what happened. Kyrie tells him to believe everything that appears in front of him, including demons and witches, and to not suspect tricks. Battler refuses to believe it, but Kyrie insists that he must so their deaths aren't wasted, and then there is the sound of her bring shot.
Maria says he shouldn't mourn because they'll all be revived in the golden land, then leaves for her own test.
Battler runs out into the rain and sees the apparently revived Beatrice, who says he should go to the front of the mansion for his test. He instead runs to rescue the servants but they've been killed, their bodies hung so that they can be seen through the window even though the door remained locked. He sees George's body.
The mansion is locked. With no choice left, he reads Beatrice's letter which leaves his "love" blank because Beatrice doesn't know if he has feelings for anyone. He says he doesn't, so instead she asks why he abanoned his responsibilities 6 years ago. He says it was on behalf of his mother's pain at his father cheating, and is noone else's business. She says there was another sin six years ago, and if he can remember and apologise, she'll forgive him.
Battler, in red: six years ago, no person called Beatrice existed for Battler.
Beatrice: the sin is between Battler and someone else, and is is the reason everyone was sacrificed.
When he says this makes no sense and asks her to remind him, she walks away, exhausted. Kinzo happily says that Maria passed her test, and Beatrice sets him on fire. She tells Battler she's abandoning the game. At first he thinks he's won and can go free, but then he realises it will stay in limbo.
She declares in blue that he's not qualified to be her opponent, Kinzo's grandson, Ushiromiya Battler.
In red, he says that his name is Ushiromiya Battler, but is horrified to discover that he can't say that Ushiromiya Asumu bore him.
Battler's form erases itself, and Beatrice leaves the game board.
Beatrice and Maria discuss the witches' alliance and how they hoped they would be able to invite others, but in the end they only have each other. Beatrice can't remember the goal she had for her own game.
1998: Captain Kawabata says he used to deliver women's supplies to a secret harbour, but 30 years ago Genji told him to stop coming.
Ange walks onto a cliff alone, and is cornered by Kasumi and her goons. Kasumi hates Kyrie for leaving the family so that Kasumi had to take over as eldest daughter, weighed down by responsibility and an unwanted marriage.
As Kasumi vents her anger on Ange via her goons beating, Ange is reminded of how Eva blamed Ange for all her problems, but also of how Ange did the same thing to Eva. Could they have bonded about their shared lost if Ange had approached her with love instead of hate? She sees EVA egging Kasumi on to the point of ripping apart Maria's diary and mocking the childish magic spells for happiness.
It turns out Maria said "Uu" as an incantation to remind her of a happy day where she sang for her mother ;_;
Ange stares Kasumi down and says she believes in magic. Kasumi mockingly asks her to stop a bullet.. and the Sisters shoot the henchman holding the gun, and then the others.
Ange begs Kasumi not to give in to the black witch and approach her with love, but when she goes to shoot Ange, Kasumi falls.
Ange arrives in the golden land, where Beatrice and Maria are having tea. Ange demands that Beatrice rejoin the game. The Golden Land needs at least two people believing in it, so Ange tell Maria to leave: if it's so wonderful, and Beatrice can do everything, where's Sakutarou? Maria promises to leave if Ange can revive him, and she does. Maria accepts that Ange is a real witch, and Ange calls herself the Witch of Resurrection. Maria and Sakutarou leave the Golden Land. The Golden Land starts tearing itself apart as it cannot be sustained by only Beatrice.
I think we're supposed to assume that what happened here is that Amakusa shot everyone else, but Ange herself probably also died. Also, Ange saw a Sakutarou doll in the shop and left it on the island for Maria. Not sure if Rosa lied about it being hand-made, copied the design, or sold her own design in her clothing shop.
And then I looked at how much was left to write up and suddenly ran out of enthusiasm haha. I did like the rest of the chapter! There's just a lot of it.
Some pretty intense scenes of children experiencing bullying and abuse in this Episode, it was well handled but distressing enough that I went through some sections at 2x speed.
This is only the a partial post because I very suddenly felt like stopping my summaries and working on my Theory instead, and want to post this part while it's fresh in my head.
Before I start: After Episode 3, the LPer Felix posted his theory on the solution to the Epitaph. It seemed, and seems, incredibly plausible, but doesn't answer many larger questions.
Also I am SO bad at keeping track of the difference between Purgatory, the witch's tearoom, and the meta-layer. Or whether people's names are in all caps.
Gameboard: Ange watches as her family departs for the Island, unable to interact with them in any meaningful way.
