[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Judoh]

Hold up... there's a shkanon culprit theory that can get around the reds about them being dead almost immediately after piece Battler's hears about it? And it's not ridiculous? Care to clue me in?

[Will Wright]

Originally Posted by Judoh

Hold up... there's a shkanon culprit theory that can get around the reds about them being dead almost immediately after Battler's hears about it? And it's not ridiculous? Care to clue me in?

The short version is that Shannon and Kanon are different people, but Kanon cross-dresses as Shannon sometimes. This means that only one of them is truly a servant and the other one just pretends to be one. This gets around Dine. They both share names.

Previously, this was accepted as "they share names just because" but under the new Meta theory, we can assume that they share their names because they are the same person.

Shannon is Beatrice. Once 'Shannon' is dead that means that only Beatrice remains. More realistically speaking, Kanon disguises himself as Shannon and shares the Shannon name as well, so 'Shannon is dead' and 'Kanon is dead' both apply to the same person while Shannontrice is still perfectly alive, without even getting into personality death territory.

The reason why Kanon died is that while Shannon cares about him, 'Beatrice' does not, or something similar.

Double Shkanon basically assumes that the reds about them being dead could refer to only one of them being dead(that one being Kanon, who is also Shannon sometimes) leaving Shannon/Beatrice alive and well to kill people.

If we assume that Yasu/Shannon/Beatrice is not a servant, this gets around Dine, and based on the meta theory, they share a name, which justifies the Shannon/Kanon death reds.

The one we refer to as Shannon is in fact 'Sayo.'

She is not 'Shannon' because she is not a servant in the first place, she is Yasu. 'Shannon' is a name given to servants. Not being an official servant, Kanon also becomes Shannon in order to do everything for her.

An extension of this theory is to assume that Kinzo ordered Kanon to do everything for Shannon(Beatrice) so that she wouldn't have to work as that would be unfit for his love. He planned on having her live as a servant(or rather, pretend to be a servant) until the day she solved the epitaph and 'revived.'

It's worth noting that Genji is an accomplice under this scenario.

This is the short version, so there are a few holes here and there.

[ameskitty]

I still think there's a lot of subtext for a jealous George culprit (that cut-short scene in the EP7 tea party was a particularly big red flag to me), but fictional-Shannon throws a big wrench in that. Wonder how it'd work in the "real world" .

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Will Wright

Shannon is Beatrice. Once 'Shannon' is dead that means that only Beatrice remains. More realistically speaking, Kanon disguises himself as Shannon and shares the Shannon name as well, so 'Shannon is dead' and 'Kanon is dead' both apply to the same person while Shannontrice is still perfectly alive, without even getting into personality death territory.

The reason why Kanon died is that while Shannon cares about him, 'Beatrice' does not, or something similar.

Double Shkanon basically assumes that the reds about them being dead could refer to only one of them being dead(that one being Kanon, who is also Shannon sometimes) leaving Shannon/Beatrice alive and well to kill people

What I'm wondering about is how it works with this red because the time it's used is immediately after piece Battler hears about the murders at the guesthouse.

6 people: Kinzo, Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda, and Kumasawa are dead!

Originally Posted by Will Wright

If we assume that Yasu/Shannon/Beatrice is not a servant, this gets around Dine, and based on the meta theory, they share a name, which justifies the Shannon/Kanon death reds.

This is something else that I've been confused about. From what I understand this only works if we assume the real name is Beatrice. Because Dlanor says that A person first introduced in the 5th game [and after] cannot be named as the CULPRIT

So it can't be named as Lion, Yasu, or Will for example.

[Will Wright]

Originally Posted by Judoh

What I'm wondering about is how it works with this red because the time it's used is immediately after piece Battler hears about the murders at the guesthouse.

6 people: Kinzo, Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda, and Kumasawa are dead!

This goes under this:

More realistically speaking, Kanon disguises himself as Shannon and shares the Shannon name as well, so 'Shannon is dead' and 'Kanon is dead' both apply to the same person while Shannontrice is still perfectly alive, without even getting into personality death territory.

In other words:

Person we refer to as Kanon= Kanon, Shannon
Person we refer to as Shannon=Beatrice

From what I understand this only works if we assume the real name is Beatrice. Because Dlanor says that A person first introduced in the 5th game [and after] cannot be named as the CULPRIT...

So it can't be Lion, Yasu, or Will for example.

Beatrice is introduced in episode 1. That she is in fact someone else(who was also introduced during episode 1) doesn't break Knox.

