So, I finally finished Ep5.
Damn, what an emotional journey. I’m very excited to actually upload the footage of those last few chapters. Even if you are a heretic and aren’t watching the playthrough @MagusVerborum and I are doing, the end of episode 5 sure would be a great highlight to check out. I’m short on time so this won’t be anywhere near as detailed as the last main post I’ve made, but I certainly do have a bunch of things to cover.
I think first of all, my solution for the gameboard hasn’t really changed at all. If anything my confidence was merely redoubled. I did find it very strange that the case was settled on the first twilight alone, even though Erika completely ignored the letter/knock and only mentioned Hideyoshi’s ‘death’ in the notes that were submitted to the various locations we had listed there at the end. I thought it was particularly interesting which groups seemed to have taken which pieces of evidence in that sequence. I think there’s definitely some more fuel for @VyseGolbez’s reader/author theory for Bern/Lambda there. The only other additional note that I would make on my initial theory is that it is dubious if Battler was the one over the phone, seeing as we are told that [color=“red”][Krauss] was killed long ago, shortly after you heard his voice over the phone[/color]. I think it makes me pin the blame on the phone calls more on to Sayo. The reason I went with Battler originally was because the first call came from the ‘external line’, and I didn’t think this would be Sayo since I just kind of assumed they were still on the island. The other reason was that I thought Lambda would pick the most unexpected person of those few I thought were still off the island. It definitely worked in to my favour, since I went in to the game with the thought that Battler could be unreliable, since he would be an accomplice for this to work.
Other than this revision, the main question I’m left with is; why did the culprit kill in this game? The epitaph had been solved, so either it was not Beatrice, or the claim that ‘this game is without love’ indicates that the Beato of previous episodes is (as her Golden Land character would suggest) not the one that we see on the gameboard.
As for that ending; I dunno. It was still absolutely amazing but damn the foreshadowing was so intense it almost felt to me like it robbed itself of a cool surprise. Perhaps the Golden Truth was meant to be that surprise, even if Battler’s ascension was not, but the golden longsword being used over and over before that first gold truth definitely made it seem obvious to me (also for the record; I reckon Purple Truth up next, it’s the only colour of magic we haven’t covered yet with it’s own Truth 
). As I said, the whole sequence was definitely amazing but it felt like it took too long to get to the point. That being said, what that screams to me, is that the ‘game master’ and ‘golden truth’, are then perhaps not meant to be the focal point, instead the obvious alternative being considering what Beatrice’s death meant, both in the mystery and as a character. I think I definitely stuck too hard to thinking about how this would apply to my Meta Theory, rather than looking at the in-the-moment character, but it definitely is interesting that it seems Beatrice was just clinging on through episode 5, just to know that Battler would succeed, even if it was too late for her.
As I said earlier, for Beatrice of the previous episodes to be the culprit, it would mean that we are breaking the truth [color=“red”]I keep my promises[/color], since the murders carry on after the epitaph has been solved. I don’t know why this is. As I said, it could be that the game is played without love (perhaps in my claim that Battler is writing this; he did not understand the promise?), but that seems flimsy to me, and I’d like to avoid breaking reds where I can. I’m honestly going to leave this one a bit open, but I will point out a few things;
- The red truth [color=“red”]I keep my promises[/color] was never stated to apply to all games, nor to only one. Perhaps the red truth only applies to the Human Beatrice, who dies in Episode 5, thus her promise is no longer valid?
- The only sub-family unaffected by the murders is Rudolf, Kyrie and Battler.
- Maria was killed, which seems to go against how Maria has been in previous games (she has died second least, after Battler, and normally late in the game, via indirect and/or relatively humane ways).
- Genji, who I have stapled as a key accomplice, was taken out in the first twilight. (Perhaps this was to tie up loose ends if it was Sayo?)
I also received a few questions from people, mainly @Aspirety about my previous post, so I’ll try cover those;
The reason I claimed the Stakes were the other Fukuin house servants was because I was trying to match Beatrice’s furniture to the theme that they were based off servants. Kumasawa and Virgilia were pretty obvious, and I then basically decided that the amorphous blob of absurd, similar characters should be paired with the as-yet unseen other amorphous blob of servants; the other servants of Fukuin house. We definitely have received names for a few of them, so I thought it sensible that there might be enough to fill out that roster for the Stakes. Gaap has definitely thrown a spanner in the works in terms of deciding what Beatrice’s furniture represents, if assuming the servant theme, but I find it amusing enough to assume that Gaap is Gohda to leave that one be whilst I look for a better solution (Aspi also told me that Gaap = Nanjo is something of a popular claim too, which is equally as hilarious).
A few people pointed out that my claim that Battler wrote episodes 3 onwards is pretty short on reasoning, and I absolutely agree. There is no necessity for it to be a different author, but there are definitely moments of foreshadowing.
- Battler narrates in purgatory for the first time at the beginning of Episode 3. I think his agency in Purgatory could definitely be taken to be significant. Also the willingness of magical characters to help Battler was an interesting change.
- The fact that we see outside the gameboard after the game for the first time in Episode 3, and then also see 1998 in Episode 4, would seem to me like the person writing about the story is alive after the incident. It would be absurd for message bottles made in 1986, like the two originals spoken about in Ep4, to make such wild claims about the future. Of course we don’t know for certain that the 1998 events that we are shown are true; but if they didn’t hold some element, of truth, why are we shown them?
- As I said in the original posts; if it is not a character we know about who is writing, why are we being shown it at all? Why were we told that only two message bottles were verified to be the truth if we are shown more stories? Why not just leave this detail out. Ryukishi has very much stuck with the idea of
Natsuhi’s Big Fucking RifleChekov’s gun thus far, in that every moment is relevant in some way (RIP Kinzo’s official wife, officially the most irrelevant character). - Certain story aspects like the red and blue truths (OMG AND GOLD NOW TOO AAAAAAAAAAH) could only exist in a written story, and combined with the ‘only two message bottles’ thing, I think we can assume that the latter episodes, are at least ‘written’ somehow, if I am trying to scrounge up evidence for this theory.
I’d have to go back and screenshot some other things that I noticed but there certainly does seem to be a lot of focus on Umineko as a written work, which I feel plays in to this to an extent. I’ve been looking in to Van Dine’s rules a little bit because of his mention in the tips for Eiserne Jungfrau, and one of his notes is “if the reader, after learning the explanation for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face”. Perhaps this is confirmation bias, but I think this theory definitely does justify some story beats that seem utterly tangential within the current scope, the 2 message bottles being the main one thus far. Yes, you might read that and think “so it’s still just a hunch then”, and you’d be absolutely right. It’s very much a hunch, and very much in opposition to Knox’s rule of intuition, but I have to start somewhere, right? And I think as I reread episodes 1-4, I certainly feel the way that Van Dine suggests about this theory. Much the same way that I did in rewatching the opening of Episode 2 after coming up with the Sayo culprit theory; it’s almost like it had been there the whole time.
ALSO
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The Episode 5 Tea Party will be recording this Saturday (9 Dec '17), 15:00 UTC
If you can it’d be awesome to have you tune in live to hear @Aspirety guide @Seraphitic, @VyseGolbez and myself through a discussion on Episode 5, as I try my utmost to mediate the fight between Seraph and Vyse whilst Aspi pulls his hair out over how lost we all are.