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lemonthepotato · 2 years

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Playing Umineko and guessing the culprit [spoilers] oh my god

Tw for r*pe mention. It’s Umineko. What did you expect? You all have no idea how long it took me to make this post. 5 months or so, probably less actually… I act very childish in this post. Imagine a 13 year old who just eat raw sugar. I’m not 13 I’m older but you get the point.

This is a long post that took forever to make. Some things here aged terribly (especially things I say about Beato.) (I’m sorry.)

I was also off the mark entirely.

Chapter 1:

[around the 5h mark in] At first, I thought it was Natsuhi, then Maria, but now I’m 98% sure it’s George. It’s like. He keeps acting suspicious. He said for example, something about ‘Gods design’, and then two seconds later said that most people don’t really believe in god. He said way earlier in the chapter that he never lies, which I found suspicious. Again, I’m probably wrong. I’m gonna keep playing. Suspicion is back on Natsuhi, because she 100% has been pushing the idea Beatrice exists. It doesn’t seem like Jessica or Battler did it, they’re on the bottom of my suspects list. Everyone else is fair game. Maybe someone killed half of the group & someone else died while killing the others, in usual WTC style.

Chapter 2

Imagine being so wealthy all you can argue on is inherent & sauce. Imagine if these four went to McDonald’s. A nightmare. Anyway, I still believe that Maria is a red herring for the first chapter. The second case hasn’t began yet, but my current suspicions are that since this novel seems to be tricking you into believing it’s a murder mystery: every kill will be Beatrice. Lame.

First six predictions: Jessica, Eva, Kyrie, Krauss, Rudolf & Natsuhi. Random guesses.

My theory was correct that Kanon & Jessica would be chosen as the sacrifices. I thought the idea that Shannon would be too… false.

I suspected Rosa a lot in this chapter however it seemed too obvious. I’m on CH3 now and my theory is that Genji was involved. He was suspicious too. I also believe Eva was either the culprit of the first case or this one. “But Eva died in these chapters” remember how in the first chapter the faces were all distorted? I feel that will be important. However, I’m still suspicious of Natsuhi. She will definitely be the culprit of one of the first three cases. I suspect the third one may have George or one of the cousins as the killer.

Chapter Three:

My theory for who will die first will be determined when I get to the “oh my god someone died” part.

First to die: Maria, Rosa, George, Kanon, Doctor Nanjo and Genji

I suspect that MAYBE George & Shannon will switch places for the second night,

I knew that Kumasawa was suspicious. First of all, always saying ‘I can’t do anything’ when someone dies. Two, I thought her name was similar to the mansion Beatrice stayed in. I didn’t think she was evil. I just thought she was suspicious. But I didn’t suspect she was Beatrice’s former mentor, Beatrice. I actually did call there being more than one Beatrice, I was under the impression that Beatrice was an apparition of Kinzo’s dead ex-lover who only exists through the power of belief, but that there was

A) Another Beatrice, a human one.

B) A set of twins.

C) I can’t remember my other ideas.

So yeah. Kumasawa is very cool but always suspicious.

Kyrie & Rudolf are gonna be the 2nd chosen, I believe. I’ve had a sneaky suspicion from the start. But damn, can Kyrie just live a little longer one of these chapters? :/

WAIT. I had a small suspicion it was Rosa and Maria. But I decided against it because I thought it was romantic lovers that would be separated. Holy shit!! Again, maybe it’s too much of a red herring. It likely isn’t Kyrie & Rudolf, probably have to wait and see.

WAIT. Is Eva sick because of Evatrice? That’s what I call her. Is she dying and being replaced? In which case, is she going to kill Hideyoshi?

Current theory: Beato & Beatrice are two different people. Literally. Beato is the human form, committing the murders. If Eva can be several places, then ‘Beatrice’ can be in one place ‘committing’ the murder while Beato is in the other. Now, Beatrice states that there are only ‘18 humans on this Rokkenjima’. I want to highlight something I’ve heard. I do not know how canon this is, but I’ve heard that if someone acknowledged you as a witch you are one, therefore making Maria a witch. In that case, Maria wouldn’t be them. Beato is the 18th person, existing in two places. We know that Maria has a split personality, which means her ‘witch form’ is inside of her. Beatrice is always the same, because her and her human counterpart are separated. Maybe this is wrong, we’ll see. (I was wrong)

Chapter 4:

Holy shit. There was so much this chapter. I honestly don’t know where to begin, as I’ve already finished it and am up to Erika. Wait… I just realised her name is eRIKA. Nah, anyway. That’s CH5 shit. This is CH4. So, my current theory, is that Kanon is the culprit for all the murders. I’m not sure how I can explain this. I don’t remember all the details so I’m not sure if each of the murders would contradict this. I just. Holy shit.

CH5:

Alright, this Erika chick has shown herself. I have a theory about her. There are only 17 people on the island, yeah mf I’m speaking in red now. Of those people, two are dead at the beginning. Kinzo Ushiromiya & I’ll throw out two random guesses. Kumasawa or Rosa.

The 17th person is Erika. This is my current theory. Many people are not who they say they are on the game board. Edit; Differner opinion.

Natsuhi is the culprit of all murder cases. I am 100% sure. (No ur not I was wrong) Why? The opening. Here is my theory. Battler is the child of Natsuhi. No reason why. Solid theory. I know it seems simple, but at this point it’s too late into the game to be hiding things. Natsuhi is the culprit of the 5th game and possibly a few others. What I know, is that, Kinzo is dead. Ushiromiya Natsuhi killed him for the inheritance. OK UM. THE BATTNATSUHI THING WAS A JOKE?? IS THE GAME ACTUALLY TRYING TO DO THISv? I WAS KIDDING.

“Father gave up” no. no. don’t natsuhi don’t. don’t say it. please oh my god if my theory is correct then Kinzo is a evil POS. Ok, I was wrong. I have to add a massive trigger warning. I thought that Kinzo may have r!ped Natsuhi. (This aged badly) I’m glad I was wrong. I think the child may be Battler. It isn’t Lady Lambdadelta. Either she went crazy & the phone call didn’t happen, or it’s Battler. Managed to mostly avoid spoilers…

But I think I got spoilt that Sayo was Beatrice…? Like, in human form? I don’t know. Oh well, at least I’ve managed to avoid most spoilers. I need to stop looking at spoilers. I know Lambda dies & that Kyrie is a bad mom or smth (someone said worse than Rosa which I doubt but ok) (aged like wine)

CH6

Lol, I knew Batter was the “groom”. Damn, Erika, what a funny little witchhuman. Okay, so I have two current theories. The person in the flashback is Ange. I also looked at Tohya and thought “Featherine?” which I dismissed but hearing her call Ange ‘child of man’ and Ange describing her. I think I know. I only know Featherine because of Eua.

Featherine is a witch. I know this because of a little spoiler, well two about Featherine. Firstly, she kills Lambdadelta, though I doubt it’ll hold any meaning as death doesn’t mean much for a witch it seems. It’s not that they can’t die. It’s just that death is a very flimsy thing. Secondly, if someone is acknowledged as a witch they become one. This is why Satoko became Majotoko (aka a vessel for Lambdadelta’s game.) therefore, Ange acknowledging Featherine as a witch further proves my point.

I still strongly stand by my theory that Maria is not a human. (Not anymore cuz I’ve finished the game hehe… don’t worry, sometimes when I write in brackets it’s me from after I finish) While her human counterpart exists on the game board, I do not count her as human. This is further evidenced by another spoiler I got: Sayo/Shannon may be Beatrice. Awkward because I used to ship then, then I found out Shannon’s age and now uh… yeah no. Anyway, assuming this theory to be true, then Beatrice’s ‘human’ form exists. However, this theory is flimsy. There are many Beatrice’s. A supposed human Beatrice, a game board Beatrice and metatrice, and that’s ignoring my theories about there being two Beatrice’s. Oh, also, Evatrice is technically Beatrice and fucking Virgil— *sigh*

Beatrice has a [im retracting this because it aged crudely] (edit: I regret saying this now—) (edit after ch8: I REALLY REGRET SAYING THIS POOR BEATO) I mean. Nothing. Legit wtf is going on here. Is this fucking Jesstrice? LMAO. I wonder what the other characters would be like as witches. Well, I have an idea for Jessica. She would probably be the witch of Determination. George would be the witch of, um, I don’t know. I give up on this metaphor.

Ok, I have a lot of theorycrafting going on. But the most important one is this (obvious joke): BI/PAN Battler & Jessica. I refuse to elaborate. Anyway, I have a theory about Sayo/Shannon. So, it’s kinda obvious that a lot of people in the fandom suspected her to be the culprit. I managed to avoid outright spoilers about it, but I think it’s obvious the game is going in that direction. However, the exact details are unknown. I believe that in the end there will be room for interpretation. Battler will ‘win’. But the reader can choose whether to believe in magic. Me personally? Magic always makes a story more fun.

HEY INFERIORS. Guess who guessed the twin thing?? Back in chapter 2? ME!! Because Beato is not affected by the spider web, she is the human form of Beatrice locked up in Kuwadorian. Checkmate, liberals. I FUCKING WIN!!!

Kyrie Ushipoopitla, with of Willpower. Witch. Yeah I can spell. Okay, so she k*lled Asumu? I’d say this is Yandere level shit. I mean it is. People think yandere means someone who obsessed over their partner, acts ‘dere’ and is otherwise sweet but will always k*ll those who stand in the way. It’s more like a spectrum. You can google the different types. Still though, calling Kyrie a ‘yandere’ would be a bit strange. It just doesn’t sit right with me.

So, here is my take on Maria saying Rosa was the culprit. I’m wondering if Rosa really was the culprit for this case. I mean, so far, I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary. ROSA K*LLED MARIA’S CERAMICS!! Not actual people! UFIEJDHDHD??? Why am I like this.

I KNEW IT. When Erika started crying I was like “this is chapter 6. Chapter 3 Beatrice betrayed Battler. This has to be a parallel.” I KNEW Erika was bluffing & that Bern was in on it. Finally. I got something right. I still felt bad for her even though I knew she was faking. My sweet evil baby. <3

Aw… Dlanor was in on it? I mean. She doesn’t exactly feel compassion (like me) (that isn’t a joke.) but like. Come on. Also… uh… I don’t wanna be like this but has anyone noticed something from the start? Dlanor uh. I’m not sure if the art is just that bad or if she’s meant to have a pp. like I really don’t like that trope in anime because “oh my god a girl having a d*ck must mean she’s secretly not!” is a transmisia 101 example. Though I suppose Umineko likes to satirise it. So if it goes unaddressed in the game I won’t mind it. It would actually be funny if Ryukishi’s thought process was just ‘man, I’m sick of that bullshit trope’ and baited weird bigoted weebs into thinking it would be relevant. I hope so anyway… jee.

No one was SEEN in the bathroom. What if someone other than Battler was there? Almost all my arguments could work if I go with my theory of 16 people. But I wonder…

I think I got my first… culprit spoiler. Natsuhi and Eva… (wrong) which is uh. Wow. You know what, fuck YouTube for moving the comments up. And honestly, I’d say I have a right to think the OP of that comment was an asshole. I refuse to elaborate on what the video was and why I watched it when it could “contain spoilers”. All you need to know is that I was unfairly spoiled. There was so such correlation, but explaining it would take a while. Seriously. What an asshole. I guess I’ll come clean. I haven’t been reading the VN on my own. I’ve been watching a playthrough. The first two chapters I read were with the new sprites & no commentary and then I shifted to a commentated playthrough to ease my boredom. Now you can see why the comment was assholish. Don’t comment spoilers on peoples fucking playthroughs. Arsehole. (Stop making a big deal past me)

Whaaaaaaaaaat? Erika is the murderer? Who could’ve guessed… impossible… totally not obvious. I love her so much even if she is bad at lying. WHY DID I LAUGH AT ERIKA MOCKING MARIA. She’s a child. But she just fucking k worded her and was like ‘oops she was alive’.

