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pochapal · 11 months

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Umineko Liveblog: Thoughts/Theories [Episode 1 Chapter 12 Edition]

Chapter 12 of Umineko was titled “Occult”. And fittingly, it was a chapter about the occult and the myriad forms the occult takes in the story. Mostly.

A lot of people talk about Beatrice and what it means for Beatrice to exist or “exist”. We also get discussions on identity, split selfhood, and the value of external validation. A lot of talk about people being multiple people, about multiple people being a single person, and people who are only people when their personhood is acknowledged. And then beyond the Identity Zone, we also get more elaboration on the mystery of the disappearing Kinzo, and the finger pointed at a potential culprit who couldn’t be more innocent if they tried. Oh, and also explicit confirmation of who’s gonna be next to die if it wasn’t super apparent already.

Let’s see how much can be gleaned from this chapter, and also see how much this chapter supports/denies my developing theories.

To start, the absolute major theme that is front and centre in 1-12 is that of what I’ve been calling the dichotomy of self: the notion that most characters have two contradictory facets of their identity that are constantly in tension. I’ve previously elaborated on this with the two more prominent examples of this in the story: Shannon in her passive, placid servant role versus the desperate and resentful human Sayo beneath the furniture mask, and Natsuhi the person versus Ushiromiya Natsuhi the ideal. Another dichotomy I’ve brought up here and there, but which may be more relevant to this chapter’s discussion, is what is going on with George.

George’s whole deal is that he straddles the line between adult and child and is incapable of finding peace in either identity. He struggles to mesh with the other cousins when trying to be a child: he is quick to chastise Battler and Jessica’s immaturity, and slow to join in on their collective fun. As an adult, he fails to find his feet at all: Eva makes a cursory effort to include George as an adult in the siblings’ conversation, but the other adults block George from that world before he can even try it out. George has dismissed his child self, but is not yet able to step into his adult self. Leaving aside the question of which identity would be more beneficial to George in the long run, what is important to note is that this is the shape of the personal dilemma guiding George’s behaviour in the story.

When the subject of Maria’s witch persona comes up, George is quick to explain to Battler and Jessica that this is a natural element of a child’s psychology – in order to reconcile the tension between stepping out of the child role and into the adult role, children quite often adopt a dual personality. He explains it as something more intense than the “work self/home self” split, indicating that these alternate personalities rely on specialist knowledge in order to assert a form of independence. In George’s words, Maria is exploring the possibility of being someone other than Maria the child by instead being Maria the witch. It is a sensible, reasonable, measured explanation.

However, this explanation fails to adequately capture what’s going on with Maria. The notion of someone taking on an insufferable identity in order to appear more dignified and adult is not Maria’s ballpark. That’s George, who simpers and scrapes to the Ushiromiya hierarchy in order to fit in with the adults, who takes a perverse joy in exploiting Battler’s immaturity in order to appear more grown up in comparison, who pushes Shannon into a marriage because that’s the adult way of doing thing. To George, who is aware of this disconnect between his two selves, it’s the easiest thing in the world to project it onto another child instead of engaging in introspection. George The Adult declares that this is a normal thing all children do, therefore there is nothing wrong with George being a pathetic individual caught between two worlds in a way none of the other cousins are (Jessica is likely under a much greater burden as the direct successor to the Ushiromiya line, and yet she does not have a weird identity complex like this). Children are silly cringe things who need to step into their adult selves faster, of course. This is the battle going on inside Maria’s mind.

It is clearly not. This is all George, all pushed out. George hates the child part of himself, so he decries it as fake and temporary, something to be killed for the true self to come out. This is in spite of the fact that George is far more reasonable and personable when he approaches life through the lens of George The Kid. He sees better results interacting with Maria when he meets her on her level. His relationship with Shannon is marginally less cringe when he isn’t trying to be the alpha male (though it needs saying that that margin remains razor thin). The only thing that embracing George’s inner child does wrong for him is that it cuts him off from being an Ushiromiya adult. George, raised and warped by Ushiromiya ideals, strives so much for that role that he is willing to kill whatever decent parts of him exist for a chance of recognition in the eyes of the other adults. His dilemma is on a similar axis to Natsuhi’s, coming at it instead from the angle of a child raised by poisoned ideology rather than an abused housewife desperate for a shred of autonomy (as an aside: interesting that both of their crises of self are expressed through inappropriate and terrible interactions with Shannon).

And so by saddling himself to the Ushiromiya ideal, George commits the Ushiromiya sin when discussing Maria: he overlooks the abuse. Maria’s dual self has much less in common with George’s inferiority complex, and much more in common with Shannon’s pseudo-dissociative defense mechanism. Maria leans hard into magic and witches precisely because it is a far better alternative to her physical reality. She believes so staunchly in Beatrice not to escape from being labelled as a child, but to experience a world that is not bleak and cruel. It is better to believe in Beatrice the ancient and unfathomably powerful witch who can perform any wondrous feat with her magic than it is to acknowledge that Rosa is cruel to her and that this is a situation that will never change. Maria is not ashamed of the child she is in order to appear adult. Maria is rejecting the world of humans because even the Golden Witch Beatrice is less cruel than her day to day torments. To return to everyone’s favourite framework, George’s self-split is Detective in nature, and Maria’s is Romantic. When existence is too horrible, it’s far easier to buy into “existence”.

