[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru - Ep. 6 Dawn of the golden witch

[Dr. Akagi]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the whole Erika conundrum can be solved rather easily if we assume that Erika is not Bern’s piece, but instead she is her furniture (which is more or less the essence of what Renall is suggesting), i.e.:

- Erika has the same status as Beato’s furniture of the core arks (Virgilia, Gaap etc.);
- there is no such thing as piece-Erika and meta-Erika since under this assumption Erika is 100 % meta (or at least should be considered ‘meta’ for lack of better term in the same way as, say, Ronove is 100 % meta); this, however, does not stop Erika from visiting the game board if, and when, her master (Bern) sees fit (in the same way as Beato’s furniture is occasionally used as a stand-in (or, if you will, a “black box”) for what’s really happening in the core arks);
- the real piece-Erika (to whom the meta-Erika we know corresponds to [in the same way as Ronove corresponds to piece-Genji, Virgilia to piece-Kumasawa and Gaap to piece-Nanjo]) is the body of the dead girl floating somewhere in the Sea of Japan or wherever, meaning Erika shouldn’t in any way influence the head count for the human pieces on Rokkenjima.

2 things make “Erika” especially poisonous:

1) she herself seems unaware of her real status (i.e. she is acting as a piece (=human), at least in Ep5, but maybe she was intentionally created that way by Bern);
2) she doesn’t look like a “magic” creature at all (she’s no ass nee-chan for sure), which is why her antics are taken seriously by everyone except Battler.

And, of course, there is a lot of Erika in ep 5 and 6, which, for starters, means that there is no reliable POV in Ep 5 at all. That is a dirty trick indeed.

I don’t see any problems with this interpretation; of course we have to explain everything “Erika” did in Ep5 and 6 with someone or something else, but wasn’t that part of the proceedings all along since the “magic” stuff started to pop up in Ep 2? The killings attributed to her can be explained with the real culprit, her seal placement has already been satisfactorily explained by Renall, some other stuff she did can be explained with Erika ball etc. I mean it’s hard, but it can be done.

[ameskitty]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I think it was stated tons of times that the parlor scene was a replay, the one who sees it is Battler not Erika, and it is confirmed that Battler isn't the detective in EP5.

It's also been stated tons of times that Erika should have noticed or said something if Kanon and Shannon were the same person and were never seen together.

"In other words, the number of people in this parlor now is equal to the total number of people on this island." - if Erika was a person and, as the red text requires, in the parlor, she had to have seen both of them or noticed that one of them was missing. Why would the ruthless Witch of Truth ignore such an important detail? Especially if she could've prevented her own death with that detail?

[Jan-Poo]

@Akagi

The problem is that so far there has never been a red including pure furnitures in them. Even if we consider Kanon and Shannon furniture (which is on of the shkannon theory interpretation) there is still a physical body involved.

There are basically two conflicting facts

the first is the red that states that Erika increases the number of the people by one. This "somehow" can be solved if you claim that Erika is a dead body that drifted ashore to the island. (you need to use a dirty trick where the very same word can mean "every body dead or alive" in one instance and "living body" in another instance)

the second is the fact that Erika is said to do a lot of things in red, which a dead body could never do.

This leads to two conflicting interpretations:
1) Erika doesn't exist at all, she's a metacharacter that works as detective in the story
2) Erika is actually one of the existing pieces in the gameboard that metaerika is using.

The only way to make "sense" out of this is to say. Okay for what concerns this red Erika is dead corpse, and for what concerns this red Erika is just an metaexistent detective, and for what concerns this red she is person X, and for what concerns this red she is person Y.

I am not going to accept this. You need to make up your mind and tell me what Erika actually is when she is mentioned in red.

Also Akagi lately we've discussing about a problem with the assumption that Erika really doesn't exist. And what I'm trying to say that with such a perspective then the Erika piece can only be either Jessica or Genji.

Renal is telling me that there is no "Erika piece" outside the closed rooms at the time of the sealing, but that makes no sense, because in that case Erika couldn't do any of the actions she did later, the more blatantly obvious is fixing the chainlock.

However if a piece erika exists outside the closed rooms at the time of the sealing then that piece can only be Jessica or Genji. I hoped we could agree at least on that... but I guess it's asking too much.


@The rogue

That's correct, but it is actually Bern who is watching that scene, not Erika.
I don't like it that much, so maybe there is another explanation, but the theory that Erika doesn't exist requires to think Bern knows about that and she keep silent.
So it is possible to use the same logic to say Bern knows that Shannon and Kanon are the same person but she doesn't say anything to Erika. When Erika was in the parlor she didn't see both Shannon and Kanon and neither she saw the red about all the people being inside the parlor. Those are things that only Battler, Bern and Lambda have seen later.

