[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Since the overall intrigue of EP5 is being discussed and there seem to be a few new people around, I'm going to reintroduce a theory I've mentioned before (hopefully in a more organized, more convincing way).

Now, in EP5 there's that scene where Erika and Battler are in the middle of solving the epitaph and searching for the path to the gold, and then Battler has a vision of Kinzo, who points the way for him. But we also know that No person would mistake Ushiromiya Kinzo by sight. So then we know for a fact that when Battler told Erika that "grandfather pointed the way", he was lying.

Nothing special so far, I know, since this logic was all explained as part of the EP5 ura anyway. However, if you think about what Battler was lying about, and the possible reasons for why he would lie about it, there are some very surprising implications.

First, I'll re-summarize the scene here, with the unreliable parts in gold:

Spoiler for summary:

Erika and Battler are at the chapel and just pushed in the final letter for solving the epitaph. Battler observes out loud that Erika has a crappy personality, and Erika admits this openly. Erika goes into how entertaining it will be to see the family squabble over the gold, and begins to talk about her predictions in detail. Dispirited by the revelation that the gold will lead to family infighting, Battler turns his back on her and, not listening to her "mumble on", seems to enter some kind of trance. He sees Kinzo, who points out the way to the gold to Battler. Battler falls out of his trance, just barely catching the end of Erika's spiel. Battler then says he's found the way. Erika expresses surprise that Battler was observant enough to notice the turned lion statue. Battler says that it was Kinzo who showed him.

As for what Battler is lying about, it's how he came to be aware that one of the lion statues was facing a new direction. So then here's the important question that no one seems to think about: What was Battler actually thinking and/or looking at during the above summary's gold section? And whatever it was, why did Battler lie about it?

You could suppose that he was simply contemplating the new revelation that the gold would cause problems in his family, when he coincidentally saw the lion statue turned, then mentioned it to Erika (despite having just realized that finding the gold is actually a bad thing), but since he was a bit mad at her decided to tease her a little bit by lying about having met Kinzo.

Possible, of course, but I think this theory sucks. It has too many weird jumps in Battler's thought process. So, here's the theory I like:

Spoiler for drumroll please:

Battler already knew where the gold was, but was pretending not to in front of Erika.

Thoughts?

Well, it's the best theory that Battler (and also Eva) didn't solve the epitaph by themselves, at least not completely as it had been confirmed by Ryukishi that, if someone where to solve it, no murders would occur.

As people die in EP 3 & 5 is reasonable to assume the epitaph wasn't solved but the solution or part of it was handed to them, possibly in exchange for their cooperation in Eva's case and in Battler's... no idea.

It's possible that the solution was handed to the siblings (Eva, Rudolf and Rosa) by Shannon and they asked Battler to play detective (maybe to avoid arguing among them) so as to 'force grandad to show up' in the belief it would be some sort of prank. He thought of it as a game as he's not suspecting grandfather is dead until, with Erika's help, he realized what the adults were really planning but, by then, it was too late to pull back as, if he hadn't found the gold, Erika would have found it.

After all this would explain why Battler switched from being unable to solve the epitaph in the prior episodes to solving it so easily in Ep 5.



Alternatively Battler might have seen Yasu dressed up as Beato pointing him to the lion. He didn't believe in Beatrice and he didn't want to sound nut saying he saw her so he gave the first apparently rational explanation that came to his mind, that he saw someone else, namely Kinzo.

However i still prefer the idea he already knew the solution. It explain much better how good he is at solving the epitaph when previously he couldn't really advance.