I made a screenshot-centered writeup of my impressions, reactions and understanding of this episode, for anyone interested: Google Doc.
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EDIT: Just finished reading the entire thing. An hour or two slipped me by, this must’ve taken a long time to make, but it was well worth the wait. One of the best summaries of Episode 1 I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading! Certainly the best on this forum.
All Umineko veterans should take the time to look this over. I believe Karifean has latched on to many of these ‘treasure chests’ @UsagiTenpura promised us earlier. Fantastic stuff.
The only thing I’m having difficulty justifying is the use of a gun to commit the murders from the 2nd twilight onwards. Is it really that easy to hide the sound of gunfire from one of those Winchesters in a mansion?
You would actually be fairly surprised how dim the sound of a shotgun going off can sound if you’re a good distance away from the area where it goes off. I regularly go with my family to a gun club out in the backwoods that I would assume to be smaller than the Ushiromiya mansion, and even if you sit in one area with no ear protection, it’s very hard to hear the larger guns going off. Granted, there aren’t many things constituting walls out there, but the sound of the gun going off would have to travel upstairs for the group to hear it (and most likely, they were too wrapped up in discussing the epitaph to pay attention, since the party should have also heard Eva and Hideyoshi getting killed as well but the main party didn’t hear it.)
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No, it’s almost unthinkable. The one time a gun actually does go off in Legend it’s fairly unmistakable, and if we assume there would be multiple gunshots (as there would have to be for there to be two victims), it becomes increasingly unlikely.
“They weren’t paying attention” isn’t a good enough explanation for me to swallow. I’d want more textual support as to why they wouldn’t pay attention, or why it wouldn’t be reasonable for them to have heard anything considering they later do hear something just fine (admittedly from a closer point, but they’re still many rooms away with at least one obstruction between them and the source of the sound).
More likely is there were no gunshots.
EDIT: Also just to dovetail Karifean’s stuff and not to rip him or indeed basically anyone who likes doing this, but what makes people so sure that “Yasu” exists as a character in Yasu’s own stories? I find it particularly unfair when people say things like “Dammit, Battler, you’re so dense” when discussing a fake, fictional Battler written by the very person you’re supposed to sympathize with who is also the avatar of the author of the story. Like no shit Battler is dense if Yasu’s sole expectation was that he didn’t remember, but that isn’t real; it’s Character-Battler interacting with Character-Shannon/Kanon/Beatrice, and I don’t think we can say there is a 1:1 correspondence between the two (moreso with Battler obviously, since one presumes the author knows more about her own creations than another real person).
People have a distressing tendency to ignore that this is in-universe fiction (double super-secret mega emphasis on fiction) and I worry it allows them to be manipulated to certain conclusions that alter perception of the story as a whole. Like wow Yasu’s personal characters are sympathetic in a story she herself wrote, no really, fascinating.
Again not trying to rip people on it, it’s not an invalid reading, but I feel as though it is incomplete unless we understand the greater emotional tragedy here, that Yasu’s expectations for Battler were so low pre-incident that she had essentially no faith in his ability to figure out what was really going on; expectations, I would note, that were more likely than not confounded by whatever “true” Battler actually did show up (to such extent as we know him from Tohya and the boat scene in EP8).
Then how does one go about putting holes in Eva and Hideyoshi’s skulls?
So to revive this little discussion without getting distracted by the logistics of the red text again, let me write an answer to this post.
Yes, Battler’s defense of Kinzo is absurd. Eva calls him out on it as you said. But everyone else gladly jumps on the opportunity to put Eva back in her place, since nobody else likes the way she puts Natsuhi on the spot like that. It’s hard to emotionally accept for them that Natsuhi could be lying to them, and Jessica manages to dissolve the argument when she fakes an asthma attack.
Eva and Hideyoshi are accomplices to what they believe to be a game (which it really isn’t) in my interpretation so I’ll skip over the next two points. But I’ll at least point out that at this point everybody has yet to realize that the murders are following the epitaph.
She knows of Kinzo being dead. She wanted to get out of that uncomfortable argument. Maria’s not in on it, she genuinely believes in the Beatrice revival ceremony with sacrifices.
Yeah, it’s like it was right next to them or something. First Twilight: all victims poisoned, carried through the rain by two people, faces mowed. Second Twilight: shot with gun, stake inserted into hole. Sixth-Eighth Twilight: Probably shot with guns in the head, faces mowed to muddle cause of death, shot again in the respective body parts, stakes inserted into holes. Duel with Natsuhi: Natushi’s gun was tampered with, Yasu just shot her outright.
