Umineko Episode 3 Spoiler-Free General

07th Discussion
#42

This episode was really great. It followed the foreshadowing we got from the 2nd Ura Tea Party, as in there were several new pieces on this gameboard, all supposed to corner Battler. I actually saw that this episode followed the Northwind and Sun approach somewhere in the middle and you can check that with my notes that’ll be at the end of this post as per usual. What I didn’t see was that this approach was done wittingly.

Sadly, I didn’t have many ideas for resolving things on my own this time, so I won’t really bring any new theories to the table. The only thing I have to offer is a possible beginning move to get out of the red web of truth, which admittedly was sparked by your theories regarding it. Of course, there’s @Seraphitic’s approach of saying one of the 18 was long dead and not even on the island. However, I looked again at the part that says who’s dead and who’s alive. Let’s put that here:
"Kinzo is dead.
Krauss is dead.
Natsuhi is dead.
Hideyoshi is dead.
George is dead.
Rudolf is dead.
Kyrie is dead.
Rosa is dead.
Maria is dead.
Genji is dead.
Kanon is dead.
Shannon is dead.
Gohda is dead.
Kumasawa is dead.
Nanjo is dead.
Those 15 are all dead.
Battler is alive.
Eva is alive.
Jessica is alive."
It is later confirmed that the three alive haven’t done it and that Nanjo didn’t kill himself either. This looks like a deadend, I’m not telling anything new here. However, one line here is weird and hints at this being a trick to mislead us. I’ll write that line again:
Nanjo is dead.
You’re probably wondering how this is weird. Well, this clues us in that all these lines only tell us the state of each person after Nanjo has died. We automatically assume that before Nanjo dies the other 14 that are confirmed dead after Nanjo’s death are dead as well. However, this is not necessarily the case. Therefore, we can put theories out for each person that wasn’t confirmed dead at an earlier point. I think someone among you did so for George, and the same really could be done for Natsuhi and Krauss (would need a misdiagnosis by Nanjo), and Kyrie, Rudolf and Hideyoshi (were never inspected by Nanjo), although those five would need the extra work of finding a motive. So my move as Battler would be “Repeat it! Neither Hideyoshi, Kyrie, Rudolf, Krauss, Natsuhi nor George have killed Nanjo!” I’m not asking about the other eight because those were confirmed dead at an earlier point in red. Of course, whoever of those six did it, he or she would have to kill themselves afterwards for the red web of truth to be valid at the point it’s used.

Now that that’s over with, I want to take a step back and look at a few things that I usually talk about when looking at fictional works, but haven’t yet done here since I was preoccupied with all the mysteries. First off, there’s something I noticed about the music. And that is that the soundtrack uses certain instruments to represent different factions or themes in the plot. For one, we have the organ, which is used whenever something magical happens, and the type of organ even represents the strength of that magic. I’m not sure if the Cembalo is part of that group, it might be. Then there’s string instruments which come up during most scenes in the mansion, representing that western flair, which is a fitting choice, as string quartetts are one of the common ensembles used in chamber music back in the days.

Second: The inspiration for the seven sisters of purgatory is pretty obvious, and Ronove’s “real life background” is even stated (he is indeed the 27th demon categorized in the Lesser Key of Solomon), so I was wondering: what’s the background or inspiration for the chiester sisters? And honestly, I don’t really have a clue. They wear the flag of Iceland on their arms, but they mention “Pendragon-sama” which could refer to Uther Pendragon of the Arthur myth, but could also just refer to the name meaning, literally “Head-dragon”, so I really have no idea.

Hmm, how to end this post…
Ah, I know! Let’s put out a crazy theory! One which is almost certainly going to be crushed by the next episode! What if the meta is actually a depiction of Ange trying to figure out what happened? And I mean each time, I view each gameboard as being a parallel universe to be honest, which would mean that each version could have a different culprit. We saw this episode that Ange does have Battler’s catchphrase of “It’s useless!”, so it wouldn’t be that unreasonable to view Battler as her avatar in researching the events of 1986 in the year 1998. This would work with the approach of magic being a representation of the unknown. However, it’s most likely going to be crushed next episode, because I expect both Battler and Ange appearing in the meta, and then this theory would have to explain a whole lot more and would get pretty ugly. Still, I’ll keep it in the back of my mind.

