#wcat rambles

So we open with Yuri as a girl in this latest loop, and learns about misogyny. Which I think some of that plot is very tired and worn out. But also we get a whole bunch of other things going on in the ship that focus on gendered violence. We first get a scene of Yuri playing around with "her" new body, and in wondering what what a girl do strike this pose.

Which is normally done by SQ, but when we meet the SQ of this loop it become immediately clear to game fans that SQ isn't SQ--its Manan.

Through Manan we see one of the primary actors of gendered violence, someone who is incapable of seeing anyone else as their own person. That possession is most notably expressed in her interactions with Renman, a person whom she literally owned as a sex slave, but rather than stop at a trite "women can hurt men too" (yes but also not useful message) the anime shows Manan in small and large ways possessing others she deems lesser.

For the dolphin Otome ("not a human") , she uses as a ride.

For her daughter SQ ("not a person"), she implicitly had to have taken control of her body this loop (and when she can't, the anime has made very clear how she treats SQ).

And most significantly, she yanks Yuri immediately after terrorizing Renman to peep on Raqio in the shower--replicating how cis people view trans people's bodies as voyeuristic curiosities. Something made more clear in the game, but handled more delicately in the anime (and better imo), is that Raqio hasn't altered their body at all to become pangender/nonbinary.

For Raqio, their body doesn't make them who they are--and they encourage Yuri to be who they are (though not after taking advantage of who she is to get information for the silver key). But to tie back into the pose mentioned before, the SQ of this episode is both the possessor and the possessed. Manan takes control of others, while SQ is simply another toy to be discarded. Yuri's pose ties her developing ideas on woman hood to Manan/SQ. You might have noticed so far this episodes involves Yuri witnessing gendered violence inflicted by Manan, a girl. But the episode wisely refocuses on the second actor of gendered violence aboard the DQO: Jonas. Following from the previous episodes Yuri takes opportunity as a girl to manipulate and gain information about both Jonas and Sha-ming. For the former, this involves diving into the question hanging over Yuri since episode 8: who is Kukurushka.

And in a surprise twist, the game opts to reveal Kukurushka and Jonas's backstory in this episode.