END: my theory was correct? my face is that one meme of the dude saying ‘HUH?!’ idk what it’s called. there’s only 16 humans aside from Erika? But that doesn’t… I don’t… that contradicts…

CH7

KUMASAWA NO WHY. Girlie probably browses the consa— nevermind. A hashtag I won’t name. I swear to god if this is what I think it is.

Ok… uh. No. I am confused. Is Shannon Lion? I think not. (Aged well) So, Kinzo did r*pe his… ugh. I knew about that spoiler but I thought it was Natsuhi. But no. It was Beatrice. Can we take a minute to appreciate Genji for a moment? He doesn’t enable Kinzo, but he also doesn’t abandon him. He lies to protect Lion (wait, I just realised it’s LION. Like. The animal.) and then has… Shannon?… impersonate Leon?

You know, reading the tea party of ch7 makes me wonder if all the times people died in groups was just because they all fought each other over the fucking gold. Like in CH1, the garage shit. Actually I’m almost certain this is a parallel to the garage scene. By almost certain I mean. 0.5% sure. Wait. Did Eva and Krauss k*ll everyone else because of the gold? Is that why everyone dies at the end? Let me keep reading…

Me: Kyrie is gonna open her eyes and say thank you, isn’t she?

Kyrie: does that (the obvious thing)

Me: I practically had everything figured out from the start. I am a genius at mystery novels.

I remember seeing a comment saying how Kyrie was a worse mother than Rosa. I was like “yeah right, how?”… I understand now. See I’ve held antinatalist views for a long time and this is not helping me… XD

“It’s just making the Kyrie piece say this!” Oh no… oh my sweet lil Lion, my sweet little Angay, oh no… remember the rules? A piece can only do what it is capable of… girly, you gotta learn a few life lessons and you gotta learn them fast sweetheart.

CH8:

Hey guys, remember how I said that I was on EP8, well uhh. I ended up watching the first part of a playthrough I was watching, then I thought “oh, this must be the second.” because it was on auto play. And then it starts up. The cousins are playing at the beach, Gohda talks about his meal and Kumasawa makes mackerel jokes. I’m other here thinking ‘man, Ryukishi, the pacing is getting bad again. It’s episode 8 and you’re retreading old ground?’ and then it hit me. I was watching part 5 of episode 1…

Imagine Bern playing monopoly. Actually, I can imagine it vividly. I think she would be the kind of person to lose, then in the next game buy one of each property so no one can win. She’s just spiteful. She’s literally me. <3 anyway, my theory for this chapter is as follows, because I’ve gotten a little bit better at murder mysteries. No. I haven’t. I’m randomly guessing. Jessica! Wait, is she dead? Um…

Okay, acid rain. That’s my theory. They all died by acid rain. Anyway guys I’m totally not the culprit… I’m speaking purple truth! How can I lie?

How can… Battler be the culprit? I guess it’s because it’s Berns Game. Also here’s my friend tryna guess Battler and Beatrice’s relationship.

“The one on the left is a lesbian and also his mothers, and the guy is trans and he wants to be a she, and so they got together so [Battler’s] trans and the mothers lesbian. Was I right?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the lore?”

Woah… okay, that was a journey. I’ve finished chapter eight. If you’ve read this lengthy, long to make post, <good.> also… I didn’t realise Sayo’s motive until I went on Wikipedia after finishing the chapters to find out what the fuck is going on with the Manga (why are there supposedly several) (why can I not figure out which order to read it in). I was over here thinking ‘awww Sayo and Jessica so cute together’ and then it hit me like a brick wall, THEY’RE RELATED. THEY’RE RELATED. OH HELL NAH. By the way, I already said this but Beatrice and Shannon was a crackship for me in CH2 because I was so god damn sick of George.

What lesson have I picked up from Umineko? Fuck George. George poopy! George smelly!

Edit: October 2023. It’s been over a year, but I want to clarify, I changed my mind on Genji AGES ago. That man WAS an enabler.

#Umineko

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ultraericthered · 3 years

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The 17 best characters in Umineko, according to my opinion.

1. Lambdadelta - Super adorable, super hilarious, super whimsical, super scary when need be, SUPER PAPER! Lambda has got it all!

2. Bernkastel - I love me a great villain, and Bern is one of the best in this whole franchise. Extra cool points for being Evil Rika Furude.

3. Erika Furudo - I want to deck her in her smug little gremlin face but then also wrap her in a warm blanket and keep her all snug and protected in equal measures, which is a VERY hard thing to pull off as perfectly balanced as Erika somehow does and I adore her for it.

4. Sayo Yasuda/Beatrice - Pretty much the centerpiece character of this entire narrative. Never fails to be fascinating and entertaining.

5. Maria Ushiromiya/MARIA - Uuuu! While at first Maria seemed a bit too try-hard to be for Umineko what Rena was for Higurashi, I got attached to her quickly and she proved to be a wonderful character.

6. Battler Ushiromiya/Black Battler - It’s almost unbelievable how much Battler’s character grew on me and won me over. A far more heavily flawed individual than Keiichi was, but just as interesting in his own right. Plus, he’s even got a badass evil doppelganger!

7. Ange Ushiromiya/Ange-Beatrice - Easily the most sympathetic character in the cast aside from maybe Maria, and ultimately the true hero of this tale. Following her journey was always a highlight.

8. Jessica Ushiromiya - Tough-as-nails but a bit scatterbrained and blunt as hell, not to mention a pansexual icon. I can’t not love her!

9. Ronove - He’s too friendly and likable to be a nefarious demon!

10. Gaap - Another very fun and likable (and hot) demon character.

11. Virgilia - Beato’s mentor really helped kickstart our deeper understanding of magic, witches, and Yasu’s character while always being a pleasant and comforting presence to have around.

12. Eva Ushiromiya/Eva-Beatrice - Eva was the most fascinating and complex of Kinzo’s children who aren’t Yasu, making me care about her yet also detest her at different points, back and forth. She also has a kickass evil doppelganger in the form of her “black witch.”

13. Willard H. Wright - I’m a sucker for eccentric and antisocial Holmesian detectives, and Mr. Wright really made the most of it.

14. Lion Ushiromiya - They’re just precious, and show us what could have been had Kinzo not been even more horrid than he was.

15. Kyrie Ushiromiya - Imagine if Kyoko Kirigiri grew up and lost a good chunk of her moral standards, and you’d have Kyrie. Whether she be acting for good or for bad, she’s undeniably one cool MFer.

16. Hideyoshi Ushiromiya - How did Eva ever manage to score a guy so caring and kind? Easily the least bad of the Ushiromiya adults in terms of morality, even if he is sadly under-developed.

17. Juuza Amakusa - Formerly of the Yamainu and now serving as Ange’s hired bodyguard, he’s another fun morally sketchy character.

And the runner ups are....

Tetsuro Okonogi - I love the guy, but he appears in literally every single When They Cry entry, so he’s not exactly unique to Umineko.

Dlanor Knox - Have a difficult time separating her from Erika in my mind, so she doesn’t really stand on her own as a character.

The Seven Stakes Sisters of Purgatory - A fun take on the Seven Deadly Sins/Demon Lords, but lack much dimension or individuality.

The Chiester Sisters - Much as I enjoy them, they always did seem kind of out of place in this series, and they’re even less developed than the above sisters group.

All the other characters I can take or leave (Dr. Nanjo, Kumasawa, Gohda, Gertrude & Cornelia), I like them alright (George, Krauss, Natsuhi, Sakutaro), or I have more conflicted feelings on like if I mostly like them but sometimes hate them (Featherine Augustus Aurora, Genji, the Goat Servants), I mostly hate them but sometimes like them (Rosa Ushiromiya, Rudolf Ushiromiya, Zepar & Furfur), or I just flat out hate them but enjoy the shit out of hating them (Kinzo Ushiromiya. Fuck Kinzo. Oh, and Kasumi Sumadera too.)

#When They Cry #Umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #characters

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love-letters-cast-into-the-sea · 4 years

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Umineko Episode I - part 1

This rambling covers the beginning of the episode up until the group arrives on the island and is full of spoilers for EVERY episode of Umineko.

When I first started reading Umineko, all I knew about it was the Higurashi guy wrote it and it was a murder mystery. The beginning of Umineko has so little in common with what I remembered about Higurashi that it took awhile for me to get into the story and -- as a consequence -- missed out on a lot of important details at the beginning.

I’m not very good at reading things on a first pass.

The opening scene is Kinzo, Nanjo, and Genji in Kinzo’s study as he receives his poor prognosis from Nanjo. I believe this scene (or one close to it) happened as depicted, just without the melodrama turned up to 11.

Kinzo is a man who’s living with deep regrets and resentment to his family, even Nanjo’s urging that he should leave some final words for them fall on deaf ears. The only bright parts of his life were with Beatrice and through fate (Bice’s early death) and his own monstrous deeds (HI BEA2 AND SAYO) he destroyed any remnants.

This is not to necessarily say that Bice’s life was brighter with Kinzo in it (and I’m still not sure how she felt about the whole situation, I’ll come to that much later in the re-read), but Kinzo thought so and he’s got the spotlight this scene. He’s desperate to see his lost love even one more time and he is at once a terrifyingly imposing figure and a broken, sad man. Nanjo and Genji stand by as two men who know everything, but except for Nanjo’s gentle pressure that he should write a will (i.e. come clean, even in death) they don’t push back on him as he wallows in his own grief.

To back it up a bit, Episode 1 (and 2) are penned by Sayo and even if she didn’t have a relationship with him beyond “employer and servant” until near the end of his life, she still would have been privy to a lot of his behaviors. While I do think she’s hamming up his performance a bit, she was likely drawing from a long memory of things he’s actually said. I’ll have to keep this in mind and compare him with the Kinzo of Episodes 3 and 4, though.

Moving ahead and it’s time to introduce the family as the prodigal son returns. Battler’s been gone for six years and everyone has something to say about that.

Eva teasing Battler that he must have broken some hearts with his charm and good looks, right?

Ouch.

Kyrie and Battler act a lot alike and Rudolf is awful for preventing Battler from having a genuine relationship with her (I guess it’s extremely debatable whether Kyrie’s half would be genuine, given what she says in later episodes).

Obviously this whole scene serves as a way to introduce the real-world readers to the characters, but I think you can place it in universe as Sayo basically figuring out Battler’s 18-year-old characterization. She’s taking what she remembers of him and maybe bits and pieces she’s heard from the other family members and trying to flesh that out into a more fully realized person. Battler still greatly admires George as this cool big brother type (and George is still low-key jealous of Battler, lol, get over yourself dude), Eva and Hideyoshi tease him, Jessica still tries to wrestle him... in short, they all pick up with him exactly where they might have left off six years ago.

Because that’s the last real impression of Battler that Sayo has.

What a fun, light-hearted introduction!

Ahem.

