[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[RockReborn]

Originally Posted by Oliver

Well, without the towels it's just less suspicious.

Mind you, I'm re-reading with the explicit intent to find at least something to suspect about everyone, particularly including my memory of future episodes, so anything said or done when it does not follow perfectly naturally is fair game.

Fair enough.

Out of curiosity, where is Kanon supposedly while this is going on?

[Marion]

Originally Posted by Judoh

Well regardless of the words The way I see it was that Shannon was trying to cheer them up a bit. I really don't think this is supposed to be a complicated mystery...

Maybe if they asked she could have retrieved a towel I think. It's not like people haven't made contradictory statements half jokingly in episode 1 before just look at Rudolf...

Well Rudolf wasn't joking - Battler narrated that he looked really freaked out. The way he worded it was wrong, but he was pretty scared. I especially like Kei's perspective of the event, but it seems pretty obvious at this point that he wanted to talk about Battler's birth.

Actually it makes me wonder if the small theory I'm trying to get evidence for may hold some water.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by RockReborn

Fair enough.

Out of curiosity, where is Kanon supposedly while this is going on?

Shannon meets him in the guesthouse servant room immediately after that scene and before coming back to the cousins. This scene also numerously refers to the change in schedules that leaves Kanon and Shannon in the guesthouse, Gohda in the mansion and orders for Genji and Kumasawa to sleep in the guesthouse, because "Krauss doesn't trust the winged servants", which is kind of suspect as they have to be co-conspirators in the Kinzo Phantom -- but the shift changes are apparently real.

What's interesting is that it seems that Jessica is surprised that nobody greets them at the guesthouse, because she immediately asks if there was a schedule change.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Marion

Actually it makes me wonder if the small theory I'm trying to get evidence for may hold some water.

Don't be such a tease. Spit it out. Or at least give us a hint towards what your talking about. It can't be that bad if you have to think about it.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by RockReborn

Out of curiosity, where is Kanon supposedly while this is going on?

Kanon is, generally speaking, AWOL for much of the 4th, from about the early afternoon when he's encountered in the garden until well into the evening. If you favor Shkanon, you have an easy enough explanation for that (since Shannon's position is known during this time), but if you don't... just what was he up to?

[chronotrig]

Okay, finally found the quote I've been looking for. This is from the post-EP5 Ryuukishi interview, but it looks a lot more interesting after EP6 and possible Shkanontrice:

Beato disappeared this time, but the game still didn't end, right?

Ryuukishi: All that happened was that the piece known as Beatrice vanished from the game board. That doesn't change the fact that Battler is still trapped on the game board.

Ryuukishi: One thing I can say here is that the personality in that world which had its own tachi-e and was called Beatrice was nothing more than the queen. The game doesn't end when the queen is taken, right? Even with the queen gone, the king that Beato calls her heart still remains on the scene. Unless that king is discovered and cornered, Beatrice's riddles will not be solved.

And he goes on to set the time of Beatrice's "disappearance" to the end of EP4, when she "told everything she had to tell". In other words, it seems that some piece on the game board is no longer active in the answer arcs. Also, interesting how he describes "the queen" here.

[Renall]

Beatrice has been portrayed as the black queen multiple times. I don't recall her ever being described as the king piece. In fact, ep6 more or less reinforces that she can be (or has been) every piece but the king, and it doesn't seem like this is changing.

By contrast, I think Battler has been described as the king piece. And there's the whole Maria's crown thing. Other than that, little has been said as to which pieces are important in chess, or indeed if the game is even chess to begin with (given some of the anti-chess analogies, like the drawing-on-the-chessboard example or the Shogi thing).

[Jan-Poo]

Battler has been called white king in Ep4 and black king in Ep6

Beatrice has always been compared to the black queen.
In any case the King must be a piece that once cornered (you can't remove the king no matter what you can only checkmate it) the game ends.

Ryukishi says that Beatrice calls this king "her heart" and it still remains on the gameboard. What's Beatrice's heart? It might be her original personality.

I really doubt that it's Maria anyway.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Renall

Other than that, little has been said as to which pieces are important in chess, or indeed if the game is even chess to begin with (given some of the anti-chess analogies, like the drawing-on-the-chessboard example or the Shogi thing).