“Existence”, of course, is also tied into the nature of selfhood in Umineko. Beatrice is a being that “exists” on Rokkenjima. She is something that inhabits nonphysical space, that can only be validated by belief in the narrative frameworks that exclusively contain her. If somebody denies Beatrice, then Beatrice cannot be. This applies to all Beatrices equally – the witch of the forest is a formidable entity, unless you don’t believe. Then she’s just a ghost story for children. The Golden Witch who spun Kinzo’s fortune, without belief, is a shoddy cover for whatever dodgy dealings landed him the gold. The person claiming to be Beatrice the 19th person on Rokkenjima, without belief, is little more than a desperate narrative smokescreen for the true culprit. Beatrice is, and yet she is not. She is multifaceted, but every facet is a conditional “existence”. Beatrice needs other people to function. In this way, the comment that Beatrice would be “saddened” by Battler’s lack of belief is apt. Even one denier of the witch kills the whole narrative dead.

This principle is also seen in a more direct way which is easier to grasp than the slippery nature of Beatrice. Natsuhi’s position as Ushiromiya Natsuhi is similarly enveloped in this hazy “existence”. Since chapter 10, she has been bolstered by a sense of pride bestowed upon her by Kinzo – for the first time in either of their lives, he has acknowledged her as a valid and valued member of the Ushiromiya family. This allows Ushiromiya Natsuhi to well and truly “exist”, and gives Natsuhi the inner strength to face Eva and her hostile torment.

The issue with this, of course, is that Natsuhi’s acknowledgement was only witnessed by herself and Kinzo. Ushiromiya Natsuhi can only “exist” so long as outside parties continue to believe that Kinzo did in fact acknowledge her. Which is why Natsuhi grows so immediately hostile and defensive when Eva begins her full-force “Kinzo is already dead” accusation. Part of this is because Natsuhi is naturally offended and insulted that anyone would insinuate she would do something as outlandish as cover up Kinzo’s death for months in order to allow herself and Krauss to siphon off the Ushiromiya wealth without distributing it among the siblings.

Part of this is because Eva and Natsuhi are engaging in an argument where both sides lack solid proof. Eva cannot prove Kinzo is already dead. Natsuhi cannot prove Kinzo acknowledged her in the study. If either is proven wrong, they will lose face in a way neither can recover from. Eva will forever be labelled as a conspiratorial paranoid, and Natsuhi will forever be labelled as delusional. The tension between Eva and Natsuhi comes where the only way either can walk away with their selfhood intact is to tear down the other in the process. They cannot both back down, because their self-ascribed value is tied to these narratives they are surrounded by. They cannot concede in any way, because if the other still stands, everything they are crumbles.

In essence, Eva and Natsuhi are on a mutual knife’s-edge with full access to the most vulnerable parts of each other. Their only option is to try to annihilate each other if either Ushiromiya Eva or Ushiromiya Natsuhi is to make to the end of the conference. The irony of this is, of course, that Eva and Natsuhi are fully capable of both making it through unscathed if they were to cooperate and believe in each other even a little bit instead of relying on a Kinzo-esque high risk gamble to prove their place in the Ushiromiya hierarchy.

Unfortunately, unlike Kinzo or “Beatrice”, the “magic” of the narrative-selves Eva and Natsuhi are attempting is nowhere near as powerful as something like the witch narrative or the demon’s roulette. Their gambits will fail because they have put up their own selves as collateral in a roulette spin which can only filter generational abuse into personal vendettas. Eva and Natsuhi tearing shreds out of each other will never break the cycles that forced them into such a dynamic in the first place. Even if one gets their miracle of being proven right, it will only perpetuate the circumstances that keep them miserable enough to act like this at all.

It also, to at least some people’s dismay, provides the witch narrative with immense strength. One major tenet of the occult story floating around is that “Beatrice” needs to be undetected and ambiguous. Whoever it is that is killing and drawing the circles cannot ever be fully discovered and exposed. There needs to be an element of redirection, of false performers to take on the expected roles in the stageplay of “magic”.

Eva and Natsuhi serve perfectly as Beatrice’s decoys to be deployed within varying layers of this nested narrative. Natsuhi, whose desperate insistence is caught out by Eva’s unassailable logic, is transformed into an increasingly obvious suspect behind the murders. She is so obvious, in fact, that she teeters on the edge of being a blatantly signposted red herring whose purpose is to pull back the curtains and reveal Eva’s crimes sitting one level deeper.

