[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Jan-Poo]

I wonder if Asumu as a culprit would be allowed by the knox rules. Certainly she was mentioned but she's never been shown, we barely know what kind of person she was. I think that father Knox wouldn't be pleased at the very least.

[luckyssol]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I wonder if Asumu as a culprit would be allowed by the knox rules. Certainly she was mentioned but she's never been shown, we barely know what kind of person she was. I think that father Knox wouldn't be pleased at the very least.

That would be a concern indeed. Perhaps the characterization would come by later realizing that the person telling the tales (3 and beyond) was actually behind the crime?

I wonder how Hachijou knew so much about what happened on the island to write those stories...

There's also this comment by Kyrie:
“How could you understand the madness of a woman whose man was stolen from her, and who has burned with envy for 18 years!!”

Now why would the author assume that Kyrie remained envious of Asumu six years after she died? Mabye because the author wanted to portray her that way?

[Tyabann]

Hachijou is a little young to be Asumu, if that's what you're suggesting. She'd be around Kasumi's age, at that point.

[luckyssol]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

Hachijou is a little young to be Asumu, if that's what you're suggesting. She'd be around Kasumi's age, at that point.

What did they say Hachijou's age was in the game? Sorry, I missed that part.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Ssol

There's also this comment by Kyrie:
“How could you understand the madness of a woman whose man was stolen from her, and who has burned with envy for 18 years!!”

Now why would the author assume that Kyrie remained envious of Asumu six years after she died? Mabye because the author wanted to portray her that way?

EP3 Kyrie said every time she saw Battler, he reminded her of Asumu and the possibility that it was her child surviving but Asumu's dead. She said her envy was present in the past, now and in the future. It would last forever.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Ssol

What did they say Hachijou's age was in the game? Sorry, I missed that part.

She just doesn't look like a woman nearing sixty to me. Well, I suppose Natsuhi and Eva don't either.

[Kaiba]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I wonder if Asumu as a culprit would be allowed by the knox rules. Certainly she was mentioned but she's never been shown, we barely know what kind of person she was. I think that father Knox wouldn't be pleased at the very least.

I was thinking, maaayyybbee Asumu killed Kyrie and masqueraded as her, took her name or something? It's not like I think that, as it still doesn't solve my main objection to Kyrietrice ( her early deaths in the first two twilights.)

[Dr. Akagi]

Originally Posted by Kaiba

I was thinking, maaayyybbee Asumu killed Kyrie and masqueraded as her, took her name or something? It's not like I think that, as it still doesn't solve my main objection to Kyrietrice ( her early deaths in the first two twilights.)

http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost...postcount=3000

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Dr. Akagi

http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost...postcount=3000

Kyrie was thinking that food was unnecessary.
She claimed that they should not leave the guesthouse.
She suggested that they leave the guesthouse to get food.
Until the last instant before she died, Kyrie preserved her pattern of behavior.

These reds prove that someone named Kyrie was on the island, unless you want to interpret them as happening before October 4/5...which you can't really do unless you have evidence or clues to back it up.
So unless dressing up as someone allows you to steal their name in the red text, Kasumi can't have dressed up as Kyrie unless they were both on the island, which is basically impossible after EP6.

[Antera Caramichael]

Easy: Just like for Kinzo, everyone reconized that Rudolf partner was Kyrie, just as everyone name Kanon and Shanon while it is not their real name. It is as plausible as people reconizing Kinzo while he is not there, since it is not stated that no one other than Kyrie can bear her name. For example, with Kyrie defection, the Sumadera family reconized Kasumi being the new hire, the new Kyrie.

[ijriims]

Well, the clues pointing to Kasumi imposing as Kyrie are as many as Nanjo's granddaughter imposing as Nanjo...

[Antera Caramichael]

But we cannot exclude this possibility. We cannot compare objectively Kyrie and Kasumi physically because:
1: There do not share any similaire behavior, nor expressions. Kyrie has always her eyes open while Kasumi don't and she is wearing a kimono with which we cannot compare their bodies.
2: 18 Years separate Kyrie and Kasumi draws.

So in brief we have neither a physical description of Kasumi in 1986 nor an alibi for her.
And since Evatrice appeared in 1998 without Eva, we can assume that Evatrice is not entirely Eva's alter ego.
Furthermore, we know that Kasumi was envying practicaly to death Kyrie for being so free. With the inheritance question, the Sumadera family being the culprit isn't impossible at all.

[Renall]

Asumu and Kinzo's wife are both characters introduced as early as ep1, stated to be dead, never confirmed dead in red and never given an actual cause of death. With Kinzo's wife you just sort of assume she died of old age or something, but Asumu's death is kind of a hanging question.

I don't see any reason to doubt they're both dead, and if one or the other were the culprit I'd feel kind of shafted, but it's certainly odd to talk about two dead characters and their unusual behavior and then never once say anything about them or show them at all. Heck, the anime showed younger versions of some characters but never even hinted at Asumu's appearance.

I suppose you could add the original Beatrice to that list. If you don't think Kumasawa was the first, anyway (I don't, but who knows). Never shown, death assumed but only hinted at, albeit much more strongly than the other deaths were.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Antera Caramichael

*snip*

If I was the one controlling the Sumadera family, I would probably send Kyrie to get the gold instead of Kasumi, as I know Kasumi is much inferior to Kyrie, ability-wise.

[luckyssol]

For any of the murders that occurred on the island (except what occurs at midnight on October 5th) it's clear that the one who executed them would chosen from the 17 on the island. What is not clear is who the string puller is and who is manipulating who.

However, I don't see how anyone can not at least raise some kind of a question to the death of a woman in her 40s. It's not natural to die at the age. Battler and Rudolf said they believed Asumu was dead but the circumstances of her death were never given.