Oh, and here’s my notes: http://pastebin.com/mFzdER0a

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#43

Hello @VyseGolbez. Glad to see you keeping on with the Umineko reading. Sorry I haven’t posted anything to you before now. I didn’t want to get in the way of your theorizing since I want you to have as unbiased an opinion as possible. However, I wanted to ask you something, who do you think killed the people this time around? I’m genuinely curious because I still haven’t been able to fully make up my mind about what has gone on. On the one hand Eva definitely could have done the murders until Nanjo. However, did she actually? It seems like it might be possible for someone else to have committed at least some of them. What do you think? Also, I love all your other posts. Keep it up. At this rate I’ll see you in the episode 4 thread soon.

#44

I find Eva to be unlikely for the first six murders, simply because I can’t think of a motive. For now my pick for those falls to Nanjo. While I can’t think of a motive either, he’s still unknown enough that this motive is as of yet to be revealed. I really only pick him here to have a motive for Nanjo’s eventual death. But let’s proceed in order. So second twilight: Rosa and Maria. This one is the easiest to attribute to Eva. We have possibility and motive for this one. Rosa found the gold as well and therefore was a threat to Eva. Maria was an unfortunate witness.Now it gets interesting. Fourth through sixth twilight: I am again suspecting Eva here. I think that Eva realized shortly after that her husband was leaving with Rudolf and Kyrie. Honestly, with Eva as one of the culprits, I assume that her illness was faked so that no one suspects her. So Eva followed the three, planning to kill only Kyrie and Rudolf. However, when she did, Hideyoshi confronted her why she had to kill those two as well. It is imaginable that he was willing to cover for Rosa’s death since she knew of the gold as well, but he didn’t understand why she had to kill two more people. So the two argued and Eva accidentally killed Hideyoshi. This might have been the point where she snapped a bit, and started to believe that she is indeed a witch and has to follow that epitaph. Here I would be guessing that she got the stakes from Kinzo’s study. It’s never really stated who of the adults had which keys afterwards, so it’s reasonable to assume that she had access to the key of the study. So now she was maybe thinking, 'I’m already killing so many people, might as well get revenge on Krauss and Natsuhi." So she killed those two next, and following procedure, used the stakes afterwards. Around here we have the second interesting point: George’s dissappearance, and eventually Nanjo’s death. My line of thinking here is that George might actually suspected his mother for the killings for one reason or another, but wanted to judge her actions through a ruse. Maybe he wanted to know if she’s still capable of loving him, whatever the reason, he decided to get Nanjo help him escape the guesthouse without anyone noticing (i.e. Nanjo closed the window again after George jumped out of it) and furthermore declare him dead as soon as they find him. What he didn’t expect was that accident regarding Jessica’s eyes. What he also didn’t expect was that he found some evidence X that allowed him to conclude that Nanjo killed the first six. The rest basically then plays out like the George theory mentioned before. George pretends to be Kanon for Jessica’s sake, kills Nanjo in revenge, and kills himself to be reunited with his love.

So yeah, that would be my theory on what happened in this game board.

For another thing that I realized is the same, or rather different, across these three game boards: Each game board, there is a new portrait of a Beatrice. We had the original in the first, the blonder Beatrice in the second, and now EVAtrice in the third. I wonder if this trend is going to continue.

edit: One thing I briefly (heh, as if) wanted to look at was the introduction of Hempel’s Raven and the concept of using the contrapositive. Because what annoyed me was Beatrice’s claim that she could prove that “all humans except me = foolish” by proving “me = wise”. There had to be a catch somewhere, because otherwise I could do the exact same thing, and common sense tells us it’s not that easy. It took me quite a while, but I think I found the “error” Beatrice made. Because to really prove that, we must first define what “foolish” and what “wise” means. And as far as I know, foolishness and wiseness is more or less on two opposite ends of a sliding scale. And here is where I think that this claim implicitly actually means that “me = the wisest”, as otherwise a contrahent to this claim could say “Compared to a possible person X, who is wiser than you, you are foolish. Therefore, your claim ‘me = wise’ is not correct”. And since we should now see that it’s actually a superlative that’s in force here, if I wanted to prove “me = wise”, which is equivalent to “me = the wisest”, I had no way around comparing myself to the rest of humanity, as this sliding scale of foolishness and wiseness is only possible by knowing different people’s degrees of wiseness or foolishness. So while the witch’s proof seems to be simple and short at a glance, it’s still no different to the more obvious almost impossible claim “all humans except me = foolish”

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#45

I like it, very good. I have another question to follow up then is, what is going on with some of these magical scenes? You’ve come up with a good working theory about what might be going on on this gameboard. I wondered if you had any thoughts about what the magical scenes are or represent or otherwise why they exist in the first place. Bear in mind this is coming from someone that is trying to come to an answer to the same question.

