Episode 15 aired last night, and they did a very good job of it. The Cruel and Unusual Death bits could easily have gone into Narm (actually, I'm not sure the original VN avoided it), but it works.
And if you previously thought that Beato was the worst Complete Monster of the series, this episode may make you rethink your opinion...
(More comments later.)
edited 8th Oct '09 12:58:48 AM by Jhiday
Man, on one hand Eva Beatrice is like Higurashi's Shion Sonozaki meets Beatrice and that's actually really bad fucking news for our heroes.
On the other hand, she took her rage out in Maria and I approve that. It also helps she did it with a big stupid cake that said "Happy Birthday Eva Beatrice!" on it.
edited 8th Oct '09 3:23:43 PM by TheAdversary
I wasn't the only one who thought of Link's Awakening when the seagull line was said, was I?
Since once again we're told to look at things from an anti-magic perspective, then Eva is obviously the culprit, and Hideyoshi would have to be in on it too. From what little we've seen from him and what dialog he's had, I really can't imagine him in that position, but I suppose he does strike me as someone who could be bullied or otherwise coerced into the plot, especially since he isn't related to the Ushiromiyas by blood. But then of course there's the problem of who killed the servants before, and if all the adults were in their meeting all night like they claimed, then only Dr. Nanjo could have pulled that off, disregarding the possible presence of a mysterious mastermind camping out in the hidden mansion. Unless like a completely huge bombshell is dropped soon, I really can't imagine the four cousins being involved and killing the family, at least not deliberately as part of the plot.
Thankfully the deaths were pretty low-key compared to stuff in the past, though I'd imagine one would have to be rather strong to pull that off with a cast-iron fence.
edited 8th Oct '09 5:20:44 PM by Crossword
Very strange.
Beatrice lost the title of Golden Witch, and now she's not annoying. Eva gained the title of Golden Witch, and now she annoys me greatly.
The title of Golden Witch causes annoyance!
edited 8th Oct '09 5:30:04 PM by Wicked223
You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!I laughed at the cake.
The whole thing was still pretty horrible, though. Rosa seems to be the Chew Toy of this series, considering what's happened to her in this arc and the last.
Crossword's theory so far makes perfect sense to me. I do wonder at Eva's reasoning at killing Rosa then, not when they were alone with the gold.
(New trope we need for this series: The Camera Is A Lying Bastard.)
Looks like I need to toss my theory that (somehow, metaphysically) Maria Is To Blame, seeing how she's...not a factor in this game any more, yet it continues.
edited 8th Oct '09 5:40:18 PM by arbane
About MYSTERY SOLVAN: It can't be Eva. No one saw anything about how were Maria and Rosa killed, so it wasn't necessarily Eva. Eva was in the bedroom having a pretty hardcore looking fever and netiher she nor her husband could have gone out without being noticed by everyone. Granted, they could have exited from the window but it looks like it's a second floor so no dice. Until I see Battler witnessing Eva explicitly killig someone, she's not guilty. And even then I guess we could blame it on her fever and not a conspiracy. I say she's going to be Umineko's Shion in that she's going to be insaner than the true culprit -well, part of her- but she'll still just be another victim.
That's actually pretty easy to explain. If Eva returned alone, and then Rosa's body was found outside soon after, well, any rational person would peg Eva as the murderer. By waiting and appearing with Rosa in front of everyone inside, she could deflect suspicion away from herself.
Now, about what I mentioned involving the earlier deaths, what if there are actually two murder plots? The first one is the usual one orchestrated by the usual mysterious mastermind who does its thing manipulating the myth of Beatrice. No one solved the riddle in the previous arcs but here someone did, throwing everything off. So Eva and probably Hideyoshi's escapade is completely unrelated to the original plot, brought on by Gold Fever, With Great Power Comes Great Insanity, what have you. I mean, we had a number of closed room scenarios in the previous arcs, but the deaths in this episode were pretty crude and felt rather spur-of-the-moment, and out in the open.
edited 8th Oct '09 6:18:19 PM by Crossword
Sounds good. There's also the possibility that one of the people who died in the First Twilight was actually the ringleader of that plot, and died in a freak accident. (Ronove didn't seem to want Beato to rule that out completely...)
From the supernatural POV, why is Eva-Beatrice continuing the sacrifices? (Aside from For the Evulz, of course.)
edited 8th Oct '09 7:28:17 PM by arbane
Also, Maria's look of betrayal is priceless. "But, Beato, we had an agreement !"
