[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[jjblue1]

Yasu's sex is that of a sexually mutilated male, raised as a female. Ergo Yasu's gender confusion.

I've heard that interpretation and I've heard the opposite. Sounds like Ep 5 where 2 contrasting solutions were presented and neither truly won, though one sounded better than the other.

The main difference with the transition to Chiru was that BATTLER switched sides; instead of believing in fantasy meaning BATTLER's defeat, it became the story's primary moral message. And it's not as though fantasy disappeared from the fictions at that point, either.

I wouldn't say Battler is believing in fantasy because he knows he's husing human tricks to kill. The message is more like to let magic live alongside tricks.
It's more or less like saying 'We know Santa Claus doesn't exist but let's not shatter the illusion it exists in front of children because it's much more beautiful to let them believe Christmas night is a magic night than telling them the truth'.

In this case you can read the trick or magic ending of Umineko as: let's be honests if you're going to be realistic Ange is going to have a harsh life as well as mental problems that might border on paranoia but if you're a hopeful dreamer, hey, you can think Ange became a writer and a good person and Battler survived the explosion exactly as she wanted and they will have their tearful reunion.

However this feels wrong somehow. Truth doesn't have to be necessarily bad, though illusion might look better. Santa Claus might be something special but it's also nice to think that your relatives went and bought presents for you.

The issue was not settled: Episode 5 was a demonstration of why approaching the problem with an entirely mystery-based approach was wrong. Ryuukishi's basically saying that the road to the truth is a proper combination of deduction (what the mystery elements tell us) and induction (what the fantasy elements tell us).

Ep 5 worked against the detectives in general. Presented Erika as cold and unsympathetic, even worse, she seemed to have fun in causing people to argue and in throwing mud on them.
Basically causing the family to argue for the gold she willingly might have caused the premise for a crime to be committed which is generally what a detective should try to avoid.
Also, although is true that a detective has the detective authority usually is presented in such a way it seemed believable.
Ep 5 seemed a parody of the detective gender that ended with having the detective, not only making a mistake but hiding evidence (Erika knew about the red truth 'Kinzo is dead') to accuse further the culprit. This is not merely a case of forgetting the heart or not paying attention to the illusions or whatever, it turns Erika into a third rate detective that might work for scandal magazines only.

[jjblue1]

It is "wrong" not because it is factually wrong but because it is morally "wrong". At least that's what you get from Ryuukishi's logic.
At the end of EP8 you must choose "Magic".
Do you choose "magic" because it's the correct answer? No it is cristal clear that that's the lie.
You must choose "Magic" because "it's the best way to live".

I wonder if the interpretation could have been slightly diferent.
For Ange, for Maria, having immaginary friends wasn't THE BEST way to live per se, it was merely that, since they believed they had no other options in such environment, they embellished their reality.
The best way for them would have been to go along with their relatives and have real friends but they don't believe this is possible. People might say Ange didn't try hard enough (it's debatable, Ange might have tried but then, after 12 years, she might have been forced to surrender) but Maria tried quite hard to get along with her mother.

Going back to the ending the message might be: when you are presented with a reality that's sad, unhappy or not of your taste you WANT to change it into a happy one, you might even go as far as to embellish it, to cover it with lies... or turn it over believing in magic.

Let's pretend for a moment Umineko original ending should have been Trick.

It's a sad, horrible ending that explain nothing and gives no positive vibes. All Ange has learnt is 'not to believe in others if you don't want them to kill you, actually kill you first'.

It's a sad message but if you consider how Battler wanted to believe in his family and the servants when one of them was the obvious culprit, it fits. If Battler had been more suspicious he might have guessed who was the culprit and stopped/killed him maybe saving his own life and the one of other family members.

However it's 'nice' how Battler wants to believe in his loved ones and protect them especially because as the story progress we grow affectionate to them. We would dislike if Erika had been right and the culprit was really Natsuhi and had killed for such reason.
However people might kill for the motive Erika gave. It doesn't look real in that situation but it's not unrealistic in general. It's just a bad reality.

