[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Kealym

Okay, I should be more specific - I won't deny that the baby was probably injured, but I think a complete recovery was made, and Yasu's body as she has it is the SAME it would've been if she DIDN'T fall off the cliff, so, the same exact body that Lion has. What I'm refuting is the idea that it's some "terrible would caused by the fall" that causes/feeds into Yasu's self-esteem and self-image problems.

Personally I've always wondered about this terrible wound.
From the way the scene is described you would expect the maid to fall on her head. Now, either she keep on holding the baby through the fall and this is what shielded the baby (assuming she just didn't crumble over the baby) or, more likely, she let the baby go in a desperate attempt to grab something and, if the baby was lucky, he/she fell on her, always falling on his head (heaviest part of his/her body and at that age he/she couldn't really turn).
The chance the baby fell on his/her lower half is rather low.
At that age a stab wound caused by a sharp rock serious enough to cause body damage should also produce enough blood loss to kill the baby.

So hum... I've always been sceptical about it.

Though it's possible that the fall damaged Yasu's brain in such a way it couldn't send the hormonal signals that would allow Yasu to enter into puberty. In this way there would be no visible scar but she would still have a body 'uncapable of love'.

Originally Posted by Oroboro

I was under the impression that Rosa felt bad and made a new Sakutarou and was going to give it to Maria during the conference, but accidentally forgot it on the boat.

The PS version had Ange find a bag full of Sakutaro... implying that it wasn't handmade at all. Though, if you've love for Rosa, you can say it's a coincidence that Sakutaro looked like those toys (maybe the resemblance isn't that marked or Rosa merely copied an already existing model) or that those toys were mass produced after the Rokkenjima incident as 'gadgets' for the witch hunters or also that Rosa created the first Sakutaro then, as Maria seemed to like it, she set it into mass production in hope to gain something from it.

Originally Posted by goldendust

One theory I had is that every red truth is all written by Beatrice as she is the "personification of the rules". That basically the Game Master and Territory Lord knows all of the red and can freely edit it.

The problem is that Beato, GM for EP 4, shocked on a red she was trying to say. So, unless Ange stole form her the chair of GM, she didn't know all the reds...

Originally Posted by goldendust

Of course, I have thought of the whole imaginary friend aspect.

Although an imaginary friend does not really account for the sudden shift. Think about it, the story goes like

-Yasu goes to work at Rokukenjima
-talks about Shannon in the third person
-wants to be a witch
-dissapears completely
-Shannon takes the place of Yasu as the centerpiece in the tale

Why is the "imaginary friend" suddenly the main character all of the sudden? Isn't the imaginary character usually the side character?

Yasu's body became the 'vessel' for her immaginary friend.
Actually it's more complicate than this.
'Shannon' wasn't just an immaginary friend but also a role model, a superego, what Yasu longed to become and who had a look that, more or less, matched Yasu. So Shannon and Yasu were already supposed to fuse into one when Yasu were to become like 'Shannon' and probably, hadn't Yasu discovered she didn't really want to become 'Shannon', things would have gone smoothly, 'Shannon, the imaginary friend' would have been 'suppressed' and Yasu would have become who she wanted to be.

Instead things go differently. Yasu realizes she wishes to be someone else but this time her wish is more troublesome. She rejects living like Shannon but can't escape it so she creates a world inside herself where her true self can be a witch and do as she pleases.

It's not big deal at first as it's more or less an innocent fantasy but then I fear the difference between who she wanted to be and who she was grew as well as her troubles. Even though she's Shannon she doesn't acknowledge herself as such and prefers to view Shannon as someone else for which her body plays as vessel (no, she's not a second personality, more like a role she has to play in front of everyone else to whom she gave a more interesting background, a bit like Maria voicing Sakutaro's thoughts). Even though she feels she's Beatrice she's not acknowledged by anyone else as such (at first) and her look doesn't even match with the Beato in her mind (that's why Beato has troubles with mirrors while Shannon doesn't).

Our confession presents Shannon as devoted to Beato and Beato seems to be the 'master' of Shannon and Kanon, though not even Beato is likely the true Yasu and, in fact, in EP 7, there seems to be an extra person rearranging Beato and Shannon's feelings... the one ChickBeato calls 'mother'.
Yasu is probably a mix of all the characters she created as she assigned to each of them part of her feelings and characteristics.

The most likely combination is a maid with more or less the look and physical abilities of Shannon (breasts put aside), more or less the anger of Kanon and more or less the character of Beato.

Originally Posted by goldendust

Despite what Ange found. What I never understood why the a stuffed animal vessel of Sakutarou was necessary. We seen that Ange could talk with Maria/Sakutarou /the stakes without any physical vessel beyond perhaps a book.

Basically it's a rule that Maria created and that only Maria could re-write to revive HER Sakutaro. Ange doesn't need the plushie as vessel, she, at first, uses the diary and then she's able to do it even without it.

Note that Maria created Sakutaro's soul before having his vessel in hands so theoretically she too could have done without it.

So the vessel is necessary only as long as Maria deems it necessary.
However for Maria that vessel was a conditio sine wua non Sakutaro could exist and she saw that vessel being destroyed in a rather traumatic way. She then decided that, with the loss of the vessel Sakutaro was dead, making him dead as long as the vessel wasn't recovered or she were to change her mind.

Maria is also very young though and she likely needed the vessel, differently from Yasu who created some of her friends just taking a vessel as model but not having it 'fuse' with the soul so that vessel and immaginary friend are often two separate things and killing/losing the vessel won't mean losing the imaginary friend, nor the vessel needs to perform as the imaginary friend (Shannon and Kanon being the only exception as they use a human body as vessel and are tied to it).

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Vessels give strength to the magical concepts. It's all symbolism. Maria saw Sakutarou die. Violently. By the very person that gave him existence. It's an emotional block difficult to overcome without a vessel.

That too, I agree.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Actually, I recently ran over that Golden Land scene in EP4 again, and I was thinking about how it connected to the Yukari ending in EP8 as well. It makes you wonder which of Ange's worlds that particular scene in the Golden Land with Beatrice and Maria actually represents.

EDIT:

In fact, it fits with the Yukari ending a lot better I think. It makes a lot more sense if Ange moves on from Maria's death by writing about ("resurrecting") Sakutarou, rather than by just finding Sakutarou dolls somewhere.

Funny enough I had the same idea though I'm still pondering over at Ange's world.