Board 8 > Umineko playthrough topic 3

(+) Yeah! (+)

Dels posted...

The riddle can be solved but it involves outside research and japanese wordplay. Apparently a few dedicated people were able to get it as the episodes were first being released.

Good to know Im not dumb or anything lol

All right time to see what this riddle is about

The beloved hometown of Kinzo. The only place I can think of is Rokkenjima itself, but that wasn't where he was when he was young...

River... family tree... a river of time, maybe, that's a commonly used metaphor.

FYI I'm trying to solve this as more hints are presented, I could at least do that much.

Can sweetfish refer to a particular person? There's no one with a name that sounds like sweetfish in Japanese though.

After solving the riddle, Eva went to the underground tunnel that connects to the hidden Mansion, I think it's called Kuradorian. It's possible to describe a tunnel as a river but that seems a to be a stretch.

'As you travel down the river, you will see a village'.

As Eva travels down the tunnel, she went to Kuwadorian, can this be the village that the riddle refers to?
What travels down the tunnel then? Kinzo uses it to go to see Beatrice. I think Nanjo knows of the tunnel, and most likely Genji, Shannon and Kanon. But why would the tunnel location be written in a book when Kinzo wants to keep it a secret? Am I going in the totally wrong direction?

Sweetfish. In Japanese, it's Ayu. This doesn't refer to anyone I know, and I don't know how to do wordplay.

When Eva says 'six characters', I think she is talking about some sort of term that has less characters. Probably Kanji that can be split into less complicated Kanji and still make sense.

The 'key to the golden land' has six characters... six.... characters that died in the first twilight. Kyrie said that much. If it's wordplay, it might have something to do with the dead character's names...

Remove six characters that are the key. Seeing the 6 people that die in the first twilight are different each episode I don't think it has anything to do with people.

Going by the hints... I think this should be removing six English letters from an English phrase. The six English letters are the key, from the first few lines.

The initial English phrase. Would it be 'On the first twilight'? Is it really that simple?

I don't know how one could make the connection between 'human characters' and 'language characters'. The spell the same in English but are totally different in Japanese.

All right, I kind of get what they're getting at now.
11 or 13 characters -> kill 6 -> kill 0 or 2 -> kill 1 for 5 times -> none left.

The next questions is what it means to gouge and kill. Maybe it's related to the shapes or characters, or their position, that can be thought of as body parts.

What do you mean by controlling a piece
Is this implying that Battler is controlling himself in all the games because it certainly didn't look like it

Why is the riddle-solving stopping here? Fuck's sake. Well at least I can have another go now with all the hints.

Putting aside the solution, I think it is clear from this part that the epitaph is simply wordplay to find the gold and not meant to be instructions for mass murder in a ceremony. Furthermore Kinzo is already dead so he has no reason to do the ceremony, and the 4th game went against the epitaph, I have to wonder if there was never a ceremony in the first place, that someone is using it as a model for killing everyone, and really not all that special.

...That's what the family thought in episode 1.

Just as I was thinking about the riddle in terms of English words and characters, Rosa had to bring up 'start point' and 'end point' and ten-day journey. Thanks for muddling it up again.

The last hint I got is that Erika is looking for an atlas, so this should be about Kinzo's beloved hometown, where you can go along some 'river' and find a 'key' of six characters. That hometown wouldn't be Rokkenjima if an atlas is needed.

My guess for the initial phrase is First twilight'. It has 13 characters, you 'kill' other characters from it, and it is a unbelievably simple answer. The game gave so many hints, it really wants readers to figure this one out and I'm fairly confident here.

The rest of the riddle would have to wait, I have no idea what should be removed next.

How will the 5th game play out then?
Kinzo is dead and can't start the ceremony.
Beatrice and the other demons are only helping Natsuhi hide Kinzo's death, and seem to have no inclination of killing humans like they did before, so why the murders start?
Not to mention Erika and possibly Battler solving the epitaph on Rokkenjima.

I'm liking this episode so far, it's still the same two days, but it shakes up things quite a bit. It's not going to be 'Kinzo starts the ceremony and Beatrice/magical beings kill a bunch of people' this time, I think. Can't tell what will happen next.

Lambda and Bern handling the game is interesting too. Shame that those two are annoying asshats.

Oh yeah, if you think of Beatrice etc. are Natsuhi's imagination then it's more it's right back to episode 1 where nothing magical is around, it's not like Erika is casting spells left and right

Erika is has been on the island for less than a day and already talking shit about the whole family. Calling Krauss arrogant, has she ever looked in a mirror? Yup, that's definitely Bernkastel's piece.

That's the problem I have with Erika, I know everything about her, so it's really hard to care why she acts like this.

There a signpost that points to the Golden Land? Is there something on Rokkenjima that indicates a direction and can move?

Battler found the Gold, which does exist and is NOT a illusion. Now I'm even more curious what's going to happen next, Beatrice said solving the riddle is required to stop the murders, and this is done even before anyone died... Though, they still died when Eva did it in episode 3.

Going by episode 3...
Battler, or some part of Battler, is going to turn into Battler-Beatrice (Battletrice? Battrice? Battlerice?) and kill the family.
...
Nah, no way that's going to happen.

'Intellectual Rapist'
what lol. who in the world uses rapist to describe themselves. brilliant.

The gold can last for 100 human lifetimes, so it really doesn't matter that much who gets more money here, just share it equally and be done with it. I never get the thinking of these mega rich people.

