[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Marion

I agree, but then why does Maria not have Sakutaro in 1986. I can't imagine her just forgetting her favorite stuffed animal and best friend.

What's weird is that in episode 5 she DOES have Sakutaro in 1986. We just get away from a scene a day before the conference (october 3rd) where the servants are talking. Rosa receives a call from Rudolf and the narration says Maria is playing with Sakutarou and something about Rosa promising to take her the Delsney land. Well anyway in episode 5 Sakutarou is not torn apart. He's "alive" on october 3rd 1986. So the diary could have lied, or was extremely biased towards Rosa during the event, and it showed us the results of how she overreacted.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Marion

I agree, but then why does Maria not have Sakutaro in 1986. I can't imagine her just forgetting her favorite stuffed animal and best friend.

Sakutaro's "death" almost certainly happened, but what about that bizarre scene where Rosa beat Maria viciously in front of a social worker and then nothing came of it?

Originally Posted by Judoh

What's weird is that in episode 5 she DOES have Sakutaro in 1986. We just get away from a scene a day before the conference (october 3rd) where the servants are talking. Rosa receives a call from Rudolf and the narration says Maria is playing with Sakutarou and something about Rosa promising to take her the Delsney land. Well anyway in episode 5 Sakutarou is not torn apart. He's "alive" on october 3rd 1986. So the diary could have lied.

Ah, wait a second. What if Rosa did eventually give Maria a new Sakutaro before the 1986 conference, but Ange just never read that far in the diary, or Maria didn't have time to write it down?

[Marion]

Originally Posted by Judoh

What's weird is that in episode 5 she DOES have Sakutaro in 1986. We just get away from a scene a day before the conference (october 3rd) where the servants are talking. Rosa receives a call from Rudolf and the narration says Maria is playing with Sakutarou and something about Rosa promising to take her the Delsney land. Well anyway in episode 5 Sakutarou is not torn apart. He's "alive" on october 3rd 1986. So the diary could have lied.

We don't know if those scenes are a day before the conference.

Actually they can't be - Rudolf tells Rosa on the phone that tomorrow everyone would meet at a tea shop in Ginza. They can't meet there on October 4th of course.

All we know is that those scenes take place before the 1986 conference. Ange says the last time she saw Maria was in 1985 and she had Sakutaro that day. So Sakutaro was ripped up between 1985 and 1986.

[Judoh]

Well I assumed it was October 3rd because the servants were talking on the day before the conference just before that scene. It could be any time before the conference though if they were meeting somewhere. Somehow I doubt it was that long before the conference though because they were talking about money and it sounded urgent. Rosa didn't want Maria to be around to hear the conversation. She got mad at Rudolf for suggesting to bring her.

[Jan-Poo]

It was probably very close to the family conference, which means, if nothing is wrong, that Sakutaro's death was a very recent event at the time of the family conference of 1986.

That might also explain why Maria was still in Rosa's custody after what Rosa did in front of the social worker. Maybe even if they lived they wouldn't stay together much longer.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

I think my explanation is sound on how, but it's obviously lightweight on why.

I'd say it's mostly sound, but here is my take-in-progress. It is not complete and it does not hold water yet because too many pieces are missing:

Ep1 ends with Natsuhi duelling someone who 'claims to succeed the head of Ushiromiya family'. Considering that Natsuhi herself has no legitimate claim to this position, there are only a handful people who could make that claim at all, according to the Ushiromiya ranking ladder, which has to be the succession ladder, Rosa is right next after Rudolf, Eva is definitely dead, and Krauss has no reason to shoot his own wife who is nothing but extremely loyal.

Without some sort of leverage, Rosa is almost certain to get shafted somehow when inheritance is to be divided, if not completely than at least substantially, but if she manages to get rid of everyone above her, her future -- and Maria's -- is set.

The red about who is alive in the shed is worded such that it is open to interpretation in various ways, so we can't strictly assume that everyone in there is dead, as has been explained numerous times before. The question is who killed them and how did they get out from padlocked shed.

But here, the other plan triggers.