She doesn’t take risks, no. Her being fickle means that she’s willing to go with whatever situation she finds herself in (something that would be hell with 14 accomplices btw). And no it’s not rigged; Yasu is fine with time running out as much as she’s fine with the epitaph being solved and her deeds being exposed. On that note, I have to pose this question: What’s the whole point of the special clause with solving the epitaph if everyone but Battler is in on it anyways?
Something I’ll also point out: Battler is actually quite graphic in describing how the 1st Twilight victim’s faces were messed around with. And you may say that he also described it as makeup, well think of his mindset going into this: at first it seems unbelievable, but then he realizes how it’s all real and goes into detail describing not the makeup as he could only describe it as at first, but the actual state of the faces. Comparing that to Natsuhi’s room in Episode 2; at this point his heart is so numb that he describes the scene before him in a completely deadpan tone. Both ways of narrating fit perfectly with his demeanor.
[quote=“Karifean, post:25, topic:26”]
Yeah, it’s like it was right next to them or something. First Twilight: all victims poisoned, carried through the rain by two people, faces mowed.[/quote]
Poisoned when and by whom? With what? And I presume you mean one person, since Kanon supposedly can’t even lift a bag of fertilizer? Or maybe zero people, given Genji’s age? Do you really expect me to believe five adult humans were that easy to transport? Eva herself thinks that’s a bit silly. Or were Eva and Hideyoshi drafted to do it?
More probable is, dead or not, they went there voluntarily.
What hole? No reliable POV ever sees that. No reliable POV ever hears the shower. No one heard a gun, and there’s no proof another gun existed. The text of Legend makes unclear whether there even is another gun in play, and the text suggests that gunshots will be heard. I’m uncomfortable with you reaching for multiplicities of murder weapons that aren’t firmly justified. And no, “there are more guns in Banquet” isn’t proof of that being the case in Legend, particularly if they have different authors.
There’s also the unaddressed question of why Eva and Hideyoshi would wander off to become the obvious Second Twilight regardless of what they believed happened in the First, and if Hideyoshi got a good look at those bodies that were in there and didn’t think better of wandering off, well, he’s a real dummy.
So there were… how many gunshots again? How did nobody hear that? That’s some serious carnage. Also how long would this take, and how many people would it take to do it? Even if the victims were somehow perfectly willing to go along with it (which is itself absurd), that’s an awful lot of effort that would take hours upon hours. Maybe even longer than they had.
And Maria’s totally cool with all of this and not the least bit troubled by tons of gunfire and a bunch of mutilation? Even if she’s turned away the whole time that’s hard to swallow, particularly given how happy she is to see Beatrice later.
With what? I don’t dispute Natsuhi’s gun most likely didn’t work, but I’d imagine it’s more probable it was loaded with blanks. And again, shot with what? It’s more probable that Natsuhi’s gun is the one that went off, given the “faint smell of gunpowder.” It’s not that Natsuhi’s gun never fired, it’s that she didn’t shoot herself. Neither of us is arguing that point, though.
He’s not standing that close, he doesn’t know what a dead body looks like, and none of those things he describes are improbable to fake. The author wrote that first impression in for a reason, repeated it over and over for a reason, and Battler is constantly doubting the reality of events and then deciding against what he wants to be true over and over through Legend and Turn. And then he loses. Hmm. It’s almost like when he kept saying he didn’t want to accept that anyone was a murderer that he was on the right track, and allowed someone to lead him into a discussion where he’d have to do that.
The thing is, what you’re so casually dismissing is actually far more believable. 14 accomplices to a game is much easier than 2 accomplices to a prank, and especially to a real crime, and especially especially to a real crime that’s spun as a prank right up to the point where the accomplices could not possibly have failed to notice it wasn’t (if it wasn’t). More people involved means it’s easier to cover for situations, steer the intended target the right way, set up complex situations quickly, and convince other people to play along (i.e. once you have 8 people convinced it’s a lot easier to convince the 9th through 14th).
The special clause is emphasized because Battler is the one who is supposed to solve it. How is that a hard question?
I’d like to say they went there voluntarily, but the story deliberately points out the blood that was found in the dining hall, and I see no particular reason for that to be there if they weren’t murdered in that very same dining hall.