On the boat ride over, the reader is given another big indication that something is very different about this family conference with the shrine being gone. The cousins start talking about incoming inclement weather and it just breaks my heart that Maria’s response to all these feelings of unease is her “uu uu” happiness spell, but there’s no one there who knows what it means.

I admit on my first read, it took an embarrassingly long time to pick up that Maria is coded as neurodivergent in some way but it’s so obvious on a re-read. She echoes people around her, the narration draws attention to her normally expressionless face, she’s lagging behind socially in school, and she instantly believes anything anyone tells her. I’m really looking forward to re-reading her scenes with Beatrice in future episodes with a better understanding of the scope of Sayo’s relationship with her.

Jessica praising Battler for managing to remember the shrine was there despite not having been to the island for six years is a dark lol.

Rosa remembering to bring Kumasawa a blend of tea after a whole year and the narration praising her with --

“Kumasawa seemed deeply touched, not only that Aunt Rosa had remembered this year-old promise, but that she would bring a gift to a simple servant like her”

-- is an even darker lol.

Welcome to Rokkenjima!

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #episode 1

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sayo-beatrice · 6 years

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Legend - EP 1

Massive spoilers for Legend of the Golden Witch! Do not read if you are not okay with spoilers!

First Game Legend of the Golden Witch

Culprit: Sayo Yasuda Accomplices: Nanjo, Genji, Kumasawa, Eva, and Hideyoshi

Preparations: In Chapter 6, after talking with the cousins, Shannon ran off claiming that her break was over. It stated that she was headed toward the rose garden, but we didn’t see her after that. In this same chapter, Kanon was unaccounted for the entire time. Rosa and the cousins soon left Maria alone in the rose garden, since she refused to stop searching for her lost rose. Yasu, as either Shannon, Kanon, or Beatrice, gave the letter to Maria while she was searching for her rose in the garden. In this game and almost all the other others, Yasu told her to read it to everyone at dinner. Along with this, she must have taken the rose on the way to the rose garden to keep Maria there, otherwise it was simply a prediction of hers (it would make sense, she predicted the typhoon).

First Twilight: In the dining hall, Yasu killed Krauss, Rudolf, Kyrie, Rosa, and Gohda, hence the blood on the seats. It is not certain why she killed those particular people, but it was most likely so that the adults wouldn’t solve the epitaph before Battler, which is what she wants to happen. With the help of one of the servants (she is the head, so they will obey her, and nobody else would help her; for more context, the servants with the exception of Gohda all accept Beatrice as their second master in Chapter 12), Yasu moved their bodies to the rose garden storehouse and painted the magic circle to give off the witch’s presence.

Although it is very discreet, Yasu presumably bribed Eva and Hideyoshi to conspire with her. Before she is killed, Eva refers to the blood as “horrible makeup” with a very firm tone. In Chapter 10, Hideyoshi did not allow George to come near Shannon’s body with the excuse of preserving her dignity. Nobody except Eva and Hideyoshi saw “Shannon” on the ground. That’s where Willard’s solution comes into place. “Illusions to illusions. The corpse that cannot return to earth returns to illusions.” Shannon’s corpse isn’t real because Kanon was at the scene, so lies took place.

To explain the scene at Natsuhi’s room, we will go back to Chapter 6. Maria rants about how scorpion charms ward off witches such as Beatrice. Shannon reaffirms this theory, and later puts it to use while planning the six murders. In Chapter 8, Jessica gives her scorpion charm to Natsuhi, and she hangs it on her door. Yasu most likely saw the charm and gave up on killing Natsuhi (keep in mind the purpose of killing the parents). She then settled for Gohda, who is the only servant who didn’t know the truth about her. To add the finishing touch, Yasu added the fake blood she uses later in the murders to her door to scare her, which fully recreated the scorpion charm myth.

Second Twilight: According to the epitaph, the victims of the second twilight will be “two who are close.” The only two who are close are the married couple of Eva and Hideyoshi, and are also dangerous accomplices who could expose her, so it would be twice as reasonable for Yasu to murder them. At a time where Kanon was unaccounted for, Yasu went to Eva and Hideyoshi’s room dressed up as Kanon. She shot them in the head and placed the stakes in the bullet spots in order to stick to her epitaph motif. Hideyoshi was placed in a running shower to create further chaos and confusion. It can be presumed that they were shot first because otherwise blood would be all over the walls and the bed.

Afterwards, Yasu went to the kitchen to get Genji as a watchdog in order to paint the magic circle. We as the readers are tricked to think that they are innocent and just checking on the couple. This can be predicted because the magic circle just suddenly appeared when Kanon came back with Kumasawa. It is said that it is a perfect closed room, but if they knew that these events occurred, they would probably come to a conclusion that is the same as mine. “Illusions to illusions. A chain of illusions can only hold back illusions.” Eva and Hideyoshi never mentioned a chain locking the door, only Kanon and Genji, so it had to be a lie. Even if the chain existed - logically, it would be easy for Yasu to lock the chain before leaving the room, creating the illusion of a perfect closed room.

Fourth Twilight: In Chapter 12, Eva talks about how she placed a receipt into the study door before she asked Natsuhi to go check on Kinzo. When Eva and Natsuhi went along to check on Kinzo, he “disappeared” and wasn’t in the study. Additionally, the receipt was in the exact same place as Eva put it in as they entered the door. To clarify, the receipt really exists because Natsuhi later says that she threw it in the trash when she saw it on the floor.

This would create a closed room scenario if not looked upon carefully. But with the evidence presented, it can be concluded that Kinzo was never there in the first place, even though everyone says he is. What would this suggest? He was already dead. “Illusions to illusions. Let the man of illusions go to where he belongs.” Krauss, Natsuhi, and the servants are “seen” with Kinzo throughout the first half of the novel. But looking back at what I just said, that is not possible. This means they are all faking his death, most likely to prevent a crazy incident to happen within the Ushiromiya family (I mean, look at the Rokkenjima Mass Murder). Knowing all this, it would be extremely easy for Yasu to stage Kinzo’s death to the unknowing family members.

Fifth Twilight: Considering the alibis, there is no possible way for Kanon and Kumasawa to hear a door closing in the boiler room. Kanon rushed down to the boiler room and saw “Beatrice.” Since Beatrice is Yasu, Kanon yelling at Beatrice would represent Yasu’s internal conflict about being a murderous sadist who causes grief to Battler and the others. In the end, Yasu goes through with it and stages a death for Kanon, so she can finish the last twilights easier. She presumably used the blood-like substance that was on Natsuhi’s door to stage Kanon’s death. “Illusions to illusions. The witch and stake of illusions can pierce naught but illusions.” The stake that apparently pierced Kanon was near him, not in him. Additionally, he was face down and the only confirmation of his death and the stab wound was Nanjo’s inspection.

Sixth, Seventh, & Eighth Twilight: The letter in the study must have been sneaked onto the table by one of the servants; most likely Genji. After all, Genji was with Kanon during the preparations for the second twilight, so he must have also slipped the letter under the door. While everyone was looking at the epitaph in the study, Maria and the servants were the only ones who weren’t seen. Maria couldn’t have done it because she legitimately believes in magic. After Natsuhi kicked Maria and the servants out, they went to the parlor. When the group in the study came down after getting the phone call in the study (from Yasu or Maria, this would also imply that Genji lied about the radio and phone not working), Maria claimed that Beatrice came through the door in the form of golden butterflies and spoke to them.

Again, when Genji said he was going to give all the keys in the mansion to Natsuhi, he lied because Yasu couldn’t have gotten in otherwise; Genji would have to lock the door in order to create an illusion for Maria. “Illusions to illusions. Illusions are the blind girls's song. Illusion of a closed room.” Adding onto Maria’s claim, she stated that Beatrice told her to face the wall and sing while she killed everyone else in the room, in order to prohibit Maria from seeing how she really does it. Either Yasu or Maria made the phone call and just left the wire hanging. Afterwards, Yasu left a taunting letter for Natsuhi and waited for her in the area with the portrait. Lastly, on the notion of Kumasawa being frightened (as Maria stated), it can simply be explained as her anxious nature toward the subject of death. Even if she knows something is going to happen, she’s still scared, as seen during the second and fifth twilights upon the body discoveries.

Final Moment: Natsuhi never fired the gun until the fight with “Beatrice.” The only logical explanation is that the gun had blanks (not by coincidence, Yasu had access to Kinzo’s room and his weapons; this means that she could tamper with them), because Natsuhi has no reason to kill herself as Jessica thought she did. Additionally, Alliance of the Golden Witch gives us two useful truths to help prove this:

“The bullet that killed Natsuhi was not fired from Natsuhi's gun; the thing that shot Natsuhi wasn't a trap, it was a real shooting murder with a gun raised and trigger pulled!”

The letter was about a duel between who should be the family head, as described as Natsuhi through her battle cry. Yasu revealed herself (dressed as Beatrice) to the children and simply waited for the explosives to go off (Rokkenjima used to be a military base of sorts, as elaborated on in Requiem of the Golden Witch).

Aftermath: It is said in the credits that Maria sent a message bottle to sea about the mass murder, but this was probably a fabrication by Yasu in order to conceal her identity to the police. The deaths by the game’s end were symbolized as “goats chewing them up,” which most likely refers to the Goat Butlers. Also, Shannon and Kanon can apparently exist as different beings inside Purgatorio, possibly because it is described by Bernkastel as “Beatrice’s realm,” and that Beatrice herself is a representation of the rules of the games (she doesn’t know about Yasu yet).

Pure Theory: Lastly, in Twilight of the Golden Witch, it is implied that Yasu committed suicide by drowning in the real world after the massacre and Battler tried to save her. Unfortunately, he didn’t succeed and instead suffered major brain damage and amnesia, making him a new person (Tohya Hachijo). This would mean that the only logical explanation for Battler not knowing anything in Legend of the Golden Witch and thinking it’s his normal life is that when both Yasu and Battler (Tohya’s former life) arrived in Purgatorio, Yasu started her game plan immediately.

Bonus: Here I will talk about how I think the Umineko universe and its writing works. It’s a bit simplified, but I hope I make sense.

Real World: The universe of Umineko When They Cry has multiple layers. The main two consist of fantasy and the real world. The message bottles are Yasu’s plans to murder the entire Ushiromiya family, but she never went through with them. In the first and second episodes, we see two of her message bottles in action. In addition, Ikuko’s novels (the third to sixth episodes) are based off of Yasu’s other message bottles that we haven’t seen.

Fantasy still plays a major part in the real world and how it shaped the characters. As seen in Twilight of the Golden Witch, Tohya comes to terms with everything in the end, with all of the magic and human characters around him. This was not just for us to see nor was it only an ending that wasn’t supposed to make sense. It would imply that the magical perspective of Battler and his adventures with Beatrice was part of Tohya’s thoughts and his regret over Yasu’s death.

Fantasy and Magic: Ange also has these types of thoughts, as revealed more clearly. Starting from the third (mainly the fourth) episode, we see that she uses Maria’s diary to escape in a fantasy world and go back into her past where she played around with the members of Mariage Sorciere. Bernkastel embodies her nihilistic thoughts of her life and the people around her. While it is supposed to look like the Ange we see in each episode is traveling to one world to another, it is actually a linear explanation of her experiences with a bit of magic added in.

The eighth episode concludes Ange’s journey, and shows that she has come to terms with everything that has happened to her family and herself. Ange in the seventh episode can be interpreted as what Tohya imagined she would feel when she discovered the truth, as Requiem of the Golden Witch is basically Tohya discovering the truth. This includes Yasu’s whole history, not just her plans to murder the Ushiromiya family.

