#lazy analysis

I think Susie's behavior towards Ralsei (where people criticize her for being unthinking of his feelings re:Flowery) is perfectly explained if we look at her behavior around Kris+Noelle

Susie doesn't know how to balance her relationships.

In my opinion this scene where Undertaker picked at Ciel for being tied to the queen like a dog on a leash feels more intimidating in the animated version than what the manga showed us. I'm not saying either of them may be better or worse, but I'd like to point out the differences and vibes both versions give me looking back at them.

Since that is quite early in the anime/manga, we don't know much of his intentions, neither his true character yet, and that drastic change from a typical playful, teasing and silly demeanor to a more stern and rough/aggressive one in the animated version does feel a little more intimidating supported by the tone he uses (I'm aware that in the manga we obviously cannot tell such but doesn't that add to mysteriousness we're used to a little?). Undertaker also seems to be struggling to keep his facade, a tense expression making him appear more menacing in comparison to what we usually see because in the manga the more motion filled position and wide playful grin supported his mysterious character way more than in the anime.

Not to mention, Ciel appears more trapped by the way Undertaker holds his arm behind him here, pulling him by the tie rather close to the face as in the manga he is leaning much more above him, having taken hold of the tie with more distance, but instead using the other free hand to make him look up at him. The manga shows Ciel looking like he's being pulled towards Undertaker instead of being held up as roughly like in the anime.

In conclusion the manga version feels more mysterious and kind of typical for his character as the animated scene is more alerting in a menacing and more directly warning way from Undertaker. I love both of the versions since they do give different ways of experiencing how Undertaker brings his point across.

Also, this is my first time at some sort of attempt at analysis (and im getting incredibly tired as it is about to become 3am rather soon.) so its more of a brief explanation instead of a deep dive sooo I'm really sorry for mistakes, poor choice of vocabulary or pointing out possibly obvious stuff. I did this for fun/practice</33

I do accept respectful advice though, I'd like to know how to improve since I might want to do this more often

I'm not going to proofread this a 5th time my vision is getting blurry guys

I really don't think it's canon.

rather than identifying pieces of evidence that have been sliced a million ways to come to different answers, I'm just going to point at Ralsei. Ralsei, who is pretty fucking aware of our presence and, during chapter 3, literally turned to stare at us because he* got jumpscared by the idea that we were controlling Susie. the fact that we can accurately see what's going on onscreen with Susie and deliver her accurate information (chapter 1); or not-so-accurate information, if we get our directions mixed up; if you tell her to go to right she goes to her right and is confused because she ends up in a dead end--if you tell her to go left, she goes the correct way, because to her perspective, she needs to turn left to go towards Lancer. We have perspective and information Kris is not able to have. hell, SANS calls us out on it when we mention his little brother without him telling us.

okay I'll do this better soon but the rough sketches of an argument. badly sourced and worsely argued. <3

THIS BITCH.

^THE KNIGHT.

The game has all but confirmed it for us. how do we know it's confirmed it for us? besides the fucking obvious (constantly fucking with our plans, literally dressed as a knight, literal antagonist smile flashed at us at the end of the first chapter)? dramatic irony. so this video at 4:45 shows Asgore doing the whole "I'll find the creator of the dark fountain and I'll parade their body around town" which is supposed to make us SWEAT. Ralsei, Kris, and we know Kris is the one who opened the dark fountain.

then we have this scene right here (text dump of both note sections here as I couldn't find a short video showing the first one, which just establishes there was a dark world a long time ago)

...which tells us a) black shards were found at the "original scene" a long time ago AND b) it matched with cyber world's dark fountain (which also uh. how'd he find out about that one) c) more importantly Ralsei VERY CAREFULLY picks their own words after Susie asks how long the knight has been making fountains by saying "I thought the knight only... [PAINFUL SMILE] showed up alongside the heroes"

we can't 100% say Kris made the cyberworld dark fountain, but we know that they definitely made chapter 3 and 5's, and Asgore thinks the creator of this fountain and the original's are the same, which implies...Kris.

Now, we could draw a crazy graph trying to divide dark worlds into "made by Kris" and "not made by Kris", which can go a few ways (we see them make 3+5; there's indirect evidence for all but 4), *or* we can read the very obvious blaring signs and understand that Kris has made the majority, if not all, of the dark fountains and can be understood to be the maker of the first fountain.

(there's another long series of speculations to be made about the circumstances of opening the first fountain and Dess' disappearence, Kris' guilt as it relates to Dess, etc, but I don't want to get into that now. The short answer is that I think the first fountain was because of Kris, (perhaps at the behest of a creature with a pointed tail...) a dark world that somehow went bad and resulted in Dess going missing, dying, or otherwise being trapped in a Dark World. I think all four kids were there, but understood it in different ways. Asgore saw enough to believe it, but ascribed malice where it was just a mistake. But gathering the evidence would require a lot more effort than this, so feel free to disregard this for now.)

^this bitch? not the knight from the prophecy.

Most of the time, when people talk about Kris' role as an antagonist, we hear them say Kris is working with the Knight! I think the reverse is more likely; this entity is working with Kris, the Knight; at most they're splitting the role between two parties. We have plenty of evidence from chapter 3 and 4 (coughing, kneeling, refusing to attack the knight) to know that they're coordinating. I also think this thing is (the remnants of) Dess rather than literally any other character, for the usual Dess Knight reasons - lost girl reversed leitmotif (really need to get a music analyst on that), driving drums similar to Raise Up Your Bat (noted Dess song), the bat that turns into a katana...anything else I'm missing?