Presented with all those bad reality we reject them. Come on, those can't be the truth. And so we decide that the magic ending must be the truth merely because it's 'BETTER'.
Ange somehow got rid of her bitterness, she found a way to get rid of the Sumadera, she restarted her life, she became a successful writer, she remained rich, she met again her brother... isn't that nicer? A miracle.

In the end of Umineko it's not Ange who makes the choice about which door to open. It's us.
While Ange, after seeing magic might be doubtful if magic exist or not, we know it doesn't.

Yet, after being presented with the trick ending we assume that the true one is the magic one and Ryukishi wanted us to chose that one but ultimately the choice was ours.

He didn't want to give Umineko a happy ending. Lambda and Bern said there wasn't a happy ending. We want it so we decide to delude ourself with the magic ending, like Maria, Ange and Beato did with their immaginary world.

He let us this possibility.
Though I admit I would have apprecciate more the trick ending if there wasn't Erika in it.
It made it as unbelievable as the good ending... unless it's supposed to mean Ange also got mad and started to see things... talk about BAD ENDING...

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Yet, after being presented with the trick ending we assume that the true one is the magic one and Ryukishi wanted us to chose that one but ultimately the choice was ours.

He didn't want to give Umineko a happy ending. Lambda and Bern said there wasn't a happy ending. We want it so we decide to delude ourself with the magic ending, like Maria, Ange and Beato did with their immaginary world.

He let us this possibility.
Though I admit I would have apprecciate more the trick ending if there wasn't Erika in it.
It made it as unbelievable as the good ending... unless it's supposed to mean Ange also got mad and started to see things... talk about BAD ENDING...

Well, it's the Trick ending, not the Truth ending. Truth wasn't one of the options. If you fall into the trap of thinking one of them is real, then ideas like "Ange was hallucinating Erika" start to pop out even though they don't make any sense.

In all of Umineko, nobody ever hallucinated anything, not even once.

I think that in the end, the reader is just being given a choice of whether they think something good or bad happened/is going to happen to Ange. It's about whether it's better to continue hoping for a happy truth in the face of overwhelming evidence, or to give up and fall into despair.

[jjblue1]

Well, it's the Trick ending, not the Truth ending. Truth wasn't one of the options.

We call it trick ending because that's the answer we've to give to Beato & Battler's question. Of course it can be a worldplay so if you chose the right answer you get tricked.

If you fall into the trap of thinking one of them is real, then ideas like "Ange was hallucinating Erika" start to pop out even though they don't make any sense.
In all of Umineko, nobody ever hallucinated anything, not even once.

I agree that Erika popping out of nowhere is a thing I would have preferred not to be included because it means Ange has gone insane (Her being a bit out of it however would be pretty normal after killing two people in cold blood) but it's not true in all Umineko people don't allucinate.

K That was really interesting right now. From the beginning of the depiction of magical events within the story, there were many scenes were golden butterflies appeared in front of the people. Latching on to Rosa’s back, Genji throwing a knife at one, I always thought that this was to show when something illusionary is depicted, but what would you say?

R It’s almost that meaning. To just come out and say it, there are no golden butterflies. When somebody starts seeing them, he is starting to go insane.

Since Ryukishi in the interview says that seeing golden butterflies isn't equal to lying about seeing golden butterflies but it's equal to going insane and therefore having hallucinations, people hallucinated in Umineko. Ange might have ended up having an hallucination of Erika instead than of golden butterflies...

I think that in the end, the reader is just being given a choice of whether they think something good or bad happened/is going to happen to Ange. It's about whether it's better to continue hoping for a happy truth in the face of overwhelming evidence, or to give up and fall into despair.

It's a way to view it. Hoping for a happy truth in face of the overwelming evidence might be viewed as believing magic or a miracle will turn your life for the better while chosing trick might means giving up on hope because fate is gonna trick us anyway (it's Yasu's feeling by the way).

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

I agree that Erika popping out of nowhere is a thing I would have preferred not to be included because it means Ange has gone insane (Her being a bit out of it however would be pretty normal after killing two people in cold blood) but it's not true in all Umineko people don't allucinate.

