Like I did with my EP1 reread, before I switched to liveblogging it all on Tumblr I was mostly just taking personal notes on EP2 in Evernote. In fact, I don’t even start posting EP2 screenshots on Tumblr until like, the very, very end of the Episode…thus the most I really have on EP2 comes from these files.
I’m not gonna lie. I was still really pissed about Shkanontrice being the solution at this point in time, and every time I saw how blatant the foreshadowing really was all along (thus reinforcing that I was a dumb blind idiot for not seeing it) I got upset. And every time I got upset I’d drop EP2 for a little while before coming back to it. I did this probably a dozen times throughout the year until I finally came back, a little before Umineko Day 2015, and finished it once and for all.
…and the only reason I even did that was because I found out that the EP8 manga had just finished being fully-translated. Since I knew the manga would supposedly include some original interlude chapters explaining the solutions in more detail (Confession of the Golden Witch) I decided I may as well take a look at just those chapters, even though I still had no intention of reading the rest of EP8.
Confession gave me a fresh understanding of Yasu’s character and made my sympathize with her more than 7 episodes worth of VN ever did. That’s why I finally decided to stop being so stupidly angry about the foreshadowing in EP2 and finished it, with the rest of my reread continuing from there.
But BEFORE THAT, I was just mad, and these notes are going to reflect that. I stress again that these are my thoughts from 2014 (possibly earlier???), pre-Confession, without ever having read the EP8 VN, knowing only spoilers from /jp/ and holding anger in my heart about it. For the most part these notes no longer reflect my opinions and theories about Umineko.
Oh, and also I took about half of these notes on my phone (I think I was mostly reading EP2 on my phone via VNDS which would also be why I have barely any EP2 screenshots), so they may be brief and possibly incoherent.
Fuck. I hate these yashkanontrice hints inn early eps sometimes…the aquarium scene with george and shannon has shannon say,
“certainly, this might not be the real sea. But if those little guys in there believe that it’s the sea, then to them it certainly is the sea.”
Way back my first time through ep2 I DID notice this line…but as a throw back to bernkastel’s poem in higurashi about frogs in a well our something. Not as LOL IF I BELIEVE I’M A WITCH THEN I REALLY AM AND MY DELUSIONS BECOME TRUE. Dammit.
George enjoys the feeling of bullying shannon so much. What a fucking asshole. Shit taste yasu
I always forget that the reference to okonogi FIRST appeared in ep2 when george says one of his fathers friends taught him about tea. Hideyoshi says it’s the president of okonogi foods. Fast forward to ep4 where he has a relation to eva’s ushiromiya group and ange. This was never exactly hidden information but I never remembered or made the connection before, but that’s obviously HOW okonogi became involved…he was a businesses associate of hideyoshi who eva obviously contacted and hired after her husband died.
Why is it that shannon never stopped to consider george romantically until jessica pointed it out “because he’s an honored member of the ushiromiya family and I’m furniture”, but falling so crazy in love with battler to the point she let it influence her decision of mass murdering his family was A-OK? >_>
I wonder just what was going through shannon’s mind when she said there was no one she has feelings for. Maybe that’s a result of the whole “shannon no longer loves battler, beatrice does” thing.
This was mentioned by someone on /jp/ back in the day I think. Ep7 has some weird timeskip stuff between shannon giving beatrice the love for battler, and the portrait being hung in 1984. It implies that kanon was created between then but not necessarily…just has to be in general around that time. It actually makes a lot of sense that this scene after natsuhi scolds shannon and she wishes for george to rescue her is when she imagines up kanon. It’s the first time he is mentioned in this flashback (he never comes up when shannon/george/jessica are chatting even though out would be a good way for george to get back at jessica for teasing him) and as usual he appears out of nowhere. It makes a lot of sense if she created a protective little brother right then to rescue her when she was thinking of how often george would do it, and also why he doesn’t seem to have been an actual person working on the island at this point in time.
