[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Leslie Chow]

All she's saying there is that she follows the etiquette of there being no hidden doors. She wasn't saying there that Knox and/or Dine rules apply to the game.

Thanks for clarifying that point up! It has been a while since I've read Umineko and I still haven't reached that part in my re-read. But yeah, I still think applying Van Dine shouldn't be a problem though, due to what Willard stated in the manga.

[AuraTwilight]

Originally Posted by Lombardest

Did we ever know what was Bern's logic error? I only watched the anime but I always assumed it was not specified since in Higurashi there was no metaworld, at least it wasn't treated as such.

Higurashi itself was implied to be the Logic Error. The implied set-up was a Lambda VS Featherine game, and Hanyuu was Featherine's avatar and Takano Miyo was someone Lambda contracted with.

The loops eventually had all the dead Rikas congeal into 'Frederica Bernkastel', who properly separated from Rika once she found salvation. It's also noted that Featherine abandoned the game and left her piece (Rika) to find her own way out of the logic error (the time loop).

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Crap. I guess I misread that one. But if we were to rely on just the materials alone (eg anime, manga, and visual novels), without the interviews, we could actually use Van Dine as a guide.

But if you cut all the info you dislike because they go against your theory you'll be like Erika and Bern in Ep 5 when they knew Kinzo was dead but still used him being alive to support her theory.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

After all, in EP2, Beatrice did say that Van Dine and Knox are applicable to her games, but since at the time Battler was incompetent, I guess we only saw Knox and Van Dine in action later in the Chiru arcs. But I guess if we took it as a hint, using Knox and Van Dine should have helped the reader somewhat solve the mystery just with the question arcs, as later claimed by Willard in EP7.

Nope, she never said they were applicable and in fact Battler heard it for the first time in Ep 5.

Beato's exact quote is:

"Hmm. No secret passage exists that you all do not know of. Was it Knox, or was it Van Dine? It seems that in mystery novels, there must not be hidden passages, no matter what. I also follow that etiquette." [Beato in Ep 2]

In case you don't know the rule about secret passages is in Knox, not Van Dine. Still, this doesn't imply she completely follow Knox, just that she follows that rule. In Ep 5 in fact it will be confirmed that Beato never said that her gameboard was knox compliant.

............Of course, there's also what both Dlanor and Virgilia said.
There's no guarantee that this tale follows the rules of the Decalogue, so of course, I can't deny the possibility that the culprit first appeared in the 2nd game or later. [Battler in Ep 5]

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

So I am guessing Ryukishi is saying to "eliminate the 20 rules" was because it might mislead the reader from reaching the truth, e.g. with the rule "The servant cannot be the culprit".?

That's a common misconception. That Van Dine applies even if you use the Sayotrice theory.
Ep 2 & 4 implied that the culprit is someone who was acknowledged as the family head. In Ep 7 we're confirmed that Sayo had inherited the title of head. Sayo was a servant under the direct orders of the head. Ergo Sayo was a servant under the direct orders of... herself. That's not really being a servant. She however didn't want to know the truth about her being the head so she continued pretending of being a servant. That's disguising yourself as a servant of the head, not being a servant.
Her pay? Technically it comes from Kinzo. Krauss never inherited for Kinzo, he's just doing embezzlement.
Natsuhi ordering Sayo? She got the right from the head to order the servants around, as Sayo is the head and she's playing the role of the servant (unknown to Natsuhi) Natsuhi technically has her permission to order her around.

The same trick was used in another Agatha Christie book where the culprit disguised himself as a servant. The victim was aware he wasn't a servant but thought it was to make a prank so he introduced him as a servant to everyone. The role of the detective is to discover the guy introduced as a servant was actually another character in disguise and that played that role on purpose.

Tricks of this kind can be used in the mistery genre if properly foreshadowed. The culprit inheriting the title of the head was properly foreshadowed starting from Ep 1 with Beatrice sealing the letter using Kinzo's ring.

this is the Van Dine that caused Ryukishi troubles:

3. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.

If we want we can put also up to debate this:

4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It's false pretenses.

as Erika was supposed to be the detective even though she didn't claim the detective authority

This:

5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions — not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker.

In Ep 6 Erika confessed! Well, sort of, as it's her player which does it and not her piece so it can be up to debate but still we learn the culprit because she told us.
without being really given time to guess it.

6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.

As Erika is the culprit Ep 6 has no detective.

9. There must be but one detective — that is, but one protagonist of deduction — one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn't know who his codeductor is. It's like making the reader run a race with a relay team.

Ep 5 has one piece detective but in the meta we've 2 detectives, Erika and Battler

12. There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature.

A bit up to debate as according to confession the 'minor helpers' were willing to murder (Eva even strangled Maria!) which makes me indignate enough. But well, maybe they're still considered minor.

16. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no "atmospheric" preoccupations. such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude.

Umineko has so much of this I can't even begin to list it.

18. A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader.

Sayo kills herself. But well, as that's not the only crime maybe it could work?

20. And (to give my Credo an even score of items) I herewith list a few of the devices which no self-respecting detective story writer will now avail himself of. They have been employed too often, and are familiar to all true lovers of literary crime. To use them is a confession of the author's ineptitude and lack of originality. (a) Determining the identity of the culprit by comparing the butt of a cigarette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a suspect. (b) The bogus spiritualistic se'ance to frighten the culprit into giving himself away. (c) Forged fingerprints. (d) The dummy-figure alibi. (e) The dog that does not bark and thereby reveals the fact that the intruder is familiar. (f)The final pinning of the crime on a twin, or a relative who looks exactly like the suspected, but innocent, person. (g) The hypodermic syringe and the knockout drops. (h) The commission of the murder in a locked room after the police have actually broken in. (i) The word association test for guilt. (j) The cipher, or code letter, which is eventually unraveled by the sleuth.

Up to debate but there was comparison of butts of cigarettes... even if it didn't quite revealed the identity of the culprit it helped.
Also Natsuhi and Krauss were drugged before being killed... they didn't use a syrince but well...
Murders were committed after the people broke in (Erika killed everyone while checking their corpses after the closed rooms had been broken)

I find rather weird how people obsess over the servant thing when there's plenty of not working Van Dine in Umineko.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

But then again, Beatrice was going with the whole thing in Our Confession that 1 in a 1000 would figure out the truth (not sure if this is accurate since I am quoting from memory).

Beatrice and Kinzo also thought it was hard to solve the epitaph, which the siblings did easily once they started seriously thinking at it.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

But wouldn't that mean believing in a magical being? No, but we could say in one crazy theory that Kinzo is so wealthy that he has access to the latest technology and may have used Shannon as a clone of sorts or even transferred Kuwadorian Beatrice's memories onto the Fukuin House servant when she was still a kid, which made her mentally disturbed like Jekyll and Hyde.

It is forbidden for unknown drugs or hard to understand scientific devices to be used.

Clonation of people doesn't exist even now... in 1986 it would be impossible to believe Kinzo did it.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Yeah I know this is a bit far-fetched but this is the best I got to reply in regards to the whole thing about Van Dine (if we just focus on the question arcs without any reference to the core arcs). Hopefully my reply wasn't convoluted and confusing, since I am bad at expressing myself.

I understand you want to use Van Dine and are trying to make it work but considering the overmentioned problems with Van Dine... I think you've a lot to solve.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

I forgot to mention this one, since I was more focused on the alibi aspect and I didn't want to put in an incomplete red truth. This one is a bit tricky, since I could claim that Sayo DIDN'T KILL Kanon, but merely CHOSE Kanon to die.

how to kill a fantasy character is discussed in Ep 4 with Sakutarou's death and later on in Ep 7 for Beatrice.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Here's my blue truth: Because Beatrice (or Sayotrice) planned to do the murder game mystery, this led to a series of events that led to Rokken Island massacre carried out by Rudolf and Kyrie. This led to the survival of Eva and the one to take care of Ange, who chose to believe that Eva was the culprit due to the mass media attention that pinned Eva as the culprit. She locked herself with her imagination becoming a girl who is almost as if is on acid, due to the influence of Maria's diary who was influenced by a mentally disturbed person who claims to be Beatrice. Because of this, Ange became anti-social and was frequently bullied by her peers, which led her to find comfort in her own imagination which ironically was made by the one who post-mortemly and indirectly put her in the situation she was in that led to her death.

Ange wasn't locked in her imagination early on, nor it was due to her being locked into her fantasy that she was bullied. It was because she was suspected of being the daughter of two murderers.

The 'locked room' in which she's trapped is a situation from which she can't get the knowledge she longs for to the point she was starving for it. In fact, had Eva's diary never existed, she would have never known the truth which was sealed by Beatrice into a catbox. Managing to put her hands on the diary meant to break the locked room. Solving the locked room also meant understanding her own situation was toxic to her, that not knowing the truth was killing her.
In fact the whole duel is filled with talks about Ange's feelings.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

If the reader is 1 in the 1000 (in the Sayotrice point of view) manages to come to this conclusion, the reader could only conclude that Shannon is Beatrice, because as far as I can remember, there is no evidence that indicates that Kanon and Shannon shares one body. At best, they could only solve 2/3 of who dunnit, 3/4 of how dunnit and 1/2 of why dunnit.

There are hints that Kanon is 'fantasy' and yet he exists and that he's somehow connected to Shannon. Also Kanon and Shannon are both labelled as Kinzo's furniture.

The vagueness I was talking about is tied, more than to a lack of hint, to a lack of... ordinariety in the situation. Sayo's situation is pretty uncommon. People are more prone to try a solution that works in a more common setting.
So even if there are hints that Kanon and Shannon are the same person the whole idea Sayo lived a double life for 3 years seem so odd you end up discharging the hints as red herrings because they don't seem strong enough to overcome the oddness of the situation.

Ryukishi also played with the setting a bit so that some oddness that made some situations uncommon were meant to be purposely ignored (like the rain that doesn't wet people unless said otherwise).

Even for the motive there are hints, or for the fact that Natsuhi might have harmed Sayo... but it's so vague and not so common one can't really connect the dots with confidence and is more prone to search for alternative yet less peculiar looking situations.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

She could have used a master key or if that doesn't work, she could have just used the garden tools in the shed to destroy the shutter with either the tools and/or gun. After all, nobody did come back to see the garden tool shed if I remember correctly.

The master keys were in possession of the servants and anyway they didn't open that storehouse. The lock is outside. And you still haven't explained how she could have recognized the key, took it from where it was, closed herself in and then return the key in its place while she was closed in so that the servants could pick it up to open the lock and find her while she pretended to be dead.

There is only one key to the gardening shed's shutter.
That was being held by those who were locked up inside it.

If the children had taken it, and had it stolen from them by some chance, that would do nothing but expose the lives of those in the shed to danger.
And even with the key, the shutter could not be opened from the inside.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Alternatively she could just break the window and get through it. The visual novel does not specify the size of the window, so it could be assumed that it is big enough to fit a person to get through it. The anime shows that Battler could at least theoretically fit through the window and if you compare his size with Rosa, it is obvious that he is taller than her and has a bigger mass in body size. So it shouldn't be impossible for Rosa to get through the window.

I can't find the quote right now but if I'm not wrong the window problem was discussed in Ep 4. One can't get in or out of it. When Gohda and Kumasawa close themselves in Battler from the outside can open the window, which is called small, but can't get in. Later, he has to break the shutter. The manga, which is more reliable, depict the window as more or less of the size of a head.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Well that would be disappointing, but I'd be fine with it. But like I said in my first post, the Japanese Wikipedia listed the clarification of the connection of Higurashi to Umineko as part of the changes in EP8 manga. But like you said, Ryukishi might just be toying with his readers by mentioning his works as being read/watched by characters of other works. But if the manga really is the "period" to the "sentence" known as Umineko, then I think that we should still get a full explanation on the full nature of the meta-world regardless as well as Ikuko by the end of the magic end. Did she have plastic surgery or something to look young, or is she really a supernatural being?

Honestly I think that the explanations that will be offered are in relation to the mysteries we were asked to solve. The nature of the Meta, although interesting and more specifically the connection with Higurashi, weren't among the mysteries we were asked to solve. In the same way we won't have explanation about how Battler's mom died, or if Beatrice Castiglioni really died of childbirth or committed suicide short after it (implied by Beato in Ep 3) and if she truly had feelings for Kinzo or merely she felt flattered by his attentions. And although Ep 8 hinted that Lion's sex was male we probably won't get a definitive answer. Also it might not even bother to dwell much into what went into Kyrie's mind that pushed her to take such a drastic course like murder beyond what was said.
And maybe we won't even get an answer in regards to Battler writing a letter to Sayo or not.
Those were all mysteries we weren't asked to guess so I bet Ryukishi isn't feeling obliged to give us answers.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

P.S. I am still having a hard time finding the scans for Willard's solutions in EP7 manga in the forum, can anyone send me a link to where I can find the scans? Thanks in advance. I have a theory in mind concerning All of them had wounds resembling gunshot wounds which became fatal!, since the snippet showed in Confession of the Golden Witch seems incomplete.

If I'm not wrong they weren't shared in the forum but on Tumblr... only now I can't find the link to them, sorry... The detailed solution to the linked closed rooms though is given in the manga, in the third part of Confession.
The scene showed in Ep 7 merely showed Shannon playing dead than waking up, dressing up as Kanon and going to play dead as Kanon.

Then there's also the interview:

R In the case of EP3 I gave my best especially in the area of tricks. I think we talked about this during the discussion on EP3, but I think EP3 has the most beautiful locked room tricks among them all. But because I gave so many hints in the aftermath of EP2, maybe it seemed easier when looking at the surface. Still the riddle in itself experienced a level up compared to EP2.

K That’s true. I despaired about the mystery of the linked locked rooms until the very end. Will said that „The end and the beginning overlap“, but…

R It’s a metaphor, so even the people who understood the hint, seem to have done so only barely. But because I wrote it that way to distract the people who did not understand, I won’t explain it further now.

