The curtains have finally closed on the story of Rokkenjima. Rest in Peace my beloved witch Beatrice

I would like to say I loved the ending but I was a bit mixed on it... I think it is good. It doesn't ruin anything that has come before it and all the revelations in it make the story more interesting, not less. And we finally get a proper conclusion to Ange's story which was needed. That's all I could ask for. It was just... kind of boring for me, and a bit too hectic as well. It has some of the best writing in the series but those are times when we focus on a few characters at a time.

I think since it came after my favourite episode I might be judging it too harshly haha, still,

It took me 5 months to finish this series and it has become a part of me now. I was very intimidated by the lenght at first but I am very, VERY glad I listened to others and picked it up. Umineko is a beautiful story that responds in kind to the attention you give it, I can't appreciate it enough for that.

Whenever Lion is not on screen everyone should be asking 'Where is Lion?'

Erika's role in episode 8 so far is interesting... Shouldn't the opening of the cat box mean death for her as well? She only exists because some true crime people learned about how she went missing closeby to Rokkenjima on October 4th. But then again, that is only one aspect of her character. She also represents a lot of different things.

I was gonna say my goat but that might be a bit inappropriate considering the circumstances

The party ine p8 is quite fanservicey in a "what if these two characters interacted?" kind of way which is fun enough. But I think there was a missed opportunity to have Natsuhi and Lion talk to each other. Everyone, especially your parents, treating you like a stranger in your own home must have hurt Lion a bit and Natsuhi is still emotional after talking to Beatrice. She would feel happy that Beatrice got to live a happy life in another universe and would probably cry again when Lion calls her 'mother'. She tells them this is their home too even though she doesn't know them. That could be sweet.

I understand why Ryukishi didn't have them interact when Beatrice talked to both of them already. But I would personally like to see a bit more

Truly Umineko is the bible for mystery fans. Catch me quoting ep8 umineko lines like bible verses

I love how they have joint character descriptions. This is a set do not separate

If I was Lion watching Battler call Bern a friend over and over again I'd be a bit annoyed tbh. I'm sure your sister doesn't feel that way man...

Bern's gonna end up trying to do something really fucked up and neither of them will be even remotely surprised. I guarantee it.

I thought there would be some kind of real life equivalent to ep7 tea party like Ange finding the truth written down by Eva somewhere but that doesn't seem to be the case...

∘₊ ✩ ─── ✩ ─── ✩₊∘

Well. Shit.

Okay. Locking in

#i can't believe this is the first time umineko has multiple choice answers in it
#ryukishi finally learned to code that in?

I thought there would be some kind of real life equivalent to ep7 tea party like Ange finding the truth written down by Eva somewhere but that doesn't seem to be the case...

From the way this game is going so far it really feels like Battler knows about what happened in episode 7. This is Beatrice, she exists in this tale but she seems to be accepted by the Ushiromiya family like Lion. It's a bit weird to think about. Beatrice exists because Sayo wasn't accepted into the family, right? How could both of these things be true?

He had already understood the truth in episode 5 but I do wonder if he knew the truth Bern showed to Ange. That was impossible to figure out before it was directly shown to us. I guess I am just a bit surprised that he is so calm about that. Is it because he finally accepted his death like Beatrice?

Considering the fact that we never actually saw him die during ep7 tea party, him accepting his death could be metaphorical. Like he was moving on from what happened by writing this tale. My guess is that what happens inside the game board in the first two episodes are written by Sayo but the meta world is written by Ikuko and/or Battler. The the rest are entirely written by them.

You married that woman Battler. She's literary your wife.

I hate Kinzo for so SO many reasons but one of them is how he straight up dies after giving Sayo the news about who she is.

comment from vriska-coded: Literally can never stop thinking about this, it’s his ultimate selfish act. Like yeah irl it doesn’t work that way but in a narrative sense he just went “welp, I’ve absolved myself of my guilt, can’t think of any other reason to live” and then died in front of the girl his servants groomed into being the perfect Guilt Absolver For Kinzo. Truly one of history’s worst fathers and it’s not even over the kids he was beating

Got Bingo... but at what cost?

In all seriousness, I did mark the catbox being opened as "maybe". Because I can't know for sure. This could just be a fragment that was possible. We can't take Bern's word for this being a "certain outcome" when Lambda herself hasn't said anything. The fact that Kyrie and Rudolf were capable of doing all that at all is horrifying, so this part would have worked well regardless of it being true or not.

Besides, the tragedy being guaranteed in every world would go go against the message Umineko is trying to say in my opinion. That's what I think for now.

I think out of everything that happened in this chapter this was the most brutal. We didn't have to know this. We didn't need to know Kinzo was the one who wanted to steal the gold. We didn't have to see Sayo like this. But we were shown that... as if Bern's mocking talk about how this is the truth that you wanted to see wasn't enough lol..

Okay... here we go...

∘₊ ✩ ─── ✩ ─── ✩₊∘

I though Will did this whole greeting act to activate his theatergoing authority but no. He is just weird

Currently finished chapter 5. I had to force myself to stop reading yesteday because it was getting late. This is the most invested I've been in Umineko so far, maybe besides ep5. I'm starting to get why my friends said I'd love this episode. Let's talk about some general things.

----------------

The game boards is already pretty interesting. It's a bunch of fragments sewn together. It initally looks haphazard but you can tell the pieces Bern chose were very deliberate.

It feels fanfiction-like in that it's very character focused (they even gave Will the ability to see characters' lives like a play). It feels like the board exists to make interactions between characters possible. There is also the fact that Bern considers the story 'done' and this is her ripping the guts of the story apart. Which is what a lot of fanfiction does as well. Really get in there and dissect the characters to see what makes them tick. My guess is that this episode we will basically put Sayo and the golden witch under the microscope. Maybe cut them apart with scalpels. ...

----------------

I enjoy the change in main characters quite a lot. Beatrice and Erika had very bombastic personalities so I appreciate the calmer vibe Will and Lion have. Their dynamic is already fun despite both of them being new faces. Ones that were introduced in the endgame of a huge story at that. That isn't easy to pull off.

Lion seems to be from a fragment where Natsuhi accepted adopting the child of Beatrice II... or maybe Kinzo told her about the baby surviving, so she had no choice but to raise them. We haven't seen much of their relationship with Natsuhi to say one way or the other, I think.

If that's true, Lion's existence in itself gives us interesting information. For example, their gender being left ambiguous. I had assumed Sayo was raised as a woman because of Kinzo but Lion disproves that. I'd say the two of them are intersex. There is another possibility, though. Natsuhi in ep5 identifies Sayo as the "man" from 19 years ago, yes? So, whatever happened did so after being dropped from the cliff. They probably sustained some major genital injury and had to get surgery for it. Culturally anyone who doesn't have a penis is automatically considered not a man, so they'd "have to be a woman". Sayo was raised as a woman because of that. It looks like Lion got to choose their identity for themself, though. I didn't think Krauss and Natsuhi would be cool with that, it looks like I have misjudged them.

Another matter concerns the epitaph. Beatrice's portrait was commisioned a few years ago in Lion's fragment as well, but that doesn't mean the epitaph has to exist. In fact, it wouldn't make sense if it did. Kinzo loves Lion and wants them to be the next head. Why would the give the siblings a chance to be the head when the grandchild of Bice is right there?

All in all, it looks like the epitaph was made just so Sayo could be the head and the owner of Beatrice's gold. This is what I have thought about before already but ep7 further hints at it.

----------------

Then there is the other less interesting half of the duo, Will. He has even less to do with the Ushiromiyas than Erika did. He is basically what would happen if you made Dlanor to be the detective. He id judt doing his job. He isn't based on a real person who was wrapped up in the Rokkenjima incident by Witch Hunters like Erika is. Most likely, his piece is based on an in universe mystery author, who is based on Van Dine. Are you feeling the layers of the meta yet?! It's like I am counting the layers of an onion.

His title "Wizard-Hunting Wright" implies the author he is based on is probably not involved with the witch hunters. He is most likely an old author too (considering how Will has recently retired) so that makes sense.

