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

[Renall]

They forgot they did it? Sometimes people do things unconsciously.

"George asked Nanjo to do it" also makes sense. If George explained his reasons to Nanjo, I'm sure he would've kept quiet about it unless he had some reason not to. And Nanjo's suspicious anyway.

[rogerpepitone]

I went back and checked:

Originally Posted by Episode 3

Battler: "If someone inside locked it in the end, this closed room is as easy as pie."
Nanjo: "B, but that means, .........that means, ......ooooooohhhh......"
Nanjo turned pale and shook his head several times. ...Because the thing that Battler said had hit him as a fact that was frightening even to imagine...

...

Nanjo says: "I, ...I did not do anything of the sort...! Y, yes, I can swear it...!!"

[MUDSKIP]

I just plowed through all 4 episodes this week (yummy), so here's my thoughts/theory:

Spoiler for Umineko 1-4 thoughts:

Episode 1:
Biggest thing that stuck out at me was that Rudolf foresaw his death. Crazy.
It seems that they're trying to point at Natsuhi as the culprit this round...
Episode 2:
KanonxJessica=WIN.
This time it's Rosa. In a sense. I'll go over it more later.
Episode 3:
Beatrice is twicky. XD
I think we can say without a doubt that Eva killed Battler at the end with the shotgun, right? The actual overall culprit may be somebody else. Will discuss in theory.
Episode 4:
Ange = WIN.
Wish I knew what was in that Boat guy's room.
I suspect Maria as the culprit this time around. Will explain in theory below.


THEORY OF DOOM:
Just to start things off: Maria is a key piece here. There's the Siesta Sisters and how they correspond to the ceramic rabbits. There's her obsession with Beatrice, and her involvement in magic. There's also the way they depict her in the OPs; They treat her as special. K moving on.

Second: ALL WHO HOLD THE TITLE OF THE GOLDEN WITCH COMMIT MURDER ON ROKKENJIMA. Even Ange-Beatrice does it, although that's in 1998. I guess...that's just an interesting fact.

I'm going to base my thoughts off of the theory/fact that the witches and their furniture correspond in some way to actual people on the island.
Let's look at episode 3.
You have the supposed culprit, Eva, and the witch born from her, Eva-Beatrice.
I'm pretty sure since Battler saw Eva shoot him, that Eva definitely shot him. That's common sense, I think? XD
CONFIRMATION: It says it in the information about Battler's death:
"Was shot to death by Ushiromiya Eva inside the mansion."
But the other murders were possibly done by someone else, in my opinion; They go by this alias of 'Eva-Beatrice' in the 'magic truth'. (There's 2 truths, remember? a 'human culprit' truth and a 'witch+magic truth').
I have mild suspicion for Maria (due to the appearance of the Siesta Sisters), but...well...I really don't know.

In Episode 4, I think Maria's a prime suspect. Kinzo's name could have been inherited by someone beforehand, and so when he/she went into the dining hall, that 'Kinzo' was recognized as the new head. That 'Kinzo' could not have been any of the people present in the dining hall at the time: Krauss, Kumasawa, Gohda, Kyrie, Rudolf, Natsuhi, Rosa, Eva, Hideyoshi, Kanon, Shanon, Genji.
Ah, and Kinzo's already dead of course.

That's really, really good. Because so many people are cut from the possibility, the only people left are: Battler, George, Jessica, Maria, Nanjo. And I don't think Nanjo can inherit the name.
So, while Battler could be suspected, I suspect Maria infinitely more because of the appearance of the Siesta Sisters in the 'magic truth', as well as the fact she died POSSIBLY of poison, meaning a POSSIBLE suicide.

...Now, it's obviously hard to imagine Maria being the 'culprit'. But couldn't there be an accomplice? Like in episode 3, let's just claim Maria's the mastermind. Eva could have done the dirty work, with the exception of Nanjo's death, which could've been pulled off by Maria herself or possibly another accomplice. It was a gunshot, after all.
Also, you could claim that Battler was Maria's accomplice in episode 4, if you really want to blame him this time around.

