[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

What do you mean "anecdotal reports"?

Ootsuki says that the first message was found by the police right in front of Ange. I don't think he'd have any reason to lie and therefore the first finding is a fact stated by official sources.

How could this be less anecdotal than this? This is practically the only official statement claimed by the police that we're actually aware of.

Ootsuki tells Ange the same story we got in the endscroll. He has no direct experience (and if he does, he doesn't advance it) that he actually got the message bottle from police.

That aside, the police aren't immune to hoax or error.

Come on, this is the easiest hoax in the world to make up. It's right up there with saying the government gave me this report that proves aliens exist, but of course if you call and ask the government they'll deny it! And the fisherman thing? Come onnnnnnnnnn.

You're using the same logic that made you think shkanon was false. And you know, I agree with you that it causes more problem and it's very hard to explain in a sensible manner. But you are starting from a wrong assumption which at this point you should drop.

How do you know it's the wrong assumption?

Oh, right. You don't. Skepticism is not unhealthy. The provenance of the message bottles is inherently suspicious. The only thing Ange ever proved is that the same person who wrote them wrote in Maria's diary. That identifies the author. Doesn't prove anything else.

Nice random crack at me over something that's still not understood, too.

I think the main issue is the fact that the novels were handwritten. So a correction of that sort would require a lot of efforts... So yeah it's highly improbable that Ange was included in the beginning.

I was going to debate this, but if Ootsuki can compare the handwriting, they must contain copious amounts of hand-written information. So yes, you can't even fix this with a new typewritten manuscript, unless he was solely comparing the writing in the diary to "Ushiromiya Maria" and her signature.

There are also the letters to consider and those were postmarked on October 3rd.
In other words we need to accept that Beatrice planned something beforehand or knew something was going to happen or that something could happen.

Unfortunately it's almost impossible to conclude with any certainty about how much she knew of what then actually happened.

It could go from "She knew everyone would die" from a "She had a completely different plan and everyone died because something went wrong".

Well, that's the problem, it's a false correlation. The postmarked letters may have nothing to do with the incident, the deaths, or the message bottles. You can't deny the evidence as such, but you can certainly question whether there is any connection or whether one is simply drawing one between incongruous events and looking for a pattern.

Is it really crazy to question whether that imagined pattern is nothing more than a falsely-drawn conclusion? Perhaps, given Ryukishi's ability to blow it and lean on coincidence and happenstance. But if this were a good story, that'd be the first thing I would question about 1998's "evidence."