----------------

Here is how the Bingo is going btw

IS HE JUST BATTLER LOL???

You know I would normally feel happy about my prediction being true but in this situation I just feel sad.

Poor Lion is about to hear the worst news of their life

Scary Shannon... Will really should have read thru the fragments in more detail before coming here

This is pretty interesting, though. I thought Lion was the baby from 19 years ago a.k.a. Beatrice a.k.a Sayo, since it is a bit too late to introduce new characters at this point and the two Ushiromiyas that are left are Beatrice II and Sayo. Shannon's existence here complicates things.

Bern did mention this board was a bunch of different fragments sewn together, and Sayo really does act like she was plopped down here from another timeline entirely. We're really blurring the lines between the meta world and the game board here.

Good morning.
Scheduled for today is the funeral of the Golden Witch and her game.
The days of the game are already over, and nothing remains but fond memories. Here, the cold, hard truth will be revealed, and death will come to the game...
There is...a bit of difficulty to this one.

It's time for episode 7!!

You'll have to forgive me about the being conservative in my guesses, I just have no idea what to expect from ep7 with it having completely different protagonists and all.

∘₊ ✩ ─── ✩ ─── ✩₊∘

I love Featherine a whole bunch too, though I feel like she is going to end up being just as cruel as Bern haha. I'm very excited to see the role she will play in the future episodes

Youu motherfuckers kept telling me how much ep6 sucked, it turned out to be amazing. It doesn't drag nowhere as much as ep4 does and the magic fights are better compared to it too. And I already liked ep4 you know? Though admittedly there wasn't much of a mystery like the other chapters.

I didn't give me much new info like the other episodes did, it just makes the things that one could have figured out more apparent. I don't think they could have made the shannon/kanon situation any more obvious at this point.

time to make that ep7 bingo card i mentioned

jnsjkdgnjkdfnvjknfjjmk

I mean... Battler is not the culprit though. Unless he wants to avoid murders altogether. This seems like a good opportunity to start the killings as Erika's focus would be on implicating him while Sayo is doing all the murders. He can let her have her blue truths that center around that and destroy all of it with one swoop. I guess it would be hard to narratively explain... so it would be dishonourable like the 5th game was...

There is a way to get out of this predicament, so maybe Battler knew that but let himself get trapped in the logic error anyway? He keeps saying how old Beato would have found a way to explain this so this could be a set up to awaken "the old Beato". I feel like that is giving him too much credit though haha

Erika you piece of shit I love you

My impression of ep6 so far is that it feels like a direct answer to those like me who didn't enjoy the ridiculous amount of freedom Erika had the 5th game. I appreciate it.

As for my thoughts at this point, I do think these murders are fake. My inital thinking was that it was to spite Erika but now that Lambda has said that so openly I am not so sure anymore. Still, I think Battler would try to avoid killing people if he could.

The love trials were fun but I can't see what connection they have to this specific game. They have a lot to do with the truth of the golden witch in general, it feels like we are really getting to see the heart of Sayo. But I can't connect it to this episode. So I am having a bit of trouble finding a motive for setting up fake deaths like this.

He is never going to live that down

Oooughhh Umineko sure is a sound novel. Rog limitationnplaying when Kyrie blocks the door it's so good

Girl who hurt you

Yeah!! It's been a sticking point for me ever since first reading the vn. It's been a bit of a dream of mine to do a resprite where I remake all of the umineko sprites and one of the things I always wanted to do if I ever did that resprite is making the women look their age (also tweak the fashion, some of the outfits are great and some of them... not so much (Jessica's outfit is so ugly I'm sorry))
Unfourtunatly considering how many sprites umineko has a resprite project would take a while.. and I don't have a while currently... maybe one day..

Trueee. Some of the designs are so good, Beato's is one of the things that got me into Umineko to begin with. However there are designs like Jessica's that just doesn't look good to me. Though I feel like I have gotten used to them a lot as the vn went on. Lambda doesn't bug me that much anymore, for example.

I get your reservations about the resprites. I am working on an Umineko translation project and that is taking quite a while as well since it's all volunteer work with only a few people. That work does add up overtime, but I don't think I would ever do something like this alone. I am very passionate about Umineko and I love translating, even though it is a bit difficult with life happening.

If you feel like it, you can start with baby steps like just doing sketches for a potential redesign. If you give up later you'd still have something nice to show :D only if you want to of course. I'd love to see more redesigns from Umineko fans.

One thing about Umineko that is unfortunate to see is the women's sprites. Characters like Eva and Natsuhi are suppose to be nearing 50 but they look like they are 25 in their sprites. And the fact that their husbands actually look their age makes this even more ridiculous. If they looked young as well then I could at least chalk it up to Ryukishi07 not knowing how to draw older people and ps3 sprites just copying that faithfully but no.

The fact that it's only women is what annoys me because it undercuts the themes of the series a bit, doesn't it? I know they are rich but even with surgery some signs of aging like smile lines would show surely. Who are these women being "prettied up" for if not the audience? For example, when I mentioned how Eva should look older to someone, he thought I was attacking his waifu. If he is thinking that, Eva's sprites are doing a bad job of representing her.

Erika is surprisingly cocky for someone who doesn't understand anything

It's a small thing but I really like Belphegor and Rudolf's western "duel" in ep3. EVA-Beatrice slowly coming into focus is such a clever way to show Rudolf's intent. becomes more obvious each step but Belphegor doesn't realize it

Damn they're laying it on thick for those who haven't figured out these two's deal yet

I find it interesting how witches do everything they can to figh their boredom even though they can just be done and let themselves sleep for eternity. If they stop thinking they die, and then can revive by thinking again. But they don't want to die, even after a thousand years.

And the way they stave off their boredom is by making connections. Yeah, I'm sure the cruelty is helpful too, but the only reason why Bern and Lambda are playing this game is because of each other. Featherine is essentially a god but just listening to Ange explain this wild story is enough to keep her entertained. Witches can talk big all they want but ultimately they seek companionship as much as anybody

I agree with Featharine on this. I thought it was possible for the initial killings before the games started (Rokkenjima massacre from Ange's world) wasn't actually Sayo's fault even though she is the culprit in the games. The "game board" she created that Lambda took a liking to could just be on paper. Possibly as a way to vent out her frustrations. Or she liked writing mystery/fantasy. It'd be kind of cute if Battler's enthusiasm about mystery made her pick up the genre too.

But then again Battler was already acting way too friendly with Beatrice in ep5 despite not knowing anything then. It's definitely within the realm of possibility that he is acting like nothing happened.

Overall, I'm leaning towards the theory I had when I was firstreading ep4: The adults killed eachother over the inheritence problem. Even then someone needs to pull the trigger first

• Krauss and Natsuhi have the biggest motivation and they live in the mansion. They can set up whatever killings they want. But the focus on Natsuhi last episode makes me hesitate to point my finger at them.
• Eva is the only one who survived. She has already killed people in the games. Also the passage leading to the gold looks really similar to kuwadorian's basement area. Eva was found there, which implies she already found the gold. This gives her even more motivation to kill. She could have started it but someone else killed her husband and her son during the massacre that ensued. Personally I think of Eva being the only survivor as a red herring.
• Kyrie and Rudolf are shown to be quite ruthless. There is also Rudolf's secret that he intends to talk about during the conference that "will get him killed" whatever the fuck that means. I mentioned on my inital read that the extreme antagonism Eva has towards Ange and the constant comparisons to George could be because her parents were the ones who killed him. I really don't think Battler would be so cheerful if he learned his parents were murderers, though.

I assumed we don't have enough information to figure out what actually happened in Rokkenjima but I don't know anymore... It could be that Battler doesn't know either since what he knows is the truth of Beatrice's tale. He might not know more than the fact that Sayo isn't the actual culprit. That could explain his cheerfulness.

I've started ep6 and I have a question about how the pieces work. I'm only up to chapter 3 but I just couldn't wait. So, when battler creates piece Beatrice she is essentially just a puppet. Battler gets really upset and laments how lonely Beato must have felt and how much of a relief Battler being her opponent was to her. Which implies all of the characters in the game board and her furniture were like puppets too.