As I said I don't really like it, because I don't see why Bern would keep secrets from Erika, but the two theories go even on that.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

At least it is still something you can tie with the real world. While a personality isn't something tangible, it is still something that can be "experienced" in the world. Not to mention that there is a flesh and blood body that can be called Kanon. "kanon" can actually be seen in the gameboard.
But what Renal is suggesting is something that can't be seen or touched or even perceived by anyone that isn't in the metaworld.

It's still wholly imaginary and can be described in red. Red can also be used to describe Meta-Beatrice's death which, I think we can all agree, has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot arc of whoever is "Beatrice" beyond origin and theme. So yes, red can describe a fictional construct just fine.

You made it long but this has a quite easy explanation. There is a timespan where Erika was totally alone. That's when she killed everyone. Before meeting with the rest in the guesthouse she might have placed the seal in the cousin's room window and the room next to it.

I think you are forgetting that everyone went according to Erika's plan, and therefore it's not like it was decided later where they would hole up. They simply agreed to Erika's suggestion.

That seems unreasonable. She put everyone in the rooms, confirmed everyone's locations, left, got the letter, and only then went and sealed everybody up? That leaves a huge hole. And nobody saw or heard her outside. Yeah, that's much more logical than Battler just permitting Dlanor to make an assurance of seal integrity which he agreed not to violate.

Dlanor is Erika's furniture, it works the same as with Maria and Sakutaro, or Ange and Mammon. In that case it's the person herself that is "lying" to herself. But Battler the GM cannot lie to Erika the detective. That wouldn't be fair. Again I'll have you to remind you how much Battler wanted this fight to be fair. It just doesn't make any sense that from one side he's pissed off at Bern because she doesn't let Erika use her authority and then he blatantly shows Erika fake scenes in front of her piece, even though that never happened to him when he was playing against Beatrice.

Dlanor is quite a delusion if Battler can see and swordfight her in the study in ep5. Erika's got quite an imagination.

That's why this kind of reasoning completely fails once you get to the chainlock.

1) We have a scene that confirms that the duct tape in this game is "no good"
2) Then we have a scene were Battler changes something in the game and that allow Erika to use a working duct tape to seal 3 rooms.

If it is, as you say, that Battler didn't really let Erika seal rooms with a real duct tape. Then he never changed the non working duct tape. The seals are just "imaginary", they are not physical objects.
But that reasoning can't possibly work with a chainlock. Erika could have not fixed it with an imaginary seal. Therefore the duct tape must exist and it must be the right one, else Battler could have simply detached it and reattached it after exiting.

Your logic is quite poor. The seals are no good for sealing external doors and windows because they won't stick well enough in the rain and whatnot. To "properly" seal a room, she needs to be able to seal everywhere, so if the tape isn't good enough for that it's no good at all.

The chain lock does not have this problem. It's not that hard to repair a chain with duct tape. It's not like Battler decreed tape isn't sticky at all. And it doesn't matter, because the room was one of the three Battler agreed she could choose to seal. So the room was verified sealed even if no physical act had been tkaen. You're right that Battler could have simply detached and reattached it were it not physical, but as GM he agreed that he would not do that. He merely thought that once the seal was broken it didn't count anymore; Erika noted she could re-seal the room and that she did so.

As to the tape itself, I don't know who really did that.

I think it was stated tons of times that the parlor scene was a replay, the one who sees it is Battler not Erika, and it is confirmed that Battler isn't the detective in EP5.

That's a lame dodge and you know it. The analogy is very relevant.

I don't think this explains how is it possible that everyone is in the same room, you have merely "explained" how it is not possible that Erika is outside.

Well that's a bit of a problem already then...

Now let me reiterate again my first point: In the neighboring room only "Shannon, Kumasawa, Hideyoshi, George, Nanjo" are inside at the time of the seal. There is absolutely no one else. I require you to explain my how this can be different if you disagree.

I don't disagree. Only those people are inside that room. I never said otherwise. Erika was in there, however, before the room was sealed. I'm just saying "Erika" could have been somebody else who was in the room and talked to Hideyoshi and left. Whoever it was wasn't one of those five people and wasn't in the room at the time it was sealed. No objections there.

As for the second point. I take it that you don't accept the obvious possibility that it goes without saying that "everyone else" doesn't include Erika by default.

I would accept that if it were in regular text, but it was in red. "Everyone else" means what it says. There's clearly a loophole, somehow, but I am instantly suspicious that Erika's position was not accounted for. It's possible Ryukishi merely forgot on the assumption that it would be self-evident where Erika was. But if Erika's existence is in question I think it's relevant to ask why we weren't ever given confirmation of where she was or if she was anywhere at all.

Let's say that you are right and that at the time of the sealing the only real persons that can be outside the two rooms and alive are Battler and KinzoKanon.

