[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

This logic is based on the wrong assumptions.
It would work only in the case there was some kind of relation between Ikuko and Battler, but they are on respect to each other two completely random persons.
Sure Battler later became famous, but Ikuko is still a completely unrelated individual. and this story is still a story about Battler among all the rest.
It's as if you read a story about Michael Jordan and you claimed it's not realistic because a random individual meets Michael Jordan. Someone is bound to meet Michael Jordan unless he decides to become a hikikomori.
A coincidence requires that two particular factors coincide.

No. You just don't understand the mathematics here at all.

Michael Jordan is indeed no more or less likely to be encountered by any random individual who happens to encounter any other random individual. If I were to say "I'm going to go outside and meet a completely random person today," then the odds that would happen are pretty close to 100% unless I just happen to live in such an isolated environment that there aren't any people to encounter. However, if I say "I'm going to go outside and meet Michael Jordan today," the odds that would happen are generally pretty low. That's true whether it's Michael Jordan or my friend Bob Smith.

If I have a preexisting relationship or circumstance that makes a situation more likely, however, it's more believable because it's more mathematically probable. If I were to say "I'm going to go outside and meet Bob Smith today," and Bob Smith is my neighbor who is often in his yard when I leave the house in the morning, the chance of meeting Bob is vastly higher.

What does this mean? I'll continue:

But let's compare the two cases:

A) Ikuko=Yasu & Tohya=random person
B) Ikuko=random person & Tohya = Battler

There is absolutely no difference in the improbability of these ecounters. In both cases the particular person related to Rokkenjima encounters a random person. Except the random person of case A possess more convenient peculiarities than of case B.

Actually you're ignoring one vastly more probable outcome, which is that Ikuko=Random and Tohya=Random.

Still, the issue is not whether it's somewhat more probable when you add the Shimoda factor, but whether setting things up to allow for the Shimoda factor gives the whole thing a fakey, overly-convenient vibe. Which it does.

What's more peculiar? An amesiac whose mind is completely moldable, that is casually looking enough like Battler, that casually remembers to be 18 years old and whose background is generally compatible to that of Battler or...
A weird and bored rich person with low morality?

Either or both, really, is more probable than Ikuko=Yasu or Tohya=Battler individually (let alone both being true, which some people have theorized).

Also bear in mind that Tohya-not-Battler and Tohya-is-Battler are equally moldable in their amnesia, given what they originally remember. They are literally indistinguishable (you can't get around this by arguing) save that one is recovering genuine memories and the other is falsely remembering memories that appear to be genuine.

It's just that this option in my opinion is the most improbable of all. In the first place does such diary even exist? There is no conclusive certainty of its existence.
And it also looks very odd that Eva would write such diary. She spent her whole life trying to protect that secret, and then she just let a random stranger to find it?
I think it somehow could make sense if she made it so that truth would reach Ange when she was older, but then why she didn't ensure it would actually work?
The big question here is why Ikuko among all people would get that diary and how? What kind of relation is there among Eva and Ikuko? None that we know of.
And there's yet another problem. Eva died in 1998. Are you telling me that Itoikukuroreigonamu's forgeries never existed before 1998? that doesn't seem likely to me. In fact it wouldn't make sense, because it is implied that Ange already knew about those forgeries by that time. But then that would mean that Ikuko obtained the diary before Eva's death. How the hell did that happen?
You'd need to come out with some sort of explanation that has absolutely no basis whatsoever.

Ikuko knows Eva, or contacts Eva, Eva gives her the diary or even writes down her experiences for posterity and passes them on to Ikuko.

Do we know that Eva doesn't know Battler may be alive? It's at least as plausible as the diary not existing at all... which, by the way, isn't exactly implausible either absent red. I mean, if Ikuko never actually intended to reveal the contents, it might as well be blank and she's bluffing.

And if by any chance you are claiming that it is an unacceptable coincidence that amnesiac Battler met of all the people someone that crazy to take him home rather than to an hospital, then you'd need to admit that Stephen King's Misery is equally unacceptable.

Not even remotely. That's the premise of Misery. We accept that Annie is the one who finds him because that's the setup for the whole story. The Ikuko thing is damn near an epilogue, and it's random new information. It doesn't get the same pass.

You seem unable to grasp the difference between a premise and an orphaned plot contrivance.

Originally Posted by RandomAvatarFan

Why do the Witch Hunters trust the Hachijou Tohya forgeries so much that they put as much stock into them as the bottles?

It's not like they know the Tohya/Battler story.

Because they are believed to be closer to the heart of the story or more accurate in some way.

Except the people reading have no way of knowing whether this is true, and are so apparently unsophisticated that they cannot determine thematic veracity (which is a way you could declare the Hachijou forgeries more authentic even if you don't know the facts). If they actually were capable of doing what Alliance suggests they can do, they would never behave the way they do in Twilight.