Recap / Umineko When They Cry Episode 4

Warning: This page contains unmarked spoilers for "Alliance of the Golden Witch" and previous Episodes

Prologue

In 1986, Battler and others discuss Asumi and bump into ANGE-Beatrice from the future and Bernkastel, but he doesn't know who she is and why is she here. Meta-Battler and Ronove prank Beatrice by making it like he's too broken. ANGE-Beatrice, naming herself Gretel, arrives at the tea room and calls Meta-Battler out for treating Beatrice as Friendly Enemy.

Back in 1998 at Saint Lucia Academy, after Eva can't abuse her for not being George, Ange is now getting bullied. Ange uses Maria's diary and imagines talking to her about Maria getting a Sakutaro plush on her birthday. Ange discusses the events at Rokkenjima with Eva's confidant Okonogi, then runs away from Kyrie's family and gets rescued by Amakusa, Eva's former guard. Ange and Bernkastel talk about how truth is relative.

ANGE-Beatrice and MARIA debate on Rosa's treatment of Maria with pessimism and optimism respectively. Beatrice ppears in pre-1986 and gives Sakutaro a human form. Professor Ootsuki tells Ange that surviving books from Rokkenjima and two contradictory confessions are deeply analyzed by enthusiasts globally, and Ange assumes the fame was the culprit's goal if they're not Eva. Ange learns to summon the Seven Stakes. Lambdadelta tells ANGE-Beatrice that due to Temporal Paradox, even if ANGE-Beatrice saves Battler, she won't see him again, so she should keep Battler trapped.

Ange's grades take a nosedive and due to further increased bullying, she orders the Stakes to kill everyone, but despairs since they're not real, and rejects Sakurato and MARIA. In pre-1986 Maria is disappointed by Ange's actions. While shopping, Maria loses her house keys and gets taken by the police, who find out Rosa has been on a vacation. Rosa comes back and breaks Maria's toys. Beatrice remarks that Sakutaro has been Killed Off for Real and teaches Maria to seek revenge. After talking with Mammon, Ange realizes she shouldn't have been forcibly objective with MARIA and revives Sakutaro.

The First Day

Returning to the game, this time Kinzo is the one to give Maria the umbrella and attends the meeitng in person. Kids stay outside. Kinzo declares all his children failures, though is optimistic about grandchildren. Then Kinzo summons Chiester Sisters and at random kills Natsuhi, Rudolf, Hideyoshi, Genji, Eva, Rosa. Kinzo also summons Ronove, Virgilia, and a new demon Gaap, who traps Krauss, Kyrie, Nanjo, Shannon, Kanon in a black hole. Gaap greets Meta-Battler. Meta-Battler and ANGE-Beatrice note that regardless of what the scene looked like, they can only trust the aftermath. Rosa wakes up in the empty tea party room and is greeted by Sakutaro. MARIA and Beatrice give Rosa a Cold-Blooded Torture. The surviving adults wake up in jail cells and find a telephone connected to the guesthouse and ask the kids to barricade. Kinzo and demons come and confirm the dungeon is in the forest mansion and that the kids are on trial.

In 1998, Ange questions the servants' relatives, who have recieved a return mail containing "07151129" and bank details, and have confirmed there's a lot of cash for each. Ange recalls reciving the same but haven't checked it. Ange finds a photo of the chapel's engraving saying "quadrillion to one". Ange and Amakusa hire Kawabata to ride the boat and see something in a display case, and Sakutaro tears up.

Jessica and George get invited. Ronove confirms he and Genji are linked. Jessica and George are asked to choose the next one to die out of select options. The adults see everything through Magic Mirror. Kinzo hints there is not right answer, he is interested in the conviction. Jessica picks herself for Kanon's sake, then attacks Ronove once he gets close. George picks the family for Shannon's sake, but attacks Gaap. The kids beat up the demons, and Shannon and Kanon break the cells. When the kids are about to do a final strike, Gaap teleports them and Jessica and George kill each other. The Chiester Sister execute the rest of the escapees. During that, Jessica's spirit and Kyrie manages to make a last call to Battler and ask to not doubt magic. Maria is invited next, then Battler. Battler checks on Gohda and Kumasawa before confronting Beatrice, but finds that they have hanged themselves. Midnight.