This construction of Natsuhi as a red herring figure within the witch narrative is, I believe, wholly intentional on the storyteller’s part. I’ve already explored how at least one likely angle of the witch narrative is to create a seemingly solvable murder mystery, complete with the expected setups and tropes. If Beatrice wanted to kill the family in an obscure and difficult to solve way, there are a million other avenues than replicating the steps in the epitaph with the most metaphorically resonant individuals for each twilight. The murders themselves are set up in a predictable pattern where from the first domino falling you can roughly figure out who will die and when, a forewarned chain of tragedy that even somebody on Rokkenjima could grasp an understanding of.

Given all that, this mystery narrative must also be solvable by the designated detective. For reasons I’ve stated before, I still think Battler is the best fit for the role. This means that under this framework, Battler must therefore be drawn to suspect both Eva and Natsuhi, and to come to the conclusion that Natsuhi is the most immediately suspicious person from the outset.

Coincidentally, this is exactly what we see Battler grapple with during this chapter. Every single thing that involves Natsuhi paints her as suspicious in the eyes of both him and the narrative. Natsuhi is the one to take immediate control of the situation. She confines everyone to the parlor away from the crime scene. She liaises with the equally suspicious servants. She witnesses occult omens that she can’t verify. She is the last person to see Kinzo, and her testimony is easily questionable. She is also the one with access to and control of a gun which serves as the most likely murder weapon for the first twilight.

In short, chapter 12 has a screaming neon sign visible from space that reads THEREFORE, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE... USHIROMIYA NATSUHI IS INCREDIBLY SUSPICIOUS! So much so that nothing Natsuhi says or does dissuades anyone from going against this notion, buoyed further by the witch narrative peddlers reinforcing it again and again and again, leaving her no defense other than the nuclear option which will forever kill the conjured self she desires to “exist” as. She is trapped, forced into a role she doesn’t even necessarily understand that she is playing. It is almost too much, a cruel teardown of her on every level.

It’s overkill. You can’t go five words without tripping over something which makes you question Natsuhi, something which comes in spite of the fact that there was nothing overly suspicious about her until after the witch narrative was set in motion. It’s a role reversal where Natsuhi was the least involved and least powerful Ushiromiya adult in the conference dynamics and is now pinned under the spotlight like a tortured insect. Which, therefore, tips the scales over into leading you to think “hey, isn’t this way too obvious?”. You look at this situation, and you can’t help but see it as the set-up that it is. You therefore cease to see Natsuhi as a suspect worth taking seriously at all.

Battler’s reasoning doesn’t follow this route, but he ends up at the same destination: he does not suspect Natsuhi. He’s not conforming to the minute details of the witch narrative’s Detective role, but he is still hitting the broad enough brush strokes that indicate that even though the one behind this narrative doesn’t quite grasp who Battler is as a person, their logic and narrative construction is airtight enough that it still gets to where it needs to go. The demon’s roulette spun clockwise instead of counterclockwise, but if it still lands in the same hole, does the process matter more than the outcome?

The next part of this measured line of doubting is, naturally, to question why Natsuhi seems this suspect, exactly. You are expected to consider where the suspicion is coming from, who is saying it, and why. The answer is that the only person squarely casting doubt on Natsuhi is Eva. In a regular mystery, this double-layer would reveal the true answer, but “Eva is the culprit” is likely nowhere near the true answer. What this does act as is a pivot point to dig into the myriad layers of obfuscation that rule whatever the real mystery is.

Battler isn’t here yet. He played devil’s advocate against Eva, and he has all the pieces to think this way, but it’s up in the air as to whether or not he’ll get there before Eva dies. If he does not figure anything out before Eva dies, then it is likely that this angle of the truth will be lost to him. If we’re playing by the classic murder mystery rules, then suspecting the dead is almost entirely a faux pas, compounded by the fact that this is a relative of Battler’s.

But if he does scratch deep enough to see Eva as suspicious, this may well serve as his entrypoint into the question mark shaped void of the first twilight. All information we have about what went down is thirdhand and untrustworthy at best. At worst, figuring out the first twilight is based entirely on speculation and conjecture. Eva is the only worthwhile link to pursue as to the events of that night, and getting through to her would reward you with the first glimpse behind the witch’s curtain.

In other words, through Eva you can reach the Detective’s truth. Through Eva you could, eventually, start to unmask the witch. Therefore, Eva must die if the witch’s narrative illusion is to remain intact, if the Romantic’s truth is to stand a hope in hell of making it through. I’ll talk more on Eva being doomed later. First, let’s visit the flipside narrative being conjured on Rokkenjima.

Alongside the triple bluff murder mystery being set up, there is also the ever-present, ever-enigmatic witch narrative. Thus far, the witch narrative has been deliberately impenetrable, hinging on elements that we simply cannot understand, on evidence that may or may not exist. It is the Romantic’s weapon being deployed in a story built for Detectives. The bulk of the witch narrative, so long as you remain opposed to magic, is completely unable to be seen. If you’re not engaging with the magic and metaphor, there’s almost no chance of understanding a thing.