That makes some sense, it was kind of implied already. What is weird to me is this: the Kumusawa and Genji we see are pieces too, right? However, they have access to informantion Battler doesn't, like when Genji explains logic errors and how much Beato stressed over them. Do they store information or something?

Another things I don't get is Ronove and the rest of the gang's appearance at the end of ep5. Beatrice is fully, truly dead by then so if they indeed have no will of their own, Battler must be the one controlling them. But then why is Battler so surprised about piece Beatrice then? Was he just in denial?

I feel like I am completely misunderstanding this wrong but I can't tell what. Is there some kind of difference between pieces made from scratch and those appointed? Like Piece Beatrice compared to Dlanor, for example. Neither can disobey their master and can't do what they are already capable of doing but the latter still has a will maybe? Or in Virgilia and Ronove's cases, they are bound to the game board itself instead of Beato.

Battler-Kinzo parallels in this episode are very ominous... I know the parallels were already strong in the earlier episodes but this is on a different level. The cape is obvious but the main thing is He's literary trying to revive Beatrice . And the similarities between this chick beatrice and Kuwadorian's Beatrice are undeniable. She literary calls Battler "father". I don't think anything horrible is going to happen like what happened to Kuwadorian's Beatrice obviously but still a bit unnerving..

I think battler is not balsy enough to actually kill people in his game. Though I'm sure Sayo would need to start the murders at some point, right?

I know kinzo burned to death so many times now but I don't think it's enough. I think we need to do it a couple hundred times more at least. It's the least he deserves for what happened at kuwadorian

I have finished Episode 5 and this is my final answer. You can look up this post about Beatrice first for additional context and my thought process.

Explanations are under the cut (SPOILERS for the first 5 episodes):

The First Game

Maria's letter can be explained by a Beatrice cosplay. Really, this wouldn't be an issue if if literary anyone tried to see things from her perspective. Kinzo is, of course, dead by this point. So getting one's hand on his ring isn't difficult for anyone who knew this. The Beatrice that Battler sights at the end of the game works the same way.

I reasoned that Beatrice guaranteeing the identities of the unidentified corpses in red just puts more suspicion on the corpses with half their faces smashed. The only people who saw Shannon's corpse were Hideyoshi and Kanon so we can't be sure if the "corpse" was actually hers. Hideyoshi might have misidentified the corpse or he might have been bribed, the specifics don't matter to me that much. Another thing that points to him and Eva working with the culprit is that they claimed to go to bed early, but were shown arguing about the inheritance topic that continued well into the night.
As for Natsuhi's door, Shannon saw Maria give Jessica the scorpion charm as protection from the witch. She intentionally avoided killing her to aid the illusion of the witch.

Kinzo's study is not even a closed room as his "disappearance" is just him being dead. God bless.

The second twilight was Eva and Hideyoshi's deaths. This "closed room" could be easily be solved if it was Kanon that killed them and Nanjo along with the other surviving servants were accomplices. I delved into the reason for this in another post but TL; DR, Genji, Nanjo and Kumasawa felt guilt for Sayo's and her mother's situations as they were all aware of the existence of Kuwadorian. The only ones that we know besides Kinzo, in fact. While we are on topic, the letter that showed up inside the study after everyone holed themselves there was left by one of those three.

Kanon's "death" is the most interesting from this episode. My theory for Kanon is that he stopped using the name Kanon. "I will not be furniture anymore" style. That's why Beato refused to repeat that his death was a homicide, but she could repeat all the ways he didn't die.

The rest of the deaths are pretty easy, Sayo entered the parlor by using her master key and killed everyone besides Maria. Natsuhi's death is the least magical out of all of them. There are multiples of the Winchester rifle she uses. After Sayo shot her, she replaced her gun with Natsuhi's to make it seem like she was killed by her own bullet.

The Second Game

Maria and Rosa meeting Beatrice gives us some information about Rosa. Normally, when someone sees magic, they usually die after that. The fact that she goes away unscathed makes me thing she has a reason to buy into that "magic" and aid the illusion of the witch. Mainly, working for the culprit. Normally this wouldn't be enough to actually suspect Rosa but there are multiple other hints as well. She is shown with the siblings in the Chapel, even though this is a magic scene her being shown must mean something. The third strike for her is repeatedly splitting the group apart and getting them killed. Not to mention she claims to have talked the Kinzo to confirm the Shannon and Genji's alibis. I could go on but you get the point…

"Only one key to the chapel exists. It is impossible to unlock the lock to the chapel with anything but the chapel’s key. When the door to the chapel is locked, it prevents any and all methods of entry or exit." Here it is said that the door of the Chapel can only be unlocked with the Chapel’s key, but nowhere does it say that a key is needed to lock the Church's door. The culprit unlocked the Chapel door, then gave the key to Maria. Since there was no Auto-Lock, the Chapel could have been entered and exited freely. She summoned everyone and killed them, and locked the door with some other method on the way out. It makes sense that a lock would be harder to unlock with lock picking than the other way around right? For the door inside teh mansion, we were given clear confirmation that they couldn't be locked without a key. But chapel's door works differently from them. Still, if this is too much of a stretch there is another possible explanation...

Alternatively, you could argue the door was never locked to begin with. Everyone there besides Gohda were accomplices. If Sayo could convince Gohda as well, then they could work together to create that illusion.

Jessica's room is a lot easier to solve compared to the chapel thankfully. Beatrice confirms that the only master keys are the ones held by the servants, one key each. Later confirming the number of master keys to be five as well. What this actually means is that Sayo has two master keys: the one left in the room by "Kanon" and the other she is holding right now. Shannon's alibi means nothing when the only people to confirm it are either working with her or are dead.

The red truth proclaiming "Kanon was killed in this room." of course referring to his identity as furniture. This is what happens basically every time he is claimed to be dead. I'll have to explain this if I'm claiming Shannon and Kanon are the same person. Just assume this is the argument against red truths regarding either of them as dead (Unless the red specifies a cause of death, of course).

The scenes with the servants finding the injured Kanon and taking him to the servants are weirddd. So many things happen that I'm not sure what these scenes are trying to tell us. My read is that Sayo outs herself and her accomplices to Gohda and threatens him to cooperate. This is why he jumps to confirm what everyone else is saying all the time.
In regards to the deaths, it's impossible to confirm if this is actually the moment when Nanjo and Kumasawa died. I highly doubt it. Since everyone at the scene asserts that to be true, that is what we see. Of course, the servants' room is not a closed room if the bodies were never moved to begin with.

Gohda, Shannon and George is the one that I still haven't figured out fully yet. Shannon standing in front of the broken mirror makes me thing she took her own life after killing Gohda and George. In that case, who killed all the other people (Rosa, Maria, Battler, Genji)? When I finished episode four, I assumed she was alive. Rosa put the key inside George's pocket and merely pretended she found it there. This is probably why Rosa got mad at Battler for checking out her corpse, it wasn't actually because of preserving the crime scene or whatever.
Unfortunately, in ep5 there is a red that basically makes all fake body double corpse tricks impossible. "Know that no corpses exist except those of characters who have appeared in the story.". I think we can assume this to be true for all of the games, since if they wanted it to apply only to ep5 five, they would have said something like "in this game" instead. It's a bit of a Knox's commandments situation. Even before episode 5, a lot of us instinctually understood culprit X and trap X theories were off the table. This is something similar to that. I think Ryukishi07 wants us to know body doubles are out of the question.
When Battler looked at Shannon's wound, he saw the insides. It's safe to say she is dead for reals this time. How did the rest after the epitaph murders get killed then? The description of the goats' attack as rumbles and tremors + the description of smoke makes me think of booombs?? I hope there is something I am missing here because that idea sounds very stupid. I am ouıt of my depth here.

