[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

Her reaction to the First Twilight was sure some good acting if so.

What reaction would that be? The one that happened before Battler arrived on the scene, when Shannon and Kanon were both in the chapel at the same time and Rosa sent them to do two separate things?

Although, it's entirely possible to know intellectually that something is fake and still have a visceral reaction to it.

Originally Posted by Renall

Plus there's the major problem of even if everyone involved somehow knows it's fake, why are they okay with letting people like Battler and Jessica think it isn't? Kind of a gigantic dick move to let people think their moms and dads are brutally murdered, even if there are circumstances keeping you from telling them openly. Not even a twinge of regret?

Vast piles of cash combined with financial desperation and the belief that there won't be lasting harm seems like a reasonable motivator there.

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

I have serious problems that anybody could believe that anybody on the island could believe that E2T1 was fake.

By the time the six were found, they had all already died. Anyone who started out thinking the victims were fake would assume that the gore was from Shannon's makeup and wouldn't fiddle with the corpses, and everyone else would just see perfectly legitimate dead bodies, so none of your objections apply.

[Cao Ni Ma]

So yeah Rosa decided to lock her siblings who she thought where alive inside a chapel for all day. They got plenty of sweets and soda in there they'll be fine! Also while the initial events in the chapel are fake the events after Battler and co got there are most like not. Rosa went physically pale when she remembered that the door was locked. Then again, if the door was never locked that would give us a clue of Rosa's ability to act eh?

Maybe Rosa never locked the door after that scene in the first place...the door is locked with a golden thread...

[rogerpepitone]

Hypotheses:
1) E2T1 is real, and every innocent thinks it is real.
2) E2T1 is fake; Rosa isn't involved.
3) E2T1 is fake; Rosa is involved.
4) E2T1 is real, but some innocents (Rosa for one) think it is fake.

My comments are is response to hypothesis 4.

Try to imagine, in hypothesis 3, the scene right before Kanon is sent to "find Nanjo". I'd expect the victims to be sitting up, stretching, until right before Kanon leaves, maybe even a little after he leaves. There'll probably be a last-minute script check before he goes.

Therefore, I have serious problems with hypothesis 4: "Geez everyone; we've got a few minutes; you don't need to get into character yet."

And as somebody who has done the "coffin trick" for Halloween, yes, for an untrained person, staying motionless for 8 minutes is tough. Eva's martial arts training might include such training, but it stretches imagination to claim that the other five could all pull it off believably.

[cronnoponno]

What if the siblings got into an uber fight, all ended up dying, then Rosa, being the only survivor, thrust them into the chapel and gave them that grotesque makeup to make it look like she couldn't have possibly committed it?



Maybe the motive for the Rosa-partner theories should be ''What accident happened that made her have to create the illusion of the witch'' instead of ''is she able to be bribed/mislead from being incompetent?).

[rogerpepitone]

cronnoponno: "The six people were already dead by the time they were discovered! All were killed by other people! All six were genuine victims, and did not take part in a mutual murder! There was no simultaneous murder!!" (「６人は発見時にすでに全員死亡していた！ 全員が他殺だ！ ６人は全員が純粋な犠牲者であり、相互の殺人には関与しない！ 相打ち殺人は存在しない！！」)

[cronnoponno]

''All were killed by other people''. meaning anyone so long as it isn't themselves.
''All six were genuine victims'', Nothing changes if they were the victims of a sibling fight.
''The six people were already dead by the time they were discovered!'', who discovered them? If they killed each other, Rosa discovered them, then moved them, nothing changes.
''There was no simultaneous murder!'' Is very vague.
''Did not take part in a mutual murder!'' There were 6 ''victims'', an even amount of people, there has never been a rule saying that something that is not a corpse can't be called a corpse. Mutual can imply ''two people square off in a fight and kill eachother'', meaning, as long as this doesn't happen, the massacre can still happen.

AKA: Kyrie kills Krauss, someone who's not Krauss kills Kyrie, and so on. As long as ''Krauss and rudolph got into a fight, with there being one victor'', this can happen, at least we can interpret it that way. To further elaborate, it's like episode 7. Krauss and Hideyoshi sort of fought, Hideyoshi survived, Natsuhi and Eva fought, Eva survived. There was no ''draws''.

