EP3 is probably my favorite of the question arcs (and probably my favorite overall). It introduces two of my favorite characters in the series (Evatrice and Ange), the change in tone was refreshing because Turn only caught my interest at the start and end, while Banquet held my interest throughout. Virgillia introducing one of the main concepts of the series, the cat box, is something absolutely crucial and done really well. It’s kinda sad that Ange, who is only mentioned at the very start of EP1 and only shortly before she actually shows up (I guess this does set up how she’s generally on the short end of the stick for most of everything, though). The battle between Virgillia and Beatrice is fun and a good distraction that they even point out as being one. Evatrice getting drunk off her own power is really well-done.
And what a lot of people fail to notice is that Evatrice is the only witch who corners Battler into giving up without resorting to dirty tricks like messing with the game board or betraying his trust, which I’ve always found interesting.
Okay so now that the entirety of the game is set up, it’s really interesting to see it go into a full match in this episode. The supporting cast growing on the Witch Side is really interesting, I like the idea that the world is “falling more towards fantasy”. Ronove and Virgilia are both really nice characters.
Since ‘Devil’s Proof’ is a well established mechanic at this point, it’s nice to see the ‘Hempel’s Raven’ and ‘Schrodinger’s Paradox’ arguments be introduced as well. The number of ways you can challenge the ideas behind each murder expand a lot in this, so as a reader you’re presented with more lines of thought to use.
Both Battler and Beatrice are improved as characters this time around. Battler has toughened up, willing to except that if a human is the culprit, it must be one of them. He stops worrying about ripping his family apart, because it’s inevitable, and he’s accepted that. He plays a lot stronger in this round, though as the story goes on you can see he’s still not perfect (though the opposition is being kind of unfair this time, so it’s not entirely on him like it was in Ep.2)
Beatrice is a really interesting case. It seems to be a common rule in most VNs with “routes” (you can kind of think of the different episodes like that) that things that are told to have happened before the events of the game are consistent. So the idea of the real life Beatrice that Rosa has confirmed(? - might not be trustable, who knows) is odd. Obviously I can’t say the conversation about “reincarnation” or “trapped souls” is real, but at the very least there did seem to be a Beatrice living in Kuwadorian 19 years before the Game. Since Rosa confirmed she existed, I assume most of the stuff Beatrice told us about her life there can be taken as presumed fact as well.
As for the real (as in fake) Witch Beatrice, I’m not entirely sure how to take her. She does play the entire thing off as the ‘North Wind and the Sun Strategy’ (which was all very well done, I enjoyed the entire story of the team up and ‘friendship’ of the two) but it seems obvious in the end that she’s, maybe accidentally, developed a real connection with Battler by the end. She clearly hesitates when declaring it was all a ruse, but maybe that in itself was part of the trick. Besides that, she does get some legitimate development. We learn she’s still very childish at heart and uncertain of things. She has a real bond with Virgilia who acts like a mother figure.
Running off that thought, something I like in this story is how, despite it almost being all dropped at once, it still very clearly develops the Witches World. We learn of succession, we learn about the difference in ranks (what the title of ‘Lady’ implies), we see a lot about how their world works. Virgilia seems to have trained Beato (Beatrice the -at least- Second) but there seems to be a whole deal about a Lady needing to vouch for you, which I believe Lamdadelta indirectly mentioned in the Tea Party that she is probably the one who vouched for Beato. She also vouches for EVA Beatrice, but that seems less important. Its just seen on screen to introduce the mechanic. The way Lamdadelta talks to Beatrice makes it sound like she could literally tear Beato’s power away.
There’s only one point I have thoughts about on Virgilia, and its not specifically about her or her role. I’m wondering if she’s ACTUALLY Kumasawa. It seems to imply she was using her body as a resting place or whatever nonsense, but that’s bullshit, so what does it actually mean. If the culprits are “EVA and Virgilia” does that mean the culprits are Eva and Kumasawa? I dunno.
Aspi’s going to pull his usual card of “You’ve stopped thinking!” here, but I think the question of ‘How?’ is overall less important in this episode (I’m probably wrong, so I’ll come back to this another time). In the final moments, Eva Ushiromiya presumably flat out confesses that she was the culprit throughout the entire game. I don’t see any reason to doubt this, there’s no need to. In fact I like it, because even with all the magical bullshit in this episode, its the first time you clearly see that a human culprit is possible, which is a good message for the reader.
I might try and tackle the actual murders a bit later. Only the first one (and maybe George’s) stand out as being overly magical. I don’t think Eva could of entirely done the first murder. I assume she DID, I just don’t know how.
Anyway, what’s left.
Oh right, Ange. Ange is fantastic. Probably the best debut moment of a new character in the entire game. I like that they gave you enough to figure out who she is in the scene (her last lines in particular), so having the personal moment of realization is really satisfying. Her name is in the credits a few seconds later, to make it obvious. I think it should of been saved for the Ura Tea Party for the actual reveal, not thrown in there. I like the setup of her personality, she’s very well established as a character in a rather short time. The aftermath of having a survivor from Rokkenjima come back to what’s left is an interesting idea, and I really like all the drama it supposedly caused.
Also she jumped off a building and that’s badass.
I’m going to break my non-involvement rule just this once to provide you with a small red that should help you from drawing completely false conclusions.
A person named Beatrice lived in Kuwadorian, and died in 1967. This applies to all games.
This was already confirmed, but here I’ve allieviated your concern that it only applied to this particular game.
Also, I haven’t seen you mention that final web of Red Truth, probably the biggest climax of the game so far~
Yeah there’s actually two things I forgot to bring up.
Nanjo’s death is quite literally a defining ultimatum and is a powerful way to end the episode, since no-one even comes up with any ideas. The only way they can beat it is to pull the self-sacrifice thing, they have no answers to present.
Every person is accounted for and their life status confirmed, and it’s directly mentioned that the survivors did not kill him. Everyone who is dead is definitely dead, and everyone who isn’t is definitely not the killer. It utterly stumped me, I spent a while thinking about this one. In retrospect its a really good example on how Red Truth can be used very situationally. I do now know of a potential theory, but since it never occured to me personally I won’t bring it up.
The other thing I forgot to mention is the Epitaph Riddle.
While we still don’t technically know the answer (I’m told this is quite a topic even nowadays) we did see that it can be solved and saw the result. Two people solved it in this episode. I want to assume a lot of needed pretext is in this episode. I’ve talked before about how as an outsider looking at a VN, I can’t just look at the island and take guesses at what locations it could be. But I guess I can list my theory.
Basically, from this episode we can at the very least confirm the gold is on the island (two characters saw it in a completely realistic scene, so there’s no obvious reason to doubt what we’re told). It’s underground. There’s a tunnel starting from somewhere, that leads to the room. There’s no obvious tells about the riddle from the tunnel itself, we just know that theres a switch that opens and closes a door. Considering how simple that is, it’s safe to say the riddle is solved by the point you get there, so the answer to the location part of the epitaph is just regarding the tunnel’s entrance.
The only real clue you’re directly given is that it is a six-character word. At first, I had this theory during this scene, but disregarded it; the six-character word is probably in Japanese, maybe featuring extensive Kanji. I wouldn’t actually be able to figure it out. But it occurred to me later on that, this is a puzzle by Kinzo. It’s not entirely unbelievable that it might be a six-letter word in english.
