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

[Pika_power]

Here's my take on the room, as it plays out on the gameboard, without Erikaball, Shkannontrice or Kinzon.

-Everyone is playing dead, as per the plan.
-The letter is dropped, as per the plan.
-Battler is supposed to leave, and then start playing pranks, as per the plan.
-Battler notices the tape.
-Battler does not leave the room, because that would give a clear sign that he was alive.
-Battler sets up the bathroom trick, and then hides in the closet, hoping like mad that she would be distracted by the water enough to give him a chance to slip out.
-Erika enters the room and seals the door behind her.
-Erika searches the room, but misses the closet.
-Battler tries to leave, but realises the chain is still set.
-Kanon has been walking around the mansion, as the FT victims didn't meet up as planned.
-Kanon discovers the true corpses and realises what happened.
-Kanon rushes to Battler's room and finds Battler there.
-There is no time to explain the situation. Kanon forces the honoured guest Battler-sama out of the room, and goes in himself, prepared to fulfil his duty as furniture.
-Kanon sets the lock behind him so Erika doesn't notice anything is wrong.
-Kanon then lays in wait under the bed to attack Erika, when he suffers a fatal heart attack.
-TA-DA! Kanon does not exist in the guest room.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Pika_power

-Battler notices the tape.
-Kanon then lays in wait under the bed to attack Erika, when he suffers a fatal heart attack.
-TA-DA! Kanon does not exist in the guest room.

These are the only two lines that doesn't work.
Battler cannot notice the tape, at the very least not on the door. The tape is outside, otherwise Erika wouldn't have been able to leave the room herself after putting it in the first place. If Battler opens the door, even a bit, the tape will break. I guess you could say he noticed it on the window and guessed from it there must also be one on the door, but he couldn't know about the signature.

[Pika_power]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

These are the only two lines that doesn't work.
Battler cannot notice the tape, at the very least not on the door. The tape is outside, otherwise Erika wouldn't have been able to leave the room herself after putting it in the first place. If Battler opens the door, even a bit, the tape will break. I guess you could say he noticed it on the window and guessed from it there must also be one on the door, but he couldn't know about the signature.

Battler sees Erika applying the tape to the window, and sees her writing on it. He also hears her applying it to the door, and guesses that it also has the signature. Furthermore, Battler does not have access to the tape, so he knew he would be unable to replicate the seal, even without the signature.

That's the tape problem out of the way. What's wrong with the other lines?

[Qaenyin]

Originally Posted by Moogleking

But every single thing points to him wanting to leave. You can't say he stayed just because he wanted to and give no explanation.

He stayed because he couldn't leave without giving up the fact that he wasn't dead. If his corpse was moved but the lock wasn't still sealed then it'd be proof it was an "inside job" so to speak, because his corpse would be gone and the room would not still be a closed room(proving the culprit couldn't just make a closed room and that the original closed room was a big fake to begin with).

Erika sealed the room he was in(via the doorframe). Then she left. Then when she came back at the end of the game, she went in the room, then REsealed the room AGAIN(this time via the chain lock), meaning from the time his "corpse" was discovered to the end of the game, there was no time at which he could leave the room unassisted without giving away the fact that either A:he was not dead or B:the culprit was in the room the whole time. Since Erika had proven there was no culprit hiding in the room upon the initial inspection, it would prove Battler faked his death.

Remember, she has 3 rooms worth of tape. There is no restriction on the number of places, times, or methods she can use to detect people leaving the rooms using this tape, only the number of rooms in which she does so.

Therefore, Battler had no choice but to stay in the room and think of a ploy to escape undetected(the bathroom distraction) until Kanon showed up and saved his bacon. That was his motivation for staying in the room even though he wanted out.

As for how he knew about the tape, there are plenty of ways, from observing it being placed on the windows(which was for all we know done from the inside, within plain view of him), to hearing her talk about it(perhaps even with the purpose of preventing him from trying to escape and potentially screwing up her plan).

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Pika_power

That's the tape problem out of the way. What's wrong with the other lines?

Ah, well I thought it was a joke honestly. What's wrong with it (and the idea that Erika signs her tape by the window frame outside in the rain in the dark, tho it's not much crazier then her actually putting it on the window anyway...) is that it defeats the entire point of finding an explanation that make acceptable sense to the mess that is arc 6.

If I were to go further, there is certainly nothing in any arcs that points out to Kanon suffering heart problems.

And if we're to go into ridiculous idea, Erika and Bern did suggest a very creepy bathtub one, that doesn't seem possible in any ways, but hey there's at least hints to it.

Seeing as Erika already killed 5 others, it seems far more sensible to suggest that she killed him at this point, if we're to assume Kanon is dead at least.

[Winar]

Simple and uncontested theory about Kanon in guest room.

Spoiler for majic disapear:

Kanon has master key, so he could open a window and jump out Its like with Kinzo in ep5.

[Judoh]

Yeah that might work, but I'm pretty sure the locks on the windows are hand operated. So you don't need a key.

You probably need someone to lock the window from the inside though.

[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.