Now we get to the elephant in the room. or the goat. What the hell happened at the end there? This scene goes against pretty much everything we know. Battler shouldn't be able to see magic in the first four games. Or "have a subjective view" as Dlanor puts it. Not to mention Kinzo being alive. Well, this isn't an ironclad explanation but... Battler was hammered before going to the study, so you can argue his view wasn't reliable anymore, which let Beato sneak in the magical scenes there. This is a deviation from the theory that Battler just hallucinated the whole thing. Since alcohol doesn't actually make you hallucinate, that didn't make much sense to me. The proceeding scene was probably an extended tea party scene as Bernkastel was there and it happened after the credits.
I briefly considered the possibility that Battler was dead before this scene happened and the Battler we saw was just an illusion, since we didn't see what Meta Battler thought of this. However, the narration was from Battler's perspective the entire time, which makes this theory pretty unlikely. If that person wasn't Battler, we would have gotten hints about that during the scene.

The Third Game

The red truth "When the five other than Kinzo were killed, the killer was definitely in the same room as them." doesn't actually specify that the victims died inside the rooms they were in. Also shows that the place Kumasawa was killed in was inside, not outside like the magical scene makes it seem.
My guess is that after killing all the servants, Sayo put their corpses in their respective rooms and pretended to be dead at the parlor. After the adults found her and left for the second floor guest room. During this time, she collected Kanon's master key from some predetermined place and pretended to be dead as Kanon in the chapel. She locked the chapel door via some other method like lock picking, as mentioned in the second game before. Shannon was the first person found and the Kanon was the last, giving Sayo enough time to do this.

You could say, "Hey, doesn't this violate Knox's 8th? We weren't given any clues that point to her pretending to be dead." We were shown in ep5 that it is possible for characters to fake their deaths no matter how realistic their "corpses" look. I know it sounds like bs, I don't particularly like it, but it is shown in the story already. Besides, Nanjo was the one who checked all the corpses. He could have lied about Shannon an Kanon so the parents don't check thoroughly themselves.

That part was easy, now we get to the more difficult murders. I first want to talk about EVA-Beatrice's role in all of this. This whole think about her being the new Beatrice signifies to me that she was not only working with the culprit, she also killed some of the victims herself. Otherwise this whole succession plotline doesn't make sense to me. However, the idea of Eva killing Hideyoshi and George doesn't make much sense to me either. EVA-Beatrice represents the fact that she could kill her siblings over money. She is a part of Eva after all, no matter how much she denies that. She also almost kills Jessica because of a supposed "misfire" and literary shoots Battler dead a short time later.

You can say it's a bit difficult to parse who committed which murders. It's been a while since I've watched ep3 as well…

Both Eva and Sayo could be the one to murder Rosa and Maria. I'm leaning towards Eva because it seems like Sayo tries to avoid killing Maria if she can. Which makes sense when you consider that she is the only person Sayo doesn't have a reason to take revenge on. Also, she is 9.

As for Kyrie, Rudolf and Hideyoshi, I think it went like this: Hideyoshi knew Kyrie and Rudolf were suspecting him and Eva and decided to go outside so him and Eva can kill them. The disembodied gun is very interesting to me. I think after the murders, Sayo intended to betray them like in ep1, and Hideyoshi took the bullet for Eva.
…oorr Sayo just killed the three of them regular style. Idk anymore.

And then there is George. He was likely planning to check on Shannon's corpse and he probably did jump out of the window like Battler said. Of course, Sayo couldn't let this happen as the was no corpse to begin with.

Nanjo's death was a huge thing in ep3 but it is entirely based on a single trick. A trick which we figured out in ep1. He is killed by Sayo as well.

Fourth Game

This is the one game where I give up… okay that's not really true. It's just that the sheer amount of fantastical scenes and the lack of red truths make it hard to give a satisfying answer. I will still try… Let's go over what we know:

It seems that the main theme with this episode is obscuring the when and where of the deaths, as there aren't any closed rooms to be solved and no alibis to account for. Jessica's phone call especially points to this, I think.

I don't think the killer has a gun that can blow off half the faces of the victims. Rudolf's character entry mentions most of his head is gone as well. I think they died by getting shot and the culprit smashed their faces later. It was post mortem.

There are also the phone calls. There is a non-zero chance that no one was actually dead by this point or Jessica and Kyrie didn't know they were dead and these calls were just them working with the culprit at least somewhat willingly, as an elaborate plan. This is the only explanation that makes sense to me as there is no other way to look at what they say as anything other than a declaration that magic exists. The calls don't really seem like they were done under threat either. If Sayo was with Kyrie during that moment then she'd have enough time to kill her, take her phone to talk to Battler and run for the place of the test.

So… when and where did everyone get killed? It's hard to give a concrete answer but we can guess. My belief is that Kyrie and the gang were never in the Kuwadorian. Of the 3 fights we see their group is the only that wins. That's because they have to. They cannot get killed inside Kuwadorian or the hidden tunnel, because they were never there to begin with.

I don't think this needs mentioning, but the Beatrice figure Battler meets is of course Sayo. That's not the problem. The problem is Battler confirms half of Shannon's face was gone when he is going around the island confirming everyone's deaths. I'm breaking out the white text here: "All of the corpses were atrocious, but having to look directly at Shannon-chan's lovely face, half of which was blown off, was very painful…" Battler also points out a stake was lying next to her head, but wasn't stuck in. If we go forward with the assumption that there were no fake corpses, then we'd need a way to explain how she committed suicide. Don't laugh but It could be a bomb. It could have blown half of her face off. The residue would be washed away by the rain and the parts of it that are left would be hidden inside the grass. It is reasonable to ask how the bomb destroyed only half of her face and nothing else, but Umineko has had more extreme solutions than this, and besides, this explanation doesn't violate any of the Knox's commandments.

What I wonder is, why would she go out of her way to complete the murder mystery even though she was so disheartened after Battler's test?

Fifth Game

This game is unique in various ways, but the answer seems actually rather simple? A lot of the confusion comes from the POV of characters. We never see things from Erika's -our detective's- perspective like we did with Battler in earlier episodes. This episode mostly focuses on Battler and Natsuhi's perspective, both of which are not only subjective but also oppose each other.
It looks like everyone is in some kind of scheme to get Natsuhi to confess about Kinzo's death. Battler straight up just says it. There is plenty of evidence that he didn't mention as well. Like how Erika never sees Hideyoshi's corpse either or how the impossible knock could have happened if everyone was in on it. There is also the fact that Battler acknowledges Shannon and Kanon as separate people.
It's possible we were completely misled about what happened during the family conference. What likely happened is that Sayo convinced everyone to join her plan then, which she has been cooking for a while. The letter and the headship ring was probably she herself giving it to Battler, as she found the gold first.
It's possible she was gatekeeping information from the family, like the person from 19 years ago and instead just told them where Natsuhi would go and they planned accordingly.

All of this makes the way everyone treated Natsuhi just way waaay shittier than it was before. Eva basically beat her up over nothing. That being said, I don't think they expected the adultery accusations from Erika. I understand why they'd be mad at her for hiding their father's death but it's not her responsibility to bear alone. Krauss was also lying!

The last point about this game is the ending. If I'm understanding things correctly, even though Erika suspended the game, the reds we are given are from the end of it. So, based on how things would go if she hadn't suspended it. So, even if we couldn't see it, Sayo did kill them for real at some point.

Looking back at ep2, It looks like I was completely wrong on some things. The truth "Furthermore, all of the doors and windows on the six rooms are normal. No device exists which can lock them without a key, such as an auto-lock." from the third game removes the possibility of the chapel door being locked by something other than its key, like I proposed. While it is possible for the mechanism of the door to be different between games like Battler argued about thr master keys, that feels a bit cheap to me.

I currently can't think of a good explanation besides the chapel door never being locked in the first place. Rosa and Genji were working with the culprit, there is also evidence to show Gohda was working with Sayo from the start as well (she couldn't have had the time to change to Kanon to go with Gohda unless he already knew). But this doesn't feel like a satisfying explanation either. Which is really bad because I need something to explain both this AND the third game's locked rooms.

I give up for now as it is pretty late. I'm gona think about this some more later.