But here is where I have a problem Renal. If that was true there was no way for Erika to get the letter. There was no way for Erika to go to the guestroom, there was no way for Erika to check every place, there was no way for Erika to fix the chainlock. Are you telling me that all of that is also just imaginary? Even if later it is confirmed in red that a physical Erika entred the room?

Now before you say that "Erika" got out from the window in the neighboring room... If that was the case Battler would have known. Since according to your reconstruction "Erika" had to be closed in a sealed room, obviously a seal must be broken for her to go out. That would have allowed Battler to use 5 people to get out of his closed room. And how stupid would be for Erika to break her own seal?

No I guess you are stuck with ghost-erika to make this work. But that doesn't match with Erika killing 5 people and Erika's body entering the room later.

Please don't tell me something idiotic like: in some cases Erika is actually a piece Erika is controlling and in some other case she's just an imaginary detective with no physical body.

It's funny, you made up three arguments I didn't say and called them all idiotic. Normally we have some kinda back and forth about this sort of thing.

But to take this at face value: We need two people outside the sealed rooms, or we need one or more people to escape a sealed room without breaking a seal. I agree with you that breaking a seal wouldn't work. Or at least shouldn't work.

However, we can get a number of people outside the room with name tomfoolery. And if we accept that "Erika" had to be outside the rooms to seal them (which isn't necessarily true, as I noted, but since we did see Erika standing outside the rooms perhaps someone was indeed outside), that gives us a free person right away with no fuss. Otherwise we need someone who shares a name with someone who isn't where we think they are. There are lots of ways:

• Someone can be "Kinzo." The location of "Kinzo's" body was intentionally excluded from "everyone else," so Kinzo can be nowhere. EVIDENCE EXISTS: Battler proposed that Kinzo is a title in ep4.
• Someone can be "Battler." They would have to be in the "guest room" however. I don't know if this means they'd be forced to be in the same room as "our" Battler or not. EVIDENCE EXISTS: There was once another "Ushiromiya Battler."
• Someone can be "Kyrie," "Rosa," "Natushi," "Eva," or "Maria." In this case they aren't even in a sealed room so they can just leave. You'd have to explain why they didn't leave the room until the time of the sealing without meta-awareness, of course, but it is a possibility. EVIDENCE EXISTS: Kinzo objected to Rosa naming her daughter Maria. This might loosely suggest he valued the name for some other reason.

As to who killed everyone, why can't it have been Kanon? The rescue need not have been intentional, as Beatrice said. And Kanon was unquestionably the rescuer. The obvious inference Beatrice wanted us to make was:

Rescuer may not have intended to rescue.
Kanon was Rescuer.
Thus, Kanon may not have intended to rescue.

Why would he come into the room where Battler's "corpse" was if he wasn't intending to rescue Battler?

I guess we have read a different story, because I was under the impression that Battler was quite pissed at Bern because she didn't let Erika maintain her detective privileges, and one of the detective privileges is to have an objective perspective.

I get the sense it was more because he felt sorry for the way she was getting kicked around. The whole point of the ploy was to get Battler to feel sympathetic to Erika and let her seal rooms to force a Logic Error.

Again I must ask you if we really read the same story. It was quite apparently shown that this is a viable possibility. Erika asks Battler if he wants to take back the move he just made about the letter, and Battler for a while thinks about that.
This means that it is quite possible for the GM to go back on his moves. Of course since this was something that was already presented to the detective, Battler couldn't do that without letting Erika know, that's why Erika gives her permission.

He didn't actually take any move back.

The point is that you cannot show fake scenes to the detective.

So then you acknowledge that both Shannon and Kanon were in the parlor in ep5 and renounce Shkanon?

[ameskitty]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

@The rogue

That's correct, but it is actually Bern who is watching that scene, not Erika.
I don't like it that much, so maybe there is another explanation, but the theory that Erika doesn't exist requires to think Bern knows about that and she keep silent.
So it is possible to use the same logic to say Bern knows that Shannon and Kanon are the same person but she doesn't say anything to Erika. When Erika was in the parlor she didn't see both Shannon and Kanon and neither she saw the red about all the people being inside the parlor. Those are things that only Battler, Bern and Lambda have seen later.

As I said I don't really like it, because I don't see why Bern would keep secrets from Erika, but the two theories go even on that.

What I was trying to say was that Erika is in the parlor by the red if she exists, therefore no matter what Bern was saying she should've noticed the person count.

And yeah, Bern lying to Erika doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.

EDIT: Oh, wait, I think I get what you meant. Again, that still doesn't make too much sense to me - she still should've noticed that there are supposedly two teenage servants and one of them was missing at that time, regardless of knowledge of the red.

[Renall]

I don't know, being needlessly cruel to a person she's barely met and claims to be an ally of seems pretty Bern-esque to me.

[LyricalAura]

More summaries. Wherein: rooms are closed, opened, and re-closed, Lambda reveals hidden depths, and Erika is a psycho.

