[Renall]

Originally Posted by Zork

Guess it's time to start taking shots before the tea party.

This could be embarrassingly wrong (or old news - I haven't really kept up well on what others have theorized), but the text dump won't open for me (says it's corrupt) and I can't really rewatch every video.

Spoiler:

Kanon does not exist.

He's obviously a key part of the fantasy narrative, but I can't remember a single reference to him in any scene where Battler is present. Even in the early scenes with Jessica, she talks about Shannon at length but never mentions Kanon once.

Shannon is Lion. Lack of Kanon, the discussion of books being strewn around implying that Shannon has been hanging around in Kinzo's study reading his books, and a couple other items seem to suggest that Shannon is very different in this fragment.

Speaking of characters Battler never meets, there's always Kinzo (Kinzo is dead as usual - may as well address that one) but I also couldn't find a scene where Battler meets Shannon until he discovers her corpse. Nanjo does appear once at dinner, but I can't find any other instance and - more importantly - I don't think Battler ever saw his corpse.

Speaking of corpses, George and Jessica being the last to have seen Shannon is another item on a pile that makes them extremely suspicious, but it's still all circumstantial for now.

Spoiler for Kanon:

There are a few instances of non-fantasy scenes where Kanon is seen or mentioned. The adults bring him up twice, and George raises the possibility that he is the culprit in the chapel.

You are right, however, that there is a suspicious lack of discussion of him elsewhere. And you are especially right to be focusing on what characters don't talk about. Of course, that doesn't mean attention shouldn't be paid to what they do bring up too.

Spoiler for Shannon:

No, you didn't miss anything. Battler never shares a scene with Shannon. The one opportunity he has to do it (the beach), he passes.

Spoiler for Nanjo:

That's correct, his corpse is never found. He was certainly present (at dinner, as you said), but wherever could he have gone?

Spoiler for Kinzo:

I should think the answer is fairly obvious but of course I'll play it cool and act like the answer is all up in the air. Certainly no corpse is ever found. In fact, I can't recall a point where anyone even brings up caring about him... although I might've forgotten my own writing at times.

I'll see if I can't fix the text dump. It's in .doc format because Wordpress wouldn't let me upload anything else, but I can easily reconvert it back to .txt. Did you try right-click save-as, or are you on a system that can't open .doc files?

EDIT: Dunno if this will work any better. It's a .txt in a .zip, no guarantees that some of the text didn't get mangled in the process.