Poisoned through beverages, which Gohda surely brought them at some point. Krauss may have arranged things so that Yasu couldn’t bring them the poison herself, but Gohda would have no reason to suspect poison anyways so she could’ve just “made tea” herself and “allowed” Gohda to show off and bring them the poison himself. The possibility of poison is brought up in the story itself. And thanks for reminding me of the fertilizer, so I’ll just bring up the wheelbarrow he was carrying those on in response.
George does witness stakes in their skulls, and if you know my stance you know I believe George to be a reliable POV. The shower may not have been heard by a reliable POV, but at the same time is there any reason at all to doubt it? I make it a point not to doubt scenes and details unless there’s a reason to.
I’m not uncomfortable with reaching for multiplicities myself, if there’s one gun it’s not hard to imagine there being more, especially considering Yasu surely left Natsuhi with a gun deliberately and probably wanted to keep one/some for herself for murders given that, as you yourself noted, she’s not exactly physically strong.
Eva and Hideyoshi do not believe there are actual murders going on, most likely they were fed a script by Yasu and don’t expect their turn to come up for a while. Either that or they’re actually preparing themselves for being made into fake second twilight victims which is also a perfectly plausible explanation. But I actually find it more likely that they just wanted some time away from Natsuhi & co. to be able to calm down.
Genji would be perfectly willing to go along with it though. Kumasawa isn’t capable of fighting back in a way Yasu can’t handle and Genji can subdue Nanjo. Genji can assist Yasu with preparing the corpses of the other two before Yasu kills him as well. Trying to get around the red of Genji not being a killer is a little tricky but I can think of a few alternatives as well.
And yes Maria’s totally cool with it. She’s facing away and deliberately blocking out the sounds she hears. She trusts Beatrice, and after all the murders that have already happened nothing could possibly be further from her mind than doubting that magic.
Well ok then. In response to the progression of the meta story, I’d rather leave that for the Episode 2 Tea Party.
The problem is there’s more going on than just the mystery “game”. There’s Eva prodding Natsuhi about Kinzo being gone too, as a prime example. I find it very, very hard to believe that Eva would take advantage of the game to trip up Natsuhi and Natsuhi or Jessica not just outright exposing the game to defuse the situation. The demeanors of the characters also do not match up that well with being in a game, like Natsuhi bringing up the possibility of Beatrice being Kinzo’s concubine when she’d never even think of bringing up that possibility under different (normal) circumstances.
But why would she want him to solve it then?
The blood is fake, as is the reaction to it. Everyone who “discovered” the FT knew exactly what they were going to find and where they were going to find it. Kumasawa’s reactions are highly suspect at basically all times ever.
There’s a technique in stage magic (and con artistry) called misdirection. The point is to create a situation that appears to match obvious conclusions so that people don’t notice what’s really going on. The “discovery” of blood in the dining hall after the discovery of the FT literally leads Battler to the conclusion the six must’ve been killed there the night before. So we don’t realize that’s not the way they were killed (if they were killed at all). You said yourself you believe it was poison (from somewhere or other); obviously there are not going to be blood puddles in the dining room if people were poisoned. It’s a plant. Nobody walked in there and shot five people. Didn’t happen. Couldn’t happen.
George is not a POV in that scene and most certainly is not a reliable POV, and he never sees Hideyoshi (no one sees Hideyoshi except allegedly Natsuhi/Kanon/Genji before the cousins even show up; the shower is off and the door is shut). And yes, there is every reason to doubt a story of a scene that was allegedly discovered by the supposed culprit and which Battler barely experienced before everyone was hustled out. This is elementary stuff. If you have any suspicion of Kanon at all then everything supposedly seen from his perspective should be viewed as little more than it almost certainly was: A story.
My point is it’s not a story about how they were killed, but a story that they were killed at all.
So you admit that you do not have textual evidence from Legend to demonstrate that the culprit possesses a gun in Legend. Wounds are questionable if they exist at all, supposedly necessary gunshots go unheard, “Beatrice” does not appear to be in possession of a weapon at the end. Why should your take on events be treated seriously? You’re materializing poisons and guns out of thin air. My solution is simpler: There was no need for them (in Legend anyway).