Spoiler for Chapter 15 summary:

Chapter 15: The Logic Error

Mansion, Entrance Hall, 2:34am (no change)
The entrance is locked, but Erika has a master key
She lifted one off of Krauss after he confiscated them from the servants
Erika and Dlanor decide to visit Battler’s guest room first
They go through the entrance hall and past the dining room

Beato: if Battler’s corpse is still present in the room, the letter will have been in vain, but it won’t incur any penalty
• But, it looks like Battler is planning to meet Erika head-on
Battler: there are times when a man can’t just back down
• He’ll figure out a way out afterward, like he did in Kinzo’s study in Episode 5
He advances a piece; Beato realizes it’s a move he won’t be able to take back

Dlanor: I have confirmed that the guest room is perfectly sealed. The closed room has been maintained ever since Lady Erika confirmed Battler’s presence.
• 客室の完全な封印を確認しマシタ。
• ヱリカ卿が戦人の存在を確認して以降、この密室は維持されていマス。
Erika throws open the door, but the light is off inside

Meta Tea Room
Rather than exposing the culprit, Erika intends to kill Meta Battler himself using a Logic Error
Erika proposes that they’ll need a fair judge of whether Battler really has a means of getting his corpse out of the locked room
In the case of the original Beatrice, Lambdadelta served that role, and determined that all of her red truth was valid
Lambda: I swear to render a fair judgment.
• ジャッジメントの公平を誓うわ。
She says she was fair in the previous game’s trial as well
Battler agrees to have her as a judge
She comes around to his side of the board and looks at his position
• Erika has perfectly read his moves
• Piece Battler is alive, and he’s the one who left the letter before hiding himself somewhere
• But, Battler also declared that the seal was maintained on the room
• He still has a few moves and chances to escape, but Erika’s planning to crush him inside the room
Lambda privately notes to Battler that the board looks like a game of poker to her, and that he has a horrifyingly bad hand that Erika’s already completely seen through
All he has is a bluff
Lambda: Battler really ought to resign at this point
• Since Battler and Beato are playing the game as chess, they shouldn’t use a poker-like move like waiting for a lucky change of cards
• In other words, Battler shouldn’t just hope he comes up with a good way out of the room in the middle of the fight

Erika says they’ll fight with time stopped as a means of protecting logic
• Battler and Erika can both withdraw old arguments and present new ones as much as they want, so long as there’s no contradiction with facts
She flips on the lights and and asks Dlanor to confirm the room’s status
Battler interrupts: Ushiromiya Battler is not on the bed.
• ベッドの上に、右代宮戦人は、いない。

Erika wants to present “Battler is alive and hiding somewhere inside the room” with blue truth
Battler: ineffective, you need to present a concrete location
Bern wonders if this is revenge for Kinzo’s study in the previous game

Erika: There is a possibility of a hiding place X that can’t be found. Since he’s hiding there, I won’t be able to find him.
• 発見不可能な隠し扉Ｘの可能性。
• その中に隠れているため、私には発見不能。
Battler: Knox’s 3rd Commandment. The existence of hidden passages is forbidden. …Wasn’t it?
Beato: Inside the guest room, no hiding places exist that cannot be found by Erika.
Dlanor: Knox’s 3rd Commandment is effective

Dlanor: the room consists of a bedroom and a bathroom
Dlanor: Excluding one place, no one’s body is inside the bedroom.
• 例外一ヶ所を除き、ベッドルームに誰の姿もありマセン。
Battler wants to know what they mean by that
Erika says she’ll keep it secret for the time being

Dlanor tells Erika she can hear water running from inside the bathroom, and there is also a bit of heat
Battler: the bathroom door is not locked
When Erika opens the door, there is a strange resistance, like something leaning against it
She pushes it open with all her strength, and gets a blast of boiling hot water from the shower

The shower nozzle has been rigged with wire to point directly at the door, which accounts for the pressure
• The knob is turned toward “hot” as far as possible, so as to spray anyone entering with boiling water, and is also fixed in place with wire
• Removing the wire won’t be possible without wire cutters
• There is a sheaf of wire and a pair of wire cutters submerged in the bathtub, which is overflowing
Erika protects herself with a blanket and manages to fish the wire cutters out with a brush
She cuts the wire and shuts off the shower

Erika: the trap wasn’t present the first time she searched the room, so it’s been proved that Battler was alive
Dlanor: No one’s body is inside the bathroom.
• バスルームに誰の姿もありマセン。
Erika: We have confirmed that, overlooking one place, Battler does not exist in the guest room.
• 例外一ヶ所を除いて、客室に戦人が存在しないことを確認しました。

