Umineko Episode 4 Spoiler-Free General

To repeat my theory from earlier in the thread: **It has already been established that the crimes of all four episodes extend from a single cause, the sin of Battler. Therefore, I propose that the Human Beatrice that Kinzo “had a conversation [with]” was involved with Battler’s sin. She is “here”: in a coffin at Kuwadorin! Battler is “alone on the island”: everyone else on it is dead. She will “kill Battler”: he is about to die as a result of the killings which she was part of the cause of. The precise details for how Battler dies, could be anything, suicide from stress, complications from food poisoning, the food being literally poisoned, there are hundreds of ways he could die.**

It’s a pretty crappy mystery, especially considering how proud the witch was of it! Can we get back to the more interesting mysteries now?

Discussion’s come to a sudden halt! Come on guys, there are yet many questions to be asked! Have you all stopped thinking?

There’s a lot of elements in this episode nobody has commented on yet. Speculating about the Tea Party and stuff is all well and good, but that’s hardly the only noteworthy thing in this episode, or even just about the general ending of it, now is it?

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Alright, lets do this thing.

Now before I begin, I’d like to say something: I haven’t read any of the above thread. I’m doing this because I don’t want to get other people’s thoughts mixed in with my own just yet. I want to stew on my own ideas for just a little while. As such I’ll probably repeat a lot of things that other people have said above. Just ignore that and keep reading. Hopefully I’ll have something different somewhere here. And if not then I’ll try and think of some different things too. Also this is going to be ranty. I’m not going to give a whole lot of thought to structure just yet. I finished literally half an hour ago and so my mind is mush. I’ll compose something better latter but for now just go with it.

First I’d like to start by feeling smug about guessing that Kinzo was dead. Good, glad I got that out of the way. The next thing is feeling disappointed that the reason I guessed that is not valid. Then back to smug because I kind of thought that there wouldn’t be a person X whom we haven’t met. So, as we all can clearly see the killer has to be someone we know. We kind of already knew that but thanks anyway Beato.

I’d like to take a sec to think about the first ‘half’ of the episode. I will be the first to admit I felt completely bored at certain points. I just kept thinking, ‘what is the point of this?’ However, there were a few things that Ryukishi slipped in there that caught my attention. First, Rosa may not be in fashion. Or, if she is, she may have another job. What job? Well my first thought is prostitution. Early into my read I proposed this idea to some people. Rosa had tickets to a city which is famous for its onsen, true? Do you know what else it is famous for? Its onsen geisha, or said in English, its bathhouse prostitutes. Ange can’t find anything about Rosa’s supposed brand and Sakutarou, which Rosa is supposed to have made, even is said to look like it was bought. This even seems to be brought up later when Ange ‘revives’ Sakutarou. It seems like she obtains another Sakutarou somehow. How might this be? Either Ange is a really good seamstress or she bought him just like Rosa did. So, what do we think? At least we can cast some doubt on Rosa being related to the fashion industry, yes? This brings up the idea, what did Rosa need money for? Why would she need money? In episode 1 it is said that she ‘cosigned something she shouldn’t’ but what on earth does that mean? And is it even true? An idea that might make more sense is that Maria is about to be taken away from Rosa and Rosa needs money to fight it. In other words, Rosa needs money for lawyers to appeal the decision to take Maria away. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the case but it very well could be.

Since it’s been a while since I’ve read the earlier stuff I’ll come back and write more about it here after I’ve had time to digest and check back over some of it.

