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

[Jan-Poo]

For all we know "Erika" doesn't exist technically and therefore every action she takes is merely a metaphor for actions taken by one or more other characters. You can't take her literal choices of words in conversations as actual events in the non-meta view of the game board.

Exactly my point. You acknowledge that what we see about Erika is not the truth, and yet you just claimed that since we have seen Erika reacting in that way in the bathroom then that has to be what she actually did.

Unless you want to believe that entire scene of her ranting about the water and being generally angry about having been made a fool of was just written in there to have no actual legitimacy or relevance?

Everything about Erika's behavior shown in the game it's either a blatant lie covering her real behavior, or that's actually what she does because she doesn't care about being consistent in the story.
Either way her apparent behavior is just not the truth.

So no, even if you see Erika acting that way there, it means nothing. Or rather it means nothing more than seeing Erika talking to Dlanor and making her usual metagaming.

You want to give an explanation that actually make sense? Then you'd better not pay attention to what Erika is shown saying or doing.

[chronotrig]

You still haven't addressed the other issue. You just need to open the bathroom door for a second to understand what's happening.
Any slightly intelligent person would understand the trick. Erika's priority was to find Battler, right? Then there was no point in wasting time trying to fix that prank.

Well, remember that Erika is the detective. We know it's her nature to be annoyed at puzzles. The fact that she made all of those ridiculous seals shows that she's a control freak who wants to know everything. She wasn't just inspecting the bathroom to see if Battler was there. She also wanted to find any clues she could about who had set up the prank, how, and what they might have done next.

[Moogleking]

Why is everyone overlooking the fact that if Battler wanted to hide, he would just leave the room?

There is no way for him to know the room is "sealed" by magical duct tape. Seeing Erika through the window is ridiculous. The curtains and shutters are generally closed on every window in the house.

The room is not closed. Battler has no reason not to leave. He would normally leave the room. The lock is broken. Nothing is keeping him there. If he wants his corpse to disappear, he would not hide in the closet.

The best explanation is that the door has been literally sealed, most likely by master key lock that "Erika" stole.

[Judoh]

Again She sealed the frame of the door with duct tape and it was never broken. That's the whole reason the logic error happened. Because that proves he didn't leave when as a GM he had planned to have his piece self do that. That's how both ends of the story don't match.

You keep saying he has every reason to leave that room, but that only works from a meta perspective. If he's faking his death he has no reason to forcefully leave the room and give that away.

I'll make it even clearer. If the reason Battler's not capable of hiding anywhere, but the closet is because he was never there in the first place then the logic error would have never happened. But the chain is set Erika repaired it, Erika reset it and Battler unset it and Kanon reset it. For all these reasons The chain was not broken at the time when Battler left. That's just a fact and you have to deal with it.

[Qaenyin]

Originally Posted by Judoh

You keep saying he has every reason to leave that room, but that only works from a meta perspective. If he's faking his death he has no reason to forcefully leave the room and give that away.

Honestly the only thing that even has a lack of sense is him hiding in the closet, and that can, again, be bypassed by assuming the fact that they want to make it look like the corpse disappeared in a closed room. He's assuming SOMEONE will come and help him get out, and set up the shower gimmick in order to give himself a chance to "disappear" legitimately in case someone wandered in beforehand who isn't one of his co-conspirators.

The only person whose behavior doesn't make sense from a non-meta-world perspective is Erika's, which doesn't matter because Erika doesn't exist anyways, so her behavior being reliant on the meta-world is irrelevant and everything makes sense if you suppose "What if it wasn't Erika that entered the room."

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Moogleking

Why is everyone overlooking the fact that if Battler wanted to hide, he would just leave the room?

There is no way for him to know the room is "sealed" by magical duct tape. Seeing Erika through the window is ridiculous. The curtains and shutters are generally closed on every window in the house.

The room is not closed. Battler has no reason not to leave. He would normally leave the room. The lock is broken. Nothing is keeping him there. If he wants his corpse to disappear, he would not hide in the closet.

The best explanation is that the door has been literally sealed, most likely by master key lock that "Erika" stole.

Well, who said that Erika sealed the windows from the outside? Seems to me that would be a long way to jog, and her purported reason for sealing the room was that she'd run out of time. Considering how long it would take to sever all those heads, even with the help of some heavy weight, this is probably one of Erika's claims that we can believe.

Also, we don't know when Erika repaired the chain lock, but it might have been when she first entered the room. So Battler might have noticed her doing that too.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

Also, we don't know when Erika repaired the chain lock, but it might have been when she first entered the room. So Battler might have noticed her doing that too.