Erika: You haven’t disappeared from this room. You just hid to create the illusion that you vanished from a locked room. The place you were hiding… is the one I haven’t checked yet, “the place I overlooked.”
• あなたはこの部屋から消失などしていません。
• 姿を隠し、あたかも密室から消え去ったかのように錯覚させただけです。
• 隠れた場所は、……私がまだ、調べていない、“例外一ヶ所”。
Erika: That “place I overlooked”… is here. The walk-in closet by the entrance!!
• その“例外一ヶ所”とは、………“ここ”。
• ……入口脇の、ウォークインクローゼットッ！！
Dlanor: There are no hiding places other than this one. Right now, you are hiding inside it!
• ここしか隠れる場所はありマセン。
• あなたは今、この中に隠れているのデス
Battler: already expected this move, since Erika used it in the previous game to corner Natsuhi and Kinzo

Erika warns Battler that she’ll checkmate him in two moves
Battler replies that she’s the one who will be mated in two
Battler: Ushiromiya Battler does not exist inside the guest room. …That’s including the closet, with no exceptions whatsoever.
• 右代宮戦人は、客室内に存在しない。
• ……クローゼットも含め、一切の例外なくだ。

Feather’s Library
Ange: Battler was hiding in the closet, and slipped out the door while Erika’s attention was taken up by the bathroom
Feather: it’s the same technique he used to free Kinzo in the previous game
• Draw the observer’s attention, and then vanish into the darkness

Meta Tea Room
Erika says she predicted that move
She declares a retroactive move, applying to the first moment after she broke the seal and entered the room
Erika: At that time, I immediately closed the door and reset the chain lock, sealing the room.
• あの時、私は、すぐに扉を閉め、チェーンロックを掛け直し、この部屋を封じました。
Battler objects: When the incident was discovered, the chain should have been cut by Gohda. So long as the chain lock is nonfunctional, it cannot be used to seal the room.
• 事件発覚時に、郷田がチェーンを切断したはずだ。
Bern: Overruled. Erika repaired the chain lock. Right?
• ヱリカは、チェーンロックを修復したのよ。
Lambda: Erika “sealed” the room by connecting the sections of the severed chain using her duct tape. In short, she used the seals to repair the chain, and used that to make the room a closed room again from the inside.
• ヱリカはね、そのガムテープで、切断されたチェーンの切断面両端を繋いで“封印”したの。
• つまり、封印によってチェーンを修復し、それによってこの部屋を内側から再び密室にしたってわ けね。
Lambda: The duct tape seals aren’t limited to a number of uses, right? It’s the number of rooms. The only limitation is the three room limit. Erika chose this guest room as one of those three. So in this room, she has the right to seal as many places and as many times as she wants.
• ガムテープの使用制限は回数じゃなかったでしょ？
• 部屋の数よ。
• ……３部屋までという、場所の制限だけ。
• ……ヱリカはその１部屋にこの客室を選んでるわ。
• だからヱリカは、この部屋に何ヶ所でも、そして何度でも、封印する権利を持つッ。

Erika: I declare that using the duct tape seals, the chain lock has been restored to its former utility. And, by means of that, I locked it at the moment I came in, making this guest room a closed room again from the inside.
• ガムテープの封印によって、チェーンロックが修復されて、元の機能に復帰していることを宣言し ます。
• そして、それにより、私は入室と同時に施錠を行ない、この客室を内側より再び密室としました。

Erika: Request: Right now, this chain lock is still locked.

Battler doesn’t dare refuse, because Erika will then use Battler as the culprit for all subsequent cases
Beato tries desperately to talk him out of repeating it
If Battler can figure out a way around the chain, he can checkmate Erika with this room, but if he can’t, then repeating her request will cause a logic error
Since both options are terrible, he decides to go with the one that will finish off Erika if it works
Lambda looks shocked:
• Sometimes a madman can risk death and obtain a miracle
• The difference between a hero and a madman is whether he wins or loses

Battler: The chain lock is still locked.
• チェーンロックは施錠を、維持している。
Erika demands an inspection to make sure a logic error hasn’t occurred

Lambda seems to be desperately hoping that Battler has something up his sleeve; he’s inherited the board from Beato, so he doesn’t dare blow it
She takes a close look at Battler’s proposed move
He somehow managed to come up with one at the last moment
Lambda pronounces it valid, to everyone’s shock
She praises him as the “witch who summons miracles”, compared to Bern’s “witch who holds miracles”
• Both she and Bern have lost, since they underestimated Battler completely
• Battler is no longer Bern’s piece; he’s completely surpassed her

Battler’s solution:
• The other five “victims” weren’t pronounced dead either, so they’re still able to move around
• Kyrie came to the door, and Battler let her in before leaving himself
• Kyrie reset the chain and then hid in the closet in Battler’s place

Dlanor: Ushiromiya Kyrie cannot save Battler.
• 右代宮霧江には、……戦人を救えマセン。

Lambda is shocked and demands to know why Dlanor’s being allowed to say that in red without basis
Bern says it’s effective, and that she’ll explain the basis in a moment
She asks Lambda if Battler’s logic holds with any other pieces
• Somehow it looks like Bern and Erika already know Battler’s solution
Lambda says there’s no need for it to be Kyrie; she offers Natsuhi and Eva

Dlanor: Ushiromiya Natsuhi cannot save Battler.
Dlanor: Ushiromiya Eva cannot save Battler.