The Second Day

Battler sees Beatrice in person and is made to do the same written test. Beatrice scolds Battler for leaving the Ushiromiya family for 6 years. Battler goes over his history, but Beatrice in all seriousness tells Battler that there's a great sin he's forgetting, but gives up as he doesn't have clue. Upset, Beatrice kills Kinzo and Gaap, and just throws the victory to Meta-Battler, and everyone in the Meta world are angry. Beatrice tires to invalidate Meta-Battler as an opponent so she wouldn't play, which would make him Killed Off for Real. Beatrice introduces Blue text, a statement that enforces either Red or silence from the opponent. When Meta-Battler tries to say in red he's Asumu son, he starts choking and then disintegrates, and Beatrice leaves with MARIA to another world.

Ange arrives at Rokkenjima. While she tries to summon MARIA, Kasumi and agents find her and beat her up. Ange admits she was unreasonable to Eva, which lets EVA-Beatrice to separate and manifest, encouraging Kasumi's violence. Kasumi makes a mockery of Maria's grimoire and slowly destroys it. Ange summons the Seven Stakes who kill the agents, to EVA-Beatrice/Kasumi's disbelief, before killing her too. EVA-Beatrice uses Eva's apparition against Ange, but fails. Bernkastel congratulates ANGE-Beatrice on promotion. ANGE-Beatrice comes to the Golden Land and invalidates Beatrice's and MARIA's False Utopia by reviving Sakutaro. Lambdadelta and Bernkastel bring Meta-Battler back because he's implied to still be an Ushiromiya. ANGE-Beatrice reveals she's Ange and suddenly dies to blood loss. Meta-Battler is determined to win even if takes forever.

Tea Party

Back in the game, Battler walks around the empty mansion and goes over every murder scene. Maria's corpse is found with sings of poisoing. He fails to find Kanon's corpse or open the underground tunnel, so Beatrice confirms his death in red instead. In blue, Battler speculates that Kinzo was Dead All Along in each game, resolving the "no 19th human" problem, which hurts Beatrice. He goes through each case and finds that Beatrice can't say witness accounts are reliable. After almost giving up, Beatrice says in red that the 18th human doesn't exist either, but Battler brings his recent locked room theories to previous cases, including if victims were fed small bombs and, and finds that red statements are valid only to the time they are mentioned.

Beatrice says in Red that the culprit for Episode 4 is about to kill him. When she asks to reveal the culprit's name, credits roll. Bernkastel and Lambdadelta discuss the cases between themselves and confirm Kanon did not die by accident, Natsuhi didn't die to a trap, the chapel murder involved no traps, nobody was impersonating Kanon in EP 2. They say Beatrice still has more secrets in her seleve, but is already doomed.

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Tropes:

