Since this is supposed to be about arc1 I’ll deal with an arc1 issue right away. In a way many of them.
First of all to believe that Yasu could have 5 clean shots that takes out all of the adults on her own is a ridiculous fiction. No one is that good with guns. The plausibility of the murders was never really dwelved into. The only thing ever being debated is the closed rooms. A closed room debate rather then the plausibility of the act of murder debate is exactly the kind of thing that fits within the mystery genre. Even in our confession the entire part about how Yasu manages to take out all the adults is left entirely blank. “She somehow does it”. That’s not something I can easily accept.
Second I’m going to talk about noise. Sure, ST could’ve potentially be done with a handgun with a silencer, but a gun powerful enough to blow up people’s head is not something that would’ve gone unheard within the same mansion (referring to T6-7-8). It doesn’t leave that the ST is still unlikely as they were both clean shots in the center of the forehead. That’s the kind of things that only occurs in fiction.
Third for now I’ll go back to the supposed official solution at least as far as I read. I may be wrong there btw, so feel free to correct me on this part alone, tho I’ll also attack it from the position I’m wrong after.
Supposedly Yasu convinced Eva and Hideyoshi that the first twilights were fake and that’s how they got them to play around. Are we supposed to believe that Battler’s pov is reliable while the pov of especially Hideyoshi who was right next to the corpses and observed them for far longer is not, that he somehow can’t tell if a body he’s been observing for a while is breathing at all (or a real body altogether). Let’s not forget that Battler says the two following things : he comments on their “makeup” and he also says that he can’t see “their faces”. This is the kind of thing that can easily go under the radar but has no reason to. I may as well add that in the T6-7-8 he comments that the victims look like their face has fallen into a tomato pie or something like that. If you want “clues” that this could all be fake, you have them within the narration’s own use of language by none other them Battler himself.
If this is actually not the accepted idea (that Hideyoshi and Eva were told they are fake corpse while they aren’t), keep in mind that Eva and Hideyoshi’s behaviour from the entire morning and even after the discovery of the corpse would be extremely weird if actual real murders are going on and they are somehow aware of it. They aren’t showing any sign of overwhelming stress which they should’ve if they were contributing to what they thought were real murders. Eva in particular is almost playful and think it’s a good opportunity to have a fight with Natsuhi and mess with her.
I want to stress out that this is nothing but my mere personal opinion, just to be certain things are not confused in any ways.
I don’t disagree that it’ll have multiple meanings at multiple levels; that’s precisely my point, as well. The only point where we appeared to disagree is whether we can gleam any useful truth from that ambiguity; if you weren’t arguing that we could not, but agree we can, then I suppose we aren’t disagreeing at all. But @Karifean and I assumed you were arguing we could not, with this line:
I don’t disagree that the Witch side intended to mislead with that ambiguity, but I would disagree if one stated no truth was to be had at all. If you don’t disagree, then I guess we can close this really long discussion on this minor subpoint.
It doesn’t change the nature of the Red vs. Blue battles. Beatrice simply created and used them for a deeper motive. Even if a player doesn’t want to win chess, it doesn’t mean chess works differently. Her ulterior motive doesn’t somehow change the way the game’s played; it just changes the focus of the novel away from being centered on the game.
The establishment of the Game was very clear, even if the motive behind the establishment of the Game was not:
Beatrice: "From now on, everything I speak in red is the truth. There is no need to doubt or question it."
Battler: "And I should believe you when you say that?"
etc. paraphrased: “This is necessary to establish a game between us; otherwise, we’ll be stalled due to the Devil’s Proof, etc.”
That’s how it all began: a Game of Red Truths and, eventually, a move offered to the other side, Blue Truth, to force the Red side to respond. Then it went into the games like we saw, even as late as the end of Chiru: Erika fighting Beatrice in a Red/Blue match, for example, with her fancy pirate hat. Or maybe that was Ange/Beatrice? Anyway, I remember it happening near the end: a clear Red/Blue logic battle of that kind.