Just saw episode 15 and all I can say is that Rosa is definitely the Chew Toy of this series.
Theory by one of the victims: In the sound-novel, while Rosa's talking to Eva, she states she thinks ALL the first round of deaths were faked: The servants were playing dead, Kinzo got a fake corpse from somewhere, and Dr. Nanjo was in on it. She thinks the whole thing was set up by Kinzo as part of the "test" that lead to them finding the treasure.
I think she's probably WRONG, as one over-curious parent checking the "corpses" would have blown the whole plot, but it's not a totally unreasonable theory.
Which arcs are Better on Tv and which ones should I read?
I'm enjoying watching the anime, then reading the S Ns. Judging by some of the fans, doing it in reverse order will give you ulcers. :D
You know, how Maria said in episode 15 "But we had an agreement!" makes me think she thinks is into the conspiracy but is actually used like a pawn. Then again, Maria does not do much besides reading the letter in each chapter so I theorize either Maria does much more than we think, or the most important part of the plan of the mastermind involves gathering al the family in one place for as long as the reading of the letter might last. Now, normally that would be used to kill them all now that they are in the same room with nowhere to go but I think the villain is trying to pull a Higurashi and just blame Beatrice for everything. So that means he or she used Maria as a distraction so they could deal with the servants in some way or another, or to set up the more intrincate parts of the plan. At first I thought it was just psychological warfare, but know I think that if the reading were to be interrupted or not take place, everything would fall down like a house of cards.
edited 10th Oct '09 9:29:10 AM by TheAdversary
Hm, I've seen various excerpts from the novels, and I'm honestly not sure if I could sit through the whole thing. Maybe it's the translation or something, but the way the tense and PO Vs (within the same scene, mind) kept switching around was kind of jarring and felt disorganized since it lacked some cohesiveness, and a bit too wordy at times. I'm not really able to connect with the text. I dunno, maybe all visual novels are like that, but I don't think I'd be able to subject myself to the whole thing without being really bored, even with all the crazy happenings going on.
As for Maria, hmm, I can't particularly imagine her being too involved in all of this, other than someone manipulating her love of the occult to set things in motion. Since she believes so strongly in magic and such, I'm sure it would be quite easy to make her read that letter without fail. I am, however, for the time being at least, convinced that she was the one who planted the discord letter on the coffee table in the first arc. She's got that handbag she carries around. Easy hiding place for it, and as I said above it shouldn't take much for someone to have her follow a plan as long as her role was kept simple.
And like I already said, Maria also has a black crown and all the chess motifs in this point that she can't not be important to the plan somehow. But queens are peices after all, not players. The letter at the end of chapter one also makes me think that if Maria were to see what her manipulator actually wants to do to her and her family, she'd probably disagree very strongly.
Maria's crown is a chess king's—the weakest, but most important piece on a side. Mind you, her dying in this round (but the game continuing) indicated the chess metaphor isn't 100% accurate.
Did Maria really write that letter? Or was it the real murderer? It didn't sound like something she'd write.
Maria's motivations are...weird. I seem to recall that near the end of the second arc, Maria told Battler flat-out that she didn't care if he solved the epitaph or not, since she was going to the Golden Land anyway.
(And then Beatrice threatened to cook her "alive", just to freak out Rosa. Go figure...)
edited 10th Oct '09 10:13:23 PM by arbane
The VNs are very, very verbose. The most jarring would be the first one, where hours of InfoDumps at the start (where Everyone Meets Everyone at the airport/boat and nothing significant happens) were cut from the anime.
On the other hand, I'm a bit miffed that the anime still hasn't found the occasion to spend a minute or two on Battler's familial background - which means that Kyrie's upcoming CMOA will need five minutes of exposition just to make sense (and that scene was already jarring the the VN).
edited 13th Oct '09 2:28:48 AM by Jhiday
the gun fight will be all episode. judging by episode summaries, episode 18 will begin with jessica losing her eyesight
A full episode for that ? Granted, it's a good sequence, but it'll make the third arc at least 8-episode long... and I cannot see the fourth arc being done justice in only seven episodes.
Hum, I've just checked the wikipedia page listing the episodes, and if it's accurate, they've done a very good joke in labelling episode 19 as "IV-I". This confirms my suspicions that episode 18 will end with Battler getting shot.

Tsunde Ray & hyjyn: Here it is: "The Furniture" gets Beatrice dressed for the party
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Man, Beatrice never misses a chance to bust his chops, does she?
edited 3rd Oct '09 2:08:18 PM by arbane