[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[GabrieliosP]

Then again, whenever someone meets Beatrice in the gameboard, they're probably too shocked to really notice things.

It has the same dress and same hair color and hairstyle, therefore it is Beatrice.

However, Kyrie met Beato side by side with the portrait in EP2 and, in her eyes, Beato as identical to Beatrice Ushiromiya. Or Kyrie is a betrayed accomplice and EP2 and was told to say that they are the same.

[Drifloon]

or he found his mother's grave, cut her face off and is using it as a mask.

This is canon now.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

There's also the thing about race that is conveniently ignored.

Though I guess this isn't too much of an issue: the Second Beatrice would be part Japanese and part Italian, then Yasu would probably be more Japanese than Italian. It's just that all mentions of Piece-Beatrice by other characters refer to her as "the Witch of the Portrait" (including Battler at the end of EP1, iirc). Maybe they were only referring to dress and hair style? I dunno, if I was certain that it was the Witch of the Portrait, then I would base that on facial features as well.

"Hey guys it's Beatrice. But it's Asian." => All characters have Asian features so you can't find out by looking at the face.
or
"Hey guys it's Beatrice. An Italian one." => Yasu is noticeably Italian, or he found his mother's grave, cut her face off and is using it as a mask.

Now I get the manga scene in Ep 4 in which Battler litterally lost his face and someone else placed it on himself!
It was supposed to be a hint of what Beato did!

[DaBackpack]

Not to mention EP1 First Twilight. It was foreshadowed from the beginning!

[Renall]

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

Not to mention EP1 First Twilight. It was foreshadowed from the beginning!

Therefore, it also passes the Knox rules! Not even Dlanor can stop this theory!

[DaBackpack]

Maybe she started a face collection? Yasu hated mirrors, after all.

Hell, maybe there was a real Kanon whose face she stole and uses on occasion.

heck why stop there

Yasu is Buffalo Bill.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

There's also the thing about race that is conveniently ignored.

Though I guess this isn't too much of an issue: the Second Beatrice would be part Japanese and part Italian, then Yasu would probably be more Japanese than Italian.

Well, Kinzo mentions, when he first meets Yasu as Beatrice, that she looks just like her mother did in that dress and hairdo, so it is not unlikely that without these elements nobody would actually suspect her to be a direct descendent of an Italian.

There's also the scene in EP2 where Kyrie witnesses Beatrice being lead up the stairs by Genji and she is obviously confused because she is sure to have seen that perosn before. This hints both towards the get-up partly disguising the original features but at the same time not being 1:1 Beatrice from the portrait.

[AC-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by haguruma

Well, Kinzo mentions, when he first meets Yasu as Beatrice, that she looks just like her mother did in that dress and hairdo, so it is not unlikely that without these elements nobody would actually suspect her to be a direct descendent of an Italian.

There's also the scene in EP2 where Kyrie witnesses Beatrice being lead up the stairs by Genji and she is obviously confused because she is sure to have seen that perosn before. This hints both towards the get-up partly disguising the original features but at the same time not being 1:1 Beatrice from the portrait.

A good make up can help a bit too, not much but still enough to decieve.


Regarding the face issue: was only in EP 1, so it doesn't really work...
and... No more cheepers creepers for you guys :P

[Renall]

In defense of a person dressing as Beatrice, if you aren't paying a lot of attention to the person under normal circumstances you might not recognize them when they're in a very conspicuous disguise.

Like if the guy who works down the hall from you comes to work as a clown. If you see a clown walk past your workstation, are you necessarily going to immediately recognize Gary from Accounting, even if you've met Gary before?

Beatrice shows up in ep2 in an audacious outfit with really striking hair. Kyrie could probably be forgiven for not being suspicious as to who she is... but anyone looking for any length of time, probably not so much. Battler of course might recognize more readily, but had no opportunity to do so closely in ep4. So at least that disguise is kind of understandable.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by AC-Phoenix

For the entire EP 2 Rosa has an alibi. Will was allowed to counter blues with his VanDine reds so they are probably applicable too, so only one culprit with MINOR accomplices.
Though his idea of what george does is no longer 'minor'.

The entire concept of Umineko seems pretty contradictory to Rule #2, though.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Kealym

The entire concept of Umineko seems pretty contradictory to Rule #2, though.

Also #16. To fully introduce those rules, I suspect they'd have to have been pretty heavily modified as one or two Knox rules were.

[battle22]

Also #16. To fully introduce those rules, I suspect they'd have to have been pretty heavily modified as one or two Knox rules were.

I was thinking that only those which were said on the story applied to the Mystery. Because, Well Why would Ryu make Battler ask Dlanor if the mystery supported Knox with Dlanor responding as 'I don't know' when She has used Knox to deny some stuff already...

[GabrieliosP]

Also the reason as to why Beato simply didn't finish Dlanor off by proclaiming that "This gameboard doesn't work based on the Knox rules" in colored text.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by GabrieliosP

Also the reason as to why Beato simply didn't finish Dlanor off by proclaiming that "This gameboard doesn't work based on the Knox rules" in colored text.

We could even go so far and say that it is not strange that End of the Golden Witch adhered to the Knox rules, since it was a game created by somebody else than Beato or Battler (though it is strange then how Ange talks about only a number of her relatives being killed off in the last work by either Hachijou Touya or Itouikukuro Reigonamu). From a meta-perspective though, the game could have been especially constructed to allow the Eiserne Jungfrau to use the Knox rules.
This in turn would make EP6 an even bigger trap, because it meant allowing rules that are not necessarily applicable to the game as a whole from Battler's perspective.