I’ll just be straight up. I think it’s under the chapel. The location is presented in Episode 2 as very very important and secure. The parents mention they’re not allowed in, it’s a special location Kinzo had made for Beatrice, presumably a delusion that the two would marry there. The thing that first made me consider this idea is actually the discussion on Maria’s name. You might remember that in the first episode we see all the characters name’s written in Japanese, and Battler notes that Maria’s name has the cool kanji that looks like a cross. I thought it was cool too, so I’d never forgotten about it. The point of interest is where Kinzo apparently had a very serious issue with Rosa deciding to name her that. There’s a speculation that maybe the key referred to Maria, but they doubt that it could be related because Kinzo and Maria don’t get along. I think the way they handle this scene is backwards, I don’t think Kinzo wanted her name different because he needed the clue written a specific way, I think he had a problem specifically with the name Maria, and wanted literally any other name. Maybe he intended a different child to be named Maria as the true clue. Possibly Ange, maybe the “two at the shore” or whatever are referring to parents, and Kinzo is unhappy as Rosa is not married. There’s a lot of reasons to suspect that Maria’s name is an accidental early use of an intended answer.
From the name, I remember the cross. From the cross, I assumed ‘Church’, a fitting answer. And from there… I got ‘Chapel’.
Here’s a playlist containing all of Episode 3’s music! Please always be mindful of potential spoilers in related videos though!
I’m very interested to hear what the thought process was behind this episode. Supposedly Ryukishi wanted to make this one harder than the last, but after hearing feedback from fans, he toned it down just a bit. I don’t know whether that was for the best or not, but I personally believe that this episode is weaker than Episode 2 in terms of story.
Granted, I will admit that this was also the most emotionally-fulfilling of all the episodes. Ryukishi didn’t take just a page from Key, he took several leaflets. Perhaps the part that interested me the most in the whole story was Beatrice’s struggle to understand what exactly being a witch entails. You could arguably say that this makes her weaker as a villain, but sympathetic villains are by no means bad, especially when they are as well-written as Beatrice. What angers me is that Ryukishi chose to throw away this development in order to continue the series. I mean, urgh…that twist ending… 
(Even worse, now she’s suddenly a pawn of Lambdadelta. I mean, what the heck?! You’re setting up Beatrice for failure as a villain, Ryukishi! Stop it! > < )
I really wanted to believe that good witches existed in this story. I think Ryukishi knew such a thing would spark in reader’s minds, but ultimately it threw a wrench in his plans to extend the series to the same length as Higurashi. I had an idea that this would be the case, so while I can’t fault Ryukishi, it makes me feel so stupid for actually believing ‘good’ witches existed in the world of Umineko (aside from Bernkastel, if we want to get technical 
).
What I can praise this episode for is that it made me much more conscious of the mystery aspect of Umineko. Beforehand, I accepted the magical elements since I was not used to thinking at the time (and I admit, thinking about the events and moral implications of visual novels is usually an afterthought; I read visual novels to be entertained, not challenged). So when Episode 3 came around, suddenly things started to make more rational sense. After piecing things together, I had a reason to suspect Rosa for the previous gameboard, based on her testimony of the witch’s death. Even now, I still highly suspect that Beatrice is affiliated with Rosa in some way, if she isn’t downright Rosa.
Then a different idea dawned on me. Just how much of each gameboard is different from each previous one? Is the culprit just as different as the methods and order of killing are different? While it is reasonable for me to suspect Kinzo as I had heard in Episode 1’s podcast (since he died the same way), there was a feeling in the back of my mind that maybe there’s a reason why certain episodes emphasize certain characters while others take a backseat. Not just to go into detail about their living situation and relationship with the other characters, but to go into reasons why they might want to kill the other people on the island. Then again, I may be totally wrong here. Let’s look at some red truths and other clues.
And then it’s never brought up again in the entire story. Why go out of your way to prove Kuwadorian exists if it doesn’t factor into the story at all? It can’t be flavor text, so I assume it has to be connected to the identity of Beatrice. Last I checked, the only two people in the gameboard who knew about Kuwadorian’s existence were Kinzo and Rosa (before the latter told the other adults about its existence). We can’t assume she actually told them if Battler isn’t there, but Ronove proves it exists, so this could be evidence that Rosa is acting as Beatrice. Supposing Beatrice did exist as Kinzo’s mistress, Rosa befriended her, and she fell off a cliff and died, Rosa could have very easily taken up the role as her way of securing the Ushiromiya fortune to herself. Furthermore, some of Rosa’s actions do feel synchronized with the witch’s sometimes, so it wouldn’t be out of the question.
Going back to Episode 2 here, while some people admit to seeing a 19th person arrive, Battler doesn’t actually see Beatrice until most everyone is dead. By then, any of the other 15 people on Rokkenjima (excluding Kinzo and Genji) could be Beatrice. Anyone and anything could be the culprit, so it’s surprising when this red truth pops up:
Note that she said this Rokkenjima. It doesn’t deny the possibility that previous gameboards had different forces at work which could have caused the deaths of every person on the island. However, if the goal for this gameboard is to identify a human culprit, this truth is actually fairly useful. It confirms, at least in this gameboard, that if the culprit is human, it is among the 18.
There’s a lot of red truths I could talk about, but I wanted to talk about a few in particular. Starting with this one:
Nanjo’s diagnoses have seemed kind of unreliable in the past. With Nanjo showing little faith in his own ability coupled with next-to-no idea as to who the culprit could be, I felt like ignoring Nanjo’s diagnoses to keep an open mind on how the murders took place. With a red truth implying that Nanjo’s been spot on with at least one of his diagnoses, it makes me think one of two things. Either Nanjo could easily identify how they died because he killed them, or he’s one of the more trustworthy, if potentially unreliable, sources of information in this gameboard.
Alright, here we go. Time to talk about the web of red truth.
Beatrice was incredibly close to revealing some red truths that could prove fatal to her position. Although there were some close calls, the game was relatively short on red truth for a good chunk of time. Then EVA Beatrice is brought in (seriously, screw her), and gives the double bird to any sort of strategy, cornering Battler in an onslaught of tightly-wrapped truth. I won’t go into detail about all of it, but there were a couple that I found interesting.
Doesn’t this implicitly disprove the existence of witches? Ryukishi made perfectly clear the difference between humans, witches, demons, furniture and the like. Looking at this red truth in that context, it’s a fatal move for the Witch Side that, for some reason, everyone seems to completely overlook! XP
Not that this gameboard wasn’t full of holes to begin with… ._.
Geez, I hate that face so much… > <
The only explanation for this contradiction is if Beatrice’s earlier storm of red truths would have revealed something crucial about the first twilight. Under the assumption that Kinzo used the same trick he used in Episode 1, he could have been there to murder Nanjo. On a different note, assuming one of the servants made it out alive somehow, say Kanon (since he was heard by Jessica), it would definitely be possible for Kanon to be the culprit and escort Jessica out of the room. But then there’s the contradiction of the deaths being proclaimed in red. This isn’t something I can solve with this post right now, but it is something I should come back to when I have a better frame of reference. ._.
One more point before I conclude my investigation. As much as I want to analyze the eight-digit number on the parlor, it’s like solving the mystery of RAB in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’ll likely have to wait for the corresponding Core arc to understand what it means.
