2011-08-06, 20:43 | Link #23661 | ||||||
The True Culprit
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2011-08-06, 21:11 | Link #23662 | |||
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Your way of reasoning is pretty similar to Erika, only that you know what you don't want it to be and you do anything in your power to reach a conclusion that is to your liking. Everything and everybody in Umineko is heavily suspect. That's the core of the whole story and I always think that the most elegant solution is one that combines all and does not discard. I could make up a theory which frames Kyrie as the most obvious of all culprits, because she is actually the only person beside Krauss with the necessary connections (Yakuza) to turn the gold into money. And given the fact how mentally unstable her sister is, it wouldn't be farfetched to assume that Kyrie isn't any better. Considering the fact that Kyrie was a sort of X-factor to Yasu and her not knowing enough about her (which might be why she disposed of her in both Legend and Turn) it is not impossible to reason that she was in fact the one who took the items Yasu prepared and killed everybody. It was also Kyrie who gave the necessary spark to the pact between the siblings in order to make them conspire against Krauss. It was Kyrie who made Ange stay home. It was Kyrie who, despite being a proud woman, chose to stay with a womanizer of a husband. Quote:
You can call Bernkastel what you want. A bitch? Yes. Conniving? Yes. Devilish? Yes. Devoid of compassion? Probably. But she never did anything to actually make her a liar. She turned sentences upside down in order to make them appear better than they were or even make a horrible sentence into something good...but she never lied. Even her most evil, if you even smile at your aunt Eva once in your life your whole family is forever dead and gone, is no lie. Once Ange would have decided to move on she would have accepted her familys death...Bern just made that act sound much more heavy than it actually was. Quote:
Of course lightning is an important part of Japanese myths and folklore, that is why people in the story believed it in the first place. But you are implying that the whole story, about Shannon causing that event in order to gain enough power to have the resolve to approach George, is completely discardable. |
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2011-08-06, 22:12 | Link #23663 | |
The True Culprit
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I'm not even going to read the rest of your post.
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2011-08-06, 22:35 | Link #23664 | |||
Goat
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Gnawing away at Rokkenjima
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They predict a disaster at Rokkenjima before it happens. Possible only if the crime is premeditated and written by the culprit (or someone who knows what this culprit is up to), or because the writer has intimate knowledge of the current family dynamic to strongly suspect that there will be a disasterous crime of some sort (and the story is actually just a kind of guess). Or someone wrote these stories beforehand, and someone else read them and made them true. They predict the weather at Rokkenjima through Oct. 6. Possible only with an accurate weather report, which is within what? A week or two at best? They predict Battler's return. Possible only after Battler's return was decided (remind me when that was exactly), unless the writer was Battler himself, or Battler's return was somehow caused by the writer or otherwise ensured to the writer by a third party. They predict Ange's absence. Possible only after Oct. 3, unless the writer was six-year-old Ange herself, or her absence was somehow caused by the writer or otherwise ensured to the writer by a third party. Or any of these could possibly be an unlikely coincidence as well. Or some or all of these events do not completely match up with Rokkenjima-prime's known history (for example, the weather was actually sunny on Oct.5, 1986 (and for some reason, 1998 readers don't bring this up)). All this isn't to say that there aren't problems with the writings being post-event; namely that one of them was supposedly discovered by the police right after the event. And there is the unlikely possibility that the bottle stories were written during or just before the event, but that would take an exceptionally fast writer (who was probably also really busy killing/not being killed/playing double- maido/whatever) Quote:
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I was going through this thread's older posts today and I finally read your Ange theory. Fun stuff. What's really funny is that at the end of ep4, I seriously considered this theory. Why? So much focus on Ange at ep4, how emo she was, how Ange was also a witch (ANGE-Beatrice), and of course the sin 6 years ago (according to the narrative by then, who seemed to care so much about Battler in the first place? Only Ange). And you ask how I could imagine a six-year old killing over a dozen people? The answer: I wouldn't put it past Kinzo Ryukishi. Last edited by Wanderer; 2011-08-07 at 03:11. |