Knightmare Chess fits well.

[Oliver]

One more good reason the Kinzo phantom conspiracy can exist regardless of the financial pressure.

Krauss or Natsuhi have discovered the gold. However, gold is not currency according to law, it's a commodity and therefore, it's property! According to Japanese law, up until 2003, the tax rate on the property valued at 20 billion yen would reach 70%, which is impossible to pay, and would result in the gold going to the government. Even if the gold was not discovered but was known to exist, this fate would befall the island land itself, which could eventually result in a chance that someone else would discover the gold! Machinations required to bypass inheritance tax can take an extended period of time and could not be performed while Kinzo, dissatisfied with his heirs, was alive, and gift tax is nothing to sneeze at either.

[J the Drafter]

I've been rereading episode one a little and I found something very strange. Right after lunch, after the scene where Battler asks Shannon about the sour sauce the family is having for dessert, Shannon and Kumasawa talk in the hallway. Kumasawa tells Shannon that Shannon is free until the evening, even though she later tells the kids at the beach that she has to hurry back to work after spending some time with them. I'm not sure how much time she spends helping Kumasawa cleaning the rooms, but there is a clear contradiction here.

[Judoh]

I don't know how you could get Shkanon from that interview. I guess the word "personality" is important. Although I think it's suggesting that all the episodes are stages in a single game board. It could be chess or chinese checkers and it wouldn't make a difference.

Of course Beatrice is inactive we already knew that. The way I see it is if I look at it like chess is that she escaped "check" in episode 3, went "on the attack" to the human side in 4, and lost authority over her own piece at the end of 4 when Battler killed her.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by J the Drafter

Kumasawa tells Shannon that Shannon is free until the evening, even though she later tells the kids at the beach that she has to hurry back to work after spending some time with them. I'm not sure how much time she spends helping Kumasawa cleaning the rooms, but there is a clear contradiction here.

I noticed that too, but there is a minor catch that could make it not-contradictory: Japanese timezone is wacky compared to most places in the Western world, so in October it gets dark around 17:00 and that time is naturally 'evening'.

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Judoh

I don't know how you could get Shkanon from that interview. I guess the word "personality" is important. Although I think it's suggesting that all the episodes are stages in a single game board. It could be chess or chinese checkers and it wouldn't make a difference.

Of course Beatrice is inactive we already knew that. The way I see it is if I look at it like chess is that she escaped "check" in episode 3, went "on the attack" to the human side in 4, and lost authority over her own piece at the end of 4 when Battler killed her.

It's just that the line suggests that Beatrice is a piece on the board. That means that some person, pattern or literally a personality is no longer an active factor in the core arcs. Since we also hear hints that Beatrice is responsible for the crimes, that means that this factor is related to the magic murders. This suggests that the fake first twilights are something unique to the core arcs and not just the same thing as the question arcs.

I didn't say it supports Shkanon specifically, but it does support some kind of Kanontrice/Shannontrice/Shkanontrice. The queen would literally represent the Beatrice personality, whereas the king would represent Kanon/Shannon/Sayo herself. In the answer arcs, the Beatrice personality never takes action, so Sayo is no longer the murderer. The secret of "who does the Beatrice personality belong to?" must be solved before the game can be.

Also, this would seem to imply that an entirely different culprit takes action in the core arcs, unless Sayo has yet another personality.

[Judoh]

I think what's constantly hinted is that Beatrice is made to look like she's the culprit. She's a superstition or a cover story. An actual person dressing up as Beatrice and killing all but 5 people just isn't humanly possible without well "her Furniture" or accomplices ( if you want to beleive she actually controls anyone). I think that's where we disconnect.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

Also, this would seem to imply that an entirely different culprit takes action in the core arcs, unless Sayo has yet another personality.

There has to be some sort of limit on the number of personalities per body, otherwise this is no better than reading numbers in red text in base 11 like I offered earlier - a cheap trick.

But speaking of cheap tricks, I've stumbled on something interesting in Ep1.

Eva and Hideyoshi leave for their guest room, saying that nobody should follow them. The next unreliable scene implies it is the same guest room that they stayed in prior to construction of the guest house. If it is, anyone except Battler should be well aware which one it is exactly.

