[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[AuraTwilight]

Nah, neither of them really out right HAND you the answers. Will answers them for Clair in words that are riddles unto themselves.

[battle22]

guy's in ep6 "kanon does not exist in the guest room" can explained
like this right ? Kanon , went it . he changed himself to shannon or yasu and hid herself in the closet or the bedroom .

[AuraTwilight]

Yea, that's a common theory.

[UsagiTenpura]

Been thinking about something sorta bugging me.
How did Yasu learn about Kyrie being Battler's mother?
What made her include in the story that Rudolf was about to reveal it to Battler?

Like many such mysteries... the solution that it already happened by the time Yasu wrote down the arc seems to sound the best, but I was wondering if anyone had any other explanations?

Overall I also sorta don't get the purpose of that sub-story. It doesn't seem relevant at all concerning any murders that ever occurs, it seems like the only point was for Beato to make that "denying Battler's own existence" thing.

Perhaps it's to give Battler a scenario equivalent to Yasu. Like she learned that Natsuhi was her adoptive mother and that Beatrice-II was her real mother, so he has a similar situation.

Originally Posted by Renall

I'm "a lot" now? I don't think there are many people who doubt that. I even acknowledge the magic scenes are probably there, but I do wonder if maybe they're not.

However, I'm almost sure the Meta-World is not.

Hmmm Ange refers to meta-scenes of arc 5 when she was talking to Featherine about it.
Will also refers both to fantasy scene and meta-scenes when solving the answers in arc 7.
I'm fairly certain they are included.

Also I'm fairly certain that "the logic" of an arc is that a story is already written and the player and gamemaster are basically using it to play a game, like Gaap-Beatrice did with Yasu with and then there were none. So most likely then not a "real" text exists for every single arc and then the meta and magic worlds are weaved atop of it. Some arcs like arc 3 and 5 really seem to have two different writers as well. Like a second, truth-knowing writer corrected the theories written into an arc by others.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Been thinking about something sorta bugging me.
How did Yasu learn about Kyrie being Rudolf's mother?
What made her include in the story that Rudolf was about to reveal it to Battler?

Like many such mysteries... the solution that it already happened by the time Yasu wrote down the arc seems to sound the best, but I was wondering if anyone had any other explanations?

Overall I also sorta don't get the purpose of that sub-story. It doesn't seem relevant at all concerning any murders that ever occurs, it seems like the only point was for Beato to make that "denying Battler's own existence" thing.

Perhaps it's to give Battler a scenario equivalent to Yasu. Like she learned that Natsuhi was her adoptive mother and that Beatrice-II was her real mother, so he has a similar situation.

Hem... you probably mean about Kirye being Battler's mother, not Rudolf's....

There are assorted theories for this, as far as I know the most popular are:

-Prior to the Rokkenjima incident Yasu used the money she inherited to learn more about the Ushiromiya and ended up discovering this
-Prior to the Rokkenjima incident Yasu ended up hearing a conversation between Rudolf and someone else in which it was revealed
-The stories were written post the Rokkenjima incident. During the incident either Kirye or Rudolf revealed the truth and Yasu happened to hear it.
-Yasu didn't include it in her stories. What we read was a relaboration of Yasu's stories made by Toya's mind as he read them. Since he had learnt the truth prior or during the Rokkenjima incident and then forgotten about it due to his loss of memory his mind added that scene in an effort to help him recovering his memory (or something like that)
-... and there are some others but I can't remember them... :P

As for the relevance of the scene...


Well, it really depends on what happened in RPrime.

In a fashion the situation is ironic because Kirye finds hard to deal with Battler because she thinks of him as Asumu's son (though she didn't show it on the outside) while actually he's her son. It gets even more bitterly ironic if you think that in RPrime Kirye might have tried to kill him like Kasumi tried to do with Ange to settle her feelings of jealousy toward Asumu.

Though this is just speculation. We don't know if Kirye even tried to harm Battler in R Prime.

And yes, Ryukishi might have liked the parallelism.

Plus this is useful in Ep 5 when Battler tries to make us believe he was the culprit.

[UsagiTenpura]

Lol, thanks for spotting my mistake I'll fix that...

And thanks for the list of theories.

