[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru - Ep. 6 Dawn of the golden witch

[Renall]

Would this provide an alternate way to break open the rescue of Battler resolution without Shkanon being necessary?

Only Battler, Kanon, and Erika entered the room. Three people entered the room. Those were separate reds. If "Erika" doesn't refer to an actual human individual named Erika, it could potentially refer to a culprit, right? Kanon enters somehow, rescues Battler, "Erika" enters, kills Kanon, and leaves?

I don't know what the specific reds surrounding that event are (could someone relink/repost them?), but something like that. I'm assuming no Shkanon just because if we're going with a "Erika isn't a real person" theory, using Shkanon as well puts our person count too low. Imagine the egg on my face if they were both true.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Kitsu

But what if pieces can loose their detective view? For example Battler looses it in episode 2 after getting drunk. So for example in episode 4 George and Jessica are both reliable detecitve POVs until they get utterly untrustworthy when getting into the magic fights.

I brought this up earlier, but everyone ignored it, unfortunately.

My idea was that Battler lost his Detective's Authority because he gave in to the witch after he found Shannon and George dead, thus losing the game.

Originally Posted by the_rogue

The red text in EP5 regarding her "addition to the person count" is suspiciously evasive, too. All it says about the actual count is that besides her, it's the same. And as for "Furudo Erika only increases it by one person." - what did she increase? Maybe Bern and Lambda were talking about the personality count. Lambda even calls her an "extra character who appears for the first time this round". An alternate personality of somebody else/the collective family that took over for Battler?

What's also suspicious is that the person count is never stated in Ep5, when it's been stated and re-stated throughout Ep3 and 4.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

We know that Erika killed the five people who died in the first twilight of Episode 6, and the detective may not be the culprit, so whoever she was representing at the time couldn't have been a detective. That's not to say she doesn't also get to act as a mouthpiece for the best idea at the time like k//eternal said, but we shouldn't assume that means whoever she's representing is a detective in the Knox sense, at least in Episode 6. It sounds reasonable to make her a roving detective ball in Episode 5 though, since she got red text to that effect.

On the subject of Episode 5, there was a similar "all other people" usage to pin down the people in the dining room at midnight. We can extract one of those and move them to the guesthouse under cover of Erika using the same method I described before.

EDIT:
I wonder if we can use Knox 3 to rule out people as culprits if we can figure out who Erika was standing in for when she took actions as the detective.

Doesn't Erika not have the Detective's Authority in Ep6 for whatever reason? That was the initial explanation for her being able to kill people that I heard...

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Renall

Would this provide an alternate way to break open the rescue of Battler resolution without Shkanon being necessary?

Only Battler, Kanon, and Erika entered the room. Three people entered the room. Those were separate reds. If "Erika" doesn't refer to an actual human individual named Erika, it could potentially refer to a culprit, right? Kanon enters somehow, rescues Battler, "Erika" enters, kills Kanon, and leaves?

I don't know what the specific reds surrounding that event are (could someone relink/repost them?), but something like that. I'm assuming no Shkanon just because if we're going with a "Erika isn't a real person" theory, using Shkanon as well puts our person count too low. Imagine the egg on my face if they were both true.

This interpretation requires to think that Erika is not in control of her own piece, and neither under Battler's control. So who is controlling this "Erika" piece? And how is that Beatrice is the only one who can know what she's doing?

Also you should remove the "leave" part since there is a point in time where the room is still closed with the chainlock and Kanon doesn't exist in there. So Erika, whoever you imagine she is, must be still inside.

Anyway you still need to get Kanon out of the sealed room in the guesthouse

[ameskitty]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

This interpretation requires to think that Erika is not in control of her own piece, and neither under Battler's control. So who is controlling this "Erika" piece? And how is that Beatrice is the only one who can know what she's doing?

Also you should remove the "leave" part since there is a point in time where the room is still closed with the chainlock and Kanon doesn't exist in there. So Erika, whoever you imagine she is, must be still inside.

Anyway you still need to get Kanon out of the sealed room in the guesthouse

Well, Battler doesn't really control his own piece in EP1-4 - for the most part it seems to act based on his personality. He uses his piece's logic as a solution a few times, but in general he doesn't seem to have real control. (heck, doesn't he say something like "Hey, I don't control what I say!" at one point?)

...urgh, seconded, can somebody point me to an EP6 red text list? Things are escaping me, and I don't have an IME configured on this OS so it's hard for me to do searches in Japanese.

From the top of my head I can come up with a very, very hackneyed solution with Kanon as Erika, but that makes the whole search/rescue with Battler nearly incomprehensible in how ridiculously bipolar Erikanon would have to be. It'd be about 1000 times worse than Shkanon .

As for the "all other people" thing, thanks for the forced loophole, meta-Erika?

[Jan-Poo]

If that was really the case with Erika how he manged to use red texts about the actions done by "Erika"?

Like the one about her killing 5 out of 6 people of the first twilight, or the one about her checking all the places in the guest room except the closet or the one about her fixing the chainlock.

In other words if the "Erika" piece can do stuff that Erika herself cannot know, then how can Erika know the other stuff? How does that work?

