tl;dr

The Story Itself

• It seems this event is focused on more Gio Gehenna worldbuilding. This time, it tells us what Gio Gehenna people do for fun.
• I feel not much character development happens here. While not necessarily a bad thing, I wish we learned more new things about the characters.
• Kanon is still a massive cunt at the end of the event, which is good. That's who she is.
• Tsumugi's actions here are driven by the her character traits that we've already learned from outside this event.

Difficulty

• NEPHI=NELAAAAAAA

The Story Itself

This event feels similar to the Bandit Returns event. That event focused more on how things work outside of Nephi's jurisdiction. We learned some new things about the sisters, that Yamato is actually a competent thief, it's just that Wakana is actively sabotaging themselves. Nothing new about Fubuki.

Here, this event focuses on how the people of Gio Gehenna spend their free time. So, how do they? They roleplay as slaves and masters and beat the shit out of each other senseless.

Stealth edit 3 minutes before release: I just remembered last year's NY event was also about Gio Gehenna. While the story was mostly about the Landosol festival that was held in Gio Gehenna, there's a moment in the story where Kanon's raid on Landosol was thought to be a snake festival march. So I suppose marches are also a thing the people of Gio Gehenna do.

The Cursed Carnival. An event where the bonds between slaves and masters are contested. The rules are simple. One must be the master, another, the slave. Then the slaves beat the each the shit out of each other. If you break the rules, you get frozen. Like Rei. It's basically a more extreme version of the card game that the kids of Gio Gehenna play.

The game sounds barbaric, but in the end, it's just that, a game. From Kaya's appearance in this event, we learn that people do volunteer to become slaves just so they can fight. The slave and master are allowed to negotiate how far their relationship goes. Kaya's master and she agreed that the latter just watch from afar while Kaya do all the fighting. It seems the master is also responsible for the slave's well-being, seeing as Kaya's master actually brought her back instead of just throwing her away after she got poisoned by Kanon.

In the end, it turns out the whole carnival was a conspiracy to distract the people of Gio Gehenna so the dark elf man and the Goblin Lady can waltz up to Nephi's throne room and kill her. Since Nephi wasn't technically following the rules, she got frozen...only for her to break out using her slime from. The two conspirators escape, and Tsumugi and the now mindbroken Kanon give chase. I think it would've been more exciting if Nephi simply called on Anemone to deal with the conspirators, this would've made her compliant to the game's rule. But I digress. I guess this is Tsumugi's and Kanon's event.

Well, that's the entire event. There are some things to talk about the characters, but there isn't as much as I hoped. It's mostly shenanigans.

I'll start by saying that seeing her mindbroken was incredibly satisfying. Bitch got it coming for a long time now. So, what happened exactly?

At one point of the story, Kanon defected to to the dark elf and the Goblin Lady. The two conspirators were impressed she was able to break out of her shackles, and both figuratively and literally, because she managed to break KSKN's magic slate that he could use to imprison her whenever she got a bit rowdy. Oh, I haven't mentioned the magic slates, have I? Basically, they're like Pokeballs but for people. Just like Pokemon, it's not a necessity to put your slaves into a slate. You can let them out and about if you want to, KSKN just did it because Kanon wouldn't shut the fuck up.

As Nephi got frozen, Kanon got excited that she finally beat Nephi. "It's finally over!", she yelled excitedly...only to find out that the only thing that's over is her. The Goblin Lady stabbed her in the back. The Goblin Lady remarked that she deserved that, because she herself was a traitor to Tsumugi and KSKN.

However, Kanon survives because Nephi broke out and drove the conspirators away. Kanon wondered why Nephi saved her. Save as in, break out of the crystal as soon as she could even though she had the option to let Kanon bleed out to death first. Nephi answered that she's simply keeping her alive because she's KSKN's slave now. Since KSKN had done a lot for Gio Gehenna, it was the least she could do. If it wasn't for this, Nephi would've decapitated her and displayed her head for all to see a long time ago. Not exaggerating btw, that's exactly what she said.

The realization that she fucked up, was shown mercy by the person she hates the most, and will spend the rest of her life as KSKN's slave BROKE her.

As much I would've loved Kanon staying broken forever, a broken Kanon isn't Kanon.

Tsumugi was the one to snap Kanon out of her despair. The main conflict for Tsumugi here is that Kanon slowly gained her respect, much to her dismay. And then Kanon decided to piss it all away by defecting to the conspirators. Which made Tsumugi go all "seriously?".

I suppose the betrayal didn't bother Tsumugi too much in the end. She talked shit to Kanon until she snapped out. There are different ways to see this:
1. Tsumugi is pragmatic and thought she needed Kanon's help to beat the conspirators.
2. Tsumugi couldn't stand the thought of leaving the rivalry between her and Kanon go unresolved. Beating a mindbroken Kanon wouldn't have been satisfying, so she decided to snap her out.

I'm leaning to the second one because at the end of the story, the two did decide to have a proper duel to settle things.

So...what do all this have to do with Tsumugi's intrinsic character? It seems Tsumugi likes to use her...uh, personality, to bring people together. She yelled at Nozomi for working too hard in the Just a Moment event. She yelled at Chika not too work too hard in the Andante with You event. And here, she yelled at Kanon to pull herself together.

While we learn nothing new about Tsumugi, this event did cement that this is something that she will continue doing. Honestly, I think she's the glue that holds Carmina together. Without her, the Nozomi and Chika probably would've exhausted themselves to death a long time ago. And Kanon would've stayed...well, not Kanon.

Difficulty

I think I've been too lenient on my scoring. From now on, I'll mark lines that I had to use Yomichan on all the words to understand as missed.

If I'm able to recall at least one word and from there understand the whole sentence but still need to make sure by using Yomichan, I'll count it as comprehended.

The reason I'm doing this is...Nephi fucking Nela! Obviously, using a dictionary when learning is normal and if you need to use it on all the words in a sentence to understand it, you should just do that rather than just leaving things not-understood. But I want to one day not need a dictionary...

So, for this event, I'm just gonna mark all lines spoken by Nephi as missed except for one. It's the line about about cutting off Kanon's head. I saw the 首 which is the kanji for neck and immediately understood that it's something about decapitation. Had to make sure in the end, but I at least recalled SOMETHING that helped me understand the whole sentence.

97% (880/900) comprehension.

That is all for this blogpost. See ya on the next one.

I hope Kanon gets an alt that puts her in literally any other outfit one day. Can't stand it.