[Raiza Sunozaki]

Originally Posted by Oliver

Spoiler for Large post is large.:

You see, this is one case where it's not very expedient. It's a linguistic problem.

When I want to talk about subway bombings, I will say 'subway bombings', not 'incident' or 'accident'. When I want to talk about the time when my neighbour's house blew up because he left the gas open, I will say 'gas leak', not 'accident'. The usage of the unspecific 'accident' in such cases is restricted to fairly narrow cases:

• When I need to clearly delineate 'accident' from something deliberately premeditated. Then it's 'accident' once and 'subway bombings' from then on. I may say 'My neighbour has an accident', but then I'll add 'he had a gas leak', and when anyone asks me 'where were you when your neighbour had an accident', I will normally respond with 'huh, what accident?' because internally it's filed as a gas leak.
• When I don't know what the hell happened and assume it was an accident. But if I don't know anything about it, I don't say things about it, I ask questions about it.
• When the event is complicated and involves a lot of things that happened in an extended stretch of time, such as a 'hostage incident'. Some qualifier will still normally be present and having a 'murder accident' would be problematic.

What in particular Episode 4 does a lot is omitting any qualifiers as long as possible even when the result is a statement that makes no sense. Certain anime and manga series loved to play with this, defining some 'kono hito' early on and then using it as it it were the name of some completely undefined character which, supposedly, attracts mystique along the way in this manner. It has been many years since this stopped working and even jokes about this are going out of fashion -- people don't really talk that way. This is not narratively expedient, this looks silly, there have to be limits. It's like trying to write a book without using the letter "e" - possible, but gruesome.

Which is why I feel that it may well be that Ryukishi really wanted to tell the story of Ange's pity party, but realised that giving us the police incident report in any serious detail would amount to giving the answer away, because with everything else we already know it's enough. That would really spoil the crowning final puzzle of Ep4!

So he just concentrated on Maria's diary and censored over any other characters who would otherwise want to talk about the incident report.



Stop thinking of plausible things and you'll immediately start finding things that could work. For example, very few people had a chance to play on the island as kids unattended, and that would be Rosa and Jessica. If what blows up is a secret underground military base with a remaining stockpile of explosives, so that the plateau the mansion is on just implodes, only Rosa, Jessica and Kinzo are likely to be able to do anything to trigger it and Kinzo is dead.

Is it plausible? Not really. Would telling us that be a huge gamebreaking hint? Oh yes, I'd tell you where Kinzo got his gold then.

Let us continue thinking backwards. If my guess is true, then the endgame event mechanism fits the following conditions:

• First, what we already know about it:
  • It's catastrophic enough to change the landscape.
  • It always happens on the same time.
  • It happens regardless of who is alive or dead.
  • It can be thought to be an accident.
  • It is probably deliberately generated anyway.
  • It probably can be disarmed.
• Only a very limited number of people have the means to cause it, rather than motive. I.e. it can't be that character X has prepared the bomb which multiple characters can trigger, even if 'Beatrice' didn't make the bomb, she is the only one who can trigger it and thus be considered the 'killer'.

This way any scenarios where anyone can cause an explosion are declared unfitting. Only those remain:

• Based on things only a few people could have a chance to know. (Secrets, special expertise)
• Based on resources only a few people can have access to. (Large sums of cash, unique objects)

Any ideas, beside scrapping the whole chain of thought, ofcourse?

I have to both agree with you, Oliver, on some points, but on others, I agree with Jan-Poo.
First of all, where it is obviously intentional, like a subway bombing, people are not going to call it an accident. However, in a case where clues indicating an intentional explosion are not apparent, such as a gas leak or the Rokkenjima Explosion, people usually go with the assumption that it is an accident. "An absence of proof does not indicate a proof of absence," yes, but in such a situation as the Rokkenjima Explosion, I doubt it would be even difficult, let alone easy, to find clues indicating a premeditated explosion. It would near impossible, especially if the explosion did originate deep underground.
But yes, it is very suspicious that in the entirety of Ange's back-story, we did not even get a definite confirmation of an explosion. All we got was a sob-story, an idea of how magic in Umineko works, and confusing hints like how Eva apparently died in a similar way to Kinzo.
I have an idea to why Ange's memory feels incomplete, though I'm not sure how it might help. Think about it. Since Meta-Battler is the main narrator, it's reasonable to think that all narration, even the narration of characters which are not him (with the exception of a few Meta-Beatrice narrations) are just him narrating what Beato is narrating to him via the gameboard's story.
But if this is true, how do we get Ange's narration, which doesn't take place on any gameboard? I think it's Battler, once again, narrating a narration which is give to him. As Ange was being turned into hamburger meat at the end of Episode 4, Battler says that all her memories, the struggles she went through after no one came back from the conference, flowed into him. So once again, he is receiving a narration, and all Ryuukishi is doing is having that narration shown to us at various moments throughout the Episode.
However, like how Beato can modify the narration she gives Battler through the gameboard, isn't it possible for someone to modify Ange's narration that Battler receives. My immediate suspicions place this on Bern, but it seems out of character, at the time, for her.

On the bomb, I've got a feeling that it's set up before the gameboard begins. Why? Because it always happens. In my opinion, things that are set up or happen before the gameboard begins are constants (such as Shannon breaking the island's mirror, or Kinzo's death), but things that happen during the game are variables, and are liable to change, as they do in each Episode. Note that the game is in play for forty-eight hours, from midnight on the fourth to midnight on the sixth.
If I'm right, that means the culprit is either someone on the island, or has an accomplice who is regularly on the island. Which isn't much of a problem, since most people theorize that some number of the servants/Nanjo are accomplices to the mastermind.
But yes, Beatrice must be the once who triggers the explosion. After all, in Episode 4, Beatrice is the one who kills Battler. So she must be the one who can trigger the bomb.
However, both Jessica and Shannon, who seem to be the only characters left that can be Beatrice, rarely ever survive until endgame, which means if Beatrice is the one who triggers the explosion, it must be done at an earlier point. My reasoning indicates a timed explosion, set to detonate unless the Epitaph is solved, but this is incredibly clichéd, so I'm reluctant to decide on it.