I don’t think it’s as easy as you’re making it out to sound, particularly given the state of the scene. Your logistics are hard to swallow. Even something like “they pretended to fake it and Nanjo got taken out first and the other two accepted it” is more reasonable than this notion (but still unreasonable). I think if you’re going to lean on the “not killers” red you’re going to put yourself in a really uncomfortable place by using Genji as a get-out-of-rational-physically-possible-explanations-free card. Genji is not actually a suicidal robot; that’s his character, but we know it isn’t his true and full self (based on Yasu’s observations of him and Ronove’s characterization).
Maria is also not a freaking robot and she does get scared and doubtful at times. She’s trusting and a little naive, but there has to be a limit and this would be it. You cannot with a straight face attempt to argue that you can be in the same room as somebody firing no fewer than 6 rounds of live ammunition and messing up a body in some fashion and not be unsettled by this even a little bit. Or that the culprit, being the witness’s ostensible friend, wouldn’t stop and think this might be taking things a little too far.
Gross details like that are among the easiest things to fake because they create a sense of revulsion. Totally reasonable if you can accept the premise, and the onus is frankly on you to explain how in a series where basically every FT appears faked why this one wouldn’t be (HINT: Because this one is also faked, at the very least in initial premise; if nothing else it’s the easiest way to get everyone to the shed).
And again you’re dodging the question of why this keeps being repeated. Themes do not exist in isolation or for no reason. The magic symbols don’t repeatedly get referred to as a “weird paint” or “blood-like substance” if they’re just blood. They’re almost certainly not blood anyway – did Kanon meticulously drain blood out of people into a bucket to paint stuff with? – so we have evidence right in our faces of blood-like fakery going down. You can’t find an extra gun, but I can find “blood makeup” right there in the text painted on the shutter.
[quote=“Karifean, post:27, topic:26”]In response to the progression of the meta story, I’d rather leave that for the Episode 2 Tea Party.
[/quote]
I think it’s fairly important to consider Legend and Turn together when looking at the progression of the meta-plot. I think you’re not giving enough credit to the idea of what things were “supposed” to be like in the original (i.e. Yasu-authored) stories vs. what the stories of Rokkenjima became under other authors, and how this influences the development of the Meta-Battler/Meta-Beatrice interaction.
Yeah that wouldn’t make any sense if they all knew Kinzo was dead and were working off some kind of script. Wait no that’s exactly the sort of situation that would arise if they were doing so.
She never wants to be “stopped by somebody.” She wants to be “stopped” by Battler. The entire thing is for his sake. She claims she will leave this to fate whether “somebody” stops her… just like Beatrice claims that fate chooses her victims. Guess what? One of these statements was definitely bullshit. The other one… well, what do you think I think? There’s a reason one of Beatrice’s patrons is a Witch of Certainty. Creating a “certain miracle” is a thing Battler does in EP6 to demonstrate his understanding of her game. Battler heavily employs a misdirection to create that miracle, and was actually doing the whole thing for Beatrice’s sake and not the sake of the witches.
The intended miracle was that Battler would appear to beat the odds. Appear to. The deck was supposed to be stacked in his favor but look like everything was against him. The Battler of the stories (and/or Meta-Battler) failed at this for a long while. The Battler of reality (probably) succeeded, but other factors complicated the outcome (as suggested by episodes after Turn).
I did consider the idea of the blood being faked, and it being misdirection is a rather intuitive and easy interpretation, but the problem is, misdirection why? Why would Yasu put in that bit of misdirection, what would she accomplish with that? So far I haven’t been able to come up with a plausible reason. And as long as I don’t find one I’m not going to assume the blood is a fake just because it could be.
George is not a POV but he talks about the ‘ice picks’ in his parents’ skulls later on, and he definitely saw Eva’s body himself so that’s not second-hand information. And since I don’t believe George is in on it (his reactions are WAY too genuine to believably be from a script) I’ll take his word for it.
There’s a lot to doubt in Kanon’s story, hell that very scene has a lot of obvious fantasy in it, but even so I still question whether individual details are unreliably narrated, and if so there must be a reason for that.
In response to this part in particular:
A story is still told for a reason. There’s a lot of scenes in this episode basically told from Kanon’s perspective (albeit by a narrator) that contain a lot of very important bits of truth in them. Dismissing everything that’s seen from his perspective as ‘a story’ and not thinking deeper into it is pretty destructive.
My problem with your argument is that all of what you want me to support with evidence is incredibly obvious and apparent if you don’t assume it’s all fake. Like there being more than one gun; it’s unmistakably proven by Natsuhi being shot at the end. And because I don’t think it’s fake, that’s that! It’s direct textual evidence that the culprit possesses a gun! ONLY barring the interpretation that it’s all fake, which again, I don’t share. Why don’t I share it? For reasons from all over Umineko, which I’ll gladly elaborate on as we go through the Tea Party.