If Rosa saw this, it's only natural that, as a survivor and a fellow sibling, guess who would get the highest amount of blame?

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

That's something we've been discussing the previous page actually. My position is that I can only really explain Rosa's behaviour if Beatrice told her about the bomb (and the switch) and promised her that she'd turn the switch off if she did as she said with the promise of letting her and Maria survive.

Rewinding time since I missed this bit somehow -- I can think of two issues with saying that Rosa was threatened with the bomb.

First, you have to assume that she wasn't shown where the bomb mechanism was. If she had any idea, she would have run there and shut it off as soon as she found Shannon dead. So that means she would need to have taken it on faith that the bomb existed at all. Possibly she'd do that out of fear after being faced with six corpses, but I don't know.

Second, you have to explain why Rosa didn't try to warn anyone or flee the mansion with Maria during the various times that Shannon and Genji were away from the group. After going up to the study she even had a weapon; wouldn't it have been a better idea to capture them and figure out something with the other survivors?

Originally Posted by cronnoponno

''All were killed by other people''. meaning anyone so long as it isn't themselves.
''All six were genuine victims'', Nothing changes if they were the victims of a sibling fight.
''The six people were already dead by the time they were discovered!'', who discovered them? If they killed each other, Rosa discovered them, then moved them, nothing changes.
''There was no simultaneous murder!'' Is very vague.
''Did not take part in a mutual murder!'' There were 6 ''victims'', an even amount of people, there has never been a rule saying that something that is not a corpse can't be called a corpse. Mutual can imply ''two people square off in a fight and kill eachother'', meaning, as long as this doesn't happen, the massacre can still happen.

I'm sorry, but this is nonsense.

- "All six were genuine victims." They weren't guilty of anything related to each other's murders.
- "They did not take part in a mutual murder." None of them killed each other.
- "There was no simultaneous murder." Specifically denies Battler's bullshit theory about them standing in a circle shooting each other, but also covers the possibility that there was a shootout and the last two people killed each other.

This pile of red is extremely clear and repeats the same idea four different ways. You can't establish otherwise without twisting the semantics of Beatrice's words in a way that she professes to hate.

Besides which, where are you saying they got the weapons from, and why would Rosa hide them if she was blameless?

[cronnoponno]

I explained it all in the bottom, and the way red is worded, even if Beatrice says it, is subject to question. It always has been, every single piece of red in this story has been able to be worked around by twisting logic and thinking outside the box rather than in it, and Battler himself confesses to loving this sort of twisted logic in EP 8.


They can be interpreted as victims even if they committed murder themselves. There is no rule stating a culprit cannot be a victim of a murder.

There are 6 victims in the first twilight, this means this can be pulled off as a chain. Lets say we have 6 people, Bob, Jack, Jil, Diana, John, and Mark. It's a mutual death if Mark gets in a fight with John, and they kill each other. However it is not mutual if Bob kills Jack, then Diana kills Bob, then Jil kills Diana, then John kills Jil, then Mark kills John, then the phsyco witch Sodayasu, or even the other sibling Rosane could have committed the final murder. Thus, no kills are mutual killings, it is one-sided, where the victims are victims. ''All were killed by other people''. If Rosa does discover the last survivor, we can say the last survivor said ''Fuck it, might as well kill everyone'' like Bern predicted in ep 7, and was killed by Rosa in her own self-defense(Like a certain Eva in EP 7). Then, knowing no one would even blink twice at this story, figured it'd be more beneficial to hide the corpses in the chapel, or Yasu could have killed the survivor, then Rosa stumbled on them randomly, thus not knowing the truth herself, then changing the crime scene by moving the corpses because if she announced the crime she feared she'd be the one suspected, in any case, many scenarios and possibilities can be true after the murders, however the core riddle can be solved this way. I also was not implying that they ''all killed each other at the same time''.


Also, we're not taking into account if they had weapons or not, as long as it was feasibly possible that they can be killed, it can become part of the tale. As unlikely as it is, Beatrice, as the game master, can make it happen, so long as ''The chances aren't zero''.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by cronnoponno

As unlikely as it is, Beatrice, as the game master, can make it happen, so long as ''The chances aren't zero''.