That Beatrice 'exists' while being one of the people in the island is an easy conclusion, so it gets around Knox & Dine.

Moreover, the character wouldn't be being introduced. Just re-imagined. That's allowed under Dine and Knox.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Will Wright

This goes under this:



In other words:

Person we refer to as Kanon= Kanon, Shannon
Person we refer to as Shannon=Beatrice

I guess I can accept that.

Beatrice is introduced in episode 1. That she is in fact someone else(who was also introduced during episode 1) doesn't break Knox.

That Beatrice 'exists' while being one of the people in the island is an easy conclusion, so it gets around Knox & Dine.

Moreover, the character wouldn't be being introduced. Just re-imagined. That's allowed under Dine and Knox.

Okay now it makes more sense. I was thinking of them as completely new characters.

[Will Wright]

Also, Double Shkanon combined with the meta theory explains a few things, like Shannon's BSOD(Will was really talking to Kanon that time/requesting to talk to Shannon and Kanon mean requesting the same person, but not in the way people are thinking) and it can be used to explain episode 6's final locked room, though regular Shkanon can also do that.

[Leafsnail]

Double Shkannon does have the advantage that Battler's thought process ("I'd be fine with saying Kanon, Gohda, Genji, Krauss, Rudolf and Jessica are in the other room...") wouldn't be a lie.

[Used Can]

The only problem with a 2 Shannons, 2 Kanons, Double Shkanon, call it what you will is that it breaks the premise of how the Shkanon theory was born. Well, it was born due to ShMion in Higurashi, but its very base is the fact Battler never saw Shannon and Kanon together. If they are indeed two people, then I'm sure Battler would have seen them together at least once.

Of course, we could say that, due to their duties, that never happened. And Battler never seeing them together is just a consequence of that. That, or as I said in a previous example, Yasu/Shannon/Beatrice wasn't around once the game began because (s)he had other things to do - and (s)he only shows up (as Suit Beatrice) whenever Kanon's body disappears. Personally, I think the latter is, quite possibly, the better explanation. However, I still cannot feel comfortable with it.

[Jan-Poo]

actually double shkanon is a lot closer to shmion than single shkanon

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Used Can

The only problem with a 2 Shannons, 2 Kanons, Double Shkanon, call it what you will is that it breaks the premise of how the Shkanon theory was born. Well, it was born due to ShMion in Higurashi, but its very base is the fact Battler never saw Shannon and Kanon together. If they are indeed two people, then I'm sure Battler would have seen them together at least once.

Of course, we could say that, due to their duties, that never happened. And Battler never seeing them together is just a consequence of that. That, or as I said in a previous example, Yasu/Shannon/Beatrice wasn't around once the game began because (s)he had other things to do - and (s)he only shows up (as Suit Beatrice) whenever Kanon's body disappears. Personally, I think the latter is, quite possibly, the better explanation. However, I still cannot feel comfortable with it.

He did see them together at least once. Twice, in End. In the parlor when Erika was introduced, and later in the dining hall. But that was the game where he explicitly denied he had a reliable perspective. Still, we always had the issue of why he would tell that lie.

There are various ways to reconcile it, even so, and Author Theory gives us even more (now, we can say things like "ep5's author was mistaken" if we believe in Single Shkanon, or "ep5's author was aware of Double Shkanon, so there wasn't a problem showing them once," or "ep5's author is Battler and he's lying about it").

Right so...

