Creative Staff
Story: Ryukishi07
Art: Kei Natsumi
Translation/Adaptation: Stephen Paul
What They Say
Time holds little meaning for Beatrice the Millennial Witch. Replaying the events leading up to the Golden Banquet again and again only gives her more opportunity to play with her new favorite toy, Battler Ushiromiya. The boy’s will to resist the witch remains strong as the curtain rises for a third time on the Ushiromiya family’s annual reunion. But as Beatrice pulls more and more players into the game, the strain on Battler’s defenses is evident.
Do the other members of his family hold the key to solving the witch’s riddle and sealing her defeat?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
In between matches as Battler suffers at the hands of Beatrice’s ever increasing number of servants the Golden Witch takes a nap and dreams of the past- specifically of a time when she was still a young girl first learning magic from the witch at the time who owned the name of Beatrice, though her master had yet to earn the title of The Endless Witch but was studying to reach that goal. When the young girl breaks her grandfather’s favorite vase and is in tears the witch appears and shows the young girl how magic works as she uses the girl’s memory of the vase to reconstruct the vase. As the pair walk in the garden shortly after however they hear a noise from the mansion as a cat wandered in and broke the vase and Beatrice explains that much like anything else destruction is easier to do but to be able to create or repair something once broken that will stand for any length of time takes the skill of the one who possesses the title of the Eternal Witch to pull off.
As the current Beatrice awakens she laments that she can no longer talk with her old master as she ponders just how her current state matches with the state of happiness that her younger version sought to achieve and was told existed for witches by her master. She ends her reminiscence when one of her minions calls out to Beatrice to restore Battler as the minions have been playing roughly with him and torn him literally to very small shreds. As Beatrice revives Battler they resume their contest as Battler tries to explain away the previous murder cases in a way that does not require the existence of a witch to have performed. While Battler continues to try to explain Beatrice’s minions take their dagger-ish form and continue to pierce him until he needs reviving again and Beatrice decides that their next repeat of events will now commence.
This time however the tale will follow closely the story of the eldest daughter Eva who has been fighting to get out of the shadow of her elder brother Krauss and get her father Kinzo to acknowledge her skills despite his very patriarchal attitude that only a man can be head of the family and that Eva’s role as a woman is simply to find someone to marry who brings an asset to the family and produce well behaved children to also carry on the family line. As a result all of Eva’s work at studying in college to help her father run his business has been ignored while Krauss has never really tried to do anything knowing that the title of head of the family will be passed to him as his birth right- and he has no problems with rubbing that fact in Eva’s face and every year the act of returning to Rokkenjima sends her into a very nasty mood with her family presuming that the upcoming confrontation is already starting in her mind.
What Eva has never told anyone though is that on that on the island there is a girl that only she can she- a reflection perhaps of her childhood when all she wanted was to be able to put her overbearing brother in his place and take control of the family and that as soon as she steps foot on the island this ghost comes to her and reminds her of their passion and dreams from years ago that Eva still hasn’t reached. As the now familiar event of Maria bringing in the letter of Beatrice’s challenge plays out Battler thinks that he has a trump card to use and he postulates that Beatrice is actually a person secreted away on the island by Kinzo as a secret lover but Beatrice has a surprise for him he can’t imagine as his theory is true…or rather was true but the human form Beatrice died years earlier as Rosa bears witness when talking to the family as she had found the Beatrice but that the woman died as Rosa was attempting to help her out of the fenced in house that was Beatrice’s world.
As Battler tries to process how his theory is falling apart in the wake of these new revelations the family on the island settles on trying to solve Beatrice’s challenge and even discovering the bodies of their father and all the servants won’t change that as Beatrice had chosen the six for the first night’s sacrifice and set up a series of sealed room murders that confuses both the family members on the island as well as the Battler playing against the Golden Witch. Unknowingly though Beatrice has provided Battler with an unexpected ally that will help him match wits in their odd game parlor while on the island Eva- with the help of her younger vision and a bit of a hint from Rosa- discovers just where the Golden Land is, thus winning the challenge and gaining everything though Rosa is just on her heels and Eva makes her promise to be silent about their finding until she can make sure Krauss can’t out maneuver her and though Rosa objects strenuously she abides by her elder sister’s (and now family head) decision. While Eva might be satisfied just by the fact that she has won her younger image wants more and it looks like the horrors of Rokkenjima may not be over at all but in fact may just be changing manipulators while at the same time Battler tries to use his new knowledge to win the game from his side and stop the carnage for good.
