Note: The following content contains complete spoilers for the game 《魔法少女的魔女审判》 (Magical Girl’s Witch Trial, Witch Trial), as well as some side spoilers for classic ADV games.
As a rare large-scale ADV game this year, Witch Trial is probably the best ADV game this year. 《无法成眠的伊达键 – From AI：梦境档案》 (AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative) may be too small, while 《百日战纪 -最终防卫学园-》 (Hundred Days War Chronicle – Final Defense Academy -) and 《终天教团》 (The Eternal Order) have too much hype and are more like a grind to play, so their bangumi scores are not as good as Witch Trial.
But it has a clear difference from many common ADVs, that is, Witch Trial avoids mentioning, evaluating, or reflecting on social organizations and social phenomena. 《Ever17》 is about the protagonists fighting against immoral pharmaceutical companies, and the protagonists of 《命运石之门》 (Steins;Gate) are fighting against the government doing evil experiments and the scientific organization that monitors the world.
Even 《人狼村之谜》 (Raging Loop) discusses the oppression of indigenous people and their beliefs by ancient Japanese people (details can be found at 土蜘蛛), and some villages are subject to unnatural religious manipulation. So, Witch Trial, which mentions witches, should mention past witch hunts like 《海市蜃楼之馆》 (The House in Fata Morgana), right?
However, it doesn’t. There are no social organizations or social phenomena in Witch Trial that can be regarded as enemies. Even the causes of the psychological problems of more than a dozen characters are mostly simply from their families (or guardianship facilities). Only Sakura 羽艾玛 Emma and Nikaido 希罗 Hiro’s psychological problems come from Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki, who committed suicide due to being bullied at school.
But later, after learning that this was part of Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s plan, school bullying became a background board for simply advancing the plot, rather than a topic that could be discussed in depth. So who is the enemy? Owl Warden? He is just a prison warden, and the specific orders come from higher up. Kurobaku 冰上梅露露 Meruru? She is only an accomplice, and her plan even allowed the magical girls to live longer, so it is difficult to truly hate her.
The Great Witch Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki? She is indeed the culprit who spread the witch factor, which led to many people being murdered and isolated. But after chatting properly, they can still understand each other and give the protagonists a way out, so she can’t be considered an enemy. So who is the enemy? Is it the humans who are carrying out genocide against the witches on the island?
Maybe, but Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki is the smallest witch, (next is speculation) Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s ability is not enough to find and murder the king or pope who issued the order. Then, based on her own abilities, Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki came up with a good way. That is to spread the witch factor to humans, making them the existence that she hates and wants to exterminate (Magneto in 《X战警》 (X-Men) also tried this approach).
It’s just that the spread is too slow. Over the years, the influence of religion has become very low, and witch hunts no longer exist. Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s plan to turn humans into the race she hated failed, so she turned to exterminating humans. Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki began to spread the modified witch factor, so some girls who are over 15 years old, have psychological trauma, and have accumulated stress will become witches with strong murderous intent.
In this way, humans will hunt witches in their own group, which is Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s revenge on humans. And when asymptomatic infected people in humans, that is, the witch factor exists in all human bodies, Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki will release magic to kill witches and exterminate all humans.
In this way, the object of Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s revenge has disappeared. The religion that used to be high above and could easily hunt witches and murder others. To the old version of religion that has declined and almost no one believes in (now they believe in the improved version, which has removed a lot of violent content). But this also raises a question, should humans bear the sin of exterminating witches many years later?
Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki also knew that her revenge was not very reliable, so she handed the trigger to the pure, kind, and well-behaved Emma. As a result, in the ending, Emma did not become Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s tool of revenge. Instead, Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki gave up revenge after everyone’s persuasion. (Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki: “I have no enemies.” It seems that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki.)
gledos generally likes 《魔法少女的魔女审判》 (Magical Girl’s Witch Trial) very much. The deep emotions between multiple characters are indeed very outstanding in ADV. However, the ending feels a bit unsatisfactory. After all, the deeper black幕 problems have not been solved, just like 《Remember 11》, which is a bit melancholy.
I wanted to complain about Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s plan, but as I wrote, I found a more reasonable reason for her. Yes, many works have so-called enemies, and it is rare to be able to write such a work based on having no enemies. Judging from the evaluations and scores, most people also accept this ending, which can be regarded as a great innovation.
Postscript: Inspired by the dolphin radio wave video 《后叮咚鸡时代的爱情——〈魔法少女的魔女审判〉测评》 (The Love in the Post-Ding Dong Chicken Era – Review of “Magical Girl’s Witch Trial”), which mentioned that the game deliberately avoided political topics.