Lambda panics, and throws out Rosa and Maria
Dlanor: He’s finished. Neither Rosa nor Maria can save him. …Finishedfinishedfinishedfinished, finishedfinishedfinishedfinished, Die the death! Sentence to death! Great equalizer is the death!
• 無駄ｄｅａｔｈ。
• 楼座にも真里亞にも救えないのデス。
• ……デスデスデスデスデス、
• デスデスデスデスデスデスッ、
• Ｄｉｅ　ｔｈｅ　ｄｅａｔｈ！
• Ｓｅｎｔｅｎｃｅ　ｔｏ　ｄｅａｔｈッ！
• Ｇｒｅａｔ　ｅｑｕａｌｉｚｅｒ　ｉｓ　ｔｈｅ　Ｄｅａｔｈッ！！

Bern: there are several exceptions to the rule that red can only be created with the detective’s authority
• In particular, there is one way that can only be used by someone who doesn’t have the authority
Lambda: if it’s what I’m thinking of, it’s valid
Battler suddenly catches on, with horror
Erika: Battler said it was okay to reclaim the detective’s authority at any time, but actually that’s already impossible; she deliberately threw it away to make this red available
Dlanor: Knox’s 7th Commandment. ......It is forbidden for the detective to be the culprit.
• ノックス第７条デス。………探偵が犯人であることを、禁ズ。

Erika: the only way to confirm an autopsy without detective’s authority is to kill the person yourself
That’s why she ran around the mansion quickly after the bodies were discovered
Erika: I properly re-killed them.
• しっかりと、殺し直したのですッ。
Bern: They were killed in various ways, but afterwards she completely severed all of the victims’ heads.
• 殺した全員の頭部を完全に切断したわ。
Erika says she avoided getting blood on herself by covering the bodies with a garbage bag and holding a carving knife through the bag
• She used different bags and knives for each person and left them in each room, to avoid getting blood on her clothes or the hallway floors
• Since the police will never come, there’s no problem leaving fingerprints on the bags
• She didn’t have time to cut off Battler’s head, so she sealed up the door instead
Erika: All five of the people I killed… were perfectly alive until the exact moment I killed them.
• 私が殺した５人全員は、……私が殺す瞬間まで、ちゃんと生きていました。
Until then, they were trying their best to play dead
Especially Maria, who didn’t realize that Rosa was being killed first in the same room as her

From the beginning, this was a story about a prank being played on the self-styled “great detective”
Someone proposed it, and several people went along with it
The rooms were chosen mostly for comfort purposes
The “victims” all went in and locked and chained their doors from the inside
It was Erika who came along and turned it into a real murder mystery

Gertrude and Cornelia: Ladies and Gentlemen, we humbly offer to state the following. Please know that neither of the seals is broken.
• 謹啓、謹んで申し上げる。@どちらも破られていないものと知り給え。
Gertrude: Please know that an unbroken seal is, in short, proof that it has prevented anyone from leaving thus far.
• 破られていない封印とは即ち、未だ何者の出入りも拒みたることの証と知り給え。
Cornelia: Though there is no need to say it at this point, please know that going in or out without breaking the seal is impossible!!
• 封印を破らずしての出入り、改めて言うに及ばず、不可能と知り奉れッ！！

Lambda says she’ll give Battler as much time as he needs to decide whether to admit a logic error or come up with a reconstruction
• But, he’ll have to spend that time in the room itself

Meta Guest Room
Erika: Battler needs to escape, obeying the rules he himself set
• This room is a locked room created from the inside.
o この部屋は内側から作られた密室です。
• The window seals are intact, so escaping through the window is impossible.
o 窓の封印は健在ですので、窓からの脱出はありません。
• Of course, there’s no way to escape from the bathroom either.
o バスルームからの脱出方法ももちろんない。
• …I’ll say it clearly. There is no exit you can escape from other than this door.
o ……はっきり断言しましょう。この扉以外に、脱出口はありません。
• But this door’s chain lock is set.
o しかしこの扉にはチェーンロックが掛かっています。
• You’re free to unset or reset it, but you can only do so from inside.
o 外すも掛け直すも自由ですが、それは内側からしか出来ません。
• And you’re even free to go out the door, but that doesn’t count as an escape unless the chain is set.
o そして、扉から出ることさえ自由ですが、チェーンロックが掛かっていない状態での退出は、脱出とはなりえま せん。