Purgatory: Ronove tells Beatrice that Battler is too catatonically depressed to start the game. She greets him in a cheerful way to cheer him up, but then she sees that he's energetically fighting a Sister for a croissant and Ronove was messing with her.
(I'm going to copy the wiki using "Sister" for the human forms of the Seven Stakes of Purgatory)
But he's still pissed, and says they will never be anything but enemies.
Ange appears, and even though she's too old Battler suspects her identity. She says her name is Gretel and coldly chastises Battler for not taking his fight against Beatrice seriously.
And now for Ange and Maria's upsettingly sad interwoven backstories! This is told in a very effective non linear way which builds like a horror movie despite being far less horrific on paper than many other events in the game.
In highschool (eg the early 90s WAIT ANGE IS THE SAME AGE AS ME) Ange is an unhappy, isolated, weird girl. Her only "friend" is the diary and grimoire of Maria she nabbed from Maria's effects after the Incident on the Island. Ange thinks of Maria as an older sister type figure even though Maria will always remain 9, the age at which she died.
As Ange reads the diary, she talks to Maria and her stuffed toy Sakatarou with "magic", which is powered by belief.
In 1998 Ange talks to Okonogi, an associate of Eva's who was always moderately decent to her, and now runs the Ushiromiya Group after Eva's death. Ange thinks Eva killed everyone, but Okonogi says she would never have killed George and Hideyoshi, and that "without love, the truth cannot be seen". He points out that Ange is so biased that no evidence would convince her of Eva's innocence, and thinking that way makes it impossible to perceive the real truth, whatever it is.
If Ange dies before setting up a will, the money will go to Kyrie's snooty yet shady estranged family, the Sumaderas. Kyrie's younger sister, Kasumi Sumadera, wants to meet with Ange, but it feels like a trap, and Okonogi helps Ange get away with the help of Amakusa, a thrillseeking guard/mercenary who used to work for Eva but was fired for being too lax towards Ange.
Bernkastl tells Ange that the truth of the future wins against the truth of the past.
Nanjo tells the siblings that Kinzo has only 3 months to live and refuses to meet with them, which he's been saying for over a year. The others accuse Krauss of hiding Kinzo's death to cover up his embezzlement, and try to blackmail Krauss into agreeing that if Kinzo dies or disappears in a shady way the money goes to Eva.
Meta-layer: Battler considers whether Kinzo is dead and thus there could be an extra person on the island without bringing the total above 18. Beatrice refuses to answer this with red text, saying that she's been helping him too much with red text. She introduces blue text, which lets people make suppositions in a more formal way, I guess? It's like blue is the theory, red is the proof.
Krauss and Natsuhi ask Kinzo to come down to dinner and he chokes Krauss by the collar for being weak but agrees. People get choked by the collar a lot, not sure if that means anything.
Uuurgh. Rosa keeps leaving Maria alone for days at a time, giving the excuse of work though theres evidence she's taking holidays. She comes home with gifts like the handmade Sakatarou (a lion cub) and a collection of ceramic bunnies and other animals.
Maria describes all this as a happy loving life in her diary, Ange says she's in denial but Maria says that the world is full of happy and unhappy Fragments and she's creating happiness out of misfortune with the power of magic. If Ange will only be satisfied with a world of purely happy fragments, she'll be searching forever.
Beatrice says that while beloved children's toys often have spirits, the fact that Sakatarou can move on his own is impressive. She proclaims MARIA to be the Apprentice Witch of Origins and gifts her a fitting magical girl outfit for a witch.
1998: Ange meets with Professor Ootsuki, an expert on occultism. Eva had to sell off some of Kinzo's effects while the inheritance was being decided. Here or elsewhere it's mentioned that the real world seven stakes were fakes created in the US in the 1960s, not ancient as they claim. After the Incident, two messages in bottles were found with two different versions of events (implied to be Episode 1 and 2) They were signed "Ushiromiya Maria" but seem to have been written by an adult and don't match her handwriting. They do match the especially neat magic circles in Maria's Grimoire that she claims were written by Beatrice.
In her hotel, MARIA helps Ange summon the Sister Mammon, whose physical form she managed to nab during the investigation. Right now, Ange's magic isn't strong enough to summon all of them. It's implied that something happened to weaken her power, that she regrets.
In highschool, Ange has learned to summon all 7 Sisters as company. Ange wants to resurrect her whole family one day, but the only one she has a connected item for is Battler, who won her some cheap hairclips at a carnival.
In the gameboard, Lamdadelta tells Ange that Benrkastl has manipulated her: even in the very unlikely chance Battler wins, he will return home to the Ange of 1986. So why not become Lambdadelta's piece and keep the game running for eternity where she can stay by Battler's side?