[ameskitty]

Oh yeah, forgot about her annoying random "oh wait I did this!" modifications :/. Strange because that was the thing I hated most about her in EP6.

Perhaps only when Battler "yields" to Erika does she have control of her piece. When she locked herself out of all the other rooms (and perhaps the insistence on his saying "all other members" rather than listing out the members was intentional) and Battler let her loose to do the inspection, she was basically given free rein to do whatever she wanted. Battler couldn't move any pieces to stop her, after all.

[Jan-Poo]

The part that baffled me the most was the fact that Erika could act without Battler knowing. I just can't comprehend what kind of rules allowed Erika to put out of commission 5 of Battler's pieces without him even realizing it. Weren't dead people compared to piece that were taken? Shouldn't them disappear from the chessboard then? Apparently Battler could still see them there as if nothing happened...

[Dr. Akagi]

Originally Posted by k//eternal

In EP5, Erika is a representation of whoever the detective is at the time.

Say what?

So now you are telling me that my favourite SN character, the perfectly adorable Erika, is actually a what, concept of "detectivness"? Great, just great.

What's next, Teatrice as the embodiment of "indiscriminate evil caused by the food poisoning"? Damn you, Ryukishi07!

[Renall]

Well, that's what we'd like to find out. Really, the two prevailing explanations so far for ep6 are "Erika isn't a real person" and "Shkanon." I'm sure you'll find lots of people not satisfied with either, but one might as well develop them as robustly as possible, right?

Still, any theory explaining a fake-Erika has to account for just what it means when meta-Erika says "she's" doing something, and what the red means when it refers to "Erika." We do know the red can refer to people who aren't real (see the "living Kinzo" speculation in ep5 when we know there is no living Kinzo), and Battler has theorized before about names being titled, and we've even gotten red about how certain people's names cannot be claimed by others. That at the very least means we can't entirely trust that the red referring to a character means a flesh-and-blood person, unless we have some reason to believe it.

Problem is, Erika gives both reasons why she cannot exist (person limit, ambiguity about numbers around her, unreliable perspective) and reasons why by all rights she ought to (who sealed rooms and killed people?).

[Jan-Poo]

If you want to make Erika one of the existing people and who could seal the cousin's room and the next room your choice is only limited to Jessica Krauss Rudolf Gohda and Genji

[Dr. Akagi]

Originally Posted by Renall

Well, that's what we'd like to find out. Really, the two prevailing explanations so far for ep6 are "Erika isn't a real person" and "Shkanon."

Decisions, decisions....

As much as I hate to say it, I'd take "Erika is not a person" over "Shkanon" any day, probably because there was always something off about Erika ever since her mysterious appearance, like maybe she was too good to be true. That, and the infamous Ryu's Ep5 "dirty trick".

Wish I hadn't to choose just between those two, though, since they are both kinda bleh...

[Jan-Poo]

If you really don't want to resort to the shkannon theory then there's been since a long while a theory claiming that Battler doesn't exist on Rokkenjima, it isn't crazier than the "Erika doesn't exist", pretty much at the same level...

[Dr. Akagi]

Which, in my book, would mean “the same level of uncool”, I’m afraid.

What’s wrong with your good old secluded island murder mystery with the fixed number of suspects? Adding unnecessary unreliable protagonists/antagonists/cast members to the mix doesn’t make it hip, it makes it meandering tripe.

If you are straying from the formula, you better make it worth it, and the aforementioned theories do nothing for me in the enjoyment department.

Edit: By "you" I was referring to the author, of course, not our unrivalled Jan-Poo.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Dr. Akagi

What’s wrong with your good old secluded island murder mystery with the fixed number of suspects? Adding unnecessary unreliable protagonists/antagonists/cast members to the mix doesn’t make it hip, it makes it meandering tripe.

If you are straying from the formula, you better make it worth it, and the aforementioned theories do nothing for me in the enjoyment department.

-_-

How long have you been playing Umineko, now? It's not anything near a 'standard' murder mystery, despite Dlanor's insistences.

[ijriims]

An alternative explanation particularly prepared for this 17 people puzzle is to say that Kanon (Yoshiya) was killed by Shannon (Sayo) during the time Battler's group arrived at Rokkenjima and before Erika arrived. (The hint was the dual between Shannon and Kanon)

Genji then gave the codename Kanon to Sayo and himself such that they were Kanon when they were performing Kanon's task. (Kanon and Shannon had been said to be codenames for Rokkenjima's one-wing symbol bearing servants in previous episodes)

The one who saved Battler was Sayo, but because it was initially Kanon's task, Sayo performed this duty so she was Kanon at that time.

When Erika said Kanon was in the wardrobe, Beatrice switched the meaning of Kanon as "a one-wing symbol bearing servant with Kanon as codename" to Kanon as "Yoshiya", so Kanon was not in the wardrobe.

Not involving Shakanon or denying Erika's presence. Does this explanation fare better than the Shakanon theory or "Erika-not a real human" theory?

[Dr. Akagi]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

-_-
How long have you been playing Umineko, now? It's not anything near a 'standard' murder mystery, despite Dlanor's insistences.

