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Originally Posted by Kealym

Is forehead-smashing really the consensus? We're told several times about how difficult it'd be to drive a the conically shaped staked through a skull.

No way it is as the solution that Ryukishi gave is different.

K Still, the locked room in Natsuhi’s chamber is a special case. If Shannon actually committed suicide, there is nobody who can get rid of the weapon. If you think of Genji finalizing that, then it just happens smoothly, but…hmm *laugh*.

R Because we have come so far, I think I can give you an answer, though it is basically the same trick as with the well. Shannon died face down, slumped over the makeup cabinet. It’s a really simple trick. You tie the weapon to a heavy object with a string, then you throw the heavy object behind the cabinet. And then it’s the classic trick, when you commit suicide, the gun is pulled behind the cabinet towards the heavy object.

K So that’s how it went?!

R I thought, because you solved the riddle of the well as well, that you would get this trick without any problem. I especially wrote that she was „slumped over, face down, over the makeup cabinet“. And while the other two in the room were actually pierced by the stakes, Shannon was not. That is why you can imagine her being the last to die in that room, because there was nobody left to insert the stake into the gunwound. There was never a full inspection of that special room, so that means that the weapon was left within it.

Originally Posted by Kealym

2. I dunno, a Chiru adaptation would be really hard to pull off well, since the plot becomes much more layered and hard to keep track of (lol, Chick-Beato suddenly popping into Featherine's study to read the old gameboards). I would recommend the manga, which is ALSO supposed to add more hints, and clears up several issues (for example, it's WAY WAY WAY clearer in the manga that Battler only witnessed 5 bodies in the shed, in legend)

The manga is definitely a must read, expecially EP 8 which is in my opinion way better than the visual novel in terms of plot, explanations and also emotional involvement.

The manga deals much better with Beato and Natsuhi's relation, with Kyrie's surprise and pain at discovering the truth about Battler, with Rosa's past and her relation with Maria, even with Kinzo and Genji's relation. Ep 8 manga version is definitely awesome.

Originally Posted by Kealym

Lambda says in red that Erika does increase it by one person, though.
Also, Yasu ... does not have multiple personality disorder. Like, it's a verbal shorthand to kind of describe the situation, but I wouldn't call it MPD, at all

I agree.

Originally Posted by Kealym

Not necessarily. In worlds where Eva dies, she'd almost certainly end up with the Sumadera's (she was staying with Kyrie's parents during the conference after all, IIRC). And, she wouldn't have the same suspicions of the Sumadera's as she does of Eva, about why her other relatives died. There'd also be no need to kill her, because 1. They'd already control her inheritance until she came of age and 2. The Ushiromiya's were relatively broke in 1986, anyways - there's a lot less money that could even be stolen from her.

Well, she might come to hate them anyway as they aren't exactly a nice family and the public might come up with a conspiration theory... like the Sumadera sending a killer there, one the police never found or that somehow ended up dying as well.
LOL, maybe they could even claim Erika was the Sumadera's killer.

Originally Posted by AC-Phoenix

You could interpret it in a way that there has never been a letter yes, but you forgot that Battler still had the head ring wich was inside the envelope. The
red truth also heavily implies that it actually existed:
And none of them misinterpreted a knocking sound. Krauss, Natsuhi, and Genji were not involved with the knock. No one else existed inside the mansion. And that knock refers to the action of standing directly in front of a door and hitting it with a hand.

No, the trick is that no knock existed which is why no one misinterpreted a knocking sound, because there was none. They lied about it and lied about how Battler got the ring. Probably the ring was handed to him but in exchange Beato asked his complicity in a plan to 'unveil Natsuhi's lies', the adults agreed to it and Battler found himself forced to take part to it.
Shannon might have not revealed her true identity or the whole truth about Kinzo's death, she might have just offered cooperation and added things like 'madam tells me to say I saw the master but actually it's years from the last I saw it... but i'm just a servant and this is no proof the master is 'vanished'... though master was so kind I want to help you all to find out the truth...'

Also, the solution for the knok is 'given' in a tip, in which a 'mysterious' envelope was supposed to be handed in the same way.

Originally Posted by AC-Phoenix

It wasn't implied that way using a red though.
I don't say its impossible, its a sound explaination after all. Though it imho breaks apart at the point where everyone straight out suepects Natsuhi instead of Shanon if she gave the Ring to Battler. People would start questioning why she had the ring in the first place.

For this she can have a perfectly reasonable explanation like she had found it in Kinzo's room, where Kinzo is supposed to be but she's not seeing him by years although she'd been told to say she did.