Which is why it’s interesting that parts of this chapter almost give us a glimpse into how the sausage is made, proverbially speaking. There is a lengthy scene where the servants converse in the kitchen, where Kanon laments Shannon’s death and he and Genji attribute all the tragedy to Beatrice.

This immediately comes across as odd given that, as the people most likely to be involved in the first twilight and specifically the infusion of the occult elements of the first twilight, Kanon and Genji should surely already have a good idea as to how and why Shannon ended up dead. Beatrice did not kill Shannon. Shannon was killed most likely by one of the Ushiromiya siblings after being in the wrong place at the wrong time following George’s proposal. The exact person that ended Shannon’s life may even be explicitly known to both Genji and Kanon.

So why go out of their way to talk extensively about Beatrice’s cruel roulette selections, and talk about how all the occult symbols are irrefutable evidence of her presence? Why does Genji tell Kanon of the bloodstain outside Natsuhi’s room in the same way that Hideyoshi and Eva spoke of the magic circle to the rest of the family?

I think the answer of this is to consider that what is going on in this scene is not Genji reporting to Kanon what he witnessed, but instead the two storytellers of the witch narrative workshopping their latest script developments. If you consider that Genji put the graffiti there to scare Natsuhi first and foremost, and is now retroactively fitting it into the witch narrative with Kanon, a lot of this scene feels more congruent. Genji has, so far, most likely been the brawn of the operation, doing things Kanon lacks the physical strength to do so himself. This does not necessarily mean he is also the one coming up with the witch narrative in advance.

In this way, Genji’s directive is to set up graffiti and act in ways that scare people and convince them of the witch’s presence, and Kanon’s role is to tie it up into a cohesive narrative that can be packaged and sold in a much harder to refute way. Natsuhi saw scary blood and Genji called it disconcerting. Together, Kanon and Genji construct the notion that this is a sign of Beatrice in motion.

As an aside, it is worth considering how proficient a storyteller Genji is, and the timings of when he and Kanon did what they did the night before. The conclusion they come to is that Beatrice tried to claim Natsuhi as the sixth sacrifice but was stopped by some unknown force, so instead decided to take Shannon’s life in her place. The Detective’s explanation for this is that because Natsuhi went to bed early and locked her bedroom door, this removed her from whatever conflict resulted in murder taking place. The Romantic’s explanation is that the charm Jessica gave Natsuhi conferred immunity from the demon’s roulette onto her, no matter how much Beatrice tried to take her as a sacrifice.

Knowing that the killer must adhere to the witch narrative at all times, a more likely version of events is that the killer knew killing Natsuhi despite her being in possession of the scorpion charm would contradict the narrative rules of Beatrice and thus had no choice to leave her alive. The problem with that, of course, is that such an assumption runs totally counter to the logic I’m using to understand what happened on the first twilight. If Kanon and Genji were there on cleanup, why would Natsuhi be hunted separately to however the adults in the parlor died? Or is it simply a lucky coincidence that things lined up in such a way that there was a neat supernatural explanation for her survival already in place? Hard to say.

What’s more relevant is that Kanon and Genji, and Kumasawa to a similar extent, spend their time in this chapter retroactively fitting Beatrice into the recent tragedy. The Golden Witch claimed Shannon’s life. The Golden Witch failed to kill Natsuhi. The whims of Beatrice’s roulette are as cruel as they are absolute. These are all truths only so long as you’re engaging with everything on the appropriate level of metaphor. As always, the value of a story relies wholly on its ability to suspend disbelief.

The first and most crucial part of the witch narrative succeeding is having everybody on the same page. The servants spend time alone in the kitchen, which is an ample opportunity to revise and discuss the script to ensure that everyone continues to say the same thing without a shred of contradiction. As the scene with Battler proves, it becomes exponentially harder to outright say Beatrice doesn’t exist when every other person in the room fervently believes, or gives the impression of belief.

This is bolstered by the natures of the people most effortlessly perpetuating the witch narrative: the servants and Maria. The (seemingly) most humble, most powerless people in the hierarchy. There is a tendency to believe people like this without question if you have even a shred of empathy for their position in Rokkenjima’s abusive power dynamics. In theory these are the people with the least motivation to pull a stunt like this in the eyes of an altruistic but oblivious rich person who hasn’t thought too deeply about power structures, such as Battler. He doesn’t want to be mean to the servants and Maria, so he struggles to immediately shoot the witch narrative down until Maria goes overboard with her thousand-year-old witch spiel.

Functionally, this is the same mechanism that propels the witch narrative through the murders. The core tenet remains the same: doubting Beatrice is to doubt those you care about, is to paint everyone around you with suspicion. If Beatrice doesn’t exist, then your family is a den of murderous snakes and the servants are all manipulative serial liars. If Beatrice does exist, then you inhabit a kinder world beset by an uncontrollable tragedy.

