[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Jan-Poo]

I'd say that Erika isn't a good person for the simple fact she finds pleasure in causing sufference into other people. There is no more basic definition of "evil" than that.
In some cases it's not the action itself that makes you "evil" or "good" but the approach you take in performing it.
A good person and a bad person might be doing the very same thing, the first with a broken heart out of necessity for preventing a greater evil, the second because she genuinely enjoys the sufference she's causing.


Will and Bernkastel did practically the same thing, both solved (or tried to solve) Beatrice's riddle (which for some reasons Ryuukishi wants to equate to a murderous act), however the first was merciful and didn't earn any pleasure in doing it the second tried to cause as much as pain as possible because that's what her very objective, as she little cared about the truth in itself.


There is then another thing to consider about Erika. If she was really looking for the truth we could say she's an evil character doing the right thing.
But she's actually an evil character doing the wrong thing, even from my perspective.

Episode 8 gives us a lot more of insight about what a "Witch of Truth" really is. It's not a person who tries to find the truth and keeps searching until she finds it. It's a person that creates the most plausible "truth" based on the evidence at her disposal and then arbitrarily decides it's the absolute truth regardless of the existence of reasonable doubts.

I think that we can see this pattern very well even in EP6. Erika didn't have the absolute certainty that she was right about her boyfriend. Dlanor told her in the end that she couldn't be sure. Erika replied that that was true if she only had human means, but thanks to Bernkastel she could transform her imperfect evidence into 100% certainty.

This is obviously something that one who really cares about the truth won't do.

Erika is basically the kind of person who says: "If I can't find the truth with 100% certainty I'll create my own truth. After all if it is impossible to find out the truth, who's going to contradict me?"


That's just being coward if you ask me. It's just an escapism from a reality where there are many truths you cannot know. A Witch of Truth may be a person capable of accepting the "truth" but at the same time it's a person who cannot accept not knowing the truth. And that's as bad as the former, if not worse.

Whether you stop looking for the truth because you have no confidence you'll ever find it, or you stop looking for the truth because you arbitrarily decided that your find it already, that's the same thing in my book, just a different approach.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

But why did she survive then?

You seem to think that the gold is near the Kuwadorian or something, and safe from the blast radius. It's not.

Sorry, I wasn't being serious with that theory.
Tho I suppose it could still be worked around, I'm not going to defend that theory ^^

Originally Posted by Kealym

On the matter of Erika being a "good guy" - UsagiTenpura equated Erika's theory against Natsuhi with popular George / Kyrie theories, yes? I won't deny their equivalency, actually. However, I don't begrudge Erika for her desire to wipe away lies. I think she became an evil character not because she sought truth, but because she was such a bitch about it. I believe there certainly MUST be people concerned with factual truth who aren't assholes, but similar to these mythical "Slytherin students who arent dickweeds", we never get a chance to see them. Ryukishi's choice, as that sort of character wouldn't fit into his personal Aesop, likely.

I don't actually think Erika is a "good guy", however no amount of reasoning on how any of these culprit theories makes sense/are different, they are based on pretty much the same arguments as Erika. Very akin to her, taking a person and depicting them as a complete monster. George = a jerk = mass murderer, is a theory based on spite.
Your mythical slytherin happens to be Will, and Will didn't even care to solve prime. However he does care about "the heart", basically the motives. Mexican standoff gone bad or cold hearted illogally greedy mass-murderer doesn't seem to fit very well with my definition of an interesting motive. Perhaps if Umineko was just a mystery novel, but 8 arc long story with that as a solution sounds pretty dull to me. However the most basic point is that it seems to contradict most themes of the serie.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Erika is basically the kind of person who says: "If I can't find the truth with 100% certainty I'll create my own truth. After all if it is impossible to find out the truth, who's going to contradict me?"

I mostly agree with the points you said, but this parts are more important to me as they basically explain exactly my problem with any current prime murderer theory.

As I've been saying before, I'm fairly certain we're supposed to consider these "truth seekers" in the same way as the conspiracy theorists who believes 9/11 was an inside job.
Using the names of "justice" and "for the truth" they say whatever they want and arrive at whatever conclusion they want, because in reality there is no "absolute red" that they have to deal with. It's frustrating that we don't know the official version of the Rokkenjima incident, but officially it is an accidental explosion. I'd assume the cops did the best job they could to figure out said truth and that beyond that only lies a realm of endless speculation where anyone can be depicted as a monster and able to murder others on a whim.