• Aborted Arc:
  • Lambdadelta gives ANGE-Beatrice a suggestion to betray Bernkastel and Meta-Battler so she can spend more time with her brother. ANGE-Beatrice does nothing during the game nor really cares if Bernkastel hasn't been honest, and Meta-Battler loses on his anyway.
  • Beatrice promises that she will not use Red until the very end, where she'll invalidate Meta-Battler's theory in one strike. When the time comes, she's not in the mood for this.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Eva has been pushing all her frustrations on Ange, first for replacing George as her family, then for just about anything that goes wrong because Eva is that petty and started to forget what she's lost on Rokkenjima.
  • Adding to the beatings, it's revealed that Rosa has left on a vacation with her lover while gaslighting Maria into pitying her, and also left her home alone so Maria would shop for herself. When the police catch up to this, the welfare department are understandably not happy, and Rosa is even more unhappy Maria caused trouble for her. Sakutaro also treats Rosa as his mother despite her ripping his head off.
• Addressing the Player: When Beatrice confirms Kanon's death, Battler didn't hear it, and Beatrice remarks that she's been talking to "you".
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Ange's classmates talk about how she should be more sociable before giving her a Suicide Dare. Ange talks to Imaginary Friends in the same scene. The accounts of Ange being bullied could be unreliable as she brings up her life at Academy only to complain about not liking people in general.
  • Mariage Sorciere has a rule that above all else forbids hurting each other's Mental World. Which makes them sound like just a geek club of shared interests, something Ange and Maria would be more familiar with than with ancient orders.
  • Maria describes Rosa's abuse of her in her diary, but she is known to be quite too impressionable and who knows if nobody else has written in it. Rosa's Judgement of the Dead is also questionable since Beatrice is also present and is shown to be desparate to keep MARIA for herself.
• Arc Villain:
  • In 1998, Kyrie's sister Sumadera Kasumi repeatedly tries to keep Ange and her Ushiromiya fortune to herself with an army of agents, and has a personal grudge against Kyrie's family.
  • In 1986, Beatrice takes a backstep while Kinzo, called Lord Goldsmith, carries out the entirety of the game personally, though Battler later finds this change suspect.
• Arc Words: "Zero" is used in a lot of contexts, like Ange trying to make the impossible happen, Lambdadelta's powers, MARIA's powers, and Shannon discussing death.
• Big Entrance: Due to Battler's alleged depression, Beatrice greets Battler at the tea party, and decides to bring parade flags and background clappers to set up the good mood. She looks extra silly when Battler faked his depression.
• Blatant Lies: The reason Rosa is so tired at home is allegedly because she has hard time as a designer. She is the CEO of own quite large company, not a designer. When Maria takes her coat, she finds a ticket for a vacation, and later the police confirm she hasn't even been at work for three days. In turn, Rosa keeps Maria a secret from her lovers because nobody would want to have fun with a single parent. MARIA reveals she knew Rosa takes "days off" quite often, but pretended to not notice.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: During the jailbreak, Virgilia says every villainous line in a book, which even come with own on-screen counter. She then realizes that despite her power, she's more likely to lose at this rate. Nanjo even does some complicated math how much Power Levels Krauss has, which is treated as common knowledge, and Kyrie can see the counter as well. Jessica and George also gain 11th-Hour Superpower through The Power of Love while fighting Ronove and Gaap and beat up demons easily, which is considered only natural. Which turns out to be just demons playing with them, and everyone gets killed as planned.
• Brutal Honesty: While other parents say their children are worth over 10 billion yen, Rudolf calls Battler an idiot who is not worth rescuing from kidnappers, though says he has passion that rich people wouldn't understand.
• Central Theme: The majority of characters talk about self-satisfaction. Maria feels happy by denying Rosa's abuse of her, until she starts growing independent. Rosa herself wants to live her life and avoids responsibility. Ange brings up that if nobody praises her, she doesn't care what others think of her. Mammon brings up that humans are greedy because their lives are short and seek some achievement to die with. Kinzo can't understand how a family makes one happy without money and personally forces them as sacrifices. Kasumi hates Ange because Kyrie marrying to another family has pushed all Sumadera work onto her. Beatrice pathetically begs to not taint her Mental World. Ange concludes it's wrong to push own ideals of happiness or sadness on others.
