Just right out the gate the end of the chapter right before Confessions shows Tohya regaining his memories as Battler due to being told about the Rokkenjima incident and it shows that the Confession was in the bottle Ikuko found oh my god, like this is fucking amazing and hurts so god damn much. The fact that this final piece written by Sayo is in part what causes him to remember who he was had me just crying for a WHILE, and while yes it wasn't a situation of Tohya reintegrating with Battler's memories and becoming Battler again it still in the end helped him come to peace with who he was and be able to move forward.
Actually getting into Confessions now, while in EP7 of the manga and the VN itself we got a pretty clear picture of who Sayo is and what had caused everything to transpire, Confessions gives a more in depth look at Sayo from her own perspective starting from her childhood with her dreams and aspirations, she wants a family, someone to love, and while she has Kumasawa, Genji, and Nanjo as acting family in a sense, she wants to make her own with someone someday. Unfortunately she fell for the man of all time, and personally I don't blame her but god is it fucked up that just one line is in part what sets the entire plot into motion. Like yes, he was 12 saying a very corny ass line, but it makes sense this was something that Sayo latched onto at the time. She was an assumed orphan with no real family, no one to confide in...and as she got older she felt like she was being left behind both by Battler himself because of his falling out with Rudolph, and by other girls her age starting puberty. I can't say that I blame her for being as distressed as she was over how she was developing, the dysphoria/dysmorphia building up because of that and seeing herself in a mirror, being constantly reminded of what she truly looked like and the fact to her Battler seemingly abandoned her crushed her.
Side Note: This page with the two of them on their wedding day with her in a wedding gown gets me fucking going everytime, it's just twisting the knife. She deserved her happy ending!!!!
Sayo in turn develops Kanon and Beatrice in a sense as outlets for those emotions and while it works for a while it doesn't last forever. Solving the epitaph leads to her finding the truth, being told that she is blood-related to the family and that she will never be able to bear children due in part to the reconstructive surgery done to her because she was that baby from the cliff incident, this entire exchange basically in one fell swoop killed both of her dreams as she had now fallen for George in place of Battler and they had shared the same dream of having a family together.
Also real quick I'd like to say say I'm pretty neutral overall on my opinion on George as a character and what he's meant to do for the story like he's very integreal to the plot for obvious reasons because of his relationship with Sayo but god do I not like him on a personal level. Like the two of them falling for each other is initally kinda cute but then like you kinda think about it and this dude is 21 or something at the time doting on someone who is presumed to be 14/15 at the time like just.....not a fan.
Anyways! I cannot express how gutted this page made me feel when I first read this, it's such a simple page but the feeling it conveys is so visceral and real to me, it's the feeling that follows the realiziation that you cannot change your situation, you have to live with it, and Sayo practically begging that they are lying to her. Her only bit of hope was that they had no proof that baby was her but the scarring proved it and she has to now live with the knowledge of who she is and that breaks her.
Her following crashout is pretty damn reasonable all things considered and I understand how she feels in this moment to an extent which fucks with me. Obviously not the blood relation thing, but the fear of not being accepted by the one you love for something out of your control, the feeling that your body is incapable of love, that you have no purpose as a human, that you are furniture. It's harrowing having an unending nagging feeling that something is deeply wrong even if like in my case I couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was for the longest time, but it makes you feel like a husk of a person and it's deeply unsettling.
Sayo continuing to essentially spiral while trying to maintain a sense of normalcy is only exacerbated by Jessica revealing she had feelings for Kanon. Like on top of keeping the truth of Kinzo and her ties to the family under wraps she's managing her relationship with George, the affection from Jessica, and Beatrice over her shoulder going off about how everything is destined to come apart and that love between two people is only physical. Honestly Beatrice at this point has essentially transformed into a manifestation of her doubts and anguish over the circumstances of her birth and surgery, and probably a little bit of Battler's side commentary on relationships from their childhood. I don't exactly blame her for then crashing out over the fact that Battler will be coming back after 6 years of absence, like those feelings she has held for years no matter how small are welling up again and it's tearing her apart. This is also something deeply relateable and I mean it's definitely more relateable to most than feeling like you're incapable of love and feeling like furniture. Who hasn't had old feelings kinda spring back up even after trying to move past them and move on it's only natural.....and for Sayo now she is truly spread 3 ways and she feels trapped and entirely helpless. To paraphrase her own words, she felt cursed by her fate and in trying to escape said fate only cast the threads that kept her bound.
