[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

But we're not just talking about predicting that a typhoon would come during or around the family conference, we're talking about predicting that a typhoon would arrive on the afternoon of the first day of the conference between ~3:30PM and ~5PM. Is that a regular occurrence?

I hate to quote myself but:

It's also possible that the tales were a lot more vague on the details than what the story we read was, for example making impossible to know when it started raining exactly.

The message in the bottle might simply say that 'due to the bad weather the boat could not came' and focus on other details.

Anyway I find rather pointless to discuss about this sort of details when we haven't read the original message in the bottle and we can't even be sure if it at least matches the plot of EP 1 and I seem to remember we already had this discussion and agree to disagree, didn't we?

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Preposterous. People do not, all on a whim, write stories about the murder of all their friends and family on a certain day, bottle them, and throw them into the ocean... only to have those people to happen to die on that very day for completely unrelated reasons. If it was pre-incident, which the police thought it was (at least as the story goes), then it's an obvious confession by the killer. There's no way that they would think it was anything but eminently relevant, even if they don't understand it well.

We know Yasu didn't write all of a whim but because she liked mysteries and wanted someone to solve the ones she wrote.
Also if I write a mystery tale in which my family get mysteriously slaughtered because I like to write mysteries and in writing 101 is written that for amateur is best start writing what they know best, this won't insure me my family will never be slaughtered, not even in the real world.

It would make it a very odd coincidence, a suspicious coincidence even, but let's face it, coincidences happens, even way more unbelievable ones. Personally I find much more absurd the tale we get for Kinzo gaining the gold than Yasu dropping a bunch of tales prior to the incident.

Add to this that this sort of coincidence happened in more than 1 mystery tale so, even if in real life it's, to use Kinzo's words, more similar to a miracle than anything else, in the mystery books world, it has a lot more chances of happening.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

And I don't know why you assume the police didn't investigate the writing. If they did, they would do it discretely in the first place. And if we go by your interpretation, since Ootsuki didn't mention it, the Witch Hunters themselves also did not check for other peoples' signatures.

If they investigated it, it never came up it belonged to Shannon/Kanon. We're told that more or less all the siblings got suspected but there's no servant culprit theory.
And it's possible the witch hunters didn't check/didn't manage to check it properly as it could be more troublesome for them to have samples of Yasu's writing, especially because the witch hunter movement didn't start immediately but later and, by then, surviving scraps of Yasu's writings that the public could reach might have been destroyed or archivied and being unreachable.

It's the message in the bottles and Eva selling Kinzo's library that 'gave life' to the witch hunter, not just the incident per se so they started late compared to the police and they might not have all the resources and experts the police could use.

How many of them were allowed to go to Rokkenjima? To see the original messages? To see samples of all the people involved's writing?

Ootsuki was capable to recognize Yasu's handwriting on the diary as the one of the messages in the bottle and was surprised by it even if he, apparently, was knowledgeable about the messages.
It shouldn't have come as a surprise if the writer had been identified as Shannon because Ange, as a person involved, could have owned without problems someone that had been written by Shannon.

Also

the Rokkenjima Witch Hunt is the name of group of enthusiasts who try to explain the truth of that crime from an occult perspective. Discussion of the mysteries that surround Rokkenjima, from the Ushiromiya Library to the mysterious two day period to the legend of the Golden Witch, is flourishing even today among enthusiasts.

so they have all the interest into assuming it was written by 'Beatrice' without trying to prove it was written by 'person X'.

But really, we already have this discussion and neither of us managed to persuade the other and I doubt one of us will do it now as the argumentations you proposed and that I can propose are exactly the same so let's re-agree to disagree?

Originally Posted by qno2

I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to with "not quite".

The idea is: even if Battler came back for Shannon things could have gone the wrong way because he didn't immediately came out and plainly admitted it.

So he might have done something that caused him to perceive himself as guilty of the whole mess.

