[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[DaBackpack]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Sorry but it's you who are wrong.

According to that logic (that Erika meant humans including dead bodies and Battler and Beato meant living persons) if you think shannon and kanon are two different persons then Erika should have been the 19th human, because Kinzo is also a human corpse.

If Erika arrived as a corpse then this logic doesn't work at all.

-if shkanon is true and Erika is a corpse you have 16 living persons alive and 18 humans (dead or alive)
-if shkanon is false and Erika is a corpse you have 17 living persons alive and 19 humans (dead or alive)
-if shkanon is true and Erika is alive you have 17 living persons and 18 humans (dead or alive)
-if shkanon is false and Erika is alive you have 18 living persons and 19 humans (dead or alive)

As you can see the logic you are using to explain the discrepancy between the two final reds only works in one case, and in that one case Erika must be alive.

I agree with the second to last one. In EP5, Lambdadelta says that Erika Furudo only increases it by one (referring to the count of people on the island). Plus I believe that Shkanon is true.

Originally Posted by Oliver

Fails. All they need to do is give the uninvolved servants a day off, give Jessica a ticket to Delsneyland or something for the weekend, and stick the body into the incinerator. On full power, nothing but ashes will be left soon, which can then be ceremoniously cast into the wind.

No body => no need to supervise it, everyone happy.

Well, you've got me there XD

[zRyuu]

Originally Posted by Oliver

Fails. All they need to do is give the uninvolved servants a day off, give Jessica a ticket to Delsneyland or something for the weekend, and stick the body into the incinerator. On full power, nothing but ashes will be left soon, which can then be ceremoniously cast into the wind.

No body => no need to supervise it, everyone happy.

I doubt Natsuhi'd throw Kinzo's body into the incinerator. Plus, they need the body, the siblings'd eventually find out that Kinzo was dead and ask what happened to his body.

[DaBackpack]

Originally Posted by zRyuu

I doubt Natsuhi'd throw Kinzo's body into the incinerator. Plus, they need the body, the siblings'd eventually find out that Kinzo was dead and ask what happened to his body.

Or they intended to make his death seem like an accident after the money was distributed.

But in retrospect, it could go either way.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

Well, you've got me there XD

Actually, I just thought of something regarding that corpse... Here's a chain:

1. Someone has to be digging up the corpse before the typhoon starts. This is evident because the corpse does get burned, and because after the typhoon started, digging it up and hauling it around becomes a very hard and risky effort.
2. So that someone has plans involving the corpse. If they're just after the ring (which has to be there with the corpse, otherwise it's just as much a liability) they don't need to haul the corpse out.
3. From then on, two possibilities appear the most prominent:
   1. They plan to burn the corpse.
      Then whoever digs it out has to be involved both with the Kinzo Phantom Conspiracy (so they know where it's buried) and with the Fake or Real First Twilight (so they know there will be a need for it). That's where speculation stops, because there's too little to step on.
      But there's another possibility!
   2. They plan to present the corpse as is.

Bringing up the old carcass can accomplish two useful things:

• It can trigger the extralegal procedures of inheritance distribution or the arbitrarily complicated Kinzo's Will just by being there.
• It can force Krauss to pay up immediately as the nuclear option. In that case, it also keeps the scandal in the family and indemnifies Krauss from future harassment by the siblings, since once they take his money, they automatically have to participate in the coverup.

Notice that both of these only make sense if no murders are expected to occur, fake or real. Now, who seems to want Krauss to pay up the most of the siblings and their spouses? My guess would be Kyrie, who has a mysterious boat ticket to Niijima in her pocket in Ep3.

Niijima is just the place to meet with a conspirator from the island.

Originally Posted by zRyuu

I doubt Natsuhi'd throw Kinzo's body into the incinerator. Plus, they need the body, the siblings'd eventually find out that Kinzo was dead and ask what happened to his body.

What body? "He went out for a walk and never came back. Probably fell off a cliff and was washed out into the ocean." Showing the body in any way is equivalent to death for Krauss, he'll never prove he didn't kill his father then.

[Leafsnail]

"He got attacked by a zombie. That's why he's so rotten."

