[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[AuraTwilight]

Beatrice's character has been described as whimsical, flippant, and at times contradictory. Bernkastel states in a letter that she has difficulty figuring out her three Rules because they, by their natural, keep changing shape. Beatrice has also been described as someone who becomes so engaged in her gambits that her methods become her objectives, and she loses sight of what she was originally trying to do.

The fact that Beatrice has two completely contradictory objectives shouldn't be a problem to you people.

Originally Posted by Glass Heart

In spoiler, could you tell me what Battler's sin is, please ?

We don't know yet.

In the end, she played to lose, I agree. But I don't think it was the case at the beginning. For some reason, she grew tired of the game after she discovered Battler has forgotten his "sin", like it was her reason to start the game to begin with.

It has been stated early in the series that the game is a torture and, at the end, the game has become a torture to Beatrice which would be the reason why she plays to lose at the very end. She became the slave of her own game, the slave of Bernkastel, an endless torture for the endless witch.

No, I think it was pretty evident she's been like this from the beginning. Before things even got to Episode 4, Lambdadelta observed that Beatrice hadn't been making the best moves she could since the game started. "are you really trying to win?"

For my claim that Maria has rejected Beatrice, I thought of the end of chapter 4, with Ange performing a magic Beatrice is unable of (giving existence to a lifeless form).
I really understood this scene as Maria losing her faith in Beatrice and in some way rejecting her, leaving the so-promised Golden Land (which I understand as the key element of the whole Beatrice's mythology, like the lost paradise).

Maria still has absolute faith in Beatrice even in future arcs, including Meta-Maria, when she appears. She only left because Ange made her promise. And though Maria loves Beatrice, really really loves her, she just loves Sakutarou more, since he's a gift from Mama.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Whats more important about the Ange/Maria/Beatrice scene is (regarding episode 5 & 6)

Spoiler:

Ange couldnt have gone inside the golden land without Beatrice wanting Ange to go there. If Beatrice wanted to just stay there with Maria she could have just denied Ange entrance. I dont know how this figures into the story, but Ange is brought back with situational amnesia in EP6, she forgets a lot of the details involving those days and the scene in the golden land. Whether or not this is because whatever she found out during that time would have given her a different insight to her narration of the events remains to be seen.

[AuraTwilight]

More precisely,

Spoiler:

She starts off with situational amnesia in the layer with Tohya Hachijo, but in the meta-world with Featherine, she has perfect memory, including of her death. But either way, yes, Beatrice wanted Ange to get Maria out of there. Beatrice would rather Maria have Sakutarou than without, and Beatrice would rather continue the game than run away. She just fell into despair and had a period of weakness.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by musouka

Yes, that's the entire point. Let me put use this example. Someone wants to put on a murder mystery dinner theater and wrote out a complete script. Somehow, everyone that was at dinner died. Looking at the script of the dinner will only tell you what the author had in mind, it won't tell you what actually happened at dinner that night.

Although it may tell you what didn't happen. If the script for the murder mystery makes out Person X to be the culprit, it would be extremely foolish for that same person to use it as a smokescreen for actual killings. They'd be accused the moment somebody solved the mystery.

[Smeckledorf]

I am not going to say this is exactly 100%, but I am fairly certain Battler's sin is a broken promise. Just reread the first five episodes; Beatrice makes quips at Battler about promises a handful of times.

Originally Posted by musouka

Yes, that's the entire point. Let me put use this example. Someone wants to put on a murder mystery dinner theater and wrote out a complete script. Somehow, everyone that was at dinner died. Looking at the script of the dinner will only tell you what the author had in mind, it won't tell you what actually happened at dinner that night.

Beatrice was outright with her goal, she wanted Battler to reach the truth. I believe Beatrice wanted to quit in episode 3 because Battler could not remember his promise and that would mean not remembering the importance of her, thus making this mystery impossible to solve. However, to say their is some kind of trick to this whole tragedy is probably true. Incidentally, I think there is no point in faking someone's death if you plan to kill them at a later time. So, if deaths are faked it is very likely that the murderer(s) didn't do so, unless it is the murderer(s) who play dead.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

So in the end whoever wrote those messages is either and idiot or someone who doesn't want the world to accept the Rokkenjima incident as a simple incident.

Or That person's a writer/occultist who wanted to profit from the incident. Hey, the occult became very popular after they were found, and bottling the stories is actually a clever sales strategy!