It’s not what Beatrice’s ultimate motive was; I grant you that. It’s not even what Umineko is about. But that doesn’t change the Red v. Blue games; it just changes the focus of the story that the Red v. Blue games showed up in.
If that’s what you were really talking about and not the Red/Blue games themselves, then I certainly agree; there’s just a distinction to be made between the two that’s important.
I’m not sure we were disagreeing on anything substantive, no. My point is in that “may” or “can,” not necessarily that suchandsuch an interpretation must be true. Rather my point is it’s possible to construct an additional layer of interpretation.
Reading through this thread (though at a certain point I started merely skimming because I had gotten the general gist of what was being said) I find Renall’s arguments to be rather pointless. Certainly it is possible to twist the red truths to suit any explanation you desire. I’ve said many times that I could make any character the culprit (save maybe Kinzo and Battler) and get through all the red. But what point does that have other than as a pure intellectual exercise?
Ryukishi constantly tells us to not ignore the heart of the tale. To not simply just use the red. The red are hints, guiding us to the truth, as are the fantasy elements and many many parts of the non-red text. Dissecting the red to the point where you can get any statement through it is certainly possible, but it doesn’t do anything for you aside from allow you to avert your eyes to the heart of the tale.
Any logic game can be broken. Any word play can be butchered beyond reason. What Renall is proposing with the red is not fundamentally any different from twisting around words to suit meanings in any other context. Which is sort of fitting for Umineko considering one of the main messages is that there is no absolute truth, but at the same time it’s a very Erika level maneuver, one that is equivalent to taking the story and putting it through a blender. Nothing of value comes out of it that didn’t already exist. It allows you to put any interpretation you want on the story, but that was already the point. However people who don’t dissect red to the point where it’s meaningless at least have to try and fit their explanation into a mold. Renall is just smashing the mold so any conceivable explanation can be fit without effort. Something I see as a pointless and valueless exercise.
Regardless of whether you agree with Renall or not, is it really so bad to put all the red aside and at least think of the game that way? EP5 seems to guarantee that any valid “solution” must be made with evidence that doesn’t include the red, and we know that in-universe, the red was introduced specifically to be misleading.
Ignoring the red entirely does seem strange to me though. It seems to mean that Ryuukishi included an entire feature merely to irritate us. A feature he devotes pages and pages to, and then basically brags about when he refuses to give an answer in EP8. I can’t see why Ryuukishi would be proud of something that requires so little thought. …Unless thought actually did go into it. In which case, it’s our job as readers to figure out why he spent so much time on it, including why and how it was used in each case.
I’m not sure you’ve read nor understood anything that I said, and you seem to be attacking a position that no one took. This is not only an incredibly rude post, it’s also not arguing against the textual analysis that explains why the red should be doubted in this fashion. Not discarded; the entire point is that there exists a perfectly valid interpretation which is textually supported, and which was reached through textual analysis and not playing around with red in isolation (because the red, in isolation, is a dangerous tool of manipulation by the story’s own admission). As I have said repeatedly, attacking on that basis is not the best way to engage my argument. That was followed by everybody attempting to engage my argument on that very thing I explained wasn’t going to work or be productive. If you consider this discussion “pointless” (very classy thing of you to say), maybe try directing it back to my point?
I have made an argument proposing the existence of the very heart of the tale itself within the framework of the layers we were already aware existed, without disrupting or disturbing those layers. We were told this sort of thing existed in Chiru, so why shouldn’t we go back and look for it with that in mind? The very things you’re complaining about are the things I’m trying to tease out of discussion by making the argument.