So, the very reasonable reaction to all this is to plan a group suicide! I'm being facetious, but when you feel like you have no other options and are scared of any outcome there isn't exactly anything keeping you from the edge and taking that way out....It also doesn't exactly help that Genji just gives no pushback on this and is willing to go along with it to the end. Don't get me wrong I understand the why, but he doesn't exactly help the situation aside from providing Sayo solice in that he will stand by her until the end.
Not too important to Confessions itself but nice to know about Rules X and Y for solving each Episode. Rule X is nice just in that there isn't duplicate games of the same sets of coconspirators, but Rule Y while it was easy to partially pick up on lies everyone agrees upon being depicted as reality, while I was reading the VN I was understanding that Battler's perspective was the truth and there couldn't be any real tampering with it but then the end of EP2 had Beatrice show up in front of him and I just got lost, so much so that I genuinely didn't have a solid theory for a while. Like my main guess by the time I hit EP7 was partially right, I just never caught onto Shannon and Kanon's whole thing even though looking back it's decently fucking blatant in EP6.....
The visualization and writing of this entire sequence is actually really neat all things considered, while Sayo is writing she describes it as feeling like her soul left her body and experiencing the worlds as she wrote them, killing each of the family repeatedly giving her a sense of satisfaction and knowing none of them could truly escape this fate. Her lack of attachment as she writes, crafting plots to kill everyone and ways to disguise it all as magic and the work of Beatrice, at this point is when she makes contact with Lambdadetla making her Beato in the metaworld where she gets to be bold, and brazen. All the locked rooms, the tricks, the tests, with her "magic" she feels anything is possible, all the while endlessly goading Battler along the mystery still holding out hope that he solves it. In the end she's having a meltdown, the full realization kicks in of what she's doing what she's been writing Sayo going about writing the bottles and her fragments about the 4th and 5th in the end are just one big cry for help. She truly does want to live and to be with those she loves yet feels too far gone, too close to that edge to ever come back. She needs someone to save her, to stop her, to solve her mystery and while "openly" she says she's okay with any outcome whomever it may be....but she truly only wants one person in particular to save her.
Rule Z while not pertinent to solving the mystery still showed she desperately wanted someone to pull her back, she could never directly ask for it at this point she truly had felt like her only option was to go all in on a miracle of someone solving the epitaph and turning off the bomb. In the end she never got that miracle she so desperately wished for, and the only remains of that day were the bottles that had washed ashore and contained the fragments of those days, and the letters sent to the remaining family of the servants including their own little golden lands.
Confessions is a rollercoaster of emotions for me because of how much I feel I can relate to Sayo and her struggles, falling for the same fucking dumbass as her doesn't exactly help either to be entirely honest.....wrapping this up when I was first told how much it would hurt to read I truly didn't expect it and the end of the manga to make my cry this much. The end of the VN already hit me like a truck and even still continues to do so when I go back and reread it, like yes over time the impact has lessened but it's still there. And yet, EP8's manga still packs a hell of a punch with the extra scenes and dialogue, the following chapter with Sayo and Ange's dialogue about living for the future no matter how hard instead of running from it and closing off your future, and that entire exchange from the family telling Ange to keep living and make her own happiness is truly heartbreaking. I truly loved reading the manga and highly recommend it if you've read the VN and want to go back or if you just won't read the VN due to it's length it's a suitable replacement even though I truly believe you should read the VN it's very good and worth your time!!! That's it that's the write up, it hurts and I cry for Sayo I love her so much and wish she could've had her happy ending with the one she loved.
