Board 8 > Umineko Playthrough Topic Part 5

(+) Yeah! (+)

Virgilia makes a metaphor about how knowing that you can solve a mystery makes you want to solve it is like wanting to only say you love someone atfer they admit they love you

Since Beatrice and Battler are, theoretically, in love, I wonder if this is foreshadowing. Virgilia also mentions that a one-sided love can be painful.

Does Beatrice love Battler, but Battler doesn't love her back...?

(I am referring of course to some layer of meta-characters I haven't seen yet, whatever history Beatrice has with Battler...)

We talk about how the strongest love can come when two people are together for a long time without either realizing it or confession it directly

which is exactly what is happening with Beatrice and Battler...?

hard to call this "love" exactly, but i can't deny the massive feeling that the two are connected that way despite all the, uh, horrible horrible fighting

and then, what i don't understand is

this chapter ended with bern and lambda cackling together about their evil love for each other and cheering that beatrice and battler went down

but the setup for this chapter was

that they both want the game to keep going in a tie

not that they wanted it to end with beatrice dying

and also, they specifically mentioned that they were running this game to give battler clues about how he might be able to solve the previous games

but then that isn't how it went down at all, they just killed battler and laughed

so...? what is the real truth...?

speaking of love

the whole epitaph is about reaching the golden land of eternal love, or w/e

and yet this has always contradicted with beatrice's methods of brutal murder and cruelty

but i don't think it's a contradiction

i don't know how it connects, but it does

it's not as simple as "the epitaph talks about love but its just a lie because beatrice is actually evil"

anyway, battler's death was described as "he's not actually dead per se, it's just that he stopped thinking, which is what counts as death"

and now because he's flashing back to the tea garden, he's thinking again, so uh, i guess he'll come back. okay.

and this, btw, is why the game has difficulty levels listed for each chapter, and why this visual novel does have "gameplay"

the game is in not giving up on thinking

the moment you accept that witches exist and stop thinking, you are losing. aka the other playthrough topic has spent a lot of time losing the game without even realizing it.

i would really like it if battler tries to solve ep 5 here instead of waiting for, presumably, episode 8 to do it

come on, this is answers arc

(its shannon btw. god i'mma be so proud if my prediction there was correct)

Battler thinks about the decalogue and how rule 1 is that the killer must be someone introduced "in the early part of the story"

well, that doesn't have to mean episode 1

in an 8-episode story, episode 2 can certainly still count as "early". hell, beatrice didn't even exist until then. (not that she's the culprit)

that said, yes, i do assume the mastermind is one of the original 18. no humans have even shown up, the new characters after that are all witches.

"That's right, ...that was...Beato's greatest weapon in the 2nd game.

Depictions of magic, which couldn't exist in a mystery.

By showing me that, she forced me to think this tale wasn't a mystery, and therefore, that reasoning was impossible... So I surrendered"

uh, speak for yourself battler. or speak for handsomeboy. some of us knew it was fake from the start...

that said, battler is saying that this means we should doubt the witnesses who claim to have seen magic

and that's not really a direction i had gone in

i assumed it was just fake stuff being shown by beatrice

but i don't know if it means i should doubt every person who saw it

after all, didn't the majority of the character see magic? half a dozen people in game 2 said they saw kanon's ghost.

kanon and jessica themselves both saw goats.

so.

i'm not sure how to know which things were lies told by beatrice and which might be lies that represent a character's fake PoV...

"However, that begs the question:... is it even possible to solve a tale written by an observer who isn't impartial?"

exaclt.y

i still don't know the rules about which things shown on screen can be trusted or not. and if they are lies, whose lies are they.

and so battler is alive again

man, deaths in this game really don't mean anything

everyone who dies, even when it's a "for realz" death (like sakutaro's) just comes back anyway lol

and now beato faded away and "died"

but she'll obviously come back

apparently battler's consciousness solved the entire truth and is now just going to vaguely allude to it...? or is this "truth" something else

man i was looking forward to going back adn solving the first 4 episodes but apparently it's still not happening...

enlightened-battler says that he was the one who was torturing beatrice all along, and she's the one who was withstanding it

sure, i can believe that

is battler about to use the golden truth?!

999

"suree nainu"

erika sucks but the scythe is pretty cool

hm

now that we're actually solving the mystery, i'm forgeting some details

erika keeps insisting the rime happened between 24:00 and 1:00

can anyone remind me why that is?

because battler returned at... 1:00? and they were "already dead"? and battler woke up in the morning and realized it?

that's the story until now, at least?

but 24:00 to 3:00 as also a window of time listed earlier, why is that window relevant?

omg, virgilia has a wand now!!!

thats probably not as exciting as i made it sound

but i dunno its pretty exciting

okay, so, i can't quite understand this all, but we are getting to the mystery of how the bodies disappear

apparently the current theory presented by battler and ronove is that the bodies weren't dead when battler woke up and screamed and said "gasp! dead bodies!" so they were... alive...? when people examined them?!

well, that's a gap in the red truth that just said "they're dead" without saying when they died, sure

anyway, instead of actually resolving anything, we just end on another cliffhanger heading into the 6th episode

but what this ???? established is at least this: battler is now an endless witch who knows the truth of all 5 episodes. (lol)

battler's theory is that the ep5 first twilight people actually died after 3am, and when people looked at their "corpses", they were still alive, and THEN they got moved and killed

and his theory is that piece-battler was the killer, because he's the baby from 19 years ago

i don't know if that's actualyl the truth or just a theory battler is presenting as a step to get somewhere else

but i guess we'll find out

Dels posted...

erika sucks but the scythe is pretty cool

truth!
---

Dels posted...

hm

now that we're actually solving the mystery, i'm forgeting some details

erika keeps insisting the rime happened between 24:00 and 1:00

can anyone remind me why that is?

because battler returned at... 1:00? and they were "already dead"? and battler woke up in the morning and realized it?

that's the story until now, at least?

iirc Erika established that it was impossible for anybody to enter the cousins' room in the guesthouse before 24:00 (Cousins had not yet returned) or after 1:00 (Erika was keeping watch)

Her theory was that when Battler returned, they were already dead, but he was too tired/lights were off/whatever and he failed to notice, yes.

ok, and his new theory is that they weren't dead at 1:00 after all, and when battler woke up in the morning and was shocked to find "dead bodies", he was faking it.

which would mean they were either knocked out, or in on it.

guess we'll find out

i'll whip up some quick character rankings but don't expect any major writeups

the only new characters were erika, dlanor, and [cornelia + gertrude], correct?