Also, since this chapter gives us a little more in terms of history what did you make of that? Beatrice really did seem to exist but she died 20 years ago or so. So why is this new person calling themselves Beatrice? Did they know the real Beatrice? Is this unrelated? I’d love to hear what you think about that as well.

#46

Hmm, it’s a mixture of “How it would look like if everything were to be explained with magic” and “a metaphorical visualisation of motives, character backgrounds and the like”. And depending on the scene, I might get more out of the first option or I might get more from the second. What I’m trying to say is I tackle each magical scene from many different perspectives to see what I can gain from it. So I don’t really have an easy answer as to what the magic scenes mean or why they’re there.[quote=“Seraphitic, post:45, topic:29”]
Beatrice
[/quote]

This one is complicated. And honestly, it’s one I don’t really have an idea about. For my theory for the third game board, it’s almost more convenient to say that every murder except maybe the first twilight doesn’t have anything to do with Beatrice. Of course there’s the issue of the letters. Well, it might be possible that Eva realized she needs help solving the riddle, and saw it as a low enough risk to ask the others. As to how she got the head ring, that might have actually been luck. Eva strikes me as the type of person that is sly enough to refine or adjust plans they made before. But luck seems like a cop-out and is almost like saying “magic!”, so it might be possible that she managed to make a convincing duplicate of the head ring in the past.That the first twilight actually happened was then benefitial for her, since it meant she could write a second letter (the one that’s displayed in the tips menu) to really get her siblings into thinking about the epitaph.

But for the first and second game board, I feel there’s too few information to really go off of.

1 Like
#47

Ahaha, @Karifean is spot on here in my opinion. Episodes 1 and 2 were very interesting to me, but for the most part I just couldn’t get into them. That has all changed with Episode 3! I love what we are able to do with this story now that we all actually understand how it works in general.

I would like to say that I was expecting that ending the whole time… as soon as Virgilia said The North Wind and the Sun, I had an idea that Beatrice would try to pull something like this. But to be honest I had completely forgotten about it until Battler said something about Beatrice being a witch and they were transported to the Banquet. So I was basically fooled by her trick nonetheless.

I said something similar after reading Onikakushi, but Ive really got to hand it to Ryukushi and his ability to scare me even when Im expecting it. Like I said, at that point I knew the whole “sign the paper” thing was a ruse from the start, but that moment when Beatrice donned her signature grin which we had almost forgotten about, and especially Virgilia who we had never seen look evil before… it was still creepy as hell!

Personally, I was happy to see the old Beatrice return at the end. As I was reading, it saddened me to think that Beatrice, who’s villainy was so perfect, could possibly become an actual ally. As exciting as it was to fight EVA Beatrice, who I kinda hated, I much prefer Beatrice as an opponent than her.
What was more devastating to me was the betrayal of Virgilia. Not only had I actually thought of her as an ally, but she represented the hope that there really were good witches in this world. But all along, she had been playing us, and as I assume we may see in Episode 4, she contains the same evil as Beatrice.

On that note, I warn against putting faith Bernkastle just because she is in the same position as we the reader. She may also be trapped by Beatrice’s gameboard, but does that does not mean we should inherently trust her, and it certainly does not make her a “good” witch.

Related to, but not directly answering:

There are a few scenes that Battler does not witness, but also are not part of the gameboard, and I am wondering to what extent we can trust them. These are the opening scenes of each episode, which appear to be pure backstory. We know that these are not part of the gameboard, at least in Episode 3, because Battler does not recognize Virgilia when she appears in place of Kumasawa later. So that begs the question, what is their relevance. Are they simply there to narratively introduce elements that will pop up later in that episode? Episodes 2-3’s openings contain many appearances of witches and magic, so if we deny those then we obviously cannot take them at full face value… but can they be interpreted in meaningful ways that treat magic as the “unknown” and a metaphor? I think we can safely assume that George and Shannon’s trip, as well as Jessica and Kanon’s romantic interactions did indeed happen in the “real world”, as they are referenced again and again. But does the Episode 3 scene perhaps show us the fragment where Beatrice came from, as referenced by Lambda? Or does it show the Kuwadorian… saaaaaaaa :wink:

Side note: I don’t know if we knew this before, but Genji’s surname is Ronove!? And Ronove the demon comments that “You [Genji] are my greatest servant.” What? I thought Genji was Kinzo’s servant? Is this just a reference to how Kinzo modeled his furniture after Ronove, as is mentioned with Kanon later, or is there some deeper backstory here?