[Renall]

Well even so, "it was an accidental explosion" is clearly far less information than the people of the Prime universe actually have. Surely the police investigators (and any associated experts) concluded what accidentally exploded. The only insight we have into the matter comes from potentially unreliable sources. We've never seen the official report, but these people in R-Prime must have.

So yes, these people are like conspiracy theorists. The question is, are they as credible as the "Aliens built the Pyramids" guys and just flat-out ignoring existent evidence to confirm police supposition that it was some kind of accidental disaster, or is the Prime report woefully incomplete, giving rise to wild speculation?

[UsagiTenpura]

That's sorta the point tho. I'm trying to base on situation on what Ryuukishi is showing us.
That information was deliberately withheld from us. If Ryuukishi wanted us to solve prime, he should have given us that information. That we had that information taken away from us, and for us to continue making various culprit theories (or even murder theories) makes us worst then the actual witch-hunters pictured in the serie. The only difference is that as far as we are concerned everything is only a fiction, so it's not exactly amoral. Still we have so little information that we can say pretty much anything.
Heck I could say that a meteor fell and "exploded" on Rokkenjima and I couldn't exactly be contradicted.

About the credibility, is one of my main problems too.
"Aliens built the pyramids" and "Kinzo had 10 tons of gold and played around daily with a 900 tons bomb, and prime scenario is a game of GTA set on Rokkenjima" sounds about as ridiculous to me as each other. However the later lies in a zone of endless darkness.
Would "aliens built the pyramids" makes for a good theory if you didn't have access to informations about them?

[Jan-Poo]

However if it was reported as an "accidental explosion" I'd have to seriously question their intelligence.

1) We are talking about 900 tons of explosive who created a crater twice as big as the largest man-made crater on earth. If it was a gas leak I could understand, but normally you don't assume that a bomb exploded accidentally. What kind of logic the police used to conclude that the bomb exploded "accidentally"? What kind of evidence they had? Even in the case of arsons the authorities won't tell the public that it was an accident just because they have no proof that it was caused by a man.

2) The bomb exploded at a very suspicious time. While this by itself doesn't proves it was man-made it strongly suggests it was

3) At the very time of the explosion one person was 2 kilometers away from where she was supposed to be, alone. And that conveniently saved her life. If a bomb explodes accidentally it won't give you the time to escape, it won't even give you the time to notice!


I don't mean to say that the police should have convicted Eva, but telling the world that it was an accident? With those premises? That's just stupid.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Would "aliens built the pyramids" makes for a good theory if you didn't have access to informations about them?

Well, there was a time for thousands of years, between the dying out of the hieroglyphic script and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, where this basically happened. No one could read the stuff that said very mundane things about who ordered the construction of pyramids, when they were built, the names of the overseers of the project, etc. Herodotus wrote about them about 1500 years after the Great Pyramid was built, and he apparently didn't read hieroglyphs (but there were still people who could; the knowledge was only lost around 300-400 CE).

Still, he made a number of gross factual errors, like proposing the pyramids were made by slave labor. But neither he nor anyone else from antiquity to pretty much modernity went so far as to say "Well, maybe they were built by gods/aliens!" It flew in the face of pretty established knowledge that human beings built them.

So I guess the question is whether we have a Herodotus in the form of the police analysis. If we don't, I could maybe see making such leaps of fancy. But if we do, then basically the Witch Hunters speculating on bombs and mass murders are in the "Aliens dunnit" camp, flagrantly ignoring obvious facts and common knowledge.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Your mythical slytherin happens to be Will, and Will didn't even care to solve prime. However he does care about "the heart", basically the motives. Mexican standoff gone bad or cold hearted illogally greedy mass-murderer doesn't seem to fit very well with my definition of an interesting motive. Perhaps if Umineko was just a mystery novel, but 8 arc long story with that as a solution sounds pretty dull to me. However the most basic point is that it seems to contradict most themes of the serie.

The cat box creates a legend, and legends are larger than life; I think that a "dull" motive for Prime actually provides a nice "realistic" contrast to all the fantasy/fictional answers we have gotten.

