天下制覇

Now we’re cooking with gas.

Impressions:

Ah, we’re finally to the bread and butter of the show; debates over the closed door mysteries, magical demonic girls, and people stuffed full of candy killed by a censorship blur through the stomach. There’s so much to talk about this week… so let’s start with the bad. Deen is Deen. They did a decent enough job with Magical Girl Kanon’s little fight, but the animation had some pretty clear issues through the rest of the episode, including some rather pathetic reuse in the metaworld scene at the end, so it’s really no mystery what sucked up all the budget. The red text to denote truth was also introduced, and I really wish they had picked something other than dropping a red filter over the screen and then blasting the statement past in size 56 font. It just looks really silly to have sparkly text zooming around the screen in the middle of what’s supposed to be a dramatic and reasoned argument. They also still really need to ease off the ridiculous Maria faces… but I suspect I’ll be saying that for the rest of this show’s run.

As kind of silly as the magical battle was, it was still fun to watch, and cute murderous things are kind of what the whole Higurashi/Umineko scene is all about, so as far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier. The first real debate between Battler and Beatrice was also good enough for my tastes, red text notwithstanding. I’m sure I’ll get used to it and they certainly could have done it worse. If it was Shaft, they probably would have just just a chalkboard up and made us stare at that for two minutes while adding the red text to it as Beatrice said each line.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist getting one more dig in.

Brief Summary:

"Happy Halloween for Maria" is written in blood on the chapel door along with the magical circle. Rosa finds the key inside the envelope Beatrice gave her and opens it to find the victims of the first twilight. When Jess sees her parents dead, she runs to Beatrice’s room in a rage, but they just find a letter from Beatrice taunting them. Jess has an aesthma attack and Kanon takes her back to her room where they’re ambushed by Beatrice and her legion of goatmen. Kanon uses his own magical blade to fight them off, but Beatrice then summons the Stake of Asmodeus. Jessica protects Kanon from Asmodeus with her body, but Beatrice summons the Stake of Lucifer Satan and it kills Kanon. (Edit: Oops, Tears to Tiara on the brain or something.)

Back with the rest of the gang, they wonder what’s going on. The metaworld interrupts, with Battler complaining that Beatrice is just adding more unsolvable mysteries. She adds a new rule to the game, the red text which is true. Battler then starts tossing theories at her, which she offhandedly counters with the text until Battler catches her unable to use the red text to say that the key couldn’t have been taken by the real culprit and then returned. Beatrice congratulates him and the real world continues with Rosa entering the room holding the gun and ready to fight back.