My conclusion: While Eva is made to look like the obvious culprit, I have a feeling she might have been framed. If the same logic were to apply to previous episodes, it would definitely prove my theory that Rosa is Beatrice in Episode 2, but it would also mean that the true culprit of Episode 1 was among the children. It’s not totally out of the question, but it seems kind of far-fetched given the circumstances. I’m willing to believe that either Kinzo was the culprit, as seems to be the case for the previous two episodes, or it was Kanon, based on the argument I gave earlier. There’s no reason to explain why, not at this stage of the game, anyway. Some of these things may reveal themselves in due time, but for now, this is the best explanation I can muster given what I have just read.
Episode 4’s title card tells me the difficulty greatly depends on how good my strategy is. The question is, is my fledgling strategy good enough to proceed without too many issues? Only time will tell, and it may not be so before the seagulls cry once more.
I thought of a loophole in EVA’s red truth while reading, and it is addressed later on. Whether it is directly proven or disproven I’ll leave up to you to ponder. Since I realised this loophole in the gap between reading Ep3 and Ep4, I think I can share it with you without breaking the rules, as it is something that I thought of while reading.
What if someone killed Nanjo, then was killed through some other means, before EVA declared the deaths of everyone who seemed to be dead?
In other words, what if someone killed Nanjo, then died just in time for EVA to announce them as dead?
One could view that “no other life form but humans are connected to this case” as what you thought, but there is a part later on you missed in that same scene. EVA defines a witch as “a human who can use magic”, so by that logic, a human can identify as a witch and be involved in the killings so long as they attribute their killings due to magic.
But just wait until you get to Chiru, things are only getting more interesting with witches, especially Beatrice, from there.
Great to see you finally stepping up to the plate, @EisenKoubu. I might just like to have you on this podcast!
You raised some very good points. However, I feel like your judgements about Beatrice might be a little off the mark. I don’t believe she’s a failure of a villain. I think she deserves more credit than you give her.
Anyway, I’d like to talk a bit about Umineko’s philosophy of magic. This is my own perspective, so don’t take it as a declaration from Ryukishi himself. Let me know if I lose you at any point.
Magic in the context of Umineko isn’t literally a force we can properly define as magic. Like, if magic WAS real, then it would still be a mystery. If magic is real, then we can reason that it must follow laws. Killing somebody with a fireball is no different to shooting them with a gun, it’s just a different method of killing. You’d still need to explain how she was able to shoot them with a fireball and escape the room, yknow?
What magic really means in the context of Beatrice’s game isn’t a matter of accepting magic as an explanation. It’s using magic as a representation of ‘the unknown’. Since magic is something beyond our comprehension, it exists only to satisfy the requirement of a ‘cause’ of the incident without the need to provide comprehensive proof. The term ‘devil’s proof’ describes the existence of magic in this context perfectly. It exists to provide an explanation to that which we cannot explain ourselves. How convenient.
Therefore, since this is not a rational system of magic we can calculate and predict, but rather a representation of the unknown, a witch isn’t a being which necessarily has to ‘exist’. In reality, a witch occupies the darkness of the world which can never be observed. She is both everywhere and nowhere. Therefore, representing her as an interger of 1 or 0, like we would a human or any other thing with a physical existence, is a fallacy. It doesn’t matter if there’s only 18 people on the island, and it doesn’t matter if other life-forms have any bearing on the game or not. The witch is more of a concept than a physical existence.
The witch’s win condition is not to have the challenger accept the existence of magic (even from an epistemological standpoint, it’s illogical to accept the existence of magic). Rather, it’s the witch side’s win condition is to force the opponent into a state where they cannot form an answer. Accepting magic exists is equivalent to not thinking, it’s accepting the illogical as an explanation for the unknown.
Having said all this, this is only from the perspective of a human in the human world. What’s great is that Umineko exists on mulitple layers of reality, and what may be true of one world doesn’t have to be true of another. As we know, in the meta plane, witches and magic physically exist. Likewise, on the layer of the gameboard as presented to Battler (the reader), magical interpretations of unseen events are everywhere. Beatrice and Virgilia had an epic magic battle in the courtyard, after all! Then, from the perspective of the greater narrative, do these scenes serve any purpose other than to misdirect us?
Discuss~
It’s my belief that these scenes exist to support the fact that the witches of Umineko, although non-existent and illogical in a human sense, are still flawed beings with their own struggles and lifestyles. This episode in particular tried to give an explanation as to why Beatrice is the cruel witch she is, going into the complex relationships she has with each and every person on the island, magical or not. In the context of Episode 2, it does represent at least a strong mental presence in many of the island’s inhabitants, from the servants to the children to the parents to Kinzo. They all hold some degree of awareness, whether they believe or not that she exists.
Also, like it or not, Beatrice is as flawed a person as the entire Ushiromiya family, and her ‘existence’ could very much represent the subtle, complex web of pride between the adults, the servants and Kinzo that may drive at least one of them to kill the others in order to achieve their own goals. Nevertheless, Beatrice can also exist as her own person, holding a hatred for Kinzo and seeking revenge in the most elegant yet brutal way possible in order to display her superiority as a witch. She has complex relations with her Teacher, her furniture and her fellow witches. She also has her own personal dilemmas, as we saw in her struggle to understand why Battler didn’t enjoy the cruelty she relished and just exactly what it meant to be a witch in the world of Umineko. (Battler x Beatrice, anyone?)
Chances are the existence of witches and magic on a separate plane are for more of a literary purpose than a practical purpose within the world of Umineko, providing parallel and thematic ties to the events of the murders and the characters’ interpersonal relationships. Still, I kind of question it when the ending throws away any sort of personal development in Beatrice for the sake of keeping the story going. But it could very likely mean that even witches are just as treacherous as the poisonous familial relationship the Ushiromiya household shares.
Episode 3 did have quite a heavy focus on the meta narrative compared to previous episodes. But I guess what you need to begin attempting to accomplish is this chessboard thinking. You need to think about what Beatrice, Battler’s opponent, is trying to accomplish. It’s unfortunate that this Episode happens to contain a lot of ‘noise’, since there are entities trying to mess with Beatrice’s game, and not everything Beatrice tries is successful. Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s in your best interests to chalk the development of the narrative down to ‘bad writing’. Don’t underestimate Ryuukishi, and don’t underestimate Beatrice.
This theory of yours that Rosa may be Beatrice is quite interesting, Eisen Koubu, one of the most interesting theories I have heard in a while, actually. Your theory still seems vague cause you seem to think that only because she met Beatrice Rosa is affiliated with her, but I think you might have something here. Ronove confirming in red that Kuwadorian does exist in Rokkenjima should be important somehow, like you said, and thus far only Rosa has been there so it might be connected to what she knows, too. Also, I don’t think that it’s as easy as you said, that Rosa took Beatrice’s role after she died to get the inheritance for herself, Rosa seems like she’s the least likely to get involved with the inheritance out of all the siblings and while that may be cause she is the youngest, I think Rosa is not as scheming as her older siblings and wouldn’t even plan so far at such a young age. Episode 2 also may disprove this theory since Rosa is one of the protagonists and fights against Beatrice and the culprit, but oh well, you’ll find out in time whether you’re right or wrong, I suppose.
So, yesterday I was pondering the eight-digit number, and decided to Google it on a whim. While I didn’t find anything from the search results alone, there was a search term close to it that I found interesting.
One of the search terms was for a .308 Winchester gun barrel, fairly modern in make, with a model number of 07151927. So I came to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, the eight-digit number is the model number of the murder weapon. Kinzo’s Winchester rifles are custom-made, iirc, so it’s fair to say that I wouldn’t simply find such a thing on Google without finding Umineko spoilers. XP
Hi everyone, finally caught up with the discussion and very excited to start coming up with some theories with you all.