I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that in "Rokkenjima prime" Kyrie's the one who killed Rudolf. I mean to her the story was "I tragically lost my baby while Asumu didn't and Rudolf had no choice but go with her" to "He went as far as stealing my baby and making me believe he died to replace the dead baby of Asumu in order to be with her and not with me".


Thinking of it, there's a pattern isn't there?
Kinzo's secret child (Beatrice-II)
Rudolf's secret child (Battler-II)
Battler's "child" (or at least she calls him father) (ChickBeato)

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

How would it make the Witch Hunters more stupid?

The meta-world adds additional rules, narrows down many theories, and provides strong hints to things the Witch Hunters seem clueless about. Basically, their ignorance is forgivable if certain forms of information we rely upon are not available in the actual original text.

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Hmmm Ange refers to meta-scenes of arc 5 when she was talking to Featherine about it.
Will also refers both to fantasy scene and meta-scenes when solving the answers in arc 7.
I'm fairly certain they are included.

They are all meta-characters, so it's not really relevant that they're using meta-knowledge.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Renall

The meta-world adds additional rules, narrows down many theories, and provides strong hints to things the Witch Hunters seem clueless about.

But do we even know that much about what the Witch Hunters think or know? All the insight we really got was Ootsuki, and arguably the goats in EP8.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

But do we even know that much about what the Witch Hunters think or know? All the insight we really got was Ootsuki, and arguably the goats in EP8.

I think Ootsuki's general flailing and Will potentially representing a rare individual who actually came to the truth of Beatrice's identity suggest it isn't very easy. Many other theories are based on things that might be pretty reasonable in a non-Meta narrative.

There's also the issue of the Meta-Narrative not existing in (almost all of) ep1. If a magic/meta-narrative is integral to the stories, why doesn't Legend have one, and why does it read just fine without one?

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Renall

They are all meta-characters, so it's not really relevant that they're using meta-knowledge.

How is it not relevant to have Ange saying in arc 6 something like "I just finished reading "End of the Golden Witch", the last forgery made by Hachijou, and I don't get why Battler changed side after understanding the truth"?

To me it's pretty clear that even the Ura are included in the "forgeries".
Witch-hunters themselves might be nothing more then in-story characters too.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Is there a non meta scene in EP4 where Ange mentions meta Battler at all? How does she describe the letters themselves? Weren't they written in an almost diary like way and later signed by Maria (as if Maria was writing them)?

Any form of meta information in those seems unlikely. Meta might have been introduced in Tohya's books though. Still, I'd have to wonder then, if in Umineko's world there is a distinction between the letters and the books, why consider these books as anything other than fan fiction? Would it really garner any attention at all?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

How is it not relevant to have Ange saying in arc 6 something like "I just finished reading "End of the Golden Witch", the last forgery made by Hachijou, and I don't get why Battler changed side after understanding the truth"?

To me it's pretty clear that even the Ura are included in the "forgeries".
Witch-hunters themselves might be nothing more then in-story characters too.

Because she's a Meta-Character, in a Meta-World, with Meta-Access, talking to literally the most Meta of all characters in the entire series. We have nothing at all to back up the idea that R-Prime Ange ever read that, or what she read, and if we don't have that we don't know what was in the "actual text." It's the same thing as Battler and Beatrice talking about "previous games" in subsequent ones, and Battler wondering whether he can reach his piece in ep4. There is some layer of the text that doesn't change unless you intentionally mess up the story (Dawn), and if you do that, the story doesn't seem to conclude properly.

That aside, do you honestly believe the texts of End and Dawn make any sense as in-universe books the way they're presented to us as ep5 and ep6? Particularly if Dawn's narrative just ends and the whole thing turns into meta-spectacle? Wouldn't some mention be paid somewhere, anywhere, to all that weird meta-nonsense flying around in those forgeries? Why didn't Ange ask about them, or Ootsuki mention how the series has been getting more and more magical? Why is there an invisible barrier of sorts between how meta-activity is applied and how the actual narrative seems to react to it, even in Dawn where Erika is doing her damndest to derail it (to say nothing of End where it's wholly disconnected)? Why is End so toned-back in its board narrative if escalating magic is the intent, since the escalation occurs in only one scene and then a bunch of Meta-Stuff?