[Renall]

I really don't like this "counter" ambiguity. I realize somebody has to be talking about something different, but I don't see how we can just automatically know, when instances where only the counter is referenced, which thing the counter is actually counting.

chrono proposes that in ep3 it's counting something it's never counted before, and certainly we can't prove it isn't, but how is Battler supposed to know that? Isn't Beatrice trying to help him figure things out? Feeding him bad information without a hint that lets him realize this instance counter differs from the one she gives him every other time is a bit, well not even a bit, it's completely at odds with her alleged objective.

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

"He got attacked by a zombie. That's why he's so rotten."

I wouldn't... well, you know.

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Renall

chrono proposes that in ep3 it's counting something it's never counted before, and certainly we can't prove it isn't, but how is Battler supposed to know that?

That's not really what I propose. I'm saying it's counting exactly what it shows: that list of names. Unfortunately, the concept of counters doesn't exist in English, so it's hard to make this argument understood, but it is a valid argument. A counter is just something you stick on the end of a number to say what sort of thing you're counting. It can be as vague as 'flat objects' or 'thin objects'. The only thing that is constant is that the counter always counts the number of objects mentioned before it. The counter itself doesn't tell you what it's counting, the noun it modifies does.

In EP3, the counter is counting the set of names that comes before it. It does not specify "personalities", "people", or "humans" in any way. It does not specify what sort of things the names refer to, just how many names there are. The trick is that Battler assumes that names only refer to human beings, when they don't in Umineko.

In other words, part of the reason this seems confusing is just the language barrier, not anything that's Ryuukishi's fault. Once we know the true answer, we'll probably go back and change it to something that works in English too.

But it's still a problem chrono.

As I told you already, if both parties talk about the same thing then the two reds are not compatible. The context can't be any different if what Battler and Beato said is to be related to what Erika said.

Otherwise they talk about different things. And then you can't be sure about what Battler and Beato were talking about.

It isn't a problem, it's a puzzle. Yes, the context is different between the two lines, and provably so. So, the puzzle is to figure out what context makes those two lines work.

However, it's the context that's different (the meaning of the word 人間), not the wording.

[UsagiTenpura]

Concerning Battler witnessing fantasy scenes.
In ep 1 it happens after midnight of the second day occurs.
In ep 2, it's close enough to it (I think it's 11:55 when Genji comes to get Battler)
In ep 3, Battler dies before the end.
In ep 4, everything happens in the first day, Battler sees Beatrice the moment midnight of the first day occurs. All of the second day is in Tea Party and contains Battler talking to Meta-Beatrice.

In short, the "rokkenjima explosion accident" (whatever it may be) is "the end of the board" - pieces that are still alive by then are shown whatever they want, since they're outside the gameboard by then, and logic rules don't have to be followed anymore.

... It just can't be coincidence that fantasy scenes from Battler's POV always occurs around midnight.

[DaBackpack]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Concerning Battler witnessing fantasy scenes.
In ep 1 it happens after midnight of the second day occurs.
In ep 2, it's close enough to it (I think it's 11:55 when Genji comes to get Battler)
In ep 3, Battler dies before the end.
In ep 4, everything happens in the first day, Battler sees Beatrice the moment midnight of the first day occurs. All of the second day is in Tea Party and contains Battler talking to Meta-Beatrice.

In short, the "rokkenjima explosion accident" (whatever it may be) is "the end of the board" - pieces that are still alive by then are shown whatever they want, since they're outside the gameboard by then, and logic rules don't have to be followed anymore.

... It just can't be coincidence that fantasy scenes from Battler's POV always occurs around midnight.

This is true, but it may not be a "reason" instead of something for the sake of the story. I'm not saying it's a coincidence (it's very intentional), but I don't think it's something that we should believe to be fact either.

Ryukishi (just like good authors in general) places things at crucial moments which stick to the readers as "fact" because they are our first impressions.
Remember the first time you saw the first scene of EP1? Kinzo was there. By placing this as the first part of Umineko, it is implanted in our minds that "Kinzo is alive and he's a friend of the doctor and he loves this Beatrice person." We know, with knowledge of EP4, that Kinzo is dead at the start of all games. This is a storytelling technique that is used, perhaps involuntarily, to disguise something that is meant to be hidden: deception (by distraction).