The wire and cutters for setting up the shower trap are lying the shower, although Battler can’t use them on the door
Bern: Battler can escape through the drain if he chops himself into little pieces first
• Once he’s down to just a hand, he can pull himself along a length of wire to slip out the door
Lambda: Soon it will be very quiet, so Battler’s thinking won’t be disturbed
• As a warning from someone who survived hell: treasure even this malicious abuse, because the warm memory of it will help keep you sane in the eternal silence
• So long as he hates Bern and Erika, he has a reason not to give up
• Giving up means confining yourself to an even more inescapable, eternal hell
Beato notices that Lambda called herself a survivor
Lambda says she still has nightmares about it; she sometimes wonders if she’s still there, and she’s gone mad and hallucinated everyone else

Lambda urges Battler to hold himself together
Beato promises him she’ll think of something and come to save him
Everyone suddenly disappears from the room, as if they were never there

Meta Tea Room
Bern and Erika already got bored and left
Beato begs Lambda to stay, saying that Battler will surely come up with some trick right away and restart the game
Lambda says that many witches have claimed that to her and Bern, but to her knowledge, those who succeeded are limited to her and Bern themselves
Beato demands to know why Lambda would help throw someone into the very hell she escaped
Lambda says it's to escape boredom, because when she gets bored, she starts to feel that terror closing in again
• By being on the side who pushes people into hell, she can reassure herself that she isn’t the one in hell

Beato swears that she will certainly save Battler
Lambda asks if she’s swearing that in front of the witch of certainty, and Beato says that she is
In acknowledgment of that and her own status as the former Beato’s guardian, she leaves Beato with a gift of “hope”
• The former Beato, the Endless Witch, was a great admirer of impossible crime detective novels
• She used those as a basis to assert the existence of witches, and caused several acts of magic to be recognized
• That was her first step on the path to becoming a witch
• She was an avid reader, and loved locked room mysteries; she was a great expert on impossible crimes
• By studying many locked room tricks, she eventually discovered the ultimate, fundamental trick behind them all, and used that as the core of a magical compendium
• Battler said earlier that the former Beatrice would definitely be able to come up with a trick in this situation
• Lambda will guarantee that on her name as the Witch of Certainty: the former Beato would certainly be able to tear this room open
Lambda takes her leave; since Beato swore to certainly succeed, she’ll just say “see you again soon”
Beato is left alone supporting Battler’s lifeless body, in a perfect reflection of the situation in the previous game

[Renall]

Man, that red about Battler's incompetence from ep2 has proven the most reliable one in the whole series. He could have easily avoided that entire problem. I'm a tinfoil-chewing moron and I could have gotten out of that.

He also probably should have required that Erika tell him what's she's doing as she does it instead of afterward. Whether you want to call it that or a "retroactive move," it's a pretty dumb thing to permit.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

Man, that red about Battler's incompetence from ep2 has proven the most reliable one in the whole series. He could have easily avoided that entire problem. I'm a tinfoil-chewing moron and I could have gotten out of that.

He also probably should have required that Erika tell him what's she's doing as she does it instead of afterward. Whether you want to call it that or a "retroactive move," it's a pretty dumb thing to permit.

I think she was just abusing the permission he gave earlier to retroactively seal things. Which was pretty stupid in and of itself, but by the time of the logic error there wasn't anything he could have done about it.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

I think she was just abusing the permission he gave earlier to retroactively seal things. Which was pretty stupid in and of itself, but by the time of the logic error there wasn't anything he could have done about it.

I refer more to killing people before going into the room where Battler was.

All he has to do is have every corpse vanish. To allow Erika to go back and say "Oh yeah before I came in I killed all of them" is a pretty amateurish mistake. Force her to enter at least one of the rooms. If she goes into a "victim's" room either have them vanish or let her get away with one murder, then have everyone else disappear. She can argue they're not really dead but she suspected as much anyway. Once you have people vanished you can accomplish anything. If she goes into Battler's room first, the solution he proposes works fine.

It's basically an insane risk for Battler that really isn't necessary.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

I refer more to killing people before going into the room where Battler was.

All he has to do is have every corpse vanish. To allow Erika to go back and say "Oh yeah before I came in I killed all of them" is a pretty amateurish mistake. Force her to enter at least one of the rooms. If she goes into a "victim's" room either have them vanish or let her get away with one murder, then have everyone else disappear. She can argue they're not really dead but she suspected as much anyway. Once you have people vanished you can accomplish anything. If she goes into Battler's room first, the solution he proposes works fine.

It's basically an insane risk for Battler that really isn't necessary.

The main problem there is that after Erika toured the crime scenes, when Lambda told Bern that all of the closed rooms were perfect, Bern replied that all of the murders were also perfect. I took that as a big hint that Erika really had committed the murders at that time, and she presented a fake or at least heavily edited account of her actions to Battler. Since she got the red truth of their deaths at that moment, there's no way Battler could have prevented her from announcing it.