Two questions still remain from this setup: what is the narrator’s goal with exposing Battler to the occult side of the narrative? The murder mystery side is designed to eventually guide Battler to a plausible truth, most likely, but the occult elements? This half of the story is infinitely more impenetrable, so rife with obfuscation and so devoid of contradiction. Battler can laugh and call the witch narrative stupid, but he can’t outright refute it. So the question remains: is the purpose to get Battler to believe in the witch, or for Battler to unmask the witch. Is the occult angle a mystery or not? Detective or Romantic?

Question two is, of course, the other half to this equation: who is behind the witch narrative? Whose script are the servants all reading off of? Before now, my thinking has landed on Kanon being the originator if only out of convenience. He is at the centre of the schemes. He is the one dropping hints about Beatrice in specific ways. Even Battler clues in on the fact that Kanon knows more than he’s saying. It all fits, no issues.

Except for one thing. Nothing Kanon says is wholly original. Every piece of the narrative that he feeds to Battler in the kitchen was said before, by someone else: Shannon.

Kanon tells Battler the story of Beatrice the vicious witch who caused harm to a servant who disrespected her. This is the exact story that Shannon first said on the beach. Shannon is the one who talks in detail of the servant who was thrown by the stairs by Beatrice. Kanon is merely recapitulating this story under a more frightening context. But it was Shannon that introduced this idea to the story in the first place.

Shannon’s stories are not only regurgitated by just Kanon, either. Maria is the one who tells Battler that Beatrice is a fierce witch with immense power who nonetheless respects those who believe. To Maria, Beatrice is far less frightening than the version of the witch that Kanon and the others portray – Maria even talks about how she and Beatrice will “play together” once she revives. This is a completely different take on the Golden Witch, a repackaged version of the witch that a child will be far happier to believe in than a violent threat.

And of course, who else is it that talks about how Beatrice is kind to those who respect her? Shannon. Every part of the witch narrative spoken in the kitchen is a repeat of something Shannon already said earlier. It’s a very disconcerting pattern that majorly brings Shannon under suspicion. Battler rationalises it as Shannon believing in the myth same as the other servants, but if you consider that the whole thing is a conscious performance, there is something very alarming indeed about the fact that Shannon was shown to know the most about the witch.

If you go even further, nothing Kanon says about Beatrice is his own original idea. It’s all stuff Shannon brought up first, or elaborating on things Shannon said Kanon witnessed. The butterflies were brought up by Shannon. The injured servant was brought up by Shannon. The fierce but admirable witch was brought up by Shannon. Every part of the witch narrative started with Shannon.

What this means is very murky. If Shannon is some kind of mastermind orchestrator of the witch narrative, her actions leading up to her death cease to make sense. If Shannon knew everything, which being this clued in on the witch narrative would argue, she would naturally have been far more aware of the risks of going to the mansion on that night. She would also have most likely known about Kanon’s plan, which makes it all the worse that she still died like she did.

Unless of course it is as it seems. Shannon was merely an earnest believer in the witch, and Kanon is the one to manipulate it to his advantage. A kind of mirrored recontextualisation of the same narrative material. This is not without precedent: Shannon and Kanon have structurally identical introduction scenes, with the only difference being that Kanon has Battler to help save him from his torment. Kanon is saved from the start. Shannon is not. Kanon is the active presence. Shannon the passive one. Is this all Kanon taking Shannon’s witch stories and spinning it into a desperate and violent attempt to escape the unending horrors of Rokkenjima? Is Shannon sus?

I don’t know. There’s definitely something percolating here with the way that Shannon keeps being revealed to be linked to core narrative themes (she’s trapped the worst by the Ushiromiya abuse cycles, her dichotomy of self is so strong that she’s essentially two people, she’s an ambiguous believer in Beatrice and magic – you can put Shannon within every important theme) that I’m not quite grasping. If you follow this through, this should make Shannon an incredibly important character to keep an eye out for. Except that she’s dead. Her role in the story is reduced to posthumous revelations and her lingering ghost. And yet.

On the topic of perplexing, slippery individuals, let’s go back to the prominent mystery du jour: Kinzo’s disappearance. In chapter 11, we were given the conundrum of Kinzo vanishing without a trace in a way that doesn’t make sense according to Natsuhi’s testimony, and makes less sense when you consider the existence of the gun in his collection.

Chapter 12 complicates and reduces the options through the introduction of a new element: Eva’s receipt wedged in the door. This was placed after Natsuhi left the study and was preserved right up until the moment she and Eva returned after the murders to check in on Kinzo. The conclusion drawn from this receipt is that it categorically proves that the study’s door was not opened once between Natsuhi leaving and she and Eva returning. Kinzo therefore could not have departed from the study during that time window. And yet he is still gone.

