[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[ijriims]

I suppose Erika is a parody on all those unrealistic Shonen detectives, or whichever works portraiting too-powerful detectives.

[June 1983]

Erika = L!

[HigurashinoUmineko]

Sorry but L is awesome. Erika isn't!

[lubczyk]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

If you want a classical mystery ending...."The butler did it".

Ronove's the murderer? I buy it!!! No one has suspected him yet.

[Geekodot]

Originally Posted by lubczyk

Ronove's the murderer? I buy it!!! No one has suspected him yet.

Ronove = this dude?

[Ithekro]

He's suppose to be that Demon, yes.

Trouble is...which butler? Or is Genji the only human to fit that role?

[Workworkwork]

I've been thinking about the closed room murder in Natsuhis' room in EP2, and I think I figured out the "Why", even if the "How" is still sketchy.

Spoiler for The "Why":

Rosa was seen at the chapel in the magic scene, correct? Now, I don't take this to mean she and all the others saw a bunch of dancing golden butterflies and took that as proof some chick in a miniskirt was a witch. I do think, however, that she took the key to Natsuhis' room sometime before the corpses in the chapel were discovered by Battler. She then handed this key to George to confirm a hunch she had, who later went there with Gohda and Shannon.

What did she want in that room?

Simple-Kinzos' corpse. THAT is the BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG hint for EP5 that Lambda promised us, not Natsuhi using red. Since we never saw Kinzos' corpse in EP2, and in EP5 he was not discovered in the boiler room, we should be able to connect the dots and figure out Kinzos corpse was in Natushis' room in EP2, just as it was in EP5. Rosa somehow knew about this, and sent George to confirm her hunch. He went there with Gohda and Shannon, but they didn't count on the killer also knowing about Kinzo.

Spoiler for The "How":

Whoever it is stabs George and brains Shannon quickly, but Gohda is a little quicker to react, and carries them to the relative safety of Natsuhis' room. Sadly, he gets stabbed just before he can lock the door. Dying, he is unaware of what George wanted, so he ransacks the room, not bothering to check Natushis' bed for Kinzos corpse.

[Marion]

Rosa wasn't in the chapel when George, Shannon and Gohda were attacked. She was in the parlor room with Battler and Maria.

[Renall]

If Kinzo's corpse was in Natsuhi's room in ep2, where did it go? It wasn't burned (the only time it wasn't, well, not counting ep5's events). If Rosa found it for some reason, where'd she take it? How'd she move it? Or was it still in Natsuhi's room somewhere, and hidden?

[Ithekro]

Trouble is...Shannon should know about it in the first place.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Marion

Rosa wasn't in the chapel when George, Shannon and Gohda were attacked. She was in the parlor room with Battler and Maria.

He means in the scene with Suit-Beato and all the adults.

Originally Posted by Renall

If Kinzo's corpse was in Natsuhi's room in ep2, where did it go? It wasn't burned (the only time it wasn't, well, not counting ep5's events). If Rosa found it for some reason, where'd she take it? How'd she move it? Or was it still in Natsuhi's room somewhere, and hidden?

Under the bed. Battler isn't a real detective, he never searched the room.

Why not under the bed or a secret compartment under the bed?

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Trouble is...Shannon should know about it in the first place.

And? She might consider it her last duty to Natsuhi to not tell anyone about Kinzo's death.

[Ithekro]

There is the closet. Being a mansion, and this is the room for the lady of the house...those could be some big closets.

And? She might consider it her last duty to Natsuhi to not tell anyone about Kinzo's death.

And therefore could be implicated as the cuplrit (or a cuplrit) if she see's her task as keeping the secret of Kinzo....even from George. Though I wonder how easily she could dispatch George and Gohda, and yet manage to get herself killed with a head wound? Though stabbing or shooting the two in the body, might allow them time to get a weapon (if one exists that isn't in Shannon's hand) and use it on her.

Alternately, she does part of the task, and then is silenced with a shot to the forehead by Genji.

How does the door get locked? Maybe they locked the door when they entered the room so they could have time to search without interruption, not knowing Shannon was in on it. Or, alternately, Genji is considered under Rosa's control, and thereby may use a master key...unless there is another key that will open that door specifically that isn't in George's pocket (because having worked with having to hand out keys, sometimes a key from one room, will actually unlock another room, even if it isn't the master key...they just happen to be keyed the same).

Odd pondering:
Shouldn't there be a sixth master key? Most places I've been, the maintainance staff all have master keys. Thus the five servants present. However the boss/head of the house also has a master key...thus Kinzo should have had one as well. Though since the servants (mostly) know about his condition, they might have taken that one away some time ago. According to the red there are five keys. But unless Gohda has Kinzo's old key...why doesn't Kinzo have one?

[Renall]

There's some reasonable basis for speculating the corpse is kept in Natsuhi's room, I suppose:

EP1: Natsuhi is alive, as are most of the servants (including all the eagle servants). Someone could've moved Kinzo's corpse to the boiler room, as everyone who knows where it is except Krauss is alive.

EP2: Natsuhi is dead, but perhaps for some reason the corpse is found by someone who doesn't burn it. Alternatively, no one finds the corpse in this episode.