#umineko no naku koro ni #umineko when they cry #legend of the golden witch #battler ushiromiya

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canmom · 7 years

Text

Let’s read Umineko! part 13

[pt. 1] [pt. 2] [pt. 3] [pt.4] [pt. 5] [pt. 6] [pt. 7] [pt. 8] [pt. 9] [pt. 10] [pt. 11] [pt. 12]

So. Our cast is divided in two. In Kinzo’s study, Natsuhi, Jessica, George and Battler wait. Thrown out are Nanjo, Maria, Genji and Kumasawa, among whom is suspected to be the killer pretending to be Beatrice.

The ritual requires three more murders. If Beatrice really is among those who left, she has three ready sacrifices.

Also I just checked the characters screen and, although it hasn’t been quite so goffick as to edit skulls over the character portraits like I have, the dead characters have been highlighted in red, so I could maybe have saved some editing lol.

But wait, the character descriptions have changed! They’re really mean-spirited now! I made a post with them here.

Anyway, Battler comments that he thinks Jessica was attracted to Kanon, but only realised after Kanon’s death. Battler, meanwhile, is searching for a book with the magic circle that we identified as the Third Pentacle of Mars, as a way to pass time. But very few of Kinzo’s grimoires are written in Japanese.

Jessica starts questioning whether they did the right thing in chasing Maria, the nine-year-old child, out into a house with a murderer on the loose. Yeah, that’s a question worth asking, isn’t it, Jessica? Natsuhi is unremorseful.

They talk about why Maria is so obsessed with the occult, and George says Rosa’s husband left her, and that she sometimes ‘got incredibly emotional and took it all out on Maria’, and didn’t like or want her. In short, parental abuse - which we’ve seen evidence of already.

George finally manages to say that they were wrong to throw out the four. It’s a bit late now, isn’t it George? It’s been hours and they’re probably already dead.

Natsuhi continues to argue they’re suspicious for placing the letter. Battler rejects this, with what are now some of his most repeated lines after ‘flip the chessboard’:

He flips the chessboard too, of course.

Why would the culprit do something so self-implicating as to place a letter? ...unless they wanted to get kicked out along with three sacrifices?

They don’t quite follow that logic, but conclude they might have played right into an external agent’s hands by kicking people out of the safe room.

Bit late now, innit.

Jessica is feeling increasingly guilty about being so mean to Maria.

Battler finds the Third Pentacle of Mars in a book. He says it agitates internal divisions and causes the enemy to bring about their own downfall. Put like that, well. You all fucked up, badly.

Just as they start wondering how to fix this, they get a phone call. On a phone that was supposed to be broken.

After some freaking out, Natsuhi picks it up... and hears only quiet singing on the other end, with no direct response. Battler takes it, and thinks it sounds like Maria. We don’t get a translation of the song.

It seems that even if the internal lines are fixed, the external ones are still broken and they can’t reach the cops. Worth a try.

They set out as a group. Battler takes a ‘three-pronged candelabra’ to use as a weapon. He wonders if they’ve fallen for another trick to make them leave the study.

George takes the chance to raise a point that Nanjo mentioned earlier, that splitting the skull with one of the gouges would require a lot of strength. He suggests the culprit may have a weapon that can shoot or otherwise drive these “icepicks”.

As they approach the parlour, they hear Maria singing. Battler says it’s a common folk song, and she’s singing more like she’s been forced than she’s happy.

They prepare to breach the room with a flashbang... wait, no, wrong kind of game. With George opening the door for Natsuhi and Battler. It turns out to be locked, and they have to make nosie to unlock it, revealing themselves to any potential enemy.

They breach the room with good tactics, but of course, it’s too late.

Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo are dead. They have been ‘gouged’ in the places noted in the riddle, and their faces have been smashed up too.

Maria is also there, doing her best horror movie impression.

Of course, she says it was Beatrice that dunnit.

Beatrice apparently told her to face the wall and keep singing ‘for a long time’, i.e. while Beatrice murdered everyone else. That’s... really horrible.

The story: the four entered the parlour and locked the door behind them. She entered the room by ‘turning into butterflies and flying through the cracks in the door’. Once inside, she said she couldn’t enter the study, so she’d choose the three sacrifices from those present.

Maria says she was safe because she had Battler’s Fifth Pentacle of Mars charm, which he ‘prayed for [her] safety and put his feelings into’.

Battler doubts, but Maria declares the eigth twilight is over, and it’s time for Beatrice to revive.

Battler is not going to accept this no matter what.

While they’re interrogating Maria, Natsuhi disappears. Welp. Guess she’s going to die too.

Or something else? She seems to have left the room - Maria says ‘reading a letter’ - and locked or blocked the door behind her.

The narration explains she bolted the door with Battler’s intricate candlestick. Curiously, the narration says ‘double door’, even though all illustrations of the parlour door have been a single door. Seems like a bit of an oversight on the art team’s part.

Natsuhi has gone to the entrance hall to challenge Beatrice in front of her portrait. And butterflies do indeed come out.

Natsuhi says she can’t believe that “something like you” really existed, but she’s going to shoot the shit out of Beatrice anyway. It turns out Beatrice has challenged her to a duel.

Beatrice takes human form, and we cut to Battler as Natsuhi opens fire. And somehow, when they force the door and get there, it seems as if Natsuhi has killed herself with the gun. Perhaps Beatrice has the power to redirect bullets, or somehow took the gun from Natsuhi, or magically compelled her to kill herself? Can Beatrice not affect her directly due to Maria/Jessica’s magic charm?

The letter challenging her to a duel is also gone. Maybe Natsuhi should have told everyone where she was going?

In any case, Maria is now confident Beatrice is about to lead them all to the promised Golden Land. And at midnight, Beatrice appears in front of her portrait, and Maria hugs her.

No thank you, says Battler.

Beatrice laughs. Curiously, she doesn’t have a character portrait but rather we have shots of the wall painting.

And the episode ends! We get a scrolling epilogue, explaining that when the police come to the island, they find only small pieces of the four remaining survivors. The story we’ve just read is notes recorded by Maria and hidden in a wine bottle. The “witch legend serial murder case” goes on to be a popular unsolved mystery.

I wasn’t able to fully screenshot the epilogue, but here are some excerpts.

There’s a list of the fates of the various characters in the ‘first game’. We learn the stabbing weapons are the “stakes of” various demons.

Well, that’s that, everyone’s dead, game over right?

No, I think this was, to make a Homestuck analogy, acts 1-4. Now it’s time to introduce the Trolls and get the real story going!

Before that, a new ‘tea party’ option has appeared on the menu. This takes place in ‘purgatorio’. Apparently Beatrice has invited us to a tea party. In it, the characters break the fourth wall and talk about the game. They suggest we’ve just found the ‘bad end’... of this completely linear visual novel. Even Maria says it was a bad end.

Battler is still creepy with the sexual harassment of Shannon.

But yeah. They talk about it less as a thing they actually experienced, and more as a visual novel they’ve read alongside us. And yet they use first-person language. This is some Homestucky shit all right.

The characters agree among themselves, commenting on the scenes, that various bits of the narrative prove a supernatural 19th person was responsible.

A lampshade is hung on the characters' ambiguously... canon-experiencing? status.

George questions the story’s genre.

The characters - now external to the narrative - decide to try to solve the riddle now. Maria says Beatrice will be happy.

Battler won’t be having it.

This, I understand, is going to be a central theme of the story.

Since this post is now very long and this ‘tea party’ postscript doesn’t seem short, let’s wrap it up here. Next time: lively epistemology.

#umineko liveread #death cw #blood cw

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ramblingsofthegoldenwitch · 8 years

Note

(You've commented a fair number of times about how you don't like EP7 much compared to other EPs. If you don't mind elaborating, what are your complaints about it?)

It’s difficult to explain my feelings in regard to Ep 7... and they might feel like things that affect just me so, everyone, if you feel like digging in this explanation, consider yourself warned.

In fact, to be honest, some of the issues I’ve with it are a matter of personal taste, for example I didn’t like at all how it was structured (as in the way the whole story was delivered to us) and I felt like many choices in it weren’t really necessary to the plot. All this can of course be countered by another person with a mere ‘but I liked it!’. We’re all different, after all, and my tastes don’t rule the world or dictate what should be likable and what shouldn’t.

Some issues I’ve about it are in regard to how ‘confusing’ its presentation is. No, I’m not talking about Will giving us obscure answers, I’m talking about the huge Meta structure that basically permeates all Ep 7 and that is never well explained. By now I’ve my theories and I’ve more or less sorted it out but the problem is that they’re just MY theories, MY interpretations. People come asking me what in the world is going on in Ep 7 and all I can reply to them is what I THINK is going on but I can’t say for sure and what makes it worse is that I don’t think we needed things to be so confusing. Umineko had better Meta ways to deliver things that had already been used. No need to complicate everything by making new ones. Of course, again, there can be people who loved all this.

Another issue I’ve with it is the Theatre-going authority. We’re lulled into thinking that it will push characters to tell us things, and that their testimony will be the truth. All the people Will uses it on were ALREADY willing to speak (even Kinzo was persuaded to do so by Lion) and they tell us an extremely personal, sometimes even deliberately mendacious version of the truth (Kinzo was the one who wanted to kill the Italians, not Yamamoto). The effect of the theatre-going authority is fundamentally the one of a giant fantasy flashback. We already had them, no need for it... unless they were supposed to be red herring? The only person who didn’t want to talk is Shannon, Will tries to use the theatre-going authority on her and then… gives up. It seems as if the theatre-going authority only existed to let us see Shannon going in ‘freaky/robot mode’ (it varies according to you reading the VN or the manga). It’s one of the things I felt we could go without.

A small issue is about Will, Lion and Clair. Although I love them to pieces, plot wise I feel we didn’t need those extra characters. I wave it off because… well, I love them madly because Ryukishi is awesome at creating characters. This doesn’t change the fact I get the feelings the addition of those extra was a tad forced.

A concrete issue I’ve with it is how it hand waves certain matters, just appealing to our suspension of disbelief on threat that if we think too much at it we’ll get a headache. Those things could have been explained one way or another but instead… no explanation is given for those oddities happening. They just… happens and we’re either asked to swallow them or make up our own explanation about why such odd things took place.

Will’s presence on the island? Hand waved, no one wonders how this strange got there or who he is, even though it’s a private island and he wasn’t on the boat with the adults. He walks in their private property out of nowhere and no one stops to wonder who’s this guy and from where it comes from, not the servants who should know who was invited nor Kinzo, the master of the house or… everyone else, really. Krauss asks him who he is but then he drops him with Lion and ignores the whole matter, because evidently that’s no more a private ceremony in a private chapel in a private island but a public place. Lion is the one who has a vaguely normal reaction and asks Will why he’s at the funeral, when a better question would be how he got on that island.

The portrait hanged in 1984? No reason for this is given in Lion’s world, it’s just something Kinzo decided on a whim.

Battler’s absence from the conference in Lion’s world is unexplained (yes, my Battler/Sayo heart shipper tells me it’s because Sayo wasn’t on the island but that’s my heart talking, not Umineko. Knox would wave it off as a random guess…).

The same goes for Kinzo’s decision to hold Beatrice’s funeral that year… in which nothing special happened. Kinzo just woke up that morning and decided to hold a ceremony to mourn Beatrice. When he didn’t feel like it when Beatrice truly died.