Beatrice offers to give shannon all of kinzo’s gold if she wants to change her wish. Herp derp, an easy request since after solving the epitaph she is the owner already…it’s pretty easy to give yourself something you already have.
Also after ep7 it makes sense why A) beatrice is so nice to shannon at first and B) why (in addition to the love stuff) she becomes so pissed as shannon continues to reject her. It’s the same as that first dream shannon had where she met clairtrice, and offended her by wanting to wake up eventually and return to real life. She was born from shannon and doesn’t like the feeling of not being needed or appreciated by her, a human/furniture, when she abandoned that humanity thinking witches were the shit. it’s obvious that she became lonely after that and being rejected by shannon, an inferior being to a witch, is like a frustrating reminder of how lonely it is to be a witch. a lonely witch that nobody would play with. because nobody would play with her she was a lonely witch.
I don’t even know why I care enough to keep taking notes but interestingly… Chaper 3 after kanon finds Shannon and Beatrice on the beach, the narration says he only really became critical about being furniture after Shannon started hanging with Beato. Most likely this is because kanon’s role was originally to be a protective brother for shannon and reminding her that furniture can’t love and not to listen to the tempting whispers of the witch is like a reminder to not fall into the same situation she was in with battler, to prevent her from getting hurt again.
The braun tubes are mentioned when kanon is talking to Jessica about her performance after the cultural festival.
Jessica teaching kanon about creating another self to form his own identity is ridiculously ironic in hindsight.
“tonight two seeds of love have been sown. Including the one already sown that makes three”. It’s funny since the way the scene is framed you’re supposed to think the third is kinzo but obviously the one that was already sown was battler.
In the chapter where Rosa confronts Maria about her meeting with Beatrice ‘every year’, and starts to get a headache because her repressed memories are obviously resurfacing…it could explain why Rosa was the major character/pawn in EP2. She entered the chapel with Beatrice and all the other siblings but is the only one who came out of it alive and gave absolutely no indication to anyone in the story that she was there with them in the first place (when you think about it, Genji must have known, but he’s such dutiful furniture it wouldn’t come up…especially if he’s helping Shannon/trice anyways). So…I’m not at the chapter where it comes up yet and my memory is hazy, but I think the chapel key was inside Maria’s envelope and the contents of the envelope Beatrice gave Rosa was never revealed. EP1 and EP3 reiterate the ‘Maria reads the letter from Beatrice at dinner’ scene, but that doesn’t happen in EP2 – though a lot of people theorize that’s the letter that was in Rosa’s envelope since she’s instructed to read it when all the siblings are gathered. It’s not specified that she has to read it aloud, right? And even if she did, there’s clearly blackmail going on in that chapel scene where they all ‘acknowledge’ her as a witch (that or bribery, but it definitely carried a more negative ‘I don’t want to accept it but I have no choice’ note that would make blackmail more likely). Maybe that letter had dirt on all the siblings…or maybe they all got individual letters. Whatever the case, it’s possible that Rosa got a sort of ‘I know what you did’ message recalling how she’s responsible for Kuwadorian-Beatrice’s death that could have been used to control her as a pawn in the rest of the arc…
In EP2, Shannon speaks to Kanon (before serving Beatrice dinner) of how she used to wish for the day when the two of them could go to the Golden Land. …in EP4, when they’re in the cell in Kuwadorian, Shannon speaks of having been to the Golden Land at least a few times, while Kanon has not and is curious. The fuck is it implying happens between that point in EP2, and that point in EP4…?
Genji: “…Shannon! I have been calling to you for some time.”