In highschool, Ange spent her study time playing word games with her magic friends, so failed a test, which brings down the class average. Her classmates "tutor" her for hours by making her write an apology for laziness to their satisfaction. In a fit of anger and frustration, Ange calls for the Sisters to kill her bullies, but the Sisters hesitate, saying there was too much anti-magic toxin in their gathering and they were incapable of carrying out any orders their master wasn't capable of doing themselves. Ange angrily declares magic a lie and her magic friends to be figments of her imagination, which causes everyone except MARIA to die one by one.
MARIA says this is a violation of the Mariage Sorciere. Flashback to 6 year old Ange and 9 year old Maria having an argument, where Ange said magic was made up, despite having vowed to never doubt magic when she was invited to join the witch group Mariage Sorciere with Maria and Beatrice.
Ange tells her bullies she wishes she had died with her family, and a teacher who heard the ruckus comes and helps her out. Ange vows to only rely on Humans.
Meta-layer: MARIA pities Ange but says she will remain by her side when the time comes and Ange asks for her help once again. Witches always stay by everyone's side, even when they can't be seen.
The past: Maria is still upset by the argument with Ange, and sad that both Rosa and the school say she's not allowed to carry her friends/toys round with her. Sakatarou suggests she brings some of the ceramic rabbits to school since they're easy to hide. When she goes out for food while her mother is away she always brings Sakatarou.
Urrrgh very upsetting section where thanks to a concerned shopkeeper, a social worker checks on Maria, and Rosa is so embarrassed and furious she freaks out and destroys one of the rabbits as well as Sakatorou.
Meta-layer: Beatrice tells a wailing Maria she is not able to revive Sakatarou because his creator, Rosa, denied him and destroyed his form, and only Rosa can bring him back. As anger and sadness wells up in Maria, her heart begins to grow dark and cold. Maria asks Beatrice to teach her the kind of magic that will get her revenge against 'the evil witch possessing her mother'.
1998: Ange has regained the ability to summon all seven sisters as well as Sakatarou and apologises for denying them. She decides that while she isn't sure if magic exists, if any one person believes in magic, it can manifest in the human world, as a different reality, similar to how two different truths can co-exist at the same time. But she wants to figure out what happened to her family without the use of magic.
Sakatarou says that watching his vessel be destroyed caused Maria to believe he was gone and so lose the ability to summon him.
Ange sees Amakusa with what is plausibly a bag of weapons.
Gameboard: Maria says Kinzo gave her the umbrella. Then he arrives in the dining room. He says none of his children are worthy to be his successor. Nanjo and the siblings argue that his grandchildren have that potential at least. Kinzo laughs and says he will test them then. And then announces that he's going to sacrifice 13 people to summon Beatrice. The only alternative is for someone to solve the epitaph, or one of the grandchildren to pass his test.
And then he summons the bunnygirl Chiester sisters 00, 45, and 410 who use golden arrows to shoot Natsuhi, Rudolf, Hideyoshi, Genji, Eva, and Rosa, as chosen by random chance. Their heads are half-smashed, which Beatrice had previously said was the best way to prove both death and identity. And then the others are swallowed by portals in the floor created by the demon Gaap, whose sexy outfit is somehow even more ridiculous than the others. Gohda and Kuwasawa run, but its not clear if they were simply allowed to escape.
At this point Felix had been speculating on what each demon and witch corresponds to in the mundane world.
Virgilia = Kuwosawa and Ronove = Genji are pretty obvious. The Sisters = the seven physical stakes. His theory is that Beatrice = Kanon AND Shannon, who are multiple personalities of the same base person. He has some compelling arguments though it's not clear how they could hide that from everyone living on the island longterm, and his revenge motive is shaky.
Felix: Oh and the bunnygirl Chiester sisters are...
Me: The winchester pistols!
Felix: Maria's bunnies! There's even a dead broken one if you check the character list!
Me: Huh!
They seem to be both, which implies others could also be multiple people/things combined.
Rosa wakes in a dark place, the side of her head numb and cold "probably from resting on the hard floor". Sakatarou helps her, calling her his mother, but her head hurts when she hears him say his catchphrase "Uryu". Rosa asks about Maria, Sakatarou says she isn't the same and urges Rosa to escape but Rosa tells him to dissappear and he is ripped apart again. Maria appears and she and Rosa blame each other for their pain while Maria kills her over and over with Beatrice's help.
After a while Maria asks Beatrice why she feels like she might be able to forgive Rosa. Beatrice says with the power of life and death, a true witch stops caring about petty human problems.