The epitaph riddle is immaterial to Beatrice. Is it material to someone else and Beatrice is doing it for that someone? No, that would still mean Beatrice gains something.

Another possibility is that the murders are just as meaningless as the riddle...

It IS meaningless. Yeah I don't know what's going on now.

Beatrice killed the family according to the riddle to terrorize whoever is left alive? If that's the case, wouldn't that have some purpose after all and not meaningless? If there is a goal, no matter what it is, you can't claim the murders are immaterial.

It is emphasized that both the murders and riddle hold no meaning for Beatrice.
So it has to mean something for Battler.
More specifically, THE Ushiromiya Battler, grandson of Ushiromiya Kinzo.
Beatrice reacted badly when she thought Battler was an imposter last episode, going as far as abandoning the game.

Therefore, Beatrice is doing all of this to show something to Battler, something that him and him alone can understand.

'Beato never committed murder for the sake of pleasure'
Wow this is juicy information. Even though she's laughing and cackling clearly enjoying all of it in the last 4 episodes, you're telling me it's all an act? And the fakeout at the end of episode 3 is an act within an act, or should it be real?

Someone should give her an Oscar already.

In any case, I felt this development, or something similar, is coming sooner or later. Beatrice is becoming less and less of a villain as I go through the game, and a proper motivation for the murders is needed if she is to be seen in a more positive light. I'm fine with that as long as it's not blatant whitewashing; enjoyment or not, you can't totally excuse killing people multiple times.

According to Natsuhi's son, he is somewhere on the island and knows her every move. But the red truth was that there are 18 people on the island. I can think of some possibilities here:

1. Someone we know is pretending to be Natsuhi's son
2. Someone outside the island, who may or may not be her son, is calling in. It hasn't been confirmed yet that the external lines are broken. This would mean he's working with someone inside the mansion to know that much.
3. Magical shennigans, daydreaming, etc.

Battler's birth huh. This has been brought up before. He is NOT Asumu's son, but he is Kinzo's grandson. I'll repeat what I deduced before: Battler is in fact Rudolf and Kyrie's son, Asumu was the one who had a miscarriage but they swapped the babies. It's too much of a coincidence for Kyrie to have a 'miscarriage' in the same day.

handsomeboy2012 posted...

The gold can last for 100 human lifetimes, so it really doesn't matter that much who gets more money here, just share it equally and be done with it. I never get the thinking of these mega rich people.

Probably accurate. Society seems to show us that even if a person gets more money than they could use in a lifetime, they still will do anything they can to get more.

Natsuhi 'son' died already, so I'm pretty sure it was someone else on the island pretending to be him. But who could it be, the only people who knew about the incident was Kinzo and Natushi. Also, whatever information they got might be incomplete, if they knew it was actually an accident they would not have threatened Natsuhi like that, they were either lucky that Natsuhi was in a bad mental state to think she did something wrong, or were close enough to know she blames herself.

Then again, stranger things have happened.... I wouldn't put it past Umineko to bring the baby back to life...

The phone call was Lambda all along
FUCK YOU for wasting my time making theories about that phone call
Directly interfering with the characters shouldn't be allowed

Bernkastel and Lambdelta are making my blood boil
God I didnt think I would hate someone more than Kinzo. Hes a nutjob; those two are malicious bitches.

Lambda doing silly voices is the equivalent of a D&D DM/GM doing a silly voice for an NPC. It doesn't mean anything regarding whether or not the phone call actually happened.
---

5 people died together in the first twilight and Hideyoshi will come later. I'm sure the order of the epitaph isn't necessary right from the beginning, Beatrice wasn't following it last game, and obviously, and then there was the talk about it all being meaningless.

The Ass sisters are back, I had almost forgotten about them. They have some fancy new sprites. I noticed a lot of those this episode, finally some characters are no longer stuck in one body position.

This time Beatrice isn't behind the crimes, so what is she supposed to do here? The Human side is trying to figure the crimes out, and the Witch side... who belongs to the Witch side on the board, really?

I like how this 5th game is no longer about Beatrice looking for creative ways to kill everyone.
On the other hand, Erika's 'this level of reasoning is possible' catchphrase is cringeworthy. This goes beyond arrogance into Chuunibyou territory

Are Lambda and Bern really playing against each other, I swear they are circlejerking...

Krauss is counted as a sacrifice for the 1st twilight when he's clearly alive? I imagine this is Lambda's way to confuse the family on the order of killings; when Hideoyoshi dies they can't be sure if it belongs the the 1st of 2nd twilight.

The nature of the 5th game has a lot of similarities with episode 1. People got killed, I don't get to see the process, and none of the people on the island witnessed magic or strange things first-hand. If we count Beatrice and co. as Natsuhi's imagination, and pretend that Lambda and Bern don't exist, it will be back to your run of the mill murder mystery.

I spotted a translation error. 'Records of the Three Kingdoms' should be 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' instead. Boo.

Is it going to be a parallel of the novel? Three sides, witches, humans and phantoms fight, in the end the most powerful of them gets usurped and proceeds to defeat the other two.

Yeah Erika really has a lot of cringey lines. :(
---

Eerieka posted...

Lambda doing silly voices is the equivalent of a D&D DM/GM doing a silly voice for an NPC. It doesn't mean anything regarding whether or not the phone call actually happened.

So I should take it as someone on the 'game board' doing the call, and not Lambda directly talking to Natushi?