We aren’t told why Natsuhi changed her mind and accepted Lion even though it’s apparently extremely unlikely. Natsuhi just woke up and decided that hey, maybe tossing him off a cliff would be a bad idea.

Kinzo doesn’t notice how Rosa is screaming she killed Beatrice.

The whole story of how an Italian submarine carrying gold came to Japan is historically illogic as submarines in such conditions would historically go to Spain. To make us swallow it we’re told that maybe they had a reason to go to Japan but ‘nobody knows it because who knew died’. For the gold the same principle is used. It was hard enough to think it was Italian but then Will randomly tosses in it could be German which opens up an even huge can of historical worms and again the whole issue is hand waved with a ‘oh well, we don’t know’.

Clair doesn’t ask Will the solution for all the mysteries. Of course we believe Will knows everything but if we accept she believed he knew everything also then why questioning him in the first place? If I’m not wrong Ryukishi claimed somewhere he wanted to focus only on the riddles that seemed difficult but then the whole scene ends up on being a plot contrivance to deliver to the readers some answers in an obscure way. Oh, it’s artistically pretty and I love it for its prettiness, but it’s plot structure is shaky.

Note that Ep 7 (and Ryukishi) also raised questions in points that didn’t need some.

The tale Battler wrote for Beato? The fandom knew it was Dawn only EP 7 described it in such a way people didn’t really find it matching with Dawn plot so people started wondering if there was another tale written for her and it didn’t help that Ep 7 manga version didn’t bother posting the title on the book cover, something that Ep 8 has no problems making (note that, due to how the manga was printed the two scenes didn’t exactly came out at years of distance but were pretty close so I don’t see where’s the problem in confirming things in EP 7).

Battler’s letter? Maybe in the Japanese fandom things were different but I didn’t remember people doubting he merely didn’t write it until Ryukishi in an interview raised the issue there was more about it… before dropping it completely. The letter is never addressed again. Not even in Ep 8. What broke Sayo’s heart is just… hand waved. Battler doesn’t know about it and while in Ep 8 he’ll apologize for not coming back he’ll never get a head up about the letter matter.

We’re all disgusted by Kinzo’s behavior with Kuwadorian Beatrice? If I don’t remember wrong Ryukishi tells us we don’t really know how things went between them… which is true but it’s clear enough they were horrible enough to push her to follow a complete stranger and try to escape. Not knowing the details of the rape doesn’t really erase it. Unless we’re supposed to doubt the whole story Rosa told us as well as what the servants told us and think that Kuwadorian Beatrice slept with Kinzo willingly and that she left Kuwadorian only for a short walk that ended poorly.

The family conference in the year in which Battler should have come back is conveniently skipped. Or handled so poorly it seems it’s skipped. We actually have a scene from 1980… but it doesn’t look like a family conference and people talking about what will happen in ‘that year’s family conference’ (Kyrie will supposedly show up) reinforces this opinion only it turns out that the next conference we’ll see is the one of 1981… Maybe a problem in the translation? Still it doesn’t work well.

Shannon feels up on asking Genji and Kumasawa to lie to Kinzo, Krauss and Natsuhi and also… hire her as Kanon. And no one notices a thing about this boy whose face is the same as Shannon and that doesn’t come from the Fukuin house as no one of the Fukuin servants could know him but… out of nowhere, really.

Kinzo pulls out the epitaph, which is a hint to Genji that he knows Shannon might be Lion and Genji gives hints to Shannon about how to solve it but… he, Kumasawa and Nanjo don’t stop thinking to a less traumatic way to break the truth to her in those almost two month it’ll take for her to solve it as if they couldn’t realize how traumatic it would be for her. No, the idea of Ep 7 is that they had to traumatize her which requires them to be either jerks or dumb… while it could have more or less worked if everything had happened without them having the chance to predict it and so, caught by surprise, they ended up saying things in a poor manner.

We spiral down with the teaparty. We’re left with the adults in a definite situation, Eva and Hideyoshi are arguing with Krauss, Natsuhi is instead arguing with the other siblings… then all of sudden we’re told that Natsuhi jumped on Eva and this caused her to get shoot. The manga worsened things by showing that the two groups were even distant and that Eva and Natsuhi were giving each other their backs and it kept on worsening things when it insisted on how EXACTLY THE SAME THING would happen in Lion’s world as well, with the only difference that Lion would be called in Jessica’s place. I can swallow that the siblings were in economical troubles even if Kinzo was alive and hated each other so much that they would still argue and kill each other but… different conditions should cause minor shifts in the plot. Instead the only difference between a dead scene and the other is in how the gun next to Eva is placed… which can be the result of a mistake done due to the change in perspective… and well, that Beato isn’t there.

Then there’s Kyrie’s characterization. Kyrie is supposed to be suspicious, careful, rational. All this flies out of the window when she decides she can trust that the credit card really will lead them to all that money without checking first, that there’s no way to convert the gold without Krauss’ help when Sayo, in order to get money on that credit card, should have been able to do it, that the bomb will surely explode even through its mechanism wasn’t tested, that the range of the explosion surely won’t involve Kuwadorian, that the safest way to go through it will start gunning down people instead than grabbing some sleeping pills from Nanjo’s bag, drugging everyone and then gunning them down and, worse of all, she doesn’t check neither Sayo or Eva’s corpses and misses their vital points rather badly even though we were told she was good with guns. Note that I can accept that Kyrie would consider murdering everyone… but I’ve issues with how careless she becomes.

Rudolf too comes as a little odd as he knows he has a defective gun but doesn’t go take another one. It’s minor as Rudolf is lazy… but well, when you’re going on a killing spree and a defective gun can cause you troubles you should play on the careful side. But well, I can swallow it.

Battler’s ‘disappearance’ also doesn’t work well. Ep 8 explains us that the solution to this is ‘Battler left the house then, all of sudden, remembered he didn’t remember the way to the chapel and came back to ask about it to Gohda’ which feels silly as: Kyrie shouldn’t have sent him in such a place considering how it was easy to predict he wouldn’t remember where it was or should have made sure he knew the way (it’s well known that the church is hardly used and Battler had been missing from the house for 6 years, you can expect him not to remember were it is) and Battler should have asked her where the church was. So again, Kyrie comes out as careless and Battler leaving to realize he doesn’t know where to and coming back comes out as a plot contrivance.

On a general note… I think that the previous episodes better addressed Sayo’s issues than the whole of Ep 7. Ep 7 focuses a lot on how ‘it’s all Battler’s fault’, when he actually wasn’t the only one to blame, and generates the false impression that this was Sayo’s only problem. It’s true that there are hints in Ep 7 that this actually wasn’t her only problem but after getting all that ‘it’s Battler’s fault’ for so long, with Will agreeing to it as well, the other issues seem minor when they actually played a big role. Sayo also comes out as petty, pushing the blame of her actions solely on Battler, when we know that in Prime she actually took responsibility for them. So ultimately I think Ep 7 did her a disservice.

Ep 7 also lost a good chance to dig deeper into the motivations of minor characters like Genji, Nanjo and Kumasawa for setting up Sayo’s life in a manner that was… simply terrible.

I’ll let slide the whole matter of how they let her believe her sex was female without even bothering to prepare her for the fact she wouldn’t develop secondary sex characteristic or be able to become pregnant because Umineko wanted to keep in the dark Sayo’s sex and use the full trauma of her discovering her own condition as one of the driving forces for the whole thing (even though the fact that Ep 7 completely overlooked on the whole matter ended up making it look less important than it was).

Let’s focus on the fact they kidnapped Sayo and gave her a new identity so that Kinzo won’t make the same mistake and rape her, which is understandable really, but then they took her back on Rokkenjima AS AN ORPHANED SERVANT, when she was too young to work and under the disguise she was actually younger. Kinzo could have recognized Beatrice in her again, think this time Beatrice reincarnated in a person unrelated to him and rape her all over taking advantage of the fact that now she was his servant. It’s a horrible plan and their decision for going through it is… poorly explained.

Then there’s the loss of a chance to let us know more about minor characters like Kinzo’s wife (where was she when the baby was handed to Natsuhi since she was clearly still alive to scold Rosa and push her to escape in the forest and meet with Beatrice? Natsuhi claimed that Krauss and Kinzo were away but what about Kinzo’s wife? Did they drag her along?) or how Asumu, a young woman with no health problem mentioned, suddenly died, to dig a little better in Battler’s six years away from his family and his feelings for Sayo (he’s jealous she chose George but then he can brush it off… so it looks like it isn’t a big deal… only we��ll learn in Prime he risked his life for her more than once and, hadn’t she died, he was willing to spend the rest of his life with her).

Then there are issues I’ve specifically with the manga.

In the scene in which the culprit shows up for the first time… the culprit’s form is slightly kept in the dark but we can see she’s not Shannon, she’s not Beatrice and she isn’t even Clair. There’s no reason for this person in the dark to be an ‘extra’ person.

Kinzo’s wife has no face nor name. I can get over the fact they didn’t give her a name, not on the fact the mangaka didn’t give her a face as there’s no reason to obscure it. She’s not hiding some dark secret. We won’t learn the truth about her later on as we’ll do with Asumu, whose face will be showed only in Ep 8 (bless Ep 8). Yes, maybe they wanted to drive home that for Kinzo she was a ‘not entity’ (his children too get no face) but still… I don’t like this. Personal taste? Maybe.

The manga tossed in a bunch of nameless maids who… go nowhere really (when it would have been so much better if, as someone (myself included) speculated, they also were vessels for things like the Chiesters or the Eiserne Jungfraws) as they don’t get names and just… disappear, while waited to introduce Reinon. This is more or less a direct transposition of how the VN handled matters, only in the VN it worked better as there were no random new faces, just random voices so you could speculate it was a 7 sister maid the one speaking and it wasn’t so clear that Reinon popped up later. The manga makes obvious that’s not the case.

Ep 5 manga version implied the promise happened on the same balcony on which Beatrice, in Ep 4, asked Battler to remember about his sin. This was a wonderful new info but… it goes completely skipped over in the manga transposition of Ep 7. Ep 7 manga version transposes faithfully the novel and just focus on the scene in the garden… where no clear promise is made. Sayo just urges Battler to come and he confirms he’ll do but he never says ‘I promise’ nor they’ll make a pinky swear.

Overall, Ep 7 isn’t fully to blame for most of the issues I’ve with it.

The background behind the Umineko plot is one of an huge amount of extremely unlikely facts happening one after the other, most of whom we’re asked to figure out. While unlikely facts can and will happen, often, in stories in general and in mystery stories in particular the author usually avoids them or explains/excuses them. Umineko just… embraced them as if the unlikely were the ordinary and Ep 7 was the point in which we were asked to do the same, often without being given a convincing reason for having to do this beyond ‘it was unlikely but it just happened, insert devil’s proof here’.

That’s why I wish the manga had at least dimmed some issues I had with the novel version, for example handled better (and not worse) why Eva ended up shooting Natsuhi or how Kyrie and Rudolf murdered everyone in Lion’s world as well.

Most of those issues weren’t IMPOSSIBLE to handle. They just weren’t explained, hand waved with an ‘it happened, don’t think too hard at it’.

As a result, I feel Ep 7 was handled poorly and the manga version did nothing to fix it. It’s my personal impression. I know there’s who loves Ep 7 and how it handled everything and, as usual, that’s fine.