There are a couple of things I’d like to say about Ange’s findings during her various interviews. There is a lot to say about all of the elements individually but we’ll deal with that later. Firstly let’s consider the handwriting that keeps popping up. Is it Beatrice’s? I’m going to suggest several possibilities:

  1. All of the things (page in diary, messages in bottles, letters to survivors) were written by the same person and they are all suspicious things. Basically things are exactly what they seem. Beatrice is throwing a spanner in the works and making things confusing. There are probably clues about what is going on here that unify things but, again, that for later.
  2. All of the things were written by the same person but not all of them, or none of them. are suspicious. This is a little bit stranger but what if one of the elements is innocent, or perhaps all of the elements are innocent. What if the person writing all of these things is simply being misunderstood. For a (kind of silly) example, what if the messages were simply meant to be works of fiction that the author wrote to amuse themselves or someone else. Perhaps the author never intended them to be released like they were and were planted by someone other than the author. That’s what I mean when I say that there might be a misunderstanding.
  3. The author did not write all of the things. Some of the things are straight up faked. Out of all of these the easiest thing to do would be the envelopes since it involves the least amount of work and would look the most authentic upon closer scrutiny. Why someone would want to do this would be a different question but suffice it to say that it could happen.

So now lets discuss these various elements. The first is the page in Maria’s diary. We were already told by Maria that she met with Beatrice every year and had for about 3 years or so. This particular page in the diary isn’t very impressive on its own. However, it does solidify something that we might have suspected beforehand. That is that there is an actual physical person on the island that Maria regards as Beatrice. There is someone that is, to Maria at least, pretending to be a witch. It may even be that this person believes themselves to really be a witch. Also, I would like to point out that Beatrice wrote her name in the diary in katakana which, in terms of the English translation anyway would mean that it should be BEATRICE.

The next object is the bottled messages. This seems to me to be a more curious thing. For one thing, we are never told of the contents of the messages directly. We know approximately what they say but no specifics. It seems to me that the story is leading us to believe that the messages in the bottles tell about the events of the previous episodes 1 and 2. The end scroll of episode 1 seems to confirm this, that the things written in the bottle tell the tale that we just heard. So, what does this mean? Could it be that this message in a bottle is some kind of hint as to who it was that did all of this? It may, as I said above, be innocent but that seems kind of strange. There is also the matter of the second bottle. Why send two out? Are there more bottles? It seems like in this one fragment Eva survives but we still get the bottles. The end scroll of episode 1 said nothing about that. So are the contents different in different fragments? Another thing about them is that they are written under the name ‘Ushiromiya Maria’ but are almost certainly not written by Maria. So why would you write using that name? It seems to me that there is very little to gain using Maria’s name over someone else’s except perhaps to emphasize that the author was close to Maria. I’m hopefully going to understand these a little bit more fully soon but we shall move on for now.

The third thing apparently written by Beatrice is the letters to the survivors. It seems that these were only written to victims’ children though it could apply further than that. We only know so much about the letters. They are postmarked at a point prior to the events of Rokkenjima. So this person intends on giving all these people money not completely knowing what is going to happen on the island. Even if we assume that the person who sent out all of the mail has a plan of some kind there is no way to know what is going to happen. What exactly this indicates about the sender is not entirely clear to me. However, we do know that the sender intends on the mail getting back to the person who they are faking it is from. In other words, this is mail to the victim’s surviving family. Why would someone mail something like this? Well let us think for a second. We don’t know what is in the other safes. After all, there are about 20 or so, right? We are told that Nanjo’s son got a small case full of money. However, that is only what he says and only what he says about what was in his safe. It is entirely possible that he could be lying or that other people might have different things. The problem is that we can’t really know. I’d like to bring up a quick idea. The thing that Ange notices in the ship captain’s house that kind of freaks her out, could it be another letter? I’m not sure if it completely make sense with the reactions but it seems, for the sake of completeness there should be a fourth letter. After all, we have the northernmost tip of Japan and the westernmost and we probably had one or the other of southernmost or easternmost tips with Ange. That still leaves one cardinal direction. However, why the captain would be included is not clear to me. Motivation for why someone would send these letters is not entirely clear to me but it may be out of guilt or a post-humus payment of some kind.