[Glass Heart]

For culprit X, my line of reasoning is the following for the moment:

Spoiler:

There are 17 people on the island:
-Battler
-George
-Jessica
-Maria
-Rudolf
-Kyrie
-Hideyoshi
-Eva
-Klaus
-Natsuhi
-Rosa
-Shannon
-Kanon
-Genji
-Gohda
-Kumasawa
-Nanjo


Chapter 1:

Battler, George, Jessica and Kanon were inside the mansion when Beatrice manifested to Rosa.

Battler, George, Jessica and Natsuhi were inside another room when Genji, Kumasawa and Nanjo get killed.

Battler, George, Jessica and Maria were inside the locked room when Natsuhi get killed.

Eva and Hideyoshi couldn't have faked their deaths.

Kumasawa was with Kanon during the time culprit X has returned to paint the door.

Genji, Kumasawa and Nanjo are unlikely to have faked their deaths.

So, only the six corpses remain: Rosa, Shannon, Klaus, Kyrie, Rudolf and Gohda (the latter one being too secondary to be the culprit).

It has been implied that one of the six corpses is the culprit who has faked his death.

Reverse chessboard: Shannon is the only one who can easily be identified. It may be intentional to hide the fact that she is the most likely to have survived.


Chapter 2:

Klaus, Kyrie and Rudolf are unlikely to have faked their death and, if they did, they couldn't have performed the church trick either way.

Rosa could have easily performed the murders in the chapter.

Shannon dies with George. A strange death.


Chapter 3:

It has been implied that one of the six locked room murder was the culprit who fakes his death. Shannon is part of them but, later, she seems to be resurrected, just before being killed again by Eva-Beatrice, along with George.

Rosa, along with Maria, discovered early that Eva has found the gold (she seems to have known where it was from the beginning and to have wait for someone to find it) and was one of the first murders.

Maria was probably killed because culprit X doesn't need her in this chapter.

It is implied that culprit X or an accomplice faked his death only to die really later. The resurrection of Shannon, in the real world, could have mean she didn't die in the first place. Then, she could have really been killed with George by Eva, in her madness.


Chapter 4:

The murder of Rosa doesn't really occured in the real world. It happens in the metaworld.

"For this moment, nobody exists but you on this island. However, I'm here and I'm about to kill you. Who am I ?"

Furniture don't have a real existence. It could mean Shannon.


Also, George was always one of the last residents of the island to die in each chapter (even if the same could be told of Battler and Jessica).

So I think culprit X might be either Rosa or Shannon, the most likely being Shannon for me.

[AuraTwilight]

There's no guarantee, though, that the culprit is the same in every arc. Infact, in some cases, like in Episode 3, it can't be. The identity of the culprit may be the "mutable, changing rule" that confuses Bernkastel so much.

"For this moment, nobody exists but you on this island. However, I'm here and I'm about to kill you. Who am I ?"

Furniture don't have a real existence. It could mean Shannon.

Beatrice has stated in red that furniture count as people. It is implied Beatrice was talking about a bomb with that line.

[C-chan]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

There's no guarantee, though, that the culprit is the same in every arc. Infact, in some cases, like in Episode 3, it can't be. The identity of the culprit may be the "mutable, changing rule" that confuses Bernkastel so much.



Beatrice has stated in red that furniture count as people. It is implied Beatrice was talking about a bomb with that line.

I agree with the part of one of the rules is the identity of the culprit.

And I thought Bernkastel cannot grasp this rule because she lacks of love. Anyway..

Is it possible that multiple culprit exists in each arc? Like for example, culprit X did this but unknown to him, culprit Y was doing this.

[Jan-Poo]

Or is writing things which are intentionally not true (I think we can at least accept that none of the message bottles are the true account of the events, if nothing else) in order to convey a message to someone without being all that interested in "the truth."

Of course they aren't the truth, and she didn't even hide that. If she wanted people to believe that such a fantasy was the truth she wouldn't have asked to "find the truth" in the end.

That very sentence in the end is a confession and a challenge: "This is not the truth, but neither is what you believed so far (or at least not entirely), find the real truth behind the Rokkenjima incident."

Spoiler for Higurashi:

Now if this was Higurashi, you could say that the messages have the purpose to create a golden witch myth, and in fact they did have such an effect.
However this is not Higurashi, nothing suggests that Beatrice has such an objective and it would be lame if Ryuukishi repeated the same thing twice in a row.

So in the end we are left with very few options in my opinion. Beatrice's real objective is to get someone to find the truth. Of course her greatest desire is that Battler will be that someone, but in case he fails she can still wish someone else will dispel all the illusions.

If the metaworld is a metaphorical transposition of events that occur in the real world then it can't be denied that Clair outright stated that she wished Battler would "kill" her, and that that was her greatest desire, however Battler failed, he wasn't able to keep his promise. But that wasn't the end of that. Even if Battler failed the desire to be "killed" didn't vanish. That's why even if it isn't Battler Clair is still grateful and happy that someone else (in this case Will) managed to do something that Battler wasn't able to.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by C-chan

I agree with the part of one of the rules is the identity of the culprit.

