[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

Actually, the way they talk about Beatrice in Ep1 is exactly the same way the cast talked about Oyashiro-sama in Higurashi.

She 'exists'. Note the quotations.

It's very possible that Beato is the Hanyuu to someone... Maria?

I would say Real Beatrice was someone like Rika rather than Hanyuu.

The game is of course solvable, with even many possible hypotheses....just that you don't buy most of them.

For example, a theory like"Renon killed Shannon on 4th Oct and imposed her, combined with pony theory as motive" could explain all events. It "solved" the game, but you never buy it.

I suppose my current hypothesis (CURRENT ONE, I have to emphasize as I revise it on a nearly daily basis) was close to "Answer", as it kind of fit the events in EP5 and solved EP1, 3 and 4, (with EP2 missing in details how the six were killed in the chapel) as well as motives and background. So far, I do not read any hard reasoning opposing my hypothesis.

That something which precluded the people from realizing it was the lack of imaginative power, preconceptions, shipments, and carelessness, etc.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by ijriims

I would say Real Beatrice was someone like Rika rather than Hanyuu.

"Beato" always refers to Meta-Beatrice.

[ijriims]

Then I would say Lambda to Beato was like Hanyuu to Rika (not their relationship was alike, I am referring the source of Beato's power was like Rika drawing power from Hanyuu) rather than Beato being Hanyuu herself.

[k//eternal]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

And Ryuukishi has said that people have succeeded in solving large parts of it, so you can't say that no one will solve it.
The few dozen active people on this thread don't represent everyone.

Even if the real answer were to turn up in these threads, I doubt most people would recognize it

While a lot of really crack theories turn up, I do think we've had some good ones, so you never know, right?

[Jan-Poo]

What bothers me the most is the epitaph, because he said that 98% of it has been solved. However most theories I have seen do not go further after finding the key. I think the ones that even try to explain the whole thing can be counted on the finger of a single hand. So wtf? Is there such a theory and no one ever heard of it? I've seen so many lame and incomplete theories coming from japanese forums and no one posted a complete and logic one?

Ryukishi in the novels said that once you understand what the village is everything becomes clear, it decribes it as a "snap snap, everything falls into place" effect.

So what's the problem here? How can someone have found that much and still not having received a general consensus?

[chounokoe]

I still don't understand where people suddenly got the idea of exploding characters and landslides. I don't know but shouldn't it be mentioned if the house or huge portions of land had been destroyed, even during a natural source like the typhoon. I still have the idea that there is a perfectly sane explanation for those characters dying.
We actually SAW them all dead in Episode 4, except Battler and Kanon who was missing again, someone must have killed at least Maria at this point, so there has to be a more rational way then to say 'After the game ended the bombs exploded'.

Today I actually wondered if not Episode 4 is the real mess-up during the Episodes (sorry by the way for the last post...I forgot to write a 'not' which was rather important) and the only Episode that went perfectly according to the plan of the culprit was Episode 3.
Assuming there is a culprit, whose aim it is to kill a certain person or group and wants to cover that up through the story of the golden witch. The problem is, there are always people like Battler who will question the supernatural, so for those we need an important safety line...that's a fake culprit.

In Episode 5 Natsuhi was framed, so why not also in Episode 1? It would explain why she was the only one to survive in the mansion and it could have been planned from the beginning to lure someone from the Guesthouse to the mansion.
In the end Natsuhi stood up against the mysterious blackmailer, confronted him in the mansion hall, but was killed.
In Episode 2 Rosa was the unexpected survivor, having been in the chapel with the parents and mysteriously without alibi for the crucial time. Later she reformed, after she learned that Maria wouldn't survive (or something like that) and betrayed the culprit, leading to her death.
In Episode 3 we know it was Eva who was used as a decoy, only she seemed to have played along, got the money (note how she copied the code on the door even though she pretended to have no idea what it is) and escaped with her life, but went insane.
In Episode 4 it would be perfectly following the chain of events if Kyrie was the woman to step into the role of the culprit. But she (being more rational than the former three) stood up against the culprit, leading to her death. The only thing she could submit to Battler were that he is dealing with someone who obviously seems to dislike his plans being destroyed so much, he is ready to do anything.