Wouldn't there be some goats who think the Meta-World is real and that there is an alternative "meta-solution" to the witch/human culprit theories? If the Witch Hunters themselves are story characters, what is the point of their inclusion? So Touya can threaten his own meta-fictional world with attacks he himself made up?

Why would the Tea Parties be separated out if they're part of the main story? Is there any evidence anyone has actually been able to use the reds Lambda provided in the ep4 ura, which would have been in the text (if everything else was, so too would red)?

There's also the disconnect between 1998 Ange and ANGE that Cao Ni Ma's pointed out; if you look closely, you can see that ANGE has knowledge Ange does not, and that Ange's questions to people and general conclusions ought to change dramatically if she knew some of the things ANGE knows. In ep6, there basically is no Ange, just ANGE. Oh and don't forget she just kind of shows back up again after dying in ep4, so apparently if the Meta-Narrative is in the actual works it's full of poorly-explained plot holes that no reader ever questions.

So no, it's not "pretty clear." You're putting trust in a narrative that has been reinterpreted at least once, possibly multiple times, to tell you about the base narrative. It would be foolish to do that, and it leads to a lot of questions that don't seem to square up very well.

And again, you're not explaining why Legend completely lacks any such elements and works fine without them, and how not one person comments on the apparent disconnect between even the original message bottle stories (ignoring forgeries entirely for now, since Turn has Magic + Meta). For Meta-Narrative to be so ordinary and expected that no character in the story ever comments on its integration into the series, you must either concede that Legend's main body had Meta-Narrative, or that absolutely no one saw fit to ever comment on it not appearing until the Tea Party, or that the Tea Parties are also part of the main narrative (as you just claimed), and that the main narrative was carefully sequentially structured, yet that by the end of ep5 an Ange with all that information available to her plus most of the Witch Hunters couldn't figure anything out, i.e. they are stupid, my original claim.

Also that, apparently, Touya created Will, because you've just said the Meta-Narrative is part of the story, which means Will/Lion/etc. are part of the more or less wholly Meta-Narrative of Requiem, which means Touya wrote them. And I guess Touya wrote about 1998 Ange in Alliance and about himself writing about himself writing about himself in Twilight, right? I mean, it's in the text, and you've proposed the texts contain no extractions or additional material, so...

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying it's impossible that what you're saying could be the case. It's just doesn't fit as well as other interpretations of where the original text/magic/meta/interpretation divisions are.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

Is there a non meta scene in EP4 where Ange mentions meta Battler at all? How does she describe the letters themselves? Weren't they written in an almost diary like way and later signed by Maria (as if Maria was writing them)?

Any form of meta information in those seems unlikely. Meta might have been introduced in Tohya's books though.

I would imagine the forgeries mimicked whatever format (letter, diary, etc.) that the original bottle-stories had in order to provide the most authentic feel possible. This extends to inclusion of meta; it's either in both the bottles and forgeries or it's in neither of them. Also, if it's a diary format, whose diary is it supposed to be? It's strange that a diary is signed "Ushiromiya Maria" but goes through Battler's perspective, particularly in the case of Banquet when Maria dies halfway through.

I never thought that it was Maria who actually signed, just that it was signed "Ushiromiya Maria" by Yasu for maximum intrigue. I'm not even sure how well the authenticity of a 9-year-old girl's signature could be verified. Maybe they could check some school assignments that she wrote her name on, but even that may be different than an official signature. And if it truly was verified as her signature, it would be a very relevant piece of information that should have been mentioned at some point in EP4 in Ange's journey.

I have wondered sometimes if Maria did in fact survive somehow. Her jaw of all things was the only physical evidence discovered for the death of anybody? It's fishy.

Originally Posted by Renall

That aside, do you honestly believe the texts of End and Dawn make any sense as in-universe books the way they're presented to us as ep5 and ep6? Particularly if Dawn's narrative just ends and the whole thing turns into meta-spectacle?