Yes, the game master can make anything happen if she wants, no matter how likely. However: Beato hoped for you to solve this game, and she created it… created the riddle of this story, so that it was solvable. You can doubt and twist her words however you like, but by that time you've stepped outside her tale into a place where you can never prove anything.

And on that note: At the time (singular) the six who were in the chapel were killed, the culprit (singular) was in the chapel!

[cronnoponno]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Yes, the game master can make anything happen if she wants, no matter how likely. However: Beato hoped for you to solve this game, and she created it… created the riddle of this story, so that it was solvable. You can doubt and twist her words however you like, but by that time you've stepped outside her tale into a place where you can never prove anything.

The second you start trusting a Witch in a way like this is when she gets you by the balls, it is the game masters job to muddle facts and confuse the rules, there would be no game if the game master didn't use every bit of trickery she can use to win. Just throwing yourself before her reds as if they can't be questioned doesn't seem like the solution we're supposed to get from this red. Lia even prevents Battler from believing everything she says blindly by telling him she changes the wording when told to repeat certain lines in red.


And on that note: At the time (singular) the six who were in the chapel were killed, the culprit (singular) was in the chapel!

Well, a revision can be made to this then, it can still be made solvable. The culprit of what? The culprit of the six who were killed, after they were killed by different people? Or the culprit of the crimes after the game itself?

Battler could not say ''No murder was committed after the deconstruction of the closed rooms'' in red to Erika after the first twilight in EP 6 because ''there would be more murders in the future so he can't say it''. So he had to be specific with the red he used to respond, furthermore, when Erika told Battler to say things in red concerning ''Krauss's group'', Dlanor had told Erika to be more specific, so she had to name each and every one of them, and tell Battler to say that they are not culprits in red, in which Battler wanted to ''keep the facts in darkness'', so he changed it to ''(all names in Krauss's group) were not involved in the murders of(each name of each victim in first twilight).

I can probably wrack my brains on this and try to find a better solution, but so far this one seems workable so I won't until I have this one completely denied.

(and just for a random joke theory that I don't care about having validated, they never said the culprit had to be alive, so if the ''culprit of one of the six murders'', lets say from my example ''Jill killing Diana, Jill being the culprit'' is in there, however dead, the red becomes completely meaningless and is instead used as a weapon to shut Battler up and confuse him)

Notice how it was called a ''Riddle'' and not a ''Mystery''? Maybe she meant that ''By solving the riddles, the mystery becomes solvable'', in other words, the riddles give hints to another mystery, this can be anything like ''Why did these people end up going so crazy?'' But that's just random thoughts there, I'm not saying that's what it was.

EDIT: Okay I believe I have my quotes fixed to be more accurate now.

[Yopee]

The six people were already dead by the time they were discovered!
Since you're playing crazy word games with the red - my definition of discovery is that only someone unaware of the six dead people can 'discover' them.
The seventh person to complete the circlejerk of death in the chapel for your scenario could be either:
1. an accomplice/subculprit who met and killed the sixth person that survived the late night quintet chapel manslaughter
2. the mastermind culprit in the most common and truest sense

There is no room left for the seventh person that completed the circlejerk to be unaware of the madness that happened at the chapel because all six of the dead people were discovered dead, not "five dead and one alive but will soon be dead once the seventh person pops a cap in him/her".

Your first scenario with Rosa being the innocent passerby wouldn't work UNLESS you are saying that the seventh person (Rosa) was aware of the murders in the chapel yet was not intending to kill anyone, went to the chapel, met the sixth survivor, and killed the survivor via self-defense.
That's one badass innocent seventh person to complete the circlejerk. Might come close to small bombs even

For your other scenario where Rosa is the eighth person to arrive at the chapel and discovers the dead six - Rosa would be doing a lot of unnecessary work just to make sure people believe that everyone else was equally suspicious as she was. If the culprit didn't already, Rosa would have to move dinner table and crapload of halloween stuff into chapel, move bodies onto chairs, carve up stomachs, stuff candy into said stomachs, and place a one-winged eagle letter and three gold ingots on the table.
Also, there were no traces of blood or anything of that sort to suggest the bodies were moved. Furthermore, Beatrice is already a perfect scapegoat.

