[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Ep. 4 Alliance of the golden witch

[luckyssol]

Originally Posted by unconfirmed

I think the magic seen in Umineko are just the manifestation of extreme emotions. Ange said stuff like "without love/hate there can't be magic" and etc.

George and Jessica's powers are probably the result of their strong feelings for Shannon and Kanon, respectively. Oh and I found this theory really interesting:

Beatrice is love. In the most literal sense. Love is the cause of Kinzo's madness. Love is why Maria trusts Rosa unconditionally. Love is the impetus for the grisly murders. Love is the magic that can change the world. Love kills. Love can lift them up and transform them, but not until it's put them through hell. And the name 'Beatrice', of course, is from the Divine Comedy: the universal symbol of unattainable love.

That's interesting, so the witches are really just manifestations of emotions. Then Lamda can be ambition based on certainty of achieving ones goals through the passage of time. Bernkastel, hope, based on traveling world after world searching for perfection. Witch Maria, innocence, based on achieving happiness through terrible situations. etc...

[Jan-Poo]

That's the same conclusion I reached a while ago, except to me Beatrice's "endless magic" is "fantasy" in its truest sense.

[rogerpepitone]

Well, it's described as a tool shelf; perhaps things that might be used inside tended to get left there.

[Jan-Poo]

Even though there is a warehouse inside the house?

[Freelii]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Even though there is a warehouse inside the house?

Maybe there is one in there too! There could be five or six cleavers around the mansion for all we know.

As for why there is a cleaver in the boiler room... I don't think it was ever specified how the boiler maintains it's heat, so perhaps it could be used for wood chopping as a back-up system should electricity fail? Or if they run out of coal?

[Ithekro]

Hmmm. (just for amusement) Say things are being transported via matter/energy/matter conversion methods. Who's says it is the living murderer being transported? If the victim is to die anyway...transport them out of the closed room, kill them (if they didn't die in transport), make whatever changes you need to their bodies (smashed faces and whatnot) then transport them back into it again. Or if one can maintain the momentum of an object in transport...transport a stake in flight (fired from a weapon, or just dropped into the beam) and allow it's momentum to kill the victim.

Micro-wormholes I believe were theorized for use by the military to deliver small explosive packages to the capital builfing of an enemy nation. They is no valid reason that this would work, though it does bring up the question on if a wormhole needs to be large in the first place.

[Ithekro]

Who uses a cleaver with a hook on it to chop wood? The axe looks like one you would use for fire safety than for splitting logs.

[Freelii]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Who uses a cleaver with a hook on it to chop wood? The axe looks like one you would use for fire safety than for splitting logs.

Maybe they want to cleave wood instead of chop it!

You have a point though, I was mostly grasping at straws. The presence of a cleaver in the boiler room, though, just doesn't strike me as all that relevant or important. I'll eat my words if it can be proven otherwise.

[k//eternal]

Actually... you do use them to chop wood. Just don't expect to chop trees with them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billhook

[Ithekro]

Okay, but why would you have that in the boiler room? Wouldn't you keep that in the gardening shed to take out vines and brush rather than cutting up wood for the boiler (coal boiler I suppose so that you wouldn't need to have a servant tending it all the time.) An oil burner wouldn't have a place big enough to drop a person, and a wood burner would probably be inefficent with a reduced staff on a island. Not impossible, since you wouldn't have to import the coal, but still. Shove some coal in a few times a day when needed rather than go back ever hour or two to put in more wood. But we don't know how much staff they normally have. They might just cut down a few trees a year to keep the place warm in the fall and winter, then not bother during the summer and spring, save on cold nights or during storms.

[Freelii]

The other exit from the boiler room leads up some stairs and outside, right? So it could still be service as a place to store extra tools. Or maybe the exit from the boiler room that leads outside has plants that grow around/near the doorway that need thwacking with the billhook/cleaver every so often.

[Renall]

It's kind of interesting that the anime shows the axe Battler uses in ep4 hanging in the boiler room next to the cleaver. Well, at least we know nobody was handling that thing...

Something that bugs me about Nanjo: He's too important to too many theories. I don't like that. Like say we believe Kanon faked his death in ep1. Okay, so Nanjo had to confirm his death. He's either incompetent, lying, or in on it. Same thing with somebody faking it in the shed (although Nanjo did not check all those bodies). The problem is, Nanjo is doing something dubious in every episode, yet to the apparent benefit of completely different parties. And he knows Kinzo is dead, so he likewise must be "on someone's side" before the murders even happen.

So how can he be trusted by any of the killers? How do you motivate him and win his loyalty? The presence of the safe off-island suggests he only has one boss. But that would mean his behavior should always conform to predictable rules.