Evidence Ange Wrote Banquet and Alliance

• First and foremost, she appears in Banquet for the first time. Whether that's as a real character or simply as a meta-presence, when we reach the end of ep3, suddenly there she is. We have to conclude that the author is either quite imaginative, is writing in or after 1998 and is aware of the actions of the apparently very private Ushiromiya Ange, or is Ange herself. I know which one I prefer.
• Eva survives in Banquet. If there is only one future, we can be reasonably sure Eva survived in it unless a real fast one's being pulled here. There is no particularly rational reason to write a story in which Eva happens to survive except that the writer knows that Eva did survive. This doesn't narrow it down to Ange specifically, but it does narrow it down to post-event writing because only then would the world know Eva is alive. Granted, she does not survive in Alliance, but at that point Ange probably understood the fiction concept better, and she seemed more interested in writing to Battler anyway.
• The introduction of new characters and furniture. If Requiem is to be believed, Maria was the genesis for much of the magic world which Beatrice adopted. Beatrice herself uses only the Stakes and Goats in Turn, but by ep3 alone we introduce Virgilia, Ronove, and the Siestas. By Banquet we also add Gaap and Sakutaro. If we accept the premise given to us in ep7, the only people who can come up with a story that just so happens to draw on Maria's ideas are Beatrice (who, if she wrote 1-2, didn't use most of them even though she could have), Maria herself (who is at least apparently dead), one of the other magic characters (but it seems Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo are dead), or Ange who has the diary. I would further venture to say that only Beatrice, Maria, and Ange could possibly know the whole Sakutaro story, and only Ange, Maria, and Rosa could know about the story of Sakutaro's "death." And only Ange can know Sakutaro is not dead.
• I'll let Oliver go over this in more detail, but the pen names discussion used in ep6 is interesting. The seemingly arbitrary number that happens to work out to 18^8 that was initially attached to Banquet and Alliance is equivalent to the chance of hitting red or black 8 times in a row on a roulette wheel. In addition to tripping the roulette and miracle metaphors, it just so happens that the 8th person in the Ushiromiya succession is Battler. Alternately, if Kinzo is known to be dead, it shifts down a peg to... Ange.
• Kyrie is elevated in importance after being unceremoniously killed off twice by the message bottle writer in the First Twilight. In ep3 she survives for a while and gets to beat a Stake, and by ep4 she's become a brilliant and tragic heroine who has a touching last-minute conversation with Battler. Where previously we were told by Kyrie herself that she really isn't allowed to do much in the siblings' conversations, suddenly she is doing things and is even the first in ep4 to suggest that Kinzo might be dead, and even prepare a blackmail plan around that concept. Why change Kyrie's character around? Well, if she happened to be the author's mother...
• The portrayal of Beatrice shifts around a lot, as if the author isn't totally sure what to make of her. Banquet is the first time Beatrice is ever suggested to be even remotely sympathetic. By the end of Alliance she's become quite pitiable. If the author of Legend and Turn was Beatrice herself, she apparently didn't want to be portrayed this way (at least not obviously), because she takes all necessary steps to avoid painting herself this way in ep2. This only really suggests someone else wrote the later works, which we kind of suspected, but Ange would be a person to have conflicting feelings about Beatrice, since Beatrice is the person claiming to have stolen away her family.
• If the message encoded into Alliance is come home, onii-chan, there's really only one person it could possibly be written by and only one person it can be written to.

[Used Can]

Originally Posted by Renall

He did see them together at least once. Twice, in End. In the parlor when Erika was introduced, and later in the dining hall. But that was the game where he explicitly denied he had a reliable perspective. Still, we always had the issue of why he would tell that lie.

My point was, so far, none of the detectives (whose POVs are supposedly reliable) have seen them together. The only time we thought that happened, we got Battler's perspective, but he was no longer the detective.

As for why would he lie, it's probably the same as when he saw Kinzo. He probably never really saw Kinzo, but something that symbolises and/or is related to him. Battler looking at Shannon and Kanon may be something like this. That, and if I remember correctly, he was in the room during the time that letter was dropped, and that whole thing was quite likely a fat lie.

[Renall]

Screw the detectives. That's exactly the sort of dependence that could hobble our reasoning. If Battler isn't the detective it just means he can mislead, not that he must do so. Either he or the author must have a reason to do it. If that reason is important, it might be a clue in and of itself. That's a lot more important than fixing reliable perspectives. Heck, Natsuhi is the most reliable perspective in End, and she's bonkers.

[Oliver]

There are a lot of quite obvious arguments to think that Ange wrote Ep3 and Ep4, starting with the special treatment Kyrie gets (she gets the right to speak when she otherwise wouldn't, survives a long time, dies in a very noble manner, has a heartfelt phone conversation with Battler), and the fact that Eva is obviously painted the culprit in Ep3. Lots of magical elements are introduced which should only be possible to find in Maria's diary which Ange supposedly has.

Let us see what comes from this.

If you study the scene of Ange meeting Hachijou with the assumption that Ange wrote Ep3-4, you can easily notice that Ange doubts Tooya's identity at every turn. Should a claim be possible that Hachijou Tooya wrote 3-6, the following two conditions must be satisfied:

• Ange has a reason to call herself Itouikukuro Reigonamu, that is, the number 11019960576 has a special meaning for her.
• Someone else has recognised either that special meaning itself or noticed that it equals 18^8, which can also be written as a name, and used that to build the Hachijou identity -- which is that of a masked male author -- sometime after Ep3 has been published on the Internet, or.