There’s another think I’d like to bring up from earlier in the episode. People keep bringing up what happened on the island as an ‘accident’. What we witness is clearly no accident. How do we line these things up? It seems that something occurs after everybody dies that can be considered an accident which covers up the murders. Lets look at some of the qualities about this ‘accident’. It has to be local (since Eva escapes it by going to Kuwadorian, or at least she says she did and it seems like a plausible way to escape this accident to people that she tells this to). It has to have some amount of destructive power (it gets rid of evidence of murders and make a bunch of body parts that are jumbled together) and lastly it must be able to be considered an accident (duh, right? Well what I mean is that it hasn’t been shown that it isn’t something accidental. However, Ange seems to blame Eva in some way so it must also be able to be thought of by some as able to be on purpose). All of these together seem to form a checklist of criteria that our accident must conform to. While there may be other answers I’m going to go ahead and propose explosion as mine. It is localized, would destroy and create a mass of body parts which are hard to distinguish and could be engineered to look like an accident while still being potentially purposely created.

How? Well let’s remember all the way back to episode 1 and what we see there. We are looking for anything that might indicate explosives. There is nothing about explosives all the way through until Battler’s ‘tiny bombs’ right? Well look again. What is the first thing that we see Kanon doing? We see him carrying a heavy wheelbarrow full of fertilizer. So what? Do you know what one of the major components of a lot of fertilizers is? Ammonium nitrate which can be mixed with some other things (such as Aluminium powder or fuel oil) to create explosives. One of the things that is remarked about the roses is that they are not as good this year as they were last year. It very well could be that the reason for this is because the fertilizer is being used for the nitrate rather than gardening. Where would the explosion go off? Well the best place I can think to put it would be in the boiler room. That way, if they ever try and determine where the blast started it would look like it came from the boiler. Then it would just be a case of ‘old boiler failure’ and an unfortunate accident. It would also mean that you attack the structure of the house and bring it down on top of the people inside. As a plus, fuel oil (one of the things which can be mixed with Ammonium nitrate to create an explosive) can be used to run boilers. Though we have no indication that this boiler runs like that it would not surprise me. I also have a bit of a pet theory that I have no real proof for. Nanjo mentions that he is used to coming out a different exit of the tunnel that has stairs. It seems possible to me that this other exit is in the boiler room. The reason is simply that the boiler room is underground making it easily accessible to connect with the tunnel. Other wise you would have to have some kind of staircase leading from the tunnel to above ground. That might be conspicuous. A blast in the boiler room might cover up any tunnel entrance there too.

Moving on, there was something that Ange says on the boat to Niijima. She says: “I don’t know why, but that’s what I think. …If I hadn’t hurt her, …the incident 12 years ago might not have occurred. …That’s what I think.” This is in reference to her memory of hurting Maria when she was little by saying that magic isn’t real. She says this without any real evidence and we don’t really have any reason to think this is true. In fact, later on, ‘Beatrice’ (I’m just going to refer to the Beatrice that we see on the balcony as ‘Beatrice’ for convenience) tells Battler that because of his sin people die. Therefore it seems likely that something that Battler did was responsible for what occurs on Rokkenjima (more on Battler’s sin later). However, let us consider what Ange says. Suppose (and this is a big suppose) that Ange is correct in what she says. Perhaps Ange is actually correct in thinking that if she hadn’t done what she did then the events of Rokkenjima wouldn’t have happened. Let us think how this might have played out.

