[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[rogerpepitone]

jjblue: That scam partly depends on the person being imitated not being close enough that they spoke very frequently. In this case, Battler had spoken with Kyrie just hours before, and it had been at least a few days since Battler had rejoined the family. I find it very unlikely Battler would be fooled by an unskilled mimic.

And Jessica would definitely be able to recognize a fake Krauss.

[Uberzaki]

Hey guys, I need help finding a link to that webpage/essay called "a brief history of detective fiction" IIRC. I ended up losing the link in the transition between an old PC and my new PC.

[rogerpepitone]

Are you referring to "A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection", by Mike Grost?
http://mikegrost.com/classics.htm

[Cao Ni Ma]

The issue is that aside from some mannerisms, we dont really know how people sound like. Krauss might have a shrill girly voice from having used steroids in his youth. Kyrie might have a deep manly voice ala Dr. Girlfriend. Gohda might have the most epic tenor voice imaginable as he sings while cooking.

How likely or unlikely the scenario of someone successfully imitating another voice is in limbo do to the physical limitations of the body and the fact that the person has never showed being trained in this.

In comparison, the possibility of everything being recorded never occurred to me until I read about recording something during an episode. Im pretty sure it was post ep4 as well but I cant quite remember. If RK07 states that everything can be solved with information given up till EP4 and the recorder was never mentioned till EP5+ then it would feel just as bad. I'd rather think it was them going along on the phone or being threatened.

PS- No one's answered my question about Maria's death bubbles. Is it feasible for them to still remain around her mouth after more than 6 hours of being dead? Wouldn't the spit have dried up by then?

[Uberzaki]

Are you referring to "A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection", by Mike Grost?
http://mikegrost.com/classics.htm

That's it! Thanks mate.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

The issue is that aside from some mannerisms, we dont really know how people sound like. Krauss might have a shrill girly voice from having used steroids in his youth. Kyrie might have a deep manly voice ala Dr. Girlfriend. Gohda might have the most epic tenor voice imaginable as he sings while cooking.

There are voice acted versions of these characters, but of course your mileage may vary as to whether those voices should apply to the VN.

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

How likely or unlikely the scenario of someone successfully imitating another voice is in limbo do to the physical limitations of the body and the fact that the person has never showed being trained in this.

In comparison, the possibility of everything being recorded never occurred to me until I read about recording something during an episode. Im pretty sure it was post ep4 as well but I cant quite remember. If RK07 states that everything can be solved with information given up till EP4 and the recorder was never mentioned till EP5+ then it would feel just as bad. I'd rather think it was them going along on the phone or being threatened.

As for "everything can be solved" with just up to ep4, IIRC he said something along these lines, but the context made me think he was mostly talking about ShKanon, Beatrice's motive, Battler's sin, Author Theory, etc. A lot of the details of the crimes, especially in episodes 3 & 4, were just not available to us (and many most still aren't).

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

PS- No one's answered my question about Maria's death bubbles. Is it feasible for them to still remain around her mouth after more than 6 hours of being dead? Wouldn't the spit have dried up by then?

Well, I don't know about the feasibility but... I'm not sure what it could even be a clue to.

[Cao Ni Ma]

The crimes where solvable rather easily using Shkanon. The reasons why the characters would go along though where always a mystery but money solves everything (probably). Yasu itself felt kinda left field and Battler being a mystery buff felt like a stretch.

About Maria, it all depends in whether or not saliva can stay like that for more than 6 hours. If it cant then it means it hasn't been more than six hours since she spat it. Which means that when Battler came in the night and found her corpse it probably wasnt a corpse yet. Or someone spat in her mouth at one point the morning

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

About Maria, it all depends in whether or not saliva can stay like that for more than 6 hours. If it cant then it means it hasn't been more than six hours since she spat it. Which means that when Battler came in the night and found her corpse it probably wasnt a corpse yet. Or someone spat in her mouth at one point the morning

Yeah, I understand that. I should have been more clear; what I meant to ask was: How does the possibility that Maria was still alive help us solve anything?

[Cao Ni Ma]

It depends, It could mean characters that Battler initially thought where dead where actually playing possum. People like Gohda and Kumasawa. It leaves a little more wiggle room for Yasu to carry out the scenes. While Battler walked around the mansion with his hatstand spear, Yasu was offing people that where outside of it and then offing herself.

It brings up a problem if Maria was still alive at the time Battler did his check. How did she die later? Was Yasu still alive? Did she commit suicide? Did she somehow leave the island thus dodging the red near the end of the episode?

Of course it could mean that RK07 was oblivious to it. How in depth he went with this particular corpse makes me doubt it, he even had Battler go "Its just like in those tv shows". Then again, surviving a drowning incident without human intervention happens in tv shows too when it should be impossible, maybe Im giving RK too much credit here

[Jan-Poo]

Well in EP4 Shannon kills herself with a gun attached to a weight near the well, that much is pretty much confirmed. There is very little reason for her not to kill Maria beforehand, so I guess she was poisoned first. Since Battler said she had a peaceful expression the poison effect must have been rapid.