Unfortunately after just finishing up this chapter I haven’t had much time to look over my notes to come up with some actually good stuff but I do have a couple of points I want to make, mostly relating to Hideyoshi.
During the scene where Hideyoshi is killed by EVABeatrice he says something along the lines of “That personality is not Eva”. Now of course this scene can’t be trusted entirely due to witches being involved so it could be as Virgilla says just what Beatrice is presenting could happen. But that line could lead more towards Eva actually doing it.
But more importantly I wanted to talk about how dead Hideyoshi is. After Hideyoshi, Rudolph and Kyrie were killed, Ronove refused to say in red that ‘they are dead’. This definitely could just be misdirection or trying to trick us but if we look at the Tips page after his death it says “That was careless of me. Didn’t think you were still alive…”. So I looked further into the Tips page and if you execute Beatrice she starts mocking you and saying “What a useless dream, to try and kill me” so I’m going to be assuming that everything written on this page was written by Beatrice. So we now have two different mentions of Hideyoshi being possibly alive. I was stuck here but looking at what pictoshark said
So this possibly could work while fitting in with Battlers ‘Eva was the killer’ theory, with Hideyoshi killing Nanjo then somehow dying himself properly, although I am not entirely sure if this has any contradictions anywhere.
Unfortunately this chapter left me confused at one point during the ending. During the scene where Beatrice is trying to make Battler say that witches do exist at the banquet, we see Virgilla send the goats to restrain Battler and do some other things that the Virgilla of the story wouldn’t do. My question is, is this Virgilla the real one who has also turned on Battler or is it just a piece that Beatrice put on the gameboard that isn’t the real Virgilla. I’m assuming its the second one for now as Beatrice says that she listened to Virgilla’s advice on the north wind and the sun strategy so it does seem like the Virgilla from the episode was helping out Beatrice as well as Batter, but that still could be part of the ruse. If anyone could confirm which it is that’d be greatly appreciated unless this is just another mystery for us to figure out without a known answer for now.
Now time for a very different theory, I’m sure that someone else has made this theory somewhere else but I think I’m not alone in being concerned in how long we will have to wait for the next 4 chapters to be released, my theory is that on the 4th or 5th of October it will be up on steam but not available yet, maybe just for pre-purchse, then on Halloween of this year it will be released properly. The gap between these two dates is about the same lengh as some of the other Higurashi chapters had between store page going up and being released and it, of course, fits in with the themes of Umineko.
Well… That was quite a ride. I’m not going to lie, that episode was probably the best VN experience I’ve had to date.
Before I get into the mysteries can I just say something about this chapter. I freaking love everything about it. The character development is amazing. The music is amazing. The plot is amazing. The multiple layers of story are amazing. The twists and turns are amazing. The mystery is amazing. I just can’t help but sit her and laugh to myself about how freaking cool this whole thing was. My only regret is that Genji didn’t get to be the badass, knife thrower that I know and love (and that the seagulls didn’t do it. Curse you EVA-Beatrice).
Ok, to start off I guess I should post my notes as per usual. I don’t know if these help anyone or if anyone even bothers to read them (I don’t even read them over fully most of the time) but I guess it’ll be a place to start. Here you go. Also, here’s the red truths for this episode, sorted by what they relate to (in my head at least).
With that out of the way we should get on with some of the solving now. Lets start with a low ball: Episode 1. More specifically, what happened to Natsuhi at the end of episode 1. There are multiple guns so the killer just made use of one of them. There we go, there’s that problem out of the way. Also, I guess we could chalk the people being beaten in the face to someone using their gun as a club, though that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Though now we have a bit of a dilemma, how many guns are there? Four? Why? I don’t really remember the story specifying and regardless it is a Devil’s Proof that there aren’t more guns on the island. There could be X many and we wouldn’t know. Let’s disregard this for now though, since it is sufficient to know that there exists more than one gun.
Cool, while we’re on the subject of episode 1, may I point out something that was said in that episode? None of the doors to the courtyard lock. Just a little something that Battler mentions and then forgets in trying to break open the closed rooms of the first twilight in this episode. We know that the boiler room is connected to the courtyard already, we know that the doors to the courtyard don’t lock, we also know that Beatrice does not confirm that the boiler (nor the chapel may I remind you) are closed rooms according to her definition. In other words, the detective side assumes that the room is closed without checking it. I propose, instead of the whole, ‘accidental death’ theory that Battler goes with, which Beatrice seems ready to deny in red anyway (“An accidental death among the six people was,” Darn you Ronove) that the rooms were never closed since the boiler room literally cannot be a closed room. Granted, this doesn’t exactly account for why Beatrice seems to be so against saying “The six were all killed by other people” as Battler wants her to. We know that none of the people committed suicide (as per the red), so what can have happened? Well, how about this: Kinzo died from his disease. In other words, he did not die because of another person but also did not commit suicide. His death was entirely natural (as much as a disease can be) and so Beatrice couldn’t say that he was killed by another person but was also willing to say, before being stopped, that Kinzo didn’t die by ‘accident’. I think this might explain that particular issue.
Moving on, lets look at the backstory a little bit more. Trying to establish some kind of timeline for past events may give us a little bit more ground for further speculation and I feel like the story is finally permitting that with Rosa’s story and Beatrice’s own remembrances. First of all I’d like to start in around 1923. We know from what Battler says in Episode 1 that Kinzo was a part of the branch family and the main family was wiped out in the earthquake. In the wake of that tragedy Kinzo was chosen as the next head because he had a lot of toes (or something). Kinzo acquires a large amount of capital and is able to rebuild the Ushiromiya fortune. He makes friends with the occupying forces and sells them stuff during the Korean war (1950). Let us assume that he purchases Rokkenjima at close to this time, perhaps a little before or a little after 1950 since his stated purpose was to use it as a supplying ground for the US. He, at the earliest, could have bought Rokkenjima in 1945 or so. Ok, wild theory time (which actually contains the numbers, whooooo random numbers are the best!): So, Japan had a bit of a thing happen in the early 1940s. There was this war that went on and stuff, probably not really a big deal or anything though. Anyway, during wars things tend to get stolen from conquered countries. Think nazi painting stealing level. National treasures and the like used to finance the war effort. Well, Japan has it’s own legends surrounding some of this. Take a look at this one: Yamashita’s gold. Now at first glance you may go, yeah so what? Obviously you think that these are the same thing but why? Let’s look a little closer:
“According to various accounts, the loot was initially concentrated in Singapore, and later transported to the Philippines. The Japanese hoped to ship the treasure from the Philippines to the Japanese Home Islands after the war ended. As the War in the Pacific progressed, U.S. Navy submarines and Allied warplanes inflicted increasingly heavy sinkings of Japanese merchant shipping. Some of the ships carrying the war booty back to Japan were sunk in combat.”
So in other words the gold probably lies at the bottom of the ocean somewhere near the Philippines. Bear with me on this because it is a long shot, 07151129 is the co-ordinates for the gold in latitude and longitude. Try 07° 15’ lat and 112° 9’ long and you’ll see that it’ll put you near a bunch of reefs west of the Philippines. Feel free to disagree because it was a bit of a guess but it would explain, also, why Eva looked at an atlas and who might have written the letters (Hideyoshi anyone?).
