[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

She doesn't just pick them off the street. She adopts them and hides them from the outside world. Who does this besides someone who wants their own personal amnesiac?

Ikuko. That's really the only person you can state with certainty that she would. Because no one else did that. Yasu didn't do that, unless you assume that Yasu=Ikuko to begin with, and then that becomes circular logic.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I agree that Battler's and Touya's stories are compatible, but there are so few facts we know about Touya in the first place other than: He had amnesia, he likes mystery novels, and he remembered the number 18.

I think being an exceptional speedreader is the most relevant part.
Amnesia isn't something you can reconduct to a specific person
Liking mystery novel is something that many people do
being a speedreader is rarer.

Anyway he remembered he was 18 years old, which is different from remembering the number 18. This suggests that Tohya lost his memory at that age and Battler went missing at exactly that age. While you can state that there are a lot of people that are 18 years old, this adds quite a lot to the convenience of Ikuko finding an amnesiac moldable as Battler that also casually believes to have the same age Battler had when he disappeared.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

As far as theorizing that someone is lying...? Testimony ain't worth shit in Umineko.

Yeah, but you can't use the lack of info you create by dismissing something that is stated as a suspicious lack of info. Because you know, just because everything can be a lie, it doesn't mean that everything is a lie.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Let's just focus on the facts we know, which about Ikuko really aren't that much: She goes by the name Ikuko, she's comfortably rich, she has a weird personality, she's a hermit, she writes mysteries, and she adopted and hid an amnesiac from the street.

Of which only "Ikuko" directly connects her to Beatrice, all the rest are either not related to Yasu at all or common enough.
Ikuko might be "weird" but her weirdness is completely different from Yasu's. You could say that Yasu created another personality, but at that point you could even say that Yasu is Tohya.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Aside from the obvious fact that Yasu gives a lot more shit about Battler than she does about Ange?

You're assuming that she's Yasu, and that Ikuko wouldn't care about anything but Battler.
If we believe that she set up the fake Eva's diary revelation day in order to quench the rampart speculations on the Rokkenjima incident, as the story implies and as Yukari Kotobuki mentions, then she has other agenda, which seems to imply she wants to fix whatever damage her forgeries might have caused.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

It's entirely stylistic. Watch any live action show or movie converted from manga or anime and the characters will all have black hair. Canon foreigners, like Beatrice, may be an exception.

You haven't seen Sailor Moon live action.

Anyway I think the main problem is the fact that many times it was repeated that Beatrice has "golden hair", as something very exotic and particular. And that would make little sense if Jessica was really as blonde as we see her.

There is then the joke in EP7 about Beatrice having hair like pasta while Japanese are all "pasta al nero di seppia".
This is a clear statement about the fact that Japanese all have black hair.

But as usual Ryuukishi gives us mixed inputs, because Bernkastel clearly mentions the fact that she gave Erika her peculiar hair color. Which means Erika in the gameboard is actually supposed to have blue hair.
Of course she's a fictional character, but then... aren't they all?