#Umineko #Requiem of the Golden Witch #Umineko VN #Umineko Manga

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pochapal · 1 year

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happy october 5, 1986 (+37)!

i do not have a full writeup done yet because i have been busy with starting my phd and contracting diseases and surviving horrors and rotating abstract concepts in my mind etc etc etc but what i do have is a hot off the press raw and rough preview of the chapter 14 writeup to share with you all in order to celebrate umineko day in some form regardless.

so, on this day of slaughter i am sharing with you a small slice of my writeup: the 3rd and 4th twilights that could have been had chapter 14 decided not to go crazy go stupid with it. i hope this is a tasty appetizer to satiate everybody as i continue to work on bringing the full writeup to completion.

happy umineko day and thanks to everyone for supporting the liveblog so far! <3

[...] This leads you to an immediate conclusion: Kanon dying in the basement boiler room was not part of the plan. Or, not part of the Witch Narrative at least. His death marks a point where this scheme has totally gone off the rails, and Genji’s script has been rendered worthless. The presentation of the death is obfuscated, but the truth beneath it is that something went deeply wrong that shouldn’t have.

This is a bold claim I’m making, but I also think I have enough proof in the story to substantiate it. I think, going by everything, the next incident following the deaths of Eva and Hideyoshi was to involve the basement in one form or another. I also think that this was being prepared in parallel with the Second Twilight – Genji and Nanjo leave the kitchen at the same time as Kanon and Kumasawa, but the two men don’t reach the scene until after Kanon has already unlocked the room and Eva and Hideyoshi have been found dead with the stakes in their skulls. Enough time to, say, take a trip down to the basement and set some dominoes in motion.

As to what I think was part of the Witch Narrative, I think everything was on track right up until the moment Kanon set foot in the basement. The foul smell filling the hallway was almost certainly set in motion by Genji and/or Nanjo (perhaps by turning on the boiler while Eva and Hideyoshi were being found in order to time it to make the smell the strongest at the perfect time – this may also have precluded moving Kinzo’s body there depending on where he was before now). Kanon acting bizarrely freaked out was part of the plan. As was Kumasawa screaming about hearing a noise, and the two of them breaking off from the group to rush ahead to investigate. Everything falls apart when Kanon sets foot in the basement and Beatrice shows up and he dies.

So what was the intended plan in the basement involving Kinzo? I think, if I were to hazard a guess based off pre-existing patterns, the boiler room in the basement was going to be used as another locked room, this time featuring Kinzo. I think this would have been a play in two acts. The first act would have Kanon and Kumasawa chase the noise to the basement and “find” the head’s ring on the ground. The family would search the boiler room and find the back door exit locked up, and no sign of Kinzo anywhere in sight (there would be efforts taken to keep anyone from investigating the boiler). The ring alone on the ground in an empty room would stand in for the Third Twilight – Kinzo is without his headship and authority, so it must therefore fall to everyone to praise Beatrice’s noble name in his stead. Dissatisfied and creeped out, everyone leaves the basement – the back door is locked from the inside, and the front door locked with a key placed in Natsuhi’s possession.

From here, this would likely have led to another discussion chapter about how the ring got there. The setup of the scene would be enough that Battler would question whether or not a nineteenth person placed the ring there, or if Kinzo himself actually dropped it there as part of some other ploy. The servants would be questioned and swear up and down there was nobody else in the basement when they entered. The sound would be discussed, as would the impossibility that anybody known to be alive could make that noise. The conversation would then turn to Kinzo as the likely suspect and Natsuhi, who’s been complicit in covering up Kinzo’s death for some time already, would start sweating as this truth grows closer to being uncovered. It’s up in the air as to whether or not the servants would help or hinder Natsuhi here, but I think it’s likely Battler would have started to think on Eva’s words from earlier. More fuel on the Natsuhi culprit fire that she can’t fight because she can’t admit to knowing what he knows. Maria would then laugh and go witchmode and say to everyone that this is obviously Beatrice manipulating things with her magic, and boom, scene.

Something would then happen in the next chapter to turn attention back to the boiler room. Perhaps the smell grows stronger. Perhaps the conversation about Kinzo grows to a fever pitch. Perhaps a servant fakes hearing another noise from the basement. Whatever the case, we would return to the boiler room a second time. There would be a point made of showing Natsuhi pulling out the only key to the boiler room and everyone stepping inside to find Kinzo’s body on the floor, burned up with an icepick stake in his forehead. The inner lock for the back door would still be set. Genji and Nanjo would confirm the body’s identity via the polydactyly. Somehow, Kinzo’s dead body appeared in the middle of a perfectly locked room.

Likely there would then be discussions of who could have killed Kinzo, given that at the time of his “death” everyone was yet again together (minus Kanon/Genji slipping in and out of the parlor to get food and drinks). The assumption would be that Kinzo was alive in there all along, and then killed himself for some reason – contradicted by the fact that if he launched himself into the boiler, how did he drag himself back out into the middle of the floor? The mystery would stump Battler, because the only major solution would be to assume a nineteenth person was also already hiding in the locked basement, and killed Kinzo and displayed the corpse, but Battler would chessboard himself out of leaning on that option. Out of options and stumped, we would stay at another stalemate where there’s no proof that Beatrice exists, but no way that the surviving humans could have set up this scene (there are of course ways, such as a back door that wasn’t really locked or a second key/master key with which to return to the boiler room and set things up, but nobody will think of them). The horrors would escalate. The Witch Narrative would persist. And so on. And so on.

This scenario, believable as it is, never came to happen. Instead we got what we got, and we need to figure out why. Why did Kinzo show up like this? Why did Kanon die, despite all known logic and reasoning stating that the contrary would be ideal? Why are things speeding up at such an exponential rate? What on earth is actually going on?

#umineko liveblog #i wrote this part a couple weeks back and while there are no Conclusions or Thoughts in here #(this is a small part of a much larger discussion about the witch narrative)#i hope you all nonetheless enjoy my attempts at trying to sketch out an umineko mystery that complies with pre-chapter 14 logic #even if i'm wildly off in everything this was a very fun creative exercise in an otherwise analytical document #i hope to finish the full writeup and share it with you all in the not too distant future but enjoy this for now!

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sg2tiger · 8 years

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I don’t want to spam up the tag with such a pointless collection of posts, but old habits die hard...so while I know that we now know the truth behind these answers thanks to the manga, and it’s all probably really obvious to most people now, I still want to go through all the mysteries myself before ‘confirming’ the solutions with the manga. Maybe it’s because I just finished that rambling post about what things were like back before we had such answers...but I feel like I can’t just...read this section without actually analyzing it on my own. So I’m just gonna dump them all here in one post under a Read More. Honestly this is more for my own satisfaction than anything, so feel free to ignore.

Episode 1: Legend of the Golden Witch

Starting things off super obvious. Illusions to illusions = something that was complete fantasy and didn’t happen. There are of course only five corpses in the shed - Shannon is absent, with Yasu instead as Kanon standing over the spot where Shannon is supposed to be. Hideyoshi, the only other witness, was bribed by Yasu in Episode 1 and asked to play along with the ruse to convince George not to confirm Shannon’s corpse with his own eyes. It was left to the roulette whether or not George would listen to his father, but ultimately he did, and Shannon’s true fate remained undiscovered.

A chain of illusions. The chain was never set in the first place. Kanon and Genji were the ones who discovered the crime scene - both accomplices in the crime itself. Yasu went to Eva and Hideyoshi’s room as Kanon after the commotion in the parlor about the receipt. As Eva and Hideyoshi were both bribed in EP1, they undid the chain (assuming they even set it to begin with) because it was someone they believed they could trust. Whether they knew Kanon = Beatrice or simply were told that the servants of the one wing were trustworthy, it’s hard to say, but they did invite him in willingly. Of note is the fact that there were no signs of struggle in that room - so the fact that Eva, a martial arts master, would not have put up a fight against her killer, is one hint to the fact that the killer was someone she trusted enough to turn her back to.

Eva let Kanon in and returned to her position relaxing on the bed, turning the volume on the TV low while they discussed the next step in the plan. Hideyoshi was most likely in the shower at the time and hadn’t even heard Kanon enter over the sound of the running water - after all, all the mansion’s guest rooms have roughly the same design, and from EP6 we know that Erika didn’t notice the sound of Battler leaving the closed room and exchanging places with Kanon while she was distracted by the trap. We also know fromConfession that Yasu hid the guns around the mansion at places she would need them in advance, so most likely there was already one inside Eva and Hideyoshi’s room - Kanon would have thus been a lot less suspicious entering the room without a weapon (otherwise it’d be weird that Eva sat back down on the bed, right?). With Eva’s guard down, Kanon grabs the rifle and shoots her in the head. It’s unknown whether or not Hideyoshi heard this and attempted to leave the shower, but he was also shot before he could even get dressed. Kanon then placed the two stakes into the gunshot wounds of their heads, left the room, and drew a magic circle on the door...and finally, placed the Third Twilight’s letter underneath it. They could then have cut through the unset chain at their leisure to maintain the story that it was set and they needed the chain cutters to get through. By the time the others were summoned everything was already set up, so the story about the chain being set when Genji and Kanon arrived was swallowed easily. No one would ever doubt Genji, who had been such a loyal servant since before most of the survivors were even born.

Kinzo has been dead for two years. His body was grabbed from the freezer in his study and stuffed into the boiler where it was set to burn slowly, so the smell didn’t reach the others too quickly. Of course, Natsuhi already knew he was dead, and the servants were playing along with the ruse that he wasn’t (while simultaneously playing along with the murder game), so it came off as a ‘surprise’ after the whole receipt situation talking about how he could have left the study. What interests me about this is why Natsuhi would then continue to willingly stay in the group with the servants. Surely seeing Kinzo’s body stuffed in the boiler would be a sign to her that says ‘whoever did this is someone who knew he was dead and where to find his body’, right? Based on EP5 and how she began to suspect the servants after finding Shannon’s card in her room, I would certainly think Natsuhi is astute enough to start finding them suspicious. Was she really just that confident that they wouldn’t make a move if they stayed together, and had faith in her gun...? Only the catbox knows.

The witch and stake of illusions = there was no one there who attacked Kanon. The illusion they pierced = Kanon himself. Basically Kanon runs down th the boiler room to stage his own death. It’s debatable (especially since EP1 is just a story) whether or not his argument with Beatrice really happened, though I personally like to believe that was a sign of Kanon’s self trying to pierce through the ‘fate’ that his creator (Yasu) and Beatrice were trying to force him into. This is the side of Kanon that was moved by Jessica’s words after the cultural festival and wants to live his own life...the Kanon that is refusing to simply go along with this farce of a roulette, hence his speech. That’s what I believe. However, he’s not strong enough to win against the roulette, and ultimately ‘Kanon’ is sacrificed - Yasu either stabs herself (shallowly, just enough to bleed a bit and be convincing) or uses fake blood (less likely IMO) and stages the whole thing.

Kumasawa does her part and screams to get everyone else’s attention so they see that Kanon is down. Oh, and Yasu already opened the courtyard door before the stabbing to make it seem like the culprit got away. Nanjo, who is also in on it, comes along and says ‘oh no we better take him in for emergency care’. However neither of them probably expected Jessica to cling on and follow them, so Nanjo ends up taking Kanon into the servant room and closing her out so he can die ‘offscreen’. This leaves Yasu’s two personas on the board dead, giving her an alibi to move around freely as the others head off to Kinzo’s study.