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2011-08-06, 22:56 | Link #23666 | ||
Goat
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Gnawing away at Rokkenjima
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But, I don't think this actually happened in any of the fictions. And especially not in R-Prime. |
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2011-08-07, 00:50 | Link #23667 |
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A couple things to point out in sequence:
Firstly, remember that the police did not respond immediately. The first person who would have noticed anything untoward had happened was Captain Kawabata when he came back on the 6th and found the island blown the fuck up. He was supposed to come around noonish, though he may have come earlier since it was a Monday and he knew everyone would need to get back to their respective companies or schools. It's gonna take him like a half hour to get out there, and then he's got to radio somebody at Nijima, and only then will the police be able to dispatch some people to the island. And then they're probably gonna be poking around a while before they find the bottle because they're gonna be focused on the giant crater where the houses used to be and not the ocean, which brings me to... Second, there is no earthly way the message bottle would've survived as ejected debris. Not even. Regardless of when it was written and regardless of when it was released, someone almost certainly had to have manually released it into the water. Wanderer has already discussed the implications of what it means if the bottle was released before or after the incident. Finally, Battler culprit is acceptable as a theory on the basis that it is totally awesome and means Battler was such an amazing culprit he even managed to dupe himself. It's literally the perfect crime. Only Kinzotrice approaches it for sheer trollish delight, and Battler culprit is actually kind of plausible and textually supported. Also, "the reason Battler didn't come back in Lion's world is he felt no need to murder his entire family in that universe" is just kind of badass. EDIT: Note that the logic has a sort of twisted amazement to it:
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2011-08-07, 00:51 | Link #23668 | |||
Dea ex Kakera
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Sea of Fragments
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In Ange's case, she only sporadically attended to begin with because of her stomach problems, so getting her real attendance correct by accident would be something like a 50/50 chance, right? Quote:
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2011-08-07, 01:01 | Link #23669 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2011
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By the way, the main point of my argument a few posts ago was more of ''Erika pulled bitch move X when I expected her to make Superior Bitch Move Y'', it was mainly just a complaint on my end, I over-estimated her and then her image was entirely ruined for me after that. Maybe it'd make more sense if I say I expected her to be a Kotomine Kirei , and then she revealed herself to be a Yagami Light. Well, she didn't really reveal herself to be that, I just wasn't paying attention until your post made me think ''Wait you're right, can't believe I overlooked that much...'' My complaint is ''She is a third-rate villain''. @Renall My thoughts exactly. |
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2011-08-07, 01:03 | Link #23670 |
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Bern never lied, but she also wasn't usually being honest. It's a fairly well-known trope to have the villain who never lies, but who uses half-truths and insinuations to make people draw the wrong conclusions. It was old when Shakespeare wrote Othello. It's just important to note that a character who does not or cannot lie isn't actually trustworthy.
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2011-08-07, 02:55 | Link #23671 | ||||
Goat
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Gnawing away at Rokkenjima
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Yasu-Beatrice had already been doing inexplicable acts on Rokkenjima for years in order to convince people that Beatrice existed. Her destruction of the shrine was role-fulfillment for Beatrice; in other words, to strengthen the legend of Beatrice. The how part of your argument is effective though. Then again, GENSAWAJO could help with that. Quote:
Last edited by Wanderer; 2011-08-07 at 03:05. |
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2011-08-07, 06:19 | Link #23672 | ||
Zero of the roulette
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Finland
Age: 30
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I also don't see Bernkastel as a liar. She is an ugly person in several ways, but not a liar. Which means I believe her saying she isn't the Gamemaster of EP7 tea party. As we hear Eva's voice in the beginning, it is probably Eva's interpretation of the events.
