[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[qno2]

That thought actually makes Maria's plea for help in the letter that the fisherman found a lot more fitting, considering the end of Turn. At least there's a direct link as opposed to whatever magical story Yasu might've imagined for the survivors at the end of Legend (setting aside the "getting blown to pieces"-part).

Of course there's no telling how much the story was padded outside the message bottle, but having a "please find out the truth, that is my only wish" from Maria right after her laughing contest with Beatrice at the finale of EP1 always seemed like quite the incongruency, as if Yasu didn't even care how unbelievable it'd be for Maria - the way she has been portrayed all throughout EP1 - to say this. So associating Maria's plea with Turn instead actually fits a whole lot better, at least in my opinion.

And although EP1's epilogue claims that "the children were thought to have survived up to the end", which wouldn't fit to Turn, it can still be explain with the police's knowledge of Legend: if anyone would have to choose which of those two is more believable I think we can all agree that Legend would be picked. However that does raise the question (that you folks discussed exhaustively already I think) of what the message bottles even contain - just a general draft of the events, all the "normal" scenes or "normal" + "magic" scenes? Of course the meta-layer wouldn't be part of them.

[Renall]

We go back and forth on that. I don't think there's any consensus. Most characters who comment on the contents of the in-world stories are meta-characters to begin with.

[Drifloon]

The EP1 epilogue is pretty weird in general, since it says more than once that all eighteen people did actually die. Even though it's the earliest evidence of author theory, it actually doesn't seem to reflect reality accurately. Pretty bizarre, really.

[qno2]

Same for EP2 actually, it has that line (~ 'when the seagulls cried, no one survived') as well I believe. Though technically it's not part of the epilogue and could be seen as part of the story, where it'd be a true statement of course. Was that line ever used again afterwards?

Which is why I think that scrapping Land for Banquet was pretty significant for the rest of the series: maybe Ryukishi never planned for Eva (or anyone) to survive in the first place, at least no one that the 'Prime-public' knows about. Alternatively, giving early hints towards the author theory through this incongruency could've been yet another aspect of easy modo. It's as if the magic side had already given up at this point, since EP1, EP2 and EP4 (with at least EP4 being written afterwards, possibly either EP1 or 2 as well) all violate the law of magic in Prime - regardless of what the "magic" consists of, the result has to be one that can be observed and verified.

But assuming he never planned for it, would've Umineko just stayed a normal mystery with trollwitches but without all the meta-layers and post-modernism? Useless to think about as we'll never know for sure...

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

The main flaw in the EP5 ???? is how the gold truth was handled, and how the rules kept changing for no apparent reason, which has already been discussed to death already.

The flaw in the EP6 logic error is the part where Dlanor "seals" the use of blue truths regarding the window, which is just a ridiculously contrived device that isn't even needed. A red truth saying that neither George, Shannon, Hideyoshi, Kumasawa, nor Nanjo left through the window would have conveyed the point much better without giving the player the mistaken impression that they are forbidden from using the windows of the next room over in their reasoning, when the solution does in fact necessitate it.

On an unrelated note, I was thinking about the arguments for the message bottles being authored pre-incident or post-incident earlier, and I had a sort of epiphany. Could it be that Legend was authored pre-incident, while Turn was authored post-incident? The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this would actually make a lot of sense.

It's a popular theory that Yasu portrayed herself as the murderer in the message bottles out of a feeling of guilt and self-loathing caused by her somehow indirectly causing the massacre to happen. But actually, there's a big difference between the way Yasu portrays Beatrice during EP1 and EP2.

In Legend, Beatrice is never actually seen until the very end, and remains a mysterious figure hidden in the shadows. There's nothing that suggests that she's a particularly cruel or sadistic person, and is even to some extent portrayed as benevolent; it's said that she doesn't cause harm to people who respect her, and the ceremony is implied to bring everyone to the Golden Land, where they will be happy.

But in Turn, it's completely different. Beatrice appears as an actual person throughout the whole tale, and this is by far the most negative portrayal of her throughout all episodes. Why would Yasu portray herself in this way?

She continually disparages and belittles the relationships that she's supposed to care about more than anything (George/Shannon and Jessica/Kanon).

She brutally tears the guts out of the parents of the three people that she's supposed to love most, undeniably intentionally making the scene much more disgusting than it needed to be for the purpose of following the epitaph.

And she makes it even worse for the three cousins by placing that letter in the VIP room which horribly insults both them and their dead parents in a completely uncaring and cruel manner.

After that, she mocks Kanon - mocks HERSELF, in other words - before killing both him and Jessica 'for fun' and laughing maniacally the whole time. Not content with just killing Kanon, she even brings him back as a zombie to further disgrace him. And then she proceeds to cruelly belittle George and Shannon's relationship before brutally killing both of them.