[DaBackpack]

That bothered me in the Chiru arcs. I don't think anybody proclaimed that any of the games adhere to the Knox Decalogue. Dlanor just showed up and went 'whaddup' and suddenly pro-mystery everywhere. Unless I'm mistaken, of course. It became a pretty big problem in EP6 as well.

Not to mention the EP7 Tea Party... literally picking and choosing from the Van Dine rules without any indication. I mean, it's one thing to say "A servant didn't do it!" or whatever. But to proclaim that a servant didn't do it because it violates one of these rules strongly suggests that the rules themselves are valid across the entire board. This isn't true. What is even the point of Van Dine's wedges? I understand that Willlard is arguably the character most representative of anti-mystery, but using SOME of the Van Dine rules makes reasoning very difficult.

[Kealym]

I doubt Van Dines is applicable at all.
Will used it first, on a completely unrelated gameboard.
He used it again in the very specific case of Bern's "who killed Beatrice" game, where she herself admitted that she just placed Beato's box into a larger box.
And he used it again during Kyrie's super-fun-target-practice, and LOST HORRIBLY. I forget the specific line, but I remember having the distinct impression that Will shied away from evening mentioning his rules during EP7, because they would've Beato's gameboard wouldn't be able to withstand them, or something like that.

Regarding Dlanor, we're told, right after Dlanor expresses her own doubt, that she would not have been allowed to enter the game if it were against Beato's wishes. In my opinion, Ryukishi's literary moralizing was trying to say "Yeah, pro-mystery rules have their place. Hell, even I'm using them, probably, but you shouldn't blindly make that assumption." Like, hoo-rah for Bern and Lambda because they were the ones who actually called Dlanor, but it's still Beato's creative graces that allowed such a move.

Plus, just to go a little farther, taking Van Dine's across the board doesn't even add much more information that Knox's, does. It would confirm that at least one person has been killed in each scnenarior, and ... that there's certainly a detective, somewhere (Erika mentioned the off chance that she could still be murdered, despite being the detective piece) ... and proving the theory about Hideyoshi's cigarettes wrong, in EP3.

It's another matter that disappointed me about the Golden Land battle in EP8 - among the squandered opportunities for clarifying, Will was said to be fighting the goats whose pro-mystery theories were basically terrible, but we're told and not shown about it. Too bad.

[GuestSpeaker]

Just remember that BATTLER's viewpoint in EP6 had to be made unreliable because he had learned the truth (Featherine said so). What else could BATTLER's unreliable viewpoint be hiding from us, if not that he's actually Genius Batter

I never thought about this statement from Featherine properly before, but maybe as well as Meta Battler learning the truth (and thus having to write his character as unreliable) what it is telling us is piece Battler learned the truth in this game. Game 5 would be waaaay too early to show us Battler being handed the solution by Yasu and seeing the gold room, and yet it fits well with the story....

[Renall]

You know, rereading ep8 it's kind of baffling how nonsensical the entire goat battle sequence is. Things just happen for no reason, people not named Will/Dlanor/Lion/BATTLER are completely incapable of thinking of any semblance of strategy, and then Battler has to fight Erika because........ because he does, and then they (and Beato/Ange) have a context-less logic battle (that we don't even actually get to see for either side), Beatrice seals a room that already has the thing in it Ange wants in the first place, Ange is completely right in all of her arguments about how everyone is being a patronizing dick to her, BATTLER argues that bad things aren't bad if we don't know about them (I'm sure that's exactly how Yukari felt about her cancer, right?), and then Lion makes a point about trusting Ange that seems to fly over everyone's head, including the author's. And then most of that turns out to have been completely pointless. And then later we get cockblocked on yet another fight scene.

Basically what I'm saying is Will and Lion are the only good characters in Chiru, and also that the removal of a board narrative for context damages the emotional investment of the logic battles. It probably doesn't help that they were also more or less cut out entirely and reduced to conclusions (that have no impact because there was no back-and-forth).

One thing I was pointing out last night though: If the goats can only deny things with "mystery" solutions (apparently there are no pro-fantasy people in the future), wouldn't a good strategy just be to make up some new magic character they've never heard of? Hell, just keep doing that, what kinda Endless Witches are Battler and Beatrice anyway?

EDIT: Also BATTLER makes so many suboptimal moves that I almost have to think he's Genius Battlering the whole thing, except that requires that he be able to accurately predict literally everything Bernkastel would do which is a vastly bigger stretch than predicting Erika's actions.

[GreyZone]

^Add to that, that Tohya and Ikuko together "form" Featherine and it makes sense again... well, almost...

[Renall]

Originally Posted by GreyZone

^Add to that, that Tohya and Ikuko together "form" Featherine and it makes sense again... well, almost...

It makes sense on the authorial level because Tohya/Ikuko basically are the top-level authority in the form of the author avatar, but it doesn't make sense on the lower level where BATTLER is doing things for what he claims to be a coherent reason yet ends up doing a bunch of shit he has no reason whatsoever to do but does anyway. These actions make sense from Featherine's context, but they don't make a whole lot of sense from BATTLER's.