Shannon and Kanon are also shown in the same room in EP1, but not when Battler is around. However, because we have no reason to assume Shkanon is true (during our first read-through) we assume that they are two separate entities. If we assume Shkanon to be true, we know this is something done to give the readers a false impression of the actual circumstances.

What I'm getting at is that while midnight symbolizes the end of the gameboard (and possibly the end of the universe's logic), the events could just be something used with parallelism to give the impression that magic exists after 24:00.

Of course, there's a very good chance that you are right by saying that the end of the gameboard=end of Rokkenjima's reality, but I would rather first try to explain everything rationally.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Concerning Battler witnessing fantasy scenes.
In ep 1 it happens after midnight of the second day occurs.
In ep 2, it's close enough to it (I think it's 11:55 when Genji comes to get Battler)
In ep 3, Battler dies before the end.
In ep 4, everything happens in the first day, Battler sees Beatrice the moment midnight of the first day occurs. All of the second day is in Tea Party and contains Battler talking to Meta-Beatrice.

In short, the "rokkenjima explosion accident" (whatever it may be) is "the end of the board" - pieces that are still alive by then are shown whatever they want, since they're outside the gameboard by then, and logic rules don't have to be followed anymore.

... It just can't be coincidence that fantasy scenes from Battler's POV always occurs around midnight.

I've been calling this phenomenon "Reality degradation". And I don't think it's a coincidence.

[Linkin Battler]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I also think that Battler's theory isn't the right one.

The solution I thought at the time of EP3 was that Nanjo died before the start of the game and the "Nanjo" in the gameboard is another Nanjo.
I am not so sure about that however at this point.
The trick of using reds about homonym people not present in the gameboard is a very bad trick, even if it has never denied, unfortunately.

Another more recent interpretation is that Shannon and Kanon only died as furniture and therefore the original persona was still free to roam.


By human Beatrice you mean that Beatrice is a separate entity and that shannon and kanon are the same person?

There are several problems with that.

1) the first is the fact that in EP6 we see a monologue that strongly hints that Beatrice was created from a person that knew Battler very well. It is very hard to ignore that.

2) the second is the fact that Kanon, Shannon and Beatrice are suggested to be connected in the love trial. The love trial is one of the best argument you can use to support the shkanon theory, however the interpretation of the love trial in that sense makes Beatrice automatically another personality of the same host body. The whole explanation of "the magic can only be granted to a single couple" would decay, and you'd have to find another explanation in the case of Beatrice, losing one of the major arguments to support shkanon theory.
Additionally when Shannon wins it is said that kanon's soul and Beatrice's soul dissolve and gather in Shannon. it is also said that in case Beatrice won, Shannon and Kanon would dissolve and gather into Beatrice.
Only those three are mentioned, while Battler, George and Jessica are inexplicably left untouched. Inexplicably, unless it's only Beatrice, Kanon and Shannon who share a special connection.

3) Another major point of shkanon is that Battler has never seen both Shannon and Kanon at the same time. However Beatrice's presence is even more dubious. If she really exists as an individual person, why she almost never show herself and the only time she did, she did it in a very ambiguous manner?

Yes, especially the second point is very harsh, however I don't think that Beatrice is ShKanon third personality... I also created a theory involving ShKanontrice that can explain the major part of the game, but I personally dislike it at all, furthermore I find the ShKanontrice solution very ridiculous ._. I really hope that is not true, Ryu07 would really delude me ._.
As it regard the first point, pony theory, in this EP is also hinted that Shannon and Battler were really close six or more years ago.
As it regard the third point, to understand that you should read my theory, but I have to update it è_é If you wanna read my PoV in my sign you find the link to my post where I explain it, if you'd like to read that and do not understand something, feel free to ask.

P.S. I found one lol thing, has anyone noticed that in the new Opening after saying "shinjitsu wa gensou no naka ni himeee" it is said "Raaaaggioooo trooooll" that is the italian for "Troll ray" x°D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rhfVbdhRu8
1:32 - 1:35

[Racheya-sama]

The one thing I like to think with regards to Shkanon is how much it seems to be alluded to in the visual novels suggests that maybe it *isn't* that. We all know Ryukishi is a first class troll and think about Higurashi. In a lot of it, it was suggested that the Sonozaki's were the culprits or involved, but at the end we find that not to be true. Whereas characters that seem rather insignificant at first (Rika) later become the key to solving the story. I think that to solve Umineko, we need to get into Rukishi's mind while trying to solve it. I guess, in a way, I'm saying that we should turn the chessboard over XD (I only realised that after writing all that).