Following that logic we can actually say some things about the people who would be killed in Episode 5's aftermath, as Ryukishi said.
After the logic 'tear up those who are close' the only person who qualifies as the next victim is again Eva, creating the 2nd twilight.
In every Episode Kanon died of a chest wound, so if he were to turn up, he would again be 'gouge the chest and kill'.
Kinzo is proven dead, so if Erika survives, this is truth to the future-world, so his corpse can't turn up among the sacrifices. Therefore we need 4 others.
Battler cannot die among them because he is always the last on the island to die, even if someone else leaves (see Episode 3) and neither can Natsuhi, because she is the 'culprit'.
This leaves Rudolph, Kyrie, Kumasawa, Gohda, Nanjo and Shannon.
Rudolph, Kyrie and Shannon died as sacrifices in each Episode (even assuming Kyrie was a mess up in Episode 4, she would have to die again), this leaves one other person...this one I can't quite explain.

Of course this is only a theory so far, but it looks rather possible to me, even if it relies on a killer, either among the people not yet suspected or an outside killer, which is still hard to prove.
Well...we will see what Battler dishes.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by chounokoe

I still don't understand where people suddenly got the idea of exploding characters and landslides. I don't know but shouldn't it be mentioned if the house or huge portions of land had been destroyed, even during a natural source like the typhoon. I still have the idea that there is a perfectly sane explanation for those characters dying.

The reason why bomb or landslide was proposed since in EP4 it was stated in red texts that at the moment Battler was killed, he was the only human alive on Rokkenjima and no influence outside the island. So it must be something inanimate killing him.

If it was true in Ep4, then one had to think about whether the same thing happened in EP1-3 as well. In fact, in the scene of 1998 in EP4 (which should be future of EP3), Ange could not find the mansion at all, as well as in Ep1 only body pieces were found in the end. So it was valid to say the same disaster happened in at least EP1 and EP3 as well.

BTW, I do not know who the real culprit you are talking about. But it seemed that Natsuhi, Rosa, Eva and Kyrie are not the culprit in your theory.

I have to say obviously Natsuhi was not framed in EP1 at all. The fact she was killed and she was with the cousins most of the time already precluded her from being culprit. On the other hand, in Ep5, obviously someone was manipulating behind the scene to frame Natsuhi by ordering her to hide in the room where Hideyoshi was killed.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

Actually, the way they talk about Beatrice in Ep1 is exactly the same way the cast talked about Oyashiro-sama in Higurashi.

She 'exists'. Note the quotations.

It's very possible that Beato is the Hanyuu to someone... Maria?

Okay... Crazy theory time.

If Maria is this game's Rika and is taking some actions to try and hunt down the murderer herself, a lot of things get easier to explain. She's got a "dark" personality like Rika, frequently acts much older than her apparent age (such as when she's reading the letters from Beatrice), and has excessive knowledge about things that directly relate to the murders, like the magic circles. She also has strange reactions to certain events. For instance, in Episode 1 she spends a long time staring at the stake in Kinzo's corpse as if there's something very strange about that one specifically. (Side note: that stake is Mammon, the same one that the police found with no blood on it in Episode 4.)

Maria doesn't really have a lot of opportunity to act on her own since she's under almost constant supervision by multiple people, so any moves she makes against the murderer would have to be indirect most of the time. She's only consistently alone after she fights with her mother about the missing rose on October 4th. It may be that this happens consistently exactly because she discovered that it's a good way to get away from the others. She's also met with Kanon on at least one of these occasions, so there's an opportunity to get him (or someone else) alone and convince them to help her.

Whoever she gets as an ally during this period can act as her catspaw to hunt the murderer down. Given Maria's attitude toward death, we can even explain some secondary murders as her ordering her assistant to eliminate suspects. Kanon works especially well as a helper because he seems to actually believe in Beatrice, based on the kitchen scene in Episode 1, and might be especially easy to convince. He also keeps vanishing and dying under weird circumstances, which could be a result of him doing things on Maria's behalf.