He’s not a suicidal robot but he’s more than aware of the fact that they’re all going to die at midnight anyways and feels incredibly indebted to both Kinzo and Yasu. He’s already been willing to help Yasu with murders, and he continues to do so in Turn.
All I can say is… no it wouldn’t be the limit. Like I thought of writing a lengthy argument, but that’s basically what it boils down to, so there.
It’s funny when comparing this to the previous quote exchanges we just had, because I find this to be a lot less reasonable than you make it out to be. The idea that Battler describes the bodies like that and fails to notice that it’s all fake is very hard, nay pretty much impossible for me to swallow. And neither of the following two episodes’ first twilights are faked so I fail to see how I’m in any obligation to explain why “this one in particular is not”.
I apologize if I dodged a question without realizing, it wasn’t my intention. Basically the reason I believe that this wording comes up repeatedly is because that’s the narration style Battler uses to describe something unbelievable. Like he can’t believe this is actually happening so he narrates it as something not real. Consequentially, when he actually stops calling it makeup like one or two lines later he essentially acknowledges it as being real which is a much bigger deal to me.
As for the evidence thing, I went into this earlier. A lot of the evidence is implicitly present if you accept that the murders are real.
I’m a bit at a loss what you actually want me to explain here. The meta plot hasn’t even really started at this point in Umineko yet - at least there’s nothing for us to observe - but I’ll just say that I think that from the perspective of the meta plane the change in authorship from Yasu to Tohya is, in fact, trivial and unimportant. What’s much, much more important in the meta plane is the change in game master from Beato to Lambda to Battler (which didn’t come with a change in authorship for the forgeries). But again I feel like later episodes provide a better opportunity to discuss this, partly too because I want to reread the episodes before I end up constructing a flimsy argument based on possibly wrong memories that makes our discussion lead to nowhere.
Except that Natsuhi trying to hide Kinzo’s death is a prevalent issue both on October 4th and 5th, and I see no reason to doubt the legitimacy of any of it. She reacts exactly the way she would if it’s not staged, even to the point of getting defensive about her own magical coping mechanisms. Not to mention we actually get a scene narrated from her perspective where she “tries to convince Kinzo” which goes entirely against the idea of it all being a script, unless you reject literally everything about that scene.
This quote in particular indicates to me a fundamental difference in our understandings of how Yasu’s mind works. First off, I think neither of the two claims you paraphrase are bullshit. Secondly, what does she want to be “stopped” from, exactly? Or better yet, what was her most basic goal in the first place? Thirdly, does the motivation of (Meta)-Beatrice align with Yasu’s game board motivation in your interpretation? There’s a lot more in your interpretation I can’t quite wrap my head around just yet.
Because… it’s a game (under this theory)? You should probably always assume large quantities of blood are fake unless you have some plausible reason to think otherwise, because that’s not really how bleeding works. And again, your notion would disclaim the possibility of bleeding in the dining room, so by your own theory that blood shouldn’t be there.
Also, as I’ve noted, there is direct textual evidence for the existence of a substance which is hard to distinguish from blood.
You shouldn’t. He and Jessica are among the most suspicious characters in the episode, especially when their “genuine” emotions switch on and off or they’re more knowledgeable than they should be. Also I’m sorry are you using his second-hand claims as direct evidence? You can’t do that. George could say whatever he wants. And that whole discussion is more evidence of the ludicrousness of it than evidence for it:
[quote]GEORGE: "...You know, I've been thinking. It wouldn't be impossible to stick one of those 'icepicks' into someone's chest, like in Kanon-kun's case. ...But splitting the skull and sticking them into the forehead, like in my parents' case, wouldn't be that easy." BATTLER: "You think the culprit had that kind of animal strength...?!" GEORGE: "...They probably had some kind of weapon, a device that can shoot or pound in those 'icepicks'. That handle was too short to be driven in that deeply by a human's strength alone."[/quote]
So let’s just catalog everything wrong with this conversation:
- George speaks authoritatively on his father’s wound which he never saw.
- George openly speculates that Kanon’s wound (which did not occur) is possible, but that it would be impossible for his parents’ wounds to be the result of simple thrusting. So now he’s casting doubt on that, which seems like a curious thing to say but OK maybe his follow-up to this will sound sincere and rational.
