[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

In a recent TIP translated by LyricalAura it seems to be implied that there has never been a knock in the first place.

Small point of order - I would argue all the necessary information regarding the knock happened during it's discussion in EP5. The Red literally precluded any of the 17 humans from being able to produce it.

I also think it was a huge hint towards the meaning behind Gold Truth (not that gold truth really came up all that much ... well, not in literal gold words, anyway)

[cronnoponno]

Or, maybe one of the servants knocked on a different door, close to their door. That way it still technically is a knocking sound, and people could hear it. It also gets around the ''x didn't knock thread'' I believe, since it's a different door.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by cronnoponno

Or, maybe one of the servants knocked on a different door, close to their door. That way it still technically is a knocking sound, and people could hear it. It also gets around the ''x didn't knock thread'' I believe, since it's a different door.

that cannot have been done by anyone inside the Mansion. Lambda specified the names of the people that were outside and those that were on the second floor and everyone else was in the dining room. And everyone in the dining room didn't knock. So if it was another door it could only have been the main door.


Let me change topic a bit. Considering that EP2 is pretty much solved I wanted to check out the last bit that wasn't addressed.

After Rosa and company go check Natsuhi's room they return to the parlor.

-It is specified that the parlor was a closed room from the time they left it to the time they returned.
-Rosa was in possession of all the master keys.
-Battler doesn't remember any letter on the table when they left.
-Once they returned Rosa went first and checked the room to see that nothing was out of the ordinary. She claimed that the letter wasn't there when she entered and she is sure that Maria didn't approach the table.

I can only conclude that the one who placed the letter was Rosa herself and she lied about everything, she played the part of the paranoid from the beginning, even after Shannon killed herself she was still at it.

I can't see any other explanation.

[Renall]

I assumed it was an excuse on Rosa's behalf to chase Battler off because she couldn't in good conscience just tell him to leave. Rosa is the sort who is willing to do bad things if she can justify them to herself, so fishing out a letter she had (and she quite possibly met "Beatrice" twice by that point in the episode, so it wouldn't be unthinkable) and then flipping out at Battler would do it.

The other possibility is she wanted to make sure he wasn't in on it, and the only way to do that was to change the script and gauge his reaction. She either wasn't satisfied or decided she couldn't be sure and had to get him to leave, but apparently she didn't think he was a threat.

[Jan-Poo]

Considering she definitely lied about the chapel's door, and that she lied about meeting Kinzo and that she didn't tell anything about her meeting with Beatrice the day before, and considering that now we can be practically certain that she even placed a letter on the table and lied about it... I don't think there are many reasons to doubt that she was following Beatrice's directions.


There are also very little reasons for her to suspect Battler since he's always been under her supervision since they met on the chapel.


My best guess is that Beatrice told her about the bomb explaining that the switch was set on "on" and the island would blow up at midnight. She probably promised her that she would turn the switch on "off" if she did was she ordered to. Rosa then probably agreed in order to save Maria's life.

Personally I think one should be pretty damn stupid to accept to become the accomplice of a total murdering psycho without any guarantee of survival. But Ryuukishi probably thinks it's a logical choice. "A mother can become a demon to save their children" is a recurring sentence of the first two episodes.
There's a chance that the same strategy was used to manipulate Natsuhi in Ep1.

This theory however requires to assume that Rosa didn't understood that Beatrice was Shannon, else she'd have no reason to keep the farce when she saw her body.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Personally I think one should be pretty damn stupid to accept to become the accomplice of a total murdering psycho without any guarantee of survival. But Ryuukishi probably thinks it's a logical choice. "A mother can become a demon to save their children" is a recurring sentence of the first two episodes.
There's a chance that the same strategy was used to manipulate Natsuhi in Ep1.

Well, that's the explanation if you see the events with love.
I'd be a little more cruel and say that it was about the gold. If it was just about her daughter, then Rosa wouldn't have gone back to the chapel to fetch the gold. She probably neither knew about the gold room nor the cash card, so this was her only option to gain enough profit in order to "buy back her husband". Therefore she also did not know about the location of the secret route to Kuwadorian and probably planned to escape there through the forest.
I say she only thought about Maria in the very end, when she knew it was too late.