Except that in EP6 Ange commented that the author "Hachijou Touya" killed 7 of her family members in End. If the story continued as usual, wouldn't the number be higher? We have three viable choices that I can think of:

• Meta scenes were not in End; Ange's comment is true meta and reflects only our limited knowledge; in the Umineko-Prime forgery more actually people died.
  Problem: If we can't get accurate information about Umineko-Prime from a statement like this, then can we ever?
• Meta scenes were not in End, and the story simply ended anticlimactically when Erika accused Natsuhi.
  Problem: It makes End very poorly written, as you say.
• Meta scenes were in End, and the story ended with Battler's revelation.
  Problems: You're covering them plenty well.

Originally Posted by Renall

Why would the Tea Parties be separated out if they're part of the main story?

Whoa now, you do realize that this would throw out EP4's Tea Party as part of the main story too, right (you know, when Battler does all his investigating)? I might add that Claire also refers to the 9th Twilight of the 4th game during Will's solution scene.

Originally Posted by Renall

And again, you're not explaining why Legend completely lacks any such elements and works fine without them, and how not one person comments on the apparent disconnect between even the original message bottle stories (ignoring forgeries entirely for now, since Turn has Magic + Meta).

Even considering meta as something separate from the fictions, one still has to wonder why the Meta-World manifested when it did and the way it did.

The real issue is the continuity that exists in the Meta-World over the supposed change in authorship. The Meta-World introduced in Turn clearly indicated there would be future games, and once Banquet was released there would no longer be room for Land or other bottle-stories to be retconned back into the Meta-World's narrative. It basically requires Yasu to be Ikuko and for her to have written the original bottle-stories with carefully orchestrated plans to continue.

Originally Posted by Renall

...that the Tea Parties are also part of the main narrative (as you just claimed), and that the main narrative was carefully sequentially structured, yet that by the end of ep5 an Ange with all that information available to her plus most of the Witch Hunters couldn't figure anything out, i.e. they are stupid, my original claim.

Using real-life readers of Umineko as a control example of a group of people exposed to Umineko up through episode 5, meta and all, is it really so strange that they would not have figured things out by then? Let's not forget that the meta-narrative hindered the answer almost as much as it helped, what with Kanon is dead and such.

Originally Posted by Renall

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying it's impossible that what you're saying could be the case. It's just doesn't fit as well as other interpretations of where the original text/magic/meta/interpretation divisions are.

Yeah. For me it's really all up in the air; I have no idea which interpretation fits best. I'm not sure if RK07 even does.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I have wondered sometimes if Maria did in fact survive somehow. Her jaw of all things was the only physical evidence discovered for the death of anybody? It's fishy.

If the message bottles could've been faked, I guess Maria's jaw could've been too, but on the other hand... seriously? Like who would just have a jaw around that would happen to have some of Maria's teeth or whatever.

I mean the only thing that's even marginally plausible that I can think of is something like "In their interactions, Yasu kept some of Maria's baby teeth after using 'magic' to turn them into money a la the Tooth Fairy, and then later just happened to use those teeth and a faked jaw to 'confirm' Maria's death." But then she'd need a reason to do that, and Maria doesn't appear to be alive. Who would she be living with? If Yasu were Ikuko, shouldn't she be living with her as Ikuko's "daughter" or something? If not, and she's alive, where the hell is she? Sure, Ange wanted to reunite with Battler, but I think reuniting with Maria would be equally important to her.

Except that in EP6 Ange commented that the author "Hachijou Touya" killed 7 of her family members in End. If the story continued as usual, wouldn't the number be higher? We have three viable choices that I can think of:

• Meta scenes were not in End; Ange's comment is true meta and reflects only our limited knowledge; in the Umineko-Prime forgery more actually people died.
  Problem: If we can't get accurate information about Umineko-Prime from a statement like this, then can we ever?
• Meta scenes were not in End, and the story simply ended anticlimactically when Erika accused Natsuhi.
  Problem: It makes End very poorly written, as you say.
• Meta scenes were in End, and the story ended with Battler's revelation.
  Problems: You're covering them plenty well.

I think the first one makes a bit more sense if only because Meta-Characters seem to operate on Meta-Knowledge. For example, they must obey facts that don't exist in the text, like the red; Battler can't speculate on Kanon not dying in Jessica's room in ep2 because the red says he did. But there's actually nothing in the board-level text of Turn that supports this, and in fact the board narrative suggests exactly the opposite since "Kanon" reappears later.