K I made a guess that „The guestroom on the first floor is the key“. It’s the pattern that Shannon and Kanon are alive, I think.

R The keyword is „Among the 6 locked rooms, there is only 1 on the first floor.“. If you give it some common sense, at that point there was no hypothesis made about the locked room of the chapel. No one came close of the chapel, it was just thought of as locked. If you exclude the chapel, there is 1 locked room on the first floor, then 2 rooms on the second floor, 1 on the third floor and the one in the downstairs boiler room. And if those were locked from the inside, and there was no key to open them, then…

K Then it’s natural to enter through the first floor window.

R And if you look at it like this is all scatters. In this chain of 6 locked rooms where each locked room can be broken that way, there was a big hint which room was entered first, at least I think so. For me it’s actually quite embarrassing that I have to answer this right now *laugh*.

K Among all the locked rooms, I think this one was the one everybody was most interested in.

R Linked locked rooms has a nice ring to it, hasn’t it?!

[Mali]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

In the VN it's never said Battler entered, just that he approached the entrance. He got an eyefull same as Jessica who kept screaming despite having been caught by Natsuhi. It's never said Battler kneed in front of his parents. He fell to his knees and hugged George's waist. Eva evidently didn't keep holding George which would have been rather pointless as it would be even harder for her to block his view than for Natsuhi block Jessica's view.
Regardless of George being just in or just out of the shed I'll say in order for Battler to hug him he must have been pretty close.
Theorizing is fine but maybe you should check facts first.
I can't even tell anymore if you're serious in tossing your theories or joking as they go crash against the rules and the facts we were given.

Ok he wasn't kneeing. I was wrong with my recalling. I read again and it say definitively that Battler is crouching in front of his parents. Ah I don't want to discuss about whether his parents were lying near the entrance.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Mali

Ok he wasn't kneeing. I was wrong with my recalling. I read again and it say definitively that Battler is crouching in front of his parents. Ah I don't want to discuss about whether his parents were lying near the entrance.

I'm sort of losing track of what you're trying to discuss here.

From your previous statements in the discussion

Originally Posted by Mali

Did George entered the garden shed? Eva was holding him. Battler entered and kneed in front of his parents.

In reply to my

Ergo not only Battler was next to George but since he was on his knees he was in a lower position compared to George and therefore with a worse chance to see what Hideyoshi was 'seeing'.

the general impression I had of your sentence was that you wanted to imply that Battler entered in the storehouse, went next to his parents and kneed in front of them in opposite to George who was held outside of it and therefore had a field of view more limited compared to Battler.

In the VN isn't said if Battler got in, just that he approached the entrance...

Natsuhi oba-san caught Jessica in her arms and Eva oba-san caught George-aniki, ......so I was the only one who could approach the entrance to the storehouse.

and that...

Disregarding age and appearance, ......I fell to my knees, clinging to Aniki's waist and sobbing.

In short the scene is rather different from the one you seemed to depict in which Battler got close to them and kneed in front of them while George was far.

But if we remove the contest yes, Battler ended up kneeling/crouching at some point and, like everyone who witnessed the scene from outside (George, Eva, Jessica, Natsuhi) was in front of his parents. It's just he wasn't far from George when he kneed nor he needed to enter or be particularly close to his parents to be in front of them.

But well, now you say you don't want to discuss his parents' position so I wonder what you wanted to discuss in the beginnig because honestly you lost me.

[Mali]

Yeah I rather losing to you than replying every post which miss the point . Next time I try to post an answer with more context than state my Position to a vague Scene in the VN.
I apologise

[Mr. Dent]

Here's all the Tumblr posts of the EP7 murder scenes.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

[Leslie Chow]

But if you cut all the info you dislike because they go against your theory you'll be like Erika and Bern in Ep 5 when they knew Kinzo was dead but still used him being alive to support her theory.

Well now that you pointed out that Umineko violates some of Van Dine's rules... then I have to admit this was a flaw in my theory-making strategy. It wasn't that I was cutting the info at all, and just as you said, I was just trying to make Van Dine work with both theories in mind.

But let us go through your objections:

3. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.

The love story aspect isn't the focus of the story. The lovers duel and the wedding thing in EP6 took place in the meta-world, so I think it doesn't count. The meta-world more or less is like in the same position as that of the reader. The rule also stated that the focus isn't to have the lovers live happily ever after, and none of the lovers ever did by the end of all games, except in EP6, which took place in the meta-world.

4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It's false pretenses.

Well... Battler was surprised that Erika was the culprit wasn't he? Since he is the Game Master, it is safe to say that Erika murdering people wasn't part of his script. And from Games 1 to 5, none of the detectives were the culprits.

We could even make the argument that Erika "wasn't the culprit" but rather Battler, since he was the one that set up the fake murder scenario.

5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions — not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker.

People in the meta-world are pretty much in the same position as that of the reader, they can see both fantasy and mystery after all. I don't think Meta-Erika confessing counts, and Piece-Erika didn't confess and neither did any of the culprits in any of the six games.

6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.

Linking a bit up with rule #4, we could even make the argument that Erika "wasn't the culprit" but rather Battler, who set up the murder scenario to play a prank on her. We could even say that Erika was just making sure they were dead, which somewhat helped her pinpoint the culprit. After all the definition of a culprit being one who murders only applies to Bernkastel's game after all.

9. There must be but one detective — that is, but one protagonist of deduction — one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn't know who his codeductor is. It's like making the reader run a race with a relay team.

In the point #5, I pointed out that characters in the meta-world are in the same position as the reader and if we add a game master, then an author as well. It's like two people reading the same novel and discussing about it. And in all games, there has only been one detective each.

12. There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature.

In game three, Eva inherited the title Beatrice, so by that point, Eva took on the role of the culprit and Sayo was reduced to probably minor helper or co-plotter status or non-culprit status?

16. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no "atmospheric" preoccupations. such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude.

In EP8 Chapter 18, Willard was able to say Van Dine 16 in red. But it was worded a bit differently - Van Dine 16th! There is no need to include depictions that exceed the necessary in a story.

18. A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader.

Unless Yasu (or Beatrice) killing Shannon doesn't count and is able to bypass this rule. But like you said it's not the only crime so maybe it could work.

Not really sure, since I have yet to look at the part of how to kill a fantasy character like you mentioned. (Can anyone reading this mind telling me at what point in the visual novel and manga is this found? Thanks in advance.)

20. And (to give my Credo an even score of items) I herewith list a few of the devices which no self-respecting detective story writer will now avail himself of. They have been employed too often, and are familiar to all true lovers of literary crime. To use them is a confession of the author's ineptitude and lack of originality. (a) Determining the identity of the culprit by comparing the butt of a cigarette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a suspect. (b) The bogus spiritualistic se'ance to frighten the culprit into giving himself away. (c) Forged fingerprints. (d) The dummy-figure alibi. (e) The dog that does not bark and thereby reveals the fact that the intruder is familiar. (f)The final pinning of the crime on a twin, or a relative who looks exactly like the suspected, but innocent, person. (g) The hypodermic syringe and the knockout drops. (h) The commission of the murder in a locked room after the police have actually broken in. (i) The word association test for guilt. (j) The cipher, or code letter, which is eventually unraveled by the sleuth.

It only refers to the culprit. Hideyoshi may just be a minor helper or co-plotter. Eva may have used actual poison to kill Natsuhi and Krauss and just strangled them to make it look horrific. The scans in the manga only showed strangling, so she may have even knocked both of them out with her martial arts before strangling them. The police never arrived, so Erika doesn't count. In Van Dine's commandments, the detective and the police (or official investigators) are identified separately. The ones who broke the closed room were the husbands right? They weren't official investigators, so this could be a loop in the system.

But yeah, if my points are invalid, I might as well just use the rules that were quoted in the story in red. After thinking about it Knox #5 isn't applicable to Umineko, so it might be a similar case where only the rules quoted in red are applicable.

Also, I noticed that the goats, who were supposedly representations of the people in the future, seems to be unaware of the red said in previous games, which suggest that the forgeries did not have a meta-world where all the red was said. For all we know it might have only depicted what was shown in-game, namely the fantasy scenes and the mystery scenes with Battler as the detective.

Clonation of people doesn't exist even now... in 1986 it would be impossible to believe Kinzo did it.

I take back what I said. In the question arcs, there was a hint about Kinzo having an illegitimate child. So perhaps maybe if you connect the dots (homunculus => vessel => someone from Fukuin => reincarnation thing about Beatrice = child of Kuwadorian Beatrice with possession of Kinzo's ring), then yes, it is possible to pinpoint Shannon as the alchemic adviser as well as the one to inherit the title Kinzo and Ushiromiya head (the part where Kinzo throwing the ring to Beatrice may be a hint that at some point before his death he gave his position to Kuwadorian Beatrice's child). You could even say that Shannon used a wig, which was confirmed in Confession of the Golden Witch.

The master keys were in possession of the servants and anyway they didn't open that storehouse. The lock is outside. And you still haven't explained how she could have recognized the key, took it from where it was, closed herself in and then return the key in its place while she was closed in so that the servants could pick it up to open the lock and find her while she pretended to be dead.

After the cousins fell asleep, George went outside to use a date rape drug (or kung fu) on Shannon to knock her out. Because the cousins were asleep, George was out of their surveillance, and as long as he isn't found out he has created himself an alibi. Then after bringing the 5 victims' bodies (who were drugged at this point or even poisoned to death or even knocked out by George with his martial arts) in the tool shed, with help from Nanjo and George, Rosa was locked in inside by either George or Nanjo. Inside is where she smashed their faces in and pretended to be dead. Either George or Nanjo took the key of garden tool shed back to the servant's room while the servants were asleep. Interestingly enough, Nanjo was the one who said that the keys were at their usual place, so he might have lied to Natsuhi, Eva and Hideyoshi. Either way, it is still possible for them to return the key to its usual place so long as the servants are asleep, which is something we can't really confirm, because for all we know, either George or Nanjo sneaked in to get the key and put it back while the servants who were doing the night shift went in and out of the servants room.

I can't find the quote right now but if I'm not wrong the window problem was discussed in Ep 4. One can't get in or out of it. When Gohda and Kumasawa close themselves in Battler from the outside can open the window, which is called small, but can't get in. Later, he has to break the shutter. The manga, which is more reliable, depict the window as more or less of the size of a head.

Well to me it looked like Rosa could have fit in there to get out of the room after being discovered. Because it looked like that only George and Battler are unable to, since in Episode 4 manga, they were pretty muscular and not skinny like in other depictions, which I think is pretty accurate in terms of their actual body size. She could have destroyed the glass of the window, went naked, chuck her clothes outside and lubricated herself with the fake blood and blood in the crime scene to get out through the window. But nonetheless, if it is impossible, she could have destroyed the shutter to get outside to move around freely to do the crimes later on using her gun and some tools from the garden shed.

Here's all the Tumblr posts of the EP7 murder scenes.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Thank you, Mr. Dent! I'll post my theory concerning All of them had wounds resembling gunshot wounds which became fatal! after I have finished re-reading all question arcs.

[Inbuiltx9]

Hello everyone, first post, but Im just jumping the introduction, its long enough as it is

Someone asked for the scans of Ep 7:
http://raffmanga.ch/manga/umineko-no...-golden-witch/
Dont know if those are all the chapters, but on tieba.baidu.com/..., there's the rest -in Japanese as well.

So anyway, I REALLY have to post my own thoughts now, cause I just dont accept the whole Touya/Ikuko story - at least not completely. So please let me hear your thoughts, cause it could be that you've already discussed all of it and I just didnt realize that there were already solutions for my questions. If so - sorry beforehand, but I just couldnt bring myself to read EVERY post in this thread - Ive already read a lot of them before to see if Im just repeating theories...anyways (wall of text-alert!):

1. it clearly says in the manga that Ange died in 1998 in red, right? (it also said so after ep 4 in the game results but not in red). and Bern said there would be no miracle. ange' s world stops in mid-air btw, not when she takes the first step towards jumping., meaning no matter how much she understands in the meta-world, she cant undo that decision to jump. Honestly, imo its very!!! forced to say she too changed her whole identity, just to let her survive and not violate the red truth in the magic ending. because even in the magic ending, there is clearly a difference between Battler being dead as a person and her state of mind - Ange herself recognizes this difference implicitly by still recognizing herself as Ushiromiya Ange. That Ange is still Ange is even said explicitly in the vn: "that she changed her name didnt mean that she had given up on being Ange". Ange didnt "die" in 1998 in the magic ending no matter how you look at it - thats why its obvious that the magic ending is just a made up story - a nice story but just part of a "what if-world". and thats also why she calls herself ANGE in the world where she didnt jump - the name she gets as a piece in the meta-world/as the eternal witch, who can, as we know, prolong a single moment almost for an infinite time span - that is, she is "stretching" the moment she still exists to live a whole life. Her death is also the reason why she can enter the meta-world in the first place - where only dead humans can enter (same as Erica).
btw - its already clear its just fiction by the way Ikuko looks. she has to be around 70-80 old years then, but she looks just like when she met Touya. And she also has this strange "aura" around her.
=> the very last part of Umineko is just the story Ikuko writes as compensation for what Ange did for her in the story she herself wrote (in whatever way she wrote the story).

Btw, the last scene is contradictory no matter how you look at it: Ange is mentioning the witch Berncastel and her last red truth. meaning that this Ange indeed has "seen" the meta-world of ep 8, there she did know featherine beforehand (met her in ep 6) and this is also the ange, that had gotton a reply from her when she wanted to meet touya - but the very same! ange in the last scene never got this reply and never knew this featherine/ikuko. of course, if you want to, you can just say that the events in the meta-world never happened in reality, but at least for this Ange they were real, cause she explicitly refers to them. this last scene is just pure fiction. im not denying this magic ending - gold truth and stuff, im just saying its not "red truth-level".

