OK, picking up right where we left off. Hiatuses? Haha, who needs ‘em. Did you know I liveblogged the whole of episode 1 in about a week?
We cut back to 1986 Rokkenjima, where the cousins in the guesthouse are just hearing about Kinzo’s weird scheme to test them for magic potential. Krauss explains that the successor will be one of the grandchildren. Since Battler is present for this scene, we can be fairly sure it’s ‘real’. For this branch anyway.
Kinzo orders that Gohda and Kumasawa must be banished from the guesthouse, lest they interfere with the test. I like how this particular shot is composed so that Krauss is side-eyeing Kinzo from behind the bars. In fact I think they drew a new Krauss expression just for this.
I think it’s interesting that they have Krauss on the phone line here, so Battler doesn’t directly hear Kinzo speaking of all this. Anyway, Gohda and Kumasawa are going to the garden storehouse. I think that may have been the first murder location, back in episode 1…
Nanjo tries a gambit to get some sort of escape route. He sucks up to Kinzo, and then asks if they could be moved somewhere warmer. Kinzo judges it to be a gambit (much as in chess, the game that Kinzo and Nanjo play, known for its gambits, you see, he is doing a metaphor), and retorts that he will line the floor with coals instead.
Gaap tauntingly says that Sayo and Kanon could easily break the bars. But if they did, she admits, Kinzo would just kill everyone. The two talk about powerlessness. Sayo recites the Furniture Ideology… one day, she says, they will be needed and loved and taken out the basement. Oof.
Kinzo sends the Chiesters out to observe the imprisonment of Gohda and Kumasawa. While he wants the grandchildren to ‘show their resolve’, apparently rebellious action now would not count. I assume Kinzo is going to order them to do a battle royale and kill each other, but there could still be another twist before the end. Anyway, a new Chiester, 556, is mentioned… ‘a good kid’, but apparently she’s dead! So the Chiesters can die. Presumably in King Arthur’s Space War.
So, here’s the setup. The ‘Examiners’ Ronove and Gaap go with Kinzo, and Virgilia stays to watch the prisoners, backed up by unruly goats. Gaap sarcastically calls her ‘Lia’, and in turn, Virgilia calls her a ‘cashmere mop’ (カシミア雑巾). Ronove, for his part, keeps mentioning ‘Milady’ and alluding to other games, making clear that as far as he’s concerned, Beatrice is the real boss.
Gohda and Kumasawa are at least given blankets and food and a key so they can leave the shed later. George has a parting conversation in which he manages to drop another two 仕方ないs… but yeah I mean he’s probably right in this case. The key is left with Gohda, and the narration makes a point that there is only one key, which is only usable on the outside, so I assume these two are next on the kill list.
Bit of a rough situation since they can only be freed by passing the key to someone outside the shed…
Maria does one of her usual spiels and Battler implicitly hits her (conveyed with sfx). Just taking a note of that here.
The Chiesters return to do their Kawaiistone Cops act. Listening to the dialogue, I notice that what the translators are calling ‘Pendragon’ is in fact 竜王さま (ryuu-ou sama), i.e. ‘Dragon King’. So is this a translator’s liberty or is it intended to be Arthurian in the original? Actually, on the lore screen last episode, they say ‘Dragon King Pendragon’, so perhaps this is just replacing a title with a name?
On the return to the guesthouse, Kyrie has the next instruction. The children are apparently going to go out alone, so it’s not a ‘which of you will murder your cousins’ test, good. The order is Jessica, George, Battler then Maria.
Kyrie gives some encouraging words to Battler, explicitly acknowledging him as her son, kind of meaningful given all the stuff we saw last time around.
The tests
OK, so, Jessica is sent to her room in the mansion. The dialogue emphasises again that the characters are being watched, can only do as they’re told—a panopticon situatioon not unlike those of the servants in the mansion we could say?
George breaks for his mild persona for a moment to say something uncharacteristically strong…
The ‘you guys will … literally beat me to the punch’ pun derives from 君らが僕より先にブン殴っちまうこと (boku yori saki ni bun nagucchimau koto)… The ‘bun’ part in katakana stands out, but I’m not sure if that’s also a pun in Japanese or just that a conveniently cute pun happened to be available in Engish. ‘Doddering old bastard’ is from クソジジイ (kusojijii), literally ‘shit old man’, which I think is really funny.
The kids psych each other up and agree to race to be the first to beat up Kinzo, action movie style. It’s not going to go so prettily, I think.
Back in the guest room, Sayo rings the guest room and gives George his orders (so it seems these tests will be concurrent, or Sayo is acting on her own) and…
chapter break!
Wow, that has to be one of the shortest chapters yet. Just moving pieces into place for the grand finale, I suppose.
Good opportunity to predict, though. What is Kinzo’s test going to involve? Given this is Kinzo we’re talking about, I assume it will be incredibly sadistic. Also, most likely chance will be involved somehow. So… Russian roulette? Pretty much anything from a Kakegurui episode would do the trick, really. (Hey, don’t you think Yumeko and Kinzo would get along like a house on fire?) Alternatively, it could be a lethal situation where you have to use magic to escape, so only wizards may pass. Not really enough to go on just yet…
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