• Clarke's Third Law: Kyrie and Battler ponder if the mansion may be filled with all kinds of Sci-Fi traps after all. Kinzo being a psychopath with Fiction 500, it sounding stupid doesn't mean it's impossible for a human.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: After worrying about Battler's mental health after all the murder games, Beatrice instead finds him excited to shove anything she'd use back in her face.
• Crush the Keepsake: Not only Rosa destroys the Sakutaro plush, she rubs it to Maria that she's aware Maria sees him as alive.
• Crystal Ball: Kinzo apparently has a magic ball that lets him see everything on the island, while the dungeon has a Magic Mirror that also works like a screen.
• Cycle of Revenge: Ange summarizes that parents blame the children for their troubles, and children see their parents as witches, but in reality the problem lies outside.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Beatrice says she's tired of sleeping in Kinzo's bed with a collar on her. She makes it sound even more sexual for Battler.
• Dramatic Irony: Maria believes Sakutaro has been Killed Off for Real by Rosa, which was done quite violently. As Sakutaro himself tells Ange, if Beatrice hasn't said that revival would be difficult, Maria would still have some hope left and wouldn't become a witch. ANGE-Beatrice reviving Sakutaro pushes MARIA to Heel–Face Turn.
• Driven to Suicide: Ange did jump from the building last Episode to scare her pursuers and survives by chance, later revealing she wouldn't mind if the net failed to catch her. Upon realizing that magic isn't real and can't help in bringing her family back or help with bullying, Ange asks her classmates to kill her if she's that much of a bother. Her investigating the Rokkenjima incident is the only thing she has left and she feels she doesn't have to leave the island.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Despite being tricked last time and ANGE-Beatrice spelling out that he should trust nobody, Battler treats her as an ally right from the start. She really is there to help.
• Fair-Play Whodunnit: As the series gets to the middle-point, there should be sufficient amount of clues to Big Bad's identity, methods and motives, which Beatrice hints at.
• Fake Defector: George picks everyone but him and Shannon as sacrifices, and insists on killing the rest himself. Then he turns on Gaap and beats her up, showing he'll be pragmatic if it's to protect his family.
• The Fettered: George uses martial arts against Gaap but stops every time he's about to hit her. Why? Just to show her he can hit her any time and also has enough dexterity to stop at this close range.
• Flashback Within a Flashback: First, Battler goes over past events, then we're given the flashback of ANGE-Beatrice before and after when she arrived to Rokkenjima, then in the future she goes through Maria's diary which describes events before the Rokkenjima incident, during which Maria describes her own birthday that happened even earlier. There are mor back-and-forths across the Episode.
• Foreshadowing: Ange pays respect to a cliff on Rokkenjima. While the are cliffs, never was there shown a cliff in the middle of the island.
• Free-Range Children: Maria pretty much lives alone and has to buy own food because Rosa only comes home at night. Rosa even asked her to shuffle convenience stores and avoid the police so nobody would notice Maria roams the streets unsupervised, but she still stands out too much and Rosa gets a call from the police.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The last scene has a bunch of flashing red text, which sound like a confession that the crime was done out of love and the culprit begs Battler to expose them.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Kinzo's test involves Jessica and George choosing the next sacrifice, between themselves or their loves ones. Or everyone else dies. They chose their demon captors as next victims. With respect, it's treated as if they gave away only their own lives.
• Gratuitous English: When Battler gets invited, Beatrice congratulates him in English and uses other foreign mockery.
• Grew a Spine: After following Kinzo's orders and doing nothing, when Jessica and George chose to fight back, Shannon and Kanon decide they are human and do a jailbreak with the adults. Krauss and Kyrie don't question the magic or why they were lying, they're just glad they have admitted their feelings and join the fight themselves.
• Heel Realization: Ange tries to make Maria understand that magic isn't real and Rosa is abusing her. Later, Ange understands that even if she's right, she disrespected Maria's views on happiness and wants to apologize.
• Heroic BSoD: Subverted. Battler has been so hurt by Beatrice's betrayal last time, Ronove says he's still crying on the floor. It turns out to be a lie to make Beatrice panic for once and he even befriended Beelzebub.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal:
  • Rosa reveals that the presents she gave to Maria were only out of "moral obligation" and to keep her occupied, she's been thinking of her as a burden the entire time.
  • Battler shows that he still thinks Rudolf cheating on Asumu with Kyrie and before she died is unforgivable.