[Kinzo’s study is skipped here, but let’s cover it for completeness’ sake. Of the four people who could have placed the letter on the table, three are possible candidates - I’d rule out Maria because she wholeheartedly believes a witch is doing this. Most likely it was Genji, but it could have been Kumasawa or Nanjo as well. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, Natsuhi was correct in her reasoning, and thus the four were booted from the room. But of course this too was part of Yasu’s plan...as we see from the Discord circle. The entire purpose of the letter was to stir up chaos and cause someone to get kicked out of the room. I don’t think it mattered who got ousted, since it was just a coincidence that Battler, Jessica and George had alibis (though I think Jessica would have been safe from suspicion no matter what since her mom is the one calling the shots), but all that mattered was that at least one person got kicked out by the others. She just happened to get three sacrifices in one go to finish the twilights, but assuming less than three got kicked she probably still had other tricks up her sleeve to get through the 7th and 8th twilights too]

I’m not entirely sure of the meaning to ‘illusions are the blind girl’s song’...but ‘illusion of a closed room’ is the same deal as the chain. The room was never closed. Yasu’s own accomplices were the ones inside the room, and they let her in willingly. Since she only needed three and didn’t want to kill Maria until the end if possible, she had her fuck off to the corner of the room and sing loud enough that she didn’t hear what was going on. Is that what ‘illusions are the blind girl’s song’ means? just the fact that it kept Maria from knowing what happened?

Anyway then she was all like ‘okay time to die’ and what followed is pretty much what Maria said. Kumasawa and Nanjo protested - after all, they never knew the full extent of Yasu’s plan or that they’d be getting killed off for real in the end - but Genji was like ‘yeah sure I’m ready’. So she shot all three of them dead while Maria just kept singing her song, and then stuck stakes in their wounds. Then she called the study and left the phone dangling there so they could hear Maria singing...like a more twisted version of the prank on Jessica in the VIP room (man can you imagine how that made Jessica feel though? Talk about an unpleasant way to be reminded of that experience). Then she...uh...I actually can’t remember if the room was locked when Natsuhi and co got there...actually, wasn’t the parlor not even supposed to have a lock on it at all? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Either way, by the time they got down from the study, Yasu had already left her letter there and made her exit.

[...and now we’re onto EP2...but I swore the ending with Natsuhi’s duel came up at some point. Hmmmm...well, I’ll cover it anyways. We don’t ever find out the contents of the letter as far as I know, but it’s not hard to imagine. It was probably written for Natsuhi specifically (unlike the one Jessica got in EP2 that was written vaguely enough that any of the cousins could have picked it up and gotten provoked by it) and said something like ‘if you want to settle this in a duel meet me in front of my portrait, alone’. So she leaves when the kids are distracted and barricades the door so the others can’t follow her.

I have to wonder...we know Lambda’s game took a very different perspective as a more human revenge than a witch fantasy, but is it possible that Natsuhi had reason to suspect the culprit was the baby from 19 years ago? Would certainly make it more personal, and EP1 definitely feels very personal against Natsuhi and may have been some form of Yasu venting her grudge against her. Either way Natsuhi doesn’t seem to buy into this witch bullshit at all, and raises her gun against the darkness - in which she probably really does see the figure of another human raising a gun against her (and not a magic pipe). They shoot simultaneously, but...from EP7, we know that the guns all had defects. It’s possible that Natsuhi got the one that jammed, and wasn’t able to fire when she tried to pull the trigger (not like she tested it beforehand). So Beatrice shoots and that’s the single gunshot that is heard. Yasu then switches the guns, leaving the warm, smoking one next to Natsuhi, and hides.

All that’s left after that is to wait for the clock to strike midnight...and the bomb to go off, taking the rest of the survivors, including Yasu herself, with it.]

Episode 2: Turn of the Golden Witch

A more difficult Episode, but not impossible. However, I’m not referencing anything but my own memories here, and EP1 is actually more vivid in my head (I blame dragging out my EP2 reread for two years) so I’m probably more likely to make a few mistakes here.

What stands out to me here is the use of ‘the gold truth’ which Will uses again later as well. I don’t recall ever getting a concrete explanation on the gold truth - all I know is that it can sometimes be more true than the red, but at other times not as powerful. Two statements we see in gold are the factual guarantee of Kinzo’s corpse in EP5...but then in EP6 when Big Sis Beato calls the candy in the cup trick a splendid magic. There’s a pretty clear difference in the veracity of both of these statements...so based on that, and Will’s statement here, I’m going to take it like this. The red truth (though it can be used within loopholes) represents objective, factual truth, but the gold truth represents a subjective truth. The Umineko mantra is basically ‘a lie that everyone believes in becomes the truth’, a sort of ‘truth in the eye of the beholder’ sort of thing. Though that’s not completely satisfying either because it makes me wonder why Battler guaranteeing Kinzo’s corpse was somehow truer than red, but...this is what I’m going with right now.

As for the lock of illusions, it’s just the same tired trick again - the door was never locked in the first place. This one is funny to me because I remember back in the day how furiously people debated over the issue of the chapel door and its key...like, I remember the arguments about that one issue going on for pages and pages, more hotly debated than any other one particular mystery that I recall. And yet I don’t really remember anyone considering that the door may not have been locked in the to begin with - the simplest explanation was completely ignored in favor of much more ridiculous theories!!

In any case, the adults confront Genji about the Beatrice situation and that’s her cue to show up in the flesh and wow them all with her spectacular golden magic (read: cold, hard ingots). They ‘acknowledge’ that she is a witch because thEY ALL NEEDED A LOT OF MONEY RIGHT NOW and she’s waving all this golden bling in their face, telling them all they have to do is play along with her little murder game. Only SURPRISE it’s not a game at all, and she kills them all for reals.

One point I have always been set on, though, is that Rosa didn’t know this would happen until she saw their corpses the next day. She reacts with quite realistic revulsion when she realizes they’re actually dead and I just don’t buy that she was that good an actress that she was vomiting on cue and everything. So it was probably agreed that, since Beatrice had given the letter to Maria the previous day, Maria’s mother should be the one to ‘discover the corpses’ while the other adults stayed there to play dead. Rosa leaves, Yasu...I dunno, I guess just shoots them all in the stomach? Their guts were hanging out and all over the place so I’m pretty sure whatever she did was pretty damn fatal, and I think they even made a point of how there were no other wounds and they just looked like they were sleeping (so she didn’t shoot them in the head and then disembowel them after they died). She probably poisoned them beforehand to make it easier, considering she did have to kill a whole six adults which may have been not so easy if they were fighting back...so she invites them to the chapel where they agree to play dead, poisons them, waits for them to pass out and then, uh, ‘decorates’ the scene.

Just like Eva and Hideyoshi’s room in EP2, the one who first discovers the magic circle on the chapel door is Yasu herself - Shannon, who claims she saw a note that said ‘chapel’ on it. So she and Genji go to wake up Rosa because they ‘couldn’t find’ anyone else, and what follows is basically as seen. Rosa, who thought this was just gonna be a harmless prank, is shocked, but she’s also in too deep at this point and can’t easily go against the person who bribed her, so she ends up playing along for most of EP2.

While I think that any one of the siblings could have found the provoking letter, it’s Jessica who ultimately gets riled up and runs off. Kanon and Gohda follow after her, and Kanon asks Gohda to leave them alone so he can comfort her, wink wink, nudge nudge. He manages to calm Jessica down and get her to drop her guard, then shoots her in the back and shoves a stake in her wound. Then, having finished his job, ‘Kanon’ dies in that room and his corpse is ‘erased’...Yasu becomes Shannon, exits the room, and locks it with her master key while leaving Jessica’s own key inside her pocket.

Rosa’s argument for Kanon being the culprit ends up being correct, though how much of the ensuing argument is genuine and how much is scripted is something I’ve always had trouble really picking apart. I’m pretty sure I’ve even got a whole page of notes just about that particular conversation in Jessica’s room from when I was doing my on-again-off-again EP2 reread.

This was always the hardest mystery for me in EP2 for one reason - I did dispute that the closed room was a coffin. I never imagined that the culprit actually did shut herself up inside the room and killed herself...even when I knew the culprit was Yasu. I don’t think it was until I read Confession that I actually understood this, despite Battler himself seeing the gaping hole in Shannon’s head.

But it’s that simple. Shannon, George and Gohda enter Natsuhi’s bedroom and lock the door behind them. I’m not sure what order things happen in next, but let’s say she kills Gohda first. George is all WHAT THE FUCK SAYO and they talk. Maybe she tries to convince him to run away with her but he’s like DUDE YOU JUST KILLED THE CHEF and none too happy with her as a result. Maybe she’s trying to work up the courage to tell him about her body and that’s what the argument with Beatrice represents as she convinces Shannon to feel awful about herself. Either way, whatever happens, George is having none of that...so she realizes that her roulette didn’t land on Shannon and George after all and kills him.

Confession shows how distraught she is over having to do this. I feel like that’s probably why the magic version of their scene is so flowery and romantic...she paints a beautiful picture of them dying together, though still kills them before George can honor her last request and say he loves her (I actually like the anime version of this better where Beatrice outright interrupts them) because of the part of her that’s still unconvinced. Ditto the scene with Kanon and Jessica, probably - she tries to give them a tragically romantic goodbye, but it still ends on a bittersweet note. Once she finishes writing this, she sits herself down in front of the mirror and does that trick with the gun, shooting herself in the head and letting the gun ‘hide itself’. Since the room was already locked and the culprit herself is now dead, the locked room is nothing but a coffin...but even after her death, the mystery game continues.

Earth to earth - Nanjo and Kumasawa were killed in the same place we saw, in the same manner (necks sliced) we saw. Illusions to illusions, no illusion can create a corpse - Phantom Kanon was not the one who did it. It was probably Genji, who shows us that he’s actually quite skilled with a knife, hint hint. Yasu and Genji are totally cool with this because they’re in on this murder plan together...but Gohda...???????? The scene in Jessica’s room earlier tells me that he and Kumasawa are both terrible liars were both playing along already at that point in what they believed was a murder game. But seeing Genji slash those two before his eyes was just ‘2hardcore4me’ so he’s just literally flabbergasted by what the fuck just happened. Hence his incredible confusion and realistic fear when he tries to describe it to Rosa - but also, he’s probably (understandably) terrified of Shannon and Genji now and none too eager to betray them and risk his own neck, literally. So he plays along when they’re like ‘we thought it was Kanon but it also wasn’t Kanon’ and he’s just like YEAH YEAH W-WHAT THEY SAID PLEASE DON’T KILL ME. He realizes he’s in a little too deep but can’t exactly get out either, so he has to play along.

I think also at this point Rosa is in the dark on what’s been happening and whatever extent her alliance with Beatrice was is starting to fall apart, and she starts acting on her own instincts - like confiscating the master keys, which IMO was probably not inherently part of Yasu’s plan. Rosa in hindsight was probs just not the best choice of a potential accomplice because she’s not the type who can easily be bribed into following orders now that the siblings that always kept her timid are out of the picture. I feel like Yasu maybe didn’t count on that, but still managed to make it work so it was all good.

[What follows is also not covered, but we basically know the rest. Battler and Rosa fight and end up splitting apart while Genji is still off doing whateverthefuck...does he know Yasu is even dead? He must, right? Rosa probably tells him when he calls them to see Nanjo and Kumasawa’s corpses? Did he know her plan was to kill herself in that room all along? Why does he continue to carry out her plan even after her death? Just because he’s just...that loyal? It’s so hard to see inside Genji’s heart and I honestly would love an Umineko Gaiden that shows us some of the key events of the various Episodes from his POV...but in any case Battler goes and gets drunk and literally everything after that from his POV is super unreliable. Meanwhile Rosa and Maria are trying to run away because Rosa must know about the bomb, which is what the goats chasing them represent. But she was so fixated on the gold that she twists her ankle and they can’t escape on time...she regrets her decisions and I do like to believe she and Maria reached that little understanding there, in the end, before they were taken to the Golden Land.]