She was getting suspicious and since Battler solved the epitaph she thought that Kinzo would have him to have the ring.

Another possibility is that Battler was handed the solution of the epitaph and the ring by 'someone' and was asked to fake finding the solution. Then this someone instructed them about how they should tell they got the ring.

Or else Shannon said she found the mysterious envelope in front of her door and she preferred to hand it to... Eva or Rudolf instead than Natsuhi but she's afraid if this were to come up Natsuhi would blame her so could they please tell her the envelope was found in a different way?

Really, there's dozens of way to deliver the envelope to the siblings while looking innocent.

Originally Posted by AC-Phoenix

The point is if you start arguing about Bern's game you can ignore all Bern-reds in game 5 too. After all The only one who should have been allowed to use reds in game 5 was Lamda, yet we saw Bern using reds as if she was the game master, and Lamda accepted them simply to troll.

Don't forget Beato had a point there, that she can't prove no on left the room - Due to Beato's rule that red is simply the truth she couldn't deny Bern though.
However Beato never misused the reds in such a way.

Actually, you would have to start doubting several red just like this one here:

And because of Erika's scientific investigation, further red had been added, saying Genji never left the mansion after 24:00
The room was not sealed by Erika who has the right to seal a room perfectly but by Eva - so Genji could still leave the room for a short while using the window. This red is therefore not airtight, lamda simply accepted it as the truth and thats how it was possible to become the truth(implied by battler that it works this way).

The red as an advantage. If you try to say something in red and this red isn't true you won't manage to say it. It happened to Battler and Beato in Ep 4.
So we know that Bern's red is true merely because she can say it.

Theoretically Bern could have found out the culprit just by trying to say in red X is the culprit replacing with X the name of each person on the island until she would manage to say the full sentence in red. Then she would know she had the culprit.

Originally Posted by qno2

Something about EP5 could be added though... we don't have any confirmation whether the phone calls even happened

I'm sure one phonecall was confirmed in red by Lambda as something that really happened. In the manga when the scene in which the phonecall is done Lambda is dressed up as 'mystery man' to play on the fact that the caller is unknown.

Originally Posted by qno2

Definitely, Battler himself mentioned that they're bending logic for their own gains. Still, the red has been said and nobody called "logic error", though somebody should probably call the witch-police.

The problem in Ep 5 is that a lot of things happen off screen so they seem pretty sudden. The reader didn't know the detective put tape on the door, that stayed awake all the night to check on Battler's room, that used also scientific methods to check some stuffs and so on.

Everything seems very similar to a Sherlock Holmes tale where the reader only know that Holmes lowered is gaze before hearing Holmes going into a detailed description of how the culprit should be and then, when Watson asks how Holmes knows, we get lot of details like how Holmes saw there were footprints on the ground and how studing them he could say this and that and how the air smelled of this and that and so on.

In short the competition between Holmes and the reader is lost by the beginning because the reader has way less hints than Holmes to make deductions however the reader doesn't care as we deem Holmes reliable.

Erika is the same as Holmes as she has at her hands lot of extra hints however we don't judge her reliable so we wonder if the fingertips she found and identified as... let's say Battler, are really Battler or she lied and Bern is providing her a fake red truth so that they can trap Natsuhi.

I think Bern's red truth is true, the trick is they're using it to force an interpretation that will show Natsuhi is the culprit.

It's like when they showed that Kinzo was in Natsuhi's bed.

All the red truths about Kinzo not being in the other places were true but the final deduction was obviously a lie.

Originally Posted by qno2

Setting aside the last red there, the real problem are Bern's rules for culprits and accomplices in conjunction with Nanjo's purple. Because neither Rosatrice nor Shkanon can work without him (or false proclamations of death in general), according to those rules he would need to be a culprit ('one who murders') as well, but the red from EP4 claims that he isn't a murderer.

Well, technically you could use Erika's reasoning and say that Nanjo killed someone in some other place that's not Rokkenjima. Therefore he's a murderer.... just not of the people in Rokkenjima.

This allows also Natsuhi to lie as she killed the servant.

And since in Umineko you can kill a personality and even a plushie...

this allow Rosa to lie as she killed Sakutarou, Maria as she killed Rosa many times in her head, Kyrie as she killed Asumu in her head many times. And probably everyone else because since the definition of death and killing is too lose likely just by stepping on a bug you become a murderer.

Though I don't think the purple statements are supposed to be applied to all the games. Bern made them to make things simpler and just for her game. I doubt they'll work in the others (and if you provide George with a gun he can kill an adult with no problems... actually likely he could kill one even without it, just with one of his kick).