K That was really interesting right now. From the beginning of the depiction of magical events within the story, there were many scenes were golden butterflies appeared in front of the people. Latching on to Rosa’s back, Genji throwing a knife at one, I always thought that this was to show when something illusionary is depicted, but what would you say?

R It’s almost that meaning. To just come out and say it, there are no golden butterflies. When somebody starts seeing them, he is starting to go insane.

Since Ryukishi in the interview says that seeing golden butterflies isn't equal to lying about seeing golden butterflies but it's equal to going insane and therefore having hallucinations people hallucinated in Umineko. Ange might have ended up having an hallucination of Erika instead than of golden butterflies...

This is a bug in the translation. Ryuukishi basically said, "You're pretty much right. You'd have to be crazy to actually see golden butterflies floating around, so those scenes definitely didn't happen that way." (Paraphrased, since I don't have the original text.)

The alternative is to think that a bunch of people randomly started going crazy at incredibly convenient times, isn't it?

[jjblue1]

This is a bug in the translation. Ryuukishi basically said, "You're pretty much right. You'd have to be crazy to actually see golden butterflies floating around, so those scenes definitely didn't happen that way." (Paraphrased, since I don't have the original text.)

The alternative is to think that a bunch of people randomly started going crazy at incredibly convenient times, isn't it?

Since I didn't translate the interview myself I don't know if the translator made an error or not.

However, if you consider the situation they're in, it's pretty normal to go insane.
Personally if at the end of Ep 1 the cousins really started to hallucinate and see butterflies I would understand it. They've just found the corpses of 3 servants and, on top of it, Natsuhi had just been killed by, apparently, no one.
It's enough to make you insane.

[Sherringford]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think you're missing something important about that sentence:
"Umineko no Naku Koro ni is the worst kind of tale, created without any intention of letting all of you solve it."
The stress is made not on the whole last sentence, but on the part that there was never any definite intention to make every reader equal. And I think that ties in perfectly with your boxing metaphor. Nobody would try to fight against an oponent that is too strong for us...and I think Ryûkishi made this oponent so strong that only people who not only get the hints but also get him, the author, can solve it. And as none of us actually know him or his ideas that well some parts remains blurry.

For example the murders. He admitted that he based every murder on a famous literary example...each way of murder is a quote from somewhere else, but slightly changed to fit Umineko. And that raises the first question, what was changed, what wasn't and to which story does it refer to? We can assume he read Christie, Carr and Higashino because he mentioned them, but who else?!

I think he didn't intend to do this...I think he was just simply very blue eyed and thought that many people would get his quotes, because so many people in Japan are into mystery fiction. I read a fair number of mysteries both western and Japanese and I still have often no idea where he is drawing his inspiration from, because there are just too many parts in a huge number of novels that are similar.
I think even his story beyond Yasu (Port Pia Murder Case), the setting (And then there were none/Ecole de Paris Murder Case) or the fantasy (Burning Court/different Shimada Souji novels) is solvable...it's just that he probably went to referential that nobody is able to get it without guessing.

He just overestimated us and himself in many areas.

I don't think he mentioned Carr, did he? I kept waiting for the inevitable Carr reference since he used the same style(even if not on the same level) as him, but nothing.

Also on that note, I think he was inspired by Greene Murder Case by Van Dine at several points. The family/mansion setting is very similar, and...

Spoiler:

The solutions are rather similar as well, in both howdunnit and whydunnit. The criminal in greene murder case was a sheltered girl who normally would have no legal right to the family's fortune, loved mysteries/criminal cases and took her inspiration for her plan from them, did it all for love, and used the same trick as used in Natsuhi's room for at least one of the serial murders. It's pretty similar in my opinion.

I also think maybe he didn't overestimate us so much as underestimated the difference between individuals. He must have thought his mindset was the same as ours. Which...was a bit of a problem.