Why not just let the seventh person be the one to kill all six in the chapel? Rosa would be suspected, sure, but she could still place the blame on the mysterious guest Beatrice easily. The servants (minus Gohda) would agree with Rosa that Beatrice did arrive.


As for your questioning of the definition of culprit, there's no true way to prove it to you. The moment you doubt the red down to each and every single word is when the definition of every single word (not just the red) will be subject to equal doubt from you. You can doubt gold, blue, purple, whatever and however you want so long as you know what theory you wish to come up with and squeeze it through words of all seven colours of the rainbow. Dangerously close to Erika. Or maybe even worse?
Only way you'd be satisfied is if ryukishi compiled an 'Umineko Dictionary' with the definition of every single word used.

Actually, I think I would want him to publish that dictionary...

[cronnoponno]

Originally Posted by Yopee

The six people were already dead by the time they were discovered!
Since you're playing crazy word games with the red - my definition of discovery is that only someone unaware of the six dead people can 'discover' them.
The seventh person to complete the circlejerk of death in the chapel for your scenario could be either:
1. an accomplice/subculprit who met and killed the sixth person that survived the late night quintet chapel manslaughter
2. the mastermind culprit in the most common and truest sense

It was more of a variable, it could be that ''Yasu killed the sixth person, Rosa found it'', or other situations.

There is no room left for the seventh person that completed the circlejerk to be unaware of the madness that happened at the chapel because all six of the dead people were discovered dead, not "five dead and one alive but will soon be dead once the seventh person pops a cap in him/her".

So you're saying it's a rule that a corpse can only be discovered once?

Your first scenario with Rosa being the innocent passerby wouldn't work UNLESS you are saying that the seventh person (Rosa) was aware of the murders in the chapel yet was not intending to kill anyone, went to the chapel, met the sixth survivor, and killed the survivor via self-defense.
That's one badass innocent seventh person to complete the circlejerk. Might come close to small bombs even

This is more or less what I was trying to suggest, if the survivor of the circlejerk decided at that point he/she might as well kill the hell out of everyone, it's only natural Rosa, upon discovery would defend herself. In the unlikely case that she survived, who would believe her? Would Battler think that his parents would commit the murder? There's just no way they would.


your other scenario where Rosa is the eighth person to arrive at the chapel and discovers the dead six - Rosa would be doing a lot of unnecessary work just to make sure people believe that everyone else was equally suspicious as she was. If the culprit didn't already, Rosa would have to move dinner table and crapload of halloween stuff into chapel, move bodies onto chairs, carve up stomachs, stuff candy into said stomachs, and place a one-winged eagle letter and three gold ingots on the table.
Also, there were no traces of blood or anything of that sort to suggest the bodies were moved. Furthermore, Beatrice is already a perfect scapegoat.


Hm? It was clear that Beatrice, after having ''fixed'' Maria's candy, wanted to hold a halloween party for her, so we can use her as an excuse to say that ''the stuff was already set up for this''. As for the blood, if this is a ''riddle'' and not a ''mystery'', it isn't needed. But I won't say that, lets just say that ''they forgot to add footprints, so why would they add blood?'' or ''the blood was cleaned afterward'', after all, if effort was put to stuff a stomach full of candy, why not put the effort in to make sure no one notices that they were moved?

Why not just let the seventh person be the one to kill all six in the chapel? Rosa would be suspected, sure, but she could still place the blame on the mysterious guest Beatrice easily. The servants (minus Gohda) would agree with Rosa that Beatrice did arrive.


Because, she said in red that ''they were killed by different people'', if the reds are as accurate as you all suppose, this means that more than one person must be responsible.

As for your questioning of the definition of culprit, there's no true way to prove it to you. The moment you doubt the red down to each and every single word is when the definition of every single word (not just the red) will be subject to equal doubt from you. You can doubt gold, blue, purple, whatever and however you want so long as you know what theory you wish to come up with and squeeze it through words of all seven colours of the rainbow. Dangerously close to Erika. Or maybe even worse?
Only way you'd be satisfied is if ryukishi compiled an 'Umineko Dictionary' with the definition of every single word used.