- Battler speculates, wrongly but perhaps reasonably, that the killer might be very strong.
- George dismisses this speculation and instead suggests an insane device, some kind of stake-launcher or stake-pounder, in apparent complete seriousness. I’m sorry… what? So to be clear George does not accept the argument that the killer was really strong but is OK with making up some thing that probably doesn’t exist. There’s even a gun in the room with them and the idea of a gun isn’t suggested!
- Battler immediately becomes distracted by this thought and starts wondering if it was used to kill the FT victims, and from this extrapolates that the nonexistent device could kill the four people he’s with even though there has been no rational explanation provided as to why such a device, if it did exist, would be capable of killing that many people so quickly. Beyond his jumps to conclusions, which are ridiculous.
You seem to be bad at understanding my point. More on this below.
That’s not what “direct textual evidence” is. Direct textual evidence is there’s a passage that shows the gun that the culprit used, or a gun that could be the one the culprit used. That doesn’t exist in Legend; we see one gun and it’s in Natsuhi’s possession and we know she didn’t use it for those twilights. Your argument is by inference, as apparent wounds without a source are not direct evidence to walk backward toward the idea that those wounds were caused in a particular manner. I’m not saying that inference is invalid, but it isn’t as strong as you think that it is.
He himself is not a murderer (and guess what, holding down Nanjo so another person can kill him is, in fact, murder, so that argument for that twilight’s a no-go). He does not seem to be terribly put-out about being spared in Turn. By the way I’m not sure you’ll be able to back up the claim that he helps Shannon/Kanon/Beatrice (I wish people would stop saying Yasu, Yasu is the author) with any actual murders in Turn.
So you concede the point. I admit at this point it’s more “She’d consider this too far” vs. “No she wouldn’t,” but plain common sense is on my side. Of course such a brutal scene would affect someone. The alternative is that things were quieter and cleaner, either because there was no murder or the murder was more subtle in some fashion, either of which makes more sense.
Battler convinces himself of plenty of things that take him away from an initial correct impression, and advocates for things that turn out to be wrong. Dramatic irony dogs his narration constantly. This is exactly the sort of thing the author would slip in to provide that.
But table that for a second: A better point is how the hell does Hideyoshi not know at a glance what is and isn’t real given his position. His behavior in the FT/ST makes no goddamn sense if he was that close to real corpses, especially if he was told they weren’t going to be real. Remember, if Hideyoshi is some sort of accomplice at this point (whatever form you think that takes), he has expectations for what he will see in there; Battler doesn’t, because Battler is unaware of what’s supposed to be there. And basically every possible scenario for Hideyoshi is dubious:
- If the deaths are fake and Hideyoshi knows they’re fake, then he has no reason to think anything is going to be wrong and it will probably be obvious to him that things are fine.
- If the deaths are fake but Hideyoshi thinks they’re real, surely something would give that away; but even if it doesn’t, he could be fooled just as Battler was. But it seems unlikely he’d be made aware of brutal murders and left out of the loop about the fact it’s not real.
- If the deaths are real and Hideyoshi thinks they’re fake, he’d have to be incredibly dense not to notice this from where he is and what he’s doing. And if he thinks they’re real when he was told they’re not, the worst imaginable idea is to wander off with Eva without telling everyone.
- If the deaths are real and Hideyoshi knows they’re real, Hideyoshi is a casual accomplice to brutal murder and able to retain his composure while lying to people. Quite an actor, and also apparently a complete monster. Which seems… highly out of character… for Hideyoshi.
[quote=“Karifean, post:29, topic:26”]And neither of the following two episodes’ first twilights are faked so I fail to see how I’m in any obligation to explain why “this one in particular is not”.
[/quote]
Sure they are. Not even you could possibly deny that Banquet’s is, at the absolute worst, 1/3 fake and intentionally staged for a particular purpose. But they are obviously fake in construction whether you believe this was used as a prelude to actual murder or not. It probably wasn’t in Legend and Turn. It definitely wasn’t in End. It only was in Dawn because of Erika. The thornier questions arise from Banquet and Alliance, but that’s way ahead of ourselves.
Also, once again, every FT in Chiru is obviously fake and every FT is much more theatrical than the deaths that follow them. This is a hint. You cannot just ignore this, nor can you ignore the rather obvious conclusion that follows from it (which you can disagree with, but I won’t allow you to without a supportable reason).