It was practically a perfect scenario for Rosa, she could get rid of her siblings, was no longer burdend with being an Ushiromiya and could buy her life back.

This theory however requires to assume that Rosa didn't understood that Beatrice was Shannon, else she'd have no reason to keep the farce when she saw her body.

I'd say there are two possible explanations (though I find my second idea more likely):

1) She knew it was Shannon and panicked when she found her dead. She knew that there was now "absolutely no way to stop the explosion" (I doubt she knew about Genji's involvement).

2) She did not know Shannon was Beatrice, which is underlined by several events in the Episode. (a) Kyrie not actually recognizing the "guest" but saying that she seems somehow familiar, (b) her behaviour towards the servants which would have made a cooperation with the culprit rather difficult and (c) her question towards Maria while they are in the chapel about wether she knows where Beatrice is.

In both scenarios her behaviour in the parlour can be explained.
She searched for a way to get rid of Battle. That was because he would have suspected her if she was the one to suggest an escape without any apparent danger...it would have been an even bigger confession, because the real culprit was already dead (or in the 2nd scenario maybe left her to take the blame) and Battler would have very likely assumed that Rosa was behind everything. He also could have confessed to the police that there were murders before the explosion happened.

I also try to incorporate that especially EP1 and 2 are written by Yasu, who maybe conceptionalized the different roles with much more believable costums and acting than it was actually possible.
Going by how she is portrayed it's pretty much possible that she started believing all of it herself and she delusioned herself so far, that she believed that nobody would look past her little charade of being several people.

The only source of her being outside the catbox of Rokkenjima is Kanon attending the schoolfestival. Considering he always wore a long coat and was described as being very young (almost girlish)...I think it's not hard to imagine that this was only a favour for a good friend.
And Shannon was a "role" she pretty much played most of the time. There was no real differentation between her when she was not fully Shannon, her 6 years ago and her now. Nobody actually knew about her Beatrice persona(s).

[FirstTwilight]

I also try to incorporate that especially EP1 and 2 are written by Yasu, who maybe conceptionalized the different roles with much more believable costums and acting than it was actually possible.
Going by how she is portrayed it's pretty much possible that she started believing all of it herself and she delusioned herself so far, that she believed that nobody would look past her little charade of being several people.

I really don't think we should consider the "Yasu was delusional when she wrote the story" angle, the way Umineko was presented to us, it was like a normal story, so the things written in there are actually things that could happen on Rokkenjima.

And i really have hard times believing they wouldn't notice Beatrice is Shannon, one thing is not noticing Shkanon, but Beatrice is just Shannon with a wig in the end.

[Jan-Poo]

It was practically a perfect scenario for Rosa, she could get rid of her siblings, was no longer burdend with being an Ushiromiya and could buy her life back.

You make it way to easy. You need to have a good degree of shortsightedness to not see the huge risks and problems involved. Basically anything that happened to Eva would have happened to her supposing she would be the one to survive. Also EP3 shows that Rosa wasn't that greedy, she never cared about becoming the head, and she wasn't willing to kill for gold.

That's why the hypothesis that Rosa would go that far for gold is very remote. Especially with the lack of any guarantee that she wouldn't be killed or that she'd actually get the gold.

[FirstTwilight]

Maybe she was forced to become an accomplice only after the murders already happened, kinda like Hideyoshi in ep 1.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Yeah, I mentioned it a lot of times before even ep7 came out. Rosa was the "obvious" culprit/accomplice in ep2. The story purposely makes us dislike her in a lot of scenes and the evidence (in regards to her credibility) certainly incriminate her. But I always liked the probability that she was for the most part innocent and was actually playing the part of the detective.

An issue with Rosa culprit/conspirator is that after everything is done if she was really the only possible culprit left she would have just left the island. If Genji was part of the killings then did he get her before she could leave? If he didn't then who stopped her?

[cronnoponno]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

that cannot have been done by anyone inside the Mansion. Lambda specified the names of the people that were outside and those that were on the second floor and everyone else was in the dining room. And everyone in the dining room didn't knock. So if it was another door it could only have been the main door.