Nanjo's behavior ought not be so variable. Ange's discoveries would weight his behavior (and Kumasawa's) toward some specific (but unspecified) objective. What does he gain from helping certain murderers over others? What decides who will keep him alive (and he's always kept alive at least for a while, which is highly suspicious) and who will kill him off? Or are we meant to take his presence and probable behavior as a hint that the theories which rely on his involvement are flawed?

If they're not flawed, is the person Nanjo actively helps the "default" killer?

[ghost_zero5]

@Ithekro:
Didn't I mention this possibilty too? As said in that case the murderer wouldn't even have to be on the island itself.

[Renall]

Come on guys. Wormholes? Let's not advance theories that, if true, make the story stupid. I'd hate for us to be right. Although I'm pretty sure cloning and teleportation are right out. They're essentially magic anyway.

[Ithekro]

I was stating it for amusement. Any sufficiantly advanced technology will seem like magic.

Though on the other note "Beatrice = Love", I'd like to see that become a meme of sorts. Sort of like Rosa is "The Best Mom Ever" level meme, where instead it is "Beatrice is Love".

[ghost_zero5]

Of course, it won't end that way (with wormholes) but actually it would still solve the mysteries
I just stated it as a possibility which is highly likely NOT the solution for this but which would still work. It would just be too "easy" to be the solution the author intends to show/give us

Originally Posted by Ithekro

I was stating it for amusement. Any sufficiantly advanced technology will seem like magic.

I agree with this one
Of course, the same goes vice-versa too. All that seems to be magic is just a sufficiently advanced "technology" that might not yet be explained.

Regarding "Beatrice = Love": Why is it "Love" for Beatrice? She doesn't actually seem to be someone who does something because of "Love". Except maybe that "different" Beatrice we saw in Episode 4 (before they switched again).

I am not sure if this has been answered yet but is Witch Hunt going to translate Ep5 too? If not, it wouldn't make sense to buy (actually import it which would take some time and therefore I wanted to do this before the translation is finished) it for me (as I don't understand Japanese - at least not yet, sometime I might learn it a bit).


EDIT:
Btw. I think it would be quite interesting if Battler too could interact with the game board like Beatrice can, e.g. that way he could even protect people from meeting their deaths - especially because his endless 9 magic resistence Not to mention it would be quite funny to watch if the game board Battler and the other met...

[Nih]

There was a theory that Nanjo is doing things for money to help his sick grandchild. But if he is working for a killer, then his plea for life in episode three raises questions: did that killer, be they Nanjo's employer or not, know about
his grandchild?

In any case, if Nanjo is involved, his behavior seems to indicate that he's feeling fear or guilt at times, but most of the time he is still calm and collected.

I really don't know what to make of it, perhaps his involvement is limited to not disclosing Kinzo's death and at the start of the games, he is not aware that killings will take place.

[rogerpepitone]

Was the plan that involved the safes of money necessarily the same as the one that involved the murders?

I have this half-formed idea in mind:
Rudolf, Nanjo, and Kumasawa are involved in something.
What's supposed to happen:
On Oct. 4, Maria receives a letter from "Beatrice" (Kumasawa), and Rudolf says he will be murdered.
On Oct. 5, Rudolf disappears, in such a manner that suggests he is dead. (He's really just hiding.)

(My reasons for believing that Rudolf was involved are that he seemed to have foreknowledge of the murders, that he got a letter, and the safe combo involved his son's birthdate.)

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Freelii

Maybe there is one in there too! There could be five or six cleavers around the mansion for all we know.

As for why there is a cleaver in the boiler room... I don't think it was ever specified how the boiler maintains it's heat, so perhaps it could be used for wood chopping as a back-up system should electricity fail? Or if they run out of coal?

Five or six cleaver around the mansion! Of course that was Natsuhi who arranged that: "we don't want an hypothetic killer to think this house doesn't have enough weapons at disposal don't we? For the glory of the Ushiromiya we can't embarass ourselves not even in front of killers!"

Anyway that boiler thing in the anime looks more like an incinerator than a boiler. So maybe the axe and cleaver are used to break down stuffs to make them fit inside the incinerator. Stuff like... old ... furniture...
Actually it makes sense. They don't have trash collectors in Rokkenjima...

Originally Posted by Freelii

The other exit from the boiler room leads up some stairs and outside, right?

Not really. It leads to an "internal" courtyard. So that isn't a backdoor from which supplies can enter without passing through the house.

[Freelii]

Yeeaa, scratch that idea about the cleaver being needed somehow for the courtyard outside. I'll stick to the idea that the cleaver is there for some sort of usage with the boiler/incinerator, like how Jan-Poo described it.