Remember, again, that Kinzo is already dead when they arrive on the island, EVERY TIME. That means every scene we've seen with Kinzo in it is an illusion to some extent. The person we're seeing is 'Kinzo', or rather whoever took Kinzo's name after he died. Krauss, Battler, George, and Eva come to mind as possible canidates; It could vary for each episode.

Battler's Sin:
All I can say about this is that I think, as everyone else suspects, this is related to 6 years ago, and probably resulted in Asumu's death. However, Beatrice said in red that this sin resulted in many deaths on the island, and that no one escaped alive. We haven't been told about any other massacre on Rokkenjima though, so...I think it's safe to assume this resulted in THE Rokkenjima massacre, the reviving of Beatrice. Is there any possibility of Maria being related to this either?
Also, the 8 numbers come to mind: 07151125. It's highly likely the other half of the number is related to this incident 6 years ago, since Battler's birthday is the first half. If this stands true as well, this means Battler is greatly related to, if not the culprit, of the massacre.

I can't say this was a clean trail of thought (this game is so immense; my mind went all over the place), but I hope it brings up a few good points? XD

[MUDSKIP]

Looks like you guys are suspected Nanjo quite a bit, huh? I guess there's the possibility in episode 4 that Kinzo gave his title to his best friend, Nanjo? Maybe? XD If you want to throw suspicion on him in that episode...let's see, how did he die again...?

His head was...half destroyed. Meaning when Battler checked his corpse, he was indeed dead and had been shot most likely by someone else (I'd say Maria XD)

EDIT:
Then, for episode 3...
They were scared out of their wits; They had every window tightly shut and locked. An unlocked/open window would scare the frick out of me. You can't argue he 'just closed it'.

And so, if Nanjo closed the window, then I'd say Nanjo's an accomplice/culprit, and George...hmm...it's a real mystery (I wonder why). Er, wait, let's think of it like this:

Eva's side of the family was all in cahoots, along with possibly Nanjo as an accomplice. Er, had Hideyoshi left by this point? Could he have closed the window?

Anyway, so. Hideyoshi and the cigarette all holds. Eva's alibi just isn't there. She left and killed Rosa and Maria, the first people who would suspect them (since Eva found the gold).
Hideyoshi obviously covered for her....
Then, when they went to the house...in the 'magic truth', he was shot then staked, right? So I'd say he was shot by Eva for some reason, then the gunshot hole was covered up with a stake.
This is getting ridiculous, but...
Then, later, George left...to....
Ok this theory's crumbling. Anyone think they can fill in the gaping holes? XD XD

[Marion]

Spoiler for Response, EP 4 spoilers:

Whole thing with Rudolf's foreseeing his death, I bet something just made him think he was going to get killed beforehand. It could be related to the epitaph, or maybe he got Eva mad or something and thought she was going to kill him His TIPs for his death say that he has a right to lament his bad luck, which relates to the entire 'devil's roulette' metaphor.

I still don't think Ange killed all those people. She's just one person and we're talking about several armed gun men.

I don't doubt that Eva killed Battler. She probably believed he was the culprit or something and shot him to keep herself safe. We know the entire thing she told Okonogi about being given the head title by Kinzo and then going to the Kuwadorian the entire time is a blatant lie after all, since Kinzo was dead.

The numbers is an interesting idea though. Maybe 11/25 is the day of Battler's sin if we put it in that thought process.

[MUDSKIP]

Dug through the wiki for November 15, found nothing.
Dug through the wiki for July 15, found nothing.
Meh.


EDIT: Maybe this, for July 15, is relevant?

Japan – Third day of Obon feast period.