Let’s look at a reasonable objection to this theory. It seems that Kinzo acquires a pretty large amount of capital before the war as well, meaning that it would be a pretty good guess that he would have had to find the gold earlier than WWII. This gold would have only been something find-able post WWII or possibly during. Also, would the head of a house like Ushiromiya just be allowed to go off on a treasure hunt in the seas west of the Philippines? How does Beatrice factor into all of this anyway? Does she know the location of the gold and give that information to Kinzo? Is she a treasure hunter?
To be honest, I don’t know. The timeline for when Kinzo got all the capital is very vague. It would appear that he got it before the war but that doesn’t mean it has to be then. Also, it seems to me that Kinzo could have covered up a treasure hunt by saying that he was going to make a business trip and going to the location he had been told. It’s a little thin but we have to start somewhere and I figure this is as good a place as any. 10 tons of gold doesn’t just disappear from a legitimate source so a buried treasure is not a bad theory in my opinion. The numbers fitting is just gravy.
So going back a bit. Suppose that Kinzo and Beatrice had known each other sometime around 1930. They were young and in love. She is a treasure hunter from the west, come to explore the mysterious east (note: this is all wild conjecture, just imagine that they meet somehow and fall in love). Now suppose that Kinzo gets thrust into the Ushiromiya headship and can no longer marry his love because of political reasons. However, he continues to carry on with her. Eventually, he gets wealthy enough to buy an island and hide his love away in a secret mansion. Beatrice gets pregnant with Kinzo’s child and dies in childbirth. Heartbroken, Kinzo names this child Beatrice as well and she lives in the mansion attended by servants, one of which is a younger Kumasawa. Remember how Kumasawa is thought of a really lazy and will disappear? What if she is actually going to the other mansion to attend to chores there? There is also a gardener. We know this because Beatrice asks Rosa when she stumbles across this other mansion if Rosa is the new gardener. What happened to the old one? Who knows but we might want to keep this mystery gardener in mind as we progress in our theories. Regardless, this second Beatrice meets Rosa after having grown up in her mansion-prison. She runs away and the events of Rosa’s encounter happen. How much we can trust Rosa’s story is debatable so we must come back to this in later theories perhaps. For now let us assume that she died. Kinzo discovers that she is gone and goes kind of crazy. 20 years (or so) later we are at the events of 1986 Oct 4.
Edit 3: Let’s think about what we know about Kinzo for a little bit. Kinzo has always been a bit strange, right. Not necessarily occult strange but he’s always had a hair-trigger temper and some seriously strange Western obsession. Ok, let’s assume that he wasn’t just born as a anglophile, why would he be so interested in having a western mansion built out in the middle of an island for his exclusive use? Why his collection of western occult books? Why his naming of his kids with difficult names? The last one particularly interests me. All the others could just be some kind of strange fairytale that Kinzo had in his mind. However, naming your kids as he did is seriously weird. There’s some reason why he is so into western stuff. Did he perhaps live in Europe or America when he was younger? I can’t help but wonder if that might not be what Eva is searching the atlas for if it wasn’t the co-ordinates (which looks fairly unlikely to be sure) and what all the siblings were talking about when they were saying that Kinzo only loved one place in particular in his youth.
Now, we can speculate freely about what any of this backstory has to do with anything. However, let’s try and establish something: there is something more than just murder going on on Rokkenjima. There is a larger story happening behind the scenes that is moving in tandem with the murders of Rokkenjima. The murders are just one layer of the story and we have to peel it back. How? Let’s look at the various reoccurring events and see if we can’t weed some of the false ones out and flesh out the real ones.
- Maria’s Rose: Probably one of the most notable ones. I feel like I knew as soon as it happened in episode 1 (as I’m sure all of you did too) that this was going to be a thing that I should pay attention to. This is also one of the more frustrating ones to deal with. Who cares? Isn’t it just a rose? Who cares if it disappears? Couldn’t one of the servants have gotten rid of it (I did think this might be possible) or it just blew off in the wind? Well, admittedly, yes it is possible that the rose has no significance and it could just be a red herring. But I would be really hesitant to dismiss this as just a red herring before exploring it. Consider this possibility: Kinzo is being poisoned. Kinzo is, very slowly, through the alcohol that he loves so much, being poisoned by someone. However, for one reason or another the killer does not want to kill him just yet. The killer brings him to the edge of death (Nanjo said the same thing about Kinzo’s condition last year as in 1986) and then leaves him there; ready for when the moment is right. What does this have to do with the rose? The rose is a test subject. The rose is dying because it is being poisoned to test the dosages. The rose is disposed of to get rid of the evidence of the poisoning. Weird, yes but again, we have to start somewhere in our theories. I guess I might as well be the crazy one.
- The Shrine & Torii: We never see this in this episode, at least not technically. What do I mean by that? Easy, the gold is hidden under the shrine somehow. Why do I think that? Mostly it’s just a guess. However, think about the path to the beach as being the sweetfish river that goes down to the sea. The two mentioned in the poem are the two pillars of the torii. The village is the shrine itself and the key is inside of the shrine (probably not an actual key but somehow it helps you to access the gold). So I guess what I should say is not that the gold is under the shrine, but more that the key is hidden in the shrine. So why the destruction of the shrine? Probably, I guess, to hide the key. Either it was not destroyed this time or the evidence of the key is never really gone.
- George’s proposal: Well, we see this happen again. What we do with the information is a little beyond me right now. Does it catalyze anything? Does it affect the story at all other than make George sad? It may or it may not. If anyone has ideas on this one I’m just as curious to know them as anyone else.
- The Lone Ushiromiya with the Gun: Well we see it twisted here but we definitely see that there ends up being a lone Ushiromiya with a gun by the end. The gun/s take a much more prominent spot in this episode so we may want to think about who is getting guns for the past couple of episodes.
- Beatrice’s Letter of Challenge: This time, it is again read aloud to the family at the dinner table by Maria who again claims to have had Beatrice give it to her. Hmmmm… again? It’s a little different this time since we see Beatrice give the letter and umbrella to Maria this time but I guess we can somewhat discount the fact that we ‘saw’ Beatrice do it.
Ok so, what’s going on behind the scenes … ummmmm… That is a very good question… I don’t really know right now. Give me some time to process and I might have a little bit more in the way of theories. Right now I guess we can start with the idea that Kinzo might be being poisoned and that the shrine might have the key to the gold. Combining this together with the backstory of Beatrice; perhaps a former servant, or somehow relative, of Beatrice is back for revenge against the Ushiromiyas and has somehow put themselves in the midst of the family conference. Meh, not very elegant but again, we have to get working on this now.
Edit 6: Let us consider a 19th person (I will justify why I think a 19th person could exist later) and their role, since that seems like a likely place to start. Suppose, as an alternative to the ‘Beatrice has a child’ theory, we go with Kinzo took someone from Fukuin House who looked a lot like Beatrice. What if the original Beatrice was a person somehow connected with the orphanage and so Kinzo has supported it ever since. When she died, Kinzo adopted a girl from Fukuin that looked like Beatrice and brought her to the island as well. Eventually she meets Rosa and dies which leads Kinzo to believe that Fuwadorian is no longer safe to hold his prisoner. In other words, he needs his next Beatrice to be closer and to leave her no way to escape his cage. He creates a room, wherein he keeps Beatrice and the gold. This is the room that Eva discovers. It is the place that Beatrice has been living in, apparently shut away from others. She does figure out a way of escape eventually. Through this she is able to talk with Shannon and Kanon as well as Maria. Since she only started talking with Kanon, Shanon and Maria recently, it is possible that Shannon smashing the mirror in the shrine really did let Beatrice out. So, rather than her finding a way of escape, Beatrice managed (through some unknown means) to convince Shannon to let her escape which may or may not have involved breaking the mirror in the shrine.