Eva then goes right back to calling it makeup, the third-person narration uses it for Kanon’s death (which even you believe is fake), it is used again for Natsuhi. Every character in the narrative sure falls back on a single exact metaphor every time in Legend and doesn’t do so later!
Supposing that I told you that, after Legend, “makeup” appears a good 20+ times and never once is used to refer to murders? It’s not like it disappears from Battler or Eva’s or the narrator’s vocabulary, but it’s never again employed in the context used in Legend. And it’s not like smashed heads disappear.
It’s. A. Theme.
You might have a point in isolation but your argument is inadequate when all evidence is considered. And unlike an episode-to-episode comparison, we can be reasonably certain that intra-episode information used in a consistent fashion probably hints at something.
I don’t think you get to make that claim as though it’s simply a premise. Why do you accept that these ridiculous, absurd, straight-out-of-a-mystery-novel murders are real? Because you want them to be real? Why do you insist on shutting out wholly plausible interpretations? Even Battler and Knox doubted whether Beatrice intended everything to be a mystery, and Knox is the embodiment of a set of rules that govern that genre!
Try seeing things from my perspective. Just try it. Choose for the sake of argument not to accept that they’re real and convince yourself that my position is not possible with the evidence provided. I don’t believe you’ll get that far. Not saying you’ll believe it, but I didn’t reach this position by just wanting it to be true and I have looked for arguments that completely demolish it. There are none, just a lot of things that make it seem that way, and I believe this is by authorial design. Again, I’m not denying that the “solutions” to the “game” are as the mystery layer answers suggest, but some of the logistical improbabilities can be resolved if we take some of what is happening as fiat rather than actually happening.
Innocent until proven guilty. Before we look for the culprit, let’s prove the crime. One of the unique things about Legend is we cannot easily do even that.
I’m sorry… what? That doesn’t even make sense. I’m not letting that slide. That claim cannot be made without some kind of support as to why changing the authorship of in-universe fiction between two individuals with different backgrounds and knowledge bases is “trivial and unimportant” when such a thing is practically the definition of an important detail. Featherine straight-up says this on top of everything else.
This isn’t a matter of interpretation, you are simply wrong if you consider that detail inconsequential.
That really isn’t a problem, depending upon when everyone is brought into the fold. The most plausible time to do something like that is in the evening on the 4th. We have no way of knowing the exact point this happens, in exactly the same way we have no way of knowing the exact point any given accomplice is recruited in a true-murder theory, but it’s largely irrelevant until something has actually happened. And even then we have cases like Alliance where recruitment (or defection, but that’s another issue entirely) could potentially happen during events.
Plus, POV issues generally. It’s a bit hard to explain this without opening myself to inaccurate claims that I’m “dismissing” stories as irrelevant simply because I don’t believe them to be in the text because they’re literal truth, but it’s also not material to the argument. Like, I can doubt the George/Shannon arbor scene without saying that George and Shannon weren’t in some kind of relationship. Doubting one does not entail rejection of the other. Scenes can have all sorts of purposes and being part of the literal physical narrative need not always be one of them.
[quote=“Karifean, post:29, topic:26”]Not to mention we actually get a scene narrated from her perspective where she “tries to convince Kinzo” which goes entirely against the idea of it all being a script, unless you reject literally everything about that scene.
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Not true, one can accept the reason that scene exists in the story without in any way damaging the overall narrative. It does establish some degree of unreliability to Natsuhi’s POV, but the point is not to reject the scene but to understand why Natsuhi is adopting the role that she’s adopting.
[quote=“Karifean, post:29, topic:26”]This quote in particular indicates to me a fundamental difference in our understandings of how Yasu’s mind works.
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You don’t legitimately believe her – that is, “real”/Prime-Yasu, not any avatar of herself that might exist in her stories – to have been capable of really killing anyone, do you?
[quote=“Karifean, post:29, topic:26”]First off, I think neither of the two claims you paraphrase are bullshit. Secondly, what does she want to be “stopped” from, exactly?
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What is hard to understand about my rejection of those claims?
- “She chooses her victims at random” is bullshit because we know that is factually untrue. The text has her say such several times and then later it’s very obviously not so, especially looking at things like the EP2 FT. Also what was the plan (if the murders are real) in the EP1 ST if Eva and Hideyoshi don’t leave? Who were the other two who were close that were the fallback, or was she just gonna be hosed? Setting that aside, Yasu-as-author wrote the stories, so obviously she picked who died on a higher level for the purpose of creating a particular narrative. It’s demonstrably not true on multiple levels.