And I think that a central reason that RK07 doesn't give us the R-Prime answer is because the answer would turn out to be mundane and dull. It's far more interesting as a legend so it is left as such.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

We are talking about 900 tons of explosive who created a crater twice as big as the largest man-made crater on earth. If it was a gas leak I could understand, but normally you don't assume that a bomb exploded accidentally. What kind of logic the police used to conclude that the bomb exploded "accidentally"? What kind of evidence they had? Even in the case of arsons the authorities won't tell the public that it was an accident just because they have no proof that it was caused by a man.

A gas leak explosion could incidentally ignite the rest of the explosives.

And, even if they suspect it wasn't an accident, they may have to call it such as a matter of legal protocol. I'm not exactly an expert on 1986 Japanese murder/explosion incident investigation protocol, but is anyone here really?

-----

About the timing of the explosion. Was it verified that off-island people observed it? If not, is there no way that the explosion could have happened without being observed? It's hard for me to get my head around the scope of the explosion, and the distances between islands.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

That's sorta the point tho. I'm trying to base on situation on what Ryuukishi is showing us.
That information was deliberately withheld from us. If Ryuukishi wanted us to solve prime, he should have given us that information.

Well, I like to think (but that's just a theory) that the tales were also based on what really happened on Prime.
In short they were a sort of rielaboration of the truth so we have to interpret them to guess what had happened.
Of course if we assume the tales were purely fictional and completely unrelated to the truth, seeking the truth on Prime becomes pointless since we have so little info we can as well give up.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

But why did she survive then?

You seem to think that the gold is near the Kuwadorian or something, and safe from the blast radius. It's not.

Well, if the tales were completely fictional the gold, if it ever exists, could be anywhere... but since assuming the tales were completely fictional means we don't have way to reason what had happened I'm not going to follow that line of thoughts...

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

A gas leak explosion could incidentally ignite the rest of the explosives.

And, even if they suspect it wasn't an accident, they may have to call it such as a matter of legal protocol. I'm not exactly an expert on 1986 Japanese murder/explosion incident investigation protocol, but is anyone here really?

The way police classify incidents like this or like a fire are basically like this:

• If they don't know the cause yet, the cause is UNDETERMINED. They don't just guess accident or crime.
• If it looks like some kind of criminal agency was involved (signs of arson, etc.), it's usually SUSPICIOUS. It might be a crime but they wouldn't say it is outright.
• If there's clear evidence of a crime, it's classified as that crime. So it would be ARSON or INTENTIONAL DETONATION or whatever crime is associated with blowing up a house.
• If after a thorough investigation the evidence suggests an accident, only then would the event be described as ACCIDENTAL.

Of course there are nuances here, such as the possibility of being forced to close an uncomfortable investigation. The incident could be officially ruled an accident when in truth the police simply weren't sure, if the government or whoever pressured them.

If it was military explosives, even if the detonation was accidental, it would be an absolute disaster for the government. Especially since Kinzo, perhaps the only person who could face criminal charges or lawsuits as a result of knowing the explosives were there (presumably), blew up with everyone else. People like Nanjo's son would be left with no one to sue over it (unless you can sue the government itself, but I imagine the government would argue immunity for various reasons).

So if the thing is filed as an accident, no one is ever punished, and nobody is able to get restitution, I could see the Witch Hunters rightfully believing something is being covered up. What might be covered up, however, is simply the fact that the investigators didn't find very much. That by itself is no evidence at all for notions of mass murder or witchy rituals.

[UsagiTenpura]

There are only two things which appears to be certain in Rokkenjima's incident. The first is that an explosion occurred, and the second is that Eva survived. It is also very likely that Battler survived, but as that information didn't come to the public it might be a sort of "good ending for Ange" that Featherine decided to include.

Now the information that the explosion was caused by a 900 tons bomb only appeared in arc 7's tea party. I'll admit it appears weird to me to trust that part while denying the rest of it, but considering it's the only explanation we ever got for a bomb I guess it's quite a possible answer. However it doesn't have to be exactly as arc 7 depicted it to be.

One thing is that the Kinzo who plays with a 900 tons bomb daily along with the lives on everyone on the island on that specific day including random servants who stays for the night, is a character who I don't even want to sympathize with.