Being now able to walk around, she creates some of the mayhem that we see in the story. Suppose that she really does give Maria the letter and that she really does go and live in the VIP room on that conference day. She may even truly believe that she is the witch Beatrice. What other roles does she play? I’m not sure of that yet, I merely wanted to give an explanation on a possibility for how a 19th person could function on the island undetected by anybody else. Plus it was bothering me as to why there was a bedroom attached to the room of gold.
Alright on to the twilights. Well I guess Battler solved most of the twilights proper right? I mean, Eva did it right? I don’t really have any objections, and neither does the witch’s side apparently. Eva seems to have been the one who did it. How did she do the first twilight? That is another good question. It seems like she has an alibi there but I’m a little unsure of that. She doesn’t really seem to have any reason to kill the servants from what I can tell. I can see why she might kill all the other ones that she apparently does kill but why the servants? Is there a second murderer on the island who kills the servants and decides to stop? There’s something suspicious about that. We need to fit the first twilight to the grand scheme of things. Eva doesn’t necessarily have to do it but there is a reason that all of the servant’s (plus probably Kinzo) died. If not Eva then who and why?
As for Nanjo’s death I’m thinking @pictoshark has the right idea about that. Someone killed Nanjo and then died somehow before EVA-Beatrice announces them dead. I’m going to give this one a bit more thought though. It seems to me that there is a more elegant answer to this since it is kind of super built up. I kind of want there to be a really cool trick to this.
Edit 1 (of several I’m sure): Another idea I had was that someone has switched places with a character. In other words, a character is dead but was killed before getting to the island and replaced by another character. This character, therefore, is not ‘affected’ by the red truth that a particular character is dead but is nonetheless a human who is one of the 18. Note: I’m not a fan of this theory but I wanted to get it out there. There is no reason, really, to believe that there is an impostor this time around. However, there isn’t really any evidence that I can see right now why one of the ones we think is dead, is actually alive. (Hideyoshi’s tip is suspicious maybe but hardly good evidence).
Edit 2: Here’s another solution that I thought of. What if there were 19 people on the island and one of the bodies had been moved off the island. For instance, one of the bodies could have been tossed out to sea and so there would only be 18 people ‘on the island’ fulfilling that particular red truth and the person would be truly dead. Then the question becomes, why would someone do that? Does someone get thrown off the island every time? What if ‘off the island’ doesn’t necessarily mean into the sea? This one requires some motive.
Edit 5: I’m not entirely sure where to put this into the post, so I guess here works. I’d like to examine some of the red truths to explore some possible interpretations. First, lets look at some of the red truths that occur during Rosa’s story: It’s definitely dead and There are no more than 18 people on this Rokkenjima. Let’s all agree that the first red truth is very suspicious. The fact that Beato doesn’t say, ‘The human Beatrice is definitely dead’ would indicate that there is the possibility that the dead thing is not Beatrice. However, I would like to point something out; she is talking about someone’s account of past events and using the red truth about it. Here we face a bit of a dilemma, how does the red truth apply to this? To give an example of what I mean suppose I am describing the plot of The Lord of the Rings and I want you to know that Boromir dies. Could I say in red Boromir dies? It is a fictional account after all, something that didn’t happen in real life. Boromir never lived to begin with so obviously he didn’t really die. We know that Beatrice lived, true, but how much can we say about the red truth applying to an account. Does it only say that something is true in the account or is what is said in red actually truth in the world of the game board? Basically what I am asking is does this red truth mean that ‘it’ died in the story of the account only and not in real life (in other words, nobody died and Rosa is making it up, but ‘it’ died for real in the story)? This particular mechanic of the red is a little ambiguous. I feel like I haven’t explained it very clearly but I hope you understand what I mean.
The second red truth is, to me, more interesting before it is said, Battler asks two different things: ‘On this island, there are no more than 18 people’ and '‘There are at least 19 people on this island’. Both of these are not repeated by Beatrice right away. And when Beatrice eventually does say her truth it comes out There are no more than 18 people on this Rokkenjima, which is not quite the same. The phrase ‘this Rokkenjima’ is a little weird. There are a few ways to interpret it. However, I would like to suggest one that might be considerably irritating but also somewhat liberating. The ‘this Rokkenjima’ that is referred to in the red is not the Rokkenjima of 1986 but rather the Rokkenjima of 1967. Beatrice is saying that there are ‘at least’ 18 people on the island at that time, which would be reasonable considering who would be on the island. For a rough count lets consider who might be on the island in 1967. Kinzo and his wife, Krauss, Eva, Rudolf, Rosa, Kumasawa, Genji, Beatrice and perhaps a handful more servants? Even assuming that there are 5 extra servants (a pretty liberal number) and even if Krauss was married at the time (which we don’t know) that would only bring the total up to 15 which is definitely ‘no more than 18’. In short, Beatrice is saying that if n is the number of people on the island in 1967 then n <= 18. This truth would then be a “vacuous truth” (credit to @NotKyon for putting me on this train of thought) meaning that it doesn’t tell us any information while seeming like it does. The reason that Beato didn’t want to say the truth when Battler wanted her too before was because then it would have to apply to the world of the gameboard in 1986 and so would tell us too much. The only thing that changes between when Battler asks her to ‘repeat’ and when she gives the truth is that Rosa is telling her story when Beato gives the truth. Beato evidently couldn’t do it before but now can by saying ‘this Rokkenjima’ and letting us think that she means the current gameboard rather than the past Rokkenjima. All that to say there are reasons to think that there are 19 people on the island.
Another little quirk in the red is when Battler and Beatrice fight over the first twilight. Battler asks her to repeat ‘The six victims are all dead’. Instead she says 6 people: Kinzo, Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda, and Kumasawa are dead! This is clearly not what Battler asks. Battler asks for the ‘victims’. By leaving out the word victims, Beato seems to say that perhaps not everyone was a ‘victim’. This feeds into the whole trouble with repeating another line that Battler wants her to say: ‘The six were all killed by other people’. This one seems particularly devastating to the witch’s side. I’ve already given a possible interpretation of that whole section about accidental death but this just adds to the evidence.
So, just as a kind of extra thing, we have a lot of information now about a lot of things that we haven’t really worked into any kind of theory or overarching story. I’m just going to try and throw in some stuff off the top of my head and I’m sure that more will come later. Nanjo says that he has a sick grandson, Kyrie says that she was also pregnant and due the same time as Asumu was due with Battler, Shannon has a really good memory, Kanon still doesn’t have a name, Maria is still really weird, Nanjo doesn’t really ‘fit’ anywhere in the story (as in, he doesn’t really have any kind of background, no history, even one that is hinted at aside from the sick grandson which is kind of debatable anyway), the letters that randomly appear in other episodes did not do so in this one, Maria and Rosa did not get staked as people did in previous second twilights, what happened to Jessica after she escapes the servant’s room? There are just so many things that need some kind of explanation. I feel like we should be able to form a cohesive story now. Lets do this thing guys! Lets beat this witch!
Hey. Hey. Here’s something to throw into the discussion.