There is a huge difference to this, Erika did it ''For the sake of outwitting others and to masturbate her intellectual exstacy''. Ryukishi never made any narration that states ''thinking a little'' to bypass reds is immoral.

Actually, I think I would want him to publish that dictionary...

This whole loyalty you all offer to Beatrice's reds as if some sort of ''integrity'' must be met seems a bit generous. The rules of the game between witches and humans in this case have been laid out clearly, and it is made clear that this sort of clean play is not what the game is about. (I'll finish answering the quotes this post and the ones before will get when I come back here tomorrow)

[AuraTwilight]

Well, yea, to an extent, it kind of is about that. While trickery is involved to extent, there's not really any canonical results of words being utterly redefined to be divorced from their common usage successfully. We're supposed to trust the Reds or else they're useless to us, and you can just semantically argue them to mean anything you want.

A good rule of thumb is if you have to interpret a red to mean something it's never implied to mean, you're doing it wrong.

[Jan-Poo]

I understand why one would become distrustful of red after the death of personalities and such. However that part was only accepted until it was practically impossible to deny it. Now you can think that this sort of trickery is not limited to that specific case, but there aren't hints for other particular interpretations.

At this point cronnoponno I want to ask what is that you are actually trying to achieve.

Do you want to prove you can find a theory that can explain things without being denied?
or
Do you want to understand the "truth" that Ryuukishi hid between the lines of this story?

In the first case, have fun if you want. But when your premises are that there is no reliably perspective, there is no reliable narrator and the red truths can be freely interpreted, it doesn't seem like a remarkable task in my opinion. The possibilities are near infinite.

In the second case I think you need to reason a bit more on the general story and on what Ryuukishi was trying to accomplish, what kind of story he has in mind and try to deduce what kind of trick he'd use based on the already solved cases. Also you'd need to consider Will's cryptic solution and the various interviews Ryuukishi relesead.
Simply looking at red truths and trying to squeeze theories past them won't be enough.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

While trickery is involved to extent, there's not really any canonical results of words being utterly redefined to be divorced from their common usage successfully.

"Dead."

That's kind of an important redefinition.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by cronnoponno

Because, she said in red that ''they were killed by different people'', if the reds are as accurate as you all suppose, this means that more than one person must be responsible.

I'll take this one. This is actually just a translation artifact; the original phrase literally means "each person's death was caused by someone other than that person", i.e. nobody killed themselves.

[cronnoponno]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I understand why one would become distrustful of red after the death of personalities and such. However that part was only accepted until it was practically impossible to deny it. Now you can think that this sort of trickery is not limited to that specific case, but there aren't hints for other particular interpretations.

At this point cronnoponno I want to ask what is that you are actually trying to achieve.

Do you want to prove you can find a theory that can explain things without being denied?
or
Do you want to understand the "truth" that Ryuukishi hid between the lines of this story?

In the first case, have fun if you want. But when your premises are that there is no reliably perspective, there is no reliable narrator and the red truths can be freely interpreted, it doesn't seem like a remarkable task in my opinion. The possibilities are near infinite.

In the second case I think you need to reason a bit more on the general story and on what Ryuukishi was trying to accomplish, what kind of story he has in mind and try to deduce what kind of trick he'd use based on the already solved cases. Also you'd need to consider Will's cryptic solution and the various interviews Ryuukishi relesead.
Simply looking at red truths and trying to squeeze theories past them won't be enough.

Who's to say my method doesn't show any truth? By solving the riddles thus far, we learn something each time:

''The chain of illusions holds back naught but illusions''
This tells us certain characters are allowed to be delusional, and that their perspectives must be investigated.

''Let the man of illusions go back to where he belongs''
Didn't everyone see a corpse that looked like Kinzo's? This tells us that fake corpses are allowed to be used.EDIT: This might not be true, as with EP 5's token golden truth about the corpse.

''The stake of illusions can pierce naught but illusions''
Meaning some characters aren't even there.