EDIT: Listening to the podcast, Im starting to wonder if, like Beatrice’s North Wind and the Sun, this whole Episode is made to trick you. It is so so easy to pin almost everything in this Episode on Eva. She disappears over and over again, has a gun, and seems perfectly capable of killing everyone. Then EVA Beatrice seems to lead us to believe that she’s the culprit, by refusing to repeat so many things in red surrounding her alibis. And of course it all ends with Eva admitting to being the culprit and killing Battler…

But doesn’t this seem too easy? We see so many things that point us to Eva, plus EVA Beatrice is the one doing the murders from the magic point of view. BUT, Battler was upstairs for the majority of the game! We cannot fully trust the majority of the scenes from this Episode. There is also a sneaky way of using the red truths that Battler does not seem to understand yet. Let me explain:

A witch can refuse to repeat something in red for any reason, and they do not have to state this reason. As such they can refuse to repeat something that is completely true in red. Beato seemingly did this early on, originally refusing to repeat that there were only 18 people on the island, only to reveal later that this was in fact true.

The question is, why would you refuse to repeat something in red? This is often essentially resigning, giving Battler a win. Ronove demonstrates a couple reasons: repeating something in red could give away valuable info, cause a stalemate, or even seal your own defeat. But there could be another reason. To trick Battler. Battler assumes that when a witch refuses to repeat something, it must not be true. But if a witch can convince Battler of one thing through this method… it could cause him to miss clues or become trapped later. This can be used as a sort of “lost the battle but won the war” situation. As EVA Beatrice pointed out, the witch side has a kinda large advantage in this game: Battler has to win every round, but the witch only has to win one. So if the witch uses an easy mystery to convince Battler of one thing, like “Eva is the killer”, then Battler (and the reader) is much more likely to stop thinking. Obviously the web of red truth has many more hang ups, but the original one that Eva did not kill Nanjo is honestly startling at first for this reason.

Clearly Eva did partake in some of the murders, or she wouldn’t have admitted it and shot Battler at the end… but my current theory is that she didn’t do all of them. Obviously not Nanjo, probably not the first twilight… possibly only Rosa and Maria.

4 Likes
#48

It’s Ronoue

Still, I think the connection is intentional.

#49

Whew, I’m getting faster, episode 1 took me a year, episode 2 took 6 months, and now I’ve finished episode 3 in about 3 months. Before we start, a quick joke. Where does Battler from Umineko do his online clothes shopping?
explainedbyhumans!

So anyways, this episode really ramped things up to 11. It started fairly innocuously but holy cow it escalated quickly, episode 2 there was some magic and some demons and stuff but this episode dropped the pretense that it was a non-magical murder mystery entirely and went all in on it. The magic battle scene between Beatrice and predecessor Beatrice was when I knew shit was going to go down. To quote myself from when I was reading it,
"E1: a murder mystery on an island
E2: oh btw there are witches and demons
E3: now the witches use the weapons of the gods to fight each other"
which pretty succinctly summarizes my experience with the first part.

I also noted that (Higurashi spoilers regarding the differences in the meta elements between it and Umineko) I feel like this game was written with people like me, who had already played Higurashi, in mind. In Higurashi magic basically doesn’t affect the world, all the murder mysteries can be explained using logic in theory. Umineko on the other hand is completely the opposite of this. It’s making it fairly clear pretty early on that yes magic is definitely real and definitely is how all these murders are happening which I think is really interesting.

Then came the part where it seemed like Battler had Beatrice on the back foot for a bit which in light of the ending was incredibly brilliant. And then Eva showed up and that’s where things got really good. First of all, witch Eva is incredibly cute and she might be a deranged murderous witch but I love her so much, also her portrait is amazing and I want a copy to hang on my wall irl. Anyways, wow, holy shit that ending, it caught me completely off guard how they were all working together to get Battler but it totally makes sense in hindsight which is one of my favorite storytelling things. (things that are totally obvious in hindsight but you never see coming in before.) Also I like how Kyrie mentioned that Battler has a step sister when she’s fighting the stakes and I totally made a note of it at the time it happened and felt so smart when I immediately knew who she was when she showed up at the very end.