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I agree it would be totally awesome and badass, though it might deprive some lyrics from Ricordando il passato of it's meaning, mainly "Quel giorno, quanti misteri avrei dovuto risolvere per poterti portare via?" = "Should I have needed to solve many mysteries that day to save you?". Well if Battler did learn the truth on Rokkenjima-Prime as speculated, and she wasn't saved anyway, then what gives? I'd also like to see some visualisation of George culprit. Martial arts VS hatstand-wielding Battler in the rainy rose garden? A fight between men as Ronove described in EP3! It is a supportable theory, though it may not explain Ange's breakdown. Or maybe Ange freaked out not because the truth was unpleasant, but because the contents were the same as EP7 Tea Party, making her think there's a conspiracy against her to hide the truth. Poor Ange being trolled by everyone. Though Eva's diary containing the truth was confirmed in red, right? So Ange shouldn't doubt, at least in Meta-perspective. Not the whole truth, but Eva's truth at least. Quote:
Last edited by Bluemail; 2011-08-07 at 06:56. |
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2011-08-07, 07:17 | Link #23673 | ||||
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She learned of Battler's return some days before through Jessica. She learned of Ange not returning from the servants on the 3rd because they had to prepare rooms. Yes, I think a typhoon is usually announced about a week in advance and by the 3rd it should have been pretty clear that it was coming with a 90/10 chance. And wasn't it also insinuated by Natsuhi and Gohda that Shannon wasn't doing her work properly and was unsually unattentive during her shift? Maybe she was busy with other things during the rest of the day. The only thing that made the officials dismiss the theory proposed by the letters were: The fact that the handwriting was not Marias. The fact that it describes a serial murder, occult events and only alludes to the fact that their "might or might not be a corpse". (Like LyricalAura said, it doesn't describe an explosion) And most importantly, the fact that Eva is described as brutally murdered in both messages, which clearly did not happen. Because of this the officials treated it as probable fiction and further claimed that this was actually an incident caused by a landslide. It is quite usual for the police in mystery fiction to be portrayed as 'not interested in the truth as long as a case is closed', so while this might be not 100% convincing it is a genre-trope that can be accepted if one wants to. Alternatively we could assume that Eva used some of her wealth (which she already should have gotten back around the early 90's) to covince the police not to research the events any further. She very probably knew about the source of the explosion and as we know from EP8 she doesn't want the truth to be revealed either. Quote:
I'd say, there is actually nothing that has to be totally dismissed especially because these are stories. Even events like Eva-Beatrice have their reason to be in the story, because it shows what even Eva started to believe at a certain point. Quote:
It's a possible theory and it would be awesome on some scale. Quote:
It's also quite funny how many people here want to believe that there was an occult mystery murder case on the island, just like the Witch Hunters. Ôtsuki said that the idea of an occult serial murder didn't even exist in public prior to the message bottles being found. Rokkenjima was known as an "occult island" after Eva sold Kinzôs collection, but that was it at first. There is even the fact that the stake of Mamon was retrieved from the site of the incident, which more or less proves that it was never used in any crime that might have happened on the island. Unless we want to believe that it is made from a material strong enough to withstand an explosion. It's quite probable that there was a hideous crime, because there's no other way to explain why only Battler and Eva escaped (unless you want to believe that everybody suffered amnesia except Eva ). But it is also quite probable that it was not the elegant night of murder, magic and mystery that Yasu imagined when she planned those 2 days. |
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2011-08-07, 07:51 | Link #23674 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2010
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Well, the government officials might not be as trust worthy as you'd think. If there where explosives left on the island and they knew about it they'd do everything they could to cover up the incident, no need to bribe them at all.
Theres plenty of circumstantial evidence that could be interpreted as them hiding the truth. From the stonewalling of the resort, because imagine the public nightmare of having a large group of tourist get blown up in an island getaway. To their incessant attempts to try an buy back the island before Kinzo developed it. It could tie up with what Okonogi mentions as well. |
2011-08-07, 08:47 | Link #23675 | |
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This would immediatly catapult us into a genre called Shakai-ha, which uses the setting of a murder mystery but is more a political thriller. And Ryûkishi himself made it clear at several points that while these elements are there, they have no influence on the central events. I would also say that you could easily write a story that incorporates political intrigue, yakuza connections, corporations plotting against the family...but the question is if we want that. |
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2011-08-07, 08:56 | Link #23676 |
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Join Date: Oct 2010
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It wouldn't have anything to do with the actual events that happen in rokkenjima, just what happens afterward. Whoever committed the crimes still did it for whichever reasons they had.
Its only used to explain the ineptitude the government would have had of selling an island with a cove full of explosives and not doing anything to try and resolve the issue because they forgot about it or whatever. |
2011-08-07, 11:54 | Link #23677 | |
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Does that mean he was a psycho killer, like that Talking Heads song "Road to Nowhere," or that he burned down the house like that other Talking Heads song, "Once In A Lifetime?" Probably not. But it's critical that no one still alive has extensive information about the kind of person Battler actually was in 1986. At least, no person who actually appears in the story. There are, in fact, only two snippets I can remember of semi-reliable memories on that time period:
Did Battler-culprit ever get traction in Japan's fanbase or something?
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2011-08-07, 13:46 | Link #23678 | |
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Join Date: Jul 2011
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This latest discussion reminded me of something from the interview:
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Working from the translation, I wouldn't put it past him to pull something like this off. There is also Bern's game in EP8 which, if I remember correctly, had both a George and a Battler solution. |
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2011-08-07, 15:56 | Link #23680 | ||
The True Culprit
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