• How We Got Here: About the first half of the chapter is how and why Ange arrives to Rokkenjima in 1998, while mixing up scenes from different time periods. Even after the game officially starts, there are some more flashbacks from before Ange became ANGE-Beatrice.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: When Rosa rants trying to justify her abusive parenting as Maria being a burden to her love life, Beatrice feels disgusted by the woman's lust and even takes back on her words to MARIA that Vengeance Feels Empty.
• Hypocrite Has a Point:
  • Ange calls the girls in her class lazy jerkasses for picking on her because she's lowering the average score despite never helping her, but while they were abusing her, Ange's scores are low because she's been playing a witch instead of studying and Ange is generally unsociable.
  • Rosa is portrayed as unjust for raging on Maria for playing with her toys in public while Rosa has been having fun herself instead of working, but Maria got in trouble in the first place because she disobeyed direct orders to not catch attention and lied about it.
• If We Get Through This…: When Krauss confronts a goat butler, suddenly we hear the goat's Inner Monologue bringing up all sorts of cliche lines like having his sister and fiance waiting at home, and he loses.
• I Like Those Odds: Virgilia tells Krauss that the chance of him beating the goat butler is 0.00001%. He casually replies it's just like at horse racing and charges.
• I'll Kill You!: Understanding why ANGE-Beatrice called his relationship with Beatrice as Friendly Enemy, Meta-Battler promises to take no breaks until he exterminates the witch.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Battler's blue truth is represented by multiple pikes that pierce Beatrice and she loses her strength. As he goes on, more and more stakes rip her apart.
• Improvised Weapon: Before the final confontation Battler takes a hat stand as his "spear".
• Instant Sedation: Finding it unbelievable the dining hall could have pit traps everywhere, Kyrie suggests that they all were knocked out by a blowdart before being moved to the dungeon.
• Irony: EVA-Beatrice, the Black Witch, tires to assure Kasumi that magic and witches don't exist.
• Japanese Politeness: When Ange thinks her rudeness may be related to Beatrice's cruelty, Mammon comments that the Japanese are weird for even considering apologizing to a serial killer. Ange also apologizes to the "no entry" sign.
• Judgement of the Dead: When Rosa dies, MARIA shows every case of her mother lying about her work despite lashing out on Maria for having fun, with Beatrice as the judge.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: While killing Rosa repeatedly, MARIA switches from trying to make her acknowledge her, to playing with her new toy she can break with no punishment. At this point Beatrice officially promotes her as a witch.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Rosa has struck Maria and a child welfare agent, and appears to suffer no consequences of it. The first thing MARIA does is to torture Rosa for all the suffering she has endured.
• Left the Background Music On: Ange complains about Mood Whiplash in the soundtrack because Amakusa has left the radio on.
• Locked Room Mystery: Battler finds Gohda's and Kumasawa's corpses in the warehouse, with the key being with Gohda.
• Magical Society: Beatrice, MARIA and temporarily ANGE-Beatrice form a so-called Mariage Sorciere alliance. It's true purpose it to give Beatrice more power, but acts more like a friend group. According to MARIA, mutual respect is one of the core rules.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: The events on the island go down in history as Rokkenjima Suspicion. Ange believes Eva is the culprit, but admits that she's biased and it really could have been some sort of natural accident Eva took advantage of.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • The way the magic works, according to MARIA, through imagination when the caster isn't interrupted, is no different from therapeutic self-hypnosis. Ange understands all scenes with magic operate more like Dream Land and have no effect on reality, but she's that desperate to talk to someone from Rokkenjima. Even when fantasy characters flicker when she tries to be rational, Ange concludes it doesn't matter and she should treat them as real.
  • There's a lot of Time Travel regarding Maria's diary, but all fantasy scenes with Maria are something Ange could have imagined herself after reading it.
  • Kyrie tries to explain the first murder with tiny homing missiles and wonders if Kinzo could have actually made something flashy like this with his money, but feels it's unlikely. She still thinks the magic show was shown to survivors as a distraction from something. Battler also doesn't get to see the murder scenes until much later and only hears how the murder occurred over the phone.
  • When Kasumi's agents shoot at Ange, they all instead get killed by the Seven Stakes. Even if Ange had the stake of Mammon with her, it'd be pretty difficult to get rid of a group of 6 men while at gunpoint. Much later in the Meta world, ANGE-Beatrice suddenly starts bleeding through many holes and disappears.