Episode 4 in particular gets much easier to deal with because we don't have to jump through hoops to explain the multiple murderers, missing weapons, or Maria's poisoning. For instance, something like this could have happened:
1. The culprit commits the first twilight murders
2. Kanon kills Kumasawa and Gohda, and goes to wait for Maria at the chapel
3. The culprit kills Kanon
4. Maria goes to the chapel for her "test", finds Kanon dead, and takes his rifle (there is a clue that she knows how to use one from the Episode 2 endgame.)
5. Maria kills Kyrie
6. The culprit completes the ritual using some combination of Maria and Kanon's victims and some new ones
7. The culprit discards their weapon to hide among the survivors
8. Maria kills the remaining people
9. Maria throws away her rifle and commits suicide (possibly by overdosing on her mother's child-use sedatives)

Originally Posted by chounokoe

Following that logic we can actually say some things about the people who would be killed in Episode 5's aftermath, as Ryukishi said.
After the logic 'tear up those who are close' the only person who qualifies as the next victim is again Eva, creating the 2nd twilight.
In every Episode Kanon died of a chest wound, so if he were to turn up, he would again be 'gouge the chest and kill'.
Kinzo is proven dead, so if Erika survives, this is truth to the future-world, so his corpse can't turn up among the sacrifices. Therefore we need 4 others.
Battler cannot die among them because he is always the last on the island to die, even if someone else leaves (see Episode 3) and neither can Natsuhi, because she is the 'culprit'.
This leaves Rudolph, Kyrie, Kumasawa, Gohda, Nanjo and Shannon.
Rudolph, Kyrie and Shannon died as sacrifices in each Episode (even assuming Kyrie was a mess up in Episode 4, she would have to die again), this leaves one other person...this one I can't quite explain.

Even though Kinzo is dead, that doesn't mean his corpse won't turn up as one of the sacrifices. Most of the servants who know about the corpse are still alive, and so are most of the other adults who would be fooled by it, so I would actually expect it to show up like it did in Episode 1. Maybe it's even the other sacrifice for the second twilight, if we continue the theme of framing Natsuhi.

[Geekodot]

Ok, I want to raise a possibility here. Please tell me whether or not this is impossible and please give me decisive evidence of that fact.

Furudo Erika did not exist in the world up to this point, nor did she influence it.It is impossible for a human to be in the world and not influence it, furthermore it is impossible to appear just out of nowhere. I can therefore conclude that Furudo Erika does not exist in the real world.

Furudo Erika only increased the head count by one. Not counting her, the number of people on the island is exactly the same as in the preceding games.Furudo Erika increased the head count of characters in the meta world, but not the number of characters on Rokkenjima.

In short, it means that the number of people in this drawing room now is the number of all people on the island.And Furudo Erika is not one of the people in this drawing room.

This theory is backed up by the rule ofno more than 17 humans exist on the island during all games.

Furudo Erika is also declared to be the detective in the 5th game.The detective is however NOT present at Rokkenjima during the game, and the detective is just a role in the meta world.

In episode 5, Battler's perspective is not objetive, this is proved by him seeing Kinzo when he couldn't possibly exist.This allows for most or all of the scenes to be fake. Many of the scenes including Erika are obviously fake because they contain lots of magic elements, which further supports the hypothesis that Erika is not present.

There is also a theory that the fake scenes are only allowed to exist if someone lies about it or all the witnesses to the scene dies. If there were to be no survivors in the 5th game and Battler's view is not objective, then it is possible that everything that occurs on the island is fake except for the events proven to be real by red text.

This is just a thought I had, but I want to know if it is possible.

or when I think about it, I can discard the whole hypothesis myself


-Erika, Nanjo, and Gohda spent 1 o'clock in the morning to 3 o'clock in the morning in the lounge on the first floor of the guest house.

-After 24 o'clock, Erika was together with Nanjo all the way until 3 o'clock in the morning.

-Both your seals and the red truth are perfect. Nanjo has the alibi of having been together with Erika until 3 o'clock in the morning. And from 3 o'clock in the morning and on, he did not leave his room until morning.

It is still not impossible however, that someone else on the island among the characters we already know represents Erika in this game, and that would allow for Erika to be present with the red truth in these cases.

That is quite a stretch though xD

I think one thing is clear even with all this though...

Furudo Erika did not exist in the world up to this point, nor did she influence it. is impossible... unless there is some trick to her character.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

Furudo Erika did not exist in the world up to this point, nor did she influence it. is impossible... unless there is some trick to her character.

That's why it was a miracle, which was set up by the "witch of the miracle".

[Geekodot]

Originally Posted by ijriims

That's why it was a miracle, which was set up by the "witch of the miracle".