This issue underpins a lot of the fight between Eva and Natsuhi in this chapter, namely because to Eva, her receipt trick proves Natsuhi as a liar. How could she have met Kinzo in the study that morning if he was unable to leave after that? Eva’s conclusion that she shares with everyone is that Natsuhi fabricated the meeting with Kinzo that morning to cover up that he has been missing for longer than she says.

Which… is partially true. This makes the most logical sense: if the receipt created a sealed room environment, and Kinzo nonetheless disappeared, that means he had to have vanished before Eva put the receipt there. However, when Eva is accusing Natsuhi of lying about Kinzo’s disappearance, she isn’t really talking about him vanishing during the murders.

Eva’s insinuation through this receipt trick is that this sealed room proves, more than anything else, her theory that Kinzo has already been dead for some time and Krauss and Natsuhi have been embezzling his wealth rather than distributing it. The receipt doesn’t move because Kinzo was never in the room to start with. All of Natsuhi’s interactions with the man have just been theatre to reinforce the farce.

Even now, with her iron “proof”, Eva still doesn’t say it though. Like I discussed earlier, there is still room to doubt. Without a body, she can’t say Kinzo is dead, just as Natsuhi can’t say Kinzo is alive without having him physically there. The receipt is enough to convince Eva, but not enough to necessarily convince anyone else.

But how likely is it that Eva’s right on this account? I’ve discussed before how Kinzo being dead all along would make the entire premise of the story make no sense. Without Kinzo’s continued abuse, Kanon would not need to resort to such desperate measures, unless there’s a case to be made that Krauss has picked up where Kinzo left off vis a vis the treatment of the servants, but even so, it’s unlikely that Beatrice has the level of meaning to Krauss as she does Kinzo, so the witch narrative would become unnecessary.

If Kinzo is already dead, every single person we’ve seen interacting with him would have to be complicit in the coverup. This would include Krauss, Natsuhi, all the servants, and Nanjo. Krauss and Natsuhi covering it up makes sense in line with Eva’s theory, and the servants could be made to comply under threat but Nanjo? What leverage could they have over Nanjo beyond a bribe? This would make sense if Nanjo was a mercenary sham doctor, but it’s been shown that Nanjo is aware of some murky sin in Kinzo’s past that keeps him bound to the man out of guilt. So his motivation in partaking in such a conspiracy remains vague and hard to understand.

Conversely, if Kinzo is still alive, we have to find a way to explain away Eva’s receipt trap. Unfortunately, I don’t believe Battler’s theory that Kinzo was merely hiding somewhere in the study since that’s too easy and meaningless an answer. So then you have to consider that the only option is that Kinzo was not in the study when Eva inserted the receipt. This still means that at the bare minimum, Natsuhi’s interaction with him was a total fabrication. There’s no getting around that one, unless you assume Eva lied about the receipt which makes no sense given that trying to prove Kinzo’s been dead all along has been her entire thing.

So that means we have to push Kinzo’s last appearance back to dinner again. At this point, though, we then need to ask why Natsuhi would cover up his disappearance the following morning. Surely the logical thing to do would be for Natsuhi to let everyone know Kinzo had vanished the first time she entered the study. After all, it is highly unlikely Natsuhi was involved with the first twilight. So why concoct the story of Kinzo talking to her instead of saying the truth?

By lying about seeing Kinzo, this indicates Natsuhi had reason to lie in the first place. Given her actions in the story, her reason has little to do with whatever happened during the first twilight. So either she came up with the cover story on the spot when she left the study, or she had this pre-prepared. If Natsuhi came up with this on the spot, deciding at that moment not to tell anyone Kinzo had vanished, then that’s a really weird thing to do for no reason, especially for someone with the kind of pride that Natsuhi has. She would only lie about something like this out of necessity. So what necessity could force her to create this mess for herself?

In the previous chapter, in the parlor, she and the servants mentioned that it should be “impossible” for Kinzo to leave the study. This is her excuse to herself as to why she’s so rattled by his disappearance. Let’s revisit that. Why would Natsuhi be so totally convinced it’s an impossibility for Kinzo to leave the study? She says herself that he sometimes goes off wandering around, after all. How can he both be known to wander on a whim and have it be impossible for him to leave the study? How can this contradiction be reconciled?

It’s impossible to leave the study, and yet he is gone. Eva’s receipt proves that Kinzo is not there, and he left at the very least several hours ago. Natsuhi lied about him being there when he wasn’t. These are the facts of the situation that we have no reason to doubt. There is a mysterious stench in the air of the study, something rotten and evocative of decay.

Unfortunately, I really do think I have to hand it to Eva on this one. Going off Natsuhi’s contradictory actions, her desperation and panic when cornered, and Eva’s receipt, the only reasonable conclusion is that Kinzo has been gone for a while, and Natsuhi has a vested interest in not letting anyone else figure it out.