  • Beatrice chokes when when she tries to say that Sakutaro is the only one in the world. Which heavily implies that the box Ange has found contained another Sakutaro ANGE-Beatrice used for "true revival". Which also makes sense since Rosa isn't that kind of person to gift a hand-made toy.
• Memento MacGuffin: Ange's pink hair accessory is a gift from Battler from an arcade. Mammon says the emotional connection can be used for Psychic Link.
• Mental World: The magic is describes as a layer of "caster"'s imagination. Fantasy characters can only interact with their master and how they act depends on whose world they are in, and the only people who see them are those who share the same ideals as the master. When someone speaks against the master, their world cracks and it's treated as taboo. In technical words, the Furniture are Imaginary Friends. Which makes demon assassins stand out considering this explanation.
• Motive Rant: When confronted in the Afterlife Antechamber, Rosa monologues to MARIA how she only raised her so the society wouldn't look down on her, and otherwise would want Maria dead because she doesn't get enough reward for keeping her.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: ANGE-Beatrice uses all her strength to bring MARIA, Beatrice and Meta-Battler back. She may have surpassed Beatrice's magic, but she can't do anything to her gun wounds.
• Never My Fault:
  • After taking Battler's only hope when he was at his lowest, then crushing it in the most monstrous way imaginable, Beatrice still doesn't get how it's something to be upset about.
  • Ange states that the reason she's so unsociable because nobody likes her anyway. While that may be true at the Academy, she avoid speaking up to schoolmates even when someone tries to communicate to her or threatens her, only adding to drama, and her slacking off did reflect poorly on class's scores.
  • Rosa has apparently been on a vacation while leaving Maria home alone. When the welfare officer asks what's wrong with her, Rosa gets hysterical why they and Maria are making life harder for her. Even as she gets repeatedly killed by MARIA, she thinks she knows the best about parenting because of her own oppressive upbringing, and blames Maria existing for not letting her have fun herself.
  • Rosa has told Maria to not show toys with her in public. Maria's "but only this time" slowly becomes all the time until the entire neighborhood takes a notice of her, then she fails to understand why Rosa takes the toys she gave to her for good behavior away and wishes Rosa dead.
• Never Suicide: When Battler checks the warehouse through the window, he sees that Kumasawa and Gohda have hanged themselves. Later, when he checks the scene in person, he notices that the rope isn't high enough for hanging and they have gun wounds.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Battler remarks that Beatrice is less terrifying when she's not hiding in the sidelines.
• One-Winged Angel: An apparition of Kinzo transforms into a black dragon, standing between Battler and a major clue to all the murders so far.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Kyrie, the biggest Agent Scully other than Battler, calls him with her dying breath to confess that magic is real and that he should give up.
• Outside-Context Problem: Bernkastel's plan relies on grabbing someone from 1998 and placing them into 1986. As an Endless Witch, Beatrice should be limited to her "Groundhog Day" Loop and shouldn't have information from the future.
• The Power of Love: Jessica and George, despite being simple humans, beat up demons Ronove and Gaap because they have someone they love captured, eventually releasing red energy. Subverted, as demons reveal they actually aren't threatened and kill them in one shot.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Demons only do what masters ask them to. While under control of MARIA or ANGE-Beatrice, the Seven Stakes are nothing but nice. Mammon's line that they can't do what their master wouldn't herself heavily implies they are literal tools personified.
• Redemption Rejection: During the Judgement of the Dead, it's set up as Rosa is about apologize to MARIA for the abuse. She also has a good excuse for it, MARIA thinks Rosa is possessed by "Meister ROSA" who grants and takes life as she pleases. Unlike the previous Episodes, Rosa instead states that her good qualities were fake and gives Maria a Dying Declaration of Hate.
• The Reveal:
  • Beatrice very non-subtly tells Battler that him doing something before leaving the family 6 years ago and not remembering who's the dearest to him are the Big Bad's true motives, and the game wouldn't have happened if he didn't return. Furthermore, Beatrice as-is did not exist 6 years ago. But because she's mistaken about his memories, he doesn't know what she's talking about.
  • There are two people named "Ushiromiya Battler", Meta-Battler is not Asumi's son and has no idea of how that happened, but he is still Kinzo's grandchild.
  • "Uu-uu" is Maria's spell to become friends with her mother, which came from the time Maria tried to sing along with Rosa and was praised for it.