Then the tea parties, it’s interesting how they basically switched them around this time, starting with the discussion among the witches and concluding with the more real people, it was pretty basic, I don’t have a lot to say about them except something that’s Higurashi spoilery so I’ll do that in the next paragraph.

(Higurashi spoilers regarding the similarity of a character in it with one in Umineko) So I am getting some serious Mamoru vibes from Ange, I’m really curious what part she’s going to play from here on out and it’s pretty obvious based on her interaction with Bernkastel that she’s going to be the key to winning the game against Beatrice.

So yeah, wow, I’m definitely really getting into the story now, episode 1 I was a bit iffy about but I’m completely sold now, I’m really interested what the remaining episodes will bring, I hope witch Eva appears again but idk if she will, regardless I’m excited to see how the story can continue turning everything up to 11.

6 Likes
#50

The best thing is that said step sister was also mentioned by I think Battler himself way back when in the airport scene in episode 1. Glad to see you enjoying Umineko, though.

1 Like
#51

It’s a pretty good piece of foreshadowing. Though, I believe it was Hideyoshi who mentions it.

#52

Ummm… Is nobody really going to say anything?

#53

What do you mean, Aspi?

#54

Wow. This episode was really something else. Some great fantasy scenes, as well as some great mystery and logic scenes, with potentially the most interesting closed room setup yet and that beautiful web of red near the end. The “Braun tube trial” concept really invites people who, like Battler, felt beat down by the appearance of magical fights to continue to treat these mysteries as mysteries and not fantasy.

Now, on to the actual mysteries. When I realized the setup of the First Twilight, with the chain of locked rooms, I was immediately hooked. And pretty stumped, considering the red truths that Beato gives. But to me, the most interesting thing about this twilight may not even be a consideration when it comes to solving the actual mystery of the twilight. And that’s the question of cause of death. Beatrice refuses to say that the six deaths were homicides, despite the fact that this would handily corner Battler, but she is willing to say that there were no suicides. She even appears willing to say that there were no accidents, if not for Ronove’s intervention. This eventually lead me to the answer that Kinzo did in fact die of illness, something that @Seraphitic has covered pretty well in terms of its implications earlier in this thread.

As for the topic of the actual mystery of the murders, I have two ideas. One is that the key lies in the overlooking of the courtyard door to the boiler room. The other is that, of the servants proclaimed dead by Beatrice, the corpse of one of them is not actually present in the room we believe it is. As an example, it would be if Shannon’s corpse was disposed of elsewhere and somebody else was playing dead as Shannon in the parlor with the help of Nanjo. No reason that I think it’s Shannon in particular, though I do think that would open some interesting things in the later murders.

I largely accept Battler’s explanation of the murders that occur from the second to eighth twilights. I think that if Eva was not involved in these murders, EVA Beatrice could have defeated Battler easily. There is still room for doubt, but I don’t have any evidence that leads me to believe that Eva didn’t do it, aside from perhaps that killing Hideyoshi seems rather uncharacteristic. It should be noted that the murders carried out during these twilights use a variety of murder methods, but that the First Twilight, George’s death, and Nanjo’s death are all said to be done by “a gun or spear-shaped object”.

George’s death is interesting. For Hideyoshi, I can envision how Eva would come to kill him. After killing Rudolf and Krauss, Hideyoshi believes that Eva has gone too far, and there is some kind of confrontation that tragically leads to Hideyoshi’s death. But Eva has no real motive to go out of her way to kill George. It is possible that this murder was carried out by someone else, though by who, I cannot say. Perhaps the same person who killed Nanjo, who we know could not possibly be Eva. Though the fact that I used Shannon as my example of my First Twilight theory actually brings me to an interesting possibility. What if it was in fact Shannon’s corpse that had been disposed of, and the “Shannon” in the parlor was the victim of the first twilight? Then the killer has a motive for killing George. George sneaks out of the guesthouse (with Nanjo’s help?) to see Shannon’s corpse, and “Shannon” is forced to kill him to keep him quiet. Then, “Shannon” turns around and kills Nanjo to either tie up the loose end of an accomplice that helped her play dead, or for his foolishness in letting George out of the guesthouse. If Kinzo does not count as one of the 18 people due to his prior dead status, the existence of “Shannon” is quite possible.