And I thought Bernkastel cannot grasp this rule because she lacks of love. Anyway..

Is it possible that multiple culprit exists in each arc? Like for example, culprit X did this but unknown to him, culprit Y was doing this.

I dont like the idea of having multiple culprits, each one different in each episode. Unless of course they are all culprits going for each others guts in each game. There have been novels where the culprit/s where in fact all the suspects but I dont know how you could validate this on a story that spans so many games.

Then again, its been hinted that you cant solve all the games with just the mystery rule sets as proven with Battler's uncaring attitude toward Bern's truth in EP7. Also Battler didn't find the golden truth until he started applying the mystery genres rules to the game. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle (which is a fallacy in itself!)

[C-chan]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Of course they aren't the truth, and she didn't even hide that. If she wanted people to believe that such a fantasy was the truth she wouldn't have asked to "find the truth" in the end.

That very sentence in the end is a confession and a challenge: "This is not the truth, but neither is what you believed so far (or at least not entirely), find the real truth behind the Rokkenjima incident."

Spoiler for Higurashi:

Now if this was Higurashi, you could say that the messages have the purpose to create a golden witch myth, and in fact they did have such an effect.
However this is not Higurashi, nothing suggests that Beatrice has such an objective and it would be lame if Ryuukishi repeated the same thing twice in a row.

So in the end we are left with very few options in my opinion. Beatrice's real objective is to get someone to find the truth. Of course her greatest desire is that Battler will be that someone, but in case he fails she can still wish someone else will dispel all the illusions.

If the metaworld is a metaphorical transposition of events that occur in the real world then it can't be denied that Clair outright stated that she wished Battler would "kill" her, and that that was her greatest desire, however Battler failed, he wasn't able to keep his promise. But that wasn't the end of that. Even if Battler failed the desire to be "killed" didn't vanish. That's why even if it isn't Battler Clair is still grateful and happy that someone else (in this case Will) managed to do something that Battler wasn't able to.

Who is Clair exactly?

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

I dont like the idea of having multiple culprits, each one different in each episode. Unless of course they are all culprits going for each others guts in each game. There have been novels where the culprit/s where in fact all the suspects but I dont know how you could validate this on a story that spans so many games.

Then again, its been hinted that you cant solve all the games with just the mystery rule sets as proven with Battler's uncaring attitude toward Bern's truth in EP7. Also Battler didn't find the golden truth until he started applying the mystery genres rules to the game. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle (which is a fallacy in itself!)

I haven't read EP 7..

I believe there is only one culprit in all games. But he/she must have managed to somehow create suspicions among the family members. In other words, she/he created another culprit. I don't know how could this be explained.

There should be some consistency of the culprit's shadows. Something that directs to him or her. We may not see it but it's just there.

Let's see.. Who could have the motive (at the same time, the brains) to do such thing..

[Cao Ni Ma]

Clair is a character from EP7, lets leave it at that. I agree with you that the culprit might have made unwitting accomplices or maybe even willing accomplices in the games and this would explain some of the issues with the mysteries. Its the roll of the accomplice to get axed in the back at one point in the story by the culprit, or maybe staked in this case?

[Glass Heart]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

There's no guarantee, though, that the culprit is the same in every arc. Infact, in some cases, like in Episode 3, it can't be. The identity of the culprit may be the "mutable, changing rule" that confuses Bernkastel so much.



Beatrice has stated in red that furniture count as people. It is implied Beatrice was talking about a bomb with that line.

Well, I think there's one culprit X but that the events can make things different (after commiting some murders, culprit X could have been killed himself by another character).

In chapter 1, 2 and 4, I think there is the same culprit. In chapter 3, I think that, at the beginning, culprit X was the same but then Eva went crazy and everything changed after that.

It could be like Higurashi where there's one character that goes crazy by chapter but still the same culprit behind each case.

A bomb ?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

If the metaworld is a metaphorical transposition of events that occur in the real world then it can't be denied that Clair outright stated that she wished Battler would "kill" her, and that that was her greatest desire, however Battler failed, he wasn't able to keep his promise. But that wasn't the end of that. Even if Battler failed the desire to be "killed" didn't vanish. That's why even if it isn't Battler Clair is still grateful and happy that someone else (in this case Will) managed to do something that Battler wasn't able to.

Which is an interesting point if we ask when the meta-world is happening.