There are a few possibilities to get past the reds given by Lambda, for one, she never said in red that ''They heard a knocking sound at the 24:00 bell'', however she did say in red that ''No one misidentified a knocking sound''. This knock could be coincidental, Lambda only said that no one knocked on ''the'' door by any (all methods) means.

So, we can see it like this I believe:
After Rosa told Genji to make snacks(a stroke of luck), Genji did so, he then prepared the letter with Yasu to give to Battler, unfortunately this is related to the knock so I'll have to stop there, they could have used a hankerchief to keep their fingerprints off the letter, thus not touching it(stupid but effective), anyway. Genji grabbed the Fall tarot card, and knocked on Natsuhi's room, to ''check if she wanted any snacks'', a stroke of luck again, her door was unlocked and he went in to place the tarot card there. This knock(he knocks twice to completely confirm) was heard downstairs(can be possible), thus the illusion of a witch knocking on the door came to fruition. He then goes up to actually find Natsuhi, so he can assess the game-board better. I believe there are no problems with this, and the reds that Lambda gave out can be worked around(stupidly, but still can). Only problem being the letter. Keep in mind that Gertrude said in red that It was impossible for anyone outside the mansion to have influenced anything inside the mansion around the time of the family conference. The knock had happened when they were ''taking a break and chatting with Kanon and Shannon'', thus the conference was technically not taking place.

This is a stretch here, but ''Krauss Natsuhi and Genji were not involved with the knock!'' does not refer to which knock, she could be talking about a knock that happened earlier, such as the knock with Yasu when she comes in to serve tea(EDIT: To further strengthen this, she said ''The'' knock, when the knock in question was actually two sequences of a knock that a servant would typically do). The bell rang a bit after the knock, by the way, not much after, but just a little bit before it. Genji could possibly have caught up with them before the bell rang. There are a few holes in this, but with a bit more thought I could probably think up multiple variations of this, not trying to make a correct theory here(almost positive this is wrong), I just want to try to point out that the riddle of the knock seems solvable, without a ''It was a delusion'' conclusion.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

I really don't think we should consider the "Yasu was delusional when she wrote the story" angle, the way Umineko was presented to us, it was like a normal story, so the things written in there are actually things that could happen on Rokkenjima.

I wouldn't actually call Yasu as an author delusional, but I would say that some things might have been exegarated to a point where things become easier to believe...as a way to ease us into believing magical scenes or events which have been altered.
And to a certain point Yasu is maybe not delusional, but psychologically unstable enough to have an inner battle which could actually end with her killing a person that she loves at the same time

And i really have hard times believing they wouldn't notice Beatrice is Shannon, one thing is not noticing Shkanon, but Beatrice is just Shannon with a wig in the end.

Ah well, Ryûkishi himself implied that she has fake breasts as Shannon, the outfit is different, she probably wears a wig in one of those roles, maybe she even has different make up. I think from a distance it would be pretty easy to confuse such a person. Maybe not for Natsuhi, Jessica or the servants who have constant contact with her...but we never saw those people meet with the "island Beatrice".

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

You make it way to easy. You need to have a good degree of shortsightedness to not see the huge risks and problems involved. Basically anything that happened to Eva would have happened to her supposing she would be the one to survive.

What exactly are you implying by "anything that happened to Eva would have happened to her"? Her reactions on the island are pretty different, because she's a whole other type of character compared to Eva. And she never found the gold, so there was never any way for her to actively kill the others out of greed. I'm just saying that she would probably go along with a plan which would benefit her.

Also EP3 shows that Rosa wasn't that greedy, she never cared about becoming the head, and she wasn't willing to kill for gold.

No, yes and maybe.
Maybe she wasn't greedy but she searched for a way to get into money for all that time because she hoped, if she just could repay her husbands debts, maybe it would all get back to normal. Money had a definite value for her and she would clearly be bribable, as is shown when she was ready to lie for Eva as long as she got her money in EP3 and would have helped cover up the killings for money in EP7.
You are right when you say she never cared about the headship. Actually she never cared about anything concerning the family in the first place I think. She was still in there because she was hoping for money, but apart from that she had no attachements to her siblings or their families.
She was not willing to kill for gold, but she was pretty much okay with going along with murder as long as she benefited from the situation.