Slightly unrelated, but I remember reading a Stephen King interview some time ago where he admitted wanting to write a detective murder mystery that played with the conventions of the genre. I would very much like to see that.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

The main difference with the transition to Chiru was that BATTLER switched sides; instead of believing in fantasy meaning BATTLER's defeat, it became the story's primary moral message. And it's not as though fantasy disappeared from the fictions at that point, either.

The issue was not settled: Episode 5 was a demonstration of why approaching the problem with an entirely mystery-based approach was wrong. Ryuukishi's basically saying that the road to the truth is a proper combination of deduction (what the mystery elements tell us) and induction (what the fantasy elements tell us). Episode 6 used the magic/meta narrative to encourage us to induce the idea of personality death so that we can find the answer to Nanjo's death in episode 3.

Except episode 5 was not a mystery approach to the series, unless you think Erika is truly a good detective. She wasn't a conductor, she wasn't actually solving anything, and she wasn't investigating like a normal detective would.

Rather, the series was only treated like a mystery in episode 7 with Will, who was an actually good conductor. If he had appeared in the series a bit earlier, he could have been very useful in making the series better.

I hope you understand that not all mystery novels are simple logic puzzles. In He Who Whispers for example, you can't simply account for everything using cold logic. You must understand all characters, then you may apply the solution. Deductive reasoning is not all there is to solving a mystery.

Overall, here's my take on the issue:

Ryuukishi created a good plot on his mind. He thought it was a good one, and perhaps it was. Only we never actually saw the mystery the way he wanted us to see, because the mystery lacked an appropriate conductor. So instead what we got was a solution that we arrived at fairly easily, but that didn't quite feel rewarding because we arrived at it in a rather crude manner.

Shkanon was, like someone mentioned earlier, a segway. It's functional but really dude really? And more importantly, like a segway, it doesn't really solve anything. It works, you can fit it in the story, but...it's just sort of there. And it looks really silly. Neither the story nor the streets need a segway.

Aside from that, you can argue whether the story is or isn't solvable but I wont' even get near that point. I'll just say that the main story is unsatisfying. Umineko had a lot of potential, which is probably why it bugs me so much.

A Carr like story that challenges you to solve its impossible crimes and refuses to give an explanation sounds absolutely fun. But...a Carr like story that wants you to solve its impossible crimes, but then offers so many copies of famous stories that you are left not unsure of how the crime was possible, but rather which book he copied, is a bit too disappointing.

Overall, Ryuukishi miscalculated a few things. I think Umineko would have worked much better if he tried to launch a few standalone mystery novels first to gain experience and test fanbase reactions so he wouldn't change plans later because of his fanbase.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Debatable interpretation. A grammar nazi would point out how "anyone" would be a better word to use if that was the case. But anyway how do you interpret this then?

Actually, for haguruma's interpretation I think "without any intention of letting just anyone solve it" would be best. Also keep in mind that haguruma knows Japanese and is probably basing his interpretation on the original Japanese version of that sentence.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

At the time he wrote those things you interpret as warnings instead of teasings that you quoted there were ONLY the fictions for us to reason about.
Are you implying that he was warning us about something we couldn't even think about and then suddenly stopped at the very time we had a glimpse of that?
I don't buy it.

I wouldn't put it past him, but no, I wasn't implying that. I brought up the fantasy vs. mystery topic only to demonstrate that RK07 fucks with us in general and uses weird mechanisms in general, and that Umineko is unique and self-contradictory in general.

I guess I should have elaborated.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

It is "wrong" not because it is factually wrong but because it is morally "wrong". At least that's what you get from Ryuukishi's logic.

Natsuhi is not the culprit. Ergo factually wrong. Battler probably wasn't the culprit either, because the victims probably weren't even killed in the cousins room: After their (George, Maria, Rosa, Genji, Jessica, Krauss) deaths their corpses were never moved. Yet their corpses were missing when Erika finally got around to looking at them. The deaths were proclaimed in red, but that's only valid for 24:00 on the second day. So here's a theory: For some reason the supposed victims left the cousin's room of their own free will while Erika was checking the windows after hearing Battler's scream. Everything reported to Erika about corpses and death was a lie (meaning at least Rudolf, Kyrie, Hideyoshi, Eva, and Battler were in on it). They intended to frame Natsuhi for murder and thereby corner her into admitting Kinzo's death. Eva was aware of Erika's actions because she was cooperating in setting up the seals with her. Erika never investigated the corpses herself.

