[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru - Ep. 6 Dawn of the golden witch

[Rui Brennan]

I realized a "strange" detail in episode 4, and actually it is also shown in the anime. As you are discussing some "episode 4"-related, things here, I will post it here (sorry! and also sorry if it is written elsewhere)

Spoiler for key?:

In Episode 4, when the gardening shed's shutter is closed, the key is given to Gohda by George.
However... is that key *really* the key of the shed?
In the game it is written that:
"The shutter was brought down and locked. Then George turned to the small window on the side of the storehouse"
"[...] Gohda-san, here, The key to the shutter"
"...Certainly, I'll take care of it. Gohda took the key, and after showing it to Kumasawa, placed it on its own pocket"
"There is only one key to the gardening shed's shutter. That was being held by those who were locked up inside it".
However, there is no red text to back up that claim. If we think on those terms, then the closed room of the storehouse can be defeated

[Tyabann]

I've said before, but locks of that type typically have two keys, a main and a spare.

[LyricalAura]

I'd be more concerned with why Gohda went out of his way to theatrically display the key to Kumasawa, actually.

[Marion]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

I'd be more concerned with why Gohda went out of his way to theatrically display the key to Kumasawa, actually.

Hm...this is just speculation, but Kumasawa probably knows more about the keys than Gohda does. Maybe he showed it to her as a way of asking "is this really the shed key?" and if she said something against it then he could call George out on it.

[luckyssol]

Originally Posted by Rui Brennan

I realized a "strange" detail in episode 4, and actually it is also shown in the anime. As you are discussing some "episode 4"-related, things here, I will post it here (sorry! and also sorry if it is written elsewhere)

Spoiler for key?:

In Episode 4, when the gardening shed's shutter is closed, the key is given to Gohda by George.
However... is that key *really* the key of the shed?
In the game it is written that:
"The shutter was brought down and locked. Then George turned to the small window on the side of the storehouse"
"[...] Gohda-san, here, The key to the shutter"
"...Certainly, I'll take care of it. Gohda took the key, and after showing it to Kumasawa, placed it on its own pocket"
"There is only one key to the gardening shed's shutter. That was being held by those who were locked up inside it".
However, there is no red text to back up that claim. If we think on those terms, then the closed room of the storehouse can be defeated

I think the trick to the shed mystery in episode 4 is the lock. Some gardening sheds have a padlock on them and some don't.

The way Battler was able to break the lock with a tool and open the shed leads me to believe that it was a padlock on the shed. This makes the shed mystery easy to solve since it can be locked from the outside without a key.

I hit the shutter with the hatchet, breaking into it, stuck the wire ctter into the crack, and scissored it around, opening up a hole.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Raiza Sunozaki

Yeah, the death order in Episode 4 is the most confusing part of it. Because Battler doesn't see any of the deaths until the second day (excluding George) we don't know when on the first day they died. As well, there's that scene where Beato is talking and celebrating with Goldsmith. I think it's either the culprit talking to themself, or a conversation between culprits, so if it's taking place at the time it's shown, then at least two people are still alive at that time. One of them leaves to oversee Maria's test, and the other meets with Battler. Their conversation leaves her in a really foul mood, and she kills the other culprit, if there was one.

I'm pretty sure George was discovered on the second day, because he discovered him after the phone call and by then Oct 5th starts. he discovered Gohda and Kumasawa in the shed and then he saw George at the arbor. I may have to reread it to make sure, but that was how I remembered it.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Judoh

I'm pretty sure George was discovered on the second day, because he discovered him after the phone call and by then Oct 5th starts. he discovered Gohda and Kumasawa in the shed and then he saw George at the arbor. I may have to reread it to make sure, but that was how I remembered it.

It's on the 4th. Battler gets the call, goes toward the mansion, finds George, peeks in on Gohda and Kumasawa, then meets Beatrice.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Judoh

I'm pretty sure George was discovered on the second day, because he discovered him after the phone call and by then Oct 5th starts. he discovered Gohda and Kumasawa in the shed and then he saw George at the arbor. I may have to reread it to make sure, but that was how I remembered it.

Since I've been working on EP4 lately, I put together a timeline that might be useful.