I think you assume that Rosa has to be a killer in order to be an accomplice, but I think it's sufficient if she's ready to lie and cover for a possible murder. I think her behaviour in EP2, 3 and 7 sufficiently proves that she is able to do that.

Along with that comes her submerged guilt for "killing Beatrice" back in 1967. If somebody who looked similar to her showed up in front of her and dropped the names Beatrice and Kuwadorian, I think she would be confused enough to be cotrollable. It becomes pretty clear even during EP2 that she is heavily suffering because of the trauma she received that day.
And yes, at least Kinzô said that Yasu was the spitting image of her mother (which would be the woman who Rosa met and watched fall to her death).

[cronnoponno]

I still like my idea that Yasu looks like Kanon physically, this allows him to dress up as virtually any female, the short hair would make it easy as hell to wear wigs. Also, Kanon has got to be as tall as Shannon, right?

It would also explain why Kanon is sometimes given physical recognition in some scenes, if you can differentiate between who is the one in disguise and who is the delusion, does anything change? Like, if they can notice Kanon, do they notice Shannon? Vice-Versa.

Doesn't have to mean that Kanon has a penis or anything, but still, Kanon would probably be the only one who we know who can pull off dressing like a girl.

Rosa also has some serious things about her, like the tea she brings in the first episode and hands to Kumasawa. Tea? More like POISON THAT KNOCKS EVERYONE OUT SO THEY CAN BE MOVED TO A DEEP CELLAR. I think she makes good culprit/accompolice material.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by haguruma

What exactly are you implying by "anything that happened to Eva would have happened to her"? Her reactions on the island are pretty different, because she's a whole other type of character compared to Eva. And she never found the gold, so there was never any way for her to actively kill the others out of greed. I'm just saying that she would probably go along with a plan which would benefit her.

Being marked for life as a mass murderer and universally considered as such even without proofs is far from being an ideal situation. In her case, if she was an accomplice, it wouldn't even be that far from the truth.

There's no point in letting someone else do the dirty work if then every guilt will be directed at you anyway. What's important it's not who physically performs the crime, but who gets the blame in the end.

Suppose that Beatrice didn't tell her about the bomb. Then how the hell Rosa thought she could get away with it?

Now suppose Beatrice did tell her about the bomb. That means all the gold would be gone forever, she'd hardly like such a plan. She knows that all of her siblings are in a fucked up economic situation, she doesn't have much to inherit apart a lot of trouble.
You'd need to think that Beatrice gave her the bank account card too in order to make her look at the situation as profitable.

Even then I think it was explained quite extensively how many things could go wrong in such situation. The bomb might be a lie, the bank account might be empty. Beatrice clearly showed a will to kill everyone why she'd want to save Rosa in particular? The probability that she's just going to use her is 99% to 1% and in fact...

At any rate if Beatrice told her about the bomb and if Rosa didn't want to become the scapegoat of a mass murder crime, she'd need to wish that bomb would actually explode. But then she'd die herself if she couldn't escape somehow, and quite apparently Beatrice didn't tell her how.

Do you understand now why this is far from being an ideal situation?

Originally Posted by haguruma

She was not willing to kill for gold, but she was pretty much okay with going along with murder as long as she benefited from the situation.

Why you think so? She kept feeling guilty for Beatrice's death for a whole life even though she didn't actually killed her. Why you think she'd be fine by being the accomplice of an assassin? And an assassin of her family no less not a perfect stranger.

It seems clear to me that Rosa has a conscience, and she wouldn't really feel content and at peace after taking part on the slaughter of her whole family.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Do you understand now why this is far from being an ideal situation?

Ah, sorry. So your problem is with the "ideal situation"?! Sorry, I got that wrong.
I meant ideal situation more in a sense of: It is the ideal situation for Rosa to get rid of her idiot family and get at least enough money out of it to buy her life back.

It's not an ideal situation in any way, of course, but it was made clear that people tend to loose their common sense in situations concerning money and power. I think everyone in the family was portrayed as willing to take that risk for the right money.