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Racheya-sama

The one thing I like to think with regards to Shkanon is how much it seems to be alluded to in the visual novels suggests that maybe it *isn't* that. We all know Ryukishi is a first class troll and think about Higurashi. In a lot of it, it was suggested that the Sonozaki's were the culprits or involved, but at the end we find that not to be true. Whereas characters that seem rather insignificant at first (Rika) later become the key to solving the story. I think that to solve Umineko, we need to get into Rukishi's mind while trying to solve it. I guess, in a way, I'm saying that we should turn the chessboard over XD (I only realised that after writing all that).

That's true. Completely trivial things that go unnoticed are often answers in his stories. For example to defeat rule Y in Higurashi and get rid of Takano's plan to put the emergency manual 34 into affect Rika has to be "dead" for 48 hours. The emergency manual was revealed in Minagoroshi to describe the Hinamizawa disaster, but I hadn't thought that Rika's death in Watanagashi and Meakashi might've proved the premise wrong until he told me it did in Matsuribayashi's staff room...

[Oliver]

The problem with chessboard thinking is not to turn the chessboard over.

It's when to stop.

[Leafsnail]

Am I the only one who, when hearing it initially, thought of flipping the board upside down and scattering the pieces everywhere?

[Oliver]

No, you aren't. There's actually a few comics that make fun of precisely that, too.

The way I was taught to do it back when I was a kid was to think for the opponent without actually changing the orientation of the board, so it took me a few more paragraphs before I got what she wants Battler to do.

[Judoh]

There are a couple of quotes that seem to go into this in one of his interviews

Originally Posted by Ryukishi

In EP3 Hidden Tea Party, I only saw her [Bern] urging Ange to jump off the building; I haven't seen her acting nice at all (smile)

R: Ordinarily, when coming up with the plot, you would want to make it so that "everyone is killed at once" [...] if the body was discovered then it would only attract more enemies. But to deliberately committing such attention-grabbing murders, this in itself must have a reason. The author keeps stating the murder methods in the EP3 TIPS for those victims whose death is unclear. That author must've been thinking about this: why is it necessary to commit murder according to the epitaph? The witch's letter has also said that as long as the epitaph is solved, then the killing would stop. It's supposed to be killing for the sake of killing, then why is there a possibility for interrupting the killings? Perhaps the existence of a magic named "Beatrice" has a method of 100% killing off the people on the island, but it stops at the 99.99% stage. Now Eva has survived. Why does the culprit (or culprits) automatically stopped at the 99.99% stage for something that can be accomplished with 100% certainty? Kyrie called that "pride". When you look at the three serial murders up to EP3, you can't even tell what the culprit is thinking. Perhaps it's like the Rule X, Y, Z in the Comiket booklet. Even Bernkastel doesn't understand the rules. Maybe the truth will be left in the dark. This is the time to turning the chessboard around. You might find something by thinking about "the reason behind the culprit's action"...

[Renall]

It's kind of funny that, at least so far, nobody has proposed "turning the chessboard over" to examine one's own motivations. It's equally as important to wonder what your opponent is thinking as to ponder what he might expect that you are thinking. There's no point in setting up a clever gambit in chess if your opponent would realize you're the sort to do it and thus not fall for it.

I'm sure Kyrie knows this. I wonder if Battler does.

[Linkin Battler]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

Am I the only one who, when hearing it initially, thought of flipping the board upside down and scattering the pieces everywhere?

No, you're not. ç_ç

[Leafsnail]

Originally Posted by Renall

It's kind of funny that, at least so far, nobody has proposed "turning the chessboard over" to examine one's own motivations. It's equally as important to wonder what your opponent is thinking as to ponder what he might expect that you are thinking. There's no point in setting up a clever gambit in chess if your opponent would realize you're the sort to do it and thus not fall for it.

I'm sure Kyrie knows this. I wonder if Battler does.

You get into a horrible Wine In Front of Me situation very quickly though.

Come to think of it, that's the main problem with turning the chessboard over in the first place... Battler gets it immediately in the first episode with "So if it made the servants the obvious culprits, why did they do it?".