2. it says in red after the 6th game (at the very end of the episode) "when the seagulls cry nobody is left alive". i find it hard to believe that Eva survived with that...same with Battler and Sayo, that they made it to the third day alive and "heard the seagulls cry". and to believe that Beatos red truth ~"everyone dies, noone makes it out alive" in ep 4 refers to Eva dying of an illness in 1998 is just soooo wrong - that completely throws out every meaning a red truth referring to a persons death could have. to me it seems that the world Ange comes from and goes to after ep 8 is one of the what-if-worlds that were created in the course of the whole game, just as it is presented in ep 3. and the whole ep 8 is spinning around this world (evas diary), but that cant be part of the real truth. Thats why with this explanation so many have problems to explain how Eva could have known what Battler thought, what Rudolf and Kyrie did when Eva was still unconscious and where all the other info came from... the 8th game is a game for the Ange which comes from a world where Eva survives, but this world is fiction

3. some of you were talking about what happened at the end of Ep 7, i.e. what truly happened on the second day. I just cant bring myself to believe that Sayo had a sudden change of heart, told Battler everything and they happily waited for the third day to come while probably avoiding meeting Eva (they coudnt have left before in the storm, the episodes made at least that very clear...). If that were the case and sayo regretted everything and confessed on this second day, there wouldnt have been any need for Beatos "catharsis" and the whole purgatory-plot which she went through after! she died. Beato even revelead her thoughts before her death in the manga of ep 8: that she didnt want to die alone and she didnt want to let Battler go on living without her.

4.in the manga of ep 4 (in the vn as well) kyrie, krauss, nanjo, shannon and kanon were locked in a kind of prison-cell-room. the manga showed some torture-devices in there and a moth (for me a reference to a butterfly), the vn was talking about the same things and some objects to keep people confined. anyways, what I thought was most important was the torture device of the iron maiden that was depicted in the manga, which in german translates to "Eiserne Jungfrau", which is the same name as Dlanors "organization". so I thought that that room would surely be important - especially with all the hints how this room cant be found (theres a statement that hidden rooms are ok, as long as they are hinted at,like with Kinzos "Golden Land"), with the hint that it was directly under the Kuwadorian-mansion (wouldnt be affected by the bomb) and how it is mentioned again in a later episode. well, it never was important in the story...
but i just cant help thinking that sayo was a "bit" crazy, and really let battler starve to death there, and that this is what hes referencing in ep 6 in the vn when he talks about his memories of a family gathering being horrible and waking up in an unknown room and having problems with chain-looks (i know he says the memory is from a time he was very young, but considering how much time they spend in the game-world/afterlife/meta-world, and how his way of talking is completely different in ep 8 and ep 1, I wouldnt dismiss it because of that; another "horrible" family gathering was never mentioned anyways. and btw-another hint that time has passed is the touya/ikuko meeting). that would make beatos last riddle in ep 4 "right now you are all one, but i'll kill you...." refer to that and not just to the game-board-truth or the bomb, it would also explain why the very same riddle is beatos looked-room-riddle for ange in ep 8 and why ange says after solving it: ~"with this, the last riddle of beatrice is solved". and it would also explain the whole fixation on looked rooms in the first place and the lyrics of some songs XD (half joking)

5. that would mean, of course, that everyone is indeed dead, and the touya/ikuko-story is a fragment-reality which is part of the purgatory and a way for the "pieces" to come to terms with what happened - especially a method for Ange to find peace at the very end - since she too died early in 1998.
I read this purgatory-stuff quite literally. the very intention of the whole story is to come to terms with their mistakes and forgive the sins they all committed. for me the reference to Dante is far too strong to be overlayed by a story of getting ones memories back. heaven is referenced various times and beato even talks about how they are literally in hell. and also beatos ~"I wish our souls could connect" spread on a double-page in the manga hints to that. I cant deny that everything is part of a book, but imo even this book-layer is part of purgatory and exists to give a (magical) rational explanation to the story. btw - the book explanation on its own is also contradictory if you just think about the origin for Bern (being Ikukos cat), but how she appears in Ep 1, which Touya/Ikuko never wrote. you could explain it somehow, but this will always weaken other aspects that are used to support the Touya/Ikuko-wrote-a-book-explanation.

6.I also thought about how I could be wrong and at least Eva and "Battler" made it out alive somehow (going against the red truth after the 6th game :S) but even then, Im not sure that he and Ikuko meet in 1986. hes talking about how he feels that his body grew older, how he cant be sure hes 18, and you can see a calender multiple! times, but never the year!! could be that its just to make it less obvious that touya is someone from the ushiromiya-family, because in umineko there are a ton of misleading hints...I dont know, but Im quite sure that on the night of the 1st and on the 2nd day there are some events that cant be explained by "I met Sayo, she confessed and thats it". I really hope the manga will give more explanations...cause the Touya/Ikuko meeting always seemed kind of surreal to me.

sorry for the wall of text, but I just have to get rid of these speculations one way or another :P at the very least, I think we can be almost 100% sure, that the magic ending really is a "magic" ending, meaning Touya/Ikuko never met Ange cause Ange died in 1998.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

The love story aspect isn't the focus of the story. The lovers duel and the wedding thing in EP6 took place in the meta-world, so I think it doesn't count. The meta-world more or less is like in the same position as that of the reader. The rule also stated that the focus isn't to have the lovers live happily ever after, and none of the lovers ever did by the end of all games, except in EP6, which took place in the meta-world.

I'll let Ryukishi answer this one:

R If everything happens in complete accordance to Van Dine’s 20 Rules of Detective Fiction, then the motive becomes basically obsolete and is removed from the cornerstones of the story. So that’s how it became my goal to eliminate the 20 rules and how they vanished from Umineko.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Well... Battler was surprised that Erika was the culprit wasn't he? Since he is the Game Master, it is safe to say that Erika murdering people wasn't part of his script. And from Games 1 to 5, none of the detectives were the culprits.

We could even make the argument that Erika "wasn't the culprit" but rather Battler, since he was the one that set up the fake murder scenario.

We've a red that confirm that Battler is never the culprit in Ep 8.
We've also red that confirm that Erika was the culprit:

I re-killed all of them.
[The manner in which they were each killed differed, ......but afterwards,] she completely severed the heads of all those she killed.
All five people I killed......were very much alive until the moment I killed them.

It's not the first time a GM pretend to feel horror or surprise for a theory that's actually correct but what's more important is that even if Battler is the GM Erika could do things that escaped from his view, like sealing rooms unknown to him.
That is or he always pretended not to know, which theoretically would be more likely as he might have caused the logic error on purpose so as to push Beatrice to remember.

Either way at the time of the game suspension Ep 6 didn't have a detective.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

People in the meta-world are pretty much in the same position as that of the reader, they can see both fantasy and mystery after all. I don't think Meta-Erika confessing counts, and Piece-Erika didn't confess and neither did any of the culprits in any of the six games.

As I've said it was up to debate but well, you've to consider we are Umineko's readers and Erika basically spoiled the truth for us by telling us what her piece did. In a way it's as if you're reading a mystery and the narration will tell you who's the murder for no reason at all.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Linking a bit up with rule #4, we could even make the argument that Erika "wasn't the culprit" but rather Battler, who set up the murder scenario to play a prank on her. We could even say that Erika was just making sure they were dead, which somewhat helped her pinpoint the culprit. After all the definition of a culprit being one who murders only applies to Bernkastel's game after all.

See my answer above. The best we can work with is that Erika killed those people but that she was actually an accomplice of Sayo (in Umineko accomplices can kill).

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

In the point #5, I pointed out that characters in the meta-world are in the same position as the reader and if we add a game master, then an author as well. It's like two people reading the same novel and discussing about it. And in all games, there has only been one detective each.

Again, the point is that to have two Meta-detectives would be unfair to me as a reader. Van Dine didn't keep into consideration the meta, he viewed the mystery as a game between us readers and the writer. With the meta Umineko breaks Van Dine toward me. You can say it complies to Van Dine toward the player but not toward us readers.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

In game three, Eva inherited the title Beatrice, so by that point, Eva took on the role of the culprit and Sayo was reduced to probably minor helper or co-plotter status or non-culprit status?

No, the whole idea is that Sayo is behind everything. If Eva were to be the mastermind she wouldn't have allowed the death of George, who was surely killed by Sayo when he went to check on Shannon. And note that he went to check on Shannon because, according to the manga, she purposely lured him by her with Nanjo purposely closing the window behind him so as to create an extra mystery.

[QUOTE=Leslie Chow;5460618]In EP8 Chapter 18, Willard was able to say Van Dine 16 in red. But it was worded a bit differently - Van Dine 16th! There is no need to include depictions that exceed the necessary in a story.

Well, of course it might be that Ryukishi deemed everything that was said as necessary, even the parts who could have been cut... but it could also be that Van Dine worked in that case because the butterlies were supposed to be relevant so when the goat tried to label them as useless Van Dine could be used.

LOL, honestly I wasn't fond of the usage of golden butterflies, expecially when I learnt how they worked, so I was sort of cheering for the goat when he said so.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Not really sure, since I have yet to look at the part of how to kill a fantasy character like you mentioned. (Can anyone reading this mind telling me at what point in the visual novel and manga is this found? Thanks in advance.)

Ep 4 with Sakutarou's death chap 13 of the manga (but I seem to remember they discussed it better in the VN), also Ep 4 chap 12 with the 7 sisters death (but they discussed it in other bits as well) and Ep 7 chap 16 when they talked about who could kill Beatrice, there's a reference about how death work in Ep 8 chap 12 (when Bern remarks that in someone else's game death didn't mean death of the flesh) and I think there were other mentions in ep 6 and in other episodes but I can't remember them right now.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

But yeah, if my points are invalid, I might as well just use the rules that were quoted in the story in red. After thinking about it Knox #5 isn't applicable to Umineko, so it might be a similar case where only the rules quoted in red are applicable.

Usage of red is discussed in Ep 8 chap 5 so not even all the rules in red might be applicable to all the gameboards. To apply them without Ryukishi confirming or denying if they work becomes speculation.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Also, I noticed that the goats, who were supposedly representations of the people in the future, seems to be unaware of the red said in previous games, which suggest that the forgeries did not have a meta-world where all the red was said. For all we know it might have only depicted what was shown in-game, namely the fantasy scenes and the mystery scenes with Battler as the detective.

Well, that's up to speculation, really. It turned out that Erika in Ep 5 wasn't aware of all the red said so it can be they aren't aware of it as well, or they're incompetent or... who knows?

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

I take back what I said. In the question arcs, there was a hint about Kinzo having an illegitimate child. So perhaps maybe if you connect the dots (homunculus => vessel => someone from Fukuin => reincarnation thing about Beatrice = child of Kuwadorian Beatrice with possession of Kinzo's ring), then yes, it is possible to pinpoint Shannon as the alchemic adviser as well as the one to inherit the title Kinzo and Ushiromiya head (the part where Kinzo throwing the ring to Beatrice may be a hint that at some point before his death he gave his position to Kuwadorian Beatrice's child). You could even say that Shannon used a wig, which was confirmed in Confession of the Golden Witch.

Well there's plenty of hints against Shannon once you know where to look. It's even said that Shannon and Kanon were furnitures created by Kinzo, which might tell you that Kinzo is their father.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

After the cousins fell asleep, George went outside to use a date rape drug on Shannon to knock her out. Because the cousins were asleep, George was out of their surveillance, and as long as he isn't found out he has created himself an alibi. Then after bringing the 5 victims' bodies (who were drugged at this point or even poisoned to death) in the tool shed, with help from Nanjo and George, Rosa was locked in inside by either George or Nanjo. Inside is where she smashed their faces in and pretended to be dead. Either George or Nanjo took the key of garden tool shed back to the servant's room while the servants were asleep. Interestingly enough, Nanjo was the one who said that the keys were at their usual place, so he might have lied to Natsuhi, Eva and Hideyoshi. Either way, it is still possible for them to return the key to its usual place so long as the servants are asleep, which is something we can't really confirm, because for all we know, either George or Nanjo sneaked in to get the key and put it back while the servants who were doing the night shift went in and out of the servants room.

The first problem I've with all this is George's motive. Why would he want Shannon dead? His uncles and aunts? Gohda?

Then we've again the problem with the key. I can't find the part in which Nanjo say that the key are at their usual place in the VN but since Kanon was sent to retrieve them and didn't claim he found them in the wrong place it can just be a logical assumption they were in the right place.
Nanjo isn't a servant, he's not supposed to recognize the key.

According to Eva:

"Genji-san said that was the case. Which means that the culprit knew where that single key was stored and took it out. Just now, I saw Kanon-kun return the key to the servants' room. The wall was packed with keys, and I don't think that a novice would know where and to what those keys went to. The culprit was magnificently able to select the key to the storehouse from all of those.
Furthermore, even though the key didn't have a tag or anything sticking to it, they knew it was the key to the storehouse behind the rose garden. ...And that means that they also knew where the storehouse was. .........I'll say it even clearer. The culprit knew the inside of the servants' room well."

Not only this is a hint against the servants but I'll say likely not even Rosa or Eva would recognize the key, possibly not even Natsuhi as very likely, as she did in this circumstance, she sent the servants to get the key and open the shed for her and then have them close the shutter.

Well to me it looked like Rosa could have fit in there to get out of the room after being discovered. Because it looked like that only George and Battler are unable to, since in Episode 4 manga, they were pretty muscular and not skinny like in other depictions, which I think is pretty accurate in terms of their actual body size. She could have destroyed the glass of the window, went naked, chuck her clothes outside and lubricated herself with the fake blood and blood in the crime scene to get out through the window. But nonetheless, if it is impossible, she could have destroyed the shutter to get outside to move around freely to do the crimes later on using her gun and some tools from the garden shed.