Later on, Genji and Kanon come to fetch them and find the sound of TV inside, lights on, and a letter by the door, with nobody answering. Genji picks up the letter, then orders Kanon to fetch the cutter, then goes with him. It is never said what did he do to the letter afterwards.

Then, Kanon and Kumasawa come back. The door now contains a drawing that could not possibly be completed while Kanon was away and narration remarks on that. And the letter is there again. Either Genji dropped it or someone added a new one, but if someone did, the one Genji took apparently vanishes for no good reason, so he probably dropped it in his haste.

It's easy to assume that the narration is lying and the pantacle was there already, because this helps solving the closed room by implicating Kanon and Kumasawa.

But what if it's just a different room? The rooms are all very similar, "hotel rooms" the text says, but it is never mentioned they're marked or numbered. They're probably identical internally and externally. Multiple rooms on the same floor had to have been prepared for the adults -- at least three, one more for Kyrie and Rudolf, and one for Rosa and Maria. They're probably adjacent. It is in Eva and Hideyoshi's interest, if they want to avoid being targeted, to pick a different one to their usual one from years ago. Only Battler doesn't know which one it is. If Eva really mistrusts the servants so much it's quite sensible. Can they? Probably, they had multiple opportunities to acquire keys or master keys, and it is never mentioned how did they acquire the key to the one they planned to go to. Possibly, they were given an opportunity to just take one from a set, and they could take two. The remark that they don't want to be followed would be a hint that they want to go to a different room in this case.

For safety, they turn on the lights and the TV in the other room, so that a murderer would not be able to determine which room they are in by looking from outside, and actually reside in a room further down the corridor than they would normally take. Alternatively, the lights and TV are turned on in their old room because a murderer is hiding in there. Genji, assuming out of habit that they took their usual one, tries the door, but nobody answers, obviously. He finds a letter, fears the worst, drops everything and runs to the kitchen.

The murderer killed Eva and Hideyoshi already, but they were in a different room - the one painted up, which Genji and Kanon did not notice being painted up because it's further down the corridor - from three meters away sideways, the paint can't be that apparent on a dark wooden door. The murderer was probably caught painting and needed to quickly hide.

Once Genji and Kanon leave, the murderer emerges from one of the three possible guest rooms, turns off the TV and lights if that was the room Genji and Kanon tried first, and leaves or hides again, moving the letter to the correct room door. When everyone returns, the room with the letter next to it is obviously The One, reinforced by the seal on the door, so nobody notices they were one room off.

I suspect that this is the loophole that allows to solve this locked room in a natural way, one that does not involve deliberately creating it by fixing the chain or magneting it closed. People should be doing something we can imagine them doing if they don't explicitly want to create a mystery that results in creating one anyway. Unfortunately, I fail to find how this could help as the nature of the wounds seems to rule out the most obvious 'Hideyoshi was killed first, Eva was killed, murderer left the room and the dying Eva locked it'. You don't do that with a hole in your head and you don't make a hole in your head to play dead - certainly you can't stick a stake into it so that it remains upright, so even if stakes are added by Kanon or Kumasawa later, holes must exist.

Any ideas?

[LyricalAura]

Wow, I definitely need to reread EP1. I totally missed that letter discrepancy.

I need to think about the room switching trick more before I decide if it's plausible in this case or not, but it does strongly remind me of a trick that was used in the manga Kira Kira Labyrinth. It might be worth reading that for a better idea of how the trick might play out.

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Oliver

There has to be some sort of limit on the number of personalities per body, otherwise this is no better than reading numbers in red text in base 11 like I offered earlier - a cheap trick.

Actually, this would be the opposite of a cheap trick if you tried to apply it to the number count, which I'm not suggesting is the case. Because of the limit on the number of people, adding another personality character would mean that another person we think is on the island isn't actually a separate person, and in pretty much all cases, Battler's perspective could disprove that.

Also, there probably isn't a limit to the number of personalities a single person can "see". After all, Ange had about 9 of them in her arc.

[Judoh]

How many times have you read episode 1 Oliver? Thats a very interesting theory.

[chronotrig]

Just to be clear, it only explicitly says that he pulled it out from the crack under the door, supposedly to check the wax seal on it. It never mentions that he actually picked it up and took it anywhere. Still, an interesting point.