Of course you can say that Beatrice simply manipulated the stuff to make that happen. But then what's the point in trying to make sense out of the rest? You either think that in this story you can make whatever you want as long as it doesn't go against the rules (even if it means creating narrative inconsistencies) or you think everything needs to make sense and be realistically possible.


And if I wanted to nitpick there are other things that do not make sense, for example

"Erika missed the closet". How can you expect me to believe that Erika checked every single hiding place in the room and forgot to check the most obvious one?
And if Battler really expected Erika to come back, why he decided to hide in the most obvious place?
How come Erika just happened to miss that very place?
Why Erika didn't simply seal the door instead of repairing the chainlock? (and I mean from a gameboard perspective)


I could go on forever.
No matter what, this only makes sense if the characters act with a metaworld knowledge of some sort.

[LaplaceNoMa]

Well heart attack is possible in this age if you're doing hormonal stuff.

Which is quite possible for Kanon

[Qaenyin]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

"Erika missed the closet". How can you expect me to believe that Erika checked every single hiding place in the room and forgot to check the most obvious one?
And if Battler really expected Erika to come back, why he decided to hide in the most obvious place?
How come Erika just happened to miss that very place?
Why Erika didn't simply seal the door instead of repairing the chainlock? (and I mean from a gameboard perspective)

He decided to hide in the most obvious place for the same reason Erika just happened to miss it. It was not the most obvious place.

The shower was running. Anyone who went into the room, say "Oh, guy X isn't here" and then goes "Oh, the shower is running" is naturally going to think "He's in the shower" not, "He's in the closet and the shower is a booby trapped distraction just to screw with me".

It's called a Batman Gambit.

[Winar]

Originally Posted by Judoh

You probably need someone to lock the window from the inside though.

Spoiler for almost escaped:

Yes, someone should lock the windows from inside to "close" them, but if Kanon was outside on the ladder and held the windows, so that they do not open. This means that Kanon did not formally left the room, but he isnt exist inside (controversial situation). Erika did not fully checked windows, so that there is a chance that she not noticed Kanon.

[Renall]

Regarding the seals: In "real life" they are useless to Erika if she cannot check them in a timely fashion. If she returns to the guesthouse 5 hours after the Logic Error resolves (assume the game goes on) and the seals on both rooms are broken, all she knows is that somebody left those rooms at some point. And if she never goes back, the seals are of no practical use.

This is not true of Dlanor's guarantees on the seals, which can clearly update Meta-Erika even when Piece-Erika is nowhere near the seals to check when they were broken or whether they're still intact.

Also recall that if somebody seals the room you are in from outside, you don't have any way of knowing the room is sealed until you break the seal.

If it were me I'd have tried to trick her by having a seal broken but not having anyone left.

[Jan-Poo]

He decided to hide in the most obvious place for the same reason Erika just happened to miss it. It was not the most obvious place.

The shower was running. Anyone who went into the room, say "Oh, guy X isn't here" and then goes "Oh, the shower is running" is naturally going to think "He's in the shower" not, "He's in the closet and the shower is a booby trapped distraction just to screw with me".

It's called a Batman Gambit.

Then how do you explain this red:

Except for one location, there is no one to be seen in the BEDROOM.

How could Dlanor state that red if Erika didn't actually check every location except the closet first?

Also as soon as Erika noticed there was no one in the bathroom, if she really was there to find Battler, she would have instantly turn back and check the room. You need to be an idiot not to understand that that was a distraction.

I rest my case. You can't explain this with real life logic.

[Qaenyin]

Originally Posted by Renall

If it were me I'd have tried to trick her by having a seal broken but not having anyone left.

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

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Then how do you explain this red:

Except for one location, there is no one to be seen in the BEDROOM.

How could Dlanor state that red if Erika didn't actually check every location except the closet first?

Also as soon as Erika noticed there was no one in the bathroom, if she really was there to find Battler, she would have instantly turn back and check the room. You need to be an idiot not to understand that that was a distraction.

Because, simply put, there is no one to be seen. That doesn't mean that Erika made an elaborate inspection, just that she made a quick look across the room, crouched down to glance under the bed, and then noticed the shower running before she got around to checking the closet.

[Jan-Poo]

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.

[Qaenyin]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

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.

Because she was angry at having scalding hot water blasting her in the face, I thought this was pretty clear from the narration of that scene >_>

[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?

[Qaenyin]

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?

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?

Yes, that's what you're supposed to believe.

[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.

[Qaenyin]

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.

You're using circular logic here.

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.

You're sitting here using the argument that because the meta world exists and characters in the game talk about the meta world that therefore the meta world is the only way to explain things, in spite of people explaining how the logic of something would make sense without the meta-world. Then arguing "But since the meta-world exists that's wrong because characters know about it." I could just as easily say Kurosawa teleported him out of the room because she's really Virgilia in disguise. You can't use meta-world knowledge or events relating to the meta-world or illusion of the witch as examples of proof of the illusion of the witch or characters having meta-world knowledge, as the perspective the game is viewed from is inherently warped by being shown from the perspective of the illusion of the witch to begin with.

Knox's 2nd prohibits this.