After some looking, I was able to find a special meaning for 11019960576. An American Roulette wheel has two green spaces (0 and 00), and can roll a total of 38 numbers, of which 18 are red and 18 are black. The odds of getting black or red eight times in a row are 18^8 times out of every 38^8 times -- that is, 11019960576/4347792138496.

Why is it significant? Counting from Kinzo down the Ushiromiya ranking, Kinzo-Krauss-Eva-Rudolf-Rosa-Jessica-George-Battler, Battler is the 8th Ushiromiya, and if you wanted to finger him among the island population with a number, 8 is the number you would use. Someone who picks 18^8 as their name wants a miracle of getting rouge eight times in a row, the miracle of the survival of the 8th person, and that is perfectly natural for Ange.

That raises a question of who the lady known as Hachijou really is, and I'm getting an image of the surviving Battler who shows up for book signings in glasses and a mask, and then asks his assistant to claim his pseudonym to meet Ange.

On the other hand... Twelve years ago, Hachijou has to have been a flat-chested loli with long black hair.

[Renall]

Note too that, if indeed "Itouikukuro Reigonamu" and "Hachijou Tohya" are not the same person, then someone is trying to claim to have written not just Banquet and Alliance, but also End and, at the time Ange appears at Featherine's, Dawn as well.

The problem here is that I'm not entirely sure the authors of Banquet/Alliance, End, and Dawn are actually the same person. Ange potentially wrote the first pair, I think it's probable that Tohya/Battler wrote Dawn (it is his game, after all), but then who wrote End?

[Used Can]

Originally Posted by Renall

Screw the detectives. That's exactly the sort of dependence that could hobble our reasoning.

I honestly don't see how. I could say the same about the Knox and Dine's rules, and about the Red as well.

Originally Posted by Renall

If Battler isn't the detective it just means he can mislead, not that he must do so. Either he or the author must have a reason to do it.

Piece Battler saw a lot of things he shouldn't, like the Eiserne Jungfrau and Kinzo. Let us remember it was Lambda's game as well.

[DaBackpack]

I talked to a friend today about Umineko today and he had some interesting ideas about the nature of witches and Battler's sin.

Each of the high witches represents a concept. Bernkastel is, of course, the concept of "miracles." She is a bitch because, metaphorically speaking, miracles don't always come to those that need them. She represents the nature of "miracles."

Lambdadelta represents the concept of "certainty," obviously. That's probably no surprise.

This is where the theory comes in. Beatrice herself represents another concept. Remember how, before the murders, Beatrice was always blamed for strange things that occured around the mansion. These were not malicious events; instead, they were things like "why is the window unlocked?" or "who did this?" Maria took a liking to Beatrice as a witch that could do anything. Beatrice is the concept of "luck" or "that which cannot be explained."

However, six years ago, Battler probably tried to blame something bad on Beatrice. This created a chain reaction of events (I don't remember this part too well) and the "Beatrice" we all know was born.

The Legend of Beatrice was nothing more than a prankster but never did anything wrong. Battler uses the name "Beatrice" to place blame on that which he could not explain. When people started dying, he said "some 19th person did this." This made matters worse for Beatrice (probably made Maria upset).

He refuses to believe magic, but also refuses to acknowledge his family members as suspects. Instead, this "19th person X" did it all.
Beatrice always taunts him with "Blame it all on me!" because that is what she (not the "Legend" Beatrice but the Witch Beatrice) represents.

When Battler finally realizes that he and his family had to have done the murders, the concept of "Witch Beatrice" dies. He accepts responsibility for his family's corruption and therefore defeats the concept of the "19th person X."
He tries to ressurect Beatrice in EP6 but cannot do it because he already knows the truth.


(I'm sorry, this is really a botched version of an intriguing theory I heard today. I'll post a more comprehensive explanation later or have him do it himself.)

[Leafsnail]

Hmm.

So, if Ange is the writer of eps 3 and 4, the scene with Tohya claiming she wrote it becomes pretty funny.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

Hmm.

So, if Ange is the writer of eps 3 and 4, the scene with Tohya claiming she wrote it becomes pretty funny.

Don't worry I don't see any reasonable risk for that to turn out to be the truth.

[Leafsnail]

I thought it was a bit silly until I noticed the direct appeal to Battler to come home to Ange. It didn't really make that much sense in the context of the episode, but it would tell a theoretical reader-Battler that Ange still loves him and wants him to come home.