"Obon is a shortened form of Ullambana (Japanese: 于蘭盆會 or 盂蘭盆會, urabon'e). It is Sanskrit for "hanging upside down" and implies great suffering[2]. The Japanese believe they should ameliorate the suffering of the "Urabanna"."

Also:

"Bon Odori originates from the story of Mokuren, a disciple of the Buddha, who used his supernatural powers to look upon his deceased mother. He discovered she had fallen into the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and was suffering.[3] Greatly disturbed, he went to the Buddha and asked how he could release his mother from this realm. Buddha instructed him to make offerings to the many Buddhist monks who had just completed their summer retreat, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. The disciple did this and, thus, saw his mother's release. He also began to see the true nature of her past unselfishness and the many sacrifices that she had made for him. The disciple, happy because of his mother's release and grateful for his mother's kindness, danced with joy. From this dance of joy comes Bon Odori or "Bon Dance", a time in which ancestors and their sacrifices are remembered and appreciated. See also: Ullambana Sutra."

[k//eternal]

Originally Posted by Renall

unidentified corpses were guaranteed, but her corpse was identified

Nope. While she didn't say "identified corpses are guaranteed", she did say "no body double tricks exist" which amounts to the same thing.

[rogerpepitone]

If Eva, George, and Nanjo were all working together, and Eva had the only gun, why didn't Eva just shoot Battler and Jessica?

I still think Eva killed Rosa in an accident (garden spikes are a terribly chancy weapon, but a martial artist could throw or shove someone and forget they're not working on a mat, and Eva had a gun anyway), and Maria in a panic. I think she killed Battler at the end, but I don't think she was involved with any other deaths. (Rosa's gun was left behind; all the other guns disappeared.)

[Valentine]

Spoiler for Long:

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

Under that hypothesis, Rosa only had to make one secret trip to the cousins' room. She pretended to remove the key the next day when she fetched it at ~6:30 AM the next day.

There's red text that she opened it in the morning, and thereby got the key though, isn't there? Most likely, she couldn't be sure that nobody would be with her when she was opening the envelope, or that she could convincingly slip it out of her pocket and claim she got it from the envelope if there was, so she felt she had to return it.

Originally Posted by MUDSKIP

Remember, again, that Kinzo is already dead when they arrive on the island, EVERY TIME. That means every scene we've seen with Kinzo in it is an illusion to some extent. The person we're seeing is 'Kinzo', or rather whoever took Kinzo's name after he died.

Every scene with Kinzo in it can't be taken literally, but it doesn't mean we're seeing whoever took Kinzo's name or that someone does that in every episode - if someone had inherited Kinzo's name in every episode, why would they have kept themselves hidden away until the siblings demanded to see the old Kinzo?

It doesn't even mean that someone did it in episode 4! Considering the sheer number of explanations Battler presented that Beatrice didn't shoot down that Lambda easily did, there's no particular reason to assume she'd shoot down the "Kinzo passed on his name" theory just because she could. It makes a lot more sense than most of the other things he said, but that doesn't mean it's definitely correct. "A good fortress has one and only one weak point." Almost Battler's entire argument up to that point relied on 18th person X. I think she knew she could let him base his entire argument on this one thing, then cut his whole argument by removing that one piece, and it had become too much of a liability anyway since Battler was explaining almost everything with it. She let him come up with a good explanation for it before she gave in though, so that he'd have something solid he could base further arguments on that she can easily cut the ground from under at a later time.

I've been considering that everything we see could be explained by everyone who witnessed something agreeing that things happened in a particular way becoming what we see. So Natsuhi in episode 1 meeting with Kinzo was just Natsuhi deciding that that was what happened. There was nobody else witness to the event, so with nobody to disagree with her explanation of what she was going to claim happened, it's what we saw. Same with Krauss and Natsuhi meeting him in episode 4. They couldn't put off the others beyond midnight, so they decided that he said he'd be down for the family conference. Nanjo and some of the servants are also continuing to claim they've met him.