Dlanor saw an opportunity to team up with Virgilia and took it immediately

Why was Sayo raised as a woman anyway? I haven't thought much about it when I first figured that out but isn't that strange? I initially though this was because Kinzo was potentially thinking about raising another Beatrice but in that case, she would just be called Beatrice. But then again, maybe she was. Sayo Yasuda could be the legal name name given to her when she started working as a servant. The servants taken from Gospel house are all girls if I remember correctly.

The next things is who knows about Kanon and Shannon being the same person? It's understandable that George doesn't knoe but I imagine this would be hard to miss for Jessica. The scenes where we see her interact with either really make it seem like she doesn't. Wild. Basically everything about the cousins and their relationships are wild in retrospect.

Sayo did nothing wrong ever

There are so many interesting things to talk about in ep5 that I want to post about that I didn't talk about because I don't want to flood my blog with them but I just have to mention This Fucking Scene.

MAAAAAANN...... I'm tearing up... when he first said he didn't remember she managed to keep herself together despite that. She still had a final confrontation with Battler because she wanted him to solve everything. Even though she learned the promise was so unimportant to him that he didn't even remember it. At the end she gave her heart to him.

That's why it's so painful to see her breaking down completely here. I knew she was in a lot of pain and wanted everything to end when I was watching the end of ep4 but it's another thing entirely to see it with my own eyes... :(

You know, ever since ep4 I thought it was weird that Battler and Ange could speak in red about stuff outside of the game board. The red truths about them are definitive. If you try to say something untrue in red you just choke. Inside the catbox that is Rokkenjima it's more like you are writing the story as you go along. Battler wasn't able to do this, but hypothetically, if he managed find the murder method as Beatrice intended, Beatrice could course correct with red and set up the murder method in a different way. It's not definitive like the red truth about Battler's mom is. I talked about this to my friend when I started ep5 and he confirmed it, but it's good to have confirmation from the game itself.

But I imagine you can't just do whatever the fuck inside the game board. Magic merely obstructs the truth so the game should have a way for the murders to be commited by a human even if it wasn't the originally intended way. So you can't say anything in red that would actually make magic the only possible explanation for something.

It's like the game is making fun of me for thinking Shannon was the person from 19 years ago. Cuz they could have just placed multiple cards in Natsuhi's room, and told her where to look depending on the answer.

So this looks like a red herring more than anything. But who else could they be besides Sayo? I doubt it wasn't her.

Here is what I think about the truth of the Golden witch. I am currently at chapter 12 of episode 5. I should have waited until finishing ep5 before I wrote this, but this is just for me to record my thoughts.

I'm definitely going to get a good grade in Umineko for this. Which is both normal to want and possible to achieve. (Spoilers Ahead)

There is a bit of a problem though, I already knew Shannon was Beatrice even before I started palying the game, or at least a part of her. There are people here tag any and all posts about Beatrice as Sayo so. I tried to ignore it while trying to solve the murders but it's impossible to not mention at this point. Could I have found this out on my own? I'd say yes just because of the process of elimination. But It's not like I can know for sure. This did sour figuring out the mystery for me but what can you do?

Anyway, here is what I think about who Sayo is:

She is a granddaughter of Kinzo's, and the daughter of his child with his mistress. His mistress might have died from an illness etc. she could have commited suicide, had a miscarriage or simply just left Kinzo. The specifics don't matter. What matters is he caged their daughter inside Kuwadorian and raised her as a replacement for his mistress. He raped her, and the baby from 19 years ago was born. The timeline matches up, albeit barely. Kinzo wouldn't just let some random baby from a orphanage be the next potential head. Kinzo's reaction to learning about what Natsuhi did makes me think he was hoping for her to kill the baby. Natsuhi said the servant and the baby didn't die immediately and were taken to the hospital. So, it's definitely possible for the baby to be alive and Kinzo to hide that. This baby was later taken to Kuwadorian and raised there. At some point, Sayo was appointed to be a servant. I'm not sure whose idea that was but I can say that they were an idiot. Maybe they were hoping she would work for a few years and get enough money to leave? We know that she didn't, though I don't remember the reason she gave. My guess is that she either couldn't or she was waiting to see Battler again.

The deal with Epitaph is something I can't really wrap my head around. But I can say this: The gold is real and it is Beatrice's. We know this but we also know there wasn't a witch that gave Kinzo the gold. I don't think it was his mistress that gave him the gold, she'd be a lot more well known then and the topic would surely come up during Ange's investigations. So, more likely, our Beatrice solved the Epitaph. My friend asked what her solving the epitaph would cause or prevent. Now that I think about it, it's definitely possible that she was arranged to solve the epitaph in some way. This can be Kinzo's way of giving her the headship as she is a descendant of his beloved mistress. A direct way of making her the head is definitely out of the question.

I just don't get why she gave solving the Epitaph as a way to stop the murders. She doesn't even follow through on it! The murders still happen!

AND another thing, Since like episode 1 I had the theory that Shannon and Kannon were the same person because Battler hasn't ever seen the two of them in the same room. Kanon's body seemed to vanish in most of the games and Shannon almost always talks to him when they are alone (and Beatrice frequently shows up during these conversations!). Battler acknowledges the two as seperate in ep5 but he is Lambda's (the witch side's) piece by this point. Though, Erika never acknowledges them both as seperate but she should see them when they are in the same room, right? This confusion likely stems from Erika being our human side piece while we are still in Battler's POV. It's a bit sketchy and this does mean he has a reason to pretend Shannon and Kanon are different people. If that's true that can give us some info on how to solve ep5.

It's a bit unfortunate because them being separate would make it a lot easier to solve the murders. Besides, it's hard to justify how no one could recognize they were the same person. When I mentioned this to my friend he said this theory can definitely work if it doesn't violate Knox's Ten Commandments. I know it doesn't since we have proper evidence to dismiss Knox's 10th. But idkkkk. Still feels like a plothole to me.

This is where I assume the "trans woman Beatrice" thing comes from. Shannon seems to be stuck in a subservient role, like some trans women who think they have to bow down to patriarchy in order to be accepted as a woman but overall she is more positive compared to Kanon who is.. absolutely miserable. He has "himself" listed as his dislike. He also looks up to Shannon quite a bit. Sayo was born as male or intersex but she likely didn't know this as Sayo is a feminine name. So Kanon's situation is a bit weird because he has been a servant for quite some time. My guess is that this is experimenting on her part to see if she would like being a man. She might have realized something was weird when puberty hit and she didn't like the changes she experienced.

Well, how does Battler and Beatrice fit into this? I don't think the Beatrice we know is just Sayo, she isn't one individual woman after all. But she the most major element of Beatrice. I will go ahead and say it's possible for Sayo inside the game board and Beatrice to have different motivations. Beatrice shows Battler these murders because she wants him to figure out the mystery. She also knows he loves murder mysteries (he knows enough about them to correct Erika on things). I guess there were a lot of truth in Beatrice's act in ep3 after all. I don't think this was Sayo's motivation though. No way in hell she commited the murders just because he liked the genre.

As for Battler's sin, it was stated in red to not be between Beatrice and Battler because it was actually between him and Sayo. Obviously. You know how he is with one liners. He probably made some promise to Sayo about marrying her or saving her or whatever. Sayo, as isolated as she was, latched onto that promise and developed feelings for him (Though saying developing an obsession with him is more accurate). When he came back 6 years later and made it obvious that he didn't even remember that exchange, it was the final straw that broke the camel's back for her.

I just had a major epiphany while lambda and others were talking about who knocked on the door

What's with these Battler level bad blue truths from Beatrice? My Beato could wriggle her eay out of this situation just fine. I will never forgive Lambda and Bern for this. Give me back Beato

At least we got new sprites tho

They are just letting her say whatever the fuck because of detective's authority? That's dumb.

You know Bern said that beatrice wasn't one individiual woman and it's basically confirmed that there are at least 2 people going by the name Beatrice (Kinzo's Mistress and her kid that he kept imprisoned in Kuwadorian). I'd wager that's three since there is another person at Kuwadorian that calls Kinzo their grandfather who is probably the child of Kuwadorian's Beatrice.