• Somehow, a plan exists to put the quarrelling adults to sleep for a day or two for reasons unknown, and the perpetrators are mostly servants and members of the already existing Kinzo Phantom Conspiracy. Rosa is possibly a willing participant.
• The idea was to hide everyone in the shed and temporarily pronounce them dead with Nanjo's help, possibly because they were about to force the Kinzo issue. Once everyone's asleep and in the shed, Natsuhi proceeds with the other part of the plan which is to get rid of Kinzo's corpse finally, and tosses it out of the window of his study into the courtyard, one door away from the boiler -- and leaves happy and shiny like a coin because she just flushed down a whole tub of formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde they kept the corpse in, which aggravated her migraines and worsened Jessica's asthma. If the corpse were to be allowed to get completely incinerated, that would be mostly the end of it.
• Meanwhile, Rosa wakes up, and cuts everyone up using tools readily available in place. She uses their blood to cover her own face, and notice that nobody pays much attention to the condition of her body in particular.
• When in the morning, everyone's looking for them, Kanon, who is in on the plan, goes to check out the shed. To his surprise, they do indeed look dead, so he shiftily reports to Genji, and body discovery ensues.
• Eva goes into paranoid mode and separates, which leaves her open to further extermination. How exactly could Rosa get out is a question, but considering that Kanon goes into the said rose garden storehouse to get the chain cutter when he obviously can't have the key to the padlock it means that something did happen to open it, and the total count of possible accomplices rises. The most likely accomplice is Kanon himself, which is why he is the next one dead and the only one dead in a manner wherein he is not shot with a firearm.
• Maria would obviously obey her mother without question if the mother IS Beatrice, or at least one of the possible Beatrice-marked individuals, -- but more about this later, -- so the parlor scene is trivial.
• Natsuhi is the last one shot.

The only thing I'm quite positive on in that sequence is Kinzo's corpse issue -- everything else does not rule out, say, Rudolf, and is a jumble of conjectures. But the biggest puzzle throughout the series which may point to Rosa is Maria herself:

• I have already pointed out that in Full Magic Mode, Maria is educated and eloquent well beyond her years. She slips down a bit when not in Full Magic Mode, but is markedly different from early Ep1, when she sounds like she's deliberately dumbed down medically. While the impression could be produced with photographic memory of passages of text she does not really understand, further episodes make me think she does understand everything she's talking about. She might be playing with hermetic tradition like a more normal girl plays with dolls, but she sure knows what she's playing with. Someone obviously taught her all these things. Well, I'm going to claim that it is not possible to do that during at most six, ten if she is very lucky, meetings on Rokkenjima. That's not even enough to read through the entirety of Keys of Solomon for most people.
• Back in 1986, personal computers are the toys of specialists, and internet is the brainchild of engineering and computer science students. It is impossible for Maria to learn these things without books. And Rosa controls Maria's access to books, just like she can punish her by destroying toys.
• Episode 2 has two interesting statements from Maria. "Mama, save me, Mama, save me...!" is her constant cry when assaulted by Rosa, but then, about Beatrice... "But you know, she's always watching Maria. So when Maria gets in trouble, she'll definitely save her afterwards." This issue would be solved if a certain variant of Good-Rosa does, in Maria's eyes, identify with Beatrice, who may or may not be aware of her own identity at the time. Whether Rosa is aware of that herself or not is open to interpretation, but...
• Rosa is the only character who claims to have met the 1967 Beatrice. And was involved in her accidental death. If anything, Rosa subconsciously knows a being called Beatrice actually did exist.

There's some other minor things which I suspect connect Rosa and Shannon ten years ago, but I'll wait on formulating them until I can dig up anything else to support them.

Originally Posted by ErenselTheJester

Hmmm... Now that I think about it, doesn't Rosa seem like a contradictory character to you? I mean, one episode she's as good a mother as any, the next she's an absolute w(b)itch. Now, of course, it might seem irrevelent considering her character, but it seems a little off now that I think about. To me, on the times she's a good mom, she would sacrifice anything for her child, and when she's bad, she would be quit to get rid of her. Now, the reason why I'm questioning this now is because there is no real reason for this. Outside of her being bullied when she was young by her older siblings, there is no actual reasoning behind her personality change. Is the Rosa we see, good or bad, the real Rosa or just some crack interpretation?

