Board 8 > Umineko Playthrough Topic Part 6

(+) Yeah! (+)

So the only possible theories I came up with in that exercise are:

- Natsuhi or Hideoyshi could be a different person based on the fact I don't know their name before marriage.

- Natsuhi and Eva could be the same person, two opposite sides of the same soul, and they turned to incest to create a child since Jessica wasn't male and Eva couldn't give birth.

- Jessica and George are the same person, in some way related to the fact that only a male could inherit the family, and related to the above issue regarding who could give birth.

- Kyrie could be fake because she's not supposed to be here, Asumu is.

- Battler could be fake because, well, it's the easiest answer since he's the most distinct character in terms of his situation in the story. He disappeared at 13. He may be an abandoned orphanage baby. He could be someone else who is the same age as him. Who knows.

- Genji could maybe be fake since he doesn't interact with a ton of people and it'd be the easiest lie, but meh.

- Maria could be fake because she died or something and people pretend she exists to make Rosa happy. Also, Rosa and Maria could be the same person since they are almost always together. (i.e. maybe Rosa has a split personality and reverts to being an 8 year old sometimes, and people just put up with it since it's impolite in Japanese society to point out mental illness)

And of course,

- Everything I said about Kanon and Shannon earlier.

Those are the options I've come up with. If it's something outside of those, I'm defeated.

Of course, if Kanon and Shannon were the same person, it still would be hard to explain how Kanon saved Battler, since Shannon was also in a closed room.

but, the idea of there being only 16 people must somehow explain why battler was able to get out of the closed room. which is interesting, i suppose.

what the fuck

https://snag.gy/DHRBhv.jpg

what the FUCK???????????

i'm supposed to be being given answers!!!!!

this is not helping!

anyway. Will also somehow knows that Lion isn't real, even though he also apparently doesn't know anything about Beatrice. but okay.

Now, I don't know what to make of this, but it does tell us one thing:

If Lion is a piece that wasn't used in previous games (similarly to how if you play a 3-player board game, one of you takes the red piece, one takes blue, one takes yellow, and green gets left behind this time)

But Bern is going to run a game now based on all the same rules as the previous one

It means it doesn't matter whether Lion is there or not.

In other words, the fact that Jessica was the heir in previous games must not be a key fact for why the game goes down the way it does, since, presumably, her not being the heir this time, won't change it.

Can the same be said for Eva's plans for George to become heir?

The Lion King
---

anyway, sounds like Bern has called Will in to officially solve things? i.e. he's going to be a better detective than Erika.

because he has love. and so he can see.

and he's going to work from the motive back towards to the who and the how...

Umineko may be a mystery, but you have to keep in mind that each episode had a several month gap between them, and it took a total of 2 years for it to finish. People had months to discuss and theorize. It was an on-going game between the author and the readers, where he would adjust the 'difficulty' of the next chapter depending on reader feedback.

internetuser387 posted...

Umineko may be a mystery, but you have to keep in mind that each episode had a several month gap between them, and it took a total of 2 years for it to finish. People had months to discuss and theorize. It was an on-going game between the author and the readers, where he would adjust the 'difficulty' of the next chapter depending on reader feedback.

Two years for 1-4, and another two for 4-8.

The release schedule was one episode per Comiket, which meant August and December.

Everything else you said is on point.

interesting.

that's a good point though - if i was playing umineko as it came out, i'd surely be on message boards where people would have posted these notes and would be theorizing things

of course, that's a different experience, and you could practically spoil yourself on most things by taking part in a fandom like that (i remember when westworld finished airing, people who posted on fan boards for it noted they were disappointed because they knew all the twists because people sleuth'd them out as the season progressed, for example)

so just because that was a way to experience it, doesn't mean experiencing it without mass discussion isn't just as valid

i had no idea though that the author actually admitted to adjusting the difficulty based on reader feedback. that's a little strange since this game seems so meticulously planned.

but i agree that based on that, the solution probably isn't super findable just by going over the facts - i.e. if it really were as simple as noticing "oh, only 5 of the bodies were confirmed dead by nanjo, but the 6th wasn't", that's the type of things fans would've found, like, immediately after episode 1 got published, so it can hardly be the solution to the whole thing, y'know

welcome to umineko episode 7, where we've thrown out our main cast and got a new protagonist and sidekick

that's fine with me, lion is everything i wanted jessica to be

there's so much new background art in episode 7, it's weird. even for places we've already seen.

i'm a little bit confused though

i assumed we were in the spirit world for that funeral and the family was just there the same way they're always magically in the big chapel for the ep5 trial and stuff

but apparently this is just the real world and there really is a funeral being held for beatrice...?

does this even count as a gameboard though...? we're just gonna interrogate people in this chapel...? no deaths?

Anyway, it's worth noting that in episode 3, red text did indeed confirm that Beatrice existed as a human once. Or something like that.

I'm sure that human Beatrice has very little to do with the witch though - it's just that Kinzo loved Beatrice, and so the "myth" of the witch Beatrice was a good form for... this, uh, "incarnation of the rules" that Beatrice is

i'm not sure if this will be a standard gameboard with twilight murders and stuff, but if it is, the fact that lion has replaced battler probably indicates that neither he nor she affect the math of there being 16 people?

the thing is, if beatrice was created to be the description of a girl that 13-year old battler said he would be attracted to

how is she both that, and also created to look exactly like kinzo's dead mistress...?

there have been a lot of links between battler and kinzo and i wonder if that somehow plays in to a twist regarding beato's identity and/or who battler really is...

https://snag.gy/BRnsLT.jpg

:O

geez, they're really drilling it in, by having shannon be nervous about kanon's whereabouts

i mean, it's just gotta be this.

thinking back, have they ever both been on screen together with other people...?