Anyway, this answer isn't even close to Erika's.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I don't think that's the problem. I never expected it to be a pure mystery, I never thought it was a pure mystery. I said that the story as whole wasn't a mystery even before EP8. But you know... that's no excuse to leave everything in the mist after you made your readers reason about it. Higurashi isn't a pure mystery either, but you can reason about it and everything is explainable and explained in the end.

I wasn't directing my comments at you in particular. And what I'm saying is that some parts are mystery and some parts aren't. In the first place all we were implicitly asked to reason about was the answers to the first 4 fictions. And not everything was left in the mist; episode 7 gave answers enough for episodes 1, 2, and (most of) 3. Episode 4 wasn't really explained, though.

Originally Posted by jjblue1

I've heard that interpretation and I've heard the opposite. Sounds like Ep 5 where 2 contrasting solutions were presented and neither truly won, though one sounded better than the other.

By the opposite do you mean sexually mutilated female raised as male?

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Ep 5 seemed a parody of the detective gender that ended with having the detective, not only making a mistake but hiding evidence (Erika knew about the red truth 'Kinzo is dead') to accuse further the culprit. This is not merely a case of forgetting the heart or not paying attention to the illusions or whatever, it turns Erika into a third rate detective that might work for scandal magazines only.

Yes, it was a parody. On one hand it was celebrating Knox through Dlanor, but on the other hand it was poking fun at the detective genre through Erika: The "detective authority" superpower is assumed in detective novels, yet patently unrealistic, thus creating a contradiction in the "realism" expected of detective novels. Further, no one in the world would go to the silly lengths that Erika did in order to create an answer based on pure deduction; Ryuukishi is telling us that crimes solvable by pure deduction are unnatural.

The red truth that Kinzo is dead wasn't used as a part of Erika's deductive argument that Natsuhi was the killer (in fact it was a liability). As a detective her biggest failure wasn't that, but the fact that she never inspected corpses (at least in episode 5).

Originally Posted by Sherringford

Except episode 5 was not a mystery approach to the series

I can agree with this, although I must say that it advertised itself as one.

Originally Posted by Sherringford

unless you think Erika is truly a good detective.

Erika "I have no interest in corpses" Furudo.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Sherringford

Slightly unrelated, but I remember reading a Stephen King interview some time ago where he admitted wanting to write a detective murder mystery that played with the conventions of the genre. I would very much like to see that.

Well, he seems to have already solved the mystery of who tried to have him run over.

And then murdered the guy who actually did it.

Then wrote a book about it where he blamed a magical guy.

Damn, Stephen King basically is the culprit of Umineko.

[jjblue1]

Except episode 5 was not a mystery approach to the series, unless you think Erika is truly a good detective. She wasn't a conductor, she wasn't actually solving anything, and she wasn't investigating like a normal detective would.

Rather, the series was only treated like a mystery in episode 7 with Will, who was an actually good conductor. If he had appeared in the series a bit earlier, he could have been very useful in making the series better.

Well, I think that Umineko gives up on the idea of having a good detective or else the good detective would have started solving mysteries starting from Ep 1.
Battler and Erika have more the role of the Watson instead than of the detective which makes kind of weird how later Battler solves the mystery, the epitaph, he is revealed to be the reader of tons of mystery books and so on.

I think Umineko might have worked better if it was a height parts mystery instead than 8 alternate versions of a mystery but this might be just me.

By the opposite do you mean sexually mutilated female raised as male?

Nope. Just that her injury prevented her to develop (growing breasts, having menstruations) and to have babies. Yasu was clearly raised as a female.