All of them, I expect. If there's any character on the board who is in any manner dissociated between multiple personalities or multiple identity/worldview bubbles with shared memory but without actual DID, Rosa is a much better candidate than Shannon/Kanon if you ask me.

Mind you, that doesn't stop Rosa from being just ONE of the possible people who actually think they are "Beatrice" on the board.

[Tyabann]

About the social worker bit... I always figured that, after what Rosa did, she had become too scared of her retaliation to report her.

Japan does not have and has never really had the same quality of child services the West does... we can see Higurashi for more examples of that.

Originally Posted by Oliver

Eva goes into paranoid mode and separates, which leaves her open to further extermination. How exactly could Rosa get out is a question, but considering that Kanon goes into the said rose garden storehouse to get the chain cutter when he obviously can't have the key to the padlock it means that something did happen to open it, and the total count of possible accomplices rises. The most likely accomplice is Kanon himself, which is why he is the next one dead and the only one dead in a manner wherein he is not shot with a firearm.

Earlier, Genji gets an unopened box containing a padlock from the storage room, and hands Natsuhi the key. The problem is that most padlocks of that type come with TWO keys, in case you lose one.

It's not impossible that he handed Kanon the extra key when he told him to get the chain cutter.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

Earlier, Genji gets an unopened box containing a padlock from the storage room, and hands Natsuhi the key. The problem is that most padlocks of that type come with TWO keys, in case you lose one.

It's not impossible that he handed Kanon the extra key when he told him to get the chain cutter.

Yes, I remember seeing you mention that at least three times previously. I thought of a slightly different variant though:

They obviously have some spare padlocks, possibly more than one, but they don't have a boxfull of them. The spare key could have been removed previously by anyone with access to the storehouse, which any servant had -- then, Genji's cooperation is not required.

[rogerpepitone]

If the killer removed the extra key in advance, he'd have to know which box to take a key from, or to take one from all of them. Also, I think padlocks usually are sold shrink-wrapped and somebody'd notice if it were unwrapped.

If Kanon needed to get into the shed to get the bolt cutters, why didn't he ask Natsuhi to unlock it? Also, in Episode 4, Battler finds the bolt cutters and hatchet in the boiler room.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

If the killer removed the extra key in advance, he'd have to know which box to take a key from, or to take one from all of them. Also, I think padlocks usually are sold shrink-wrapped and somebody'd notice if it were unwrapped.

In 2000s, maybe. In 1986, I suspect most padlocks still sold in cardboard boxes, and removing a spare key from every single one (how many do they have? Three, five? More would be silly.) should not be a problem.

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

If Kanon needed to get into the shed to get the bolt cutters, why didn't he ask Natsuhi to unlock it? Also, in Episode 4, Battler finds the bolt cutters and hatchet in the boiler room.

We just know he didn't. He rushes to the location that is unambiguously identified as the rose garden storehouse both through text and through used background images, grabs the cutter and runs. Either he did go there or the whole scene is a lie and then he's the accomplice anyway.

[Judoh]

You know I've been thinking about something. If we look the epitaph from a plot line murder standpoint the cause should be the key right? Battler's sin is against the "key". The only person I've heard being called the key though is Maria by Kyrie. Kyrie calls her the key to finding out about who Beatrice is. She's also called the key in other instances too, but I can't remember all of them. Maybe that's why I liked ijriims's idea for Maria being the person Battler sinned against.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Judoh

Maybe that's why I liked ijriims's idea for Maria being the person Battler sinned against.

Maria is very definitely the one character who knows the most about Beatrice, or at least says the most, so it makes sense that if anyone created Beatrice-as-we-know-her, that would have to be Maria. The problem with it is that at the time the sin is supposed to have happened she's three years old, which, strictly speaking, is barely conscious.

But there's an interesting quote from Meta-Beatrice that I found that may explain how it is possible for Battler to have sinned against Maria:

Beatrice: "...Imagine it. When people are born, they don't know of fraud. ...They get it from somewhere. And so they learn it."

This jumps out of the flow of the conversation about keeping promises as if it's put in there specially, and sounds to me like it references someone who was very young at the time.

What if Battler was the one who promised to show magic to Maria... and didn't?