Given this, Meta-World Ange has only ever actually seen the Meta-World presentations of the stories. When she says something like "I read End," she wouldn't be talking about the R-Prime End (although Ange-Prime may well have read that End), but about the version she saw in which Natsuhi was accused, a Meta-Trial was held, and Battler switched sides and the rest of the board world story never happened. I think you can support this in that ANGE converses with Featherine and mentions her death in Alliance. She's probably not talking about the 1998 sequence where she appeared to die (unless that too is in Alliance, which seems absurd), but about the Meta-World death she experienced when trying to revive Battler. So the story she is aware of (and probably participated in) involved that scene. But that scene actually existing in Alliance would be both extremely bizarre and very out of character for Touya to include (he's already nervous enough about all the intimate details of Ushiromiya Battler's life, is he really going to have an intimate scene involving the sister he doesn't even remember?).

Finally, we'd be forced to question what Requiem and Twilight even are. Are these works that exist in R-Prime in any sense? Are they works at all? Is the Lion world part of a forgery? If so, is Will's appearance part of it, or is he a special addition? Are the Kinzo and Yasu flashbacks part of it? If so, who wrote them and how did they know all of that information? Is the Tea Party bit Requiem, or part of it, or not? What the hell is Twilight, exactly?

Whoa now, you do realize that this would throw out EP4's Tea Party as part of the main story too, right (you know, when Battler does all his investigating)? I might add that Claire also refers to the 9th Twilight of the 4th game during Will's solution scene.

I think this is evidence for editing rather than against it. The stuff we see as the Tea Party of ep4 almost certainly must have been part of Alliance, but it wasn't the actual climax of Alliance itself, tacked on as a Tea Party. Logically, however, that's only because stuff like the Ange narrative was woven into what was the actual text of Alliance. I would argue that, assuming no Meta-Narrative is in the original text, it went directly from the last thing we see Battler do at night to his panic, frantic sleep, and morning investigation, and concluded at midnight at the end of that day as the Tea Party board story does. So the breakdown into Body/Tea/Ura seems arbitrary and was probably done after the fact on an interpretive layer, and thus not in the original text.

So I would think the "proper" end of Alliance is when the explosion happens (whether the text specifically says that or not). All the stuff afterward about Beatrice asking him if he's satisfied and the transition into the Meta-Battle of the Ura/???? Party is added.

The Ange stuff is probably not in Alliance at all. But having said that, I'm not sure what it is. The Ange backstory, and the endings in ep8... what exactly is that from? Ep6 suggests it's ANGE, not Ange, and that the pre-Meta part of meeting Featherine is basically the latter's illusion, but I see no reason to believe the parts in ep4 or ep8 are.

If they are in Alliance, it seems like that would be a pretty significant thing, wouldn't it? Why is Touya engaging in such speculation about Ange? Why doesn't he continue? What is he doing there? How does he know the information she gathers, or is he making it all up and why? It does work in some ways (might at least explain Amakusa as Touya's fictionalized self-insert), but in others it's just... hrmph.

The real issue is the continuity that exists in the Meta-World over the supposed change in authorship. The Meta-World introduced in Turn clearly indicated there would be future games, and once Banquet was released there would no longer be room for Land or other bottle-stories to be retconned back into the Meta-World's narrative. It basically requires Yasu to be Ikuko and for her to have written the original bottle-stories with carefully orchestrated plans to continue.

Quite so, and this is a problem the board and magic narratives don't have. Every board narrative is, of course, a reset; there are, however, details that pass from one to others as if in continuity, which is to be expected if they're written sequentially. The magic worlds are often quite different, obeying different rules or portraying magic characters slightly differently. Again, perfectly understandable if different stories change the rules around and "callbacks" to previous episodes are fine.

But the Meta-World would require a strict continuity from Turn to Banquet. As you've said, we've been told that the author of the bottles is not the author of Banquet and beyond, and nothing that would contradict that continuity (such as Land, an "official" story if you believe ep8) ever surfaces. That's remarkably fortunate! Unless, as you said, Ikuko was behind everything. If she were, she could suppress Land in favor of her collaboration with Touya to create Banquet.

Using real-life readers of Umineko as a control example of a group of people exposed to Umineko up through episode 5, meta and all, is it really so strange that they would not have figured things out by then? Let's not forget that the meta-narrative hindered the answer almost as much as it helped, what with Kanon is dead and such.