I think we can all agree that the only reason Yasu would ever portray herself behaving in such a horrible way - and in such a horrible way specifically towards the people that she cares about most - would be because she genuinely hated herself. So as you can see, the evidence of the message bottles' portrayal of Beatrice being a result of Yasu's self-loathing is actually entirely from EP2. There's no trace of this in EP1 at all, yet it's absolutely overwhelming in EP2. Isn't it sensible to conclude that Legend was written before the incident happened, while she thought that everything would turn out the way she planned, and that EP2 was written afterwards, in despair after all her plans had failed and everything she cared about was lost as a result of her own 'game'?

Rereading the conversation between Ange and Ootsuki in EP4, this seems completely plausible. No idea is given of the time that the fisherman found the first message bottle (nor is there any indication of which bottle is which, so the bottle found by the fisherman may well have been EP2). In fact, it's said that the fisherman's message bottle wasn't even taken seriously at the time because it could have been forged. So there is no evidence that says that this bottle has to have been authored pre-incident. Whereas the bottle found by the police is said to have been found on the day of the incident. So it is pretty much impossible that it could have been authored post-incident. The proof that this bottle was written pre-incident, combined with the similarity between the two bottles, led the public to conclude that the bottles must both have been written pre-incident. But actually, only one of them had any evidence that pointed to this. So it's entirely possible that one of them (Legend) was written beforehand while one (Turn) was written afterwards.

What do you think, everyone?

I like this theory. It sounds very interesting and explains the difference in the portrays of Beato which had always bothered me. I think I'll go recheck EP 1 & 2 to test it.

[DaBackpack]

A random observation while rereading the escape scene from EP4.

Virgilia, the Siestas, Shannon and Kanon all refer to Shannon as "The Gatekeeper."

Huh. Maybe I'm looking too deeply into this, but...

[Kealym]

...random thought.

I was reading through Natsuhi's trial in the Court of Illusions in EP5, yeah, and I was thinking of the red stating that Kinzo never, ever ever actually trusted Natsuhi, and by all accounts, was just kind of an unsociable dick to her for 20 years.

I was thinking of a what-if that distrust was based on Natsuhi reminding him of his legal wife? Their marriage circumstances were similar - ladies from noble families chosen basically for prestige. And this point in particular is silly, but the only glimpse of Kinzo's wife we ever see (from the EP7 manga ... correct me if I'm wrong) basically looks like Natsuhi with shorter hair and a plainer dress (was that kinda-sorta Victorian look just really popular in postwar Japan or, what? ).

We're told once that the siblings couldn't remember Kinzo being severely upset since the time their mother had died, but,maybe he was never sad to lose her. There are no hints suggesting that Kinzo and his wife fell into a decent relationship, like Kratsuhi did. In fact, based on Mrs. Kinzo's conspicuous absence during the incident with he baby 19 years ago (even though she was DEFINITELY alive during the incident when Rosa met Beatrice II, which had to have been pretty close in the timing), maybe what the siblings witnessed was just Kinzo crying for Beatrice at their mothers funeral or something, since Mrs. Kinzo and Beatrice II probably died around the same time.

Then you get Natsuhi, who seems similarly ... "severe" in her person, I wanna say, but she seems to be getting along rather well with Krauss, which is something his own marriage lacked. He needs to put this suddenly orphaned witch-baby somewhere, so he presents Lion. Cue cliff-pushing/ accident, and maybe to an aging Kinzo it seems like the spirit of his spiteful dead wife made sure to wipe out even the final trace of the mistress she so often suspected.

Well, I'm not saying Mrs. Kinzo possessed Natsuhi or anything, or that Kinzo thought such a thing, but rather that the curious circumstances of it all may account for his decades (doing the math, I believe Natsuhi married into the family in 1958/59, so that's OVER 9000 days of it) of hardwired jerkass. It also makes Natsuhi's strange worship of him (which apparently was almost always there) into some really strange ... I'unno, Stockhol Syndrome stuff.

tl;dr "Kinzo dislikes the woman who ended up reminding him of his wife too much. Chucked the relevant illegitimate baby off a cliff, to boot. NO EYE CONTACT FOR YOU, Natsuhi.

Also, I kinda wanna write an entire forgery where in the magical narrative Beato brings Mrs. Kinzo back to life to haunt the shit out of her kids, and they're all found in their childhood rooms or something. She possesses Natsuhi and uses her ghostly Meta-knowledge to lead Natsuhi to the gold turning her into Natsu-trice and ... I'll stop now.

[GabrieliosP]

No, continue. And then Natsuhitrice doesn't have a One-winged Eagle Scepter. Then, somehow, she is reduced to only an heart like Beato in EP3 and her heart has the family crest on it.