Another thing is that Kumasawa's son and Nanjo's son both seem to believe it is an accidental explosion, and Okonogi at least claims to believe so as well (I guess it's possible he just adopted the same stance as Eva in front of Ange independantly of his own actual opinion). To doubt the information of accidental explosion I'd have to assume that cops were completely stupid, and that everyone believed them without any questions except the people who are portrayed negatively by the author like Ootsuki.

But it remains entirely possible that Kinzo did play with such a bomb and that someone else detonated it willingly to either erase traces of the truth (tho I'm not sure how well that would really work) or to actually murder everyone.

Still when Kinzo's backstory was explored by Will in arc 7 it didn't seem like the bomb played a particularly important role in his life. I currently find it safer to assume that if he indeed had 900 tons of explosives they were simply leftovers from the war he couldn't exactly get rid of, and not something he wired on an actual bomb. That would make the accidental explosion theory more likely.

The other possibility where Kinzo actually did wire it on a bomb and played with everyone's lives daily, I don't see much of a reason to look really further then that into the culprit. I could argue that Kinzo gave hints that could be understood at him having wired the bomb to explode the moment anyone solved the epitaph during the question arcs. Arc 7 mentioned Kinzo had a key to go there without having to "solve" the quadrillion thing every time. Perhaps the bomb only activates when one solves the epitaph and don't simply use Kinzo's key. Genji not being utterly insane might've deactivated it after it started up before midnight came (or the decision was left to Yasu and she chose that), but then they might not be always able to verify if someone solved the epitaph or not. Eva might've done just that, activating the bomb unaware of it, and through exploring ended up in Kuwadorian when it reached around midnight.

Obviously I am trying to think of a version of the story where none of the character could willingly mass-murder everyone else. I might be wrong, entirely. However given the way Erika and the witch-hunters were portrayed and the general themes like "without love it cannot be seen" it seems like this is at the very least what Ryuukishi's telling us to do. To the point where I'm not entirely certain he himself decided on an actual "definite" version of what happened, leaving endless paralleling possibilities coexist.

There is another possibility where there is a human culprit who willingly did that but had reasons that, tho we could find amoral, could also find understandable and not utterly stupid or completely incoherent. I do not see much traces of that neither within Umineko nor in anyone's theories so far, but it's possible I guess.

@ Wanderer: About the dull truth, you're marking a point, in a way. Mass-murdering so many and the supposedly 900 tons of explosive detonating aren't exactly mundane events. Your regular greedy murderer or family murder/suicide tragedy doesn't reach that scale. Nonetheless, I think you are right that the truth, murderer or accident, is not something very shocking/special, given from Ange's reaction when she learns the truth.

[jjblue1]

I wonder if it's possible that the explosion was caused by a WW2 bomb that fell on Rokkenjima and that remained there quietly until something, during the day of the storm, caused it to go KABOOM!

As for Eva reaching Kuwadorian. Yes, it's suspicious but only because the rest of the island blew up. During her childhood Rosa too reached Kuwadorian.
What if Eva, before the storm started, decided to go for a walk, went lost and reached Kuwadorian?
She finds the telephone line and call the main house but, by then, it's dark and is raining too much so a 'resque mission' would end up getting lost as well.
She agrees to wait on Kuwadorian as there's food and then half of the island is blasted away.

Note that I don't believe this is what had happened, just a possible normal reason for Eva to end in Kuwadorian without knowing everyone else was going to die.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Your mythical slytherin happens to be Will, and Will didn't even care to solve prime. However he does care about "the heart", basically the motives. Mexican standoff gone bad or cold hearted illogally greedy mass-murderer doesn't seem to fit very well with my definition of an interesting motive.

I should've been more clear - by "factual truth", I meant the truth of R-Prime, so I excluded Will since, as you said, he doesn't care about that. To continue my stupid Slytherin analogy, I'd say he's more like a Slughorn, in that he's the only real nice Slytherin we see. There are no characters, though, legitimately interested in the truth of Prime, who aren't asses about it, just as there are no Slytherin students who helped fight off Voldy at the final battle, even though there totally should have at least been a few.

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Well, if the tales were completely fictional the gold, if it ever exists, could be anywhere... but since assuming the tales were completely fictional means we don't have way to reason what had happened I'm not going to follow that line of thoughts...