There is also Beatrice's that are inside the heads of Shannon, Kanon and Natsuhi etc. So she really is an unknown amount of people.

And I've seen a post about why you should read Umineko saying Beato is a trans woman. The fact that I haven't seen any more posts about that on tumblr makes me think it's like a big BIG spoiler. I got the umineko spoilers tag blocked so that's probably why I haven't seen them.

I'm only at ep5 so I'm not sure when the topic comes up... it's gotta be pretty late though

When I was talking to my friends about my thoughts after finishing episode 4, they urged me to think about Battler's lineage more and that I had the tools to figure out some things. They don't normally point me in a direction like that so I thought it would be important. Turns out it is..?

Anyway, if we assume about his mother being someone that we already know, and also assume there was no incest (big assumption with this fucking family to be honest), than our only choices are Kyrie and Natsuhi. Obviously it's very unlikely that it's Natsuhi. So, I reasoned Rudolf switched Kyrie and Asumu's babies at the time.

This bit from episode 5 makes it even more likely since it confirms Rudolf knows about Battler's situation. Was this the thing Rudolf was referencing all the way back in episode one when he said he might end up dead tomorrow. Holy fuck. How do you even think that much ahead? I just thought he knew the murders would happen.

Damn my theory about Shannon and Kanon being the same person went to shit pretty much immediately lol. That's fine. It didn't even work well before ep5 to be honest.

I've only read up to chapter 2 so far but I'm already loving the change of direction in ep5.

For the question arcs, while Battler was undoubtedly his own character, there was a lot of overlap between him and the player. Outside of a few exceptions, you only knew what he knew and he was completely transparent with you.

But that has changed now. Currently we are watching the rewound game where the piece Battler is controlled by Bernkastel, if I'm understanding things correctly. Basically, for the first time, we have no fucking clue what he is thinking and planning.

I know I've said murder could be very adventageous to the humans side but I really doubt things will go that far. A bishop can only move within tiles of its own color no matter who playing so. I can safely say he won't become a culprit any time soon as moves Bern can make are very limited. I doubt that matters to her anyway as her main piece is Erika. However, I can see Bern using him as support for her. Subtly manipulating things so she can do detective work more freely. It's possible that stuff like planting evidence is on the table as well. I'm very interested in seeing what decisions Bern makes.

It's really fucking weird to see Battler being an outsider to us for once. I'd say he is my favourite character besides Beatrice, so I am looking forward to where Umineko goes to with this.

Beato.. sweetheart...

I saw a few people giving Battler shit for his compassionate demeanor towards Beato and I do understand why the tonal dissonance would annoy people. But, personally, if I botched killing someone so bad that that they got trapped inside a hellscape in their own mind, I'd feel absolutely horrible about it. No one deserves that

This is the second part of my Umineko theories for the Question Arcs, now that I finished it. Focusing on a narrative point instead of the killings. This is my half formed answer for the question "Who is Beatrice?"

This text was machine translated from my native language. I cleaned it up but It can still a bit hard to read. Still posting to record my thoughts.

Beatrice's Identity

I have mentioned a lot of things I talk about here on an earlier post if you want to see.

Instead of examining this as a mystery, we need to examine it as a story. In a meta way, that is. But first, it would be good to mention what we know about Beatrice:

Bernkastel: "Beatrice is not one individual woman. She is the personification of all the rules in this [game board's] world."

Lambdadelta: "Your board truly is an impressive and perfect game board… That's why I made you a witch in exchange for letting me borrow it…..If I stop being your guardian, you'll immediately go back to being a Human…No matter how much incredible magical power you hold, …you are nothing more than a temporary witch." and "……But I get the feeling that's not quite true. Rather than toying with the opponent in a match you can win…you don't actually care whether you win or lose, right?"

Apart from this, Rosa's encounter with Beatrice's "homunculus" when she was a child also gives us information. According to Ronove's red truth: "A hidden mansion called Kuwadorian does exist in the forest of Rokkenjima. In the past, the pair actually had a conversation like that in this place. This is the world of 1967. In 1967, in a hidden mansion on Rokkenjima, Beatrice-sama existed as a human." Beatrice adds "It's definitely dead." reffering to Human Beato.

In my opinion, the Beatrice here is not the mistress herself, but the child of Kinzo and his Mistress. She is close in age to the other siblings and it is obvious that she grew up in Kuwadorian. Kinzo raised this child as his mistress. It is not strange that even her clothes are the same as in the portrait. This person died after going outside with Rosa.

There is a harbor next to Kuwadorian and it has been closed for 30 years according to the Captain Ange talked to. This matches the time of her death (Implying her death occurred around 1968). Here is what's weird: someone lived on Kuwadorianeven after this Beatrice's death, shown by a scene early on in episode 3. This person addressed Kinzo as grandfather. "Virgilia" we see in this scene is probably actually Kumusawa, basically confirmed by her son as he mentioned she knew about Kuwadorian. So this scene is not even a magical scene.

What I'm getting to here is this: Kinzo raped his child and she had a grandkid from him. He couldn't kill this grandchild out of regret and they grew up in Kuwadorian. It doesn't matter that Kuwadorian's harbor is closed, things can be transported from the secret passage to the Kuwadorian underground. Genji, Nanjo and Kumusawa seem to already know the situation. This grandchild is the one who prepared the Game Board, the one who caused the Rokkenjima Massacre. The one Lambda gave her power to. If we are looking for a reason for this person to kill the Ushiromiyas, their mother's situation is more than enough.

Also, it seems like this person has a grudge against Battler for some reason. Right now, it seems like a love story is starting between Battler and Beato in the story, so I think this sin is related to love. 12 year old Battler said something like "I love you", this person really cared about it, since he grew up in Kuwadorian, they seem to be quite isolated. He may trust others easily like his mother. But after saying this, Battler left the Ushiromiya Register. When he came back and obviously didn't remember what he promised, this person couldn't handle that on top of everything else and the Game board was formed. Battler leaving is the sin.

"Ushiromiya Battler has a sin

Because of your sin, people die.

Due to your sin, a great many people of this island die. No one escapes, all die."

This person's name wasn't Beatrice like his mother's, so Battler could say "Six years ago, no person called Beatrice existed for me." as a red truth. So who is this person? I don't know. I'm guessing Shannon.

I had a spoiler about Shannon being a part of Beato (it was on this blog, I'm not mad though, It happens), on top of that Shannon's age fits this timeline of events. Shannon's connection to Beatrice is big, we saw this clearly in episode 2. My problem is, Shannon is comfortable enough around Battler, either she is a great actor or Shannon's background in this Game Board is different. Besides, didn't she grow up with Kannon in an orphanage, not Kuwadorian?

Let me state this clearly, this person doesn't have to be a piece on the Game Board. As Battler said, there are changes between games, such as the number of master keys. This person may have removed themself from the game board. They don't have to be the culprit either, it was already clear in episode 3 that Eva was a culprit for example. Just because they made the game board doesn't mean they have to be behind the deaths in the games. It's also true that Shannon died in episode 1. Shannon may not have died in episode 4, but may have presented Kannon's body as her own and appeared before Battler like that. But she was dead in episode 1.

Now that I've finished episode 4 it is time to put out my theories on what happened in the Question Arcs. Will I be able to do marginally better than Battler?! Remains to be seen...

[Note: This text was originally in my native language. I translated it to English with the help of Google Translate and some editing. I was talking to friends on discord about my theories. The opinions were mixed, if you were wondering.]

First, let's start with the simple facts: Kinzo was dead before the game started, and there were actually no more than 17 people on the island. Natsuhi, Krauss, the servants, and Nanjo lied about this so Krauss could keep the inheritance money for as long as possible.

Piece Battler's POV is the only one we can trust due to reasons I have explained before. we can't trust things that Battler can't see with his own eyes, which explains the above situation. But if I'm questioning whether a scene that doesn't involve magic is real or not, I have to give a reason for that. If a character is lying, I need a plausable explanation as to why.

Battler is not the culprit for any of the games, despite the fact that he tampered with almost every crime scene in episode 4. Battler may have had a role in the Rokkenjima Massacre in Ange's world, but he can't be the culprit in the games. Him being one is a disadvantage for Beatrice.