Shannon was taken aback by Genji’s sudden voice. Apparently, she had been called for repeatedly. She hurriedly answered. When she turned back, Kanon had disappeared. …It seemed he didn’t feel like showing his tears to anybody…
Uh-huh, that’s what was actually going on in that scene. >_>
The short chapter right before the First Twilight was actually pretty interesting. Not only does Shannon’s conversation with George make it painfully obvious that she’s full of shit…
…the most interesting part of the proposal scene, though, is when you stop to compare it to EP1’s version. If EP1 and 2 are ‘official’ stories written by Yasu, especially, they’re the most relevant. In EP1, Shannon was very reluctant to accept George’s ring, and was flustered the entire time. The look on her face as he last saw her was one of uncertainty, contrary to what he claims he saw. Obviously this is because she’s all torn up about how she feels, as EP7 explains…if Battler had come a year before or a year after, it’d be fine. But his timing threw everything into chaos and Shannon no longer knew what to feel and if she wanted to accept George’s proposal anymore as her feelings for Battler came flooding back. Thus, the massacre happens by her own hands. But in EP2, Shannon is much more enlightened about it all. She accepts George’s ring instantly, to his surprise, because it’s not ‘a promise to be wed’, but ‘a wedding’. By accepting the ring, she gives her answer and the two of them are officially ‘married’ – their feelings are ‘complete’. This is what makes the Beatrice personality so upset as seen in all the Beato/Shannon scenes because Shannon is basically throwing away her connection to Beato and living on her own, as not-furniture. So the events in EP2 end up drastically different because of the way Shannon is feeling…in EP2, she doesn’t seem to have the same lingering feelings for Battler. Actually, I don’t know where I’m going with this anymore, I thought I had something but I lost it so…moving on.
The little textless montage at the end after the scene with the adults in the chapel had always been so mysterious, but it seems simple now. When we last see them they’re asking Genji what the deal is with her. Next thing we know, they’re in the chapel with Beatrice, ‘accepting’ her because she’s ‘proven devils’. What happens here is almost definitely a variation of what we saw in EP7. What probably goes down is that Genji finally relents (maybe the secret that Kinzo is no longer alive is forcefully exposed) and explains things to them. Or maybe he’s reluctant to explain and that’s when Beatrice shows up herself and decides to show the adults the truth. She opens up the tunnel to Kuwadorian and shows them the room with the gold, explains everything about the bank card and the bomb, etc. This would explain the ‘I’m impressed’ and ‘I seriously respect you’ comments the adults make, too, if it’s in an ‘I can’t believe you thought this far ahead’ kind of way. So then she leads them to the chapel where there are 3 ingots in the table…though that might be silly if they already saw the gold room. More likely, she just takes them to the chapel directly, shows them the ingots in a ‘there’s more where that came from’ sort of way, maybe encourages them to solve the epitaph or just shows them the bank card…I don’t know. Whatever the case, they have no choice but to ‘accept’ her (as Kinzo’s legitimate daughter). She gets them all to concede with her little info dump…then there’s a massacre and everyone starts killing each other. Rosa either takes the role of EP7’s Kyrie, or EP7’s Eva (putting a stop to it by killing the killer) but then has to hide the crime by making it look twisted, so she cuts them open and stuffs candy inside of them (or perhaps this is Beatrice’s doing – Rosa definitely seemed shocked by that in the POV scene when they discover it, so even if she knew they were all dead/possibly killed them that could have been done by someone else).
Rosa’s weird behavior for the rest of the episode is because she’s trying to cover her ass and she only comes to regret everything at the end when she realizes Maria > 10 tons of gold. In fact, considering Shannon survives until very late in the EP, that might be more likely than Rosa doing the gruesome ‘decorations’…also, the magic circles and everything, since Rosa would never do that. Tying it to a creepy Halloween party for Maria may have even been a way of getting under Rosa’s skin since she knew how much those creepy things bothered Rosa. Also if they had seen Kuwadorian and the bomb there’s no reason Rosa wouldn’t have gone all Eva in the end and set the bomb off to cover everything…THEN AGAIN her line at the end of EP2, ‘there’s no place we can survive on this island’, does sound eerily like she’s aware of the bomb. Either way I’m getting ahead of myself…bottom line, what goes down in that chapel between the adults and Beatrice is almost certainly the same basic scenario that EP7’s tea party shows us.