Also Rosa would have needed the red paint to make the magic circle and I'm not even sure if the pain would have remained there if it was used with that pouring rain. I would suspect it would end up being washed away (The Sayotrice theory have Sayo paint the shed beforehand as anyway no one checks it... and coincidentally Kanon was carrying gardening tools when Battler and Co arrived on the island).
Plus note that there was blood in the dining room so George should have known the people from that room were dead when he carried them in the storehouse. Ergo Rosa or George killed them there not just with drugs but with some weapon.
The guns used in Umineko belong to Kinzo who kept them in his study and only Genji has the key (Ep 8 also explains how the disfigurement of the faces was done with one of Kinzo's guns).

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Well to me it looked like Rosa could have fit in there to get out of the room after being discovered. Because it looked like that only George and Battler are unable to, since in Episode 4 manga, they were pretty muscular and not skinny like in other depictions, which I think is pretty accurate in terms of their actual body size. She could have destroyed the glass of the window, went naked, chuck her clothes outside and lubricated herself with the fake blood and blood in the crime scene to get out through the window. But nonetheless, if it is impossible, she could have destroyed the shutter to get outside to move around freely to do the crimes later on using her gun and some tools from the garden shed.

Hum... which window are you looking at? The one shown in Ep 4 chap 21 looks way too tiny and considering the fact that whose windows weren't meant to be panoramic windows it fits they were small. Even the text referred to it as small:

Then George turned to the small window on the side of the storehouse.
At that side there was a small latticed window which could only admit light and ventilation.

As it can only admit light and ventilation I guess this means bodies are excluded.

Also... why would have Eva opened the door to Rosa and let her in her room? And how she placed the chain that closed the room back into its place?

Originally Posted by Inbuiltx9

Hello everyone, first post, but Im just jumping the introduction, its long enough as it is

Welcome aboard!
A red truth being used to state something that's different from the death of the flesh was a theme often discussed in Umineko. Even in this post I mentioned it while discussing with Leslie Chow.
So while I understand you might not like it... well, Ange's death is not the only case of it.
And in Umineko they also discussed how a death that's not the death of flesh can allow for a resurrection. And Ange is the witch of resurrection.
So in a way even if she died because she took another identity she can also resurrect her previous identity.

Red truths working in all the games or only in a game also were discussed in Umineko, the better point is Ep 8 chap 5. You can, of course, apply it to Eva died in 1998 but you can also say that Eva died in the gameboard of Ep 4 (first twilight) and so none was left alive. After all in Ep 3 we know she survived. Different gameboard, different result, different red working for it.

What happened with Sayo and Battler (Sayo was presumably shot by Kyrie by the way so we don't even know if she was alive, dead, or wounded) in Prime is up to speculation. The scene in which they leave the island is clearly an interpretation and likely it didn't happen exactly as presented.
Again, it happened for other scenes. Think at Natsuhi in Ep 5 and her chats with Beato.

The idea that everything about 1998 is fantasy from a starving Battler is interesting but if you erase all the info we have about 1998 like this we've too few info to make theories and all becomes speculation.

It's speculated that the Meta didn't exist in the original tale and was 'added/created' when Tohya read them. Also, even though Bern is based on Ikuko's cat, Bern is actually the personification of miracles. A bit like the chiesters who're guns but also Maria's bunnies.

Anyway you aren't the only one to have doubts about what happened to Sayo and Battler and with Ikuko. We're all waiting for the manga to clarify it because yes, it was pretty obscure.

The manga had proved to fix many things so maybe it's just a matter of time and we'll understand.

[Inbuiltx9]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Welcome aboard!
A red truth being used to state something that's different from the death of the flesh was a theme often discussed in Umineko. Even in this post I mentioned it while discussing with Leslie Chow.
So while I understand you might not like it... well, Ange's death is not the only case of it.
And in Umineko they also discussed how a death that's not the death of flesh can allow for a resurrection. And Ange is the witch of resurrection.
So in a way even if she died because she took another identity she can also resurrect her previous identity.

Thanks Well, Im really!!! open for having my thoughts disproven, cause at this point I just dont care as long as it makes some sense. But Im not yet convinced about Ange's death. Actually, a death of a person in Umineko always meant permanent death at least for the personality. But Anges personality never vanished the way Battlers does in a way that makes her think that in Battlers case even the red truth of him being dead applies.
I could accept your argument with the resurrection - for the red truth to work, we'd have to think that she killed her personality in 1998 and resurrected it when she met Touya. But that is not what the VN says-it says immediately when she changed her name, that she never threw away her personality, that she would always stay Ange. I dont know, but that would be the lamest red truth ever XD The content would practically be zero. What exactly does allow one to think Ange died in 1998 when she immediately says Im always gonna stay Ushiromiya Ange? I also think the fact that she jumped and the frozen time of her world, where she stops in mid-air, which was shown over and over again, makes it pretty clear how her life ended... I even thought she died at that moment before we were given this red truth.

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Red truths working in all the games or only in a game also were discussed in Umineko, the better point is Ep 8 chap 5. You can, of course, apply it to Eva died in 1998 but you can also say that Eva died in the gameboard of Ep 4 (first twilight) and so none was left alive. After all in Ep 3 we know she survived. Different gameboard, different result, different red working for it.

Yep, I know that a red truth can always refer to the "Prime" or just the Game Board. Thats also what I was thinking about for a long time. But 1. in episode 4 the way Beato said that truth, the circumstances, how Beato talked about battler being responsible and being pi***d at him and also the way Ange reacted didnt appear to me to be about a truth that only refers to this one game board. Same with all the pomp with which Beatos gave her last riddle after they discussed EVERY game board and which she posed as a part of revealing her heart. BUT I couldnt completely deny it, and I WOULD accept the explanation if it werent for the red truth at the very end of episode 6! "When the seagulls cry nobody is left alive". Because that just cant refer to the 6th game. We know this game never ended and there were a whole lot of people alive. the story of the 6th game was originally meant for Beato to be a peaceful story where nobody died-then Erika screwed it up, but at the end there were many survivors, Erika included. This red truth definitely refers to the real truth...

Originally Posted by jjblue1

What happened with Sayo and Battler (Sayo was presumably shot by Kyrie by the way so we don't even know if she was alive, dead, or wounded) in Prime is up to speculation. The scene in which they leave the island is clearly an interpretation and likely it didn't happen exactly as presented.
Again, it happened for other scenes. Think at Natsuhi in Ep 5 and her chats with Beato.

Thats interesting! To think she really died at that point. Thats could be possible too. Until now I still think after that Eva and Battler also didnt make it, so they'd meet in the afterlife. For me the biggest flaw in the logic of the story with Sayo and making up with Battler as depicted was that that would make the whole purgatory which Beato even still talks about in the ep 8 manga completely unnecessary. But by her being dead, its possible they met in the "afterlife". I dont think Touya/Ikuko would fit into that in real life if she was dead, because Beato would have never mattered to him that much, but since I dont think they are part of the real world anyways thats no problem

Originally Posted by jjblue1

The idea that everything about 1998 is fantasy from a starving Battler is interesting but if you erase all the info we have about 1998 like this we've too few info to make theories and all becomes speculation.

Not all, we know how the incident is treated afterwards, even if we assume Eva did not survive. That Ange suffered etc. The information Ange gathers on her journey is still valid too - their relatives being left with a lot of money e.g. what I give up on is everything about the Eva-Diary-World, but I give up on that for a whole different reason - that is the red truth at the end of Episode 6.

Originally Posted by jjblue1

It's speculated that the Meta didn't exist in the original tale and was 'added/created' when Tohya read them. Also, even though Bern is based on Ikuko's cat, Bern is actually the personification of miracles. A bit like the chiesters who're guns but also Maria's bunnies.

Well, not much speculation necessary, is there? Its clearly stated in the 2nd Ep that the meta at the end of this episode was not told in the message bottle. but you're right, the meta could have been added of course, and Bern could also be explained otherwise. but thats what I meant when I said at the same time it takes away from the Touya/Ikuko-book-explanation. Cause if we think Bern is NOT just the cat of Ikuko than this explanation isnt necessary in the first place. No matter how we look at it - Bern exists unrelated to the cat of Ikuko. the meta could of course have been added afterwards, thats actually the only explanation I can find if I want to make the book-theory somehow work - that they took the first message bottles and "transcribed" the whole story - cause the meta also influences the games in between. Im ok with that - just that if we take that explanation, then of course every difference between the first two and the later episodes arent important anymore.

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Anyway you aren't the only one to have doubts about what happened to Sayo and Battler and with Ikuko. We're all waiting for the manga to clarify it because yes, it was pretty obscure.

Im REALLY glad to hear that! Cause especially Ikuko is driving me crazy-the way she behaves is just too weird...

[Leslie Chow]

Usage of red is discussed in Ep 8 chap 5 so not even all the rules in red might be applicable to all the gameboards. To apply them without Ryukishi confirming or denying if they work becomes speculation.

So I guess the best option for me is to just use the reds and logic that is related to the four games then, in addition to some definitions that Beato provided Battler (e.g. What is a closed room, etc.) as well as the timing on when Beato declared some reds.

Well there's plenty of hints against Shannon once you know where to look. It's even said that Shannon and Kanon were furnitures created by Kinzo, which might tell you that Kinzo is their father.

If I might add, if the reader were to think outside the box, they might notice a certain trend in which Shannon and Kanon don't show up in front of Battler at the same time, though concluding that Shannon and Kanon are the same person with question arcs alone is highly unlikely, unless they've spoiled themselves.

The first problem I've with all this is George's motive. Why would he want Shannon dead? His uncles and aunts? Gohda?

George doesn't necessarily even have to be aware that Shannon was killed. Rosa might've killed Shannon later on after George is done helping him. Rosa might've lied to him that she might have other accomplices and it might have led him to conclude that his parents can't be trusted. You could even say that he was in denial that Shannon was dead. It's most likely that Rosa betrayed George. He might've even thought that Shannon's death was faked, though of course he might lose his shit if he had gone in and saw Shannon's head smashed in half. But even if George found out that Shannon really is dead, I am pretty sure that he wouldn't want to blow his cover that he is aware that Rosa is a co-plotter. Keep in mind that he hasn't seen her corpse, so he might have still have been hanging on to the small hope she is still alive. I think at that point in EP1 is when he wanted to kill Rosa when he gets the chance, but because he is surrounded by other people, his actions were limited.

George was very likely to have wanted to kill others just so he wanted to be with Shannon as evidenced in EP4 with his fight with Gaap and later explored on in EP7 where he was insecure about Battler, since Battler might take Shannon away from him. Perhaps the opportunity came to him when Rosa decided to make him a partner in crime. Of course I would even add that Rosa may have took advantage of his insecurity so that he could be persuaded to help her. In EP1 and EP3 however, it's most likely that Rosa had betrayed George early on, since Rosa wanted to kill everyone.

Seriously someone should have just taken her and pounded her tuna (jokes - DBZA reference).

Then we've again the problem with the key. I can't find the part in which Nanjo say that the key are at their usual place in the VN but since Kanon was sent to retrieve them and didn't claim he found them in the wrong place it can just be a logical assumption they were in the right place.
Nanjo isn't a servant, he's not supposed to recognize the key.

While George and Nanjo was helping Rosa gather the corpses, either George or Nanjo (or both) went after Gohda, threatened to shoot Gohda with a gun, told him to get the key to the garden tool shed. This way Nanjo or George would have found out that where the key was placed. Of course it would take some timing to get in the servants room where no one was looking at them. Since Gohda is the cowardly type of person, it's most likely that he'd be obliged to take the key for Nanjo or George. After testing and confirming that it's the right key, Gohda was either killed or knocked out before getting stored in the tool shed where his face was smashed in by Rosa. Then Rosa just had to be locked in by either George or Nanjo before the key was returned to its proper place.

Hum... which window are you looking at?

I was looking at the chapter where Gohda and Kumasawa were locked in. It looked rectangular in shaped. But after looking at Chapter 21, then I have to rule out the possibility of getting out of the window. It looks way to small.

Also... why would have Eva opened the door to Rosa and let her in her room? And how she placed the chain that closed the room back into its place?

In the EP7 manga, it is shown that the door was never locked. Rosa just had to get inside, kill Eva and Hideyoshi, locked the door from the inside and hide under the bed.

Hello everyone, first post, but Im just jumping the introduction, its long enough...

Someone asked for the scans of Ep 7:
http://raffmanga.ch/manga/umineko-no...-golden-witch/
Dont know if those are all the chapters, but on tieba.baidu.com/..., there's the rest -in Japanese as well.

Thank you for the scans and welcome! Your posts are similar to my first posts concerning the future world, though mine was more focused on the connection to Higurashi and to some extent the meta-world. You're not the only one who is bothered by the meta-world, magic ending and Ikuko and trying to make sense to it all.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Inbuiltx9

But Im not yet convinced about Ange's death. Actually, a death of a person in Umineko always meant permanent death at least for the personality. But Anges personality never vanished the way Battlers does in a way that makes her think that in Battlers case even the red truth of him being dead applies.

Not really. In Ep 2 Kanon is resurrected twice and in Ep 3 Shannon is resurrected and Kanon is partially resurrected. Beatrice's personality is also resurrected in Ep 6 when she recovers her memories.

Then we've the resurrection for the furnitures, like Sakutarou and the seven sisters or for Lambda herself.

And then we've the resurrections in memory as Ange resurrects her whole family... and in a way we can speculate Ange managed to resurrect Battler too when she carried Tohya to the orphanage and he somehow awaken as Battler.

Originally Posted by Inbuiltx9

I could accept your argument with the resurrection - for the red truth to work, we'd have to think that she killed her personality in 1998 and resurrected it when she met Touya. But that is not what the VN says-it says immediately when she changed her name, that she never threw away her personality, that she would always stay Ange. I dont know, but that would be the lamest red truth ever XD The content would practically be zero. What exactly does allow one to think Ange died in 1998 when she immediately says Im always gonna stay Ushiromiya Ange? I also think the fact that she jumped and the frozen time of her world, where she stops in mid-air, which was shown over and over again, makes it pretty clear how her life ended... I even thought she died at that moment before we were given this red truth.