At the end of this episode, it really seems like Eva is the culprit, doesn’t it? She turns on Gameboard Battler, says ‘took you long enough!’ and shoots him. Wolves and sheep puzzle. She has motive, she had opportunity for every death except for Nanjo. She didn’t want to kill Hideyoshi or George, but they couldn’t accept her crimes. George wanted to be with Shannon even in death, which Eva couldn’t accept.
Is Eva also Beatrice?
Well, EVA Beatrice is Beatrice. We saw the succession ceremony and everything. Let me ask it another way …
Did Eva write and send the letter of challenge?
Why? She wants the gold and headship for herself, doesn’t she? If she was on the verge of solving the riddle herself, why tell anyone? Did she need her sibling’ help? Rosa’s hint does guide her in the end. And she can’t exactly get the gold off the island without Krauss’s assistance. So is the letter meant to set up the idea that whoever finds the gold gets the headship and inheritance, so her siblings will accept it? After all, the meaning of the epitaph is only a theory, at that point. Kinzo hasn’t confirmed it. (Maybe that’s why he gets killed so early on in this episode, so he can’t disconfirm it.) So even if she was on the verge of solving the riddle, and only needed a little help, maybe she still needed to establish her position. And hence the letter. It’s a risk, but without risk, there can be no reward.
But then why kill them all, all the witnesses who heard the letter and would acknowledge her headship? Why waste this elaborate scheme? Did she really go mad with lust for gold?
No, what I’m really getting at is … do the challenger and the culprit have to be the same person?
If you look at the epitaph, there’s something weird about it. It seems to foretell the murders, but it also doesn’t. Rather, it tells you where to find the key, and then to sacrifice the six chosen by the key. Then it says two will be torn apart by ‘those who remain,’ and goes through all the bloody twilights.
Taken metaphorically, it makes the most sense as some kind of word puzzle. Taken literally … doesn’t it sound like someone is challenging you to commit these murders, in exchange for the rewards of the Golden Land? Not, in other words, like they’re committing these murders themselves. And everything should only get started after someone takes the first step and finds the key, but that’s not what happens (seemingly).
If Eva really is the killer, is there still someone else who prompted her to kill?
Hmmmm… excellent points. Did Eva come to the island with the letter and decide that that was the best way of gaining headship of the Ushiromiya. Eva seems to originally go to the island just with the idea of trying to scam as much money from Krauss as possible. However, other Eva (later to become EVA-Beatrice), has other plans and mentions the riddle during Eva’s dream. She could have hatched the plan then, possibly. I’m not sure if she would have gotten the plan any earlier, because then what would be the point in the plan to scam Krauss or involve other siblings?
There is one problem that I see; who committed the first twilight murders? It would seem like nobody really has motive to do this. The servants aren’t standing in the way of Eva’s ascension to the head of the Ushiromiya family. Eva might have reason to kill Shannon if she knew about her and George (which, from episode 2 we might conclude that she did) but there isn’t any reason to kill the other servants. In fact, Eva didn’t really have opportunity to kill the servants unless all of the other siblings participated. The first twilight is, in this episode, possibly more inexplicable than Nanjo’s death. Why are the servants killed? Why does Kinzo die? Why is Kinzo’s death and disposal so different from everyone else’s?
On the other hand, I love the last comment that you made:[quote=“mimsy, post:22, topic:29”]
If Eva really is the killer, is there still someone else who prompted her to kill?
[/quote]I think that you are right on about this. There is something or somebody that is prompting people to kill. Gold is a pretty good motivator to kill but there wasn’t really any need to kill Krauss and Natsuhi if that was the only motivator. Rosa and Maria make sense and Kyrie and Rudolf make sense too. However, Hideyoshi makes no sense at all for Eva to kill. Why would Hideyoshi, who knew that Eva was going to kill Rosa and Maria (if that was indeed what happened) all of a sudden not be able to accept Eva killing Kyrie and Rudolf? I get the feeling that Hideyoshi was killed by someone else. There is someone who is prompting the killings in each of the cases I think. There is another person or thing motivating these murder sprees.
Outside of how exactly HOW the first twilight was conducted we’ve got 2 problems. To sum them up:
- If Eva came up with the letter plan, why did she then go for the massacre plan afterward.
- Eva has no motive for the first twilight, none of the people who died in it were in her way to the succession (except Kinzo).
So why don’t we bash those problems together? Hit together these rough stones, spark the fire of solution? What if Eva wasn’t responsible for the first twilight? What if something happened between the first twilight committed by a third party and the second which made her want to kill? What if she thought someone else was trying to get the gold by being the last man standing, and she feared for her life, deciding to kill everyone around her?
I’ll throw my idea out there, see if it makes sense to you guys. It’s kinda imperfect and could use some polishing but I think it alright.
So here goes nothing. I would like to present some more basis to start forming theories about what is going on on Rokkenjima. Bear in mind that there is a lot of conjecture but I’ll try and make sure that as much of my theorizing sticks to facts.
To start with, I would like to propose a way of sorting all of the murders. I have mentioned in previous posts that there could be a 19th person who could be pulling more strings than we think. I’ve shown that this 19th person could exist on this third Rokkenjima. We know they could exist on the first and we might have actually seen them on the second (emphasis on might). One of the strongest arguments I think we can make for the existence of a 19th person is the first night in episode 3 as well as Nanjo’s death. This first twilight seems different from other first twilights since we may actually be able to eliminate people from suspicion. It seems like none of the siblings did it and they don’t really have any discernible motive to kill the servants. Nor, for that matter, do the children. Before, when the servants died I had always just assumed that they were collateral damage. They had seen something or just were unlucky enough to be in the way. As far as we can tell, there really was no reason to kill the servants other than that. It’s possible that Shannon might be killed by Eva in order to prevent her marrying George but that kind of seems pretty crazy. Aside from the lack of motive it seems to me that none of the siblings had opportunity to kill all the people of the first twilight. As I mentioned before, Kinzo could have died from natural causes but the others were certainly murdered. Could all of the siblings have collaborated to kill the servants? That seems unlikely since they all seem pretty ready to believe in another person being the murderer of Rosa and Maria. You would think that if they turned up dead and Krauss, Natsuhi, Rudolf and Kyrie know that Eva and Hideyoshi had taken part in the previous murders and were also absent from them during the time when Rosa and Maria were killed that Krauss, Natsuhi, Rudolf and Kyrie would just naturally assume that Eva and Hideyoshi did it and not trust them at all if not just outright kill them on the spot. Instead, they seem to think that there is another person who killed Rosa and Maria. What I am saying is that I think we can eliminate any of the siblings and their spouses from being the perpetrators of the first twilight. As for the children, it seems to me to be highly unlikely that Maria could have done it. George or Jessica might have been able to. But George wouldn’t have killed Shannon imo and Jessica wouldn’t have killed Kanon. Plus Jessica has that crazy bad asthma so I find it hard to believe that she did it. Battler is the detective so we are eliminating him from suspicion because that’s how detective novels work.
Now we are left with three options for who committed the first twilight: a 19th person, Kinzo and Nanjo. Obviously for Kinzo to be the culprit he would have had to fake his death. Some other corpse with 6 toes was burned and Kinzo killed all of the servants because he’s crazy. Honestly I don’t know why he would do this but I don’t think I can say the same thing about him that I can for the other servants; that he doen’t have any motive for killing them. It may be that they are accomplices in something else and he is tying up loose ends. However this leaves us with the inescapable red truth 6 people: Kinzo, Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda, and Kumasawa are dead! This red truth comes right after the first twilight so while you could try and say that Kinzo could have killed the servants and then died himself you would then have to explain how he got into the furnace in the boiler room. You might try and wiggle around and say that it doesn’t mean literally dead in Kinzo’s case or something to that effect. However it seems to mean that in other people’s cases, so why only in Kinzo’s case is it not true? Basically it seems like Kinzo didn’t do it. If anyone can combat the red truth then I would love to hear how. For the time being though, let us take this red truth as it is.