If Battler were the culprit, he could easily prove that the murders were committed without the use of magic. For example, he could say, "A witch didn't kill Kanon, I did. I set up the locked room like this," and Beato wouldn't have a counter if he really did that. Apart from that, he could kill the corpses he wasn't sure if they were dead, so he could know for sure that a character was dead even if Beato didn't prove it. Therefore, committing murder could be considered advantageous for the human side. Honestly, such a radical move on it's own for throwing Beato off her game.

But the problem is that the pieces in the game can only make moves that are appropriate to their characters. Even if Meta Battler changed his mind, the piece Battler wouldn't commit murder because he didn't have the information he had and also because of his character. Of course, what we know about Battler could be wrong, but unless we learn something that would make it reasonable for him to deliberately hide this information, Battler will be considered innocent. Besides, he already has a suitable alibi for most of the murders (he is usually with his cousins or an adult).

When I refer to "The culprit" that can mena multiple people. I just didn't want to wrestle with google translate more to change that to "The culprit(s)". Sorry.

1st Game

In the first game, I thought Kyrie and Rudolf committed the murders, but since Beato said "(for the first game) I guarantee the identities of all unidentified corpses", that theory seems to be in the trash. If they were alive and pretended to be dead they wouldn't be considered corpses... (It sound really stupid but how else can you point at who killed Natsuhi at the end?) Both of them have motivations. On top of that, Rudolf said something like "don't be surprised if I die" to Battler, strangely enough. He speaks as if he knew what would happen in the first twilight. Also, at the end of the game, the character profiles say that George and Jessica are dead. Although Battler's avatar looks bloody, it is not certain that he is dead. They would have left their kid alive..

As for the second twilight, Hideyoshi's body is in the bathroom and it is certain that he is dead. Eva's body is in the bed and it is certain that she is dead. Their room is both locked and chained. They told the group that they would lock their room with chains, before they left. The culprit could have entered and killed them before they chained the room. The murderer was in the room when they died. The culprit knocked them out and waited to kill them so they could create the illusion of a closed room, as everyone expected the two to got to their room and lock it when they said they did.

While it is technically possible that this was a double murder, it is completely against their character, and they have no motive to do so. Notably, When Battler entered the room the culprit wasn't in there. This really puts the blame on the servants, my leading theory is Shannon and Kannon as Nanjo, Genji and Kumasawa were stated in red to not be killers.

The third and fourth twilights are a bit more complicated. Kinzo is already dead, his burnt body was brought to the boiler room and locked. My theory for Kanon is that he stopped using the name Kanon. "I will not be furniture anymore" style. With this, the red truths "All of the survivors have alibis. Let us include the dead as well. In short, no kind of human or dead person on the island could have killed Kanon.", "Kanon did not commit suicide." and Lambda's "Kanon did not die in an accident." could all be true. There was no person named Kanon anymore. That's why Beato refused to repeat that Kanon's death was a homicide. In short, the culprit could kill him and escape, thus solving no longer Kanon's murder without using Trap X.

I think there's no need to explain the twilights 6 through 8 for now. As for Natsuhi, the red truths are: "Natsuhi's death was a homicide. There were no unidentified corpses, and all of the survivors have alibis. The bullet buried into Natsuhi's forehead was not fired from her gun." and Lambda's "The thing that shot Natsuhi wasn't a trap, it was a real shooting murder with a gun raised and trigger pulled.". Considering that there were multiple identical Winchesters like the one Natsuhi used, the most logical thing to say is that the gun they found next to Natsuhi wasn't her gun. That's why there was a single gunshot and smoke coming out of "her gun". The culprit did this to make her death seem like suicide, at least momentarily. This murder is also really important in my opinion as it happened very close to our characters. Subsequently, it was the least magical. Making it obvious to me that the culprit killed everyone else in the same fashion. All the other wounds were post-mortem.

2nd Game

First Twilight

Episode 4 "From the time Maria received her key to the instant Rosa unsealed the envelope the next day, the key passed through no one's hands. There were no doors with auto-locks other than Kinzo's study. The six were already dead by the time they were discovered. All of their deaths were homicides. All six were genuine victims and did not take part in a mutual murder. There was no simultaneous murder. There was no one hiding in the chapel. Therefore, the shut-in "murder you suggest does not work." (From Lambda:) "When the six were murdered in the chapel, the culprit was inside the chapel." Also "Only one key to the chapel exists. It is impossible to unlock the lock to the chapel with anything but the chapel’s key. When the door to the chapel is locked, it prevents any and all methods of entry or exit." Here it is said that the door of the Chapel can only be unlocked with the Chapel’s key, but nowhere does it say that a key is needed to lock the Church's door. The culprit unlocked the Chapel door, then gave the key to Maria. Since there was no Auto-Lock, the Chapel could have been entered and exited freely. They summoned everyone and killed them, and locked the door with some other method on the way out. It makes sense that a lock would be harder to unlock with lockpicking than the other way around right?

Second Twilight and Onwards

"The only way to lock this door is with Jessica’s single key or the master keys, only one of which is held by each servant. You can enter or exit through the window, but the window is locked from the inside. Kanon was killed in this [Jessica's] room. When locks, it [this door] does not permit any form of entry. No trick could have the effect of locking the door from the outside without using a key. There is no way to get in or out other than the door and the windows." and "When Jessica's corpse was discovered, only Battler, George, Maria, Rosa, Genji, Gohda, Shannon, Kumasawa, and Nanjo were in Jessica's room. Whoops, the corpse of Jessica is also included. Therefore, both in the case involving Jessica's room and the one involving this [servant] room, no humans exist that you were not aware of." This time, since it is said "Kanon was killed", the metaphorical death logic we used before does not work.

Kanon may have died in Jessica's room, but we cannot say that he died at the same time as Jessica. Especially considering that Kanon's body was not found. Likewise, Nanjo and Kumasawa may have died later than we believe. Making a lot of people's alibis go to shit. As for Gohda, George, and Shannon, their case isn't even a locked room. If Rosa is working with the culprit, she could lie about taking the key to the room from a predetermined location and finding it on George, like Battler theorized about the master keys. His theory was rebuted with red, but only for the master keys.

It wasn't said in red that they were dead, but Battler looked at Shannon's head and said he saw the inside of it. We don't know for sure if Battler left Rosa after him, Rosa and Maria seperated from the rest, but if he did, he would have said so. So Rosa has an alibi. I have no idea who the culprit is... I don't feel like watching Episode 2 again, so I'll just count this as unsolved. But I can say that none of the closed rooms are actually closed.

3rd Game

Nanjo's Death (and first twilight?)

I think the game giving us so many red truths actually makes it easier. Battler said that since EVA didn't give the time of death when she declared who died in red. Thus, it was possible that someone killed Nanjo during the interval between Nanjo's death and EVA's counter. However, he couldn't give a reason as to why this person committed suicide after killing Nanjo. Alternatively, maybe the theory I mentioned about Kanon for Episode 1 could also apply here? Kanon and/or Shannon stopped using the names they used, because they didn't consider themselves as furniture anymore. In this case, the first twilight and Nanjo's death can be solved. EVA already sneakily added Kinzo's death as a red truth so this isn't that far fetched.

Of course, Eva was the person responsible for the other deaths, as she had no alibi. Even outside that, EVA-Beatrice is the literal representation of how much she is willing to kill people for the gold. Not that she is special in that regard.

4th Game

I'll be honest, I've given up on solving the 4th game for now. Especially with the lack of red truths. For example, I could make a multiple theories on how Kumasawa and Gohda died, the simplest one being "The culprit just picked the fucking lock. It's an old shed. It was never specified in red that this lock was unpickable." But this doesn't actually get me closer to the truth now does it?

I will say this though, It's really fucking weird that Kanon's corpse wasn't found. I think "Shannon's corpse" that we see might actually be his. Then, the Beatrice that shows up at the and would be Shannon. This really incriminates Shannon as the person Battler commited his sin against. More on that here though.