Disregarding the existence of “Shannon” (or really any other “fake servant”, Shannon is just the most compelling because of the George connection), then the only remaining explanation I have for Nanjo’s death is that somebody who was thought to be dead but not confirmed in red (Krauss, Natsuhi, Hideyoshi, George, Rudolf, or Kyrie) killing him and then dying soon after, either from succumbing to wounds or from suicide. I think Rudolf and Kyrie are both compelling choices for survivors, as I find them the most likely to write the number on the parlor door which contains Battler’s birthday. Though Hideyoshi is also an interesting one because of his dead character profile text: “That was careless of me. Didn’t think you were still alive…”

And finally, the last thing that I’d like to touch on. In EVA Beatrice’s final argument, she essentially argues that a witch would be considered a magical human. Unless the 18 people on the island are not the 18 people that we think are on the island, this essentially confirms that the killer has to be one of the main 18 suspects that have existed since Episode 1, as even from a magical perspective the killer would have to fit within that 18 according to EVA Beatrice. Though really, good mystery sense tells us that, but I still find it interesting.

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#55

Hey guys! I just posted a thread about a theory I made during episode 3. I decided to keep it out of this thread because it likely contains spoilers (though to be honest I don’t actually know because it’s speculation and detective work). If you want to check it out, head over here! Please read the warning at the top though - it is important.

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#56

This was a rollercoaster of an episode. Where do I even begin? I feel like I had just woken up with the worst hangover in the world, and the cold, grungy morning air is trying to drill through my skull. My mind feels like it’s filled with birdshot. Ryukishi’s cornered me again.

So, we are presented with the character of Ushiromiya Eva, who I’ve never liked and didn’t want to give any sympathy to. The same arrow would strike true with Beatrice later on. I love how Ryukishi notably set up Eva’s disdain of smoking to be a plot point later on, and how finally we get insight into just how jealous and greedy she is that she would acknowledge living out her dreams through George, regardless of to what degree that is. It was so satisfying to see her admit her mistakes. I’ll almost always admire the way the characters are written, no matter how I feel about the characters themselves.

One thing that struck me out of place was Rosa telling the story of her encountering Beatrice in Kuwadorian nineteen years ago, in 1967. Why was this not recounted in the other boards? Did it only happen in this fragment, or did it happen in all of them and she just suppressed it? I’m not sure.

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Finally, Battler grows a bit less incompetent. I’m glad to see my favorite protagonist of all time become better, no matter who he’s fighting. As we’re introduced to the concepts of Hempel’s Raven and Schrodinger’s Paradox, I’m glad to see these powerful tools crop up against the battle with Evatrice.

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So I want to delve into the symbolism as best I can. The screenshot above immediately reminded me of The Divine Comedy, where Dante Alighieri is guided by the Roman poet Virgil through Hell and Purgatory, while his ideal woman, Beatrice, guides him through Heaven. Beatrice is noted as being a symbol of divine love; I believe it is the purest of love that flows from God and is only corrupted by the sins of man. Love is a major theme in the Divine Comedy, as, if I’m correct, it is here as well. I believe Battler represents Dante. He is lost at first in this new and frightening world, and is stuck in Purgatorio with Beatrice, an analogue for God, because he refuses to accept the existence of witches and magic, just as those who lived with human virtue but did or could not accept Jesus were stuck in Limbo. Purgatory in the Divine Comedy states a theory that all sins arise from love, like Beatrice’s love of violence and cruelty.

During the battle between Virgilia and Beatrice, they summon several mythical arms as weapons. Only one stood out to me, though; the Aegis shield, used by Beatrice to block Gungir. Aegis was a shield forged by Hephaestus and given to Athena, goddess of wisdom, war, and craft. Athena was praised for her intelligence and strategies, and it’s not hard to see why I parallel her to Beatrice here. By extension, I compare Battler to Athena’s brother Ares, who represents the violence and physical aspect of war with his fiery spirit and tendency to succumb to his emotions. This is reaffirmed by their favored nations in the Trojan war; Athena supported the victorious Greeks, while Ares supported Troy.

At one point, Beatrice speaks of chess. “Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine.” This is a quote by Rudolph Spielmann, a famous chess player of the romantic school. The romantic school of chess focuses on quick maneuvers rather than long term planning, like throwing caution to the wind and letting whatever happen, happen. I believe Spielmann is a perfect analogue for Kinzo; he shut himself in his Swedish apartment in August of 1942, perhaps fearful of the growing Nazi sympathies in the country of the time. He was found dead a week later, either from heart disease or starvation. On his tombstone read “Rastlos flykting, hart slagen av odet” (“A fugitive without rest, struck hard by fate”). This mirrors Kinzo’s obsession with researching ways to revive Beatrice, and his unlucky deaths due to the roulette. It should be noted that Spielmann himself, while playing chess, was fond of sacrificing pieces.