Kyrie, Krauss, Nanjo, Shannon and Kanon find themselves in an old jail cell with no way out. Kyrie's wristwatch reads 10:40 PM, approximately 10 minutes after the massacre at the dining hall. They find a phone but it can only use the internal lines, so Krauss tells the cousin what happened. Kinzo appears with Ronove, Virgilia and Gaap, and tells them they're at the basement of the secret mansion, Kuwadorian. He says to ring the cousins again and tell them to prepare for his tests. Virgilia acts very silly in a way she hadn't previously.
1998: Ange visits Nanjo's son, a doctor. He's initially hostile, having had bad experiences with "witch hunters", people fascinated by the mystery. She asks if he can really say he's suffered more than her.
He says his father seemed normal before the trip. But shortly afterwards the younger Dr Nanjo received a letter, ostensibly sent by him shortly before the trip but returned to sender because it had an obviously fake address: Rebun Island, Rebun County, Rebun City, 1-2-34-567, Hokkaido, Japan
Inside was a key number plate inscribed with A112, the number 07151129 (which we saw in Episode 3), and instructions in Beatrice's handwriting for a high class safety deposit box. When he visited the bank, he found millions of dollars in yen bank notes. This was all so shady he left it there and never told anyone.
She visits the son of Kumasawa, who says he got a similar letter addressed to Okinawa Prefecture, Yaeyama County, Yonaguni City, 1-2-34-567, Okinama, Japan. He never followed it up, but says his mother was trying to solve the epitaph. There's a photo of a door with the inscription "This door is opened only at a probability of a quadrillion to one. You will be blessed only at a probability of a quadrillion to one". Which matches Felix's theory!
Ange has a vague memory of receiving a similar letter, but being a mourning six year old she didn't pay it much mind, and it's lost now.
Ange visits Captain Kawabata, who drove everyone over to the Island back in 1986. He feels guilty for taking the family over when he knew a typhoon was coming, and agrees to take her, since most other captains consider it haunted and refuse to visit.
Ange sees something in the bedding shop his family owns that noone else can, and thinks this is fate.
Game board: Kinzo instructs that the cousins lock Gohda and Kuwasawa in the garden shed so they don't interfere with the test. He threatens that if anything doesn't go according to his exact orders, the test will stop and everyone will be executed.
In the dungeon, Kanon and Shannon feel it's too dangerous to use their powers to escape and despair about being helpless furniture. Kyrie wonders how many people are in on everything. Felix's theory is that she'd been in on a "fake death" scheme (since the surviving adults tell the cousins that magic was used to kill the others, and the whole mystery only makes sense if theres non-magic explanations for everything) but is starting to suspect she may actually be in danger.
He also thinks that at midnight on the second day a bomb goes off killing anyone left alive in the mansion or guesthouse. This explains why it's later seen as a mysterious "accident" with no survivors or even easily identifiable bodies, and why it's seen as suspicious that Eva was in the second mansion 2km away. It also fits various other things we see happen at midnight, like Rosa and Maria running from "a cloud of gold butterflies".
It wasn't in the summary but at some point someone, I think Kinzo, ponders the way you can never reach 24:00 but always reset to 0:00, and how this is a metaphor for human limitation. HMM.
Anyway. For her test, Ronove gives Jessica a piece of paper saying "Among the three mentioned below, in order to gain two, sacrifice one. 1) Your life, 2) Kanon's life, 3) Everyone else's life. If you do not choose one, all of the above will be lost." She is to answer with resolve and explain her reasoning.
Gaap hands George a similar question, but with Shannon instead of Kanon.
Kinzo asks the Chiester sisters what they'd answer, then criticises their answers. After they leave he says that there is no correct answer and the point is to answer "without hesitation, quickly, and with a resolute conviction and their own strong, unshakable will!". Kinzo alludes to his own test, where his answer led him to obtain gold, honor, and the witch.
The prisoners can see the tests on magic mirrors.
Jessica chooses to sacrifice herself, because she wouldn't want to live on with that guilt.
The Chiester sisters are so upset by Kinzo that Virgilia has to go comfort them, leaving only goat monsters to guard the prisoners.
George chooses to kill everyone else and go off with Shannon, because he promised nothing would keep them apart. Gaap is impressed and says that was Kinzo's choice, then tells him to start by killing Battler and Maria. He says that if he is supposed to act like the Head, he gets to choose his own actions.. and Gaap will be the first sacrifice.
Just as Ronove reaches out to stop Jessica's heart, she PUNCHES HIM IN THE FACE WITH BRASS KNUCKLES, saying that if she's supposed to be acting like the head of the family she's hardly going to give in without a fight.