[FirstTwilight]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Well, I think that Umineko gives up on the idea of having a good detective or else the good detective would have started solving mysteries starting from Ep 1.
Battler and Erika have more the role of the Watson instead than of the detective which makes kind of weird how later Battler solves the mystery, the epitaph, he is revealed to be the reader of tons of mystery books and so on.

It does make sense actually, because you need love, you need to see more than just the clues to solve the mystery. I.e., ignoring the magic scenes only to dismiss them as "lol, bullshit" like Erika is the wrong way to do it.

To give a practical example, the fight between Beatrice and Shannon in Natsuhi room in ep 2 is a great clue toward the truth, dismissing it to look for where the culprit hide the murderer weapon is the wrong way to do it. I don't think Umineko needed a good detective during the questions arc, honestly.

[cronnoponno]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

that ended with having the detective, not only making a mistake but hiding evidence (Erika knew about the red truth 'Kinzo is dead') to accuse further the culprit. This is not merely a case of forgetting the heart or not paying attention to the illusions or whatever, it turns Erika into a third rate detective that might work for scandal magazines only.

Supernatural agencies must not be employed as a detective technique.
Being told on a Meta-plane of existence that someone is dead without your knowledge is supernatural.

Erika did suspect Kinzo was dead, but she couldn't prove it, and as Gaap tried to claim he was dead in red, Dlanor got pissed and said Battler had to prove it, and the only way he could was an asspull of golden text.

[jjblue1]

Supernatural agencies must not be employed as a detective technique.
Being told on a Meta-plane of existence that someone is dead without your knowledge is supernatural.

Erika did suspect Kinzo was dead, but she couldn't prove it, and as Gaap tried to claim he was dead in red, Dlanor got pissed and said Battler had to prove it, and the only way he could was an asspull of golden text.

True, however she could use Red Truth to confirm alibi and other things even if her seals weren't involved.

Erika: "And furthermore, while he was in the second floor corridor at 24:00, he then returned to the servant room to transfer the phone call for Natsuhi and was completely isolated."

Beato: "Which means that it was possible for Genji to commit the crime-"

Bern: "I'll say it in red. When Genji finished transferring the call, he immediately returned to the waiting room. That's just a cold, hard truth, without any evidence, proof, seals or alibis, got it?"

I think that using a red truth to confirm an alibi is using a supernatural agency as detective technique so I figure she could have said Kinzo is death and have Bern confirm it.

Also she used red truth to confirm Krauss' death when his status was just missing

".........Fool. I won't let you take that back, okay...? Here's what you get for being a quick-tempered moron. By the name of Bernkastel, Witch of Miracles, I speak with the red truth. Ushiromiya Krauss is not the culprit. And he was killed long ago, shortly after you heard his voice over the phone, get it?"

Since Kinzo is also missing why couldn't it use it for Kinzo?

The funny thing is that yes, Battler couldn't use the red truth to confirm Kinzo's death but he didn't actually had to prove it, he pulled out a golden truth and solved the matter.

[cronnoponno]

Perhaps Erika already knew what Bernkastel said in red on a personal level.

All of the victims were very much alive before I killed them!

AKA, she was there so she could say it in red, and since she's the detective, if she really was challenged with proving it, maybe she could?

[jjblue1]

Perhaps Erika already knew what Bernkastel said in red on a personal level.

All of the victims were very much alive before I killed them!

AKA, she was there so she could say it in red, and since she's the detective, if she really was challenged with proving it, maybe she could?

I'll reply with another quote from Umineko 5

".........Don't worry. I'll make a detective proclamation about this piece."
"Detective proclamation......?"
"I proclaim that Furudo Erika is the detective."
"The detective is not the culprit. No proof is needed to show this. ......In short, there is absolutely no need to suspect this girl. Even if she appears as a human piece from now on, you can theorize the same way as you always did, get it...?"

I guess Erika managed to be the culprit in Ep 6 because Bern didn't make a detective proclamation about her but that can't work in Ep 5.