It's pretty weird that Erika would have the right to present false scenes to the game master instead of the other way around. On the other hand, there's Knox 9 and Erika's lack of detective status to consider, so I think it might be technically legal (if horribly unfair) under the rules. We've just never had a situation where someone other than the game master was in control of a non-objective piece before.

It feels kind of like an object lesson in why the detective isn't allowed to be the culprit, actually.

[Renall]

Well, in theory if the detective were the culprit, he or she would be forced to objectively and temporally describe what was going on, including any killings.

Really, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense why this sort of thing was allowed at all. It feels, well, I hesitate to say it, but kind of like the lame trial setup in ep5. Too long-winded and contrived to get a shocking payoff in the meta-world even though by all rights it doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Marion]

Originally Posted by Renall

Man, that red about Battler's incompetence from ep2 has proven the most reliable one in the whole series. He could have easily avoided that entire problem. I'm a tinfoil-chewing moron and I could have gotten out of that.

He also probably should have required that Erika tell him what's she's doing as she does it instead of afterward. Whether you want to call it that or a "retroactive move," it's a pretty dumb thing to permit.

Yeah, basically the entire logic error because once again he got trolled. Even Dlanor said he was stupid to be so fatally fooled. Although I do feel bad about Erika to some extent, because even she knew she was just a pawn of Bern's struggling to live. Her situation is very much like Ange's, only she was aware from the beginning of her position, while Ange only learned about it. But I can't understand how people now hate Erika but a lot of them still favor Bern, who is waaaay worse than Erika.

Of course Erika participating in the killings majorly questions Knox #1 and how the definition of 'the start of the story' is defined. If it means "the start of every new game" then Erika is allowed to be the culprit of EP 6.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Marion

Yeah, basically the entire logic error because once again he got trolled. Even Dlanor said he was stupid to be so fatally fooled. Although I do feel bad about Erika to some extent, because even she knew she was just a pawn of Bern's struggling to live. Her situation is very much like Ange's, only she was aware from the beginning of her position, while Ange only learned about it. But I can't understand how people now hate Erika but a lot of them still favor Bern, who is waaaay worse than Erika.

Of course Erika participating in the killings majorly questions Knox #1 and how the definition of 'the start of the story' is defined. If it means "the start of every new game" then Erika is allowed to be the culprit of EP 6.

And there's a nice fat problem. On the basis of Knox 1, quoth Dlanor:
You cannot name a character who first appeared in the fifth game as the culprit!

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

And there's a nice fat problem. On the basis of Knox 1, quoth Dlanor:
You cannot name a character who first appeared in the fifth game as the culprit!

Wait, is that actually something Dlanor says? If so, then that's basically confirmation that Erika isn't real.

[Goldsmith]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

Wait, is that actually something Dlanor says? If so, then that's basically confirmation that Erika isn't real.

Not necessarily. Do we have a definition of what "the culprit" even means?

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Goldsmith

Not necessarily. Do we have a definition of what "the culprit" even means?

"A character who is responsible for any of the murders"?

This goes back the argument about the definition of a "corpse" earlier... by conventional logic, what a "culprit" is should be obvious. But then again, Umineko has never been shown to use conventional logic.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

"A character who is responsible for any of the murders"?

This goes back the argument about the definition of a "corpse" earlier... by conventional logic, what a "culprit" is should be obvious. But then again, Umineko has never been shown to use conventional logic.

In EP6, when Erika requested red that "Krauss, Rudolf, Hideyoshi, and Gohda are not the culprits" of the first twilight, Battler reworded it on the grounds that "culprit" was too vague and would limit his options too much. He actually had to restrict the request to mean only murders. So I think we can safely interpret Knox 7 to mean something like "The detective may not be knowingly responsible for any of the mysteries presented to her."

On the other hand, Natsuhi is not the culprit despite (probably) being behind the whole Kinzo thing. In that case it was clearly referring to a specific crime that definitely occurred though.

[Renall]

"Culprit" strikes me as being more general than "killer." A "culprit" doesn't have to kill, but they're somehow involved in the murders (presumably consciously). Still, it's not very well-defined.

Virgilia takes the time to note that Battler both "isn't the culprit" and that he "didn't kill anyone." Of course, that makes sense; it's possible to be the culprit without killing (a mastermind) and it's possible to be a killer without being the culprit (accident, self-defense).

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

So I think we can safely interpret Knox 7 to mean something like "The detective may not be knowingly responsible for any of the mysteries presented to her."

Originally Posted by Renall

it's possible to be a killer without being the culprit (accident, self-defense).

Erika neither causes an accident nor kills in self-defense... she knowingly decapitates people. I'd think that'd qualify her as a "culprit", which should be impossible under Knox 1.