George and Jessica are implausibly effective against the two demons. Gaap calls the goat monsters to help her, leaving the prisoners unguarded. They escape with the help of Shannon and Kanon's powers.
Just as it looks like George and Shannon are going to win, Gaap teleports them so that they land deadly blows on each other, and die.
Ronove revives Jessica long enough to ring Battler. She says George has been killed, she's already dead and that the enemy isn't human and can use magic.
The prisoners escape out of the well behind the mansion that turned out to be a secret entrance to the second mansion. But as they emerge everyone but Kyrie is shot by the Chiester sister's golden arrows, and Kanon's corpse falls back down the well.
Kyrie barricades herself in a room and rings Battler to describe what happened. Kyrie tells him to believe everything that appears in front of him, including demons and witches, and to not suspect tricks. Battler refuses to believe it, but Kyrie insists that he must so their deaths aren't wasted, and then there is the sound of her bring shot.
Maria says he shouldn't mourn because they'll all be revived in the golden land, then leaves for her own test.
Battler runs out into the rain and sees the apparently revived Beatrice, who says he should go to the front of the mansion for his test. He instead runs to rescue the servants but they've been killed, their bodies hung so that they can be seen through the window even though the door remained locked. He sees George's body.
The mansion is locked. With no choice left, he reads Beatrice's letter which leaves his "love" blank because Beatrice doesn't know if he has feelings for anyone. He says he doesn't, so instead she asks why he abanoned his responsibilities 6 years ago. He says it was on behalf of his mother's pain at his father cheating, and is noone else's business. She says there was another sin six years ago, and if he can remember and apologise, she'll forgive him.
Battler, in red: six years ago, no person called Beatrice existed for Battler.
Beatrice: the sin is between Battler and someone else, and is is the reason everyone was sacrificed.
When he says this makes no sense and asks her to remind him, she walks away, exhausted. Kinzo happily says that Maria passed her test, and Beatrice sets him on fire. She tells Battler she's abandoning the game. At first he thinks he's won and can go free, but then he realises it will stay in limbo.
She declares in blue that he's not qualified to be her opponent, Kinzo's grandson, Ushiromiya Battler.
In red, he says that his name is Ushiromiya Battler, but is horrified to discover that he can't say that Ushiromiya Asumu bore him.
Battler's form erases itself, and Beatrice leaves the game board.
Beatrice and Maria discuss the witches' alliance and how they hoped they would be able to invite others, but in the end they only have each other. Beatrice can't remember the goal she had for her own game.
1998: Captain Kawabata says he used to deliver women's supplies to a secret harbour, but 30 years ago Genji told him to stop coming.
Ange walks onto a cliff alone, and is cornered by Kasumi and her goons. Kasumi hates Kyrie for leaving the family so that Kasumi had to take over as eldest daughter, weighed down by responsibility and an unwanted marriage.
As Kasumi vents her anger on Ange via her goons beating, Ange is reminded of how Eva blamed Ange for all her problems, but also of how Ange did the same thing to Eva. Could they have bonded about their shared lost if Ange had approached her with love instead of hate? She sees EVA egging Kasumi on to the point of ripping apart Maria's diary and mocking the childish magic spells for happiness.
It turns out Maria said "Uu" as an incantation to remind her of a happy day where she sang for her mother ;_;
Ange stares Kasumi down and says she believes in magic. Kasumi mockingly asks her to stop a bullet.. and the Sisters shoot the henchman holding the gun, and then the others.
Ange begs Kasumi not to give in to the black witch and approach her with love, but when she goes to shoot Ange, Kasumi falls.
Ange arrives in the golden land, where Beatrice and Maria are having tea. Ange demands that Beatrice rejoin the game. The Golden Land needs at least two people believing in it, so Ange tell Maria to leave: if it's so wonderful, and Beatrice can do everything, where's Sakutarou? Maria promises to leave if Ange can revive him, and she does. Maria accepts that Ange is a real witch, and Ange calls herself the Witch of Resurrection. Maria and Sakutarou leave the Golden Land. The Golden Land starts tearing itself apart as it cannot be sustained by only Beatrice.
I think we're supposed to assume that what happened here is that Amakusa shot everyone else, but Ange herself probably also died. Also, Ange saw a Sakutarou doll in the shop and left it on the island for Maria. Not sure if Rosa lied about it being hand-made, copied the design, or sold her own design in her clothing shop.
And then I looked at how much was left to write up and suddenly ran out of enthusiasm haha. I did like the rest of the chapter! There's just a lot of it.
