I don't remember how Mary Skelter 2 got on my radar. I hadn't seen any gameplay of it, hadn't listened to any of its music, hadn't read any reviews, but nevertheless it found its way onto my Steam Wishlist and into my Steam Winter Sale cart for $8.75. Playing it on a whim took a random curiosity and turned it into pleasant surprise, and a single moment in it transformed that into a feverish obsession. Let me try to convey what about the Mary Skelter series has had me so gripped.
Before I can cut to the chase in this post's headline, it's best to go over some setting details to paint the tone of these games. The Mary Skelter series takes place in a part of the world that has been swallowed up by an unknown phenomenon, warping it into a twisted hellscape known as the Jail. Monsters known as Marchens torture humans to satisfy the desires of the living Jail while indestructible Nightmares rule over the Marchens. Humanity's last hope remains in an organization named Dawn which leads the resistance with the use of Blood Maidens: girls with allusions to fairy tales and the power to defeat the Marchens.
However, there are two critical problems that Dawn faces. The Nightmares regenerate when attacked, making them impossible for the Blood Maidens to overcome in a fight. Additionally, Blood Maidens have a fatal weakness: Blood Skelter, a berserk state that triggers when a Blood Maiden's mental state reaches a critical breaking point, with no way out once entered. At the beginning of both Mary Skelter 1 and 2, a youth known by the name of Jack is discovered to have blood capable of curing the Blood Skelter state and a spontaneous expedition with Jack uncovers the existence of Cores which remove the Nightmare's ability to regenerate when destroyed. This twist of fate gives Dawn the tools and knowledge they need to properly start their counterattack to find a way out of the Jail.
Mary Skelter's setting and tone is one of hardship, struggle, and determination. Dawn's headquarters is dilapidated, environments like the Downtown area are oppressive in their sickening color and claustrophobic architecture, and the monsters are macabre mutations of malice. That thing's teeth are fourteen guns!! But it's things like the distant view of the Jail tower while surrounded with the homes of everyone still willing to endure this world's hardships backed by the track Peace of Mind that exemplify the hopeful undercurrent of the game, of the determination to climb against adversity to a better tomorrow. Mary Skelter's music is excellent. The star of Yoh Oyama's compositions for the games is Sena Tei's violin performance, which provides the bittersweet and somber tone for tracks like Peace of Mind while delivering an incredibly distinguishing sound for battle tracks like Urge to Freedom. All of this elements combine for a strong sense of aesthetic for its world, and while the clean character designs and ecchi fanservice might seem at odds with that it by no means undercuts it.
Now to get to the gay: Taking the spotlight of Mary Skelter 2 are Otsuu and Little Mermaid. Our protagonists to this alternative continuity of Mary Skelter 1 are Blood Maidens that have been part of Dawn for many years, but initially met each other in the Jail. Otsuu, based on the tale of a crane that transforms into a man's wife when saved, fell madly in love with Little Mermaid at first sight and proposed to her on the spot. Little Mermaid personally longed for a prince and didn't want a wife, so she said she'd be okay with it if Otsuu became her prince. Thus, the Biggest Wife Guy of All Time was born.
Otsuu is an incredible character. She is so consistently dedicated to performing a male role that I question if the romance can even count as gay as Otsuu is by all other means functionally a trans man. Otsuu refers to herself with masculine pronouns (boku) and titles such as Prince and Husband, she willingly binds her chest (link warning: booba) to minimize her feminine traits, she plays the role of "Daddy" when playing house with Rapunzel, she's referred to by another character as being like a brother instead of a sister or even just "sibling," and she serves the Male Harem Protagonist role that Jack did in the first game. Otsuu is a dork that loves to constantly praise and tease her wife, practices princely lines ahead of time, and eats shit from having to hastily explain herself out of her incidental harem antics in front of her wife. These comedic elements aside, Otsuu serves as a leader for the Blood Maidens and cares deeply for each one of them, talking to them about their troubles and non-troubles in private and rallying them together against the challenges of the Jail.
Little Mermaid is the perfect match for Otsuu. She's calm, kind, caring, but resolute with a strong will of her own. As bashful she is in the face of Otsuu's teasing, she's just as happy to twist Otsuu's arm in her own way when she gets the chance. When Otsuu is trying to explain why she was in bed with the team's ever-eepy Sleeping Beauty, Little Mermaid is quick to go "Yeah, no, I get it. She's physically clingy but innocent, so I see how you got in this situation" and clears Otsuu's worries, but follows that up with "Now's a great time for us to all take a nap together!" and gets some rest while Otsuu is too nervous to sleep because she's sandwiched between Two Beautiful Babes. Her own brand of antics aside, she's an easygoing personality in the dorms of Dawn but is capable of rising to the task and taking decisive action in situations that even make Otsuu falter. When the group encounters a hostile Blood Maiden, Otsuu can't find a way out of fighting when Little Mermaid steps in and puts her life on the line to steer the situation away from combat.