It's one of the many interpretative red truth.
You can think it applies to the suicidal Ange, who 'dies' when Ange choses to live.
The Ange that decides to live and become Yukari is, in a way, a different person from the Ange who wanted to find the truth, pin the blame on Eva and die.

Another possibility is that Ange disappeared and was declared dead after no one found info about her.

In this case technically Ange is officially dead... even if she's alive.

In a way you can even force the red truth of Eva died on Eva even if she remained alive. Eva is dead inside. The only people she loved, Hideyoshi and George, died on the island and she was the one who 'sparked the fire that killed them'. She killed her brother and his wife in revenge. She killed Natsuhi by accident.
She was told it was just coincidence she didn't kill everyone.

It's acceptable even in real life to say 'the person I was before is dead, now I'm a new person'. Eva returned from Rokkenjima as a new person, even if she retained her memory and her body.

Originally Posted by Inbuiltx9

Yep, I know that a red truth can always refer to the "Prime" or just the Game Board. Thats also what I was thinking about for a long time. But 1. in episode 4 the way Beato said that truth, the circumstances, how Beato talked about battler being responsible and being pi***d at him and also the way Ange reacted didnt appear to me to be about a truth that only refers to this one game board. Same with all the pomp with which Beatos gave her last riddle after they discussed EVERY game board and which she posed as a part of revealing her heart. BUT I couldnt completely deny it, and I WOULD accept the explanation if it werent for the red truth at the very end of episode 6! "When the seagulls cry nobody is left alive". Because that just cant refer to the 6th game. We know this game never ended and there were a whole lot of people alive. the story of the 6th game was originally meant for Beato to be a peaceful story where nobody died-then Erika screwed it up, but at the end there were many survivors, Erika included. This red truth definitely refers to the real truth...

Let's start with Ep 6. It's not that the game never ended, it's just that it was suspended and we were never shown the conclusion. During the Teaparty we see that everyone has reached the golden land. Ergo at the end of the game they all died.

In an interview about Ep 5 Ryukishi said:

In EP5, the game stopped shortly after Hideyoshi's corspe was discovered, but people who know the "answer" should be able to predict what happens next in the second twilight and beyond.

This means that even if Ep 5 was also suspended and we never saw it reach its end technically it had an end. It's like reading a book and finding the culprit during the middle of the story so you don't continue it. The book goes on but you'll never see it.

Now, back to Ep 4. Ep 4 gives us a Death count which refers to the gameboard but that includes also Ange, given as death in 1998. It's not Meta Ange, unless the meta is taking place in 1998 instead than in a timeless place, it's the Ange we saw going on Rokkenjima and that was killed by Amakusa as hinted in Ep 7.

Effectively, at the end of that episode, none, not even Ange, was left alive.

Back to Ep 6. It has been speculated that Battler knew what Erika was after and that purposely let her set up the logic error so as to push Beatrice to remember everything. In fact as Battler is the gamemaster he should know he could use Kanon that way and he immediately figured out the trick Beato presented to Erika.

So Battler allowed Erika to kill everyone, knowing the game would end in people being murdered.

Originally Posted by Inbuiltx9

Thats interesting! To think she really died at that point. Thats could be possible too. Until now I still think after that Eva and Battler also didnt make it, so they'd meet in the afterlife. For me the biggest flaw in the logic of the story with Sayo and making up with Battler as depicted was that that would make the whole purgatory which Beato even still talks about in the ep 8 manga completely unnecessary. But by her being dead, its possible they met in the "afterlife". I dont think Touya/Ikuko would fit into that in real life if she was dead, because Beato would have never mattered to him that much, but since I dont think they are part of the real world anyways thats no problem

In the past it was speculated that Sayo survived and became Ikuko due to various circumstances... even if the manga seems to hint that's not the case and that Ikuko is a different person.
The whole references to purgatory are tied to the Divina Commedia and Beatrice's role in it but also hell, heaven and purgatory are tied to mind states.
Umineko is very symbolic. Think at how the witches claim they lived centuries when actually the centuries were all in their mind.

Originally Posted by Inbuiltx9

Not all, we know how the incident is treated afterwards, even if we assume Eva did not survive. That Ange suffered etc. The information Ange gathers on her journey is still valid too - their relatives being left with a lot of money e.g. what I give up on is everything about the Eva-Diary-World, but I give up on that for a whole different reason - that is the red truth at the end of Episode 6.

The whole character of Ange is built around the fact that she was raised by Eva whom she believed being the culprit. If you claim Eva died and Ange was raised by... let's say the Sumadera, Ange could be completely different. We can't say if better or worse because that would be up to speculation.

Originally Posted by Inbuiltx9

Well, not much speculation necessary, is there? Its clearly stated in the 2nd Ep that the meta at the end of this episode was not told in the message bottle. but you're right, the meta could have been added of course, and Bern could also be explained otherwise. but thats what I meant when I said at the same time it takes away from the Touya/Ikuko-book-explanation. Cause if we think Bern is NOT just the cat of Ikuko than this explanation isnt necessary in the first place. No matter how we look at it - Bern exists unrelated to the cat of Ikuko. the meta could of course have been added afterwards, thats actually the only explanation I can find if I want to make the book-theory somehow work - that they took the first message bottles and "transcribed" the whole story - cause the meta also influences the games in between. Im ok with that - just that if we take that explanation, then of course every difference between the first two and the later episodes arent important anymore.

No, it's actually not clearly stated in fact people speculated a lot about what was and what wasn't in the message bottles.
Bern also exists as the witch side of Rika Furude from Higurashi and Lambda is likely the candy Beato uses in her trick with Maria.
Erika is Bern's alterego but she's also a real person... and in Ep 8 she's also a cat.
Gaap is how Sayo pictured Beatrice but is also the representation of things that disappear.
Clair is Beatrice the elder with another look but she's also the narrator.
Beatrice herself moved from representing Sayo's mischievous side, her immaginary friend and the her self hate.
Symbolism in Umineko works by association.
The seven stakes are given the look of previous servants but are actually paperweigth. Who cares they looked like previous servants?
Who cared if the siesta are based on the bunny band of Maria?
It's just an extra, an inspirational bit.
There was people who never figured Cornelia and Gertrude were nothing else but personifications of the seals on the door and the window.
The fact that Bern is partially inspired to a cat might be purely coincidental. For Beatrice that cat might have been the one who "broke the vase" in her place when she was young. And then the fantasy side developed this and it had that cat magically become Ikuko's cat.

Bern is a fantasy figure so you can change her background like it was done for Gaap who stopped being Beatrice and became Gaap.

I wouldn't read too much into her.

Originally Posted by Inbuiltx9

Im REALLY glad to hear that! Cause especially Ikuko is driving me crazy-the way she behaves is just too weird...

Many thought Ikuko was really odd. She's simply introduced too late and ends up doing things that are never clearly explained so look way too odd.
Many tried to explain it with her being Sayo. It was speculated also that she could be Umineko's version of Annie Wilkes (from "Misery"). ^_-
Ultimately I fear with the info at hands trying to speculate on Ikuko leads us to nowhere that's why our best option is to wait for the manga to clear it up... if Ryukishi will feel like it.

So far he didn't add much to her but at least he informed us of how she and Tohya got so many info about Sayo, thanks to the bottle they found containing a confession.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

So I guess the best option for me is to just use the reds and logic that is related to the four games then, in addition to some definitions that Beato provided Battler (e.g. What is a closed room, etc.) as well as the timing on when Beato declared some reds.

I fear so.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

If I might add, if the reader were to think outside the box, they might notice a certain trend in which Shannon and Kanon don't show up in front of Battler at the same time, though concluding that Shannon and Kanon are the same person with question arcs alone is highly unlikely, unless they've spoiled themselves.

Let's say it's technically possible to figure it out and I know of people who had done so but it's generally a theory many are going to discharge because it seems unlikely.
In Umineko though unlikely things happen.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

George doesn't necessarily even have to be aware that Shannon was killed. Rosa might've killed Shannon later on after George is done helping him. Rosa might've lied to him that she might have other accomplices and it might have led him to conclude that his parents can't be trusted. You could even say that he was in denial that Shannon was dead. It's most likely that Rosa betrayed George. He might've even thought that Shannon's death was faked, though of course he might lose his shit if he had gone in and saw Shannon's head smashed in half. But even if George found out that Shannon really is dead, I am pretty sure that he wouldn't want to blow his cover that he is aware that Rosa is a co-plotter. Keep in mind that he hasn't seen her corpse, so he might have still have been hanging on to the small hope she is still alive. I think at that point in EP1 is when he wanted to kill Rosa when he gets the chance, but because he is surrounded by other people, his actions were limited.

Honestly it feels way too forced. He drugged his girlfriend to hide her in a storehouse filled with corpses with her wearing make up that makes her look as if she was killed as well so he could kill all his relatives and servants in cooperation with his aunt when at best the only ones who could have complained about him marrying Shannon were Hideyoshi (not so much) and Eva (oh, quite a lot) so he could inherit the money he didn't want because he wanted to buy his own empire/castle/whatever.
Battler gives George his support with Shannon in Ep 2 and in ep 2 Shannon accepts to marry George, she doesn't escape with Battler or claims she've to think at it.
So even if I understand George could have been nervous in regard to Battler... well, it's hard to think he'll kill him when Battler was supportive and Shannon accepted to marry George.
It's a situation completely different from Kyrie, who lost Rudolf to Asumu, believed she had lost her baby, was kicked out from the family and shamed, spent 12 years in that hell and then found herself pregnant again and, at this point, considered killing Asumu, her rival.

I know that George's sentence about being willing to sacrifice his family sounded pretty bad and that people hate George but honestly, after saying he was willing to sacrifice everyone else he tried saving everyone else.
No one says Jessica is suicidal or self sacrificing because she chose herself (though there's who believes Battler could go around committing murders [which is denied by the red by the way] but they don't tie it to him chosing Beatrice).

Rosa is disturbed so I can accept that she would consider killing everyone... even if ultimately she's never shown as being able to pull the trigger differently from Eva, Natsuhi, Kyrie, Hideyoshi and Rudolf and she's the only one of the adults who'll feel sick in front of corpses... which makes me think she's actually not up to it exactly because she's unstable and traumatized by Beatrice 2's death.

I've also problems with the idea that George or Rosa would manage to organize everything and that they would follow such a setting.

If George found out that Shannon is dead why didn't he went to check Rosa as well? He should suspect her naturally.

Also how Rosa gained the ability to make such convincing make up? The place was light up, Natsuhi, Eva, Battler, Hideyoshi, Kanon and Jessica saw her corpse among the others. Hideyoshi and Kanon went inside the storehouse so they probably got to give her as well as Shannon a good look. Rosa is supposed to have her head severely damaged. It's not so easy to fake.

At this point it would have been better to drug/poison everyone and pretend to have been poisoned as well.

When Shannon and Kanon fake being dead they use a lot tamer death methods which involve a single wound and some fake blood on their clothes.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

While George and Nanjo was helping Rosa gather the corpses, either George or Nanjo (or both) went after Gohda, threatened to shoot Gohda with a gun, told him to get the key to the garden tool shed. This way Nanjo or George would have found out that where the key was placed. Of course it would take some timing to get in the servants room where no one was looking at them. Since Gohda is the cowardly type of person, it's most likely that he'd be obliged to take the key for Nanjo or George. After testing and confirming that it's the right key, Gohda was either killed or knocked out before getting stored in the tool shed where his face was smashed in by Rosa. Then Rosa just had to be locked in by either George or Nanjo before the key was returned to its proper place.

Why locking Rosa in? Couldn't they kill Kumasawa and lock her in if they wanted 6 victims? And why not to poison everyone? Kill everyone in their sleep? Why to take so many risks? Why would George trust Rosa but not... let's say Rudolf who could care less if he marries Shannon? Why would George kill Jessica, who helped him with Shannon all along, or Maria? Or the servants?
Why would Rosa trust George or Nanjo when it's made clear Rosa can't trust anyone but herself?

When Rosa and George went on the plane didn't they notice they had a weapon in their bags?

Why would Nanjo cooperate with them? If it's for money he could squeeze more money out of Natsuhi and Krauss by threatening to reveal the truth about Kinzo's death. Rosa is more desperate than them in regards to money.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

In the EP7 manga, it is shown that the door was never locked. Rosa just had to get inside, kill Eva and Hideyoshi, locked the door from the inside and hide under the bed.

Nope, the door was locked, then Eva saw Kanon, opened to him and he killed everyone then he and Genji lied about the door being locked. That's what the manga is showing. The manga after all aims to support the Sayotrice theory and in fact it'll show Sayo killing George and Gohda in Ep 2 and herself later on.

[Leslie Chow]

Honestly it feels way too forced.

George doesn't even have to be an accomplice. It could just be Dr. Nanjo helping Rosa.

Rosa is disturbed so I can accept that she would consider killing everyone... even if ultimately she's never shown as being able to pull the trigger differently from Eva, Natsuhi, Kyrie, Hideyoshi and Rudolf and she's the only one of the adults who'll feel sick in front of corpses... which makes me think she's actually not up to it exactly because she's unstable and traumatized by Beatrice 2's death.

By the end of the day, in both Rosatrice and Sayotrice theories, EP1 isn't really what happened in Rokken Island. The games are just scenarios and plans. And if we were to use Confession of the Golden Witch as a guide, Sayo didn't even have the balls to carry out the horrific murders either (no pun intended). Also, Sayo was overconfident about the fact that he could bribe the adults, but for all we know they might even retaliate. And if we are looking in the Rosatrice perspective, shouldn't we also say that Rosa might be overconfident as well, if Yasu is supposedly a part of Rosa? Yes, Sayo did eventually planned to have the murder scenario carried out, but for all we know it might even be less horrific than the ones depicted in the forgeries.

