[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Ssol

Do you know which chapter Rosa said the bottle of child-use sedatives was empty?

I'm not sure of the chapter name, but it was immediately after the succession ceremony, when Maria started throwing that weird tantrum about her rose.

Honestly, what kid is able to suddenly shut off tantrums like that? There's so much abnormal behavior from Maria that I'm starting to get paranoid about what her witch personality might be up to.

[Marion]

Originally Posted by Kaiba

There's nothing indicating Kyrie cares anything towards Maria, there's nothing indicating that Kyrie and Rosa have cooperated any more closely with each other than say, Hideyoshi and Rudolf, and I don't believe for a second that either Rosa or Kyrie (and especially Kyrie) could know where the gold is and keep it secret while passing on that vast wealth and the glory of the Ushiromiya family. I'm sorry, all I see above is "this may have happened, this possibly could have happened", and that's just not good enough.

Here's something to think about. According to the red no more than 17 people exist at the start of each game. When Suit-Beato is introduced in EP 2 no one has died yet - this means Suit Beato at that point either

1) Is a lie fabricated by someone.
2) Someone in disguise.

Considering the chapel key letter it might be 2, but Maria could have gotten that letter at any time - there's no red saying when she exactly she received it.

The only people to have witnessed Suit-Beato are:

Rosa, Maria, Kyrie, Genji, Shannon and Kanon

Now Maria is a gullible kid and would believe anybody in a convincing outfit could be Beato. But Rosa and Kyrie both claimed to have seen the woman, even though technically they couldn't have. Thinking about it the one who mentioned the bad weather to Rosa was Kyrie, which prompted Rosa to leave and 'meet' Suit Beato.

If Suit Beato is a fabricated lie then something must be up.

[Neofio3]

Another observation, how likely would it be that the game structure is some sort of clue? In the character profiles page, there is generally a page for real people, the furniture, people from 1998, etc... Ryukushiki quite obviously planned things ahead of time, and that extends to the game structure.



From the above, we see the real people in the island, as of episode 4. We see relationship lines extending from characters. The family tree is linked in red, while the servants chain according to rank, with Genji on top, is linked in Blue. Nanjo is unaffiliated, so he has no links.

From episode 5, we know that Erika occupies the leftmost empty space, as the second to the last living person in the island. She is also unaffiliated, like Nanjo. That leaves only one empty space in which an actual, real person can enter the gameboard (between Rosa and Maria, and right under Kyrie, logically Maria's father, but it could be someone else), making up 20 people in all. It also must be noted that this new person *cannot* be Ange, given the line crosses with Rosa, and that circumstances before the game are static, which means its impossible for her to come.

In any case, given this, we know no other real people on the Rokkenjima gameboard can exist other than, at the maximum, 20 people. If a real Suit-Beato exists, she would occupy the only remaining space available. If somebody else occupies the position as a chess piece, then Suit-Beato does not exist, and somebody already in the gameboard is masquerading as Beatrice.

Obviously, there needs to be something to go against no more than 17 people exists in the island, but that has happened with Erika anyway, and can be explained via the following:

- Person X was never in the island, or left before the red was in effect.
- Person X was already dead the entire time, ala Kinzo
- A person is both X and Y at the same time (specifically, Kanon = Shannon, counting as one person)

Going from the above, it would also follow that no more human servants or furniture are going to be introduced to the gameboard. The only servants will be Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda and Kumasawa (given that the only human character left is a member of the Ushiromiya family).

Originally Posted by Marion

The only people to have witnessed Suit-Beato are:

Rosa, Maria, Kyrie, Genji, Shannon and Kanon.