[Drifloon]

That's really interesting. I've actually always pictured Kinzo's wife as looking like Natsuhi for some reason, even though I haven't seen that EP7 manga page you're talking about.

Regarding the theory I posted earlier, another intriguing contrast I noticed between EP1 and EP2 is the way that the ceremony is presented. In the first episode, it seems like all the victims will be brought back to life in the Golden Land, regardless of the point at which they are sacrificed; even the victims of the first twilight have TIPS messages saying things like "we'll see them again soon" and "everyone will be revived in the Golden Land" and such.

Whereas in EP2, it's repeatedly stated that only five people will get to reach the Golden Land, and the thirteen that are chosen as sacrifices will never get to go there. Not only that, but even the five who do survive end up getting eaten by goats, which is hardly a warm welcome to the Golden Land - and when Rosa actually does reach the Golden Land, she gets tortured there (if the tea party is even part of the story).

In other words: in EP1, Beatrice is performing the murders to bring about her revival, but this will also bring everyone to the Golden Land, so she isn't actually being selfish per se but doing the thing that will bring the most happiness to both herself and the humans.

But in EP2, it seems like she's just manipulating and deceiving the humans into allowing the ceremony to be performed, making false promises about bringing them to the Golden Land when she really hates all of them and just wants to bring about her own revival regardless of the cost it causes to anyone else. Her promise to Maria, to bring her to the Golden Land, doesn't seem to mean anything to her; she leaves her to be eaten by goats and then possibly even eaten again by Rosa. Likewise, even though Kinzo is the one who set up the ceremony and allowed her to be revived, she's not even slightly grateful and abandons him to be eaten by the goats too. Basically Beatrice only makes promises to humans in order to fulfil her own agenda, she doesn't care what happens to them after she's achieved her revival. I think this fits with my previous theory nicely.

[RandomAvatarFan]

It's strange because in EP3, Shannon and Kanon both said something like if they're being the first of the sacrifices, they won't be in the Golden Land.... but in the same Episode, the Golden Land that Battler and Beato goes to have... everyone?

This goes beyond Yasu depicting something different between her two bottles, this is Tohya depicting something different within one forgery.

[AuraTwilight]

That's because the Golden Land is a lotus eater machine. The Golden Land has everyone because it's what Battler wants, but is it REALLY THEM?

Especially since Eva was alive.

[Drifloon]

This goes beyond Yasu depicting something different between her two bottles, this is Tohya depicting something different within one forgery.

Well, that's not anything particularly mysterious. He's just merging the two versions of the mythology that were present in the two genuine message bottles, consciously or unconsciously. I believe that most Umineko fanfiction takes fantasy elements from various genuine episodes for its fantasy scenes, so it's not surprising that things like that happened in-universe too.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by RandomAvatarFan

It's strange because in EP3, Shannon and Kanon both said something like if they're being the first of the sacrifices, they won't be in the Golden Land.... but in the same Episode, the Golden Land that Battler and Beato goes to have... everyone?

This goes beyond Yasu depicting something different between her two bottles, this is Tohya depicting something different within one forgery.

I think Battler/Toya gave a different interpretation to the episode. You would reach the golden land by solving the epitaph and having the others be revived (or not be killed).

And likely the people Battler saw in the golden land were just an illusion to trick him into recognizing Beato, not his real relatives reaching the real golden land... though that Battler is Meta Battler interacting with Meta people/Meta illusions so it can be the destiny of the Pieces is different? According to the tips only Jessica reached thegolden land after all.

[chronotrig]

In the First Twilight of the first game, all the corpses are found with their faces torn apart. Also, they're found in a room filled with tools that looked like they could tear off a human's face.

Why did the culprit grind up the faces of those corpses?

[Drifloon]

To shock everyone and provide an excuse for the accomplices not to let the children on to the scene, presumably. After all, if the crime scene had been fairly clean, how would Hideyoshi have prevented George from wanting to see Shannon's corpse?

On an unrelated note, I was thinking about this theory earlier...

Originally Posted by Valkama

Yes the key was in the fifth room they checked. But it wasn't needed. All Yasu would have to do is use the turn locks and keep the chapel door unlocked until she went inside.

Also I went back and reread the discovery scene and found some interesting things. First Krauss states that he didn't hear anything coming from Kinzo's room. Krauss knows Kinzo is dead but he was trying to keep up the appearance of him being alive so Krauss more likely than not would have lied about this saying he heard Kinzo. Another thing though is in order for Yasu's closed room to work the Parlor has to be the first room checked and interestingly enough Krauss suggests they check the Parlor first.

So I think Krauss is an Accomplice in EP3

And I noticed that it can actually make quite a neat pattern between the accomplices in each episode, depending on how you interpret things of course.