You do understand what chronotrig is saying, right? It’s not “throw away the red,” it’s “don’t let the red be an obstacle.” Step back and look at the text as just a text. Pretend it’s a book without any colored text; that doesn’t mean don’t read the colored text, but read it as though it’s white text just like any other part of the story. Knowing what we know about the story and the way Battler reacted to it both before and after “learning the truth,” does it make any sense that he would simply have realized the solutions to the murder mystery layers of the stories? That alone does not seem profound enough to have influenced him so strongly, or to have awakened his sympathies so profoundly. Furthermore, in order to demonstrate his understanding he immediately runs a gameboard where the entire First Twilight is faked. Is Battler some kind of wimp who chickened out about his game, or is this part of demonstrating his understanding?
Now go back to the text of prior episodes. Is there any possibility of that being the case beforehand? Well uh, hrm, yeah maybe? There are quite a number of “deaths,” especially in Legend and Turn, that look kinda fake or maybe are not actually possible as physical murders even if you answer the closed room puzzles. “But the red says…” Well, we know the red can be misleading or have its rules seemingly broken, so where the red is in conflict with the overall text what do we believe? I think we have to look to the text, because the text has context and the red often deliberately doesn’t. And in the text it describes Natsuhi’s death in Legend as being arranged like a “stage,” and Natsuhi’s wound as “blood-makeup.” The FTs are in strangely dark, out of the way places (that no one would just stumble upon) where setting up an elaborate scene would be a lot easier if the “victims” were also participants. Jessica gets a super convenient asthma attack at a time where it most benefits Eva and Hideyoshi, people she has no reason to favor over her mother. There are a great many bodies Battler doesn’t get a close look at, and he’s the one to refer to blood and the like as “makeup” or “masks.” Even if he is speaking metaphorically, is the author?
Also, Will refers to every single twilight in Legend with “illusions to illusions.” Does that maybe mean something? He doesn’t do that for the others. What does he try to convey when he chooses between those two lines? Whatever it is we thought it meant before, could we be mistaken somehow? It’s not like he gave a strict definition for those things. Suppose that, in addition to giving answers of a sort, he’s also distinguishing between “the plan” and “the parts that went wrong?”
Well, Jessica does start coughing when she demands that Eva and Hideyoshi prove an alibi for the FT, but she might just have remembered that Natsuhi was the only person who survived the FT.
Eva and Hideyoshi have a weak but plausible alibi, saying that they left the mansion and met Genji sometime before the crime happened (Nanjo placed the time of death at 2:00AM or earlier, Eva and Hideyoshi return to the guesthouse at midnight). Natsuhi’s alibi is “the murderer walked right past me, but didn’t harm me at all, and I didn’t even hear them kill all those people in the same building”. Eva would necessarily have to respond with that accusation if Jessica didn’t terminate the conversation right there, after getting her line in.
Either way, it’s intensely suspect when a conversation is cut off for reasons like that in any work. And that wasn’t the only thing: Battler was gaining ground at that point and kind of got headed off and derailed by it (and by Eva and Hideyoshi leaving). It’s far too convenient a time for her asthma to just happen to act up, which makes it look deliberate. If it isn’t, the writer’s trading on some silly coincidences, and I doubt that was the only way he could’ve gotten past that scenario (so it’s unlikely he couldn’t think of anything else).
The point of my statements was not to be rude, but to say that you’ve basically deconstructed the story to the point where there is no longer any story left.
Of course not, I doubt anyone believes that’s all he figured out. After all solving the mysteries requires understanding the truth of Beatrice.
This is where I disagree. None of the deaths are impossible. However you are deciding to ignore red truths, justifying doing so by making claims about language and context that don’t really serve any purpose aside from getting around red truths that are inconvenient for your claims, in order to say corpse =/= dead bodies.
A great counterexample to your claims that most of the games had no deaths (or few deaths) is Our Confession. This extra tale that Ryukishi released has a bare minimum of fantasy covering, just enough to not outright reveal Beatrice’s real form. And characters’ explicitly are killed in it. No fake murders, real ones.
