Magical Girl Raising Project restart ‒ Episode 4
Yet, now we are down three (or potentially four?) magical girls. Magical Daisy died due to her own hubris, and Akane was put down after her unprovoked murder(?) of Genopsyko Yumenoshima and her subsequent attack on the rest of the magical girls. Leaving Genopsyko's puzzling resurrection aside for the moment, we are left with the murder of Masked Wonder—her head bashed in with a rock. The only cleared suspect is Shadow Gale (as we were watching her at the time of the murder), and the only possible motive we're aware of is the stolen coin Masked Wonder was carrying that increases drop rates within the VR world.
Luckily, there is a magical girl detective among our heroes. In the downtime between rounds of the death game, she was able to not only figure out Magical Daisy's secret identity but also learn of her death. The issue is that, within the death game—when faced with an actual murder—she's all but useless. She doesn't take charge, she doesn't investigate the crime scene, and she can't even stop her team's conflict-creating actions.
Rather, it is Pfle who takes the role of the detective for our magical girl murder mystery. However, while Detec Bell may be concerned with proving who did the crime with facts and logic, that's not how Pfle works. Pfle is more akin to a mentalist than a detective. She is a student of human nature. She looks at how people act in certain situations to determine their mindset—and thus their guilt or innocence.
This is the motive behind all of Pfle's actions in this episode. She manipulates everyone to show her their inventory—and show their reactions to the idea of being searched—by not only bringing up the missing coin but also by having her and Shadow Gale go first. Then she spends time figuring out the rules of the VR game—what's possible and what's not—because you need to understand the framework to understand how people act within it. And finally, she forces a confrontation with Cherna Mouse—a violent but non-lethal fight—to see how everyone reacts.
Also, to do so, she has Shadow Gale turn her wheelchair into a giant robot—which is not only awesome but shows us that labeling any magical girl a “non-combat type” is simply a failure of imagination. Anyone could be the murderer, even if it doesn't seem so just because the murder weapon was a rock.
Rating:
Magical Girl Raising Project Restart is currently streaming on OceanVeil.
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