Ok, starting with the fact that there is somebody that Maria considers Beatrice we shall try and work our way up. Let us also assume that this person is not delusional and actually does think that they are a real witch. This person has, for some reason fooled Maria into thinking that they are a witch. There are a number of reasons why this could be, such as pity for Maria’s circumstances or perhaps something illegal. Regardless Maria has been fooled by this person into thinking that they are Beatrice incarnate or something like that. Now, Ange comes along and messes everything up. She tells Maria that witches aren’t real and that magic doesn’t exist. Perhaps this, combined with the loss of Sakutarou puts doubts into Maria’s mind as to whether magic is real or not. Perhaps Maria starts to doubt if there really is this person Beatrice or if she is lying to her as well. Now, this person does not want Maria to stop doubting that they are Beatrice (this is why I kind of like the idea that there is something illegal going on since it would give this person a reason to cover up everything). After all, Maria is pretty little and a wrong word somewhere could mean the end of this pretender. So they have to start the mass killing of all these people. However, they have to do it in such a way that it seems magic. This is so that Maria still does not reveal who the real killer is and therefore mess up the killer’s plans. Now, you will no doubt find some problems with this theory. First of all, there is no mention of Battler’s sin which we know to be involved. Next, this is entirely based off of the idea that Ange’s comments were correct, which we have no basis for. Lastly, if this Beatrice is the same person who planted explosives (if my other theory about explosives is correct) then why bother with the murder at all? Why not just blow everyone up? (actually that’s a problem with the explosives theory in general) In short there are some problems which I can hopefully resolve later.

On to the next thing on my list: Battler’s sin. Hoooo boy is this one a bit of a killer. Now, before I give my idea I’d like to show my assumptions. First off, I’m assuming that it is knowable at this point. In other words I’m assuming that we have enough information either about Battler’s character or about his actions to know what this sin was. The second is that it is actually a ‘sin’. Let’s face it, the word is a little weird isn’t it? It is obviously something that ‘Beatrice’ thinks Battler needs to repent for. It seems like it is somewhat serious, judging from 'Beatrice’s reaction. Ok, so with those two things granted I’d like to bring up a scene in episode 3. In episode 3 we see the cousins + Shannon at the beach. They are all having a grand old time talking about Battler and the past. They talk about how big he’s gotten and so on until we see Shannon mention that she remembers what Battler was like then. Battler says that he’s surprised that people remember what he was like then because his own memory is so hazy. Shannon says “I can remember it clearly as if it happened yesterday…” George says that is because her memory is so good. Jessica confirms this. Jessica then asks what Battler was like six years ago. Shannon says that Battler, “said something like this when he left. ‘I’ll be back, < see you again >. I’ll come to greet you riding on a white horse.’” Battler is of course mortified by this exchange from his middle school self. However, this constitutes perhaps (in my memory at least) the only time we ever hear anything about something that Battler did 6 years ago aside from leaving his family. So, the question is, is this the sin that we are looking for? I’d like to suggest that that exchange, or perhaps something like that exchange is what is counted as the sin. Now, what is ‘sinful’ about it? That part I’m kind of drawing a blank on at the moment. It seems like a pretty likely thing that Battler could have said something that might be interpreted as sinful after he has returned. Take the instance that Shannon talks about. Suppose that Shannon really believed Battler for all that time and then, when he finally comes back, he barely remembers anything about anyone and certainly doesn’t remember what he said to her then. Now, it could be something different but I imagine his sin might be something like that. I’ll continue thinking about that and try and come up with something else if possible.

I’m going to keep working on some of the rest of this post but I thought I would put this much up for right now so that you guys can say what you think. Also here are my notes for this episode if anyone is interested. They are kind of long this time, be warned. Red truths are here and blue truths are here.

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This was already answered in Episode 4.

What do you mean by this? Please elaborate.

Great to see you finally joining us~

Well, from where I’m standing it doesn’t seem to contradict any of the opinions I hold, in fact I think it reinforces them.

But we kinda already knew that thanks to the ending of Ep 1.

I would be tackling the core mysteries of the Episode right now, but I have maths to go do. Expect a post in a week, once this whole thing has blown over, or perhaps earlier if I finish it really fast.

Well it seems that there is another ‘version’ of Sakutarou out there (if version is the right word). I’m not entirely sure of specifics but it seems like Beatrice is unable to say that there is only one Sakutarou. So it seems like there are at least more ‘versions’ that Ange has managed to get her hands on.