In episode 6 Battler chooses to not have the characters die because that is his nature. Even as part of a board he does not want to kill his family. However in the other episodes the deaths are real. There is a clear distinction between what deaths could have been faked, and what ones could not.
That’s because every twilight had falsehood in it. The first Twilight Shannon’s body was not present. The only person who saw it was Hideyoshi and he was an accomplice. He simply told everyone else she was there and that her corpse was obscured. 2nd twilight the entire closed room was a hoax. The chain was set and cut after the murder. 4th twilight Kinzo wasn’t killed because he was already dead. 5th twilight Kanon’s fight and death were faked. 6th-8th twilights Maria locked the door after the murders.
For each hint Will is explicit about what the illusions are.
The corpse that cannot return to earth returns to illusions.
A chain of illusions can only hold back illusions.
Let the man of illusions go to where he belongs.
The witch and stake of illusions can pierce naught but illusions.
Illusions are the blind girl’s song. Illusions of a closed room.
None of this gives any validity to the idea that any deaths were faked aside from Shannon/Kanon.
What I’m seeing, and what I’ve seen throughout this entire thread is a twisting of the narrative and of language in general to support ideas which are not contextually supported.
You didn’t even read the discussion by your own admission. You are incorrect about what you think I’ve done and should reread.
And what is the truth about Beatrice? Did Beatrice kill anyone?
You have yet to even attempt to engage the argument that people can be playing a role and you cannot possibly dismiss it when the orthodox interpretations not only allow for that very argument, they require it.
Our Confession also supports the notion of more than two layers to the narrative. It’s not a counterexample at all, it supports my point.
Some things Will denotes as “illusion to illusion” do not have falsehoods associated with them, at least none that are told explicitly to a character. And a number of things that have a false narrative (though not necessarily a false story) are “earth to earth.” I don’t think your interpretation is defensible as the only one.
Not one of those statements suggests anyone actually died and one explicitly describes an event where a person faked their death.
Yeah I guess you’re right, there’s absolutely nothing in the text which would support a reading of-
[quote]…Anyway, …each one of the bodies jammed in here…had been given an atrocious makeup.
…It wasn’t makeup, …it was more like… their faces had been plowed…![/quote]
Hmm, OK, maybe Battler’s just hyperbolic, he did correct himself, it’s not like it’s some kind of them-
[quote]“I’m sorry, but even I can’t tell you any more than that. …However, I’ll tell you one thing.”
"…What’s that?"
"It’s reasonable to think that the culprit…no, culprits…are multiple in number and fairly well armed. They’d have to be, wouldn’t they? They had to assault the four in the dining hall and kill them, drag a total of six bodies all the way to the storehouse beyond the rose garden, and arrange for that disgusting makeup and the graffiti on the shutter. …There’s no way that a single culprit could carry out all of that on their own, right?"
It made sense. It probably would’ve been possible for a single person with enough time, but it would take so incredibly long. It was probably safe to assume that a significant number of people were involved.[/quote]
Well hrm it’s kind of weird for Eva to say something like that and point out how many people would have to be involved and use the word makeup again but it’s probably just a coincidence. After all, everybody witnessed the brutal deaths of Eva and Hideyoshi up close and-
[quote]"…A-At any rate, we can’t let the children…we can’t let George-kun see this room. Seal this room with all haste…!"
"…Y-Yes, we mustn’t let them see… If George-san saw his parents in this brutal state…“
But they could tell that those fiercely racing footsteps in the hallway belonged to George, even before he came dashing into the room.
George and the other children had been waiting in the parlor.
However, when they saw Genji speak to Natsuhi, when they saw her turn pale and fly out of the parlor, they’d felt a sense of foreboding.
And when they saw a large group of people gathered around the guest room, they were sure of it…
“Father!!! Mother!!!”
”…Aaahh, wh-what is this…? Another…magic circle?!"
"…"
“Aunt Eva and Uncle Hideyoshi are safe, right?! Hey, Kanon-kun! What’s this all about?!”
