[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru - Ep. 5 End of the golden witch

[maximilianjenus]

Probably but the fun here is trying to guess what will happen later.

so, the stake of gluttony is completely out of the game that means that the remainign stakes are:

pride
envy
wrath
sloth
greed
lust

one of those is also gone so once they kinzo's body he will have another stake... does someone hasa list of who gets staked by which stake, that should make this easier ?

[Sniesk]

There is a list here

[imaginari]

I don't think that we can get too much from the stake patterns. The killer already has to get the right number of people alone and kill them in a puzzle-y way without drawing suspicion to themselves. That's going to require some flexibility, you can't guarantee that everyone will be where they were planned to be, you'd have to change bits of it halfway through. Maintaining a strict victim order sounds like a bit too much of a challenge.

[luckyssol]

I agree, I think is already difficult to seperate everyone and kill according to the epitaph. It becomes too complicated if you have to choose fixed targets assigned to specific stakes.

In episode 4, Kyrie was staked and a stake was found next to Shannon's corpse. If the stake theory were true it would have been impossible for both stakes to be Mammon's stake.

[Marion]

Kyrie's stake could be Leviathan, but we don't know that for sure.

Anyways the stake theory seems like a red herring to me - Hideyoshi in EP 5 was gouged with Lucifer, which completely breaks the pattern he usually has. Of course, this could indicate a different killer in EP 5 along with other things.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Ssol

I agree, I think is already difficult to seperate everyone and kill according to the epitaph. It becomes too complicated if you have to choose fixed targets assigned to specific stakes.

In episode 4, Kyrie was staked and a stake was found next to Shannon's corpse. If the stake theory were true it would have been impossible for both stakes to be Mammon's stake.

If you're associating Kyrie with Mammon on the basis of EP3, I think there's plenty of grounds to be suspicious of that staking.

There were five stakes used and two missing. We were told that the two missing ones were Belphegor and Leviathan. We have wounds on some of the corpses that were possibly made by a spear-like object. We also know that Mammon was found by the police after the incident, even though it was supposedly buried in Kyrie's gut and all the other stakes vanished from the mansion. And yet the police didn't find any evidence of a crime, which most likely means there wasn't any blood on the stake to indicate it had been used to stab someone.

Some people have suggested that Eva pulled Mammon's stake out of Kyrie's corpse and washed it off, but there's no reason at all for her to do so. She already had a gun, and even if she needed a stake for some reason, she could just pick up the one Battler pulled out of Rudolf's head. And the possibility that Kyrie pulled the stake out herself and washed it off before she bled to death is too silly to bear consideration.

So here's what I think happened: Kyrie was actually staked with Leviathan. Belphegor was used as a murder weapon to kill George and the first twilight victims. And Mammon was found by the police because it was unused and probably not even in the mansion at the time the "accident" happened. It might have even been in Eva's possession.

[luckyssol]

That was assuming that the stake theory followed the stakes and victims listed the witch's game record in TIPS. If you don't go by that then I would select Leviathan for Kyrie as well. I believe that she was portrayed as an envious woman by the author of the story.

[Jan-Poo]

Well if you question the reliability of the TIPS and the story itself about which stake staked whom, then finding a pattern is going to be even harder.

Anyway the only thing that seems to be consistent is the fact that everytime there are different combinations of "first twilight" and "second twilight".

[LyricalAura]

Honestly, the only thing I'm going to trust for certain about the stake identities is Battler's eyes in the manga. We know the TIPS are lying about stuff.

That said, Beato set up a certain fantasy theory in EP1 and EP2 (committing a sin makes you susceptible to the stake), and then significantly deviated from it in EP3 for some reason. If we're trying to find meaning in fantasy scenes, then it should be worthwhile to figure out why that deviation occurred. Did Kyrie really commit the sin of greed at some point so that she could be stabbed by Mammon, or was that a hint that something weird was going on?

[Jan-Poo]

I wouldn't say that Beato set up a fantasy theory of that kind. That is just a speculation from the readers. I'm not going to take for granted that there is a necessary relationship between stake used and the victim's most relevant sin.
A person being staked twice by the same stake doesn't amount to a sufficient sample to come to any reliable conclusion.

[Renall]

I agree, at this point it's unreliable enough that finding patterns isn't very instructive. The stakes aren't even used at times, or aren't used "correctly." It's clearly the mark or weapon of a person or group of persons, and I have my suspicions as to who could be involved (Nanjo and/or Shannon being prime suspects), but I don't think they plan out ahead of time who gets staked with what unless they have lots of free time to do it.

[LyricalAura]

The stake choices don't have to be planned out by the culprit. From a mystery perspective they might well be interchangeable or randomly chosen. On the other hand, because of that interchangeability, Beato should be able to use her game master's authority to weave the story so that people "just happen to" end up with what she thinks are appropriate stakes. That is, the stake choices have meaning at the fantasy level even if they don't at the mystery level.

It was the TIPS in EP1 that said stakes could only target people who committed the corresponding sin. If the stake choices are entirely up to Beato, then there's absolutely no reason for her to present a story that contradicts that, unless she's trying to make a point or hide something.

[Dlanor A. Knox]

A little bit late, but there is something that relate Jessica&eorge except being cousins... They are both in love with a servant, so what if it's chosen on how much they have in common..


like:

Hideyoshi&Eva = George is their son.
Kanon&Jessica = unrequired love (?)
Rosa&Maria = They both have a difficult childhood & they are the youngest. (Rosa - siblings, Maria-cousins)
well Jessica&George = Servants love.
Hideyoshi&Kinzo = both started with nothing.