It may be that I shouldn’t use the word ‘fragment’ but I think what I was thinking was something like this: the end scroll of episode 1 seems to suggest that there is no way to reconstruct events aside from the bottle, meaning that Eva did not survive in that game. In that game the end scroll tells us that the stuff we just read is from the contents of the bottle. What I was wondering is if the contents of the bottles remains consistent across all gameboards. It also seems weird since it would mean that we would know nothing about the events on Rokkenjima since the bottles apparently lie to us (since we are told that both bottles tell about Eva dying when she clearly didn’t).

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A fresh perspective! @Seraphitic, I like your speculation on how, exactly, the events of those two days could be interpreted as an ‘accident’ – while it did strike me as strange at the time, I didn’t think too deeply on it, and it could be a fruitful line of thought. This, for instance –

[quote=“Seraphitic, post:187, topic:31, full:true”]
All of these together seem to form a checklist of criteria that our accident must conform to. While there may be other answers I’m going to go ahead and propose explosion as mine. It is localized, would destroy and create a mass of body parts which are hard to distinguish and could be engineered to look like an accident while still being potentially purposely created.

How? Well let’s remember all the way back to episode 1 and what we see there. We are looking for anything that might indicate explosives. There is nothing about explosives all the way through until Battler’s ‘tiny bombs’ right? Well look again. What is the first thing that we see Kanon doing? We see him carrying a heavy wheelbarrow full of fertilizer. So what? Do you know what one of the major components of a lot of fertilizers is? Ammonium nitrate which can be mixed with some other things (such as Aluminium powder or fuel oil) to create explosives. One of the things that is remarked about the roses is that they are not as good this year as they were last year. It very well could be that the reason for this is because the fertilizer is being used for the nitrate rather than gardening. Where would the explosion go off? Well the best place I can think to put it would be in the boiler room. That way, if they ever try and determine where the blast started it would look like it came from the boiler. Then it would just be a case of ‘old boiler failure’ and an unfortunate accident. It would also mean that you attack the structure of the house and bring it down on top of the people inside. As a plus, fuel oil (one of the things which can be mixed with Ammonium nitrate to create an explosive) can be used to run boilers. Though we have no indication that this boiler runs like that it would not surprise me. I also have a bit of a pet theory that I have no real proof for. Nanjo mentions that he is used to coming out a different exit of the tunnel that has stairs. It seems possible to me that this other exit is in the boiler room. The reason is simply that the boiler room is underground making it easily accessible to connect with the tunnel. Other wise you would have to have some kind of staircase leading from the tunnel to above ground. That might be conspicuous. A blast in the boiler room might cover up any tunnel entrance there too.[/quote]

– looks very promising to me, because it ties together elements that have been recurring throughout the episodes. I think some folks were talking about that in the other thread – if something is the same from episode to episode, then perhaps it’s something necessary for the killings to take place. Maria’s sickly rose and its disappearance features in each episode, but it’s hard to draw definite conclusions from it, because it never seems to come to anything. If it’s related to the general sickly state of the garden, though …

And of course, someone gets chucked in a boiler in each episode. (ETA: Wait, fact-check me on this, does anyone get chucked in the boiler in episode 2?) Someone already dead, but if the authorities don’t know that, it could look like a horrific accident that started a chain of accidents.

Is there anything we can guess about the culprit from this train of thought? Who it’s likely to be, or what their motives might be? It is strange that they constructed these elaborate crime scenes in locked rooms with magic circles, only to blast away all the evidence on the last day. Perhaps they wanted to trick the people on the island, but knew the trick wouldn’t hold up to sustained investigation. Could that be what the bottle messages were for, to make the people off the island think it was a witch, too? I guess the question that still remains is: why? What does the culprit gain from this?

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BY THE WAY GUYS, @Seraphitic has been reading the old translation for god knows why, so please avoid quoting his reds.

HOW and… WHY? I thought he owns the steam version… Yep, I found a profile that @Karifean has on his friend list called “Seraphitic” which owns Umineko (with 13.4 hours clocked as of writing)

@Seraphitic, could you fill us in on this?