[Escargotage]

With all this talk of Battler sinning against Maria, I could definitely see Battler promising Maria her dad would come back or something with magic. He then tries to convince Maria's father to come back, and he fails miserably. He estranges himself from the family for 6 years out of guilt (and also that Kyrie/Asumu drama).

[Marion]

Whole thing is that in EP 6 the sin is clearly shown to be a broken promise, which resulted in "Beatrice" being born. Heck, Maria is hardly mentioned in EP 6 after the 1st twilight

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Marion

Whole thing is that in EP 6 the sin is clearly shown to be a broken promise, which resulted in "Beatrice" being born. Heck, Maria is hardly mentioned in EP 6 after the 1st twilight

Yes, yes.

But there's just as many ways to break a promise as there are to make them. The usual interpretation of this promise being made to Shannon to come back for her does not involve a time limit, but isn't the moment when you sin by breaking a promise when you do not do something at the appointed time -- not when you promise to do so?

[Jan-Poo]

that's why the sin is the fact that Battler forgot the promise and not the fact that he made the promise.

Beatrice asks Battler why he abandoned the Ushiromiya name, and that means this somehow is connected to the sin. Plus Beatrice said "the fact you don't remember is your sin". Additionally in EP5 Battler asks Beatrice when did he ever made a promise to her and Beatrice reacts by saying she doesn't care anymore if she disappears.

So there are many hints that Battler's sin was the fact that he forgot the promise he made.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

So there are many hints that Battler's sin was the fact that he forgot the promise he made.

Yes -- I just don't think the evidence provided is sufficient to make the conclusion as is. There's a piece of puzzle missing, and I'm looking for it because I'm not satisfied with a typical Shkanontrice explanation.

I did mention above that Rosa might know something more specific. In particular, I don't think I caught any other Ushiromiya or any of the spouses consciously calling servants 'furniture' -- the cousins generation doesn't like the very idea, and the sibling generation skirts the issue entirely. But Rosa uses it in the scene where she expels the servants a second time. Eye glazes over it because previously, much of Ep2 was devoted to expanding on the topic, but it doesn't seem happen anywhere else.

And then she offers to drink coffee with Shannon, which sounds very much out of place.

[J the Drafter]

There's a scene right after the part where Rosa asks everyone who gave Maria an umbrella. Kumasawa and Shannon meet up with Genji and Kanon and Kumasawa asks if any of them gave Maria an umbrella, to which they all say no. Scenes like this can't be taken at face value, but it suggests that Maria getting the letter is not a plan from the faction trying to make it look like Kinzo is still alive. (The fact that the letter hurts Krauss's position strengthens that assumption.) This doesn't preclude someone going rogue, but this goes against the plan to make Kinzo seem alive.

[Jan-Poo]

In Ep4 Maria says it was Kinzo who gave her the umbrella (or so it seems, can't be 100% sure about that).

Anyway let's suppose that Maria actually said that, since we know Kinzo couldn't possibly be the one who lent the umbrella to Maria, then it's possible that someone from the "Kinzo is still alive" faction asked her to say that.

It is also quite possible that one or more persons among the "kinzo is still alive" faction are also part of the "Beatrice exists faction", although they probably do not completely overlap.

[Marion]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

In Ep4 Maria says it was Kinzo who gave her the umbrella (or so it seems, can't be 100% sure about that).

Anyway let's suppose that Maria actually said that, since we know Kinzo couldn't possibly be the one who lent the umbrella to Maria, then it's possible that someone from the "Kinzo is still alive" faction asked her to say that.

It is also quite possible that one or more persons among the "kinzo is still alive" faction are also part of the "Beatrice exists faction", although they probably do not completely overlap.

Yeah, I can only see this being it. Since there's a red statement saying no one would mistake Kinzo by sight then it means she was probably just told to say that.

It makes me only think more that the person who gave her the letter is aware of Kinzo's death. Saying "Beatrice gave it" would have a similar disbelief effect, but everyone on the island doesn't believe in her being real (well, except a couple like Maria). Saying "Kinzo gave it" means that Kinzo would actually be alive and well, thus countering Kyrie's theory about him already being dead.