I have a lot of thoughts and theories now that I've watched ep4 tea party but like the main thing that poked out to me is that Battler focuses too much on "Denying the witch" over finding the truth. If Beato hadn't accepted death she might have pushed him enough for him to actually figure things out instead of all the trap X's and small bombs.

Trying to figure out the Rokkenjima murders but someghing else popped into my mind,,, the guy Ange is talking mentions Eva was found on the secret mansion in the woods, okay... that makes things a lot more complicated because the siblings arent suppose to know about that place.

This does mean Beatrice wasn't lying about the mansion, I didn't think she was but it's good to have confirmation about this in ep4. Specifics of Beatrice's game board support this being real too since Rosa's encounter with "Beatrice" didn't have anything magic related in it.

Beatrice's "homunculus" was born and raised in the mansion. If we apply Virgilia's logic to this we can come up with a non magical theory: She is not Kinzo's mistress, she is most likely her child which Kinzo raised after his actual mistress died. Though, In the scene with Virgilia, "kid beatrice" calls him her grandfather, which throws a wrench at this theory. Idk, unless Rosa was lying Kinzo was keeping someone who looked like Beatrice there. They don't have to be his kid (actually they most likely aren't because Kinzo met his mistress before he got married, but she looks around the same age as the other Ushiromiya siblings) but they are definitely related to his mistress in some way for Kinzo to want to keep them in the first place.

The secret mansion situation was horrible enough already but him keeping her mistress's kid imprisoned in that mansion and making them dress and act like her is another level of fucked up. Didn't Beato mentioned he tried to "make her accept his love" Oh god...

I have a question about Umineko: Is there a specific reason why Battler never dies during each game? I was under the impression piece Battler and Meta Battler were different people, ep2 shows that Beatrice is the one controlling his actions since she is the one setting the murder mystery up and dictating what the pieces do (as long as it's in character for them).

Beato would absolutely show Battler his own corpse to fuck with him. The fact that she doesn't makes me think that she can't.

In ep3 and 4 the murders turn into straight up anime battles. To the point where seeing Beatrice's furniture is a death sentence for the 18. Piece Battler never sees these events because he never gets targeted.

My guess is that piece Battler isn't allowed to see the "magic" because then it would undeniably be real, because he literally sees it, there would be no point in the game to begin with. That would imply that the only POV you can fully trust is piece Battler's. That makes some sense, this is how you can deny all the anime stuff I mentioned earlier. No one lives to tell the tale and the people who do live never see magic, making it possible for Battler to deny the magic as just Beatrice's explanation/theory of events. What about non-magical stuff we see from other people's POVs though? This would make a strong case for Kinzo being already dead theory. I can't prove Battler's perspective is reliable but he never sees Kinzo, right?

If we go back to the main topic, piece Battler doesn't need to see any magic to get offed. We can just cut to someone else's perspective and kill Battler during that time. But maybe that's too dull for Beatrice now that her furniture are at full power.

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Yeah! You hit the nail on the head pretty much. It's more about why Beato never kills him. It's something she would enjoy a lot, and the reliable info Battler gets from the game is one of the most important tools for him. Getting rid of that + refusing to use red would make it very hard for him to do much of anything.

• Is it because of a direct or indirect rule of the game?
• Is there something that makes it hard for culprit(s) to kill him without him realizing who they were? If it's too risky for Beato to do it then that on it's own gives us info about the nature of the killings. The how and the who.
• Does Beato have a personal reason for not wanting to kill him? Like you said, he does die at the end of ep3 so I find this unlikely.
• The fact that he always survives could hint at something like the comments imply. I'm thinking he could be another survivor of the Rokkenjima Massacre with how hard the game has been hinting at there being another survivor. But Ange knows he is dead. She was at his funeral. I'm not saying it's impossible, Eva definitely has a reason to do that, but could she manage all that? Would Battler let her? He wouldn't unless he was in such bad condition that he couldn't fight back. I don't really believe this being true unless proper evidence comes up.

In regards to Maria dying, EVA-Beatrice was part of Beato's plan and mercy killing her and Rosa was an act. So I'd say she is still main one responsible there. Maria is actively helpful for the Witch side, in a lot of ways too. It'd be stupid for Beato to get rid of an asset like that.

I'm sorry but Rosa is fucking deranged. She is nuts and should be kept as far away from Maria as possible. The entire town knows Maria is living alone, it's a miracle that no one has broken into the home yet or kidnapped her yet. She is an adult, she knows what would happen if someone found out she is alone. She just doesn't care.

When someone points the fact that she is putting her kid's life on the line and ruining her life just for some dick, she completely loses it.

I used to think she cared about Maria at least a little, she at least tried to protect her. But now I see that when it comes to stuff that actually matters, not imaginary witches and monsters, she doesn't care.

And I don't like how the game goes on and on about how Maria is satisfied with her life. It's good that she can create some sort of happiness for herself, It's the only thing she can really do in this situation. But that doesn't mean that she is actually satisfied about anything. She is only covering up her sadness and waiting for it to inevitably boil over. She is just too young to accept her situation. This isn't something Ange should be striving to reach! Goddammit!

Ryukishi07's thing for number 34 is especially funny to me because 34 is Istanbul's licence plate number. People are very attached to these arbitrary numbers too . It's in branding and everything. Basically what I'm saying is

Istanbulite Lambda real

My thought is that if it wasn't a crime they wouldn't be so vague about it. You could at least say what kind of "accident" it was. But Eva wasn't THE culprit either. They just killed each other over money. I know this part is obvious so I will move it a step further. Get more speculative.

Eva's hatred of Ange in relation to George makes me think it was Kyrie and/or Rudolf who killed him. They needed a huge sum of money too. Also, Kyrie scares me. That being said I don't think they would all kill eachother unless someone else was planning something already. That person doesn't have to be Eva, though.

Also, them hinting at a potential survivor makes me think. It would have to be someone that Eva wanted go hide the identity of. Maybe a servant? She may have wanted to hide that person so they shut their mouth, a servant would agree to hide as well.

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Actually, it might be Krauss and Natsuhi who fired a shot first. I do believe Kinzo was dead this entire time, if that got out and they wanted to keep the inheritance... well...

Plus, they live in Rokkenjima so it's easiest for them to plan something like this. It's something to consider.

There has to be a non-magic answer to these games otherwise the integrity of the game would be lost. But I can't for the life of me figure out who the culprit(s) are. I have a guess or two for episodes 1 and 2 but nothing I can confirm

Okay, I've been assuming Beatrice's cute demeanor and change of heart was an act to throw Battler off his game like she did by making Eva the new Beatrice, right. I saw her feeding Rosa flesh of her siblings like last episode. But I'm starting to think Beatrice genuinely doesn't think what she is doing is wrong, like for real. It's just a murder mystery man it's just a prank bro type of deal. She is being cruel and she know it, yes, but she also thinks it's not that big of an issue. It's just a game board

Girl, at least try to put yourself in his shoes.

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Okay so it was an act after all. That is a good thing by the way, otherwise this whole thing would have been just bad writing. I don't think Beato can change at this point unless something really big happens. After 1000 years one's beliefs and personality crystallize. It is how it is.

KINZO YOU PIECE OF SHIITTT

I just realized there is a cg with stacks of gold in the OP. I don't remember seeing it before so it's definitely possible they sloved the epitaph at dome point. Tbh I assumed the epitaph was there just so Beatrice could fill the "magic always has a weakness" quota but also Umineko (with VA) is like 200 hours so they might as well solve the riddle during that time lol

Yeah Shannon you should be grateful that they deprived you of your childhood, education and freedom and forced you to be a servant, treating you horribly the entire time. You should be over the moon

Kumasawa doesn't deserve all that. I know all the servants get suspected but she has it worst by far in this regard. In Ep1 they suspected her for the intial 6 along with the other servants, after that they think she killed Kanon. And now in Ep2 Rosa is accusing her of killing Kanon and Jessica. Everyone should just leave her alone

I thought I had Umineko figured out then suddenly Kanon pulls out a magic demon blade which he apparently had all this time lol?