Rosa made Sakutarou according to a red truth. "That is a special stuffed animal! Made by Rosa for her daughter’s birthday, and in the entire world, the only. Doesn’t completely disprove everything about what you’re saying here, but Rosa did indeed make Sakutarou.

Okay then, let’s look at the red truths and try to find something of worth there. I was only able to find a few things that seem a bit suspicious to me.

Natsuhi’s death was a homicide! There were no unidentified corpses, and all of the survivors have alibis.

This red truth really puts a damper on the whole Kanon did Episode 1 theory we had going before. If Kanon was still alive, then he would have to be roped into the role of being a survivor, wouldn’t he? You can only assume he wasn’t working alone to have an alibi, but everybody seems to have had their death confirmed in that episode but him and the cousins.

Both deaths were homicides! It is not the case that after the construction of the closed room, one of them committed suicide after committing murder! Furthermore, the murder was carried out with both the victim and the perpetrator in the same room! No method exists for the perpetrator to commit murder from outside the room.

I think with this truth I’ll counter it with a blue truth Both murders were never committed in a closed room. They were committed in a different room, and were moved thereafter to create the illusion of a closed room. Fits with the whole “in the same room” thing, but this specific mystery is pretty flimsy as a closed room, so it can be most anything. You could also make the claim that one of them is murdered by the other, and then the murderer was murdered by another person, since they only cite there as being one victim and perpetrator at a time.

One thing that was really odd were Ange’s red truths during the scene where she “dies”. They’re really weird, and out of place as red truths. Things like “Come home quickly, Onii-chan!! Don’t leave me all alone!!” are less truths but more feelings expressed as demands. It makes me question the nature of the red truths a bit, even if it is said in red that “you can’t trust any words that aren’t red” Although we do know that anything Beatrice specifically says in red is the truth from the first red truth in Episode 2. But even then, truths change, so we can’t be entirely sure of the red truths from Beatrice always being trustworthy either. I don’t want to question the red truths, but when you have lines like “The witch before your eyes stole away my whole family, even you Onii-chan”, then it’s hard to not do so.

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This is debatable. I believe if someone were to fake their death and nobody knew about it, they wouldn’t be included in the understood definition of ‘the survivors’.

Regarding the red, I’ve always held the belief that statements that lack a truth value can be stated in red without any problems, like when Beatrice called Battler incompetent and laughed in the red. It’s not true, it’s not false, it doesn’t have any truth value. But at the very least, it’s not false, so it’s fine.

However, a statement like “The witch before your eyes stole away my whole family” is a very interesting thing to say in the red, since it has a definite truth value. If it was false, she would be choking up.

But Beatrice knows about it, and she said it, so if she didn’t count him as a survivor, and he was, then it wouldn’t be the truth from her perspective.

If we consider the Red Truths being less truths, and more things that aren’t false, then I feel that would change a lot.

This is debatable. I believe if someone were to fake their death and nobody knew about it, they wouldn’t be included in the understood definition of ‘the survivors’.
[/quote]

Damn it, you beat me to the punch Aspi…[quote=“Aspirety, post:195, topic:31”]
However, a statement like “The witch before your eyes stole away my whole family” is a very interesting thing to say in the red, since it has a definite truth value. If it was false, she would be choking up.
[/quote]

I dunno, at a stretch you could convert in to a vacuous truth by saying There is no witch before Battler’s eyes, as Beato is not truly a witch.

She could be using survivor in the sense that Battler means it. Red’s probably aren’t from the speaker’s POV otherwise Battler has some explaining to do as to how he knew about the circumstances of his birth.

Beatrice could be using the word survivor to mean, “Those who everyone believed to be alive” Also, Kanon did have an alibi, albeit a false one.

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Whew. Well the podcast is soon. I should probably write something again (cause I know you guys love my endless crazy drivel).