Finally, I want to touch upon the rifles Kinzo has. I was desperately searching for something behind them, and why Ryukishi chose this specific model of gun to put into Umineko. There had to be a reason. Little did I know, it was staring me in the face, black barrel and all. They are modeled after “Mare’s Leg”, a Winchester 1892 carbine carried by Steve McQueen in the 1950’s television show Wanted: Dead or Alive. Like many genres, Western media went through their golden age, and then were deconstructed until they could be put back together again. Wanted: Dead or Alive represents the golden age of Westerns. The main character, Josh Randall, is a bounty hunter who helps those in need and fights for the good of others. He strives to make the world a better place. It was a heavily romantic view of the West, a period piece that focuses on the beauty and remembrance of the past. Now, does Kinzo not romanticize the past he had with Beatrice, and wants to return to the time they were together? To see her smile once more? I think this is the meaning behind the rifles he owns. To remember the rosy past not of the West, but of his own life.

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It is here that Beatrice follows the strategy set forth by The North Wind and the Sun. Using persuasion, rather than force, she hopes to trick Battler into accepting her by unfortunately the best waste of character development I’ve ever seen in my life. Ryukishi had me utterly fooled. By introducing Evatrice, my instinct lowered its guard for Beatrice. I shed tears for the first time here, as I watched Kanon guide Jessica to safety and profess their love for each other. I cried as Beatrice defended the barrier until nothing but her heart remained standing, beating as an eternal testament to the power of love; the power of love that I so beautifully believe in, only to have it snatched away as though my own child were being taken. I believed in her. I felt the hard hammers of shock and despair strike at the doors to my soul, as even Virgilia betrayed him. They belong in the jaws of Lucifer, alongside Brutus, Cassius, and Judas. This was the most polarizing twist in any piece of fiction I’ve encountered. Still, it’s far from over. :crying:

As for Eva suddenly being the culprit, I can only see this happening if the red truth told by Evatrice was a lie. I refuse to trust the narrative anymore, and while the fantasy elements only seem to misdirect me I still enjoy them as a setpiece. Ange seems like a promising character, and I can’t wait to see Battler stop being played. This is my favorite episode so far, but I think I need a moment to relax. :mii:

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#57

That’s all very good, Zosonte, but may I know, what did you think of the Hidden Tea Party Chapter (is it named as ??? in the VNs?)? The part in which Lambdadelta and Beatrice talk about Beatrice’s game, to be more precise.

#58

Where Lambdadelta says she’s only propping up Beatrice to beat Bernkastel? It was a bit shocking, but in the end it didn’t surprise me. I’m not really sure how much I can trust, anyway.

#59

Yes, that’s the one. Well, you being untrustworthy of the narrative aside, what do you make of it?

#60

I think that Lambadelta is trying to fool me into believing that she will take over Beatrice as the primary antagonist, so that I’ll turn my gaze away from Beatrice and live in the shadow of wondering when she’ll strike directly. Bernkastel is aiding Battler against Beatrice, so I want to believe that Lambdadelta is a outer-scope villain that Bernkastel will beat again if needed.

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#61

I really liked Beatrice’s character development scenes. I saw the Umineko anime back in 2010. I don’t remember much at all, but one of the few things I remember is that the third arc ends with it being revealed that Beatrice was pretending. Yet, even with that in mind, I still let myself get really invested in her storyline and just wanted it to be real. Even if I know that it’s fake, it’s just really well written and just is such a great arc. And as has been said in this thread, I imagine that there’s still some hints of truth.

I try to let myself get invested in the pathos sections while also acknowledging that a large amount of what’s going on might not be real at all. In other words, don’t let myself be like Battler who got so sucked in to Beatrice’s act that he stopped being critical.

I don’t think I have the words to explain yet about my mindset. But it’s viewing it as a truth while not being the truth. I have it in my head somewhere, but putting it into words in a concise way is complicated. In my attempts to put it into words, I made a couple lines that I want to expand upon into a poem or other type of writing. The themes of subjective and complicated truth in Umineko are fascinating and something that I really want to explore in my own writing

Find the truth behind the lie
What lies beyond the truth?