After the previous arc completely underwhelmed me I was curious as to just how this next arc would proceed and it turns out that it is a complete win on all fronts from the return of artist Kei Natsumi who worked on the first arc to the return of a much darker start but also one full of psychological motivation. In fact this half of the arc maybe one of the strongest collection of manga chapters I have read in quite some time as it is bursting with explanations and characters’ history and motivations while also fully committing to a supernatural element and, just for fun, the material also is willing to point out the complete absurdity of some of the logic being used in the fight between Beatrice and Battler while continually increasing the sense of stress that the events create.
It is hard to say really which character’s revelations I found more interesting but I’ll start by touching on Beatrice’s both because hers starts first and for alphabetical reasons. Through the previous two arcs Beatrice has started as first an unseen force blamed for events on the field and then been a persona on the field itself as well as in a room with Battler as she reveled in the carnage created on the sealed off island with a dark joy that seemed at times to border on madness. In this part of the arc though the reader is finally clued in to some of her feelings of anger toward Kinzo as her history on the island comes into view as well as the dark –and bordering on maniacal- extremes and perversions of nature he was willing to go to in order to posses the witch that captivated him, regardless of the toll it took on the family. The arc also shines when Beatrice finds that thanks to some advice Battler gets she has to start exercising some self restraint in her contest but she also seems to gain a few moments of reflection that may indicate that The Endless Witch may in fact still be capable of change.
The other place where I was practically rolling in joy over the richness of material revolved around Eva as she has been a completely unlikable character up to this point seeming to always be looking to push other’s buttons in order to win all the family fortune she can but also to try to win every encounter with almost every other person on the island which often had her pushing those around her into psychological corners making her come off as a bully. With an amazing economic uses of pages the author and artist combine to reveal the all too believable and relatable history of the eldest daughter who finds that her gender serves to keep her father from acknowledging anything she does while her brother Krauss is willing and able to twist the metaphorical knife of his superiority in the family despite his lack of attempts to do much to further that empire into Eva at every opportunity that he can.
This serves to take a character that seemed to be completely unlikable and quickly turns her into a sympatric character who is capable of recognizing how out of control her behavior is at times as well as worry that she may be pushing her own son George as a type of substitute so that while she may never be head of the family George will be once Krauss dies. This balance of both desire and regret would be enough to make for a compelling story but Ryukishi07 isn’t content to just play in the world that humans can be comfortable with and so he inserts a second Eva who is perhaps a manifestation of her desires from childhood of becoming head of the family and who only appears to Eva when she is on the island and she serves to remind Eva both of her goals and shortcomings in obtaining them like a slightly sinister and scheming Jiminy Cricket.
But it is when Eva finds the room with all the treasure in it that events completely go to hell as the power dynamic on the island is thrown into total disorder as a new force takes control and guides things toward an end even Beatrice cannot interfere with or imagine. With revelations, secret long suppressed desires released and an increasing cast of magical beings making an appearance it seems that the events on the island will descend into a utter chaos that defies the ability to be predicted but which will be as narrativly rewarding to those who like their tales mixed with a helping of darkness and some gore as anything released on the market in quite some time.
And just for one more bonus the author allows the book to show that the characters do have a level of recognition for just how flimsy some of the verbal spats between Beatrice and Battler are and is even willing to call it out in no uncertain terms while also spinning it as a positive measure- which I don’t quite agree with but does make more than a little sense in the boundaries’ of this tale anyway and at least he is willing to grant both the reader and his characters the intelligence to know that they are being BS’d and use it rather than hide from that obvious fact.
In Summary
With more and more demons and witches appearing it may be that the island of Rokkenjima has truly turned into a type of hell and Battler almost certainly wouldn’t disagree as he is subject to both the Golden Witch’s horrible game of murder mystery with his family as well as physically being used for sport by the minions who answer to her. But every story has a start, and every person has a story and as the one here unfolds the reader will be given glimpses into two of the characters who have to date been portrayed more as unrepentant villains – Beatrice and Eva – than real characters with dimensions to them. As the narrative goes along it may just be that the reader will discover that despite the horrible things that these individuals have done in previous arcs and do here as well that their history produces more understanding then revulsion and reveals that it truly may be possible to have sympathy for some devils. Highly recommendation.
Content Grade: A+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: January 21st, 2014
MSRP: $22.00