It seems clear to me that Rosa has a conscience, and she wouldn't really feel content and at peace after taking part on the slaughter of her whole family.

If you see her with love, yes. But that is something that could fit to everyone. Eva was portrayed as both, being able to go along with murder for money and to feel guilt about what happened. I think it doesn't apply to see this only in the two dimensions of "having a conscience" and "not having a conscience".

She was portrayed again and again as being very unwilling to actually perform a murder. She didn't shoot Eva in EP3 even though she had the chance, her first reaction in the dining room in EP4 was to hide...
But she has no problem with leaving other people to die, extorting others for her own benefit. She also hates it to loose control of her life, which is pretty much shown in her behaviour towards Maria.

I also don't think she would have been at peace after taking part in a mass murder...but I think neither would have Kyrie, Eva, George or any of the others. But the truth is, somebody probably did go along with a mass murder plot or at least performed one.

[Jan-Poo]

But she has no problem with leaving other people to die

I think there is a big difference between valuing your own life over the others and letting a killer do his job or even help him!

For what concerns the law being the accomplice of a murder is just a step below from being the actual murderer. It's a serious crime.

On the other hand running for your (own) life when a psycho with a gun is shooting at random isn't even a minor infraction.


Generally speaking when it comes to "save your own life" most crimes are condoned ore they are greatly lowered in culpability. Think for example about the concept of "legitimate defense". So you can't really lump this together with a general "for your own gain", it's a completely separate thing.

Which is why I think it's more probable that Rosa would do all that to save her life rather than to become rich.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Generally speaking when it comes to "save your own life" most crimes are condoned ore they are greatly lowered in culpability. Think for example about the concept of "legitimate defense". So you can't really lump this together with a general "for your own gain", it's a completely separate thing.

There is a difference in both severity and how they are handled by the law, yes. But it is a completely different thing when it comes to how people act. You can't draw a definite line between those acts and say "somebody who kills ins legitimate defense" is a good person and is completely different from somebody who would kill "for his own gain". In the end it's like drawing random lines, but your left with the events that happen in the junction between those.

It's like what Kyrie said to Eva in the Harawata scene in EP7.
「いいえ。成り損ねただけの、立派な殺人鬼よ。絵羽姉さんは、暴発に救われただけ。・・・・・・あの幸運が なければ、そして私があなたより先に実行に移さなければ。・・・・・・あなたが私の役をやっていた。それだ けは、あなたがいくら否定しようとも変わらない、異なる未来の、真実なのよ。」
It's not only about being able to do something, it's also about getting the chance and using the chance. If there is no need to become a murderer, why should somebody become one? Though on the other hand, the terrible truth of Rokkenjima is everybody is able to murder.

Which is why I think it's more probable that Rosa would do all that to save her life rather than to become rich.

I never insinuated that she wanted to become rich. But it was made clear that she was in desperate need of money. Her company was being taken from her hands because of her financial situation and she has the feeling that her husband left her, because she couldn't provide money. She is under the illusion that money could make her life better. She is not doing any of that to become rich, but to regain power over her own happiness.
Every killer in the story did it not because of their thirst for wealth, but their thirst for a certain kind of power.

[Kealym]

Sorry, but I wanted to comment on an earlier bit of talk about Shannon's "Beatrice disguise".

Why do people INSIST on assuming that Shannon literally walked up to people in a damn wig and victorian ballgown? There is absolutely NO need for a "Beatrice costume", AT ALL, and outside of maybe Shkanon shenanigans, there's absolutely no need for characters to be mistaking any other humans identity by sight.

I mean, really. Also, Beatrice is hardly just "Shannon in a wig", that's just one conceptual cog in the Beato trolling machine. <_<

[AuraTwilight]

Because we know that at the very least, BATTLER saw Shannon in a full-on Beatrice costume, and back when she had the Claire design, servants reported seeing a 'white ghost' running around the mansion and staring at them from windows. We can say extremely confidently that when she's Beatrice, Shannon dresses up.

Oh, also, EP7 Tea Party. That too.

[Jan-Poo]

servants reported seeing a 'white ghost' running around the mansion and staring at them from windows

And she removed her fake boobs when she did that.