Also Battler, which to me is exponentially greater evidence than the 6 above (what Battler himself sees counts much more than what any other character does). Which is why I think Battler seeing Beatrice out the window in episode 4, and the circumstances Jessica's body is found, not to mention the fact that Jessica looks amazingly like Suit-Beato (clothes and all), points her being the culprit (or at least the Beatrice Battler sees in Ep4) a great deal.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Kaiba

I'll admit that I don't like Rosa as a culprit as she's just way too obvious in Episode 2, but just what evidence is there that 1. those two have collobrated on anything besides extorting Krauss and 2. that Kyrie gives a damn about Maria? (as I know you've stated earlier)
There's nothing indicating Kyrie cares anything towards Maria, there's nothing indicating that Kyrie and Rosa have cooperated any more closely with each other than say, Hideyoshi and Rudolf, and I don't believe for a second that either Rosa or Kyrie (and especially Kyrie) could know where the gold is and keep it secret while passing on that vast wealth and the glory of the Ushiromiya family. I'm sorry, all I see above is "this may have happened, this possibly could have happened", and that's just not good enough.

Let me clarify something: the notion Kyrie caring for Maria FOLLOWS Beatrice caring for Maria, as it was shown multiple times in EP4 that Beatrice had been contacting with Maria. So if Kyrie was Beatrice, then she must be caring for Maria. If Shannon was Beatrice, then she must care for Maria. That's the idea.

For proof that Kyrie and Rosa cooperated, it was also FOLLOWING the notion that Beatrice was cooperating with Rosa, as Marion has mentioned above, both of them seeing suit-Beatrice were strange, my idea was that who Maria saw was in fact Kyrie, then Kyrie claimed that she "saw" her while in fact she was the imposer. In your Shannon=Beatrice theory, then it was Shannon imposing as Beatrice and Kyrie saw Shannon. (The only problem was that other servants would not know Shannon was imposing? Since Shannon has gone missing if she was imposing.) Other clue that Rosa was cooperating was that the cause of Maria stationing in the garden alone was that Rosa told her to stay there forever and scolded other cousins away. It was an recurring scene that made it probably a plot. With Rosa partaking in it, all will go smoothly as planned. Without her partaking, the delivery of the letter may not go as smoothly. If Shannon was Beatrice, then she was likely to be coorperating with Rosa as well.

The focal point was why I thought Kyrie was Beatrice. And there were clues pointing towards it: the writer of letters-in-the-bottle, bank card deliver, Maria's master were all the same person. And the bank password was written on the door in EP3. Who killed George in EP3 would be most likely the one who wrote the password. And who wrote the password were most likely Beatrice. Then who was the most likely person to kill George then? I suppose it was Kyrie. (At least Shannon was dead long time ago). Kyrie also had a very complex relationship with Battler. Not as shallow as Shannon was in love with Battler before she chose George (Love triangle really did not intrigue me, another reason I don't believe Shannon as mastermind. The main reason is she was unsophisticated and inexperienced). Another clue is that Beatrice knew beforehand that Ange would never arrive at Rokkenjima was suspicious enough.

Yes, I trust the VN's (aka. Battler's) portrait of characters. So Jessica was truly hot-headed, Gohda was excellent in handling food but not lies, Shannon being innocent, socially inexperienced (how could you expect a girl working on an island for 10 years from 6 to know the real world?), etc.


I am interested to know why you can't believe Kyrie or Rosa knew where the gold lies but can believe Shannon did.



About the 10t gold , does Rosa or Kyrie really look that greedy to you? Eva was caring about the title of the head of Ushiromiya family much, but Rosa was not. She was portrayed as suggesting to divide the gold among siblings even though she and Eva could divide them just between them in EP3. Rosa wanted the family to be harmonized, I think it was confirmed. And in EP2, someone must have recovered the gold and present them to the siblings, but it seemed like the siblings treated it as Rosa wanting to take all the glory and gold and she killed them and Genji started making everything looking like it was witches' doing.

[Geekodot]

Originally Posted by Neofio3

- Person X was never in the island, or left before the red was in effect.
- Person X was already dead the entire time, ala Kinzo
- A person is both X and Y at the same time (specifically, Kanon = Shannon, counting as one person)

The dead does not count as still existing because:
Before now, I have proclaimed that no more than 18 humans exist on this island.
I will lower that by one for Kinzo!!
No more than 17 humans exist on this island!!
This was said while Kinzo's body was still on the island. Therefore, dead bodies does not count as "people".