Their marriage isn't something that can be plausibly denied as "oh, they're just close enough to say they're married." In fact, Little Mermaid uses that explicit phrasing and denies that, because not only did they marry when they first met, they exchange their vows in private and marry again when another character (with no ill-intentions) questions the lack of any formal procession. Also, in the game's menu where you can check each character's affection levels towards Otsuu, Little Mermaid starts with a much higher bond and exclusively gets 6 hearts instead of every other character's 5 stars because she is Otsuu's Wife.
What really makes Otsuu and Little Mermaid's relationship so compelling is that Mary Skelter's central theme, of which it sincerely cares about, is about carrying trauma and helping others carry their trauma as they help you carry yours. Mechanically, in the dungeon crawling portion I have no time to talk about, the Blood Skelter berserk state is something that happens when a character's corruption level is high enough when they get an excess amount of Marchen blood on them. Despite the fanservice-y aspect of the near-naked anime girls, this is catastrophically bad. Any titillation of seeing anime skin is quickly extinguished by the character's bloodcurdling scream followed by very high odds of seeing an instantaneous team-wide instant kill deleting an hour of your progress. Thematically, Blood Skelter is a character's mental health reaching a breaking point, putting them in a frenzy where their emotions & bodies are laid bare and they lash out at those closest to them. Each of the Blood Maidens has their own fixations, insecurities, and neuroses amplified by their fairy tale traits. There's a scene in Mary Skelter 2 where Red Riding Hood is found in her room cutting her hood that she always has on because she views her fixation as a sign of weakness, despite the sharp pain it's causing her to damage it. Otsuu and Little Mermaid are the ones to stumble onto this and both of them embrace Red Riding Hood and reassure her that they're both here for her and that she doesn't need to shoulder her suffering all by herself. There's a bit of whiplash going from goofy antics to a scene like that which so clearly represents a character committing self-harm, but these things can coexist, and it's the dark writing of something like that that gives substance to the scenes where Otsuu and Little Mermaid affirm and support each other through their struggles when a snapping point is something that is so real and possible in their dire, high-pressure circumstances.
The "single moment" that elevated Mary Skelter 2 to such a high degree that I mentioned in the opening paragraph is its ending: something I desperately want to talk about, but absolutely cannot let myself spoil for you. I've thought long and hard about it, but there's too much predicated on the game's idiosyncratic world mechanics, foreshadowing, and expectations built up for the ending that giving you a link to 60 minutes of cutscenes would not do it justice. The most I can say is that Mary Skelter 2's ending is one that expands the scope of what the story is, and it becomes immediately apparent that playing Mary Skelter 1 is not optional. The game goes on sale for quite cheap and the gameplay is perfectly okay for Idea Factory's general reputation, and I think it's absolutely worth playing. For those who don't want to know more about it further, that's fine, but I hope I've left you with a question that you'll want to answer one day in the future. Of course, you could spoil yourself, but that would only be a cheap answer for a fragment of Mary Skelter's worth.
For those who do want to engage with a niche game that does something truly great, I highly recommend wishlisting for a future sale. The ideal order of play is Mary Skelter 1's main game & ending -> Mary Skelter 2 -> Mary Skelter 1's post-game to see how MS2 shakes up MS1 and so that there's a minimal gap from The Drop to picking that thread back up. The dungeon exploration is pretty straightforward, the gamefaqs guides are reliable, and combat is usually hassle-free on Easy mode (as long as you look out for Blood Skelter). For MS1, Force Wave and Thumbelina's AoE magic will take care of every random encounter while Rage Rush will demolish bosses. For MS2, Hameln's Wind's Edge will clear encounters and Charge into Rage Rush will demolish bosses and Kaguya/Sleepy's basic attack passives will put in a lot of work. Also, try to avoid looking things up, as YouTube or Google Images will gladly throw important CGs you haven't seen at you. While I think the gameplay does leaves something to be desired in terms of character building since the above suggestions more or less solve the game, it's still plenty enjoyable to see those encounters solved and experience the whole package of art, music, character writing, and story of the game.
Once I find the time I am incredibly excited to go through Mary Skelter Finale and experience the conclusion to the series, and it'll be even more worth it if I'm able to get one more person to experience how good its story is.