Nope, the door was locked, then Eva saw Kanon, opened to him and he killed everyone then he and Genji lied about the door being locked. That's what the manga is showing. The manga after all aims to support the Sayotrice theory and in fact it'll show Sayo killing George and Gohda in Ep 2 and herself later on.

It should also be possible for Rosa to bribe Eva and Hideyoshi as well if we are going to follow Confession of the Golden Witch as a guide. And while Eva and Natsuhi were arguing, Rosa might've even snuck inside their room. As for the painting well, there was the part in the novel that people did go out of surveillance from time to time, so Nanjo could even have painted the door red and went back to the group.

Why locking Rosa in? Couldn't they kill Kumasawa and lock her in if they wanted 6 victims? And why not to poison everyone? Kill everyone in their sleep? Why to take so many risks? Why would George trust Rosa but not... let's say Rudolf who could care less if he marries Shannon? Why would George kill Jessica, who helped him with Shannon all along, or Maria? Or the servants?

Like I said, the games are plans and we are going with the notion that Sayo or Rosa are confident that they could bribe the adults and that everything would go according to plan. For all we know, if Sayo planned on carrying out the third game in the real world, if George did find out Sayo was the culprit, he might have retaliated and even knocked him out. George might even be possessive. Heck, if we look at the Rosatrice perspective, he might've even changed his mind in the real world and told Sayo everything and Rosa's plan might've been bound to fail from the start. Unfortunately though, Kyrie and Rudolf killed everyone. Also since EP1 is the first game, we could conclude that this game is quite the riskiest one of all, and arguably the most naive one of all, as I've noticed that as the games progressed, they become more likely to succeed and Battler start to see less and less and becomes more sleepy.

Why would Rosa trust George or Nanjo when it's made clear Rosa can't trust anyone but herself?

EP2, there was a part where Rosa whispered to Dr. Nanjo that she is counting on him before Nanjo left with the servants. So while Rosa may not trust anyone much, it doesn't necessarily means that she wouldn't take any risks. After all wasn't it emphasised in Umineko that the higher the risk the greater the payoff?

When Rosa and George went on the plane didn't they notice they had a weapon in their bags?

Following Confession of the Golden Witch, the guns are scattered and well-hidden. There is no need to bring the guns.

Also how Rosa gained the ability to make such convincing make up? The place was light up, Natsuhi, Eva, Battler, Hideyoshi, Kanon and Jessica saw her corpse among the others. Hideyoshi and Kanon went inside the storehouse so they probably got to give her as well as Shannon a good look. Rosa is supposed to have her head severely damaged. It's not so easy to fake.

In the VN only. It stated that it was flickering fluorescent light, so we could assume it wasn't that bright, as the CGs show. Also, it didn't specify where Rosa's corpse was positioned, so potentially she could have been anywhere in the shed and anything could've still covered her head. The place was not lit up in the manga or the anime. Only Nanjo had the best view on Rosa's head. Looking at how the head is positioned, the most Battler could see is Rosa's neck. And her head is conveniently surrounded by boxes. I don't think after seeing the other corpses the others would have the guts to do a proper check-up and/or look. Since the other corpses had their heads supposedly damaged, it should be possible for the others to conclude that Rosa must've had her head smashed in as well.

[GoldenLand]

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Like I said, the games are plans and we are going with the notion that Sayo or Rosa are confident that they could bribe the adults and that everything would go according to plan.

I've been trying to follow the conversation between you and JJ above, but I'm afraid I've ended up getting a bit confused. If you don't mind me asking, what's the gist of what you're arguing? Are you arguing for simultaneous alternative possibilities for Sayo culprit theory and Rosa culprit theory within eps 1-4?

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Following Confession of the Golden Witch, the guns are scattered and well-hidden. There is no need to bring the guns.

Confession of the Golden Witch said that Sayo was able to take and hide the guns, but if she isn't the culprit in a particular theory it's not as if she's going to go and pre-hide them for the real culprit of that theory, unless she was an accomplice. Wouldn't somebody who was already on the island have to hide the guns for Rosa and/or George culprits in advance of their arrival? Or if not, wouldn't Rosa and/or George culprits have to gain access to Kinzo's study to get to the gun collection very shortly before the crime and then hide them?

[Leslie Chow]

I've been trying to follow the conversation between you and JJ above, but I'm afraid I've ended up getting a bit confused. If you don't mind me asking, what's the gist of what you're arguing? Are you arguing for simultaneous alternative possibilities for Sayo culprit theory and Rosa culprit theory within eps 1-4?

Well firstly we had the thing about Van Dine working in Umineko or not, but after pointing out how it is impossible (as well as there is no guarantee that Knox would work in EPs 1-4) we moved on to how Rosa culprit theory should work out. But like you said, I guess we are pretty much arguing for simultaneous alternative possibilities for Sayo culprit theory and Rosa culprit theory within EPs 1-4. Currently we're stuck at the first twilight of EP1, arguing on how Rosa could have pulled off tricking everyone as being dead, as well as how impractical it was for Rosa to have even taken risks. Compared to Sayotrice, Sayotrice was able to fake wounds easily, whereas in Rosatrice, it is very tricky to work around it. But I did point out in my previous post that since EP1 is the first forgery, then the possibility that it is naive and very risky (but Umineko did went on the notion that the higher the risk, the bigger the payoff) should be considered, after all the forgeries were just plans on how the Rokken Island Massacre should be carried out and that in the end they were successful. In both Rosatrice and Sayotrice, EP1 never even took place. Consider this, Sayo said that the adults can be bribed easily. This statement suggest that he is very overconfident. Since the forgeries never happened, we can't really be sure if the adults can be bribed easily. So it shouldn't be a problem to doubt how impractical the forgeries would be if they were carried out.

Confession of the Golden Witch said that Sayo was able to take and hide the guns, but if she isn't the culprit in a particular theory it's not as if she's going to go and pre-hide them for the real culprit of that theory, unless she was an accomplice. Wouldn't somebody who was already on the island have to hide the guns for Rosa and/or George culprits in advance of their arrival? Or if not, wouldn't Rosa and/or George culprits have to gain access to Kinzo's study to get to the gun collection very shortly before the crime and then hide them?

Nanjo should be able to hide the guns for Rosa and/or George in advance. If Confession of the Golden Witch is to be used as a guide, even Genji should be able to help, since he is loyal to the family and should know that Rosa is the head and he did claim in EP2 that he must be available for the master to call on him at any time so it is possible that he gave Rosa the key to Kinzo's study. There was even the scene that Rosa, along with Genji and Shannon took the guns from Kinzo's study. Plus he seems like the kind of guy who just follows orders and watches how everything plays out. We could even include Shannon as being an accomplice, but chooses to keep her mouth shut. Even Kumasawa could help, her son was paid after all and she did claim in one of the episodes she wouldn't mind getting some gold for herself.

Just because Confession of the Golden Witch and EP7 shouldn't be taken at face value when using the Rosatrice theory, it doesn't mean that it should immediately be discarded as being useless for Rosatrice. If anything it should be viewed as a lie with the "truth" sprinkled over it.

[jjblue1]

Okay, let's go at it another way.
The main requirement for a culprit theory that allows people to fake being dead is having Nanjo as accomplice.

In the Sayotrice theory this works by Nanjo feeling he owns Sayo so he wants to help her, he didn't think she was the one really murdering people but someone was taking advantage of the game she was setting up, Genji, the only one aware that Sayo was murdering people, was backing her up, Sayo had apparently nothing to gain by murdering people as she lived with them for 2 years after becoming the owner of the gold.

In the Rosatrice theory there are no hints Nanjo felt like he owned something to Rosa. Rosa to him is the same as the other siblings. It's also much harder to swallow that he'll buy that Rosa was playing a harmless game that got hijacked and would feel obliged to protect her by hiding she's still alive versus protecting himself and the others. Rosa is in economical troubles, hates her siblings and has all to gain by killing them. Rosa is also unstable and therefore hard to trust. Since Rosa is in economical troubles it's harder for her to be able to bribe him successfully into covering up murders. Nanjo would have to believe that the police would come and how would he explain he cooperated with a murderer?
Nanjo also can't hide the guns in advance. The servants clean up the house carefully, they'll notice guns hidden. He doesn't have a masterkey nor can enter in Kinzo's study freely without Genji's help. He's therefore limited in what he can do. When people get on the island a servant goes to welcome them, Nanjo likely wasn't expected to have huge bags so it's not like he can carry around guns and red paint. Also I'm not sure how Nanjo would get a gun as it's never hinted he owns one, knows how to use one or could have bought one (plus if he were to hide a real gun it would mean he knows Rosa is going for real murders).

Another requirement is the servants' complicity.
Gohda might be bribed, but as he's a coward he'll likely won't accept being bribed for something that's murder. Being involved with guns and corpses would creep him out and cause him to slip (which happens in Umineko). As guns need to be prepared in advance prior to Rosa coming to Rokkenjima, Rosa wouldn't be able to keep him under surveilance so he could turn to the police or whatever for help.

Genji's defining characteristic is loyalty to the head. In the Sayotrice's theory not only Sayo is the head but he also feels guilty in her regards and it's vaguely implied that after Kinzo's death he wasn't looking forward to a long life.
In the Rosatrice theory we should assume that Rosa becomes the head.
Rosa is the last among the siblings in line of succession ina family that's male supremacist so that even if Jessica is seen as a future head because she's the heir to Krauss that's supposed to be the next head, she's expected she'll be the wife of the head, not the true head. It'll make more sense if Genji would recognize as the head Krauss than Rosa.
But let's assume Rosa solved the epitaph. This should solve her economical problems (the culprit even sent money out in form of a card for a bank account) but we know that's not the case. We know the culprit needed to solve the epitaph prior to being trapped on Rokkenjima otherwise he wouldn't have managed to send the money, the know that Krauss and the siblings have no way to know the culprit is sending out that money from... let's call it Kinzo's secret bank account so it's not like Rosa needs to kill them to use that money.
If Rosa solved the epitaph in 1986, becoming the head in those fateful days she couldn't know that, as the head, she could count on Genji as an accomplice ergo she couldn't prepare her murder plan in advance.
If we assume Shannon and Kanon are two different people and not the culprit their loyalty goes to the head, with Kinzo dead to Krauss who's the next in line. Kanon dislikes everyone equally, he won't help Rosa over Natsuhi and he doesn't have interest in money. Shannon tries to like everyone equally and also has no wish for money.
Rosa can't threaten them while she's not present so we slip in the same problem as Gohda.

The siblings need to be bribed here and there but all the siblings are too proud to accept to obey.
In Krauss's case in the Sayotrice's theory Sayo: bribe him with gold, threaten him with the explosive and the threat of revealing the truth about Kinzo and uses Genji as a back up.
Rosa has no such weapons. We went through the lack of funds she had before and as for suspecting the truth about Kinzo she has no proofs.
In Eva's case Sayo offered her the title of the head, along with a method to prove Krauss was hiding Kinzo's death, along with the money.
Rosa might at best claim she would accept Eva as the head but as she lacks the other two options and can't really make Eva the head this doesn't amount to much.
In addition between the two is Eva the one who solves the epitaph faster, that orders Rosa around and doesn't accept Rosa to order her around and that's more prone to deal with Rosa with violence should she not obey. Rosa is willing to go against others only when she's sure she has the upper hand but here we can't see her having much to claim as such.
Rudolf is probably the easier to bribe and the one who'll have less moral problems with the whole mess. He's the most desperate because not only he's in economical problems but he's in economical problems with the wrong kind of people.
Kyrie however is the most wary and suspicious along with possibly the most intelligent of the bunch. And we know she's more prone to push the trigger than to share the money.
Also Battler checks her and Rudolf well and they always end up death.
In the Sayotrice theory she in fact considered bribing them but decided it wasn't worth the risk. They're used only in Ep 4 & 5. In Ep 5 Kyrie believes that the adults are in control and that Sayo is merely helping them to pursue their goal. It's harder to guess the setting of Ep 4 as most of it is fantasy so I'm not even trying.
For the sake of a "whoever else"trice theory I'll look at Rosa and at her possibility of being bribed as well. Rosa wants money desperately so if you've some she'll play along for the ride. She'll likely need more insurances than everyone else that she won't end up in troubles as she's the less brave of the bunch and less prone to take bets. She's also very wary and can't handle death well so she's a bit of a wild card.
In the Sayotrice theory she's bribed only once in Ep 2, and likely thought she could push the blame on the servants or Battler. It's hinted she didn't know who was Beatrice and was acting as such merely because she was desperate for the money.
In Ep 3, when she's bribed by Eva, she shows pretty soon she's a difficult partner as she doesn't trust Eva and wants the money asap. Even in the Teaparty is made clear that she wants the money.

Now... the cousins. We know that Battler in the first 4 episodes can't be bribed nor can be the culprit as he's supposed to be the detective so let's skip him.
Maria is guillible. Everone can manipulate her. It's unlikely she's up to murder though.
Jessica and George aren't guillible but could be willing to play along for a prank. Jessica is in no dire need of money. She wants to leave Rokkenjima but she is in no real rush to do so. She's unhappy but not desperate, she bitches with her parents but loves them, she loves her friends at school, cares for the servants and has a crush for Kanon. She's the heir of the heir so she technically has less authority than Krauss.
She's clearly presented not as someone who can make careful plans but as someone who's brash, impulsive. If she ends up trying to kill someone is because she has jumped on that person without thinking, not because she has made a careful plan.
The only thing she ponders about a bit are her feelings for Kanon. However there are no elements to claim she would do a lover suicide with Kanon and, if she were to want to do it, she wouldn't need to wait for all her family to be on the island.
George is more of a schemer but not one to really take risks. He never acts directly in his attempts to steal Shannon for Battler, he's always pretty snide. The only one who would really be against him and Shannon getting together is Eva, the others could care less. He might suspect Kinzo would also oppose but Kinzo is supposedly dead. He's jealous of Battler but the situation as presented does nothing to fan that flame. Battler never challenges him for Shannon and Shannon never tries to reach out for Battler.
George's goal is to try and become a man overcoming his weak self. Ergo he wants to get past his jealousy of Battler and build his own kingdom. He'll probably be flattered if Kinzo were to chose him as the head as he's vain and thinks he's better than everyone else but, at the same time, he's not really that interested in it.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

By the end of the day, in both Rosatrice and Sayotrice theories, EP1 isn't really what happened in Rokken Island. The games are just scenarios and plans. And if we were to use Confession of the Golden Witch as a guide, Sayo didn't even have the balls to carry out the horrific murders either (no pun intended). Also, Sayo was overconfident about the fact that he could bribe the adults, but for all we know they might even retaliate. And if we are looking in the Rosatrice perspective, shouldn't we also say that Rosa might be overconfident as well, if Yasu is supposedly a part of Rosa? Yes, Sayo did eventually planned to have the murder scenario carried out, but for all we know it might even be less horrific than the ones depicted in the forgeries.