Of course it's not, but I'm still hoping it's a well thought out and carefully executed deconstruction of one rather than "the more outrageous the better" kind of mess which would eventually collapse under its own weight.

You see, i've got love, man! Tons of it.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by ijriims

An alternative explanation particularly prepared for this 17 people puzzle is to say that Kanon (Yoshiya) was killed by Shannon (Sayo) during the time Battler's group arrived at Rokkenjima and before Erika arrived. (The hint was the dual between Shannon and Kanon)

Genji then gave the codename Kanon to Sayo and himself such that they were Kanon when they were performing Kanon's task. (Kanon and Shannon had been said to be codenames for Rokkenjima's one-wing symbol bearing servants in previous episodes)

The one who saved Battler was Sayo, but because it was initially Kanon's task, Sayo performed this duty so she was Kanon at that time.

When Erika said Kanon was in the wardrobe, Beatrice switched the meaning of Kanon as "a one-wing symbol bearing servant with Kanon as codename" to Kanon as "Yoshiya", so Kanon was not in the wardrobe.

Not involving Shakanon or denying Erika's presence. Does this explanation fare better than the Shakanon theory or "Erika-not a real human" theory?

that's still Shkannon theory in my book, at the very least I have always seen it that way... until EP6... now I'm not sure anymore that Kanon ever existed, but anyway the idea that Shannon is just impersonating her little brother (who died before the starting of the game) has been the main basis of the Shkannon theory in the past.

BTW I can see a few options as to how "Kanon" escaped from the guest room, and it is my belief that "Beatrice" knows some incredible trick to create closed rooms.
The real problem is getting Kanon out of the sealed room. With the shkannon theory you can use the window in the "next room" because Kanon by being Shannon has always been there in the first place. But with "Erika doesn't exist" you still can't explain it and so you need yet another theory to cover that part.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

that's still Shkannon theory in my book, at the very least I have always seen it that way... until EP6... now I'm not sure anymore that Kanon ever existed, but anyway the idea that Shannon is just impersonating her little brother (who died before the starting of the game) has been the main basis of the Shkannon theory in the past.

BTW I can see a few options as to how "Kanon" escaped from the guest room, and it is my belief that "Beatrice" knows some incredible trick to create closed rooms.
The real problem is getting Kanon out of the sealed room. With the shkannon theory you can use the window in the "next room" because Kanon by being Shannon has always been there in the first place. But with "Erika doesn't exist" you still can't explain it and so you need yet another theory to cover that part.

With "Erika doesn't exist" you can remove people from both sealed rooms at once. For instance, something like this:
1. Kanon leaves the cousins' room holding the Erika ball, so he isn't trapped by the "everyone else" red.
2. One or more people leave the neighboring room through the window.
3. The Erika ball passes to one of the other escapees to satisfy the "three people" red.

[Jan-Poo]

And of course Battler, who has the power to say in red the location of every people, doesn't notice that Kanon is free to help him

You need to consider that Battler knows that there are only 17 people in total, and he knows the location of every people. So if Kanon left the room as Erika and then the Erika ball passed on someone else Battler would know that Kanon is free

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

that's still Shkannon theory in my book, at the very least I have always seen it that way... until EP6... now I'm not sure anymore that Kanon ever existed, but anyway the idea that Shannon is just impersonating her little brother (who died before the starting of the game) has been the main basis of the Shkannon theory in the past.

Some differences remain:

1. Shakanon theory (and Shakanontrice) usually say that both Kanon and Beatrice were Shannon's created persona (or alternative personalities) for the sake of Jessica (and Battler), which meant that no one on Rokkenjima seemed to have aware of this non-existent Kanon or agreed to pretend for his existence. This is quite implausible if it was true. This codename theory said that Shannon and Kanon were two separate humans from the beginning, so there is no such difficulties.

2. Shakanon theory were stated before EP3 was even issued, it was basically a theory trying to get around all the red texts about Shannon was dead or Kanon was killed. This codename theory only applied to EP6 as only in this game it was hinted that Kanon did not want to be a "furniture" anymore right at the beginning, hinting his struggle with Shannon and Kanon was killed by Shannon, and never did Erika see Yoshiya once in EP6 (She probably see him many times in EP5). Also the real name of Kanon was out, so I could distinguish Kanon and Yoshiya from now on, the white texts of EP6 also made this distinction sometimes. Further hints are that even though Erika has asked about the definitions of rescuer, going in and out of the room, checking the structure of the guestroom Battler was in, verifying it was Kanon rescuing Battler and there were three distinct bodies passing through the door. She forgot to ask the most important question: the definition of Kanon.

-------------------------

By the way, if someone wanted to say Erika was just referring to the person who was acting as the detective, please try to get around this two red texts first: 　全ての名は、本人以外には名乗れない！！

Loose translation: All names are carried by their owners only!!

And よって、ヱリカ、戦人、嘉音の名はいずれも、本人にしか名乗れぬのだ。

Loose translation: Therefore, neither the names Erika, Battler, Kanon are carried by someone other than their owners.