[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Wanderer]

This whole "roulette" thing... what is the supposed mechanism behind it? Do Yasu/Kinzo just pick randomly based on a whim? It's nonsense.

[AuraTwilight]

Originally Posted by J the Drafter

It's implied in the games that there's some fight over the gold. You do have a point, though. It doesn't make much sense to fight Yasu when they can get what they want by playing along. However, the cash card is the only piece of wealth Yasu can offer that is of practical use. Maybe there was a fight over that card (there must have been, if multiple siblings knew about it), though I don't know how that leads to Genjasawo being killed in the first game. (Maybe they knew too much?)

Kyrie has mob connections. That gold can be cashed if they worked together.

[cronnoponno]

Would a purely financial motive be thinkable at all?

The cash card covered EVERYONE'S immediate expenses, even if Krauss could greedily take the highest portion of the gold, they STILL would have got enough to screw over their lives, and the narration seemed to imply that Krauss COULD convert at least a worthwhile amount of the gold(not sure if that was Ange saying it), why the hell would ANYONE kill under these circumstances? I mean, if you were offered 10 million dollars and your idiot brother was offered 30 million, would you really risk murder to gain 40 million when there are multiple witnesses? Would you really blow up your entire family just to get the rest of the cash when 10 million could arguably serve any normal person quite well?

Maybe I'm just too ignorant over how dumb people could become when faced with a pile of gold that will most likely never be converted for the realistic amount it's worth.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

This whole "roulette" thing... what is the supposed mechanism behind it? Do Yasu/Kinzo just pick randomly based on a whim? It's nonsense.

Maybe? Going by the individual games, the first twilight seems to go for either a random assortment of people in the mansion at midnight (Legend), or a specific victim theme (Turn, Banquet, End, Dawn). Whether the murder game was literally murderous, or just a harmless game, all one could say was that the first twilight proooooobably included Rosa.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

George has gone on record as saying he is willing to kill everyone else to make Shannon his and make the entire world his enemy and he would kill a child.

Pffft, George's romantic posturing meant to impress his waifu. Several people have expressed an overt willingness to resort to violences, in word. Furthermore, George also planned to announce his engagement on the second day of the conference, having already accepted the idea of being ousted from the family.And really, noone but Evayoshi would've cared a great deal.
Besides, he can't kill adults.

Originally Posted by cronnoponno

Would a purely financial motive be thinkable at all?

The cash card covered EVERYONE'S immediate expenses, even if Krauss could greedily take the highest portion of the gold, they STILL would have got enough to screw over their lives, and the narration seemed to imply that Krauss COULD convert at least a worthwhile amount of the gold(not sure if that was Ange saying it), why the hell would ANYONE kill under these circumstances? I mean, if you were offered 10 million dollars and your idiot brother was offered 30 million, would you really risk murder to gain 40 million when there are multiple witnesses? Would you really blow up your entire family just to get the rest of the cash when 10 million could arguably serve any normal person quite well?

Maybe I'm just too ignorant over how dumb people could become when faced with a pile of gold that will most likely never be converted for the realistic amount it's worth.

This was pretty much Rosa's entire sentiment in the EP7 Tea Party. I'm fairly willing to throw her in the "almost definitely not the culprit" as she's been consistently portrayed as overwhelmingly against the idea of risking murder. Lion also expressed that sentiment while watching the scene, and concluded that the presence of such an incomprehensibly large sum of money made them very irrational.

The presence of he winchesters really wasn't helping matters because even though the scene shied away from it, somebody had to grab one first, and I imagine that's when shit got real in that argument.

[AuraTwilight]

Pffft, George's romantic posturing meant to impress his waifu. Several people have expressed an overt willingness to resort to violences, in word. Furthermore, George also planned to announce his engagement on the second day of the conference, having already accepted the idea of being ousted from the family.And really, noone but Evayoshi would've cared a great deal.
Besides, he can't kill adults.

He can kill adults just fine, just not in Bern's game because she had to frame Battler. Also George is fat, therefore giving him a motive.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

He can kill adults just fine, just not in Bern's game because she had to frame Battler. Also George is fat, therefore giving him a motive.

Whaaaaaat ?? You can't seriously be suggesting tha-
*is impaled by giant red stake*

[Renall]

Originally Posted by cronnoponno

Would a purely financial motive be thinkable at all?