I put it that way because with a story like this, you really can’t just get the whole picture solely from the truth. The magic stuff isn’t here just to deceive the reader, in my opinion it’s to create a bigger picture that wouldn’t exist if this was a story that only included the truth. In order to get that big picture, you have to ask what lies beyond the truth. Yet, I still have the primary goal being to find the truth. It’s important to ask what’s beyond the truth, but the most important thing is still the truth itself.

As for the red web of truth. It seems very overwhelming. But the fact that she played so much of her cards at once to corner Battler just ends up really highlighting what she didn’t say. The ultimate red truth of defeat would be, at the moments before Nanjo’s death, the only humans alive on the island were Battler, Eva, Jessica, and Nanjo. She said a lot of damaging facts to imply that that had to be the case, but it wasn’t that direct statement. So in that case, there’s still room to argue. One way would be that one of the 18 died after killing Nanjo, or died at the same time. It ends up being really convenient for Eva Beatrice that everyone is dead at the point in the game that she uses the red truth. It’s a little too convenient though.

The other damaging red truth is that there’s no more than 18 people on the island. Until it’s defined further what that means, that doesn’t really mean much in terms of there being a person existing besides the 18 we know. It’s been suggested by Seraphitic that Kinzo might have already already died before the Twilights, leaving room for another person to be the 18th. But even beyond that, that raises the question of how much a dead person counts as a person by the witches’ definitions. That’s one thing that’s suspect about Beatrice’s red “It’s definitely dead.” By referring to the body as an it, that might imply that a body would lose its personhood when it’s dead. If the red “There are no more than 18 humans on this island” was only stated by Eva Beatrice at that late point in the game, it would leave room for basically 15 more people to just walk around freely and do as they wish. Though since Beatrice said that in red before the killings even started, that only really leaves room for the Kinzo was dead all along theory to work, at least in terms of this particular gameboard.

I don’t think that culprit is beyond the 18 characters we’re familiar with, since the idea of the murderer being someone we don’t know is cheap in mystery novels. However, with so few options available in the web, I’m just keeping every option there is open. It seems foolproof, so any and all holes that exist need to be poked through the best that they can.

EP 4 Spoilers: As I said, I’ve seen the Umineko anime, so I know that in the 4th game board, Kinzo is confirmed to be dead and there’s no more than 17 people. I don’t know if that applies to the other game boards though, so I’m keeping my options open. I’m assuming that that’s a universal across all game boards, but this board seemed to introduce the possibility that the culprit might not be the same across every board, with Eva seemingly being the culprit here. So I’m not just going to take it for granted.
Let me know if it counts as too much of a spoiler to discuss a theory that I know is at least partially true.
I figured if I spoiler tagged the second possibility as EP 4 spoilers while discussing it, it would end up actually being implied spoilers by discussing it only in the spoiler tags.

The idea presented by Lambadelta about her not trying to win is very interesting. There’s two different aspects presented that indicate that. If Beatrice had played this round more straight, then she theoretically could have cornered Battler with the red web herself, forcing him to give up (Though the fact that she didn’t use it herself indicates that it’s not as fullproof as it seems). And the second is that her and Virgilia both get creepy faces right before Battler is about to do the final bit of concession. At first, I thought this was kind of silly, since they almost had this full-proof method of defeat besides an unknown factor like Ange. But Beatrice gives up her ground with randomly giving a creepy Higurashi-like indication that this isn’t real after all. But since Beatrice didn’t know that Ange would come, that would basically be the one out that she could give Battler to stop her from winning the game from that trick. I know Beatrice really likes tricks, but I don’t think she’d actually want to steal the game away from Battler by a trick. She’d probably just have way more fun being extremely close to winning with it and then it not working.

The creepy faces might have another explanation though, like that it takes a lot of energy to keep up a facade that huge, and it melted away. Even that could tie back into Beatrice not giving it her all on some level though.

Potential slight Higurashi spoilers: Also, a question about how Higurashi relates to this. I’ve seen the Higurashi anime and read the first three visual novels. How much would reading the visual novels as a whole help me understand Umineko? I asume the visual novels go more in depth about the fragments concept than the anime does. Plus the Bernkastel stuff of course.

Also additional thoughts now that I’ve listened to the podcast: The concepts presented about how to view the magical elements are really interesting. The idea that some characters are just representations of wider concepts instead of characters in themselves is something to consider. Even if I’m not sure I agree with the interpretation, the fact that the meta stuff is so open ended so far that it can mean so much is really interesting. I’m really excited to learn more about the world of Umineko further and just figure out what this all means.

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