Ok so after much thought and deliberation I took a look through the thread. The idea that Kanon was the culprit for episode 1 seems like the best idea honestly. I’m going to go with that for now with some quick notes. First of all, there is another person whose body Battler does not see. Shannon. Battler never actually sees Shannon, it’s only Kanon and Hideyoshi who see her body. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

Let’s talk about Shannon for a second because I threw some shade her way in my first post on this thread and I’d like to say, I stand by what I said; she seems like the mostly likely person to remember Battler’s sin. What she says about remembering what Battler said and did and was like is actually reinforced in episode 2 in a scene that I had forgotten about where George, Jessica and Shannon are talking about how Battler and Maria were having fun in the airport. Shannon definitely remembers Battler.

This got me thinking a little bit more about Shannon. Does anyone remember this little exchange at the beginning of episode 2?
George: "…Err, …um, you’ve been working here for almost ten years now, right? You must’ve saved up a lot of money by now."
Shannon: "I wonder… It’s not like there’s anything in particular I’d like to buy… After all, a few million yen isn’t enough to live off for the rest of your life…"
Wait, wait, wait… how much money does Shannon have? Weren’t we all wondering who sent the money to all those people via the keycards? I think we may have another suspect. Ok, so just to be clear, this person wrote the letters, the diary entry and the messages in the bottles. The letters were sent, at least, to Nanjo’s son, Kumasawa’s son and Ange. Why? Well let’s consider some options.

My first thought it this: Nanjo is shady af. We all agree on this I think so I’m not going to go over evidence for it. Nanjo may have had his reasons but there is good reason to suspect him as in league with the killer. I’m going to say that any money paid toward Nanjo is in repayment of his services. However, Nanjo is no fool. He knows that he is a liability to the culprit and so he wants the money sent in advance to his son for the aid of his sick grandchild. The culprit is also no fool and sends the money so that it will arrive late to ensure Nanjo’s cooperation.

My second thought: Kumasawa was nice to Shannon. I’m going with the assumption of Shannon being the writer of the notes (I guess that means that I’m accusing her huh?). Kumasawa is shown to stick up for Shannon in the first episode and presumably other times as well. With this in mind I’m going to guess that Shannon wanted some way to pay back Kumasawa for her kindness and so she sends a letter to her family containing keys to the safes.

The third thought: The culprit wants something left for the survivor, Ange. Ange is sick in bed on the 3rd, the day the letters are postmarked. The culprit finds out that there will be a survivor to what is about to happen and feels bad for them, left alone in the world and orphaned (well, if the culprit is Shannon, wouldn’t you?). So as a way to provide for the child she sends the letter.

If this is all true (which is a bit of a long shot) then we have an idea for who this Beatrice of the letters is. The bottled messages and diary entry as well as the letters could all be Shannon. It certainly seems to fit. Of course you had just heard me say that I agree that Kanon is the likely candidate for culprit of episode 1. How do I reconcile this do you ask? By going absolutely insane!

I go absolutely insane
Shannon=Kanon. There, I said it. There’s my absolutely crazy idea. Now, I just want to say, this probably isn’t true. There is a mountain of circumstantial evidence that this is not the case and there is probably something that I’ve overlooked here. However, I’d like to point out something. Battler never sees Shannon and Kanon in the same room together. Ever. At least as far as I can tell there is either Kanon or Shannon in the room with Battler and never both. Going by @pictoshark’s axioms Battler is the only one we can really trust so the fact that he never sees both seems to knock their credibility as distinct entities. There is also the point earlier about Battler never seeing Kanon’s body. There really is not a whole lot going for or against this theory in terms of hard evidence. All of it is circumstantial. I’m going to leave this theory alone for the moment because I’m not too happy with some of the issues that it has. But I wanted it to get out there for people to discuss.

I calm down a little and actually think of some more likely (but less fun) theories
Realistically I’d like to say that just because Shannon may have been the one to remember Battler’s sin and may have been the one to write everything, she may have told Kanon some things. She may have let slip about Battler’s sin and so on and so Kanon may be the culprit all along and has simply gotten some information from Shannon. This would make Shannon nothing more than a blabbermouth but not a murderer.