As for for the voices at the telephone I suppose it can't be denied that they were faked but it's improbable and it isn't a necessary theory. The theory that some adults were threatened or bribed or convinced to play along the murder plan is unavoidable since it's the only way to explain Hideyoshi in EP1 and Rosa in EP2, plus it's explicit in Natsuhi EP5.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

It depends, It could mean characters that Battler initially thought where dead where actually playing possum. People like Gohda and Kumasawa. It leaves a little more wiggle room for Yasu to carry out the scenes. While Battler walked around the mansion with his hatstand spear, Yasu was offing people that where outside of it and then offing herself.

Bubbles or no bubbles, Yasu already had plenty of time for shenanigans before Battler actually investigated where Shannon's body was reported to be. Getting Maria to fake her death only to kill her later serves no advantage in this; Yasu would just kill her from the start and be done with it.

On the other hand, I've long suspected that Genji did not die when reported. It makes a shitload of logistical sense (Genji could be a very helpful agent for Yasu), and there is even a fantasy-narrative hint: Jessica's sense that Ronove is Genji. Of course this does not mean he wasn't really dead by the time Battler saw him in the dining hall. Other people like Rudolf and Natsuhi could have still been alive after the first twilight too and they would be useful as hostages to get Kyrie and Krauss to cooperate. But sadly I don't think we'll ever know the truth about these things.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

As for for the voices at the telephone I suppose it can't be denied that they were faked but it's improbable and it isn't a necessary theory. The theory that some adults were threatened or bribed or convinced to play along the murder plan is unavoidable since it's the only way to explain Hideyoshi in EP1 and Rosa in EP2, plus it's explicit in Natsuhi EP5.

I think you are wasting your time if you're just going to ignore Will's answer. Or do you think it means something else besides "They were already dead before the call"?

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I think you are wasting your time if you're just going to ignore Will's answer. Or do you think it means something else besides "They were already dead before the call"?

Eh?

Will's EP4 solution was entirely a nice way of saying "Yeah, that was all a bunch of bullcrap." Every single time of death is pretty up in the air.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I think you are wasting your time if you're just going to ignore Will's answer. Or do you think it means something else besides "They were already dead before the call"?

"Dead people can't recant the fictions they told in life" was how I read it, more or less.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Kealym

Eh?

Will's EP4 solution was entirely a nice way of saying "Yeah, that was all a bunch of bullcrap." Every single time of death is pretty up in the air.

I agree for the first and second twilights because for those he says and repeats "Illusions to illusions. The tale woven by the gold truth returns to illusions". However, for the 3rd-7th twilights (Kyrie's group) he says "Earth to earth. Illusions to illusions. Silent corpses, adorned with fiction."

This really stands out to me. Why the change? Something must be different about this one.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

"Dead people can't recant the fictions they told in life" was how I read it, more or less.

Ah. That's sensible. I never looked at it that way.

However, I really felt like the use of "adorned" was passive in the sense that it was done to the corpse, not merely a described state of the corpse.

I took a look at the original Japanese:
「土は土に。幻は幻に。
……虚構に彩られし、物言わぬ骸。」
Reading the Japanese reinforces my feeling. The key verb "彩られ" (adorned) is passive form, which to my (limited) understanding of Japanese conveys a strong sense of "done to". My instincts tell me (could be wrong) that using Japanese to simply describe the state of the corpse in this context you would just use plain past tense (彩った).

I'm about 75% sure on this. I'd appreciate if any higher-level Japanese readers could weigh in.

[UsagiTenpura]

Read a few pages ago that Shannon/Kanon still is hard to accept to some.
Thought I'd add one thing concerning that.

In arc 1's Ura, try to execute Bern, and then read her tips. She basically explains, before red was even introduced, the concept of "life and death" for a witch. She can die if she stops thinking and revive if she starts thinking again. The concept of boredom killing a witch is not unique of that part either, but something more or less constant in the serie.

It fits perfectly with the idea that Shannon and Kanon can revive at will. It'd probably be interesting to approach the arcs in which they died and revived as "what made her lose interest in playing them" and "what changed her mind about it and made her interest in these roles rise up again later on".

Then in that Ura Bern calls Beatrice an incarnation of the rules of the board. She explains that we need to "watch the game" and "learn the rules" from it. She parallels it to someone learning chess by watching others playing a game. This implies pretty clearly that the rules of the board are not the normal mystery rules some readers expect her to follow. A game where the goal is figuring out the special rules, which is stated as early as episode 1, cannot have normal/standard rules as the answer.

Taken differently if the rules of the game were supposed to be standard mystery rules/common sense and that this is what we were supposed to find out, it'd be like Ryuukishi taking us for idiots.

What'd be cheating is if she broke her own rules, not if she's not following the rules we expect her to follow.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I think you are wasting your time if you're just going to ignore Will's answer. Or do you think it means something else besides "They were already dead before the call"?

As everyone else said Will sentence doesn't say that, that's quite a free interpretation. To put it in a strictly literal way it's:

"adorned with fiction corpses that can't talk"

The subject here is "corpse" not "Jessica" "Kyrie" and so on. Therefore Will is referring to the time Battler actually saw the corpses. At that time of course none of the corpses could talk.