And therefore

-Person X entered the island after the first twilight when only 11 people existed on the island.
is also possible.

[Ithekro]

One thing about Kyrie. She's the one with the youngest child (Ange) so she might be the most likely to notice things related to Maria, who was the next youngest and thus the one Ange was most likely to be playing when on the island the previous years.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

And therefore

-Person X entered the island after the first twilight when only 11 people existed on the island.
is also possible.

Hey, there is a troop sneaking up to the island !! From a submarine!!

I have thought about it in EP3 when Beatrice declared that there was no more than 18 people on the island. But discard it because the story would lose much meaning and tension so I don't think Ryukishi07 used this trick.

[Neofio3]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

One thing about Kyrie. She's the one with the youngest child (Ange) so she might be the most likely to notice things related to Maria, who was the next youngest and thus the one Ange was most likely to be playing when on the island the previous years.

Kyrie just does not seem the type to actually care about somebody else' child (or anybody else in particular). She doesn't even seem to care about Battler much (she does love him, but I'm willing to bet its the same sort of grudging, obligatory love Rosa has towards Maria), nor does she care about her own sister, or the circumstances of Asumu (whom she paints in a pretty black-and-white light).

Basically, while Kyrie does have motive, and is plenty smart enough to kill everyone and be Beatrice, the reason being Maria, or all people, seems pretty unlikely. She just seems too calculating and self-interested for that motive.

[Geekodot]

Originally Posted by ijriims

Hey, there is a troop sneaking up to the island !! From a submarine!!

Why is it so strange for someone to enter the island, sure it was a storm, but it is still a possibilty that you can get there with a normal boat.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

And therefore

-Person X entered the island after the first twilight when only 11 people existed on the island.
is also possible.

I've always considered Unknown Person X to be a stupid theory, no offense.

It would remove a lot of what I feel is important to the story, that is, that Battler NEEDS to suspect one of the family/servants. He NEEDS to lose his biases and see things for the way they really are.

Unknown Person X is just an escape from the truth that at least one of the people Battler loves is committing murder.

Originally Posted by Geekodot

Why is it so strange for someone to enter the island, sure it was a storm, but it is still a possibilty that you can get there with a normal boat.

Very possible, yes. Likely? No.

[Neofio3]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

It would remove a lot of what I feel is important to the story, that is, that Battler NEEDS to suspect one of the family/servants. He NEEDS to lose his biases and see things for the way they really are.

He's been suspecting the servants and his family since episode 3 though.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Neofio3

He's been suspecting the servants and his family since episode 3 though.

He'd still much rather suspect Unknown Person X, as we see early in Ep4.

Again, he's just running away. And much like Shinji Ikari before him, he can't run away.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Neofio3

Basically, while Kyrie does have motive, and is plenty smart enough to kill everyone and be Beatrice, the reason being Maria, or all people, seems pretty unlikely. She just seems too calculating and self-interested for that motive.

Was Kyrie such a calculating, rational, self-interested person to the bone?

She had baby with Rudolf before they were engaged. She waited 18 years for marrying to Rudolf. She married to Rudolf despite family's opposition (and ran away from her supposedly family head post).

She did crazy things, at times. (just like Takano in Higurashi, she was cold usually, but once she talked about Oyashiro, she was carried away. The same person could display two very contrastive personality at the same time. But generally speaking it was to "whiten" the person when he or she was first cold and rational at the first sight, while "darkening" the character when he or she was warm and friendly at first.)

In real life, I have seen quite a few this kind of person. They all have rich personalities.

[Geekodot]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

I've always considered Unknown Person X to be a stupid theory, no offense.

It would remove a lot of what I feel is important to the story, that is, that Battler NEEDS to suspect one of the family/servants. He NEEDS to lose his biases and see things for the way they really are.

Unknown Person X is just an escape from the truth that at least one of the people Battler loves is committing murder.



Very possible, yes. Likely? No.