Another theory is that Shannon and Kanon are actually in a weird competition of sorts. In other words, Shannon and Kanon are both ‘culprits’ in a way. Kind of a murder game where they try and murder each other and the people around them to ‘win’. This one intrigues me a little and I’m sorry to say I don’t have more to say on this theory.

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Oho! The Shannon=Kanon theory is a wild theory, but wild enough to work. If nothing else, it’d be fun to think through some of its implications. For one, it makes the witch’s red truth that no more than 17 humans exist on this island nothing more than a strategic retreat. If Shannon=Kanon, that decreases of the number of known humans on the island to 16, and there can still be an unknown 17th person x. If there isn’t a 17th person x, that explains why the witch doesn’t say ‘there are only 17 people on the island’ and settle the question definitively. There are only 16 humans, because two of them are the same human, and Beatrice isn’t ready to give this fact away.

One, potential hole in the theory is Lambdadelta’s red truth: No one else can go by Kanon’s name! A different person can’t claim that as their name! But I think the same vacuous logic we used upthread can apply here. No one can claim Kanon’s name because no one is Kanon. Even Shannon isn’t Kanon, or Shannon for that matter, but Sayo. Or … something like that. It starts to hurt your head after a while.

A related thought I’ve been mulling over: the speculation upthread is that the Beatrice at the end of this episode is Kanon cross-dressing. But what if Kanon was cross-dressing already? Let me put it another way. What if Kanon’s biological sex is female, and Kanon dresses as a male servant? We see Kanon angsting about not having the right ‘body’ to love Jessica, and saying that if he reaches the Golden Land, he’ll wish for a new form. Supposedly this is because Kanon is mere furniture. But maybe it’s because Kanon loves Jessica as another woman, and alas, doesn’t understand the beauty of yuri love. :wink:

But if Kanon is also Shannon, that makes it even worse! She’s a girl, and engaged to a man, who is Jessica’s cousin! Oh, the drama! This is getting very convoluted very quickly. Still, thanks for giving me something fun to think about, @Seraphitic.

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Yes, thank you for giving Umineko some of that yuri/yaoi appeal too!

You are truly god’s own agent, @Seraphitic!

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Ok @Karifean. During the podcast you dismissed my original theory on how Kumasawa and Gohda were killed in the shed. I’ve returned to try and attack it, since I hate having something like that on my record.

In case it doesn’t make the final cut or it’s not clear to people I’ll put my original theory here too

Original Theory
I had thought that the room could be constructed like this: Gohda and Kumasawa were somehow convinced to put on the nooses themselves and make it seem like they had been hung. They would not be killed by these nooses because, as we see, they are still able to stand up. The culprit then shoots them both through the little window. The nooses stop the second person from getting under cover or something before they too are shot. Karifean denied this. He didn’t exactly go so far as to use the red so this theory isn’t exactly discounted but one of those bold assertions was made “you cannot shoot someone, much less two people, squarely in the head through a tiny window”. Anyway I’ll get on to my new theory. I think I’ll put this one in blue because I have yet to use blue in this thread.

New Theory (specifically crafted to belittle this mystery)
The original lock that Battler and the other cousins put on the shed was cut, the occupants of the shed were shot and hung up and a new padlock was put in place on the shed’s door. Before the door is locked the bodies are searched and the original key is removed from Gohda and the new key is put in his pocket. Thus there was no need for there to be a witch.

There we go, simple and I think the blue is effective. Your move.

I am so curious about your other theories but ugh mobile is hard to listen to those… :confused:

It is kinda annoying tho. Not everybody has time to listen to a podcast, at least uninterrupted, and because of the podcast barely anyone shares their theories in the topic. I mean… I wanna see the theories and laugh at them in my own fragment. Kihihihihihihi

Podcast isn’t out yet, but when it is there’s no reason you can’t start and stop it at your leisure.