They actually found time for three musical numbers in this one!
We start this episode in some sort of space between worlds, visualized as an open realm with double helix staircases floating in the void. Here, the witchlings (each one alone) confront their shortcomings, flaws, and fears before finaly joining Kafu in song, which causes tethers to the world of Kamitsubaki City to appear. Thus, from their otherworldly data, each of them is able to be recreated in the ruined city. Those whose familiars still cling to life emerge from them, with Kafu and Karu calming down from witch mode and Sekai being a little less dead than she seemed before. Koko shows up as well, emerging from Kugel’s memory egg. Still down an arm, but seemingly good to go other than that.
However, Rime’s partner blew himself up kind of totally, so she’s a bit stuck in the netherworld.
The non-stuck girls meet up atop the central tower when Maxwell appears. He starts freaking out, asking about Sophia or, in a new name drop, Noah. He demands to know how they reached the “upper world” and exchanged data with it, and doesn’t take being told that he couldn’t manage very well.
Maxwell takes his penultimate form and starts spewing not only tesseractors everywhere to try to kill the witchlings, but creepy copies of the main characters who can’t sing properly because, you know, they don’t have thoughts or feelings and just mouth noise when we’re in a setting where music is emotional magic. As Laplace dives in, Maxwell takes a pretty awesome giant flying doom whale form and starts strafing the tower.
From this rain of this, that, and the other thing, Kafu remembers the RD chief… which ends up recreating the RD chief, since recall everything in this world is made up of data, or Fragments, which the Witchlings can manipulate. This leads to Koko being able to reclaim Kugel via merging his memory egg remnant with a hollow copy, and the girls being able to sing to Rime in order to invite her in. Rime, thereafter, is able to use the same mechanism to recreate her partner, who joins the aerial battle.
That’s just about done, though, as it turns out that Maxwell is a bit cooked. Again, having to go back to last episode’s twist, recall that Maxwell is a program. And with the observation of Rime’s reconstruction, he has fulfilled his purpose and begins to shut down no matter how much a part of him still wants to reach the upper world and find Noah (who I presume to be the programmer behind the virus Maxwell, as Sophia was behind the simulated universe). Maxwell’s giant body becomes some kind of cocoon, and his humanoid form falls out and begins to break down as Sekai (who contests the idea that Maxwell had no soul) watches.
This allows a two-way flow. The witchlings start big song number #3, and as the credits roll it begins to reconstruct everyone who lived in Kamitsubaki City. Not by resetting things, per the Phenomenon, but simply by remaking them – even ones who died earlier like the girl who was sacrificed in episode 2 – in the city as it is. Golden light flows across the world bringing people back into existence, Maxwell dissolves into nothing, the end?
Well, there is one more episode. I feel like it’s going to be mostly unpacking the happy ending, but maybe we’ll do something with the big Maxwell cocoon and Noah. Either way, we’ll see next week in what should be the final curtain for this show.