"…Battler-sama…“
Kanon didn’t have to say anything. George’s scream after he ran into the room told them everything they needed to know.
”…Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggh!! Who… who did this?!! I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!!!"
"…George-kun, …hang in there…"
Natsuhi touched George’s shoulder with her hand, but he violently shook her off.
…George fell over beside Eva and buried his face in the bed in front of his mother’s face, wailing.
Then he pounded on the bed with his fist, over and over again…[/quote]
Well OK so technically literally the entire scene of the discovery of Eva and Hideyoshi’s bodies is unreliable POV but when the cousins got there Battler went in the room and-
[quote]Battler…had his back against the wall of the hallway…and was covering his eyes with his right hand and weeping without restraint…
(…)
"…At any rate, we’ll lock this room and leave everything as it is until the police come. …No objections, I take it?"
Natsuhi announced it as though she didn’t care whether they agreed or not.
…If anyone had a right to object, it would’ve been George, …but he looked as though he’d shed enough tears.
George nodded slightly, still facing away from the others, and when he stood up, everyone else agreed too.[/quote]
Oh… so… Battler never set foot in the room and never actually saw Eva’s body up close or Hideyoshi’s body at all and was too preoccupied with weeping and swearing revenge. But at least there was no mention of makeup or anything, that thread of the narrative completely disapp-
[quote]The same type of weapon that had been stabbed into Eva and Hideyoshi’s foreheads…was in Kanon’s chest…
"…Nnng, …ghh, …"
Kanon was curled up in anguish, fresh blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth…
…It was…makeup too extreme for Kanon’s white skin…[/quote]
Well it’s not like that’s a confirmed fake de- oh wait it is. But it’s not like Battler would ever deliberately describe a scene as appearing to be stag-
[quote]And the entrance hall…looked like a stage.
Like the heroine of a tragedy, on the ground and bathed in light, …arrayed in the beauty of that silence, …Aunt Natsuhi lay face up, crumpled on the floor…
Half-crazed, Jessica ran up to Aunt Natsuhi.
…On Aunt Natsuhi’s forehead, …it was almost as though a sparkling shard of pigeon
blood ruby had been placed there.
…And… from it, one stream… of blood makeup… passed by her eye… and began to traverse her face…[/quote]
Bah that’s just a coincidence or a narrative flourish, Battler wouldn’t describe someone with the exact same wound differently in a case where it’s far more likely to be rea-
[quote=“EP2”]Maybe my heart was totally worn out and dead…
Even though I knew it was wrong, …I lifted her head…and checked.
…And, I confirmed that my guess had been right on the mark.
There was a gaping hole in Shannon-chan’s head, and the insides were dripping out.
Not only that, …but you could even see…inside her.
After seeing that, I finally realized I was doing something wrong.
I immediately averted my eyes, but by now, it was probably pointless.[/quote]
Oh. Nevermind. Shit’s fake bro.
Honestly there is no reason to be so snarky in your reply. Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean you need to be an ass about it. And yes I did say I skimmed a large portion of the thread in my initial response, but having read the whole thing now I don’t think anything I said was wrong.
I’m not arguing that there is not more than one person involved in these murders. I’m simply arguing that there were in fact murders. The 6 murders at the beginning are rather easy to explain. Eva and Hideyoshi have to be accomplices for episode 1, as Hideyoshi falsifies Shannon’s death. So we are not talking about 1 person with a gun taking down 4, we are talking about 3 people with guns taking down 4 (this assumes Gohda was killed separately from the rest, which is a reasonable assumption considering he is a servant and was not part of the conference).
As for the noise, well most of the survivors were either in the guest house or are accomplices (Genji, Kumasawa, Nanjo). But yeah Natsuhi was in the house, so she would have heard right? Well who said they were killed in the house. Episode 7’s tea party along with episode 2’s first twilight provide a reasonable explanation. The adults were lured somewhere like the Chapel or the room with the gold and then killed. It doesn’t matter who sees the gold if they are all going to die, right?