i remember when kanon told shannon "they've invited me to play cards with them" and shannon encouraged kanon to go, and i wondered why shannon herself hadn't been invited

that's pretty crazy though if i never noticed for 6 episodes that shannon and kanon were never in the same room as each other LOL (except for when they are alone with each other)

apparently shannon's nervousness about kanon's whereabouts was because she couldn't remember lion's name, not because she's covering for them being the same person

we'll see

geez

as soon as will tries to get kanon and shannon in the same room, shannon gets creepy AF

i guess that was meant to represent her sort of breaking down, like, on a coding level? because he was trying to use his "theatregoing authority" to make her do an illegal move?

but will described it as if she was giving him a warning that if hew ent through with it, his king would be in checkmate? so it wasn't a good move for him?

i don't really get that - it's more like he was about to stumble onto the truth without realizing it

anyway, i don't know if i would've figured out that shannon and kanon are the same person, lol, if you hadn't given me the hint to name 16 rather than try to find the 1 who is missing.

but the game would've spelled it out pretty darn explicitly here.

though i guess i'm still not sold. maybe it's a mislead of some sort.

i mean, what about game 1? shannon's body was there... right? and kanon still lived for a bit longer? and people... interacted with him...?

eh

they're the same person, so whatever.

i wish i could go back and check, i thought shannon was one of the names confirmed to be in the... hideyoshi room? which was "the next room over"?

and kanon was with the "everyone else" in the... cousin room?

hm

Dels posted...

so, based on this, kanon was apparently in the "next room over" because his real name is hideyoshi, george, kumasawa, shannon, or nanjo, and those 5 people were said to be in that room.

well, okay. sure.

and erika can't say that he escaped through the window because dlanor, in the stupidest explanation ever, just said "nah" to it

okay, found a post where i named it.

but then it was confirmed in red or something that "no one is called anything other than their name" or w/e

so????

i mean, sure, there's nuance, if it's the same person, what is their actual name, is this some technicality because their names are similar, or like, etc

or is this actually somehow a red herring. hm. you'd think if this was the answer, they wouldn't have just nearly explicitly made it clear to the player so early into chapter 7...

eh, nah. it's not a red herring.

it's the only way anything makes sense.

shannon/kanon (hereby refered to as sayoshiya)

died in the first twilight in ep 1 as shannon, then the body got moved around and it was pretended that kanon died in the boiler room and got dragged around to the infirmary, but really, it was just the same body that was dead all along

OR, shannon didn't really die in the first one, and that was somehow a fake, but then kanon really did die there, but they had to move the body over to cover up for the fact that... i mean, like, is it actually male? or female? lol. i don't even know.

then in episode 2

uh

this is the tricky one. i don't remember. do they both survive till near the end...? shannon went with george and gohda to find the charm, and died there, or something? when did kanon die? i don't even remember, tbh... oh wait. right. kanon died in jessica's room for second twilight, but no body was found. this was while shannon was with kinzo. so, yeah, easy answer.

episode 3... they both die at the start. but there are two seperate bodies in two locked rooms, aren't there? but i can't recall, maybe one of them was placed in the loop somewhere that this works.

episode 4... both in prison group together. well. wait. that's a time they appeared together in a scene with others. but those scenes were all sort of fake since they had magic and stuff. it's quite possible only one servant was there, and no one else's dialogue actually addresses both of them during non-magic scenes...

episode 5... i think neither died and neither did anything majorly relevant?

and then episode 6, well... yeah. they're all in the same situation all the time, plus the duel and stuff. as beatrice said "but i don't understand! if it was 3 people, and 2 were fighting for the love of 1... but it's 4 people!" well, yeah.

anyway, i'm "impressed" by this one, i give it a tentative seal of approval as i, uh, wait to see more details.

really great misdirection from the game though, to have me not realize that in both episodes 1 and 2, kanon's body undergoes something weird with how it dies, and then of course the same thing roughly happens in episode 6 as well.

throws a little bit of a wrench in my idea of shannon being the mastermind though

will and lion feel like a much more stereotypical anime duo but tbh i'm down for it, it's refreshing

the game is reminding me about how kinzo's treatment of his own "reincarnated" beatrice is the same as battler's treatment of his own reincarnated beatrice

again, i can't tell how much of this is just thematic links or if there's a time loop and battler is kinzo lol

https://snag.gy/B9S1Nt.jpg

i like how will is straight to the point just saying he gets that all the magic stuff is metaphors

after all, it is chapter 7. surely even handsomeboy will understand that by now...

https://snag.gy/6Ohfl1.jpg

lol @ this btw, if true

this chapter started off fairly exciting with the funeral and the introduction of will and lion, but i hope this isn't just a vehicle for exposition... that'd be a sort of sad way for such an intricately woven tale to end.

you'd think umineko could find a way to wrap its truths up in climactic sequences where people truly have things at stake... not with some new character with no relation to the story just learning it via monologues...

anyway, kinzo monologues about beatrice, or rather, just sort of admits the truth

i'm not a fan of exposition monologues like i said, but this is fine. i mean, we honestly already knew this stuff. it's just will making the most basic assumptions you could make about the stuff from episode 3.

let's see if we get anything new.

kumasawa: "kinzo forced an innocent girl to be locked up in a hidden mansion where she had no contact with anyone but him and he treated her like his dead mistress. it was all very sweet and beautiful. ^_^"

anyway, kinzo takes us back in time for some more exposition

i sure hope this episode is more than just that though

not to mention young kinzo just looks weird and creepy

"Living means having your own will. ...You probably were dead during that time." Will says to Kinzo, about the days he spent being a puppet

we talked about the theme of only being alive when you have passion/purpose/drive/spirit etc, in line with how characters in the meta world "die" when they've stopped thinking

it's so weird to see this game suddenly start to dive into real world history