[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

It's less that, and more that I can't empathize with his/her supposed pain if I don't understand where it's coming from. All the pieces were supposedly in place by the time where we stop, yet Yasu's attitude in no way portrays him/her the way he/she apparently wants us to see him/her two years later. So either Yasu experienced some profoundly life-altering pain that we get barely any elaboration on (enough to, maybe, sort of, make a guess), or didn't and then we're left wondering what the hell the motive was for writing what he/she wrote.

It doesn't help that the justifications we do have are pretty much the most pathetically petty things, or things which seriously don't matter that much and seem odd to flip out over. Yet the story has gone to such length to try to discount petty motivation, but refuses to provide something more substantial.

It leaves Yasu a flimsy character... not that he/she wasn't to begin with, but at least some effort is being put in to try to sync up the person we're seeing with the person whose writings we're already familiar with. And then that effort sort of trails off right when it was getting good. If Ryukishi wanted the character to be fully relatable, he failed by being too vague right at the point where he was bringing everything toward a single conception of the character as a full person.

Now, maybe that's the point, designed to make us question whether they could really become that kind of person... but it's kind of a weak point and it causes some retroactive damage to the story that he could've repaired had he continued along with his elaboration. Essentially, if the goal was to make me buy this character as a culprit it was a miserable failure because it didn't push far enough to the genesis of whatever murderous instinct arose; and if the goal was to get me to believe this character is scapegoating themselves, I'm not clear on who they're scapegoating for, why, or when they decided to go forward with that.

Pretty much the worst-realized character in the VN when he/she needed to be the best, or at least one of the best. Quite honestly, every other character in ep7 came across better, which is a travesty considered we supposedly have six episodes of indirect development for this person. Like a half-complete jigsaw puzzle, and half the pieces are from the wrong one.

Will seems to think the other episodes provided it but, considering what Yasu did, to justify it we would need a bit more about her drama and her reaction to it than just the bits we had in the previous episodes.

Ep 7 makes things worse because it portray Yasu in such a gentle light it's hard to think she would go and murder everyone.

Not mentioning the wound and the gender identity issues that probably were a big problem for her are so barely brushed one might miss them completely.

Honestly, if Yasu isn't the murderer in Prime, I don't think she's scapegoating for someone. I think that due to a setting of facts she ended up being a scapegoat.

Really, I've a hard time believing she would do something so horrible as to kill so many person but I have equal hard time into believing she would make something so kind as to take the blame for all the mess for someone else.

She doesn't come out evil enough or kind enough for either of the two things.

Spoiler for Spoilers for Ep 8 chap 10 manga version:

Again the manga proves to be better than the Visual Novel.

When Battler and Shannon go to call Ange after they left her sleep on the couch differently from the visual novel they have a moment together in which they talk.

No idea about what they talk but, from their faces I'll say it's likely about what happened among them or Battler's promise or something like that.

It's definitely much better than in the Visual Novel where they just went there and never had a moment to interact.

Also... two words about Bern's murder game. I wonder if it's the same as the one in the visual novel as Rudolf and Kyrie really seem dead, their eyes open and apparently unseeing and blood dripping from their mouth, same as Eva and Rosa.

Hideyoshi too has blood dripping from his mouth but his eyes aren't shown and Genji's seem close. Hideyoshi though seems to have cuts on his chest as well as a stab wound (or is it a gunshot hole?). I'll say Genji has more than one stab wounds (gunshot holes?) on his chest but I'm not so sure.

There's blood on Rosa's head as if it's coming from a wound. I can't see any hole though so maybe she was hit by something hard? The same goes for Eva, who's also losing blood by her nose, ear and eye. Rudolf seems to have wounds on his forehead while there's blood on Kyrie's head and forehead (under her hair) that's dripping in one of her eye.

If it's make up is awesome however, the interesting part is that, from the position Ange is in, she shouldn't be able to see Kyrie's face at all. Rudolf is sitting on the floor also pretty far from her (he's probably the fathest) and his bended knee should cover part of his bowed head, specifically his face.

(So maybe the culprits are again Kyrie and Rudolf and their really-dead-look is merely a narrative trick not something Ange witnessed)

Krauss and Natsuhi aren't lying on the floor as in the Visual Novel. Krauss is sitting on the floor, back resting against the wall. Natsuhi's head is resting on the bed, though she's probably sitting on the floor as well.
Natsuhi has a knife stuck in her throat. I can't really see how Krauss was killed but the most of the blood is located around his throats in the front and there are sprays of in behind him as well, at his throat height.

Shannon is in the garden with clear strangulation signs.

Jessica is also in the garden, seated on the ground (not lying on it), her throat cut open (basically it's so cut open she almost has her head chopped off... more than half of the throat was cut...).

Nanjo is at the entrance, his throat cut as well.

Gohda and Kumasawa are together. Gohda has a knife stabbed in the eye and his throat cut. I can see the wound on Kumasawa but the blood is around where her neck is so again a throat cutting?

Definitely here after the murder in the dining room the weapons are the knives and not the guns and the killer seems to go for the troath. Kanon's body is, of course, not found by Ange.
Hideyoshi and Genji's throats seemed uncut. I couldn't see well Eva and Rosa's, there's much blood under them but it's unclear if it came from the wound on their heads or from their throats being cut.

The wounds on the head of Eva, Rosa and potentially Kyrie and Rudolf however aren't as bad as the ones of the corpses in the shed in EP 1 or of the corpses in the dining room in Ep 4, the wound covered by the hair so that we can see if the wound is a holecaused by a bullet or by a cut or by something heavvy hitting the head or it's merely fake.
Of the 6 in the dining room the one I'll bet being dead for sure is Eva as Ange can give her a good look and her eyes are looking in opposite directions, one showing signs the veins inside it broke.

The oddness of all of it is that if guns weren't used (and there's no sign of them) the culprit had each time to overpower his/her victims with force which doesn't seem that easy to do in some cases.

Anyway I'm waiting for when we'll see the murder case as presented by Bern to Battler and Beato as, so far, we only saw it through Ange's eyes.

Oh and by the way...

Spoiler for Spoilers for Ep 8 chap 9 manga version:

Chap 9 didn't differ much from the visual novel apart for one thing. In the hide and seck game that had replaced the quiz game used in the novel Ange finds everyone apart from Battler. So she cries she can't find him when he walks, likely purposely, in front of her while wearing a pumpkin on his head. Interesting enough it seems Battler didn't really hide in some secret spot in the house but merely slid under a table in the room in which Ange was counting before she began searching for people.

It's a rather interesting parallel with how Battler survived becoming Tohya and wasn't really that far from her but Ange will be allowed to meet him only when he'll let her, let's say at the end of her travel. Also, when Battler speaks to her while Ange is sleeping she talks about the ending of Ep 3, when Ange came to his resque.