The clue from the story that there could have been some conflict that lead to her "death" was the fact that Rudolf was probably cheating on Asumu at around the time of Asumu's death. The year Ange was born and the year Asumu "died" were in the year. Why should we simply ignore a clue like this?

There are many possible ways to construct a motive for Asumu. As an example:

Spoiler for Motive:

We know from episode 4 that Kumasawa knew about the death of the servant around 1967. Since Kumasawa always talked to Shannon it's not a stretch that it would be mentioned to her at some point. Shannon being 10 years old could have asked Asumu about it.

Asumu then could have told the story of the servant falling off the cliff to Shannon when Shannon would ask her about it. It was a family secret but there would be no harm in telling a young girl who had worked there for four years already.

The exact year wasn’t given; she probably said something like “around the time you were born”. The clue that Asumu would describe it vaguely like this was given when Rosa described it in episode 3:
“How old was I then, I wonder. Probably, middle school. I don’t remember well. Anyways, I think I was about that old.”

Shannon would then begin to believe it to be her mom, the Beatrice of the legend and start believing in magic.

However, it's possible that Battler mocked and denied magic in front of Shannon six years ago. Shannon would then believe that the Ushiromiya family cover up of the servant who she believed to be her mom was a complete disgrace to her "mom". From that, one can make a theory that Shannon would try to get revenge on one of the people who was behind the cover up of the servants death.
This is especially hinted at the beginning of the episode 2 manga where Shannon appears to go crazy when George speaks of magic jokingly.

If Battler had not have done that she would have never tried to kill Asumu and the whole tragedy would have been avoided. Thus, this sin was the cause of the tragedy. How ironic would it be that by Battler's denial of magic would end up creating one of most mysterious events involving witches and magic in recent time.

Let's assume Shannon tried to kill Asumu in a way similar to how the servant died. If someone were to fall off a cliff that wasn't too high and were to fall onto the rocks below some blood would be left but depending on the distance the fall might not be fatal. It's possible that this could have occurred near Rudolf and Asumu's home.

Asumu would then stagger to her home and look for Rudolf to call the police. However, as it was hinted before, Rudolf and Kyrie were having an affair at that time. Since Asumu had been away Rudolf could have invited Kyrie over and they could have slept together. What would Asumu's reaction be if she were to stagger home and see through a window that her husband was with another woman?

Why wouldn't she go right to the police?
Instead of simply revealing herself, Asumu used the fact that they thought she was dead to her advantage to plot the murders of Rudolf and Kyrie. Nothing would change the fact that her husband was unfaithful to her so she plotted revenge against him.

She would then manipulate Shannon, who tried to kill her, by threatening to reveal that she knew Shannon had "killed" Asumu. She wouldn't use her name but instead use an alias, for example, 07151129.

Initially the plan was to get revenge on Rudolf and Kyrie so she had been contacting Shannon with plans to kill them. The hint that the plan was to kill Kyrie and Rudolf all along was from the messages in the bottles where the stories both show Kyrie and Rudolf dead in the first twilight.

The plan could have been constantly changing and would eventually come to a plan where they take advantage the the epitaph and make it look like someone was executing an occult killing.

Asumu could have had Shannon spy on Kinzo to get his contacts from the war, who would likely have access to some of explosives. Shannon could have also spied on Krauss so Asumu would be able to swindle him for money.

The constant spying on the relatives would lead to belief that the family was beyond hope. To preserve the reputation of the family, the deaths of the entire family would need to be done.

As k//eternal posted:
"Instead of being a family that squandered its massive wealth, they'd be remembered as a wealthy family that all tragically died for some mysterious reason. The puzzle presented by the witch stories in the bottles basically would serve as a further distraction."

She could have manipulated Kanon to plant all the explosives over 2 years time. Kanon was shown moving fertilizer in episode 1 but what if it was also packed with tnt?

In the end, the thing that went wrong was that Battler showed up at the family conference. His death was not part of any plan and Asumu would always regret what she had done to the person who, even though it wasn't her real son, was her son in her eyes.

No time to check for type-o's since I got to head to class. I'll edit it later on.

[Tyabann]

It needs (a lot of) work, but I like this theory.

[rogerpepitone]

@Ssol: Rudolf couldn't have married Kyrie without a corpse or having Asumu declared legally dead.

And if there is anything suspicious about a woman's death or disappearance, it looks very bad for the husband to announce a second marriage shortly after that. (See Agatha Christie's disappearance.)

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

@Ssol: Rudolf couldn't have married Kyrie without a corpse or having Asumu declared legally dead.

Which kind of makes me think that, if the theory is true, either Rudolf is in on her faked death or someone produced a fake corpse which Rudolf identified as Asumu for whatever reason.

[luckyssol]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

@Ssol: Rudolf couldn't have married Kyrie without a corpse or having Asumu declared legally dead.

And if there is anything suspicious about a woman's death or disappearance, it looks very bad for the husband to announce a second marriage shortly after that. (See Agatha Christie's disappearance.)

If she did fall off a cliff it is possible that the corpse may have washed out to sea. There would have definitely have been a search of the area. However, it might not have been possible to locate. There would need to have been at least some kind of blood stain where she fell for them to have detemined this.

Regarding Rudolf, in my theory (which is not even half complete yet) I have him absolutely believing that Asumu passed away so he had no problem with moving on to Kyrie.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Ssol

If she did fall off a cliff it is possible that the corpse may have washed out to sea. There would have definitely have been a search of the area. However, it might not have been possible to locate. There would need to have been at least some kind of blood stain where she fell for them to have detemined this.

I don't think that this works... if there's no body, even if she should by all rights be dead, I think she'd still be legally classified as "missing".

There's still a year left to go before she'd be declared legally dead... unless someone got a certain doctor to declare her death after only, say, four months.