  • Kinzo has been Dead All Along at the start of each of the four games, which resolves the "no 19th human" problem. Beatrice lowers the human count to 17 in turn.
  • Battler goes over each murder from the four games and finds new loopholes.
  • The credits state with no ambiguity that Ange has died in 1998, allegedly by Kasumi.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Shannon remembers being in the Golden Land "last time" and says it's a place where you have no worries, but forgot the details when the game restarted.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: ANGE-Beatrice from 12 years in the future tries to stop the Rokkenjima incident to the best of her ability, meaning nearly none, so she joins Battler at the Meta world as an arbiter to find Beatrice's weaknesses hoping she can change the outcome this way.
• Shout-Out:
  • Sakutaro is named after Cardcaptor Sakura.
  • Ootsuki says that Message in a Bottle has been popularized by a certain novel.
  • Battler promises to gift Beatrice as Gian Punch.
• Silent Scapegoat: According to Maria, she intentionally became a Bully Magnet as if it's not her, someone else would surely get picked on.
• Simultaneous Arcs: The Episode switches between the 1986's story and 1998's story, which occur at the same time as well due to Mental Time Travel.
• Soul Jar: According to MARIA, she has left a fragment of her soul in her diary, which lets her talk to Ange in the future.
• Split Personality: With getting no the answer from Battler she wanted, School-Beatrice stops caring and gives Witch-Beatrice control over her body, who also no longer cares and tries to ragequit the game.
• Stable Time Loop: Ange considers that if magic is real, her in 1998 talking to Maria in 1986 through Psychic Link has unwittingly pushed Maria into cynicism and let Beatrice manifest in the first place.
• Straw Nihilist: EVA-Beatrice and Kasumi promote not only that magic to create happiness is ridiculous, the basic idea of being happy is silly and that living is about pushing pain on something else.
• Super-Hearing: Kanon hears a patrol of goat butlers through walls, but decides to keep it to himself as he can't explain this to adults.
• Sympathy for the Devil: As Kasumi pushes her grievances for Kyrie for indirectly ruining her life on Ange, Ange reminiscences to how Rosa and Eva had terrible lives too due to also being younger heirs of a prestigious family, something she didn't want to think about. Consequently, she forgives Eva and Rosa for their abuse.
• That Man Is Dead: After Maria despairs, Ange notes that in her diary she has started to call herself as "MARIA" and that Maria may be "emotionally dead".
• "They're Not Real" Reveal: When Ange orders the Seven Stakes to kill her classmates, she realizes that they can't and ask the Stakes kill themselves instead. Mammon confirms they are only delusions because Ange has no friends. When she rationalizes that Sakutaro is still a plush toy, MARIA treats it as an attempted murder and leaves with him. Later, Mammon states that magical beings are self-aware and are independent, and Ange feels it no longer matters if they are imaginary or not, going full into magic theory.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Adding to Battler being stuck in "Groundhog Day" Loop, ANGE-Beatrice arrives from 12 years in the future to call him out for doing a bad job of playing detective. Meanwhile, Ange from 1998 has a telepathic conversation with Maria from both before and after 1986, who shares memories with herself but Ange does not.
• Trash of the Titans: Maria's room is severely untidy, but she at least remembers where everything is as long as Rosa doesn't touch it.
• Unwitting Pawn: Lambdadelta and Beatrice realize that ANGE-Beatrice exists for the sole purpose of keeping Meta-Battler and Beatrice in the game, expecting her to sacrifice herself unrewarded.
• We Can Rule Together: Lambdadelta proposes to ANGE-Beatrice that instead of trying to save Battler, she should sabotage him so they can be together forever just like she wanted. Because if he wins, at best the magic will get destroyed along with ANGE-Beatrice, and at worst Ange needing to Time Travel in the first place means she fails.
• Wham Line:
  • Beatrice drops her Killer Game Master attitude and asks Battler to remember his sin from 6 years ago. Since he has no idea what she's talking about, next she questions if he's even Battler.
  • When Beatrice resumes the game, she monologues that she was created to lose and is ready for it.
• Wham Shot: Maria finds a trip ticket in Rosa's coat, who slaps her immediately. Ange quickly realizes that Rosa's vents about "working hard" are all lies.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Maria understands the importance of Rosa's job and believes she's doing nothing suspicious, but can't help to feel that she should spend more time with her. Unfortunately for Maria, Rosa has been in a love hotel away from her job.
• Villain Decay: After revealing she's on the demon side in Episode 3, in Episode 4 Virgilia, a Great Witch, has been reduced to Kinzo's furniture, gets mocked by Gaap, and nothing is working out for her. She even has trouble controlling brainless Mooks.

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