The cash card covered EVERYONE'S immediate expenses, even if Krauss could greedily take the highest portion of the gold, they STILL would have got enough to screw over their lives, and the narration seemed to imply that Krauss COULD convert at least a worthwhile amount of the gold(not sure if that was Ange saying it), why the hell would ANYONE kill under these circumstances? I mean, if you were offered 10 million dollars and your idiot brother was offered 30 million, would you really risk murder to gain 40 million when there are multiple witnesses? Would you really blow up your entire family just to get the rest of the cash when 10 million could arguably serve any normal person quite well?

Maybe I'm just too ignorant over how dumb people could become when faced with a pile of gold that will most likely never be converted for the realistic amount it's worth.

Well, yes and no to your first question. Is it thinkable? Sure. Money is a very common motivation for murders. But of course there are several questions we'd have to ask here to know if it'd be likely for this one:

• Why would any of them need MORE money that badly? Battler clearly outlines how much money everyone could get from the gold (and cash card, if it exists) and the adults are very clear on exactly how much money they need. Anything else is gravy. If they can debate over Kinzo's inheritance they can probably debate over an equitable division of this essentially free money. To want to kill over the gold, someone would need a motive to have way more money than they're already going to get with a simple 25/25/25/25 split (or even 20/20/20/20/20 if they want to give some to Yasu for whatever reason).
• How do they plan to make immediate hay from the windfall that they couldn't make by working with other people? Everybody seems to have something to bring to the table here, even if it's just additional companies to launder money through.
• How are they going to get away with it? To know about the bomb, they have to actually be told about the bomb. While it isn't a tremendous stretch to think this might happen, what if it doesn't? There's no plausible way you're not going to get arrested and there's no way the gold won't be found. And assuming you do want to use the bomb, you have to think that's going to destroy the gold. So basically the logic would have to run "I'm willing to destroy billions in gold for whatever's on this card." A card which cannot be verified for its value while you're on Rokkenjima. It could be a piece of junk plastic. And someone's willing to kill over a dozen people and blow up valuable real estate and billions in illicit money. Anyone who did this would not be a criminal mastermind. They wouldn't even be doing it because they're not thinking clearly. They'd be doing it because they're literally an idiot.
• What about, y'know, familial love? Are they seriously just going to murder their relatives? All their relatives? Seriously?

Really the only plausible reason I can think for murdering over the gold is if for some reason you weren't going to get any, but then it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense that such a situation would develop. Even in the ep7 Tea Party everyone seems to realize really quickly that if they all split it they can cover up their various problems and just call it square. So they're not so greedy that they don't think of the problems their family members have. And as Battler calculates as early as ep1, it's enough money to pretty much set everybody on the island twice over for life.

Nobody seems to have indicated that they need more money than an equitable division could bring, or that they have so much need for large amounts of money for future projects (George mentions wanting to make it on his own but he probably doesn't mean "by murdering my family and stealing their money," and besides he could get some of the gold for his venture if he asked his parents easy enough). So on the surface everything seems pretty fair.

About the only other way to go about it is if you believe, as Ryukishi claims in the ep7 Tea Party, that gold just makes people greedy and stupid. If that's his explanation, I think that's a pretty short shrift to the parents after multiple episodes showing off the ways they could be as virtuous as they are sinful.

[Wanderer]

Well, someone did it. I tend to think that it was an escalation from all the adults' various aggressive personalities. It probably started with an accident, like in the episode 7 Tea Party. Then people got angry and scarred and started doing stupid and brutal things they normally wouldn't do... and things just got more and more out of control until even the kids and servants got involved.

I wonder, though, how the winchesters got involved in the first place. I think the idea of Yasu just giving them a bunch of loaded guns along with the gold is pretty ridiculous.

I do like AT's George theory, too.

[Renall]

Well, look at it this way: The servants probably don't care (it's not like it's their gold and they'll probably get bought off to shut their mouths about it, so I imagine Gohda's got no problem with it and the others are pretty much already invested in it). The adults don't seem to initially have any problem with splitting it. Yasu doesn't care (if she did, why would she let them find it?).

Who does that leave out of the loop? The kids, basically. Of the kids, would Maria care? Probably not. Would Battler, Jessica, or George? I don't know. Jessica probably not. Battler and George... maybe? But even then, what's to stop them from just asking for some of the money from their own parents?

And again, there's the problem of the gold blowing up. If you want all the money, what's the point of destroying most of it? If the goal is to preserve the gold the last thing you want to do is murder enough people that attention will be drawn to the big pile of illegal gold. Alternately, you'd want to kill everybody and dispose of their bodies somehow, hide the epitaph solution and route to the gold, and just ride it out until the heat's off you and you can go back and get it.

Why take the risks associated with such a spectacular act, if money was the motive?

