[hirahira]

Originally Posted by June 1983

Klash gave a pretty good explanation of the significance of this episode a few posts above, but ...

1) Ange found out that SOMEONE -- most likely the culprit or someone who was either in league with the culprit or at least aware of them -- sent out letters to relatives of those who were going to die on Rokkenjima the day before the meeting.

2) More specifically, the person did it in such a way that the letters would reach them some time after the murders -- because the intended recipients (Nanjo's son, etc) were listed as the senders and their relation on the island was listed as the recipient at an undeliverable address.

3) A very, very important note is that this person seemed to be aware of the fact that Ange was not going to be at Rokkenjima for the meeting, since she herself received one of these letters (I don't think the anime mentioned this aspect of that incident, but in this case the letter's "intended recipient" was Rudolf). This is interesting because no one knew Ange would not be attending until the very last minute, ie, after the letters seem to have been sent out.

4) This person has a playful personality and enjoys an element of "risk" (which Kinzo and Beatrice say is the core of "magic").

5) Their handwriting matches the handwriting of "Beatrice" in Maria's diary and in the bottle-letters from "Ushiromiya Maria".

6) The letters contain keys to high security bankvaults, and the code to the bankvaults is the mysterious string of numbers that was written on the door to the parlor in EP 3 (found when George and Shannon's bodies were discovered). In other words, the individual who knew the code to the bankvault, who may then be the person who sent out the letters, was on the island at the time of the murders.

7) On another note, Ange's trip revealed that Kumasawa was seriously attempting to solve the epitaph -- something we were not aware of.

8) Furthermore, it looks like she knew more about goings-on on the island and may have gotten pretty far in solving the epitaph. The photograph we saw was probably only a part of her research into the riddle, because her son said that there were more papers related to it which were split up among his siblings.

On the 1986 side of things, we learned that

1) George seems to have a more forceful and potentially dangerous aspect to his personality than we may have thought.

2) George and Jessica are both engaged in fights for their lives (regardless of whether or not demons are involved).

3) Kumasawa and Gohda have been locked in a self-imposed closed-room scenario, and this perhaps may give us a clue about other closed-room scenarios that we've seen before.

Are you still going to say that this episode didn't contribute much to the anime?

You forgot about Ronove saying that Genji might be his true form