Umineko Thoughts: Episode 2, Complete

Episode 2 complete! Some of the… for want of a better word, cinematography of that episode was excellent, particularly the final scene with Rosa and Maria, cutting to the logo and then the text. I hope this will continue!

• I adore the red text as a narrative device, assuming it can be trusted (and given how the story has presented it, I think it must be trusted for any of this to work.) It feels like a great way to show Beatrice’s overconfidence, giving away extra definite information and opening her up to Battler’s requests to repeat things.
  • I’ve been told by several different people to take notes of all the red text I read, and I’ve been doing that. I think the precise wording of them will probably be important - already there’s Battler’s ploy of the hiding place not constituting a secret door, and seeing what gets left out from each is interesting.
  • One redText of particular note is That leaves only the five master keys, and ‘Rosa’ was holding all of them. Why put Rosa in inverted commas here? It certainly looks like Rosa, and we’ve already established some form of shapeshifting/disguise (although I’m reluctant to accept this, see below)
  • None of the red texts have any punctuation. This makes formatting my notes annoying. :(
• So in this episode, there were a significant number of events that, if they occurred exactly as was physically shown, would be almost impossible to explain without accepting magic. Kanon and these goat men have hand-light-blades now? Shannon has always been able to just do a shield thing and just never told anyone???? I can’t accept that these are really happening in the real world.
  • Given how the characters shown to exhibit magic have their magic described on the ‘witch side’ of the final character screen, I think these scenes must be taking place in the meta world (where I’m happy to accept the existence of magic).
  • This would explain the time difference between the on-screen deaths and the deaths in the character menu, and make me significantly more comfortable with the events of the magic scenes.
  • Failing that there’s always good old ‘Beatrice is just lying to our faces’.

• I’m once again not sure what to make of the tea party / ???? scenes. This time around the tea party felt much more like a continuation of the events of the final chapter…? My girlfriend suggested that the ‘food’ Rosa was being served during that scene was not, in fact, various parts of her family members and Beatrice is just fucking with people for her own delight? Perhaps the food is part of Beelzebub?

• I’d like to find out more about the rules of this meta world. Can Beatrice just create meta versions of people at will? Is there even any sense of ‘real’ timeline any more, with Beato just creating worlds as she wishes under her rules? What does it mean to reject the witch’s magic when she literally sets the terms of engagement?

• Is there perhaps some relationship between Lambdadelta and Maria? They look relatively similar and Lambdadelta has that pumpkin on her(?) clothing…
  • I don’t know what that could possibly mean though.
• Beatrice still hasn’t ruled out the existence of automatic devices carrying out the murders. This is the 1980s so they couldn’t be that sophisticated (from a computer standpoint) but perhaps that could explain some things…
  • Or maybe I’m just tempting fate and that will be redtext’d out at the start of episode three.
• Episode three awaits…