[AuraTwilight]

However, of those kids, GEORGE has an additional motive.

Jessica? She's a hot chick. Even if she lost Kanon she could always bag another cute emo boy.

Battler? He's so overly nice that he'd probably be willing to share Yasu or something, or even go "No, I abandoned you for six years, I don't deserve you, go to one of the others."

Maria? She's nine, dude.

George? Well, Shannon is his first girlfriend, and there is no way a telephone pole like him is ever going to bag another bodacious bombastic babe. He'd kill to keep her.

And if he finds out she's actually a flatchested dickgirl who's been cheating on him? Yea, I can see him flipping the fuck out.

[J the Drafter]

I think that Jessica has been portrayed as insecure over her ability to attract a boyfriend.

[AuraTwilight]

She's also shown as consistently unable to kill anyone but someone who's already a murderer. She'd rather die than have to live with the guilt.

Also she has fucking asthma. She wouldn't be a very effective killer anyway.

[Cao Ni Ma]

George is fat, a man of his girth wouldn't be able to run around the mansion killing everyone in rapid succession.

Also in the fantasy scenes george span around like a top throwing kicks unimpeded by his fat and Jessica boxed like she didn't have any respiratory problems at all.

Anyways, neither of these would have a reason to allow the clock to strike midnight unless they didnt know about the explosives or if they suddenly had an incomprehensible plan like Kyrie did in EP7. In fact, given Will's response in the final answers, not even Yasutrice wanted the clock to hit 12. So, has there been a character that openly wished for this to happen?

[AuraTwilight]

George is fat, a man of his girth wouldn't be able to run around the mansion killing everyone in rapid succession.

He's not so fat that he can't do martial arts. He is large but deadly, like a horned rhino.

Also in the fantasy scenes george span around like a top throwing kicks unimpeded by his fat and Jessica boxed like she didn't have any respiratory problems at all.

George's magic doesn't modify his own body, unlike Miss Robot Jessica.

Anyways, neither of these would have a reason to allow the clock to strike midnight unless they didnt know about the explosives or if they suddenly had an incomprehensible plan like Kyrie did in EP7. In fact, given Will's response in the final answers, not even Yasutrice wanted the clock to hit 12. So, has there been a character that openly wished for this to happen?

You honestly can't think of a scenario where the clock hits 12 without anyone wanting it to?

[Cao Ni Ma]

Like they know its going to blow up and they dont want it to blow up and they try their hardest to stop if from blowing up? Some sort of drama about everyone trying to cut the right cable at the right time or the whole island blows up? I'd pay good money to read that Umineko episode.

I meant everyone other than Yasu, she would always have the "I know everyone will solve it before time runs out because I believe in th*BOOM*". Outside of that, could you give a reason why anyone else would let the clock run out if they knew the consequences of it?

[AuraTwilight]

Well, there's the 'destroying evidence for murders' thing, I guess. But I think the most logical conclusion is someone using the bomb to take the killer with them. Why would the killer draw suspicion and go around killing people and starting a panic when they can blow everyone up with no one being on to it?

[J the Drafter]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

She's also shown as consistently unable to kill anyone but someone who's already a murderer. She'd rather die than have to live with the guilt.

Also she has fucking asthma. She wouldn't be a very effective killer anyway.

Asthma won't stop her from shooting people.

[cronnoponno]

Implying Jessica could secure a gun to shoot said people.

If there was a table of guns, I highly doubt the adults would just be like ''Oh what's the harm if Maria were to go near one and think it's a magical staff?''

But now that I think of it, Kinzo must have an assload of guns, in EP 5 there was multiple Winchesters, and then there's a secret stash of them in the VIP room?

[AuraTwilight]

Asthma won't stop her from shooting people.

Sure it could. I'd like to see you aim good while having a severe coughing fit.

But now that I think of it, Kinzo must have an assload of guns, in EP 5 there was multiple Winchesters, and then there's a secret stash of them in the VIP room?

There's only the four. Beatrice moved the guns to the VIP room, they're not additional guns.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

He's not so fat that he can't do martial arts. He is large but deadly, like a horned rhino.

Right! Ever seen sumo wrestlers? It's time people realized George's fat isn't only a motive it's his biggest strength! In close combat his weight makes him an unmovable wall. And the extra girth around his "center" gives him perfect balance!

Ever wonder why Kyrie chose to kill Jessica in episode 7's tea party instead of George? I bet it went something like this:

Rudolf: So dear we going to kill George next?

Kyrie: You do it! I don't want to have to carry that guy!

Even Kyrie fears the monstrous weight of George...!