Most of the magic we see is only witnessed by people who are killed during the event. The real killer is the only surviving witness, so if the explanation they want to present is that they were killed by magic, that's what we see. The only magical events we see that anyone survives to tell about has them claiming that it's what actually happened despite what they claim being seemingly denied by red text. Kanon was dead before the events in the parlour in episode 2, and apparently it's impossible that they could have mistaken anyone else for Kanon. Kinzo was dead before the events in episode 4, yet Kyrie tells Battler the story apparently as we saw it, with Kinzo as the ringleader, and again it's apparently impossible that they could have mistaken anyone else for Kinzo. None of the others who talked to him contradicted anything in this story, and Gohda and Kumasawa's reluctance to talk about exactly what had happened and Jessica's claim that magic was involved only backs it up.

For whatever reason everyone who saw what happened at these events and got to relate it to someone else before they died has decided that this is the story they want to tell. I suspect that in both cases everyone is flat out lying about what happened for whatever reason, and that there was no passing on of Kinzo's name. Everyone present recognised the presence of Kinzo, even though neither he nor a successor was present because it was part of the story they all agreed they were going to be telling to the four cousins.

Originally Posted by MUDSKIP

Battler's Sin:
All I can say about this is that I think, as everyone else suspects, this is related to 6 years ago, and probably resulted in Asumu's death.

There's another person we've heard about, who may have been alive on Rokkenjima six years ago as well. Do we have any idea how long ago Kinzo's wife died?

Actually, I seem to remember something about her funeral being after Battler went to live with Asumu's parents. Am I misremembering that?

[Freelii]

Originally Posted by Marion

Spoiler for Response, EP 4 spoilers:

I still don't think Ange killed all those people. She's just one person and we're talking about several armed gun men.

I don't think I've seen this mentioned yet but one thing that stuck out in my mind is that her bodyguard was carrying the black case/bag whose contents were never directly declared but seemed to infer weaponry of the ballistic kind. Specifically:

Spoiler:

That whole scene with Ange being surrounded on Rokkenjima, but then each aggressor being subsequently killed one by one made me think that her bodyguard (sorry, his name escapes me at the moment) decided she was taking too long and went off to look for her, or was shadowing her. It wasn't until the aggressors drew weapons that they started to get knocked off. While the kill order might have been a coincidence, it's possible Ange's bodyguard was following her lead and killed off the aggressors she would point or look at.

Kind of like how she thought she was sending the stakes at her aggressors, her bodyguard was just picking them off.

As for her death, I just finished Episode 4 not a week ago, but I can't remember specifically how she died. So going off what I've stated already:

1. She was accidentally killed by bullet penetration when Kyrie's sister was finally killed.

2. She slipped off the hill/cliff which might be why we were treated to a scene of her back on the skyscraper.

Does that make sense or work?

[Marion]

Originally Posted by Freelii

I don't think I've seen this mentioned yet but one thing that stuck out in my mind is that her bodyguard was carrying the black case/bag whose contents were never directly declared but seemed to infer weaponry of the ballistic kind. Specifically:

Spoiler:

That whole scene with Ange being surrounded on Rokkenjima, but then each aggressor being subsequently killed one by one made me think that her bodyguard (sorry, his name escapes me at the moment) decided she was taking too long and went off to look for her, or was shadowing her. It wasn't until the aggressors drew weapons that they started to get knocked off. While the kill order might have been a coincidence, it's possible Ange's bodyguard was following her lead and killed off the aggressors she would point or look at.

Kind of like how she thought she was sending the stakes at her aggressors, her bodyguard was just picking them off.

As for her death, I just finished Episode 4 not a week ago, but I can't remember specifically how she died. So going off what I've stated already:

1. She was accidentally killed by bullet penetration when Kyrie's sister was finally killed.

2. She slipped off the hill/cliff which might be why we were treated to a scene of her back on the skyscraper.

Does that make sense or work?