Surely they coulda guessed Shkanon at least, though. That was blatantly obvious to just about everybody after, like, ep2, even the people who didn't believe it. And if they guessed Shkanon, they could've guessed he/she was the culprit, as it's a very odd thing for a non-culprit to do. The way Will approaches it, he tries to keep it semi-secret by talking in riddles and not pressing the issue when Shannon has a BSOD. If Will represents that rare truth-finder, there's no reason for him to keep secret something everybody would have to already know.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Renall

I mean the only thing that's even marginally plausible that I can think of is something like "In their interactions, Yasu kept some of Maria's baby teeth after using 'magic' to turn them into money a la the Tooth Fairy, and then later just happened to use those teeth and a faked jaw to 'confirm' Maria's death."

Plant a fake jaw and replace Maria's records with forged records that match the fake jaw (RK07 used this trick in Higurashi). As for the other issues, I got nothing, but it's still suspicious.

When was her jaw discovered? I forget.

Originally Posted by Renall

Given this, Meta-World Ange has only ever actually seen the Meta-World presentations of the stories. When she says something like "I read End," she wouldn't be talking about the R-Prime End I think you can support this in that ANGE converses with Featherine and mentions her death in Alliance. She's probably not talking about the 1998 sequence where she appeared to die (unless that too is in Alliance, which seems absurd), but about the Meta-World death she experienced when trying to revive Battler.So the story she is aware of (and probably participated in) involved that scene. But that scene actually existing in Alliance would be both extremely bizarre and very out of character for Touya to include (he's already nervous enough about all the intimate details of Ushiromiya Battler's life, is he really going to have an intimate scene involving the sister he doesn't even remember?).

For reference, here's the quote itself:

• "In her latest forgery, 'End', she killed off seven of my relatives, at least during the actual story."

The last clause is pretty interesting.

In EP6 Ange alludes to her past death twice, once clearly talking about her meta-"hamburger"-death with Featherine. The other time was with Ikuko where it's not exactly clear which death Ange is talking about except that the conversation immediately moves to Ange's miraculous jump from the skyscraper. In any case there are all sorts of other references to EP4 1998 events throughout Ange's interaction with Ikuko in EP6.

I'm not sure exactly how consistent it is but... when Ange is talking to Ikuko her past is that of 1998 EP4 Ange, and when Ange is talking to Featherine her past is that of EP4 Meta-Ange.

Originally Posted by Renall

...So the breakdown into Body/Tea/Ura seems arbitrary and was probably done after the fact on an interpretive layer, and thus not in the original text.

Right. Point is that it's arbitrary, thus any argument that the Body/Tea/Ura is used to separate text vs. meta lacks a consistent backing.

Originally Posted by Renall

Surely they coulda guessed Shkanon at least, though. That was blatantly obvious to just about everybody after, like, ep2, even the people who didn't believe it. And if they guessed Shkanon, they could've guessed he/she was the culprit, as it's a very odd thing for a non-culprit to do. The way Will approaches it, he tries to keep it semi-secret by talking in riddles and not pressing the issue when Shannon has a BSOD. If Will represents that rare truth-finder, there's no reason for him to keep secret something everybody would have to already know.

ShKanon is kinda obvious, but the important clues for it don't come from the meta-narrative until episode 6; so we're talking idiots either way.

Oorrrrrrr... the clues we get from the non-meta narrative are actually meta-clues. Like how Kanon and Shannon never appear in front of Battler together is not how the original stories go, but some kind of amendment to the original texts that we get due to viewing them through the eyes of a certain reader (Battler/Touya).

[Cao Ni Ma]

Maria's jaw was found after the public outcry about Rokkenjima shortly after the letters were made public. It goes like this- Authorities dont find anything (or do but dont disclose it), letters signed by "Maria" are leaked and spark renewed interest, Authorities comb over the island again and only find Maria's jaw. I found the whole sequence kinda weird myself, wondered if the letters were signed "Battler" , would the authorities have found Battler's jaw instead? Did someone else go trough the trouble to actually plant this to make sure the person named Maria stayed dead?