Understand where you're coming from, but not a fan of this line of reasoning because you can effectively call Devil's Proof on everything besides A.) an explosion and B.) an alive Eva, with it. I'm not saying certain things shouldnt be subject to scrutiny (lol, Shkanon), but it seems less than helpful to disregard how the text describes the framework of the narrative. And I mean this on the highest Meta level, wherein we're reading a book a man from Japan has written for our consumption.

Spoiler for space:

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Obviously I am trying to think of a version of the story where none of the character could willingly mass-murder everyone else. I might be wrong, entirely. However given the way Erika and the witch-hunters were portrayed and the general themes like "without love it cannot be seen" it seems like this is at the very least what Ryuukishi's telling us to do. To the point where I'm not entirely certain he himself decided on an actual "definite" version of what happened, leaving endless paralleling possibilities coexist.

There is another possibility where there is a human culprit who willingly did that but had reasons that, tho we could find amoral, could also find understandable and not utterly stupid or completely incoherent. I do not see much traces of that neither within Umineko nor in anyone's theories so far, but it's possible I guess.

Again, a gold motive does not equate with a wanton murder spree, and Renall has explained why this doesn't make sense for a singular culprit. It might be a matter of taste, but "tragic misunderstanding, coupled with bits of paranoia and self-defense" is a more interesting and sympathetic motive / turn of events than what we got.

Also, to restate, while Eva's survival is one of only two things we can be 100% certain about regarding prime, based on everything Ryukishi has told us, it's a very small and reasonable logical jump to assume that George and Hideyoshi were dead before she went there.

[battle22]

Btw guy's why does Rudolf think he's gonna die?

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by battle22

Btw guy's why does Rudolf think he's gonna die?

General consensus is that he plans to tell Kyrie about the whole "baby thing", and he's exaggerating (maybe) about how she'll be pretty darn pissed about it.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Kealym

Again, a gold motive does not equate with a wanton murder spree, and Renall has explained why this doesn't make sense for a singular culprit. It might be a matter of taste, but "tragic misunderstanding, coupled with bits of paranoia and self-defense" is a more interesting and sympathetic motive / turn of events than what we got.

If you can find a scenario for something like that.

Also, to restate, while Eva's survival is one of only two things we can be 100% certain about regarding prime, based on everything Ryukishi has told us, it's a very small and reasonable logical jump to assume that George and Hideyoshi were dead before she went there.

Why can't you do the same to explain that?
But honestly, as you said it's a matter of taste, but I can't imagine a very good scenario as such, and as I said I haven't read one either. If it was just the adults and Beato, I could understand and get it, but there's just too many people and some pieces fits very badly in the whole like Maria and Kumasawa. As a result, to me such a theory is much closer to a comedy. I also very much doubt such a thing could/did happen in our actual real world. Wanton murder spree does occur in our world, which is why I can't exactly rule it out, but it just renders most of "what Umineko is talking about" useless and contradictory.


Now concerning differences between prime reality and fictional Rokkenjima tales realities. The thing is that arc 1-2 seems to have been written before the actual thing. Assuming Yasu did plan on murdering everyone as she did in the arcs, that might be the truth. People might have turned against each other in such a scenario, but Yasu would remain the culprit. If Yasu planned to murder everyone, but like in arc 7 tea party ended up not doing it, she's still guilty of planning to murder everyone and I don't think Battler would understand that to the point that he'd be the one who apologize when figuring out the truth (yet he did such a thing).
So on the assumption that Yasu didn't really plan on having everyone dying, it would seem to be incredibly weird to release in the form of message bottles the prime truth concerning so many dark secrets of the Ushiromiya family.

She is essentially revealing that Kinzo's death has been hidden for nearly two years by Krauss, Natsuhi and the rest of the servants including herself.
She is also revealing the puzzle that can lead one to find 10 tons of illegal gold, should they happen to be on Rokkenjima one day.
And if Shkanon is true, she's also revealing to George and Jessica (to name but the important ones) the truth about that.
Also leaves hints concerning the truth of Battler's birth, which sounds to me like it's Rudolf/Kyrie/Battler's own affair to deal with.
Ah not to mentions the details revealed on the financial situation of most of the adults, which could potentially ruin them if these information became public knowledge.

So it is based on the opinion that Yasu would be a sick person to amuse herself with everyone's skeletons in order to write a story that could compromise forever their reputation. My understanding is that she made herself the culprit in the stories exactly in order not to taint anyone's reputation but herself. Cause really, if you write a mystery/murder story based on real people, it'd be very jerk-ish to make someone else then yourself into the culprit.