Spoiler for Timeline, long:

10:20pm (Oct. 4)
Kinzo shows up at family conference; everyone except cousins is present
Natsuhi, Eva, Hideyoshi, Rudolf, Rosa, and Genji killed by Siestas (1st twilight)
Kyrie's group transported to dungeon by Gaap

10:31pm
Gohda and Kumasawa arrive at guesthouse
Kyrie's group calls the guesthouse; everyone exchanges info
Kinzo, Virgilia, Gaap, and Ronove visit Kyrie's group to explain tests

11:00pm
Krauss calls guesthouse
Gohda and Kumasawa locked in shed

11:10pm
Krauss calls about Jessica's test; Jessica leaves
Shannon calls about George's test; George leaves
Kyrie talks to Battler on phone
Jessica meets Ronove in her room (Genji?)
George meets Gaap at the arbor (Nanjo? Shannon?)
Jessica and George kill each other (2nd twilight)
Jessica calls to report George's and her own deaths; loud noise at end of call
Kyrie's group escapes the dungeon, chased by Virgilia and Siestas
Kanon shot, falls in well (4th twilight)
Shannon and Nanjo shot outside well (5th, 6th twilight)
Krauss shot inside back door (7th twilight)
Kyrie calls to report her group's deaths
Kyrie shot in 1F guestroom (8th twilight)

11:47pm
Beato and unknown others call about Battler's and Maria's tests; Maria leaves guesthouse
Kinzo leaves his study for Maria's test
Battler talks to Beato on phone; leaves for his test
Battler sees Gohda and Kumasawa hanged in shed (full weight on nooses)
Battler confirms George shot to death in arbor

12:00am (Oct. 5)
Battler's test; Battler sees Suit Beato on the 2nd floor balcony; front door is locked
Suit Beato switches with Dress Beato
Kinzo returns to the study from Maria's test; burned to death by Dress Beato
Gaap turned to glass; Ronove disposes of Kinzo's body
Battler goes to chapel, finds master key
Battler enters mansion, confirms 1st twilight victims shot and Maria poisoned
Battler runs around searching for the culprit all night, but doesn't find anyone

6:00am
Battler searches the grounds and confirms the rest of the deaths
- 1st twilight and Maria in dining hall
- Jessica shot in her room, locked
- Kyrie shot and staked in 1F guestroom, locked
- Krauss shot and staked at back door
- Shannon and Nanjo shot next to well with stakes nearby
- a six-toed corpse in the incinerator (Kinzo? Kanon?)
- Kumasawa and Gohda hanged and shot in the garden shed, locked
Battler tries to break open the well but fails

12:00am (Oct. 6)
Everyone else is dead; Battler killed

EDIT: Does anybody remember if Dress Beato appeared on the board at all before Battler failed his test?

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Renall

It's on the 4th. Battler gets the call, goes toward the mansion, finds George, peeks in on Gohda and Kumasawa, then meets Beatrice.

yeah I definitely need to reread it then...

[Koi]

Weren't Jessi and George found in different place?
Unless someone moved Jessi's body, they couldn't kill each other. If someone did anyway, Battler would find trail of blood, right? Her head was smashed.
@LyricalAura : nope... except for meta scenes... I don't think Battler, or anyone ever saw DressBeato. The one that tested Battler was PieceBeato, and she wore suit. Battler said he didn't remember, PieceBeato got disappointed, and she switch over with DressBeato. I think...

[Raiza Sunozaki]

Koi, you're forgetting it was raining. Any blood spilt would've washed away in the rain, and it's easy to prepare a tarp or a way to transport the corpse through the mansion that would avoid spilling blood.

On the order of deaths, considering it's safe to assume the constant that the original six "victims" of the first twilight initially don't die, then isn't it likely that everyone in the mansion, including them, were drugged while waiting for Kinzo to appear, and imprisoned with the other people? Then the culprit either convinced Kumasawa and Gohda to lie or forced them too, making Battler believe they were dead from the beginning. Then Battler gets agitated faster than they expected, and Beato is forced to stall for time while they prepare the corpses scattered throughout the mansion and it's grounds, so she makes him go on a wild goose chase to the chapel and back.

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

EDIT: Does anybody remember if Dress Beato appeared on the board at all before Battler failed his test?

As far as I can remember: not at all before this point. It was only board Beato, and Dress Beato took her place when the former got utterly upset after Battler's failed test.