.... Just a suggestion....

[Judoh]

Other than the Dante metaphor. I have no idea why the stakes even exist.

After reading episode 4 for the first time I was ready to deny the existence of the physical stakes. In other episodes people are staked though so if they are used in those episodes than somebody has to have them. It would be easy to just say that since Kinzo likes occult stuff that one of the servants steal the stakes from Kinzo's room along with his ring so they could make the letters. Or that Maria had them in her handbag for some reason and that whoever used them got them from her bag. Or like I said earlier that Rudolf's Niche company made them. The only reason they seem to be used at all is for the gouge the X and kill theme in the epitaph, but since the epitaph doesn't require anyone to be staked at the second twilight, unless people are restaked for some reason, than the numbers are all messed up.

But I don't think the stakes are the murder weapon at all. There is a lot of evidence against a device being used to shoot stakes at people like Battler theorized so I think they are killed via another method before being staked.

For example in episode 2: Jessica could be killed by activating her asthma with pepper spray causing her to choke to death, and then she can staked in the chest afterward. It wouldn't be that hard to kill her that way. And if Jessica was already dead from choking when Kanon returned it would be easy to kill him, disappear him out the window, and lock everything up.

[KanonTheFurniture]

The stakes definitely can't be the cause of death at least in 90% of the murders (even the 'gouge the head' stakings are iffy). You can't die from being staked in the leg or knee, for instance. It's obvious that the stakes are just there as a decoration or 'warning' to the person who discovers the bodies - their significance is to the discoverers of the corpses, not to the people who are being killed. I don't believe in the stake shooting device, either.

What's unusual is that there don't seem to be any other 'obvious' wounds on some of the staked bodies, or at least our inspectors aren't looking hard enough for them (maybe another purpose of the stakes - be so visually distracting that they don't examine the bodies closely enough). Eva and Hideyoshi in EP1, for instance. Right away we learn two things: they're dead, and they've got stakes in their foreheads. No one mentions any other visible wounds on the bodies that would indicate them being killed in some other way and then staked afterwards.

[Judoh]

For episode 1 at least. I thought that as long Kanon killed Eva and Hideyoshi after removing the chain lock it wouldn't be a closed room. I Have a theory for how he staked them and it has something to do with the storehouse where gets the wire clippers. He got a tool for it. Something like a power drill.

But to me even if they are killed before they are staked Kanon has to be the murderer for it not to be a closed room.

Also in the VN Battler never enters the room so he never saw how they were killed he just heard about it from everybody else.

I also like the idea that the stakes distract people from seeing external wounds. Natsuhi and Rosa seem to keep Battler from looking closer at the bodies a lot. Rosa chased him out when he tried to take a look at Gohda and George so we know Shannon was clearly hit in the head pretty hard by how much she was bleeding, but the cause of death for Gohda and George isn't clear at all. In fact since George was staked in the same place Kyrie was in episode 3 it might not even be a fatal wound.

[ErenselTheJester]

Originally Posted by Judoh

For episode 1 at least. I thought that as long Kanon killed Eva and Hideyoshi after removing the chain lock it wouldn't be a closed room. I Have a theory for how he staked them and it has something to do with the storehouse where gets the wire clippers. He got a tool for it. Something like a power drill.

But to me even if they are killed before they are staked Kanon has to be the murderer for it not to be a closed room.

Also in the VN Battler never enters the room so he never saw how they were killed he just heard about it from everybody else.

I also like the idea that the stakes distract people from seeing external wounds. Natsuhi and Rosa seem to keep Battler from looking closer at the bodies a lot. Rosa chased him out when he tried to take a look at Gohda and George so we know Shannon was clearly hit in the head pretty hard by how much she was bleeding, but the cause of death for Gohda and George isn't clear at all. In fact since George was staked in the same place Kyrie was in episode 3 it might not even be a fatal wound.

Well, if we were to suppose that somebody was hiding in the room before everybody got there, then its not a closed room either. For instance, if Kanon wasn't the culprit then somebody else had to kill and the only possible would have to be the dead. A theory is that Shannon faked her death and killed Eva and Hideyoshi, then hid under the bed.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by ErenselTheJester

Well, if we were to suppose that somebody was hiding in the room before everybody got there, then its not a closed room either. For instance, if Kanon wasn't the culprit then somebody else had to kill and the only possible would have to be the dead. A theory is that Shannon faked her death and killed Eva and Hideyoshi, then hid under the bed.

No that would still be a closed room because it happened while the room was locked. In your theory someone is just hiding and they can't leave from the closed room they created them self. The only way it can't be a closed room is if somebody murdered them after Kanon removed the chain.

[Renall]

Unless there are other wounds, I'd be willing to bet most of the non-lethal stakings involved poison or suffocation (or a sleeping agent and suffocation). That could also more readily explain the First Twilights, at least some of the time.

[Sniesk]

Doesn't Knox 4th forbids poisons or drugs? Also in ep1 there where bloodstains in the dining room where the six were probably killed (i think the face smashing happened in the shed) so they were first injuried with something.
I think that the various first twilights are more impulsive than premeditated, and i would not rule out a mutual killing due to the inheritance fight. Then someone, or the survivor just has to clean up the mess...
Also, from ep5 we know that there is also the possibility of a faked first twilight. If that happened in that episode, couldn't it be faked in other episodes as well? Maybe in ep1, where there are no death confirmed in red. Of course Battler witnessed the corpses, but he is not a doctor and i don't think he has ever seen a dead body before. His perspective must be reliable becouse of Knox rules, but they still allow the detective to make mistakes or misundertand something