Saturn/Screenshots: The Eye of God, and Ishiel of the Phantom Tribe (11/17/02)

The Final Curtain: Finally along in our stumbling journey, we managed to get to the climax. Bugrom are coming, gotta go unseal the Eye of God. But to do that, we need the agreement of all four priestesses. While Miz simply agrees after being attacked, it takes Ishiel and Shayla to attack each other before either of them are convinced (I'm not sure why exactly, but once it's all done, and we used Makoto as a human shield, they're both on the boat.) Last comes Afura, which by video game logic must absolutely be the most stubborn. Something Rune says to Makoto in the night gives him the courage to confront Afura.

Then it's time to unseal and then board the Eye of God. For some reason it's up to Makoto (Why?!) Once there, Makoto and Fujisawa (How?! ;p) are confronted by Shadow Tribe guards. And lo and behold, Ishiel, our wonderful fourth preistess, is actually, to quote our infamous English-speaking Japanese-reading guide writer:

She is a member of the tribe. She's 1/2 PT and did not have blue skin. Even Nanami didn't suspect anything. Ishiel's mission was to help Makoto in any way she can and to use him to achieve the PT's goals.

With Rune in the eye, Galus can activate the eye... and destroy El-Hazard (if you don't know why he wants to destroy it, buy copies of the OAV tapes). Ishiel first believed that the eye would only be used so that the Phantom Tribe can return to their homeland. Galus intends to do that, but not before destroying El-Hazard. Ishiel then turns on Galus and misses.

Then there's a bit where you can either forgive Ishiel (saving her from the dungeon), or not (and she's arrested). We tried not forgiving first; Makoto gets sliced by Galus (supposedly avoidable if you did something we didn't.) Thus we got a gameover. Second try, we did the forgiveness path, and got a big battle scene, and a few other events, eventually ending with Makoto taking control of the Eye of God and going home. (Mysteriously as Fujisawa getting on-board through the magical warp, this time Nanami also went...)

Tried as we might've to avoid it, apparently we botched our efforts to botch it and got the Wanderers-esque Rune ending.