[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

Spoiler for Something that bothers me about the end:

Natsuhi traps the cousins in the room in a way that doesn't protect them. An outsider could get in easily.

Spoiler for Spoiler:

It all really depends on the contents of the final letter I guess, which of course was never really revealed.

And the truth of the matter is, I can't find any human explanation for this episode 1.

The main problem with the first 6 murders is that they couldn't have essentially just killed each other off because you have the issue of the bodies arranged and the faces being bashed in. Even if we were to say that some of them killed some of them, there still would have to be the 7th person to arrange the dead and to rearrange their faces. The only possible exceptions were Gohda and Shannon who were seen to be apart from the four. Then, you have that magic circle. There isn't enough info on alibis to understand the other 12 so you can't exactly pinpoint any one of them.

As for Kinzo, it's the receipt seal issue. Again since we did see Natsuhi talk to him we know he was there in the morning. As Battler suggests, the only way is that he could have left after the seal was broken by Natsuhi and Eva. We end up having to debate whether he left by his own accord or he was lured out. If he left by his own accord then it would be impossible to determine who would have killed him and left the stake in his body because there is no direct involvement by any other person that can be perceived. If he was lured out, the only humans who can have done this are Genji or Nanjo. When you consider the fact that both of them were dispatched in the same manner of being stabbed with a stake it makes it highly unlikely that they did kill Kinzo, much less an issue of motive.

For Eva and Hideyoshi, we honestly again don't have enough information on the nature of their locked room problem to know if it was possible for a person to gain access. The possibility can be determined with closer inspection but we aren't given that. Considering that both were also stabbed with stakes at positions that made killing from the door impossible, it HAS to have occurred inside, which again brings us back to the issue of access. The door was chained after all. The only possibility is if the killer was already inside, killed them, and left AFTER the chain was cut. The problem here is that unless I'm mistaken, everyone's presence was accounted for already. If this is the case, it would have had to be someone outside the 18, which would also be highly unlikely.

For Kanon it could easily be a person who stabbed him, using an optical illusion of gold butterflies. Again the problem is that practically everyone was again accounted for IIRC, and even if it weren't Battler did chase the purported killer into the rain. It would have been obvious to an extent if one of them did it as they did collect together after, and you can;t exactly immediately hide being drenched in the rain.

As for the last 3... unless Maria did it which doesn't seem likely, it couldn't have been the last four in the study room. This again leads to the idea of the 19th person.

The real kicker for me are the magic circles. It has to be a person who understood what the essence of the circles would have meant, which makes the obvious choices be Maria, Genji or Kinzo, but Kinzo and Genji were killed, and again Maria? Not likely.

If you combine it all, you have only 2 human possibilities:

1. Different people killing different people, with some shady background participant capitalizing on it.
2. 1 Person behind it all.

The problem with the first theory: How could the "killer" predict and capitalize on all of this? While the existence of multiple explanations for the different deaths suggest multiple causations are possible, there are simply far too many variables in play for one person to link all of it together for his own ends. This doesn;t even consider the inordinate amount of time necessary to make it all work.

Ocham's Razor would probably say the second is more likely, but it again throws the issue of how 1 person can seemingly plan and execute such elaborate murders, much more the more impossible ones.