1x08 Episode 8

The end of the witch hunting is very disappointing. Yet again, character's actions make zero sense but to serve plot and pseudo suspense, that's very cheap. Fortunately the reveals about how the game work still makes it interesting.

First, like in the lightbulbs game, Arisu has the solution but wait until the last minute to say it. Instead they spend half an hour discussing Aguni's feelings, with everybody on edge and several people with guns. What the actual fuck ? And the forensics girl was useless since she comes after it was revealed. What was the point ?

Also the guy lost his friend, boohoo. He just ordered the massacre of a hundred people, what are you waiting for ? Just fucking kill him and go back to finding the witch, you have like 5 minutes left. What is wrong with you ?
Don't get me wrong, the Aguni's background story was actually ok. Killing the hatter was not really on purpose, it was not a power grab, I actually didn't see that coming. That adds a little depth to the character. But that's the way others react to that that is totally stupid.
Although the whole thing is aimed at showing that Aguni was actually not a bad guy, and it was just a persona to control the crazy guys, but that pretty much conflicts with everything we saw of him before that. In the game he just sacrifices one of his own as bait. And when we see him again at the beach he just orders his guys to bring him Usagi and break Arisu's legs for resisting. In a way that very much shows that this happened before. So not so sure about the "actually not a bad guy" part.

And it's not like it was a was of people asking themselves the moral question of should we kill him or not. They were just killing people by the dozen a few minutes ago! And now there is one guy, very aggressive, claiming to be the witch, even acknowledging that he just wanted to kill them all, ... and nobody does anything ???
There were a dozen of people with guns at the beginning, eager to shoot at the crowd. And then when Aguni needs to be shot, or Niragi comes back, there is not one single gun to be found ??

Also note that this whole time, nobody even moves to burn the witch when it's been revealed for a while who it is...

For the game part:
First there are dealers. Nice. Are they the one that bring the phones ? OK the lasers seem to be satelites, but hundreds of phones didn't magically appear right ?

There are also control rooms. With probably regular people that are a kind of players too then ? Were they killed because all the cards were found ? Or because the video of them was found ? Also kinda disappointed at Chishiya there. Seriously ? You do not recognize immediately the drawing of metro lines of your city ? I have no idea what Tokyo lines looks like but even I could see immediately that it looked like a metro plan.

Obviously next step was the figures. Though they seem to be announced by neighbourhood. So you can choose ? And maybe only send one person for hearts game then.

Mira appears as a game master. We didn't see much of her before, nothing really says what her qualifications were to be part of the council. She just seemed a little crazy. Again I will guess that it was handled much better in the original material, here it does not really appear as a shocker. Anyway that does not mean much. She might just be a rank above dealers.

For what comes next, is Chishiya an ally they can really trust ? Maybe. Maybe not. However, they team up like that ? Why not take some people from the beach, like the forensics girl ? Seems like a waste.