"adorned with fiction" doesn't have any subject, nor it is specified that they were "adorned" before or after the corpses became corpses.

Your assumption that this must have been done by someone else than the victim or only after they were killed is invalid.

The proof of this is Shannon herself who is included among the corpses. Clearly her corpse was "adorned" before she died.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

What'd be cheating is if she broke her own rules, not if she's not following the rules we expect her to follow.

Except she did exactly that. She said "this is how you know I'm telling the truth," and then lied. I'm not sure what planet people are on where "I'm telling the truth... according to a set of definitions of words which are not the standard definitions and which I refuse to explain" is considered honesty. It's a dumb hack that destroys his integrity to justify his dumb gimmick.

Which, lest I remind everyone again, does not solve anything. And has hilarious unintended consequences that make all of the stories completely pointless. I was okay with writing in your fictional characters into your story, sure, we'll go with that. But killing them while allowing a body to stay alive, or just arbitrarily being able to declare them dead or alive when nothing has happened? That can go fuck right off.

And it isn't even helpful for anything. It doesn't teach us anything about the mysteries or the character behind the mysteries that we couldn't already know, save perhaps that she is an asshole who doesn't know what words mean.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

On the other hand, I've long suspected that Genji did not die when reported. It makes a shitload of logistical sense (Genji could be a very helpful agent for Yasu), and there is even a fantasy-narrative hint: Jessica's sense that Ronove is Genji. Of course this does not mean he wasn't really dead by the time Battler saw him in the dining hall. Other people like Rudolf and Natsuhi could have still been alive after the first twilight too and they would be useful as hostages to get Kyrie and Krauss to cooperate. But sadly I don't think we'll ever know the truth about these things.

I do agree with Genji being alive for the most part till Battler saw his corpse near midnight. But its because of this that I think that Kumasawa and Gohda where still alive when Battler first checked them trough the hole. If Genji was still alive at the time of their murder then Yasu could have used his help to properly hoist them instead of doing it half assed. She'd just ask for the key and kill them, have Genji prop them up while she tied to rope. Even if Gohda freaked out at the last moment they'd just cut the lock and off them. Substitute for another lock and hide the bolt cutters inside the shack. Battler would have to destroy the lock to verify, at which point he wouldn't be able verify if the lock was the original one.

About what Will stated. That would at most be relevant to Kyrie only. It wouldn't even apply to Jessica. So a more broader interpretation like the ones mentioned would fit better.

And as for Maria and her spit, I really dont know what form of conclusion we can come out of it. It just seems like something that sticks out if you take the events before them into consideration.

Another weird thing is the possibility of different type of ammunition. You had a strong caliber round thats capable of blowing a head in half. You also have a round thats just strong enough to go trough the skull but not enough to leave an exit wound. Again, this tells us nothing about what many of us think because its much easier for Yasu to just use the same weapon for everything.

[Jan-Poo]

I think not only Genji but most of the people if not everyone was still alive at the time of the various phone calls. It makes easier to explain why there was such a general compliance to Yasu's plan.
Also it would make Yasu's actions more rational. If that was a test meant for Battler it would be more logical for it to have a good resolution in case he passed. Naturally there can't be any good resolution when your whole family has been already killed.

In other words everyone was still alive at the time Battler talked to Beatrice, believing it was just all a prank or a joke. Unfortunately they all died for real once Yasu realized Battler didn't remember anything and wasn't going to remember anything.

That's the most rational solution in my opinion. Plus the fact that everyone aknowledged Kinzo's existence is proof of the fact they all decided to comply with Yasu's plan for that evening.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

I do agree with Genji being alive for the most part till Battler saw his corpse near midnight. But its because of this that I think that Kumasawa and Gohda where still alive when Battler first checked them trough the hole. If Genji was still alive at the time of their murder then Yasu could have used his help to properly hoist them instead of doing it half assed. She'd just ask for the key and kill them, have Genji prop them up while she tied to rope. Even if Gohda freaked out at the last moment they'd just cut the lock and off them. Substitute for another lock and hide the bolt cutters inside the shack. Battler would have to destroy the lock to verify, at which point he wouldn't be able verify if the lock was the original one.

The nooses were probably part of the faking because of their length, so Yasu would just need to cut the lock off and shoot both of them while they were pretending to hang there with their eyes closed.

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

Another weird thing is the possibility of different type of ammunition. You had a strong caliber round thats capable of blowing a head in half. You also have a round thats just strong enough to go trough the skull but not enough to leave an exit wound. Again, this tells us nothing about what many of us think because its much easier for Yasu to just use the same weapon for everything.

Picture this scenario: Krauss paints his head up with a bunch of theatrical gore to make it look like he got shot in the head with a shotgun. Then Yasu comes along, shoots him in the same place with a rifle, and plugs the wound with a stake. Now the fake gore is splattered with real gore, and we have the illusion of a shotgun wound with a stake haphazardly stuck in it.