To me, it makes more sense with an unknown person X than everyone killing each other. Sure there is a murder plot on the island, but without the unknown person X, the later murders gets silly... Like someone faking their death just to kill Nanjo and then die themselves in the third arc... or for example Jessica to cosplay Beato in front of Battler and then blow her brains out in ep 4...

[Neofio3]

Originally Posted by ijriims

Was Kyrie such a calculating, rational, self-interested person to the bone?

She had baby with Rudolf before they were engaged. She waited 18 years for marrying to Rudolf. She married to Rudolf despite family's opposition (and ran away from her supposedly family head post).

She did crazy things, at times.

Correction, she waited 11 years to be married to Rudolf. The entirety of which was spent being close to him and being his right hand despite the fact that for all extents she should hate him for betraying her. Staying real close. Then opportunistically jumping in the moment his wife died.

She abandoned her family to "live it up" with the Ushiromiyas, a family which self-admittedly was in the decline, then left her younger sister with the bill to be married to a man she didn't love. Basically, Kyrie jumped ship on her entire family for her own happiness.

If there are defining traits about Kyrie, its that she's smart, and that she does things for her.

So yes, she is pretty cold and self-interested. Which does not necessarily mean she's evil (or she is, if she's the culprit), but that she's not predisposed towards caring for anyone who does not benefit her own interests. Which means *if* she's the culprit, caring for a victim like Maria would be way down the list.

[MeoTwister5]

And if Kyrie actually cared about anyone, it'd have to be Rudolf and/or Battler. Then again, Rudolf pretty much always dies at some point, and only Battler ever survives to the end and is eventually "lost" at some point.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

To me, it makes more sense with an unknown person X than everyone killing each other. Sure there is a murder plot on the island, but without the unknown person X, the later murders gets silly... Like someone faking their death just to kill Nanjo and then die themselves in the third arc... or for example Jessica to cosplay Beato in front of Battler and then blow her brains out in ep 4...

Then the mystery is pointless.

It was just some lunatic who jumped off the train in the middle of the night after all.

Accepting Unknown Person X is exactly like accepting magic. It's an easy way out of this devilish puzzle. It's cutting the Gordian Knot, which is of course missing the whole point, thank you, lateral thinking.

There are no more than 17 people on Rokkenjima.

How is it so hard to accept that for once, this red means exactly what it seems to mean?

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

To me, it makes more sense with an unknown person X than everyone killing each other. Sure there is a murder plot on the island, but without the unknown person X, the later murders gets silly... Like someone faking their death just to kill Nanjo and then die themselves in the third arc... or for example Jessica to cosplay Beato in front of Battler and then blow her brains out in ep 4...

Without love, one cannot see the (Ryukishi07 's) truth. It was a novel, and an artwork. Beatrice did care about the format very much, as you should already know.

Now I think about it, if Kyrie was indeed Battler's mother, then she must not know about it from EP1-4 (EP5, I don't know, I haven't read it yet.). So the sin of Battler she was talking about was indeed nothing related to Battler not realizing it. She saw Battler leaving of the family as one cause of the current Ushiromiya family's disharmony and struggle (and Maria's suffering). She questioned Battler about it since she did paid close attention to Battler (for she believed him to be Asumu's son), but again Battler had no realization of it. Her initial plan was to give Ushiromiya family a final challenge, to see if they could unite against Beatrice, so she was deeply disappointed for her plan to unite the family fail completely.
------------------------------

Talking about the character of Kyrie really sounded like Ange debating with Okonogi about Eva being murderer. Ange did not believe Eva's sorrow during her husband and George's funeral was genuine. While some people also did not believe that Kyrie would care deeply for anyone (save perhaps Ange) at all.

Given the same information, still we could arrive at totally different conclusions.

Truly, without love, one cannot see the truth.

[Dr. Akagi]

If we apply Occam’s razor, introduction of an additional Fukuin servant as the culprit/ 18th person seems unnecessary. If we follow the logic of a 18th person who is known to us and is secretly present on the island, I have a much better candidate.