And even still I am hesitant to say he’s been dead all along. In many ways, Kinzo’s presence is crucial for nearly everything in the story. To write him off as dead leaves gaping holes in our understanding of what’s happened in Umineko. But given that this is the most compelling theory that makes sense with what’s available to us, let’s try and see if there’s a way to recontextualise Umineko with Kinzo being dead all along.

The first major stumbling point are the scenes in the study throughout episode 1. Kinzo physically being there is not necessarily a problem – you can use the Detective/Romantic lens of scene presentation to disregard him and focus instead on the results instead of the process. In most cases the scenes consist of someone hanging around his study and then returning empty handed. The only crucial Kinzo scenes where him being dead complicates things are the prologue and the scene where he starts the demon’s roulette and casts aside his ring..

I’m not worried about the prologue. We don’t know when it occurs relative to the story, so claiming that it took place at a time where Kinzo was still alive is not beyond reason. He can be alive and discussing his will and since it has no bearing on the events of the plot I don’t think it’s worth being overly concerned about.

With the ring scene, you have to return to focusing on the end result of the chapter beyond Kinzo: the Ushiromiya head’s ring has been taken. We know that whoever wrote the letter and appeared to Maria in the garden likely ended up in possession of it, and that that person is most likely Kanon. If you subtract Kinzo from the equation, the scene can be read as a whole lot of theatre to disguise the more simple truth that Kanon likely just walked into the study and took the ring without fanfare. Nobody ever found the ring outside, so it’s not like we need the ring being thrown out of the window to be true.

Beyond that, even if the timing/placement of the servants is too far off for it to make sense for someone to take the ring when the story indicates it vanished, Kinzo being dead from the start opens up the possibility that the ring could have been acquired before the day of the conference. After all, the contents of the letter itself were most likely prepared in advance, so why not the rest? Kinzo being dead would also explain how the suspicious servants are able to move about and scheme the way they do. If they technically have no “master” to serve other than Krauss and Natsuhi, they are most likely more free to do as they please. After all, if Krauss and/or Natsuhi object too much, then any servant could blow the whistle on Kinzo being dead and make things very uncomfortable for everyone very fast.

Way back in the first chapter, Eva remarks on how out of character it is for Kumasawa to be at the docks waiting for the family. Kumasawa was likely there to sow the seeds of the witch narrative in advance of their arrival on Rokkenjima. How she got to shirk her duties and be there makes sense if you consider that there is technically nobody there to punish her for behaving like this.

Where this gets complicated is when you start thinking about why any of this is still happening if Kinzo is already dead. If every servant we saw enter the study throughout the story knows that Kinzo is dead, why would Shannon, Kanon, and Genji act as they do? Shannon still being trapped under a veil of fear makes sense, but what doesn’t make sense is Kanon still trying to rig the family to kill each other. If he’s anything like Shannon, he also will have accrued a decent amount of wealth from working as a servant over the years, so it’s not like he urgently wants for money before he can even think of trying to escape from the role he’s forced into.

Again, if Kanon wanted to, he could have had the letter Maria read out announce that Kinzo was already dead. This would have equally thrown the family into such turmoil that the power dynamics keeping them all trapped there would have been ruptured. Yes, it would be announcing to the world that he has been covering up a death which is a crime, but a comparatively lesser crime compared to inciting people to kill each other.

So if there’s no Kinzo and his iron grasp of power, why do things still go down like they do? Why must the Ushiromiya adults still die? Why does Shannon, who is perhaps twice-complicit, still end up carelessly murdered? Who would orchestrate this series of events under these circumstances?

Kanon fits as a culprit when you considered the absolute desperation of being trapped under Kinzo’s thumb. If the starting conditions are different and Kanon has the luxury of time and options, why land on this still? Why do the witch narrative and the murder mystery exist? What could the true motive be for any of this?

This is something I don’t think I can begin to answer yet. I think the answer lies with all these disparate thematic pieces (fractured narratives, nested metaphors, Detectives and Romantics, dichotomous personalities, what it means to be a being that “exists”) but the problem is I don’t know if I have anywhere near enough pieces yet, let alone the means to think about slotting them together.

The best guess I can give is that Beatrice the manifold entity has manifold intentions – one is to tear the Ushiromiya family to shreds, and the other is to get someone who may or may not be Battler to figure something out via a story conveyed through the servants (who may or may not be the originators of this narrative). This something is likely related to some deep-seated sin within the Ushiromiya family, as well as some additional element that can only be expressed through occult metaphor. It’s a blank wall full of question marks, filtered through the contradictory puzzle of an old man that is probably already dead even though it defies all common sense. There’s a hazy shape that I know exists but that I can’t really see or articulate. It’s all still too unclear.

What isn’t unclear, though, is the motive of something yet to happen: Eva and Hideyoshi’s murder on the second twilight. I’m not even going to attempt to pretend like this is something that is a surprise or something that took any real puzzling out to realise. The story has been signposting their demise basically since the first bodies hit the ground, and in several ways their deaths were locked in the minute the identities of the first sacrifices started to become apparent way back in chapter 8. Eva and Hideyoshi are so super dead and that’s all there is to say on the matter.

