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Haven't been thinking much about Umineko in a long time, but thinking back about it, I now find it extremely hard to believe Yasu/Beatrice can be the culprit (within the games).
There simply is constantly hints that takes various forms that relates to the idea that "the one everyone believes is the culprit" cannot really be as such. Accepting that Yasu is the culprit isn't any different, ultimately, from accepting Eva as culprit in arc 3 and Natsuhi in arc 5 (or even Kinzo in arc 4 and "beatrice the 19th human" in arc 2).
Could start approaching it from various povs in various arcs, but I think arc 5 is clear enough that we don't really need the rest.
- We were shown that Natsuhi could (assuming her own scenes aren't necessarily reliable) have committed every single murders when we look about alibies.
- Just like Yasu, Natsuhi really was "up to something" and has plenty of stuff to hide, and it'd be quite easy to pass down a moral judgement on her.
- Just like Beatrice, Natsuhi seems to feel partially responsible for what's happening and has regrets about it.
Basically it's the formula to be blamed as culprit. A formula we've been constantly shown in a negative light.
Btw I'm not going to suggest another culprit, because this is essentially what I think has been our mistake in Umineko : We're not there to find a culprit, we're there to defend people who has been wrongfully accused.
Not saying the culprit isn't important or interesting to find btw. It might be all that interests many of you, but I'm just talking about what's been going on in the serie. It's always been about proving someone innocent. Defence lawyer is pretty much both Beatrice and Battler's job, in the end.
To me this is particularly interesting in the light that, if a witch or other fantasy being was actually responsible for everyone's death, we'd only be able to prove this by proving without a shadow of a doubt that everyone else is innocent. That would actually make Beatrice the heroine trying to find the "villain" while it would make Battler the one who is causing trouble to the investigation by trying to pin it to someone who is innocent out of mostly spite. Interesting mostly because, this is basically a proof that fantasy can require at least as much logical reasoning then mystery does, if not more.
Generally speaking too, a lot of things like all those talks about devil's proof ends up becoming much more important then as they stand right now under that approach too.
It also raises the question about ethics : what interests you the most - protecting the innocents or pursuing a culprit. At the very least, to me, this solves the problems everyone had about "Ryuukishi's messed up ethics".
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