Rosa's character isn't overconfident. She's a weak person who takes out on who's weaker than her. To solve Umineko you've to solve not Prime but the forgeries who need to have a consistent characterization. In Ep 2 Rosa feels sick seeing the corpses. In Ep 3 Eva and Hideyoshi murder people and Rudolf and Kyrie tried to do the same with Kyrie successfully killing Hideyoshi. In Ep 1 Natsuhi shoot to Beatrice. Rosa is the only one in the forgeries who never managed to shoot to a real person only to the goat. And yes, she killed Sakutarou and one of the bunnies. Her characterization is consistent in claiming that she can kill people in her head but not outside of it. She can abuse who's weaker but as soon as someone is more powerful she cowers up.

She also is depicted as someone who wants to live but in Umineko everybody dies. Shannon and Kanon are depicted as resigned to die but the same doesn't happen to Rosa. In Ep 2 the last she tries to do is to escape with the gold from an island that's about to explode.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

It should also be possible for Rosa to bribe Eva and Hideyoshi as well if we are going to follow Confession of the Golden Witch as a guide. And while Eva and Natsuhi were arguing, Rosa might've even snuck inside their room. As for the painting well, there was the part in the novel that people did go out of surveillance from time to time, so Nanjo could even have painted the door red and went back to the group.

I've discussed previously of how chances for Rosa to bribe Eva or Nanjo were different than for Sayo.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Like I said, the games are plans and we are going with the notion that Sayo or Rosa are confident that they could bribe the adults and that everything would go according to plan.

The problem here lies again in the characterization. Rosa is not a confident person. She wants to live, she doesn't want to have troubles. Sayo has nothing to lose and she doesn't want to live.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

For all we know, if Sayo planned on carrying out the third game in the real world, if George did find out Sayo was the culprit, he might have retaliated and even knocked him out.

Again, risk was contemplated. We know that in Prime things won't go as Sayo planned. However Sayo was willing to take the risk. Rosa instead is more for safe bets. You've to trick her to make her make a risky bet.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

Also since EP1 is the first game, we could conclude that this game is quite the riskiest one of all, and arguably the most naive one of all, as I've noticed that as the games progressed, they become more likely to succeed and Battler start to see less and less and becomes more sleepy.

The best theory is actually that as the game progressed they were written by Tohya who based them on what he remembered. As he didn't see much on Prime his piece also saw less and less.

Originally Posted by Leslie Chow

In the VN only. It stated that it was flickering fluorescent light, so we could assume it wasn't that bright, as the CGs show. Also, it didn't specify where Rosa's corpse was positioned, so potentially she could have been anywhere in the shed and anything could've still covered her head. The place was not lit up in the manga or the anime. Only Nanjo had the best view on Rosa's head. Looking at how the head is positioned, the most Battler could see is Rosa's neck. And her head is conveniently surrounded by boxes. I don't think after seeing the other corpses the others would have the guts to do a proper check-up and/or look. Since the other corpses had their heads supposedly damaged, it should be possible for the others to conclude that Rosa must've had her head smashed in as well.

For Rosa to play it safe enough she should have lot of accomplices on this one. It's never said that her face wasn't in full view in the VN but let's pretend she was placed as in the manga and it wasn't in the best view. Flourescent light, even when flickering, can make a good illumination but let's assume it was flickering a lot so as to make difficult to see well.

Anyway back to Rosa. She has to have Nanjo as accomplice, which is a requirement for everyone and I discussed previously how I find it hard. She also needs Genji and Kanon as accomplices as they're the ones who open the shed and inspected the corpses first. She'll need Hideyoshi as he wanders through the shed and could have seen her face. Then she has to make sure Battler or George or Jessica or Natsuhi won't move so as to see her face easily.
Shannon's body is well hidden but Rosa is... not so much.
Rosa would be taking a risk greater than Shannon in every sense. Not only Rosa is more exposed at being discovered faking her death but if people were to discover Shannon isn't there they would suspect not her but Hideyoshi who's lying.
Kanon might claim he was threaten by Hideyoshi to support his story, Shannon would be nowhere to be found and so she couldn't be questioned. At best Hideyoshi and Kanon could claim Shannon's body magically vanished when Battler got closer. We'll have a situation similar to Ep 2 in Jessica's room.
If Rosa is caught pretending to be a corpse she's automatically pinned as the culprit.
It' true that in Umineko there's the theory that the greater the risk the greater the gain but Rosa isn't embracing this way of thinking. Again, when she takes a great risk is because she's tricked into it.

I think if you want to make a Rosatrice theory work you've to first build a good background for her, one in which she has the power to make the trick works and then tackle the tricks. The Sayotrice theory works also because the source of Sayo's power and her motive are explained and her character, once her nature is explained, fit with it.

With Rosa we bang our head on how she's more powerless than Sayo and not fitting for such setting.

[Mali]

Still arguing about Rosatrice? Wow...it's an interresting discussion right here.
Some twists for you:
The safest and simplest logical way to apply an another theory than Sayotrice would be drugging Battler early in the story (the dinner or cookies). No base?

Did Erika play fair in ep6 (without using the receipt trick)?

After the typhoon arrives the island would be a relativly closed room. What would happens happens to the closed room murder in all episodes?

Is Erika a title like "Beatrice"?

Back to Ep 6. It has been speculated that Battler knew what Erika was after and that purposely let her set up the logic error so as to push Beatrice to remember everything. In fact as Battler is the gamemaster he should know he could use Kanon that way and he immediately figured out the trick Beato presented to Erika.

So Battler allowed Erika to kill everyone, knowing the game would end in people being murdered.

In fact Erika gave up too early with Beatrice closed room. She could created another logic error as well. Is it risk Beatrice really needed?

1. State in red she killed 5 people.
2. Battler's Logic error (she could wrap the 1rst twilight victims in duct tape)
3. Beatrice announces that Kanon is the rescuer
4. announce the names in red of the 5 people from 'the next room over'
5. 2nd Logic error?

I think in that way she could eliminate any double name/2nd personas tricks. It's just a theory after all.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Mali

Still arguing about Rosatrice? Wow...it's an interresting discussion right here.
Some twists for you:
The safest and simplest logical way to apply an another theory than Sayotrice would be drugging Battler early in the story (the dinner or cookies). No base?

What would you do with a drugged Battler?
LOL, a past theory was that Battler was actually drug addict and everything was allucinations he had. It never got very far because it sort of remove any deduction on the mystery though but you reminded me of it.

Originally Posted by Mali

Did Erika play fair in ep6 (without using the receipt trick)?

Technically yes. Battler was the first to apply a retroactive move and to give her permission to seal 3 rooms without specificating how. Of course it would have been more honest to announce sooner her retroactive move but he didn't hand her any rule about it and in the witch game what you don't define is up to interpretation.

Originally Posted by Mali

After the typhoon arrives the island would be a relativly closed room. What would happens happens to the closed room murder in all episodes?

Is Erika a title like "Beatrice"?

It was speculated long ago but honestly I don't remember that theory anymore.
Anyway Erika is technically a real person who likely drowned around the time the Rokkenjima incident took place. People however speculated she reached Rokkenjima and died there.

Originally Posted by Mali

In fact Erika gave up too early with Beatrice closed room. She could created another logic error as well. Is it risk Beatrice really needed?

1. State in red she killed 5 people.
2. Battler's Logic error (she could wrap the 1rst twilight victims in duct tape)
3. Beatrice announces that Kanon is the rescuer
4. announce the names in red of the 5 people from 'the next room over'
5. 2nd Logic error?

I think in that way she could eliminate any double name/2nd personas tricks. It's just a theory after all.

[/quote]

Erika can't list them in red. She would have to ask Beatrice to do so. Overwise she wouldn't need Battler to acknowledge her blue truths, she could directly try to say them in red and see if they work.

She can use red only for things she can prove as, for example, she witnessed them through her piece. Or things she did through her piece. Like killing people.

[Leslie Chow]

In the Rosatrice theory there are no hints Nanjo felt like he owned something to Rosa. Rosa to him is the same as the other siblings. It's also much harder to swallow that he'll buy that Rosa was playing a harmless game that got hijacked and would feel obliged to protect her by hiding she's still alive versus protecting himself and the others. Rosa is in economical troubles, hates her siblings and has all to gain by killing them. Rosa is also unstable and therefore hard to trust. Since Rosa is in economical troubles it's harder for her to be able to bribe him successfully into covering up murders. Nanjo would have to believe that the police would come and how would he explain he cooperated with a murderer?

In the 3rd game, we find out that Nanjo has a sick grandchild. He is an old man and he is pretty weak and easy to manipulate. This begs the question. So what if his grandchild is sick? He is a doctor, so shouldn't he cure his grandchild instead? His son also is a doctor, but according to EP4 TIPS, his terminally ill daughter (Nanjo's grandchild), passed away. This also tells me his son couldn't do it, so it could suggest a crisis in Nanjo's own family. And we also find out that he never took the money, since it was too suspicious. Which leads me to believe that his grandchild is probably suffering from a sickness which doesn't have a cure at the time of 80s so it is probably a sickness which requires research, which means a lot of money. Or the cure for the sickness costs a lot of money, something which his family can't afford. Since the diagnosis of the grandchild isn't specified, then we also have no reason to disprove that he is in desperate need of cash, so the possibility of him being desperate certainly exists. I am pretty sure that the only opportunity for him to get that amount of money is through Kinzo, but we don't exactly know when his grandchild contracted the illness and the illness may have been contracted when Kinzo was already dead. So the only way for easy money is to ask the new head. But what if the new head didn't comply with his request? He is an old man so of course it would have been easy for the new head to pressure Nanjo to do dirty work. I also think that Nanjo values his own family more than the Ushiromiya and he may have been just going along with Kinzo's whims since it is advantageous to have a rich friend, so he may not have even a true friend to Kinzo. Of course, he wouldn't make it obvious and he does it by paying back the change from the gold that he received in WWII. Even if he gets jailed if he survives, I am pretty sure that at that point he wouldn't care since he is pretty old. Also it doesn't mean that he wouldn't have the chance to talk to his family members, since his son would most definitely ask his father about the money he received. Nanjo would then just have to say to take it and not say a word about it. In essence, he doesn't care if he gets jailed as long as his grandchild gets the cure. If he gets jailed he has nothing to lose. Plus I am pretty sure that Nanjo's son getting money from the bank is discreet, so his family won't even have to suffer from the public like Eva and Ange.

Nanjo also can't hide the guns in advance. The servants clean up the house carefully, they'll notice guns hidden. He doesn't have a masterkey nor can enter in Kinzo's study freely without Genji's help. He's therefore limited in what he can do. When people get on the island a servant goes to welcome them, Nanjo likely wasn't expected to have huge bags so it's not like he can carry around guns and red paint. Also I'm not sure how Nanjo would get a gun as it's never hinted he owns one, knows how to use one or could have bought one (plus if he were to hide a real gun it would mean he knows Rosa is going for real murders).

The guns could also be prepared when everyone is asleep. He is around with Genji for most of the time, so it is not impossible for Genji to let him in Kinzo's study from time to time. It is possible for Rosa to let him borrow a gun to force the other servants to tell the Demon Kanon story in EP2. Of course we get the red Genji, Kumasawa and Nanjo are not killers, but it doesn't disprove the possibility that he would threaten others to kill the servants, even though he wouldn't. The possibility that Nanjo may have threatened the servants in EP2 is shown before Rosa separated Nanjo and the servants from the remaining Ushiromiyas, since she told him that she is counting on him. Also, he doesn't have to carry red paint. The paint should have been somewhere in the island anyways before the conference would take place. Of course by then, he would already know where it is located.

Another requirement is the servants' complicity.
Gohda might be bribed, but as he's a coward he'll likely won't accept being bribed for something that's murder. Being involved with guns and corpses would creep him out and cause him to slip (which happens in Umineko). As guns need to be prepared in advance prior to Rosa coming to Rokkenjima, Rosa wouldn't be able to keep him under surveilance so he could turn to the police or whatever for help

He doesn't need to be bribed, he just has to be threatened with a gun. He seems to be the only servant to be unaware of what's going on. Once he is threatened by Rosa or an accomplice, all they had to say is that if he tells the truth to a group (e.g. in EP2 and EP4), their boss or co-plotter who is with said group would murder you and everyone with them. I'm pretty sure even a coward should be able to follow that order, since not only his life is in danger.

Rosa is the last among the siblings in line of succession ina family that's male supremacist so that even if Jessica is seen as a future head because she's the heir to Krauss that's supposed to be the next head, she's expected she'll be the wife of the head, not the true head. It'll make more sense if Genji would recognize as the head Krauss than Rosa.

True, Kinzo did say in a flashback that Eva should get a husband since she is a woman so it is only logical to say that he expected the same from Rosa. However, he was pretty specific in his final years that whoever solves the epitaph becomes the head of the family. He did not even specify gender, so gender shouldn't be a problem, so everybody has equal chance. Also, Genji should also comply with his master's wishes as well as the new head's since that is the kind of guy he is (e.g. EP2, when he decided to be left alone).