Episode 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch

By this time I had started getting more serious in posting about my reread, so I actually tackled a lot of these crimes in posts last year. I’ll summarize but also link to my older theory posts where applicable.

It’s funny how the most impossible closed room if you don’t know the truth about Yasu came from one of the forgeries...but once you do know, it’s not only one of the best closed rooms, but also one of the easiest.

Shannon ‘dies’ in the most obvious and visible room in the mansion, the parlor. She does this so her body can be seen easily from the big glass window outside...where the adults are forced to go, because she’s locked the doors all over the mansion. Since Nanjo is in on it, it’s easy for him to say ‘oh yeah, she’s dead’. Then they open the letter and get the key and begin following the trail she laid out for them.

Kanon is at the very end of the loop, giving her plenty of time to change clothes and go play dead in the chapel while the adults are busy investigating the other rooms. If I recall, all the other rooms are also in the mansion...giving her plenty of time to slip away to that out-of-the-way building. And just like the shed in EP1, if the adults for some reason decided to double back and return to the parlor, and see that she wasn’t there any more, that’d just be the way the roulette fell. But it didn’t, and they followed her trail perfectly, winding up on Kanon at the end. Thus the chain of closed rooms is perfect and unbreakable...and is an illusion where the end and the beginning overlap.

Earth to earth = they’re actually dead and it basically happened the way we saw it. Likewise, no falsehoods. Rosa gets fed up with Eva for still not having told the others about the gold and they have a bit of back-and-forth...then Eva shoots Rosa. I’d like to believe that Eva hadn’t completely fallen to The Dark Side at this point, and this was probably the same sort of trigger slippage that lead to the disaster in the EP7 tea party...but of course, it happened in a lot less isolated of a location than that. And then you have to worry about Maria screaming her head off about MAMA MAMA UU UU!!! and well...someone has to shut that brat up before everyone comes running out to see you with a gun in your hand standing over Rosa’s bleeding corpse, right?! So she strangles Maria and lays her down next to Rosa, then zooms back to her room where she has to explain to her husband how she just accidentally murdered her sister and on-purposely strangled her daughter.

I also think that the scenes of Hideyoshi trying to comfort and calm Eva down make a lot more sense if you consider that these deaths were a lot more accidental/spur of the moment and she was freaking out about what she’d just done and where they go from here. Of course, a good husband stays by your side in sickness, in health, and apparently in murder, so...Hideyoshi ends up covering for Eva and trying to give her an alibi for the time while they wait for someone else to discover the crime. And after all, they were all together all night long when the first series of murders happened, so since we already know there’s another killer hiding on the island (and no one else knows about the gold yet now that Rosa is kill) no one really has any reason to jump to suspecting Eva just yet.

...that is, until Kyrie finds the cigarette butts and starts to formulate her theory for why Eva should not have actually been in that room as they claimed. She comes up with her plan to get the three of them to leave the guesthouse where she and Rudolf plan to question Hideyoshi. As for what follows, I made a theory post about it last year, which you can find...here, and also here (note the ‘keep reading’ tags all over because I was trying to truncate the post so you might have to click a few to see all the things). It ended up becoming a chain of back-and-forth reblog discussions (I think it was before Tumblr added the conversation system to posts) so it’s a bit disjointed, but I’m pretty sure I still believe in, uh...whatever it was I came up with to explain this last year. I’m honestly too lazy to reread these posts right now but I don’t currently have any new info that would likely contradict what I came up with a year ago, though once I reread the EP7 tea party that may yet change.

[these solutions also skip over George’s death in the parlor, which is funny to me because it’s one of the few crimes in EP3 committed by Yasu, who is the one Will is supposed to be showing he understands...but basically I believe that Yasu and Nanjo had been in touch throughout EP3. Nanjo is actually the one who locks the window behind George after he escapes, and then he goes to the mansion where OMG SURPRISE SHANNON IS ACTUALLY STILL ALIVE WHAT ARE THE CHANCES. Only unlike when they’re alone in EP2, George is just so elated to see that she’s still alive that he drops his guard entirely, and she shoots him.

I wonder if she was more resentful to him in EP3 than EP2, because she isn’t distraught enough to kill herself after killing him this time around...and she had to have called Nanjo and specifically told him to let George come over to the mansion herself. Though to be fair (as I mention in one of the above posts) she also shouldn’t have yet known that Eva solved the epitaph, otherwise she would have kept her promise not to kill anyone else...so George was probably originally meant to be one of the twilight sacrifices. Hence, when she realizes she fucked up because someone solved the epitaph, she leaves the bank code behind for Eva as compensation (because nothing says ‘sorry I murdered your son’ like fat wads of cash).]

The ‘mutable blade’ is either a rope or a wire or whatever is being represented by the Siestas’ gold thread...and the ‘obvious culprit’ is Eva, because at this point, she is the only one who could have done it. But I remember being bothered by this because I can’t figure out a real good reason for why she killed them, and my thoughts and discussions thereof can be read here (mind the ‘keep reading’) and here.

[we also skip over the finale of EP3 here, which is extremely funny to me because of the huge emphasis put on Nanjo’s death in the other arcs. But I suppose once Will has proven he understands this much the matter of ‘who killed Nanjo’ is trivial. It’s Yasu. Since ‘Shannon’ and ‘Kanon’ are both dead, we get to play fucking hopscotch with loopholes in the red, and Yasu is the only entity who is still alive and alibi-less that is able to kill Nanjo at that time.

Then at some point she realizes that Eva solved the epitaph and she shouldn’t be killing people anymore in the first place...so she leaves the bank code behind on the door. And then, when Eva shoots Jessica in the face...she can’t let go of her lingering feelings, so she ‘revives’ Kanon and tries to guide her to ‘safety’. The reason Kanon warns Jessica not to touch him is obviously not because he’s a ghost, but because he’s not a ghost and she’d realize that immediately if she felt his physical body right there. Also she probably had no intention of being Kanon anymore once Kanon was kill so I’d imagine she’s still dressed as Shannon after having met George like that, so it’s a damn good thing Jessica is blind right now...either way, she knows they’re all about to die from the bomb real soon, so I think it’s more of a last-minute comfort sort of thing at this point, not only for Jessica, but also for Yasu. Final, lingering regrets as Kanon, much like we see in EP6, about not deepening his relationship with Jessica while he still had the chance.

Then Eva shoots Battler and fucks off to Kuwadorian, escaping the blast, while Kanon and Jessica stay behind and die. The end.]

Episode 4: Alliance of the Golden Witch

Like EP3, I already covered some of these in more detail when I did the EP4 tea party last year and will link to those posts when applicable.

EP4 is just one big farce so the fact that there was a massacre at all is the illusion. Didn’t happen. And in accordance with my personal interpretation of the gold truth from above, the fact that ‘everyone agrees that it’s true’ (since they’re all collaborating on the lie) makes it true. They all tell the same story of Kinzo showing up and summoning bunnygirls in the middle of the dining room table (rude tbh) and everyone getting their heads shot off, then getting sucked into magical pitfalls and trapped in a dungeon. I can imagine Krauss and Kyrie rolling their eyes at such a ridiculous story, but when someone offers you 10 tons of gold to play along with their script, you do it. My post from last year can be found here, though I haven’t reread it myself.

I have a problem with this because Will labels similar cases of thinly-decorated-but-ultimately-true scenes as ‘earth to earth’ (ex. Rosa and Maria’s EP3 death, as well as Kyrie/Rudolf/Hideyoshi’s EP3 deaths). If those interpretations get labeled as ‘no falsehoods’, why is this considered an illusion with the gold truth spinning a false tale? Seems really inconsistent to me.

Either way, the cousins are the only ones who aren’t in on this little prank of Yasu’s, and are convinced to go to their respective locations for their ‘test’. I went into more detail on my thoughts about what happened here in my post from last year. The test is legit, though - not an illusion - so perhaps the illusion is that they don’t actually die simultaneously the way we’re shown in the magic scene? Because otherwise I don’t feel as though the gold truth line really applies to this scene as well as it does to the first twilight.

[Then Yasu dresses up in her Human Beatrice outfit and goes to test Battler. At the time she’s drunk as Hell and in a pretty cheery mood - my belief is that she needed to give herself enough courage to test Battler and thought getting wasted was the best way to do so. It does not go so well, and she just completely gives up at that point, ready for the roulette to take her away...]

This is both earth and illusions because they are dead (silent corpses), but it didn’t happen at all the way we’re shown (adorned by fiction). And also because Kanon obviously didn’t leave a corpse behind.

I made posts last year going through each of these twilights individually:

Kyrie

Krauss

Nanjo & Shannon

Kanon

This isn’t specifically a question about Kumasawa and Gohda, but since they’re in the picture and not otherwise covered specifically here’s my post from last year covering them.

As for what we’re being asked here specifically, it’s the same reasoning that applies to the end of all of Beatrice’s games - the answer is the bomb. The bomb that kills everyone and wipes out all evidence without a trace at midnight, October 6th, without fail. Earth to earth is the fact that none are left alive (except Eva in EP3 and Prime). Illusions to illusions is the fact that the truth is sealed away by the bomb, inside the catbox, with Eva as the only surviving witness...who dies without telling a soul of the truth. The message bottles sent out by Yasu, of which only two were ever discovered, represent possible truths that may have happened on those two days, but are also just fictional possibilities. It breeds an environment where any fictional forgery based on the Rokkenjima incident may become the truth, forever shrouded in illusion.

And finally...

I originally thought the answer to this was ‘the bomb’ (just like when she asks this in EP4) but that’s the answer to the last question...and also, ‘regardless of the witch’s will’ doesn’t really make sense when realistically Yasu could have shut the bomb at any time if she so chose.

The promised reaper, then...is Kyrie. Or in theory, any of the adults who could have taken advantage of the situation to spark a massacre (like Eva in EP3). The fact of the matter is that the adults solve the epitaph...and once that happens, the tragedy is inevitable. The one outcome of the roulette that Yasu least expected to happen is the one that did. The fact that, despite Yasu being the one who masterminded the whole crime, she ultimately did not end up being the actual culprit. The real culprit is whichever one of the adults takes advantage of the confusion and murders everyone, sealing the truth away inside the catbox. In Prime, and apparently also Lion’s world, this is Kyrie.

Or maybe it really does mean the bomb. I dunno. Neither of those is really the answer to who Clair is, though, so much as the answer to ‘then what killed everyone’, anyways. But by solving all the other mysteries, Will proves that he understoof her heart, so I guess it’s all cool in the end.

What matters is that the tale of those two days is destined to end in tragedy, ‘regardless of the witch’s will’. By the time we reach October 4th, all those complicated factors have piled up so much that a happy ending is pretty much impossible. It could have been prevented so many times, in so many ways, but by the time it gets this far it’s basically too late.

#I am ashamed of how many hours this post took #I'm gonna post the other caps I took from the chapter real quick and then go play video games #my brain is tired #umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #SG2 Rereads Umineko #SG2 Rereads Requiem #long post #umineko discussions #umineko analysis #umineko theories

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