EP1: Eva and Hideyoshi as accomplices
EP2: Rosa as an accomplice
EP3: Krauss and Natsuhi as accomplices
EP4: Rudolf and Kyrie as accomplices (The first twilight victims probably weren't killed at the same time the fantasy narrative shows)

Another fun little pattern I found with the siblings:
EP1: Only Eva survives the first twilight
EP2: Only Rosa survives the first twilight
EP3: All survive the first twilight
EP4: Only Krauss survives the first twilight

EP3 is the odd one out. I wonder if Land would have had Rudolf as the only surviving sibling? That would fit Renall's idea of EP3 originally being centered around Battler.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

In the First Twilight of the first game, all the corpses are found with their faces torn apart. Also, they're found in a room filled with tools that looked like they could tear off a human's face.

Why did the culprit grind up the faces of those corpses?

I think the answer is given in Our confession when Beato shots the first group of victims and then says

So that bullet holes are not discovered, whole chunks of their bodies are destroyed.

I guess in EP 1 and 2 the first victims were killed by shooting at them but, in order for the thing not to be noticed, she torn apart the bodies.

In Ep 3 though she couldn't do it as she was one of the victims. Plus in EP 3 we start to get hints on how guns were involved in the killing (the Siesta, more guns available, people clearly killed by a gun)...

Originally Posted by Drifloon

And I noticed that it can actually make quite a neat pattern between the accomplices in each episode, depending on how you interpret things of course.

EP1: Eva and Hideyoshi as accomplices
EP2: Rosa as an accomplice
EP3: Krauss and Natsuhi as accomplices
EP4: Rudolf and Kyrie as accomplices (The first twilight victims probably weren't killed at the same time the fantasy narrative shows)

Another fun little pattern I found with the siblings:
EP1: Only Eva survives the first twilight
EP2: Only Rosa survives the first twilight
EP3: All survive the first twilight
EP4: Only Krauss survives the first twilight

EP3 is the odd one out. I wonder if Land would have had Rudolf as the only surviving sibling? That would fit Renall's idea of EP3 originally being centered around Battler.

Actually in EP 1 Natsuhi also survived and in EP 4 Kyrie also survived. Or are you not counting the wifes of the siblings as 'survivors'?

Though I would say Natsuhi was an accomplice in EP 1 too, although she likely had no idea Eva was an accomplice as well.

[RandomAvatarFan]

Drifloon was only counting the siblings. Because... you know... the rest of the children survived the first twilight in EP1-4....

It's interesting... so for the most part, there may have been an "out of the siblings only would have survived the first twilight."

However, I don't completely think it's alright, because in Eva's case of EP1, she dies right after the first twilight during the second, and then she has a bigger role in EP3.

Although his speculation about Land is interesting, I wonder what it would mean as a whole. What kind of meaning does a non-existant Episode give?

[Renall]

A more interesting pattern is that only one mother survives until the end or nearly the end.

EP1: Natsuhi dies at the very end. Rosa and Kyrie die FT, Eva dies ST.
EP2: Rosa is alive at the end. The other three die FT.
EP3: Eva survives. Each other mother dies in a separate incident.
EP4: Kyrie is apparently alive toward the end, at least long enough to report on the supposed deaths of most everyone else.

[Klarth]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Though I would say Natsuhi was an accomplice in EP 1 too, although she likely had no idea Eva was an accomplice as well.

Random thought: In EP1, after the FT is discovered, Natsuhi and Eva go to talk to Kinzo, alone. Two women going alone when a supposed murderer is loose; as capable as Eva might be, it doesn't seem to be a very good idea for them to do so. I think Natsuhi actually asks to go alone at first, only to have Eva offer to follow.

Doesn't this suggest that they know they're not in danger for some reason? Or are they just not thinking? Or am I just missing something?

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

I think the answer is given in Our confession when Beato shots the first group of victims and then says

I guess in EP 1 and 2 the first victims were killed by shooting at them but, in order for the thing not to be noticed, she torn apart the bodies.

In Ep 3 though she couldn't do it as she was one of the victims. Plus in EP 3 we start to get hints on how guns were involved in the killing (the Siesta, more guns available, people clearly killed by a gun)...

That's true, and it works fine as a way to hide that she's using a gun (although with 6 people killed at once, it'd still be natural to think that a weapon like a gun was used).

However, as for making the murders look magical, this has the opposite effect. Anyone looking at the crime scene would jump to the conclusion that those tools were used to damage the faces, and in fact, those tools probably were used. The correct, very non-magical answer is staring us in the face. If the corpses were found in literally any other location, we'd have a very bizarre mystery on our hands. Instead, we've got some strong evidence that the culprit couldn't rely on magic even to smash a few faces on already-dead corpses.