There really isn't anything RK07 can do with this. Unless he planned some master stroke from the start, its already too late for him to do anything with it. I doubt he'll use "Our confessions" to stir more questions up except maybe to have Yasu=Ikuko being alluded to. But if he wants to pull something off, it will be with something involving Ikuko, thats for sure.

Anyways, about Ange in EP6. The whole scene is meta from the start, but it stats of with some semblance of being a "real" scene. During that time, Ange mind is completely whacked, she feels like she remembers things but cant really connect the dots. Its not until it goes full meta that she can remember these things.

[Renall]

Again though, I don't get the point of faking Maria's jaw if she's dead anyway. Everybody is believed to be dead regardless, and the only real connection is that Maria is the name that was signed to the message bottle letters.

I guess it sort of creates an "impossible crime" thing, except for the following problems:

• The bottles were at least intended to appear as if written pre-incident, even if they weren't. If anyone believed Maria was actually responsible, they wouldn't find confirmation of her death at all odd. She was supposed to be dead post-incident, after all, but the bottles were (to everyone's mind) written well before. So why bother?
• Signing the name and then confirming the death looks suspicious, particularly since even the Witch Hunters don't seem to believe Maria was the actual author. Why go to so much trouble to sign your name Maria? Why go to even further trouble to plant a jawbone? If it was just a weird coincidence, what was the point of mentioning Maria's remains specifically? It neither helps nor hurts the message bottle author in any appreciable way.
• If you were trying to ensure Maria "stays dead," that implies that you're trying to deceive people. In other words, that you're hiding that Maria is alive. However, absolutely nothing seems to actually confirm this. Maria seems about as dead as dead gets, and there are no hints that I'm aware of that she's alive. If she were alive, in secret, she'd have to be living with somebody who is willing to go to the effort to hide that fact. We know Ikuko has done this with Battler. That makes her an obvious candidate to do the same with Maria, but there's nothing to suggest this at all. And I don't see how, say, Ikuko could be Maria, short of one throwaway line, and it'd still require that Battler have basically been a hobo for like a decade before becoming Touya, which would mean a huge gap between the message bottles and the first "official" forgery.

So basically it just seems like an entirely pointless bit of evidence, the way I'm looking at it right now. It should be evidence that Maria is alive... but then the story never once follows up on that, so apparently either she actually isn't (meaning the evidence was just pointless confirmation of a death we already knew was almost certain) or she was going to be but Ryukishi didn't consider it important enough to mention. I doubt he'd drop a plot thread about Maria like that, but I'll be damned if I have the slightest clue what his actual goal was.

[Jan-Poo]

I think there's a high chance that Ryuukishi used Maria's jawbone either as a possible plot element he could use later or as a red herring.

In his previous work dental records were used to forge the identity of a body, it was easy to think the same could happen to Maria. The fact that the only body part that was found among 18 bodies was one that could be used for identification is also extremely convenient.

It's hard to think Ryuukishi didn't make any particular thought about it. Maybe he thought he could pull a "Maria comes back" in the end but then abandoned the idea. Considering his "later queen problem" essay I wouldn't put it past him.

If she were alive, in secret, she'd have to be living with somebody who is willing to go to the effort to hide that fact.

If she was alive there is one obvious person that she should have gone living with.

P.S. No, not Eva, a closer relative.

[Cao Ni Ma]

As I said, its too late to do anything with it. He probably did just do it to re-affirm that Maria was dead, but in a series that seems to be about finding contradictions it really stands out. Its the only piece of identifiable evidence that gets reported.

As Jan also stated, RK07 placed a lot of crap that went nowhere. Its basically little details that he could use as a backdoor into different possible outcomes. Most of them went nowhere and since he didn't properly close those doors by the end of the series they are just there kinda there, taunting us.

e- Jan do you mean her father? I mean she didn't even know him I doubt that she'll get a hold of him after the incident...or is it the priest she mentions in ep7...is she a nun now

[Wanderer]

Jan means Rosa. There's nothing absolute about Rosa's death, and some scenarios exist where she might have the motive and the means to hide Maria and herself. Episode 2 comes to mind for all of this.

But yeah I tend to agree that it was just a thread RK07 elected not to use.

EDIT: Apparently Jan did mean Maria's father after all. Sorry, Jan.