The next person on our list is Nanjo. Now, Nanjo seems to be a good candidate for the first twilight. Although he lacks motive (as per usual, it seems) he certainly had opportunity. So, while we can’t really say anything about why he might do something like this, he seems to be the most likely of the living people to have actually done the deed (if we ignore a 19th person). However, this brings us to Nanjo’s death and the question of who killed Nanjo. We could argue that one of the people who seemed to be dead was not actually dead and later came to kill Nanjo but, again, we must ask who and why. If we ignore a 19th person then someone pretended to be dead, eventually got up, killed Nanjo for some reason, didn’t kill Jessica and then killed themselves (or somehow or other died) so that all of the red truth could be true? Possible but very inelegant and it feels kind of contrived. The most likely idea in this vein that I could think of is that George is faking death after guessing that Nanjo committed the first twilight. If this was the case then Nanjo would have killed Shannon and so George would have a motive. He may have killed Nanjo, imitated Kanon for Jessica’s sake and brought her away from the servant’s room. After he did that he killed himself so that he could ‘join Shannon in death’ or something like that. In other words, George’s death was a trap so that he could kill Nanjo in revenge. This seems pretty plausible to me and provides a motive for Nanjo’s death. Nanjo’s motives for committing the first twilight are very unclear but, if we believe what Nanjo says in that scene about his sick grandchild I could possibly see some Mr Freeze stuff going on where Nanjo commits crimes to try and save his terminally ill grandchild.
Now, let me propose my theory. I believe that there are certain deaths that hold particular significance to the overall narrative of Rokkenjima. Let us assume that there are two categories for murders: motivated or ‘central’ murders and ‘cover’ murders. This theory assumes that there are certain people that are killed because of some underlying backstory to Umineko. In other words, the stuff that is going on in the background is the cause for those murders. It may be that there is a 19th person who kills these people or it may be that a 19th person prompts their murder. It may even be that there is no 19th person but one of the 18 has a reason to kill these certain people each time. In these cases they die every time because the backstory is the same every time. These are the motivated murders or central murders. They are the important ones that we should focus on and tell us about what is going on in the background and what happened in the past. So, what are the ‘cover’ murders. These are the noise in the machine. They obscure our data collecting by giving us a whole bunch more murders to worry about. If there is a 19th person who is performing the central, motivated murders then these cover murders could be collateral damage (i.e. witnesses or people who might be able to know who the murderer is when they see who was murdered), people murdered by another person (for instance if Eva is not the central murderer then any murders committed by her are cover murders or are only central murders by accident if she happens to kill someone whom the central murderer would have killed anyway), or people who were merely killed to throw the detective off the scent. Why go to such elaborate lengths for this theory? Because of Nanjo’s death.
There are certain characters that die in every episode. Now, we would expect this. After all there are at least 18 people on the island, right? If only 5 at most can survive every episode and we’ve only had 3 episodes there would expect there to be some overlap. However, if we think in terms of central murders and cover murders then the people who die every time become a lot more interesting. But how are we to tell which ones are the central ones and which are the cover ones? Well the first step is as mentioned above; they die in every episode. This gives us a good starting place. What else? Doesn’t it seem strange that in every episode so far there is at least one series of murders wherein there is a witness? In Episode 1 there were the last three twilights where Maria was in the room with them while they were being killed. In Episode 2 there was the scene with Kanon in the servants’ room where Nanjo and Kumasawa were killed. In this episode there is Nanjo’s death where Jessica is a witness. Why do I bring this up? These murders go against what we might normally think for a murderer to do. You don’t leave witnesses. There is no benefit to it. Why do it? One reason might be that this particular person only is interested in certain deaths. Only certain people must die and killing other people wouldn’t be what they want. Notice anything about the victims of these particular murders? Yup, our very own Nanjo seems to be a recurring victim. Could it be that Nanjo is one of these central murders? I think this is very likely. If we think that Nanjo might be one then who else? Kumasawa and Genji come to mind. Both die in episode 1 and while Genji doesn’t die in episode 2 it would be reasonable to say that Genji was able to fend off the murderer this time around while he wasn’t able to in episode 1.
Now I know this is largely speculation and I haven’t exactly given a great reason to believe that there are these central murders or cover murders. However, I will leave it here for now, since this post has already gone on too long. If I think of some added detail that might shed some more light on this theory I will post some more.
I like the boldness of your theorizing, @Seraphitic! This is getting very interesting.
My first thought was that we could draw up a list of victims from gameboard to gameboard, then think about everything what we know about them. If we examine their relationships to the rest of cast, we can come closer to discovering what motives there are for murdering them. If Nanjo is one of the central murders, we should think about what we know about Nanjo.
We should think about Nanjo, anyway, actually. He’s an odd piece on the gameboard, isn’t he? He’s Kinzo’s old friend and doctor, but he’s not family. There’s no reason for him to be at the family conference, except to confirm the state of Kinzo’s health. It’s not that he’s suspicious, exactly – he seems like a good-natured and well-intentioned man – but the more you think about him, the more he sticks out. Even his seating at the dinner table is awkward.
But because he’s a good-natured man – and because he’s not as embroiled in the family drama as the rest – it’s hard to think of a reason why someone would want to murder to him. Could it be because of his closeness to Kinzo?
Hmm. Here’s an odd detail. I checked the TIPS and the Witch’s Game Record to get an idea of who lived and who died in each episode. In both episodes one and two, Nanjo dies on the seventh twilight, gouged by the Stake of Belphegor. Is there any meaning to that, any message the culprit is trying to send? Has Nanjo sinned against anyone through sloth or idleness? Here’s what Belphegor’s character screen says …
'Belphegor is well trusted and known for being a reticent, serious, and responsible piece of furniture.
However, this is partly due to her demonic desire to turn her masters into useless, lazy pigs.
In that sense, she might be the most demonic of all the sisters.’
Maybe this ‘sister’ is a metaphor for Nanjo’s crime in the culprit’s eyes. Maybe he didn’t do anything evil himself, but he enabled someone else (I’m looking at Kinzo), and that’s the motive behind Nanjo’s murder.
(Sidenote: there’s some randomness to the stakes, but there are some patterns, too. It doesn’t seem to correspond to the twilight, but the person. In both episodes one and two, Kumasawa dies on the eighth twilight, gouged by the Stake of Leviathan. But in episode one, Kanon dies on the fifth twilight, and in episode two, Kanon dies on the second twilight. Both times he is gouged by the Stake of Satan. Likewise, Hideyoshi is gouged by the Stake of Beelzebub in episodes one and three, but in episode one, it’s the second twilight, and in episode two, it’s the fifth twilight. If we believe in witches and demons, we could say it’s because that stake is mystically drawn to the sin of that victim, no matter the timing of the death. If we believe in a human culprit, either the culprit is choosing those stakes to send a message, or it’s truly a coincidence. If you’re curious, Leviathan is associated with envy, Satan with wrath, and Beelzebub with gluttony.)