[Raiza Sunozaki]

I think Dress Beato hijacks her piece self like Battler does in Episode 6. Because she was only a piece, she probably was getting very emotional over Battler forgetting his sin, and was coming close to giving a hint to him that would cause some problem, be it with Lambda's rules or a logic error (I'm just throwing possible examples). I found Dress Beato's calm composure, yet also accusing Battler, in the meta-world strange. After the large fuss Suit Beato made over Battler's sin, I expected her to be a little angrier. So the sudden cold-shift felt put-on to me.

[kingsky123]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

I've been musing on the rules of the game lately, and I had an idea about what Meta-Beatrice's motivation might have been in getting Battler to play this game with her. I don't really have much supporting evidence for it yet, but I'd like to ramble about it a bit and hear what people think.

Beato wanted Battler to reach the truth, but she drew out this game as long as possible, tried to deceive him, and made both him and herself suffer in the process. She wanted the culprit exposed, but for some reason she wanted Battler to drag himself to that truth in spite of her efforts to hide it. If she cares about the family so much that she's willing to take the blame for all of their sins, why did she try to protect the culprit who murdered all of them? And once Battler learned the truth, why did he join her in trying to hide that culprit's identity and forgive her for all of her own sins? Or to put it another way, is there a particular person who Beato and Battler would behave this way for, if they were the culprit?

My idea is: no, there is no such person. The clues Beato provided in the first four games do not single out a specific culprit, but rather allow two or more possible theories, each with a different culprit. And that's exactly the point.

According to the rules, many different possible solutions can exist as long as they don't violate the red truth constraints. For example, there may be an ultimate solution in which Shannon is the culprit and Kanon is innocent, and another solution in which Kanon is the culprit and Shannon is innocent. Let's say these are the only two solutions permitted by the red. In that case, who is truly guilty? By Battler's logic, until the cat box is opened and someone's guilt is proven, they're both innocent. But in that situation, who would dare swing the red sword and condemn someone they love as a murderer?

We already have plenty of quantum physics in our mystery, what with the many-worlds interpretation and Schrodinger's cat box, so let's throw in another term. Entanglement, a state where two particles are in related but unknown states. Say, one has spin up and one has spin down, but you don't know which is which until you open the cat box. Up or down, innocent or guilty. Beato has the power to decide which way it goes, but she loves everyone too much to make the decision herself, so she tried to get Battler to do it for her. She wanted him, using the blue truth, to force her to pick a culprit.

But in the end, Battler reached the same conclusion that she did. He understood why she hid the truth, and he could hardly condemn her for refusing to damn a loved one; he didn't want to do it either. That's why he forgave her, and switched to her side for the sixth game. But Virgilia understood that as long as they didn't choose a murderer, there would be no hope of catching that murderer, and no hope of releasing the other sixteen people from the island. They would remain in purgatory forever. It's like Maria's fairy tale about witches from EP4: one must be damned so that everyone else can be saved.

lol then its gonna be battler thats gonna be the bad guy in the end

[Smeckledorf]

Originally Posted by Raiza Sunozaki

I think Dress Beato hijacks her piece self like Battler does in Episode 6. Because she was only a piece, she probably was getting very emotional over Battler forgetting his sin, and was coming close to giving a hint to him that would cause some problem, be it with Lambda's rules or a logic error (I'm just throwing possible examples). I found Dress Beato's calm composure, yet also accusing Battler, in the meta-world strange. After the large fuss Suit Beato made over Battler's sin, I expected her to be a little angrier. So the sudden cold-shift felt put-on to me.

Seeing as Beatrice likes making quips about keeping promises and calls Battler a liar, I would say his sin IS that he has forgotten. Whoever piece-Beatrice actually is tried to jog his memory, but no dice.