For instance, if we suggested Will was someone who came along later and "figured it all out," that would be sufficient to kill the mystery, but it wouldn't be the "genuine" Battler killing the "genuine" Beatrice (as Clair isn't the "true" Beatrice as such). In other words somebody solved it, but it wasn't Battler, which the writer had originally hoped for. If Battler were to be dead, then obviously he'd never be able to solve the message bottles. However, if the writer knew Battler was going to die, then it wouldn't make sense to hope he's the one to solve it (and if the writer is dead, how would he/she be satisfied anyway?).

Of course, ep7 provides some heavy-handed suggestions that Battler is not, in fact, dead. So while Will or whoever/whatever he represents did "solve the mystery," it seems that "the truth" is still out of reach. Then in the epilogue we suddenly have Battler sweeping in promising a story. How else are we supposed to interpret that? ...But then again, it's certainly not like any of that is any less circumstantial than anything else he's teased so far.

[TehChron]

Originally Posted by Renall

Which is an interesting point if we ask when the meta-world is happening.

For instance, if we suggested Will was someone who came along later and "figured it all out," that would be sufficient to kill the mystery, but it wouldn't be the "genuine" Battler killing the "genuine" Beatrice (as Clair isn't the "true" Beatrice as such). In other words somebody solved it, but it wasn't Battler, which the writer had originally hoped for. If Battler were to be dead, then obviously he'd never be able to solve the message bottles. However, if the writer knew Battler was going to die, then it wouldn't make sense to hope he's the one to solve it (and if the writer is dead, how would he/she be satisfied anyway?).

Of course, ep7 provides some heavy-handed suggestions that Battler is not, in fact, dead. So while Will or whoever/whatever he represents did "solve the mystery," it seems that "the truth" is still out of reach. Then in the epilogue we suddenly have Battler sweeping in promising a story. How else are we supposed to interpret that? ...But then again, it's certainly not like any of that is any less circumstantial than anything else he's teased so far.

And then we have the funeral scene at the very beginning of the Episode 7. If Battler really did fail to "kill", her, then how are we supposed to interpret that funeral? He didnt kill her, just laid her to rest?

Thats an odd inconsistency.

[AuraTwilight]

And I thought Bernkastel cannot grasp this rule because she lacks of love. Anyway..

She cannot grasp the truth because she lacks love. She cannot understands the rules that make the truth because they confound her trial-and-error method.

Is it possible that multiple culprit exists in each arc? Like for example, culprit X did this but unknown to him, culprit Y was doing this.

That would go against a few Mystery rules. There may be different culprits in different Episodes, but there should only be one at a time.

Originally Posted by Glass Heart

A bomb ?

Yea; it'd explain why No One Is Left Alive, and why Eva survived by hiding in Kuwadorian. Furthermore, take a look at Ange's map of the island in the anime; it shows levelling and a big lack of forests and buildings, indicating that something destroyed a huge part of the island. And EP6 of the VN mentions an "Explosion Accident" in the TIPS...

And then we have the funeral scene at the very beginning of the Episode 7. If Battler really did fail to "kill", her, then how are we supposed to interpret that funeral? He didnt kill her, just laid her to rest?

Not really. Ange and Featherine discuss at the end of EP6 that Beatrice probably "went to sleep, satisfied" after that, but this was done in a fantasy scene. Beatrice was laid to rest as a character, even though the mystery is still hidden in fantasy, the truth buried deep and carried close to Battler's heart as a deep secret. That, and remember that the funeral segues directly into a world where Beatrice is "killed" by...well, the whole Alternate Universe deal.

[Smeckledorf]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

There's no guarantee, though, that the culprit is the same in every arc. Infact, in some cases, like in Episode 3, it can't be. The identity of the culprit may be the "mutable, changing rule" that confuses Bernkastel so much.

Actually, it's less of a guarantee and more like probably true. Why else would Battler be kept alive in each episode? Blind luck? However, I will agree that the culprit(s) may not be the only person(s) committing murder.

[AuraTwilight]

Or someone who isn't the culprit is protecting Battler, such as the actual Beatrice, and not the killer taking the name of a witch who shares her name.

Or he's kept alive because he's the Detective and the story says he must, and since every Episode is actually a fiction written in-universe by someone related to the Rokkenjima incident, this is an entirely sufficient explanation.

[C-chan]

Is it confirmed Battler is a detective? I'm doubting that he is.. Instead of supporting his own theories, he denies them. He doesn't want to suspect his family members but as much as possible, he denies Beatrice.

The writer of the the second and third message bottles were Hachijou/Fetherine, right? She had discovered the truth through the first message bottle.

Is Fetherine writing EP 6 while the events were taking place or did she wrote EP6?