Thank you Dalbun.

Observation: D-ko and her parents appear to be at a graveyard. Are we visiting Chigusa?

Ruggahissy wrote:

Observation: D-ko and her parents appear to be at a graveyard. Are we visiting Chigusa?

That was my guess too. But D-ko's in her Ohtori uniform and needs to take a plane to get home. And her father's sick, so he probably wouldn't have come to Ohtori to pick her up...?

Dallbun wrote:

Our poor father... sounds like he was struck with a case of Akio-Wants-Us-Out-Of-Ohtori-Now-itis.

Or Chigusa's yorishiro was secretly sustaining him as well!

Dallbun wrote:

It's really cute the way the game is calling back to all our previous activities. We slept with Touga, fenced with Juri, tutored Miki, and... uh... Saionji was also around.

I guess we should have made time to drink Rooibos tea with him.

Dallbun wrote:

I deliberately caught the date box on this shot, because it strikes me that Akio's dialogue in the last scene is a little odd. Chigusa was a test case for Mikage? But Mikage is already walking around on the 25th, as evidenced both here, and in our previous playthrough, where D-ko ran into him just before talking with Juri and getting picked up in the Akio Car.

I dunno, maybe he was so excited that the Chigusa thing worked that he went ahead and set up Mikage as soon as possible. It just seems kind of hasty, is all.

Possibly Chigusa was a test case for Mikage solely in regard to him being a duellist. Assuming there's some sort of special circumstances required for people to go to the duelling arena or something. In which case, Mikage has probably been around since he first showed up as Nemuro, but wasn't given any motivation to get involved in the duelling game. Meaning the following scene could well be Mikage and Anthy!Mamiya's first meeting, to paraphrase the concept as it appears in certain Disc World novels; Mamiya has been living in Nemuro Memorial Hall's basement for decades, but he hadn't been living there yesterday.

Either way, syncing things up with Mikage as part of the plot is really neat, once again I'm amazed with how far the game takes us.



So D-ko wrapped the red thread around... her (father's) sword? That is not how the charm is supposed to work!

I assume on a specific character ending it would refer to them specifically, with we got it makes the most sense for Juri to be D-ko's ambition. Which is totally great because by the time she gets back to Ohtori, Shiori will have returned. That would be fun to watch.

Dallbun, no words can describe how thankful I am to you for having done this... twice even! Nor are there enough and 's in the world.

Thank you Dallbun!!!

This was a triumph! I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

I like how the game refers back to past events. I also like how Touga has the same expression in every scene of the entire game.

Dittio and Touga's half smirk gave him a whole 2 different expressions for the entire game...oh well according to D-ko he expresses himself well enough in bed.

for you.

Ico wrote:

But now that I see the juxtaposition of all these pics together, I do find it mildly disturbing that D-Ko had such a good time with Touga (even though I am guilty of voting in that direction)--and that Touga looks so stunningly like her own dad.

This is not helped by remembering that Nanami and Touga are adopted.

Ico wrote:

Re: Mikage's lingering spirit, if the implication is that he is well and truly dead--how did he die in the fire?  I'd always assumed that Akio's phone call to him meant his ejection to the real world (and yes, I know there are a multitude of theories about what actually happened to him).  But within the game continuity, if he did die when Nemuro Memorial Hall burned down--when Tokiko slapped him for setting the fire, he was standing OUTSIDE the building.  So how did he burn with it?  After she slapped him, did he realize he'd made a mistake and then just... give up, and go inside the building and let himself die?

Because if that happened, that's even more tragic than his story is already. 

I don't think he died in the fire. It's a personal opinion, I think, but from Akio's comments about Ohtori being a garden where teenagers never become adults, and considering Mikage's assertion that he made time stop because his beautiful memory was worth preserving, I think Mikage was just the...god, the Germans/Scandinavians have good words for this. Doppelgänger, certainly, or maybe something similar to a Finnish Etiäinen. Possibly also a reverse vardøgr. Given the essential differences between Mikage and Nemuro, it's like his spirit was fractured. Chigusa doesn't seem to have been in quite the same boat; she remembers things a lot more clearly than Mikage does. With Mikage, it always seemed to me that Akio whipped his fledging emotions -- which he had not experience to control -- into a frenzy, and then used that energy to his own ends. Poor Nemuro. As for the horcrux...I'd be inclined to think Mamiya himself/herself was the horcrux, rather than the rose. He'd lost the duel before Utena struck it from his chest, and the whole things ends with Tokiko/Mamiya falling down. It would possibly explain why Mikage projected Tokiko and Mamiya onto Utena and Anthy; his horcrux was more mental, and he was just giving it a physical manifestation, perhaps?

...this is a bit OT, sorry. Thank you, Dalbun! I've only come in at the end here, and I need to go back and read it all properly. Thank you so much for doing this, though.

Ico wrote:
But now that I see the juxtaposition of all these pics together, I do find it mildly disturbing that D-Ko had such a good time with Touga (even though I am guilty of voting in that direction)--and that Touga looks so stunningly like her own dad.

This is not helped by remembering that Nanami and Touga are adopted.

We just added a little more incest to the series!


Also, thank you so much for your awesome work, Dallbun.

Thinking more about the Akio scene, maybe it doesn't relate directly to Mikage at all. Possibly the way Chigusa is brought back is similar to how the black roses function, since they're tied in with the hundred dead duellists.

D-ko's mother probably isn't the first girl D-ko's father slept with.

minervana wrote:

Not to mention that Nanami, who looks nothing like D-Ko, is the same age as her. Right?

Nope, Nanami's a year younger than D-Ko.

D-ko's mother probably isn't the first girl D-ko's father slept with.

Or the last.

Last edited by Raven Nightshade (04-29-2010 04:15:13 PM)

I don't think Chigusa is the experiment for Mikage. I think Chigusa is the experiment for all the Black Rose duelists.

Using a soul for a duelist.

The black rose signet is what binds the dead duelist to the bearer.

Amazing Dallbun, I really enjoyed this thread.

I'll add my voice to the chorus.  This shit was off the hook.

Twisted wrote:

I am so in love with you for doing this! Please please please do another play through!!

At the very least, we need a Juri run like we were doing before we got distracted.  It would make my life a hell of a lot more fulfilled.