Edit: The alternative leaves me with very little choice but to think of Yasu and Erika being pretty much the same kind of person.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

The other possibility where Kinzo actually did wire it on a bomb and played with everyone's lives daily, I don't see much of a reason to look really further then that into the culprit. I could argue that Kinzo gave hints that could be understood at him having wired the bomb to explode the moment anyone solved the epitaph during the question arcs. Arc 7 mentioned Kinzo had a key to go there without having to "solve" the quadrillion thing every time. Perhaps the bomb only activates when one solves the epitaph and don't simply use Kinzo's key. Genji not being utterly insane might've deactivated it after it started up before midnight came (or the decision was left to Yasu and she chose that), but then they might not be always able to verify if someone solved the epitaph or not. Eva might've done just that, activating the bomb unaware of it, and through exploring ended up in Kuwadorian when it reached around midnight.

Obviously I am trying to think of a version of the story where none of the character could willingly mass-murder everyone else.

Well in this case there would be a human character who willingly mass-murdered everyone: Kinzo. If the epitaph was a trap, then obviously he would be 100% culpable for any deaths. Eva, not knowing this, could plausibly have wound up exploring the tunnels to the far side of the island and not even realized how much time had passed until the explosion happened. Plus she could potentially do this with George and Hideyoshi still alive, since she wouldn't be expecting the place to blow the hell up and would have no reason to go back for them.

And if Eva never actually was told about the explosives, I could see the later vague investigations by the authorities causing her to go slowly insane. The logic's not hard to follow: "I solved the epitaph and the place exploded -> The police think it might have been a sudden detonation -> Oh my God, was it set to blow when the epitaph was solved!? -> This is all my fault!"

That's not to say it did happen that way, but if it did, then Kinzo would be the culprit and Eva would be the unwitting person who set off his trap. I don't believe that's too likely, and I don't want to believe Kinzo would do something like that, but isn't it equally as likely as anything else?

[UsagiTenpura]

Ah Renall, I was basically saying if Kinzo really had a 900 ton wired bomb I don't see any reasons to look for another culprit. I agree, he'd be the culprit and 100% responsible for it. Oh and actually it sounds more likely then George/Kyrie culprit theories to me, at least. But I really think Kinzo didn't have that much explosives, or if he did, he never planned on using them and they weren't prepared as a bomb.

[AuraTwilight]

"I solved the epitaph and the place exploded -> The police think it might have been a sudden detonation -> Oh my God, was it set to blow when the epitaph was solved!? -> This is all my fault!"

This is my new favorite theory, but what about Yasu having solved it previously?

[Jan-Poo]

I wonder if it's possible that the explosion was caused by a WW2 bomb that fell on Rokkenjima and that remained there quietly until something, during the day of the storm, caused it to go KABOOM!

Short of an atomic bomb there isn't any single bomb that could cause such a disaster.


There are three other important things that are known about the explosion,

1) It is known that it was massive enought to engulf a huge area (I'm not going over on how this can be deduced again, let's just say that Ryuukishi himself said you are supposed to deduce that)

2) It is known that practically nothing survived from that explosion, as the only evidence of a body is Maria's jaw.

3) It is known that there is only one person still alive who can tell what happened.


While some people may doubt these points (and we know the third is false), this is the official version.

Considering all this asking how the hell the police determined that it was an accident I think is in order. People may believe in authorities but they don't believe them blindly. If they told the public that it was an accident, then they should have also provided an explanation as to why they believe so. I don't think any newspaper would let them off the hook that easily with a "it was an accident, don't ask".

And what could they possibly tell? Eva, the only witness, refused to say a thing. They had practically nothing to check apart of a huge crater. The only thing that they could reasonably find from it is that it was the result of explosives.

Even supposing they wanted to cover up the story, then they had to cover up it better than that. You don't lie by giving to the other the means to understand you are lying.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

This is my new favorite theory, but what about Yasu having solved it previously?

Didn't happen or, as Usagi suggested, Genji knows about it and disarms it in time, but doesn't know when Eva does it.

Battler escapes, if he does, by finding the tunnels as well and wandering off in a different direction. Or something. Whatever.