EP3: Kinzo is burned, but the problem is that all the servants are killed too, and Natsuhi and Krauss are in the conference all night. So either they arranged for someone else to do it, or the corpse was found by someone who coincidentally decided to burn it. Or, I suppose, the servants were caught burning the corpse and killed. The Nanjo theory would work here, as Nanjo knows Kinzo is dead, and has no alibi for the First Twilight.

EP4: Kinzo is burned, but we have no idea what happened. It's possible the pressures from the other siblings caused Krauss to panic, and he was caught burning it, or he revealed the body and someone else burned it after killing a bunch of people.

EP5: We don't know where Kinzo's corpse is, but we might have found out if the game had kept going. Natsuhi is alive, as are all the servants who would know except Genji, plus Nanjo. So it's unlikely to be lost.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Shouldn't there be a sixth master key? Most places I've been, the maintainance staff all have master keys. Thus the five servants present. However the boss/head of the house also has a master key...thus Kinzo should have had one as well. Though since the servants (mostly) know about his condition, they might have taken that one away some time ago. According to the red there are five keys. But unless Gohda has Kinzo's old key...why doesn't Kinzo have one?

"Master key" was never defined, to my memory.

There might well be a key that opens all or most of the doors but for whatever reason isn't classified as a "master key".

The existence of such a key would solve 90% of the closed room mysteries.

[Renall]

Does the CEO of a company have keys to the entire building? No. Generally not.

Who does? The janitor.

It's entirely probable that Kinzo and Krauss didn't have master keys to their own home, trusting the servants for that sort of thing. The servants, however, would need master keys to go about their duties (cleaning, moving things around, etc.).

[Ithekro]

Depends. Where I worked the Director did have a master key set that would unlock most of the doors. The Assistant Director also had a master key set. This was so they could come in at any time, even if the maintance staff was off duty.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

EP3: Kinzo is burned, but the problem is that all the servants are killed too, and Natsuhi and Krauss are in the conference all night. So either they arranged for someone else to do it, or the corpse was found by someone who coincidentally decided to burn it. Or, I suppose, the servants were caught burning the corpse and killed. The Nanjo theory would work here, as Nanjo knows Kinzo is dead, and has no alibi for the First Twilight.

The burning itself is really strange because it draws the adults' attention to the boiler room first, even though the letter inside implied that it was supposed to be the last room visited in the closed room chain. If the boiler room were meant to be the first visited, that would require the adults to have some means of getting inside, and the closed room chain only makes sense if the adults don't know about the unlocked door to the courtyard.

If we look at all of the rooms where bodies were found, the only ones that the adults could reasonably break into first are the chapel and the parlor. Going to the chapel first would get them to the boiler room last, but we saw from the adults' search pattern that they initially focused on the rooms they found locked in the mansion, and didn't even consider looking outside until they found the chapel key in the boiler room. Even though they could theoretically get into the chapel first, it's much more likely for them to have done exactly what they did: go in through the parlor window. If we take the parlor to be the first room in the chain, then we would expect the letter to be in that room or in the chapel. The boiler room doesn't make any sense at all.

Suppose that for Reason X (say, Natsuhi and the servants are trying to set up a distraction to keep everyone from wondering about Kinzo), the servants deliberately set up the locked room chain with the intention of faking their deaths. However, instead of Kinzo being in the boiler room with a letter, what if they had actually planned for a sixth person to fake their death in that room? After the closed room chain was constructed, this sixth person broke from the plan and burned Kinzo's corpse to take their place. Then the sixth person is the one who left the letter from "The Golden Witch Beatrice". The letter was not part of the original closed room setup.

[Geekodot]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Odd pondering:
Shouldn't there be a sixth master key? Most places I've been, the maintainance staff all have master keys. Thus the five servants present. However the boss/head of the house also has a master key...thus Kinzo should have had one as well. Though since the servants (mostly) know about his condition, they might have taken that one away some time ago. According to the red there are five keys. But unless Gohda has Kinzo's old key...why doesn't Kinzo have one?

There are only five master keys! That was made pretty clear in episode 2 ^^.

[Workworkwork]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

There are only five master keys! That was made pretty clear in episode 2 ^^.

He referenced that. What I'm wondering is why does nobody think that Kinzo, the master of the house, might have the key to his room doubling as a master key in function?

True, by assumption, "Only 2 keys to Kinzos room work=Those 2 keys don't work with any other room". But maybe...

It could have a special function that makes it compatible with other doors. This could have been Rosa's hunch that made her send George out to get the key, actually.

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Workworkwork

He referenced that. What I'm wondering is why does nobody think that Kinzo, the master of the house, might have the key to his room doubling as a master key in function?

True, by assumption, "Only 2 keys to Kinzos room work=Those 2 keys don't work with any other room". But maybe...

It could have a special function that makes it compatible with other doors. This could have been Rosa's hunch that made her send George out to get the key, actually.

It's also made clear for almost every closed room that "only the five master keys and the single key to this room can unlock the door". There's no getting around that at all. I think the doors leading outside the mansion are the only ones that Kinzo's key could possibly open and have any significance to the story.

Maybe there were a few closed rooms without such tight red text.