If my solution to the knock riddle is correct, then we can note that ''Characters can mishear things, and this can be used to keep the illusion of a witch''


Lets say my theory does work, lets say that each person was killed by another person. We can then learn that ''Some murders that happened were truly impossible for just one person'', which would have made episode 7 more predictable. Also, Aura, that makes my theory easier, because now ''everyone can achieve a draw'', meaning some characters can even kill off 2 and so on, just like Kyrie in EP 7. Although this is only a possibility.

My theory is that Beatrice was less definitive on her reds than later on because Battler wouldn't have been able to work his way around them as well as he started to learn in Episode 5. Bernkastel and other characters were much more clever, so more detailed reds were required. It was more important for her to teach him other things at the time, like his sin from 6 years earlier.


There has been plenty of evidence to suggest that the ''real answers'' to these cases are something an average mystery fan would say ''What the fuck?'' over, such as when Battler gets saved from a logic error, he says to Beatrice ''Are you sure this answer works? People are going to start complaining that this isn't a mystery anymore...''

Meaning, we can think that the true answer is not some direct line of reasoning that can be reached by believing in some sort of honor behind Beatrice's reds, and as I have said earlier in this thread, Battler himself has screwed around with the reds to ''not restrict the witches darkness''.


My motive is actually, to have these theories proven wrong, that way I can build up more reasoning, but if the only thing people are going to do is prove me wrong by telling me I am playing unfair, and then placing the morality they perceive in this game into practice(the same way I'm doing the opposite), then I unfortunately have to say that my theory does not waver, and I have even given a special hint that solving the riddle this way can imply that the actions in EP 7 can be predicted by solving it this way.

I have given examples of times when the red was used unfairly, where even the main characters have used them in the ways I explained, and possible rewards given to clue the reader for solving them early. All I'm hearing in response is reds that are only being perceived lightly, and not being worked around, although that last bit about the translation artifact was something I was worried about before I was told that, if I have taken an English translation too literally and it can be worded differently in the Japanese language(which is the original language this was written in), then I fully welcome any corrections to be given on the English reds given.

[Jan-Poo]

My motive is actually, to have these theories proven wrong

there's no way to prove them wrong with such premises, case closed. You can add your theory to the thousands theories that cannot be proved wrong in umineko.
This kind of game could work before Ep6 when people didn't try to find ridiculous loopholes in red truths, this game it's been since long dead.

You can ignore this fact and try to discuss with other people that still haven't realized this, but I know already the outcome: you'll win; for the same reasons Dlanor couldn't beat Erika in their mini challenge in EP6.

[AuraTwilight]

"Dead."

That's kind of an important redefinition.

Eh, not really. In the context of the works Shannon and Kanonare treated as if they were separate living people even though they're not, and 'death' is consistent with "This asshole's not showing up ever again."

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Eh, not really. In the context of the works Shannon and Kanonare treated as if they were separate living people even though they're not, and 'death' is consistent with "This asshole's not showing up ever again."

Just to go back to something Renall brought up a couple pages ago, I assume that THIS was the "problem" in EP 5's narrative - basically, that Shkanon was treated as two living, breathing, physically separate people, and Erika was just lounging around both of them with her perfect Detective's-Authority-Perspective, easy peasy.

Assuming Shkanon is, of course, a major part of Beato's heart, and assuming further that EP5 was written as ... ... a sort of exercise ... like, End was written under the premise of "Well maybe Shannon and Kanon are truly two physically seperate people", sort of like Banquet was written under the premise of "maybe Eva became the culprit", it explains why it's called a game "without love", because the "love" required to realize the truth of Shkanon is completely dismissed.

In that sense, it would've made Dawn a bit unfair for Erika, because it implies a drastic change in the "rules" of the game that she would'nt have noticed because she gave up the objectivity of her perspective, there (though Battler had expected her to keep it ... probably). That last point I have a hard time completely reasoning out because I like the "Battler is an evil-genius troll" regarding EP6, but it depends on who you think, between him and Erika, was more predictive steps ahead of the other.

Anyway, EP5, Kanon is REAL! Jessica find Zepar and Furfur and tells 'em to suck it.