Umineko Thoughts: Episode 3, Chapters 1-8

(but also more generally, i’ve spent some time thinking back over what’s been seen so far)

• So after some deliberation and discussion with my girlfriend, our leading theory, at least for episode 1, is that Eva and Hideyoshi were the culprits. I’ve mentioned here before how I think at least Eva’s body might be fake, or at least suspicious, since it still had shoes on despite that being contextually unlikely, and it seems like their bodies were never properly investigated (unlike most others in ep 1)
  • Eva and Hideyoshi’s alibi for leaving the dining room is weak at best, and if we accept that either a) their bodies were fake and the real Eva/Hideyoshi are hiding in the room where they were ‘killed’ or b) they took some drug or something to appear dead, then they could just leave the room from their window and run through the courtyard to the boiler room to confront Kanon. (They would be able to hear that people were heading to the boiler room through the door)
  • After that, all of the other closed rooms fall to ‘one of them made it to the servant room and took a spare room key’.
  • Anyone other than Eva being involved poses the annoying question of ‘how was Eva able to be overwhelmed, given her obvious martial arts skill’. Having Eva on the other side both resolves that question and makes it easier to imagine the simultaneous murder of six people.
  • The reason I include Hideyoshi in this is the conversation just before the two of them are ‘murdered’ - it seems like it is a very strange thing to say when six murders have just occurred, and the whole ‘having no regrets about life’ discussion feels like it could be interpreted to support this theory
  • I can think of a few motives, but it’s possible that the years of malice have twisted Eva’s goal of becoming the head into this. It’s also possible that this was a backup plan after her plan to extort Krauss failed. I think she wanted to avoid killing children, but she (as well as most of the adult Ushiromiyas) sees the servants as less than human.
  • I’m unsure how to fit this into the wider structure of the episodes, since in ep 2 I am relatively convinced that there must be a 19th person. I’m still processing the confirmation of the whole ‘multiple collapses of the waveform’ theory presented in chapter seven, but if it’s wide ranging enough to change events that must have been set in stone before Oct 4th (like the number of master keys held by the servants) then it’s possible that the actual identity of the culprit could change.
• More generally - I’m really interested in the context given to the gameboards by the fabled Multi-layered Worlds Reduction Technique. (that name is incredible. please never change, Ronove). The idea that we’re some onlooker looking at a gameboard that’s refined by redtext and the narration is very interesting, and Virgilia’s seeming assertion that we should take Battler’s [or our own?] theories as on equal level with the witch’s narration is … fun.
  • Some day Ronove is going to explain transfinite induction as the ‘Infinite-to-finite Case Splitting Technique’ or something and I will lose my mind.
• Unsure what to make of the look into Beatrice’s past, and Rosa’s supposed killing of her. I feel like she should have brought this up before! There are a few different ways Beato’s discussion can be… rationalized, but all of them seem to end in Kinzo doing something deeply fucked one way or another. Oh dear.
  • I think this is something I need to think more about, since if this is true in all timelines (or if I can just choose it to be so) then suddenly the existence of a 19th human person doesn’t become unreasonable… especially given that the red text There are no more than 18 humans on this Rokkenjima was careful to state the word this which I choose to believe is referring to this episode’s Rokkenjima.

• Now that I think about it do we have any knowledge that the events of an episode correspond to a single ‘game-board’? This would be a cruel trick (but not the first time it’s been pulled on me), and would make Beato’s interpretation of what’s going on also wrong, but I think it’s clear that Beato does not have full control over what’s happening, so I’m unsure.

• That fight was so cool.