So the idea that the murders were not possible without faking is a false premise to begin with. So next we can ask why would the murders be faked? In episode 6 it is to play a prank on Erika, but that can’t be the case here. So the only reason would be that Yasu is bribing everyone to go along with her plan, just to try and force Battler to figure out the truth. But if it was all fake, why the explosion? If they are going to kill everyone if Battler fails then why would they stage fake murders instead of real ones to begin with?
And so do I, what I do not support is your notion that you can ignore words in red willy nilly to support a pet theory.
Some things Will denotes as “illusion to illusion” do not have falsehoods associated with them
This is simply not true, but go ahead, provide an example.
And a number of things that have a false narrative (though not necessarily a false story) are “earth to earth.”
Will’s hints are not about the narrative shown, but about the tricks themselves. A giant epic battle that leads to a mundane body doesn’t need to be illusions to illusions. If there is nothing faked about the body, the room it’s in, the lock, whatever, then it’s earth to earth.
As for you’re long strings of quotes and snarky replies, honestly they just seem to me like you reading a lot into some very specific choice of words in a translation. Nothing stated there changes the fact that you are throwing out red truths to build up a theory that is flimsy at best, based on the way the bodies are described in few scenes. Heck the idea that Battler would describe fake bodies as fake and real bodies as real would imply that he is in on the whole thing. None of it adds up in any meaningful way.
The noise I speak of concerns twilight 2, and even more so twilight 6-7-8. I mentionned this earlier clearly as well. Not twilight 1 obviously.
Twilight 6-7-8 again, in particular, there is no way that a gun powerful enough to remove people’s faces wouldn’t be heard from within the same mansion.
The second twilight the shower was running which would have covered up the sound at least a bit. The 6-7-8 twlights weren’t even necessarily done with a gun. You can smash people’s faces with a baseball bat or a crowbar, or a number of other blunt implements.
And we don’t even know for certain they were killed in that room, they could have been killed outside and then moved there. Certainly I don’t find that likely, but the point is there are plenty of ways to kill them without those locked away in Kinzo’s study hearing.
The big point though is that the red is very explicit in both of these cases that people were killed. If you start to try and doubt the definition of being killed and allowing it to include faking deaths then the entirety of Umineko falls apart. Red becomes meaningless and you can make up whatever answers you want.
If you aren’t going to respond to the actual text of the work, you are conceding that you have no foundation for your literary analysis. If someone quotes six or seven passages in support of an argument you don’t get to dismiss it and retain any sense of respectability or intellectual honesty. This time you’ve resorted to arguing it’s a translation thing (with the translator in this thread no less), as though chronotrig just picked words out of a hat and happened to use the exact same one every time in Legend for no apparent reason.
But hey, it turns out the MG release has a language switch function to access the original script, so let’s examine that claim too!
…And…
from it, one stream…
of blood makeup…
passed by her eye…
and began to traverse her face…[/quote]
The key phrase is 血の化粧が, chi no keshō ga. 化粧 or keshō literally means “makeup, cosmetic, adornment.” This is not a fanciful translation flourish. It is the exact same word used by Kyrie when discussing her makeup at the airport, as well as…
[quote]……とにかく、
………ここに転がっている遺体は、どれも惨い化粧が施されていた。
…Anyway,
…each one of the bodies jammed in here…had been given an atrocious makeup.[/quote]
…here. In fact the expression 惨い化粧が施されていた or mugoi keshō ga hodokosa rete ita more or less means “cruel makeup had been applied.” Can that be a metaphor? Sure. But it happens over and over. Eva later uses the expression 悪趣味な化粧 or aku shumina keshō, roughly “makeup in bad taste.”
