The synopsis is pretty much a brief description of the first chapter of a bigger underlying story, and mind you this series can be separated into four chapters with at least 4 episodes each. The anime is centered around a game played by the Witch Beatrice and Battler (a member of the Ushiromiya family) and the goal of the game is to have Battler either admit that witches exist, or prove how the murders of each chapter can be done by human intervention.
You will be first introduced to this game setting about 4 episodes in.
I thought this series was good, however, I often found myself getting bored and confused. Because of the magic aspect, I sometimes had a hard time following the story, but that doesn't mean there isn't some awesomely insane sequences.
There was tons of blood and gore and dead bodies everywhere, however, the gore was often censored. There is a deep psychological aspect to this story that shows up near the end of the series, but what I liked the most, is how the show depicts how devious the witch Beatrice can be. Sometimes the story would completely mislead you, until you found out at the very end that they were pulling your leg the entire time, making me feel stupid, yet impressed. But what I was most impressed about is how the artists depicted the family members and how they would act in order to receive unimaginable wealth. In 2009 the Ushiromiya families 10 tons of gold would be worth 20 billion yen, in 2011, the gold would be worth 40 billion yen, I would probably be an uptight douche bag too if I could get wealth like that.
The art was very consistent and at times down right creepy, however, since a lot of the gore was censored, I didn't get to see the full glory of the horrifying scenes. And even though magic was used throughout, the art was consistent during those sequences. And for some reason, Victorian dresses can still look frilly and extremely complex... I wonder if that is just a natural thing for anime's.
Anyway, the dialogue sometimes moves to quickly and at times too slow. A lot of the time the dialogue is to help you understand the setting of the current chapter, but it is also used to create character development. Music.... what music, I guess I was too bored or possibly too engaged to notice the music.
Like I said, I did enjoy the series, yet found myself getting bored sometimes. The story at times would really just drag along and when you see the same setting multiple times, things tend to get boring until you come across the one aspect or part of the story that changes everything forcing the story to go down a horrifying path.
Overall, I give this alternative setting a 7/10. I think the show was good, and if I had seen the show when I would be more engaged, perhaps it would've received a better score by me.
And mind you, Einzo did not resurrect Beatrice, but rather, Beatrice uses the epitaph as a reason to continuously murder the Ushiromiya family. If I got anything wrong, it may be because some of these things may have been explained in those times I was bored.