Instead, let’s try and figure out how/why they’re going to kick the bucket. My current thinking puts Eva and Hideyoshi as the partial culprits of the first twilight and the only living people on Rokkenjima with blood on their hands. Ignoring the many question marks a lot of the aforementioned topics of discussion throw over this line of thinking, the important thing is to consider that the only people who are killers are slated next to die. The only real threats to Eva and Hideyoshi’s lives were all killed on the first twilight, either at their hands or at the hands of said threats. There is nothing really left to hurt them from their perspective, and they surely know this. So how is it that they basically have a chapter left to live?

Beatrice is going to kill them obviously. And she’s going to kill them in a confusing way that only a witch could do, because Battler asked so very nicely. The important part is figuring out what that’s going to look like in reality, because the witch isn’t directly killing anyone until after her resurrection is complete.

So then, which human on Rokkenjima is most likely to kill Eva and Hideyoshi? I’m sure Natsuhi loathes Eva, but Natsuhi is forever excluded from being a culprit due to her role as the red herring. The cousins are completely removed from the murders except as spectators so suspecting them for even second is ridiculous. And for the servants, what purpose does killing them solve beyond murdering for the epitaph’s sake? All the threats to their freedom are already dead. Any other murders would be needless collateral if you assume the most utilitarian murder route possible.

Well. There might be one servant who might have it in them to gun for Eva and Hideyoshi, a servant who is trapped in the tragic spiral of plans gone awry. Of course, I am talking about Kanon.

One huge question hanging over the first twilight is how Shannon died. She was an incidental figure in the manor that evening. If Krauss’s poisoning scheme was likely, he would not have factored her in given that he specifically moved her over to the guesthouse. As a person, Sayo may have infinite resentment and loathing towards this family, but the Shannon persona would never have permitted her to take action against her superiors. Shannon’s death was almost certainly not a retaliatory killing.

So let’s revisit the notion of how Shannon got involved in the first place. Last we saw her she was distracted by a golden butterfly in the hallway. This is probably a metaphor for Shannon becoming aware of the mounting conflict in the dining room, or some other means of her getting roped in. The two possibilities are that either the sounds of violence drew her in, or Gohda coerced her to accompany him as insurance. Whichever method, the most likely outcome is that Shannon stepped onto the scene unaware of what she was getting into.

This, in turn, makes it exceedingly unlikely that Shannon acted as the aggressor in any capacity. The absolute worst case I can think of is that Gohda made Shannon (unknowingly) serve the poisoned food/drinks to the siblings, thereby technically implicating her while keeping his hands clean – Shannon forced to be a double-proxy for Krauss.

If this is the case, then in the eyes of the incensed, horrified, and judgemental Eva, Shannon is yet another guilty party who just killed all of Eva’s siblings. What’s important here is that when Eva believes she’s right, she doesn’t budge from her convictions. What is also important here is that Eva does not care about the servants enough to spend even one second thinking about any alternative explanation for what she just witnessed.

This would mean that Eva and Hideyoshi’s revenge attack goes the same as how I outlined before, only this time Shannon is also a misguided intentional target of theirs. Odds are that Eva and Hideyoshi killed Shannon, and Kanon knows this. Kanon stared in the face of those who murdered his sister, and helped them cover it up.

The obvious question here is: in what world would Kanon, who was already planning a whole murderscheme to save Shannon, let something like this slide? Unlike Shannon, Kanon doesn’t have a reflexive pliant furniture persona that keeps him from acting. He was already planning on sacrificing up to thirteen lives to get him and Shannon out of there, and yet he shows restraint when coming face to face with his sister’s murderers?

I think the answer here is that the only reason Eva and Hideyoshi have lived this long is that killing them any earlier would threaten the witch narrative, which is the only thing Kanon has left to fight with. My theory about the killings on Rokkenjima comprising a relay-chain of revenge seems to be correct. Krauss’s actions turn Eva into a killer which turns Kanon into a killer.

Unlike the first twilight, I’m less confident on this, but I think it mostly makes sense. The only problem with this is figuring out who then would kill Kanon to continue the chain, and also that it would mean that Kanon is extra doomed instead of just super doomed and I would much rather he didn’t die, actually. I like Kanon. I think he deserves to live.

Maybe we should all be hoping that Kinzo is still alive so everyone can just go ahead and kill him and then get off Rokkenjima before any more Horrors unfold.

Failing that, I guess there’s no choice but to bear miserable witness to the next step in this tragedy. It’s too bad that Eva will never live to see if her theories about her father are correct or not, in the end. But Beatrice must have her pound of flesh, and the cycle of violence cannot be broken until we have answers.

We have none, so the witch will continue to reign.

Let’s get the second twilight over with.

#umineko #umineko liveblog #long post #sorry for the delay but here's the writeup!#umineko writeup

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