So just Battler coming back for Shannon didn't automatically destroy any "Nervous Wreck Battler"-theory or any possibility that Battler did something that caused someone else to snap and kill people.

Think if something that was a mix of Ep 5 & 6 happened. Yasu bribes one of the adults into taking part to a mystery game for Battler with the promise his son/daughter will be spared. Battler persuades the cousins to take part to a mystery game for Shannon just for the fun of it. Incidentally cousin X, who agrees to play the role of the victim, is also the son/daughter of the adult bribed who think the blackmailer broke his promise and snap.

Originally Posted by qno2

It's not quite the "happy end" overall, for Yasu. It is for Beatrice, or "her lingering feelings for Battler", as this "part" of her personality feared that he might've all but forgotten about her (EP4). Of course, "Shannon", her current life, the one that loves George, might've felt fear instead and wouldn't know how to react.

Ep 6 implied that Yasu had already come to a solution between Shannon and Kanon and that, despite this, the lingering feelings for Battler, were so strong that Beatrice still prevailed, even if she should have been destroyed along with Kanon.

Originally Posted by qno2

On that note, had Battler returned a year earlier she wouldn't have been so invested in George that he's about to propose to her and not as confused on how she should react (and she'd probably not write anything). A year later and ... if Lion's world is to be believed... Battler wouldn't have anything to return back to anyway.

(yes, I wrote "she" for convenience sake, add "he" every time if you want to)

I prefer to consider Yasu a 'she' as well, though not everyone agrees so sometimes I give her double pronouns.

I guess the real problem in Prime wasn't Yasu but the adults' business troubles. Ryukishi implied in the interview that we can guess that it was the adults who did something. By this is possible to assume that, even if Yasu had challenged Battler to her game a year earlier the result would have been tamer than the one we had in that year when they were in really BIG financial troubles (actually we'll never know, there's plenty of things that could have gone wrong anyway).

Of course it could be that Clair merely meant what you said and didn't care about Prime at all. After all EP 7 deals with the culprit on the gameboards not on the one in Prime and on the gameboards the adults' will is meaningless. There's only Yasu/Beato's will.

Originally Posted by qno2

Regarding EP6, didn't Battler join the duel, implying that he might've remembered, and hijacked the game to "show that obnoxious guest" (since Shkanontrice participated in Meta and didn't produce her own 1st Twilight I don't see how he organized a game AGAINST/without her)?

A theory is that Battler played the game with Erika aiming for her to create a logic error that Beato would have to solve, pushing her to remember.
So, while pretending to play with Erika, he was actually 'playing' with Beato the way Beato played with him, using the game to make him remember.
Only he went at it in a different way, using himself as a bait while Beato used the lives of his family (Battler was sure solving the game he would save his family).

Originally Posted by qno2

If you just meant that "Prime-Battler remembered" in light of his absence in Lion's world could still be connected with "Nervous Wreck Prime-Battler" via two murder games at the same time, then sure - thanks.

Yup, that was it.

Originally Posted by qno2

Change of mind or am I missing something?

The idea is that theoretically there should have been dozens of Lion as you can vary dosens of things producing bilions of different worlds in which Lion existed, from Natsuhi accepted the baby to Natsuhi didn't accept the baby but slipped and she was the one who fell from the cliff to the baby fell but survived and Genji returned it to Kinzo instead than hiding it and many, many more.

Plus the many variations in Lion's world like Battler's mom didn't die so he didn't leave the family.

There should really be endless fragments with Lion, not just 1.

That's why it's weird Bern found just 1 and in this one coincidentally everything ended badly. If she had told, I found millions of worlds with Lion but I couldn't find 1 with a happy ending for him I would have believed her but if she says there's just 1 Lion... I end up thinking she hadn't searched hard enough... or that she had purposely searched a world that could fit in the Rokkenjima box, in short a world that had to end in a mysterious tragedy.

Which ironically would means that Lion has only 1 chance in a million to end up in a tragedy... only no one considers them because they are unrelated to the mystery at hand making them 'nonexistant'.