[cronnoponno]

She doesn't have to be the culprit, she obviously snooped in on personal things like Natsuhi's diary, knowing of Krauss's death to make sure not much can go wrong with framing her wouldn't be beyond her. The detectives duty(I suppose don't quote me) is not to beat the shit out of the culprit mid-crime and end the mystery, it's to .....beat the shit out of his alibi at the end of the story.


The only problem is if that's considered fooling the reader, since she didn't tell us, which I would consider it to be, so I guess she still breaks a rule by this.


EDIT: Another action of people using red randomly because they had personal experience with it is Natsuhi, when saying she only ever told Shannon her favorite season.

Red= Able to be used if Ryu feels like he wants his characters to make an honest testimony?

[jjblue1]

She doesn't have to be the culprit, she obviously snooped in on personal things like Natsuhi's diary, knowing of Krauss's death to make sure not much can go wrong with framing her wouldn't be beyond her. The detectives duty(I suppose don't quote me) is not to beat the shit out of the culprit mid-crime and end the mystery, it's to .....beat the shit out of his alibi at the end of the story.


The only problem is if that's considered fooling the reader, since she didn't tell us, which I would consider it to be, so I guess she still breaks a rule by this.

Still, I'd like proof for Krauss' death but Erika works in strange ways...

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Since Kinzo is also missing why couldn't it use it for Kinzo?

The funny thing is that yes, Battler couldn't use the red truth to confirm Kinzo's death but he didn't actually had to prove it, he pulled out a golden truth and solved the matter.

This is just a theory now, but bear with me...
Now that I think about Blue and Red especially in this connection...isn't her ability to use this red pointing towards a rather simple but gruesome truth?
What we basically learned is that Red can only be used when something is known by the speaker to be unshakably true. This is how it would work if you think about it concerning what we learned in EP5. Natsuhi could speak Red because she knew that she did not tell aybody else...it's the god honest truth. This is why normally only Beato or other witches/demons with insight can use Red, because it needs knowledge of the situation (like Ronove/Genji could prove that Beatrice existed in Kuwadorian in 1968).
And nobody except Beato says "Kinzô is dead" because they either refuse to share that kowledge or just don't have it. Therefore the Golden Truth was necessary...because it is what sparked the whole dilemma in the first place. Everybody decided to believe that Kinzô is dead without the need of any proof!

There were people refusing to believe in Krauss' death so it could never become a Golden Truth...but somebody knew for a fact that he was dead. And this is the same person who beheaded 5 people in EP6 isn't it?
I know it doesn't help with the actual culprit, but it does refer to EP1 and explains Evas strong detective behaviour even though by now we have to assume she was working with the culprit. It would be all a ruse to distract from the fact that she was actually murdering...which is of course best covered by finding a fittig scapegoat.

[Wanderer]

Erika didn't prove Krauss's death and, because of that court's bullshit rules, she didn't need to. It was already after Krauss was removed as a suspect based on Natsuhi's refusal to blame him (which is illogical bullshit, but hey, it's what they did) when Bern red-texted his death to fuck with Natsuhi. So, yeah, technically not used as a detective technique.

But there's also the possibility that Dlanor could just choose not to draw her sword and let Erika violate Knox.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by haguruma

And nobody except Beato says "Kinzô is dead" because they either refuse to share that kowledge or just don't have it. Therefore the Golden Truth was necessary...because it is what sparked the whole dilemma in the first place. Everybody decided to believe that Kinzô is dead without the need of any proof!

Restating my theory, based on it's two uses, and mentions in Will's solutions that gold truth means either

Common sense to all observers, but can't be objectively proven for some reason (STRONGER than red truth, like the identity of Kinzo's corpse)
Something all observers just agree to lie about (WEAKER than red truth)

Furthermore, as a small point of order, part of the reason for Red Truth's existence is to provide those Word of God guarantees that the detective normally wouldnt be able to. Otherwise we'd have dozens of available master keys, cleverly hidden in the window sills and the like. Let us not forget that End's Court of Illusion sequence was essentially Erika proposing her solution against the length of the novel, but her only having read, say, the first half of the book, because she's an overconfident bitch.