Dels posted...

the only new characters were erika, dlanor, and [cornelia + gertrude], correct?

Yes

Character Rankings, Post Episode 5

See chart here: https://snag.gy/REdKoO.jpg

I actually made these without looking at the previous ones, and since they were from a few months ago, I didn't really remember them. But the new list came out almost the same as the previous one.

Notes:

- Natsuhi back to #1. This is a recency bias thing I'm sure, she dropped after episode 1 because she didn't get focus, but she got another episode being the central character so I am back to loving her. <3

- I ranked Beatrice #2 because, like I mentioned earlier, I just think the intricacies and depth of her character are making her more and more compelling, and she's just very well written.

This puts Kyrie down to #3 for now, but hey, she didn't do anything this chapter, it's only fair.

The rest of the top mostly stays the same. Everyone from 4 to 11 are characters I like quite a bit, the exact ordering doesn't mean too much at the moment.

Virgilia goes up a ton because she was actually nice this chapter. She didn't become randomly evil for no reason, and also didn't become randomly immature.

Dlanor places around the same tier as Virgilia and Ronove. I like her because she got the tea party garden scenes to give her some development, though her more confrontational persona is kind of obnoxious.

Gaap jumped up a lot, I don't really know why, I guess I'm just used to her now and she's pretty inoffensive. Most people below her are actively boring or uninteresting or dislikeble, so, hey.

I actually found Lambda a bit less annoying this chapter? I'm not sure why. But it doesn't result in any difference in the rankings, apparently.

George seems to have suffered a -7 drop but I can't tell you why. He had an okay chapter 4 but now I'm back to not caring about him. Still, he should be grateful he's somehow 11 spots from the bottom. I'd never have believed you if you told me atfter chapter 1 that George would be 11 spots from the bottom. =P

Inquistors get #31 because they have cool designs and a sort of cool role but they have nothing going for them besides that.

Erika gets #39 because she sucks. Duh. But she avoids the bottom spot because her whole detective parody gimmick thing is actually a little bit funny.

And because, of course, Bern takes the bottom spot, because I can't stand her.

Jumps of +22, -21, and +13 are definitely the biggest jumps (or falls) any characters have made this entire time, though with the field being at 40 total, it's easier for someone to make big leaps like.

Honestly, everything below 18 was kind of a slog to rank because that's about where I stop caring about the characters.

Kinzo is the other one I had trouble with.

The version of Kinzo that exists inside Natsuhi (and Battler, and Beatrice's) head is actually pretty cool.

But the actual real Kinzo is still an unlikeable asshole.

So it's a bit hard to rank.

well, let's take a peek into episode 6!

battler is the game master now, sure. difficult level is none. "this isn't a hint, it's a confession"

so battler, now armed with the golden truth, realizes that he's actually the one who did wrong, not beatrice. and he's not exactly our "protagonist" anymore, because... we have a knowledge gap with him. he knows everything. we still know nothing. so what will the format be....?

but before that, of course, let's introduce another blue haired freak

oh and of course she has a sister. because every useless side character in this game has to come in a pair/trio/etc with sisters

the profiles say that this will be the last game

interesting

i'd certainly like it if episodes 7 and 8 finally went back and solved things instead of having new games, that's for sure!

and battler's profile pic has a cape now, meaning he is the character in the logo. well, that's what i figured.

wooow. ronove, gaap, and virgilia don't even get their own entries anymore. they're just combined. how cruel.

but despite being a witch and "lord" of this fragment now, battler is being forced into, uh, marrying erika.

yeah. okay. whatever. i don't really care about what new weird shit this game comes up with lol

man, i really hope the bio is telling the truth and this is erika's last chapter. i worried that her living past episode 5 would mean she'd be in all 4 chapters. but if this really is the last game, and eps7/8 are something new, i really hope she doesn't stick around

oh look, ange is back

even though she "died" very "explicitly" in a way that you "can't return from" and we spent the next episode mourning how she was "definitely" "gone"

ange seems confused about how she exists as well though

almost like she's just part of a story, being conjured up

she can't remember how episode 4 ended. (it ended with her dying on an island)

either way, we're picking back up almost exactly where episode 4 left off, as it seems ange is now meeting with the person who found the bottle. though her title is literally "message bottle forger" so uh????????????????????????

https://snag.gy/Q1r7GM.jpg

interestingly enough, this is a parallel to battler. he has now found the "truth" and is, theoretically, moving on to the side of the riddle giver by being a game master. at least, that's what the chapter description told me. the actual episode so far only depicts him as a prisoner sold into marriage.

ange says that the forger's most recent story was called "end of the golden witch"

in other words, episode 5 was just a story written by this author...?

hm hm hm

alliance and banquet are the names of her other forgeries, apparently.

let me see.

i can open up the first game since it's on steam and I'm using GOG for this, to verify which those are.

oh. i uninstalled it. meh.

can someone tell me the names of the first 4 episodes in Question Arcs?