[Raiza Sunozaki]

Originally Posted by kingsky123

lol then its gonna be battler thats gonna be the bad guy in the end

What Lyrical is saying is that there is no bad guy. At the end, each scenario has no common conclusion, that because of the various circumstances of the family and servants, it's a different person each time. However, we know there are some people who are never the culprit, because of the red. Natushi, Battler, Nanjo, and because of logic, Eva and Maria.
I can't completely agree with that though, Lyrical. I came to the conclusion that Beato challenged Battler to her game so that he could find the single mastermind culprit, and gain the determination to save the family, and knowing Ryuukishi, the culprit as well. I believe that while there may be a different cast of culprits for each episode, there is a single mastermind who doesn't change for all episodes.
But you're right, for some reason she couldn't just appear infront of him and tell him "X is the culprit." She had to drag him through hell and back with her game so that he could find the out for himself. My solution for this involves my belief that Beato is Shannon, and that George is the mastermind. Even though Shannon has loved Battler for several years, it's only natural that she would begin to accept George's flirting, if he was persistent, and it seemed like Battler was never to return. So she loves both Battler, the hero who will save the family, and George, the culprit who will kill them all. Even though she knows it's right, she can't bring herself to pass judgement on George. But she's not sure if Battler is the person she fell in love with six years ago, so she tests him with her game. Episode 4's scene with Beato retiring was her giving up, no longer confident that Battler had the capabilities to save the family from the murders.
And yes, the rules of the game allows for multiple truths to co-exist. Like how Erika solved Episode 5 completely with her "Natsuhi is the culprit" story. We know now, because of information revealed at a later time that she was incorrect, but at the time she made her theory, it worked enough to kill the Illusion of the Witch.
So I say this: With certain levels of knowledge, multiple truths are allowed to exist. But with all the knowledge of the games available, there is only one truth that can exist.
I really like your electron spin analogy though.

@Smeckledorf:
I'm thinking along the same lines. Because of his anger towards Rudolf he left the family, and in his hot-headedness, completely forgot his promise towards Beato(At that time, completely Shannon though). I can't quite connect the dots to why this causes people to die yet though.

[MeoTwister5]

Nothing to really contribute here. Was planning to finish Ep6 after classes and a well-needed vacation and finish posting my notes here but dammit everything after the first logic error is too complex for my meager Japanese.

Looks like I'll be waiting for the Ep6 translation to finish. Hopefully Ep7 won't be that hard to read and I can play it when it comes out.

[rogerpepitone]

Originally Posted by Ssol

I think the trick to the shed mystery in episode 4 is the lock. Some gardening sheds have a padlock on them and some don't.

The way Battler was able to break the lock with a tool and open the shed leads me to believe that it was a padlock on the shed. This makes the shed mystery easy to solve since it can be locked from the outside without a key.

The shed's lock is described in Episode 1. The shed has a lock of its own, and there's a place to attach a separate padlock.

As for Battler getting into the shed in Episode 4, I took it as:
- He hit the door with the axe a few times to make a hole in the door big enough for the wire cutters.
- He then used the wire cutters to make a hole in the door big enough to walk through.

My question about the shed in Episode 4 is: When / why did Gohda / Kumasawa get the key in the first place? In Episode 1, Kanon is the last person to use the shed; Gohda gets excused from non-cooking duties during a conference; Kumasawa probably isn't strong enough to do the lifting required and wouldn't normally use the key; there's no reason for either of them to have been carrying the key before the first twilight. They're described as running straight from the first twilight to the guesthouse; they wouldn't have picked up the key along the way. There's no mention of going into the mansion to pick up the key, and there's no mention of the key already left outside the shed. To me, that suggests that the whole first twilight was fake; Gohda and Kumasawa were in on it.

[Jan-Poo]

good point. They really had no reason to have the key with them, and there's absolutely no mention on how they managed to get it in the first place.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

The shed's lock is described in Episode 1. The shed has a lock of its own, and there's a place to attach a separate padlock.

As for Battler getting into the shed in Episode 4, I took it as:
- He hit the door with the axe a few times to make a hole in the door big enough for the wire cutters.
- He then used the wire cutters to make a hole in the door big enough to walk through.

My question about the shed in Episode 4 is: When / why did Gohda / Kumasawa get the key in the first place? In Episode 1, Kanon is the last person to use the shed; Gohda gets excused from non-cooking duties during a conference; Kumasawa probably isn't strong enough to do the lifting required and wouldn't normally use the key; there's no reason for either of them to have been carrying the key before the first twilight. They're described as running straight from the first twilight to the guesthouse; they wouldn't have picked up the key along the way. There's no mention of going into the mansion to pick up the key, and there's no mention of the key already left outside the shed. To me, that suggests that the whole first twilight was fake; Gohda and Kumasawa were in on it.

They found a new lock in the garden shed, and threw the key to Gohda. Just like what was done in EP1. I suppose