Zack and Rachel reach the prison floor, floor B-3. I wonder what the B stands for? Basement? Is there an A floor? How many floors must they ascend before escaping this place? Well this episode answers none of those questions. So I don’t know why I bothered asking, just musing to myself I suppose.
This floor seems like an absolute maze of obstacles as a woman named Cathy is putting them through punishment for their ‘crimes’, she is the judge of this floor. She seems like an absolute sadist who gets off on the suffering of others and seems to have a particular obsession with Zack as she keeps picking on him by name rather than being focused on Rachel. She seems to enjoy how purely stubborn and monstrous he is.
So when he just sits down right on what is clearly an electric chair and gets trapped and gets zapped over and over again until Rachel has to solve the puzzle to save him. I think Cathy is having just a little too much fun. So Rachel figures out the riddle and lobs the heads off of all the dolls in the room and stops the electric chair.
Then, not learning anything from the electric chair incident. Zack just storms them through a door that is clearly dangerous and basically marked for poison and surprise, surprise, it’s a airtight room meant to pour poison gas into it. So they are given a gas mask and told they have a time limit to solve the puzzle of the room and escape, before she poured in a poison gas so strong that even the gas mask won’t help them.
I wonder if this segment of the original game is timed? One of those timed puzzles if you don’t finish it in time you get a game over screen? That’s just the sort of feeling I got from this.
Rachel gets the first part by noticing a body laying on the ground that she feels is important and has Zack move it so they can read the writing underneath. Weigh the right foot against the crime. So obviously you need the right foot of the corpse [which was already cut off], and the crime, which was displayed as merely a sack with something in it. I’ll leave that to my own imagination. She puts them on the scale and they even out, yet that is not the only part of the puzzle.
There has to be another mechanism. Time is running out though as the poison gas is filling the room and the gas mask is only hindering her ability to look around. So she chokes and sputters as she tries to find the second part of the mechanism and Cathy loves every second of it.
Honestly, the best part about this episode was the character interactions between Zack and Rachel. Despite the fact it’s a very similar dynamic to the one they’ve had so far, you can see it really cementing itself. In that way where, they are truly beginning to depend on one another. Past the idea that he is going to be the one to kill her, past the one that she needs to be the one to help him get out of there. They are pushing one another to care for one another in a messed up way.
Otherwise, why push the gas mask on her when she’s only began to cough? Why be so worried as to tell her to tell you before it becomes hard to breathe? If you’re truly just using someone to escape from somewhere, why care about what state they are in? As long as she’s not dead, it’s not a problem right? Maybe i’m just reading too much into it.
I also get a ton of enjoyment out of the little lighter moments the episode gives us. Like Zack trying to slam on iron despite Rachel telling him that he couldn’t in the beginning and then her asking him later why he wasn’t trying to slam on iron later and he’s like “You said I couldn’t.”, she was 100% teasing him. Which is pretty funny for someone who is so dead inside she’s asking the most psycho guy she’s met so far to kill her as soon as they leave this madhouse.
One final note of something that bugged me. Before he slammed on the iron bars with his scythe and the bullets rained down and nearly turned the both of them into swiss cheese. He asked her what she had in her bag, she said a thread, a needle and…. and then trailed off. What’s the third thing in her bag? Does it relate to what with saw with the bird down on Zack’s floor? I am intrigued. I am also intrigued to know why she is also being treated like a criminal. With Zack, it makes sense. Yet Cathy called them both criminals and sinners and considering the way that Rachel seems to view God and her promises with him.
Why call her a sinner?
What is the secret of what she saw and how she ended up here? I’ve been under the impression that everyone here is already dead from the beginning. Am I right? Am I wrong? Is there a way for her to truly die and reunite with her parents? Who knows. We’ll find out.
After you watch the entire anime, I really recommend you to read the manga because Zack and Ray’s thoughts are explored and shown more. And they also look closer faster in the manga than in the anime so far.
Yeah, the only reason i’m not checking out the manga/buying and playing the game myself is to avoid spoilers ^^! I plan to looking into both when it’s done airing.
When you read the manga later, I suggest you read it at Mangarock, the scanlated and translated chapters are 1 to 30 so far. There are other websites too, but most of them only reach for a few chapters.