Also one that I missed, Genji/Kumasawa/Nanjo are described as…
Well that’s a… strange metaphor to use there. But it could just be his poetic style, let’s check out Turn.
There was a gaping hole in Shannon-chan’s head, and the insides were dripping out.
Not only that, …but you could even see…inside her.[/spoiler][/quote]
The word being used here is 中身 or nakami, which means “contents, substance, filling.” The “gaping hole” is ぽっかりと穴, pokkari to ana, which literally means “gaping hole.”
それどころか、…その中身まで、…見えてしまう or soredokoroka sono nakami made miete shimau could also be translated as “on the contrary… the insides… have become visible.”
Was the shower running? Did Battler ever hear the shower running?
[quote]"…Kanon, turn off the shower… Don’t let this be any more pitiful than it needs to be…!"
"…Y-Yes Ma’am."
Kanon gripped his handkerchief and twisted the valve, turning off the shower.[/quote]
Oh hey how about that we’re explicitly told in that unreliable POV scene that the shower was turned off before the cousins even showed up, so at no point would Battler have ever heard the shower running. Nobody enters the bathroom after that. Was the shower even running?
Think about the ridiculousness of the claim, too: Not only are guns much louder than showers, if we assume that Eva and Hideyoshi aren’t in on it (despite it seeming pretty obvious they are), the killer was saved from having their gunshots overheard by… a shower they had no way of knowing whether Hideyoshi would take? Hmmm. That sounds like a shitty plan. So no, I don’t think a gun was fired at all, which means Kanon must’ve physically overpowered two physically stronger adults without the other noticing and killed them hand-to-hand. Shenanigans, I say, even with the stakes available. They were playing the role of the Second Twilight, which is the very reason they left the group to begin with.
One of the goals of the Steam retranslation was so that you would be able to read into the literal meanings of the words without breaking anything. It definitely isn’t perfect, but I’m confident that Umineko isn’t solvable without checking the literal meaning, so I recommend going as literal as you can. We intend to update the translation to catch any mistakes or unnecessarily vague statements that get spotted.
Of course, the best option will always be to read the original Japanese. Reading Ryuukishi works is how I first built up my Japanese experience, and I’d definitely recommend using this series as a springboard if that interests you. Lots of beautifully subtle Ryuukishi lines can only be roughly imitated in the English language.
Honestly, I don’t think that’s the case. The red truth, from the beginning, has been used by Beatrice to guide Battler towards the truth she wants him to find. It’s easy to look at the red statements, see how they apparently lead you away from the conclusion that Shannon or Kanon are the culprits and conclude that they’re used as misdirection; but that wasn’t the truth Beato wanted Battler to reach. She wanted him to find the culprit not through logical deduction, but through the ‘heart’. If he’d just been able to deduce that Shannon or Kanon is the culprit, he might have just stopped thinking right there, content with having denied Beatrice. On the other hand, presenting him with apparently impossible scenarios is a potentially great way to get him to turn his thinking around, approach things from a different perspective, and - hopefully - find the truth Beato wants him to find.
As your example shows, the red itself was probably used there to be misleading, to force Battler to reach the truth only after understanding the gameboard more fully. Beatrice’s goal with the red is to keep Battler in the game, but she does that by using it as a weapon, challenging Battler and giving him more paradoxes to solve. Of course, since mystery novel-type writers love to have the true answer always staring the reader in the face, we can expect nearly everything she does to be filled with shadowed hints. But since she’s a mystery writer, even those hints will often be intentionally misleading. (Name for me a good Christie novel that doesn’t have hints pointing at the wrong culprit or motive, which are often so well-hidden that they don’t get revealed until after the real culprit is caught).
But unless we rely on hunches and completely unsubstantiated theories, I can think of no way to “solve” that red by itself. That red can’t be a starting point, it can only be tackled after building up a theory from evidence elsewhere. So it never makes sense to cut off whole lines of theories just because it apparently contradicts a red line.