[This occurs back in the very beginning, right after I broke the seals and entered this room.] At that time, I immediately closed the door, reset the chain, and sealed this room.

She pretty much has to repair the chain when she entered to reset it.

[Nihilartikel]

Originally Posted by Qaenyin

If it were me I'd have killed her from behind so she couldn't see who killed her while she was distracted with the bathroom, but Battler has this big pacifism policy so that wouldn't work

I actually expected Battler or Beato to play that card at some point when I first read this episode: "Since you are officially not the detective now, I guess you won't mind if I use you as a victim. Try winning the game without a piece to call your own, you haughty b*tch."

Of course, with all the meta-stuff going on in this episode, it wouldn't have stopped Erika at all, but it would have humiliated her quite a bit and it would have been awesome to see her struggling to figure out who killed her and when while Battler helpfully offers some bullshit mystery explanation: "Maybe they fed you some small bombs at dinner, who knows? Wouldn't put it past Gohda."

[Qaenyin]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

Well, who said that Erika sealed the windows from the outside? Seems to me that would be a long way to jog, and her purported reason for sealing the room was that she'd run out of time. Considering how long it would take to sever all those heads, even with the help of some heavy weight, this is probably one of Erika's claims that we can believe.

Also, we don't know when Erika repaired the chain lock, but it might have been when she first entered the room. So Battler might have noticed her doing that too.

The only way that makes sense in regards to Erika sealing the door is that she sealed the frame from the outside when they first discovered Battler's body, then when she came back to check the room for him after killing everyone, she broke the exterior seal, entered, then turned around, resealed the door by taping up the door chain, and then proceeded to search room+shower+closet.

Sealing the door by taping the chain at the very beginning leaves it subject to tampering(For example slowly extricating the chain from the tape and then reattaching it without damaging the tape). There wouldn't be enough time to do so if she'd tampered with it after entering the room, since Battler would be on a time limit due to her attention only being diverted by the shower for a short moment.

[Moogleking]

I keep saying he has every reason to leave the room from a logical perspective.
You keep saying he can't leave the room for meta reasons.
The only thing I take from the meta game is that Battler didn't leave the room.

[Jan-Poo]

You guys need to understand the difference between "sealed room" and "closed room". There are a few sublte but important differences.

A sealed room is a room from which it is impossible to exit without breaking a seal
A closed room is a room with all the possible exists shut and the methods of locking are only possible from inside.

Before Erika broke the seal, the guestroom was a sealed room. But after she broke the seal it never became a sealed room again. It became a closed room.

If it was a sealed room Kanon couldn't possibly enter, and Battler couldn't possibly exit without breaking some kind of seal.

This is also important because Erika's plan was not to keep Battler inside, it was to make him fall for a logic error. If she simply sealed the room, Battler would have no moves left and he'd have no choice but to tell her that the seal was broken or let Erika find Battler in the closet.

But by leaving that hole open for Battler to escape she managed to make him say the reds that ultimately cornered him into a logic error.

Of course this is only explainable from a metaworld perspective. Otherwise Erika had absolutely no reason to make the room a closed room instead of a sealed room.

[Renall]

Well, she'd have reasons, but they don't square with her apparent actions.

• If she's someone from the epitaph conspiracy trying to construct a closed room.
• If she's trying to keep someone outside the room from getting in.
• If she wants to avoid risk of interruption while killing Battler, if she's the culprit (though then why she got distracted is a question).

The thing is these aren't clearly what her actions as we see them were intended to do.

[Misuzu]

Originally Posted by Moogleking

I keep saying he has every reason to leave the room from a logical perspective.
You keep saying he can't leave the room for meta reasons.
The only thing I take from the meta game is that Battler didn't leave the room.

I don't think it's that hard to explain. Since there's obviously some kind of fake death plot going on, Battler wasn't supposed to exit the room for a certain period of time, so that they could be sure that everyone who wasn't in on the plot was no longer in the mansion. When Battler is about to leave, he hears someone in the hallway. He can't leave without risking them seeing him, and he knows that a note will have been left saying that his corpse has disappeared, so he can't let whoever it is see him in the room. He sets up the trap in the bathroom to distract them and hides with the plan of sneaking out while they're otherwise occupied. However, when he goes to leave while Erika is in the bathroom, he sees the chainlock is set, and he can't leave without giving up the fact that he was in the room when she entered it. To explain why he didn't just give up the plan, you could argue that he was being manipulated like Natsuhi was in game 5 or that he saw blood on Erika and realized that she'd done something to the others.