- “She didn’t care who stopped her” is bullshit because we know Battler is what matters most to her on this particular weekend of 1986. His return was a crucial factor. Beatrice’s game is with Battler alone. The Love Duel is about Battler, Jessica, and George, not “anybody.” All her pining is for Battler. Battler is consistently and constantly held up as the thematic core of her desire. Battler alone can (and does, sort of) free her from the cursed island.
[quote=“Karifean, post:29, topic:26”]Or better yet, what was her most basic goal in the first place?
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In “real life?” Almost certainly not to murder anybody in cold blood. There was something she wanted to see if Battler would do or could do. Something may have gone wrong with it, but that has no bearing on her goal.
Meta-Beatrice’s goal? To make Meta-Battler understand the big picture. I don’t think that’s terribly controversial considering just getting at answers didn’t satisfy her in EP4, and that what seemed to upset her most was Battler not even trying for a broader perspective.
[quote=“Karifean, post:29, topic:26”]Thirdly, does the motivation of (Meta)-Beatrice align with Yasu’s game board motivation in your interpretation?
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Is there a particular reason that it must or should? For that matter, how do you know what Piece-Shannon/Kanon/Beatrice’s gameboard motive was?
I still stand by experience in that the din of the guns going off would be very difficult to hear through a lot of walls, doors, and at least one flight of stairs. I would expect Rudolf or Kyrie to be more likely to identify a distant gun going off since they have more expertise with them than most of the people on the island, but they’re dead by this point.
And it’s laid out in Alliance, but Maria is completely looking forward to whatever death may come if she survives the eight twilights because she IS a zealot for Beatrice. Beatrice promised that in the Golden Land, good things would come to Maria and to get there, people had to die. She was barely bothered by the death of her mother in this arc, so not being bothered by the murders going on behind her back isn’t exactly surprising (especially when she’s imagined far crueler and more gruesome deaths in her mind).
Most likely, I believe that the culprit waited for the four to go to the room, used a servant key and closed the door, asked Maria to stand in the corner and ignore the bloodshed, shot the elderly accomplices, set the stakes/paperweights, made the call, left, and locked the door. Then Natsuhi’s gun wasn’t loaded but the killer’s was, and the killer switched Natsuhi’s gun with their gun so it seemed like she shot herself. (The manga for the final game explains all of the tricks, but I’m just offering explanations with the most logical explanation.) I sure can’t wait to eventually discuss EP2 because on a re-read, I noticed something cool about the end I missed the first time.
Looking back at Episode 1, there’s still one thing in particular that I’m having a lot of trouble rationalising…
The fifth Twilight, specifically, the hatchet. Why is there a hatchet? Why is Kanon wielding a hatchet? What is this scene meant to communicate to us? Why did nobody mention the hatchet after the fact?
Its very existence is odd…
It might be a Higurashi reference. The nata or hatchet/cleaver is Rena’s signature weapon. Although I don’t know the significance of Kanon wielding it specifically.
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I get that, but I think there’s more to it than that. Why would the author bother including that Hatchet if it didn’t play into the mystery in any way? Even in fantastical scenes, everything is shown for a reason.
Is there something Kanon wanted to use the hatchet for? It can’t be for fighting beatrice; that makes no sense.
Hmm, do we necessarily have to read the sound novel for this or can we comment here by reading the manga adaptation too?
My guess is that having read just the manga should be fine, since I don’t think there’s any significant spoilers in the sound novel that weren’t revealed in the manga.
In fact…it’s kind of the other way around isn’t it? Should manga-exclusive stuff be spoiler-tagged in these threads?
There aren’t any real VN-only spoilers, but the manga probably wasn’t built to be “solvable” in the same way the VN was. Ryuukishi urged VN readers to re-read the whole series and polish their theories before starting the EP8 manga, but he told manga-only readers to read it right away without worrying too much about it. The manga seems to be almost completely solvable, but several puzzles/treasure chests exist in the VN only, and by following this thread, it’s possible someone will get spoiled on them before they’ve gotten a chance to read it.
Good point about the EP8 manga… That one’s almost like an extra 9th episode of the VNs, and it’s definitely worth reading before you hear people quoting everything that happened in it, even if you haven’t read the manga up to that point.
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