Spoiler for Response:

Your theory is basically the most agreed upon idea for the scene so far.

Ange's death wasn't specifically shown outside the meta-world. She definitely died in 1998, but we have no idea how as of now. It's most likely that Kasumi killed her and then was killed herself.

[Jan-Poo]

Second: ALL WHO HOLD THE TITLE OF THE GOLDEN WITCH COMMIT MURDER ON ROKKENJIMA. Even Ange-Beatrice does it, although that's in 1998. I guess...that's just an interesting fact.

There's no way Ange killed all those people by herself unless she's really a witch. Everyone pretty much came to the conclusion that Juuza sniped them from afar.

As for the various culprits. I'd like to note that while Eva is the most probable culprit of the events of episode3. There's really no glory in pointing the finger at her. Battler has been suspecting her the whole time, he even says it at the end, and it is even said that Battler got shot by Eva (not in red though). In other words saying that Eva is the culprit in Episode3 is a no brainer.
It might turn out that she really is the culprit, but that would be a disappointing turn of events, everything is exactly as it seem. Boring.

To a lesser extent the same could be said for Rosa in episode2. While it is not that clear as in the ep3, she is still the most probable culprit of Ep2. But again, if that happens to be true, it would be yet another disappointing turn of events. Guess what? The culprit is exactly the one that raised most suspicions. Boring.

As for Natsuhi in episode1. Whoa this is plainly wrong. She's got an alibi for the last three twilights. You'd have to think that even Battler is not reliable. Also it's been stated in red that she got killed by another person.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by k//eternal

Nope. While she didn't say "identified corpses are guaranteed", she did say "no body double tricks exist" which amounts to the same thing.

It's not a body double if it's you lying there. Makeup or whatever to appear dead, shed is locked and key is given to Natsuhi. Natsuhi later goes off with the servants, she lets them out. Easy, no body doubles necessary.

[k//eternal]

Ah, now that's more interesting thinking. Did they bring Nanjo for that incident? I don't recall at the moment.

[Marion]

Originally Posted by k//eternal

Ah, now that's more interesting thinking. Did they bring Nanjo for that incident? I don't recall at the moment.

Yes. Genji got Nanjo from the parlor and took him to the shed. There he identified them all dead and said rigor mortis has set in for at least several hours.

[k//eternal]

In that case, faked deaths imply that Nanjo is in on it, too.

It's not a bad theory, actually.

[Marion]

Originally Posted by k//eternal

In that case, faked deaths imply that Nanjo is in on it, too.

It's not a bad theory, actually.

Spoiler for EP 4:

Considering his role as Kinzo's physician too, I don't doubt he's covering something up since we know Kinzo is always dead before the game begins.

There's also his grandchild too. Apparently she had an incurable disease and died by 1998. If Nanjo was trying to figure out how to fund research for a cure then maybe he could have been coerced into covering up for people who faked their death, in exchange for a certain amount of money.

[crazysjd89]

As I stated in my Episode 1 theory, it doesn't neccasarily imply that Nanjo is in on it, thought it is a possiblity.

There is also this thought: Nanjo didn't check every body. The normal assumption from seeing six bodies gathered together with the same MO is "They were all killed at the same time", so it is also possible that Nanjo only checked one body, and assumed the rest of the bodies were the same.

Just thought I would point that out to you all so you don't close your options off too much.

[rogerpepitone]

The unwritten final line of Alliance of the Golden Witch: Ushiromiya Ange was dead; her body, riddled with bullets, lay still atop the cliff on Rokkenjima Island.

Or is that "her body, splattered on the sidewalk, lay still outside the ... Hospital."?

[k//eternal]

Are you going somewhere with that?

As far as I can tell, Ange's exact fate isn't possible to know (whether the soldiers were sniped, she actually didn't survive the building jump, or if she jumped down toward the mansion) but also doesn't influence the mystery.