But let's assume Rosa solved the epitaph. This should solve her economical problems (the culprit even sent money out in form of a card for a bank account) but we know that's not the case. We know the culprit needed to solve the epitaph prior to being trapped on Rokkenjima otherwise he wouldn't have managed to send the money, the know that Krauss and the siblings have no way to know the culprit is sending out that money from... let's call it Kinzo's secret bank account so it's not like Rosa needs to kill them to use that money.

If EP7 is to be used as a hint, then Rosa who supposedly created Yasu doesn't care much about living and wants everyone to die. Yes, she has got financial problems, but did we really see her work her ass off? Can we really say for certain she cared about her company? We for the most part know that Krauss is incompetent, and since he is swindled, he can't do much about it, so he needs the money; Eva and Hideyoshi's company aren't in such a dire situation compared to the others, but it could have been resolved regardless, due to their connections and it has been established in EP3 flashback that Eva was hardworking, so money was the easy way for them, but it doesn't necessarily means that they are desperate, only desperate because Krauss would most likely monopolize everything; Rudolf doesn't really care much about his company, all he really cares about is monopolizing the money, settle his court case and leave his employees to ruin; whereas Rosa only has a failing company. Compared to the others, she wasn't really partaking in much of the discussion when it comes to the inheritance money and it doesn't seem that she is in some kind of trouble and in my reckoning, if she worked harder, then her company might have a chance. But we didn't see her work and doesn't seem to care about her company like her brother Rudolf and we can't really say she's incompetent like her brother Krauss. Instead of acting as the president of the company like she should be she was sleeping around with some guy at Hokkaido, leaving her daughter alone at multiple occasions. This tells me that Rosa is in desperate need for love and that her financial troubles aren't that important to her.

Also, if we look at the fantasy scenes in EP2 and EP3, Beatrice was really cruel to Shannon and her view of love was that of lust and that she is really pissed at Shannon due to how Shannon claims that she has no regrets and that she is "complete". This is parallel to Rosa, who has a failed relationship with Maria's father as well as probably the guy from Hokkaido, as in EP4, she says that no man would ever want a woman with someone else's child. If we think about it, Rosa's life isn't complete in a sense, plus it seems that she takes her daughter for granted. Since we get the notion that Beatrice is jealous and doesn't view love as sacred as Shannon does, we can assume that Beatrice had a bad experience in love. When Beatrice says about George just looking at Shannon in lust, we get somewhat of an insight to Rosa's love life. Maria's father left her and she has a sex friend from Hokkaido, which strongly suggest that she is just being used and is saying that Shannon would also have the same experience as her, but is angry because of how "pure" Shannon's love is, which is something she doesn't have. In addition, if we are to take hints from the fantasy scenes, Kinzo (or the new head) wants Beatrice to revive. If Rosa is the head, then she of course wants Beatrice to revive. Why would she do this? Well even though she was the head, she couldn't get what she wanted - love. And if we look at the epitaph it bestows four treasures, but in this case, Rosa would probably want the two of the following:

One shall be, the resurrection of the souls of all the dead. - Beatrice 2 revived, which would redeem Rosa and wouldn't be guilty anymore about her death.
One shall be, even the resurrection of the lost love. - The return of Maria's father would make her fulfilled as a woman and would make her a good mama (and I say this because I remember that when she still believed in Maria's father, she was good to Maria.).

In this sense, Rosa would be "complete". By following the epitaph in a literal fashion, she is making a huge risk that everything would work out if pulled off successfully. Plus having her partake in the occult could also account for Maria's interest in it as well as indulgence on it (as repeated so many times already).

If Rosa solved the epitaph in 1986, becoming the head in those fateful days she couldn't know that, as the head, she could count on Genji as an accomplice ergo she couldn't prepare her murder plan in advance.

If she was the head, then it would only be natural to think that Genji is an accomplice. If he isn't then he is someone who just goes along with his master's wishes, since he is extremely loyal to the head as evident in EP2, when he said that "Furniture's fate is decided by the family" and that he has to be available to the master when needed.

If we assume Shannon and Kanon are two different people and not the culprit their loyalty goes to the head, with Kinzo dead to Krauss who's the next in line. Kanon dislikes everyone equally, he won't help Rosa over Natsuhi and he doesn't have interest in money. Shannon tries to like everyone equally and also has no wish for money.

True, but Rosa could also threaten Shannon and Kanon that if they don't do what she says, she might kill the others. And since she is Beatrice and the head, Shannon and Kanon have no choice but to follow Rosa, even if grudgingly, in Kanon's case (as evident in EP2 when he supposedly licks Beatrice's boot). If we look at the fantasy scene when Beatrice first arrives, Shannon was passive aggressive towards her, saying that she would ignore Rosa. Kanon and Shannon may also be told by Genji the head servant to keep their mouths shut. She might also lie to Shannon and Kanon saying that she has multiple accomplices and that if they ever say anything, they would kill the people around them. This could also account to EP8 Chapter 25, when George says that as he talked on and on about his dream with Shannon, there was always something bothering her, so we could say that while she is aware that Rosa is Beatrice, she can't tell George anything, because she might put George and everyone else at risk.

Rosa has no such weapons. We went through the lack of funds she had before and as for suspecting the truth about Kinzo she has no proofs.
In Eva's case Sayo offered her the title of the head, along with a method to prove Krauss was hiding Kinzo's death, along with the money.
Rosa might at best claim she would accept Eva as the head but as she lacks the other two options and can't really make Eva the head this doesn't amount to much. In addition between the two is Eva the one who solves the epitaph faster, that orders Rosa around and doesn't accept Rosa to order her around and that's more prone to deal with Rosa with violence should she not obey. Rosa is willing to go against others only when she's sure she has the upper hand but here we can't see her having much to claim as such.

But then it skips to the part where Beatrice supposedly gave Eva the headship, and if Rosatrice is to be followed, she revealed to Eva everything and Rosa was merely following Eva. Also, if she is the head, she knows Kinzo is dead. It is also hinted in the second game when she supposedly claims that she saw Kinzo. And she's also got Genji.

Rudolf is probably the easier to bribe and the one who'll have less moral problems with the whole mess. He's the most desperate because not only he's in economical problems but he's in economical problems with the wrong kind of people.
Kyrie however is the most wary and suspicious along with possibly the most intelligent of the bunch. And we know she's more prone to push the trigger than to share the money.

It is because Kyrie is the most intelligent, wary and suspicious of the group that she has her killed in the first twilights in most games, except in 3 and 4. In 3, she has an alibi and in 4, she supposedly threatened everyone and she got weapons. Even Kyrie should be forced to do her bidding. She could have even forced Kyrie to make the recording before killing Kyrie and playing the recording on the phone. Recordings are possible, as evident in EP7 as Willard suggested.

For the sake of a "whoever else"trice theory I'll look at Rosa and at her possibility of being bribed as well. Rosa wants money desperately so if you've some she'll play along for the ride. She'll likely need more insurances than everyone else that she won't end up in troubles as she's the less brave of the bunch and less prone to take bets. She's also very wary and can't handle death well so she's a bit of a wild card.
In the Sayotrice theory she's bribed only once in Ep 2, and likely thought she could push the blame on the servants or Battler. It's hinted she didn't know who was Beatrice and was acting as such merely because she was desperate for the money.
In Ep 3, when she's bribed by Eva, she shows pretty soon she's a difficult partner as she doesn't trust Eva and wants the money asap. Even in the Teaparty is made clear that she wants the money.

In EP2, she was with Shannon and Genji and she later tells the group about Kinzo, who was already dead. It is most likely that she knew that Shannon was the new head. If she is an accomplice she may have been forced to follow Shannon's orders.

Rosa's character isn't overconfident. She's a weak person who takes out on who's weaker than her. To solve Umineko you've to solve not Prime but the forgeries who need to have a consistent characterization. In Ep 2 Rosa feels sick seeing the corpses. In Ep 3 Eva and Hideyoshi murder people and Rudolf and Kyrie tried to do the same with Kyrie successfully killing Hideyoshi. In Ep 1 Natsuhi shoot to Beatrice. Rosa is the only one in the forgeries who never managed to shoot to a real person only to the goat. And yes, she killed Sakutarou and one of the bunnies. Her characterization is consistent in claiming that she can kill people in her head but not outside of it. She can abuse who's weaker but as soon as someone is more powerful she cowers up.

Umm... Sayo was weak as well and she can only kill people in her head as well and it took a while for her to grow some balls (not literally for obvious reasons). In EP2 as well Kanon in the fantasy scene also said that Rosa killed him and Jessica and that Rosa would kill everyone. I think if we ignore what others say about Rosa that are out of the ordinary, we are limiting ourselves to what we think is her full personality. Also there was black witch, which support the notion that Rosa is into the occult. And if we are to work with EP7 and Confession of the Golden Witch, which is not seen in a objective perspective btw and is mostly fantasy, and if we work around it we get Yasu, who is supposedly a part of Rosa as well. And if we are using Rosatrice, we have to work with EP7 and CotGW and if Yasu is the culprit, then we get another view of Rosa's personality, albeit not in a direct way. Just because this is Rosatrice, doesn't mean CotGW and EP7 is thrown out of the window. And with Sayotrice, would we even come to the conclusion that Shannon and Kanon are callous murderers? Of course not, probably. But they would help us connect the dots to support our theories. It's the same for both Sayotrice and Rosatrice, once we get EP7 and CotGW, we get another view on the personalities of the culprits in both theories. And since Yasu is supposedly confident, in the Rosatrice perspective, Rosa also possesses this trait.

She also is depicted as someone who wants to live but in Umineko everybody dies. Shannon and Kanon are depicted as resigned to die but the same doesn't happen to Rosa. In Ep 2 the last she tries to do is to escape with the gold from an island that's about to explode.

Good point, but this could also connect to the magic ending in EP8 when Battler and Beatrice supposedly left the island. While Beatrice wanted to die, Battler urged her to live. If we turn this scene around, we get a Rosa, who after revealing her plans to Battler gets the urge to live and they both escape. Rosa decided to live for her daughter and when she fought the goats she is shown to actually care for her. We could say that the Rosa personality decided to live where the Beatrice personality didn't and supposedly died in the explosion, or in the magic ending drown to death, where symbolically there was a catbox underneath the ocean which symbolises the notion that since the island exploded, we would never know what happened in Rokken Island. Plus this would also account for the goats that attacked Rosa and Maria when attempting to escape, as goats were the representations of people's opinions concerning the incident.

Anyway back to Rosa. She has to have Nanjo as accomplice, which is a requirement for everyone and I discussed previously how I find it hard. She also needs Genji and Kanon as accomplices as they're the ones who open the shed and inspected the corpses first. She'll need Hideyoshi as he wanders through the shed and could have seen her face. Then she has to make sure Battler or George or Jessica or Natsuhi won't move so as to see her face easily.
Shannon's body is well hidden but Rosa is... not so much.
Rosa would be taking a risk greater than Shannon in every sense. Not only Rosa is more exposed at being discovered faking her death but if people were to discover Shannon isn't there they would suspect not her but Hideyoshi who's lying.
Kanon might claim he was threaten by Hideyoshi to support his story, Shannon would be nowhere to be found and so she couldn't be questioned. At best Hideyoshi and Kanon could claim Shannon's body magically vanished when Battler got closer. We'll have a situation similar to Ep 2 in Jessica's room.
If Rosa is caught pretending to be a corpse she's automatically pinned as the culprit.
It' true that in Umineko there's the theory that the greater the risk the greater the gain but Rosa isn't embracing this way of thinking. Again, when she takes a great risk is because she's tricked into it.

I've already explained why Nanjo could be an accomplice. Since Kanon is not an observer, Rosa could have even wore a mask and tricked Kanon making him think that Rosa really was dead, this applies to the others, except Battler. This would also account for when Clair said when fighting against Willard (in response to when he said "what if that guy [Battler] wanted to see that face") and Clair responded "that's what it means to leave yourself to fate". And I already stated before that if the others already saw how horrific the murders were, they wouldn't bother to look. They might catch a little bit of glimpse to Rosa's mask, but at this point they might think that she is in the same state as the others. And since Rosa's head is conveniently surrounded by boxes, then the focus shifts to Rudolf and Kyrie once the shed is opened, who were in all adaptations were at the front. And since we are going with the notion that Kanon might be somewhat aware that Rosa is Beatrice, he would probably start believing that there is another Beatrice, one that is real.

I think if you want to make a Rosatrice theory work you've to first build a good background for her, one in which she has the power to make the trick works and then tackle the tricks. The Sayotrice theory works also because the source of Sayo's power and her motive are explained and her character, once her nature is explained, fit with it.

The background for her is basically EP7, CotGW, her past with Beatrice 2, and a bit of an analysis of her life devoid of love. EP7 and CotGW may seem it is incompatible with Rosatrice, but then again everything about it is mostly fantasy, and there is no guarantee that CotGW is the truth, just because it is written on red paper. Red paper =/= red truth. Does it mean it's useless for Rosatrice? No, since there is some truth behind the supposed lies, just not in the direct way.

The safest and simplest logical way to apply an another theory than Sayotrice would be drugging Battler early in the story (the dinner or cookies). No base?

This theory actually has some basis. In CotGW, it is stated that everyone was drugged before the first twilight. Then the culprit simply chose the victims. This actually makes sense, since Natsuhi, known for her headaches, claimed in EP1 that when she woke up, it has been a while since she had a good sleep. And there is evidence that she was supposed to be one of the victims as there were handprints on her door, but because the culprit have to play by the rules so to speak, they skipped on her, since she had the scorpion charm.

And sorry for the long post and for anyone who cringed throughout the whole post. I will admit that I wasn't eloquent enough and I might've missed some points here and there, but this is the best I have got at the moment. All of this are from memory and I haven't got the time to progress with the Question Arcs in my re-read, so I haven't even got the chance to even go through the Core Arcs, of which most connects the dots to what is being asked of me from what I understand.