The red is always true.No matter the miracle, it is impossible for someone to simply appear in the real world.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

Ok, I want to raise a possibility here. Please tell me whether or not this is impossible and please give me decisive evidence of that fact.

Furudo Erika did not exist in the world up to this point, nor did she influence it.It is impossible for a human to be in the world and not influence it, furthermore it is impossible to appear just out of nowhere. I can therefore conclude that Furudo Erika does not exist in the real world.

Oh, wow. That would be magnificent bastardry even for Ryukishi. And I don't think I can refute it either.

Originally Posted by Geekodot

or when I think about it, I can discard the whole hypothesis myself


-Erika, Nanjo, and Gohda spent 1 o'clock in the morning to 3 o'clock in the morning in the lounge on the first floor of the guest house.

-After 24 o'clock, Erika was together with Nanjo all the way until 3 o'clock in the morning.

-Both your seals and the red truth are perfect. Nanjo has the alibi of having been together with Erika until 3 o'clock in the morning. And from 3 o'clock in the morning and on, he did not leave his room until morning.

It is possible that Erika "spent time with" Nanjo by watching him from the meta world. Meta characters can "exist" on Rokkenjima without being physically present on Rokkenjima. This also explains Erika's perfect observations of the lounge and Battler's room. Perfect observation is not possible in the real world.

Seals created by Erika are perfect because she didn't create any seals. If she did, they are meta artifacts only and cannot be interacted with by pieces.

At the stroke of midnight, Erika existed outside the mansion, but with my theory above that's already meaningless.

[ameskitty]

Originally Posted by chounokoe

I still don't understand where people suddenly got the idea of exploding characters and landslides. I don't know but shouldn't it be mentioned if the house or huge portions of land had been destroyed, even during a natural source like the typhoon. I still have the idea that there is a perfectly sane explanation for those characters dying.

At least in the case of exploded I think we're just referring to the state of the bodies, not necessarily how they died . I agree that there is a solution out there (for how everybody dies at midnight as long as they're in the main house area), but I'm baffled as to what could really be killing them without leaving something obvious behind. (nope, I definitely can't buy the landslide theory either :/)

I've always jokingly said small bombs, but that's not likely at all really XD.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

Ok, I want to raise a possibility here. Please tell me whether or not this is impossible and please give me decisive evidence of that fact.

Furudo Erika did not exist in the world up to this point, nor did she influence it.It is impossible for a human to be in the world and not influence it, furthermore it is impossible to appear just out of nowhere. I can therefore conclude that Furudo Erika does not exist in the real world.

Furudo Erika only increased the head count by one. Not counting her, the number of people on the island is exactly the same as in the preceding games.Furudo Erika increased the head count of characters in the meta world, but not the number of characters on Rokkenjima.

In short, it means that the number of people in this drawing room now is the number of all people on the island.And Furudo Erika is not one of the people in this drawing room.

This theory is backed up by the rule ofno more than 17 humans exist on the island during all games.

Furudo Erika is also declared to be the detective in the 5th game.The detective is however NOT present at Rokkenjima during the game, and the detective is just a role in the meta world.

In episode 5, Battler's perspective is not objetive, this is proved by him seeing Kinzo when he couldn't possibly exist.This allows for most or all of the scenes to be fake. Many of the scenes including Erika are obviously fake because they contain lots of magic elements, which further supports the hypothesis that Erika is not present.

There is also a theory that the fake scenes are only allowed to exist if someone lies about it or all the witnesses to the scene dies. If there were to be no survivors in the 5th game and Battler's view is not objective, then it is possible that everything that occurs on the island is fake except for the events proven to be real by red text.

This is just a thought I had, but I want to know if it is possible.

or when I think about it, I can discard the whole hypothesis myself


-Erika, Nanjo, and Gohda spent 1 o'clock in the morning to 3 o'clock in the morning in the lounge on the first floor of the guest house.

-After 24 o'clock, Erika was together with Nanjo all the way until 3 o'clock in the morning.

-Both your seals and the red truth are perfect. Nanjo has the alibi of having been together with Erika until 3 o'clock in the morning. And from 3 o'clock in the morning and on, he did not leave his room until morning.

It is still not impossible however, that someone else on the island among the characters we already know represents Erika in this game, and that would allow for Erika to be present with the red truth in these cases.