[UsagiTenpura]

Now saying that Erika's scenes aren't the exact truth is obvious, but deciding that we can discard every scene with her as fake is the same as saying "there is no detective in arc 6, so everything is fake".

I do not think this is how it goes.
If Erika said she sealed the windows from outside, I do not see any reason to believe she sealed them from the inside, even if it makes no sense.

You would also have to think that sealing windows from inside have the ridiculous flaw that the people inside actually sees it. That would then bring the point of why anyone let Erika duct-tape the windows. I feel much more confident into believing that Erika's actions are weird then assuming that everyone else's reactions is weird.

The game tells us clearly that she put on her swimsuit to put the seals on windows outside. Arbitarily deciding which scenes contains some truth and which have no truth at all about it is simply ignoring scenes that you don't like. It's really anti-thematic to the recent attemps to consider every scenes of every game to be a hint toward something.

So a last thing. In arc 5 Erika put on her swimsuit, and was the detective, and put seals on windows.

This is evidence that these are actions possible to her.

In arc 6 she claims to have put on her swimsuit, and put seals on windows.

Because of the evidence from arc 5, her claim is not only believable, but there is no evidence denying it.

Putting on tapes on a window from outside, no matter how long it takes, is nothing next to the time it takes to sever off five heads.


@ Moogleking
Yes, you keep saying he has every reason to leave.
However that simply isn't true. It's just your conjecture.

[Jan-Poo]

Did Erika actually say she sealed any window from the outside in this episode?
Certainly if she sealed Battler's window from inside at least you can explain how come Battler knows about the seals.

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

The game tells us clearly that she put on her swimsuit to put the seals on windows outside. Arbitarily deciding which scenes contains some truth and which have no truth at all about it is simply ignoring scenes that you don't like. It's really anti-thematic to the recent attemps to consider every scenes of every game to be a hint toward something.

The game might say that, but it's just Battler's imagination at that point. Erika never says that she sealed the windows from the outside in EP5.

[UsagiTenpura]

Erika's reason to kill
She killed everyone to ... find tape on one of them...

[UsagiTenpura]

Strictly speaking Chronotrig is right.
She didn't say so, but why would they mention the weather, and especially why would she have put on her swimsuit, to put seals inside?
Swimsuit

These theories make a lot less sense then accepting what we're being told as true.

[Pika_power]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Eh? That doesn't work at all. The problem with the window is that it's sealed not that it's locked.

Plus only Battler left the room.


@Pika_Power the main problem with your explanation lies on the "heart attack" part. Realistically speaking is simply ridiculous. Heart attacks do not happen to 16 years old boys unless they have a congenital disease. But such a thing was never mentioned, not even hinted.

Yeah, the heart attack was mostly just a placeholder for Disappearance Method X. The purpose of the post was to find a gameboard solution to the occurrences at face value, without name-evasion theories.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Then she was so angry she completely forgot why she was there, and decided to "relieve" her frustration by fixing the shower and getting some burns in the process.

Is that what I am supposed to believe in?

Yes, because you have no reason not to. She's human, not a robot. She's decapitated five people because they dared to play dead. What about the idea that she's angry and acts impulsively is so difficult to understand?

Alternatively, she hopes to let Battler leave the room by breaking the chain, so she can then blame all the murders on him. Remember, she has just killed five people. She needs a scapegoat, or else she'll be torn apart by everyone else. To this end, she gives him time to escape.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

We are talking about Erika here. Her apparent behavior isn't something you can consider realistic.

She makes metagaming all the time. She calls for Bernkastel's name in several scenes, and you can see her talking to Dlanor in the gameboard the whole time.

I can't see why I should suddenly trust that in that instance what Erika did and said was a factual truth.

She does not call Bernkastel's name in this Episode. As for the talking to Dlanor, she is allowed to falsify her PoV. If she says she talked to Dlanor, it's fine. However just because she's allowed to falsify her view doesn't mean she always is. Even if she is, I've provided an explanation for why she'd hang out in the bathroom for a while.

She doesn't fully seal the door again because sealing it with the chain is faster.


I've got no doubt that the actions are being manipulated by Meta-Erika. However they can still make sense on the gameboard. While you can make an argument for why she'd fully seal the room, it's also possible to pose a reason to just seal the chain. So Meta-Erika has both options open to her, as both are valid. She then chooses the one best for trapping Battler.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

You want to give an explanation that actually make sense? Then you'd better not pay attention to what Erika is shown saying or doing.

No that simply won't explain anything. Not believing anything about Erika doesn't explain anything, it just removes the question that anything has to be explained.