Spoiler for The mysterious 18th person is...:

Kasumi Sumadera, of course.

The following scenario seems plausible:

Kasumi meets Kyrie on October 3, murders her, assumes her place, brings Kyrie’s corpse to Rokenjima (possibly bribing the boat’s captain and hiding the body amongst the food supplies).

This theory clears a lot of stuff, actually:

- the ‘unaccounted murderer’ of Episode 1;
- Kyrie obviously being the mastermind for Episode 4 but being presumably dead early on in both Episodes 1 and 2 is not a problem anymore: Kyrie is dead all right (and having fun in the shed) while Kasumi is stalking people enjoying perfect freedom;
- the problem of Rudolph premonition of his impending demise from Episode 1;
- the appearance of Black witch (=Kasumi) from 1998 in Episode 3 as Evatrice;
- doesn’t violate the ‘no more than 17 people on the island’ rule, because the corpse of Kyrie wouldn’t count as a ‘person’ (same as for Kinzo);
- explains why adults are always the first to die (at least in Episodes 1, 2 and, probably, 4, because the order of death in Episode 4 is never confirmed).

I’ll explain the last point in more detail. If Kasumi is impersonating Kyrie, Rudolph is an obvious choice for the first twilight (because he may see through her disguise) along with ‘Kyrie’ herself; this is exactly what happens in episodes 1 and 2; but the first twilight requires 6 victims (as per epitaph) so the other 4 are simply there because they are present at the same place with the intended victims, ie at the family conference.
Now something doesn’t go as planned in episode 3, but episode 3 is generally regarded as a ‘freak accidents’ episode; nevertheless, ‘Kyrie’ takes the first opportunity to separate Rudolph from the rest of the adults under the pretext of getting food and what do you know – they both turn dead immediately afterwards.

In episode 4 Rudolph is offed at the first twilight, too, which makes it look like a pattern.

Of course, Kasumi being Asumu (twin sisters as rivals in love? Poor Rudolph…) is also a possibility.

Now I do not insist that that is what happened, but to me the above scenario looks much more preferable and enjoyable than a ‘stray Rannon/Mannon’ one.

The cons are obvious, too: the author utilizing the same Shion/Mion trick from Higurashi again would be lame; besides, I prefer Kyrie as the mastermind and not her crasy sister, although Kasumi as Kyrie/Evatrice looks highly likely to be true for Episode 3 alone.

[Neofio3]

Kasumi would be good, but as you said, it would also be lame. Its basically recycling a plot element. I actually hope its not the case.

Originally Posted by ijriims

Talking about the character of Kyrie really sounded like Ange debating with Okonogi about Eva being murderer. Ange did not believe Eva's sorrow during her husband and George's funeral was genuine. While some people also did not believe that Kyrie would care deeply for anyone (save perhaps Ange) at all.

Given the same information, still we could arrive at totally different conclusions.

Truly, without love, one cannot see the truth.

Its not that people are saying that Kyrie is incapable of love, she clearly loves Ange and Rudolph, and (probably) Battler. Its just that she has no reason to love anyone else. Her personality and past actions show no indication of it at all.

I would be just as hard pressed to claim Eva would care much about anybody but her family. And we know as much, because she was basically skipping with glee over attaining the headship with the death of Krauss in episode 1.

Both women are pretty similar: brilliant, self-interested opportunists. Which does not mean their murderers, or that their incapable of feeling for people close to them. However, those people are are few and far between. I certainly don't think she cares enough to commit murder (of Rudolph, no less, the one person we know she loves) for the sake of a pitiful child she's only tangentially related and meets once a year. Which is not to say she couldn't commit murder, but its going to be for other reasons.

Basically, if Kyrie is indeed the culprit, your hypothesis on her motivations is flawed in that it necessitates Kyrie have more "love" for a little child she only has casual relations with once a year, rather than a person who she has pined over for 11 years (no doubt building her life around), and left her family over. That she would love Maria so much over Rudolph, in fact, to kill him (as well as everyone else). Its nonsensical.