That is quite a stretch though xD

I think one thing is clear even with all this though...

Furudo Erika did not exist in the world up to this point, nor did she influence it. is impossible... unless there is some trick to her character.

I have thought about this myself, but if you assume that the gameboard is a real thing you'd get stucked in many points.
Let me show you the only way I can think of to make this work:

Furudo Erika cannot exist in the real world. I think you can agree until this point. Furudo Erika, however, can be in the gameboard. The gameboard is not the real world. The gameboard is a fictional world created by Beatrice, and by Lambda in Ep5

I've been stating this since a while but now I have even more reasons:

Originally Posted by Ryukishi

As the leader of the witch side, Battler will be forced to continue the serial murders. So he must carry out 13 murders using the game pieces. If he can create a crime that follows the rules of Beatrice's game board and is seen by Lambadelta and Bernkastel, they'll be able to confirm that he understands this world, and the game will be over.

So now Battler becomes a murderer... it doesn't matter if he makes other people do it, he'd still be guilty of mass murder. Does it really matter if it is not his kakera (so who cares?) or if they will revive in the end anyway (wasn't he very pissed at that in ep3?). An how exactly this is going to end? He kills 13 people among his relatives and the servants and then "woot, battler wins!" Enjoy your victory with the remaining 3-4 people!

I don't buy this. First I couldn't buy this because I couldn't believe that Beatrice Ronove and Kumasawa could be so indifferent toward human life, but now there is even Battler in the picture. The games are not real, the pieces are not real people, the murders are not real. They are exactly what they are called, they are games. Fictional reconstructions of the Rokkenjima serial murder case

And let me add this to clarify my point. Red is not tied to real world events. It is only tied to truths. I can say that Anakin Skywalker is Luke Skywalker's father. Red is effective but it is not a real fact.

[ijriims]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

The red is always true.No matter the miracle, it is impossible for someone to simply appear in the real world.

Just accept it as a paradox, since the presence of Erika in EP5 could not have affected EP1-4 anyway. As one can deduce the whodunit, howdunit, and whydunit from EP1-4 alone (from Ryukishi07's interview)

[Riza-chan]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

The games are not real, the pieces are not real people, the murders are not real. They are exactly what they are called, they are games. Fictional reconstructions of the Rokkenjima serial murder case

I kinda like your theory but only if that would be the case then after winning the game Battler would return to the real world where everybody was killed and so...no happy ending

[chronotrig]

The red line about Erika can also be written as: She does not exist in the worlds before this one, nor does she influence them.

If "worlds" in this sense just refers to location each game takes place in, there's no contradiction here. In other words, this could be the same as saying "she does not exist in or influence anything on Rokkenjima in EP1-4". When Rokkenjima is closed off by the typhoon, it's often referred to as a separate world.

[Geekodot]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

The red line about Erika can also be written as: She does not exist in the worlds before this one, nor does she influence them.

If "worlds" in this sense just refers to location each game takes place in, there's no contradiction here. In other words, this could be the same as saying "she does not exist in or influence anything on Rokkenjima in EP1-4". When Rokkenjima is closed off by the typhoon, it's often referred to as a separate world.

Btw Chronotrig, what do you translators do when something like this comes up? It can be read differently and have a completely different meaning right? xD

[ameskitty]

I don't see how there's a complete difference, because the "it" in "nor did she influence it" refers to "the world up to this point", right?

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

Btw Chronotrig, what do you translators do when something like this comes up? It can be read differently and have a completely different meaning right? xD

Well, in this case, I think we follow the intended meaning. But in general, yes, it's a serious pain ^^; And since some weird but plausible theories rely on a particular phrasing for certain lines, we actually have to think up those theories on our own before translating. Simple answer is there's no way to get everything, so it's almost guaranteed that we'll have to go back and change some lines once we know more about the answer.

By the way, here's how I see all this. Despite using several lines to confirm Erika's position, Lambda never says "There are now more people on the island at the start time" or whatever. My guess is that this is because Erika isn't on the island at the start time, but arrives shortly after. It (the number of people on the island) only increased by one person, Furudo Erika. Besides her, the number of people on this island is exactly the same as it was in the previous games. Neither of the two red texts about the number of people say "at the start time..." in them.