Rosa comes to the” obvious” conclusion that there’s a key in the envelope pretty fast, despite having not actually touched it to feel for herself until she goes to confirm it.
When Rosa and co leave the chapel and see the magic circle, George theorizes “happy Halloween for Maria” to mean the virgin Mary, and that it makes sense that a witch would blaspheme God at the chapel.
Rosa: “you sure know a lot…. Did you hear that from Maria?”
George: “…yeah, something like that.”
… That’s an unusual little exchange that stuck out at me……
Battler raises the question of the chapel’s significance for the culprit to go through all the trouble of carrying out the murders there. Obviously it’s because of the epitaph, and the location of the gold. Beatrice wanted to give a hint about that, not to the victims, but to the survivors… Or maybe because of her bizarre role and actions in ep2, it was specifically a hint for rosa. The question is, how much does she know, and how much is she lying about, by this point post-first twilight?
Nanjo: “that’s right, didn’t [kinzo] say something like… Someday, he too might be able to receive a blessing there. But unless a miracle occurred, that day would never come.”
I think this is implying the miracle Kinzo wished for was that Yasu might someday solve the epitaph, since EP7 hinted that it was likely posted specifically for her to do so (hence Genji giving her the Odawara hint). What’s always been weird to me is, how did Kinzo know? Why did he suspect that Shkanon was his long lost child? And for how long did he suspect it? I’m guessing he’d have posted the epitaph as soon as he realized it, so maybe he only figured it out shortly before that. But either way, I guess Genji’s poor attempt at hiding Yasu’s true identity didn’t work so well after all. (then again, on some level he must have wanted Kinzo to find out, or he wouldn’t have brought her to work at the mansion in the first place…I still don’t really know what he was trying to accomplish with such contradictory actions but I guess we’ll never know because Ryukishi never gave him a personality beyond The Perfect Servant Robot -_-)
George doesn’t take long to notice the relief that apparently no one else pays attention to on the chapel door, that it has obviously been decided no one would be blessed without a miracle since the chapel was constructed, and offers “m b t q” as a ‘hint’.
During the first red text battle over the chapel key, as Battler corners Beatrice.
Battler: “sorry. I’m gentle with women. I don’t hurt women. … I don’t betray a woman’s expectations.”
Couple that with the ways Beatrice tells kanon how you can hurt a woman earlier before she attacks Jessica (by betraying their hopes) and you can really taste the irony.
Battler: “i won’t specifically investigate who the culprit is. Because I believe humans!! Because I definitely won’t accept that there’s a person among us who would steal the key from Maria, use it, and do something so horrible!!”
And that’s mistake #1, batora. Your bullshit kills the whole epic atmosphere of dread of the grave and badass pointing because you are so fucking inconsistent. Or should I say, incompetent? No… We’ll get to that later.
I still can’t figure out what the fuck happens in Kinzo’s study with rosa, Genji and Shannon. If she didn’t already know he was dead, she does now, yet despite her pissing on the servants for the rest of the ep, she repeatedly uses them bring with kinzo as an alibi for those two, and Genji survives until the end. What in the fuck went on in there? Is this the point at which they become accomplices? Or would that had to have happened beforehand, since she alone got spared from the first twilight?
There’s also the gold butterfly behind rosa when she heads upstairs. The butterflies always signify a fantasy scene, but why then and there, specifically? Is it related to what will go on (unseen to the readers) in the study?
One point I always go back to in ep2 is when they’re discussing the 3 gold bars in the parlor. Nanjo suggests that the other relatives may have found and brought them, but gohda says no, he carried everyone’s luggage and would have noticed that weight. Yet earlier when everyone arrived on the island and he asks for their luggage, rosa refuses and carries her own stuff. I always found that suspicious, like she had something in there she didn’t want anyone to know about. But I can’t imagine WHAT, at that early point in the game.
Side note, I find it interesting that even with all of Maria’s knowledge despite her age, and her close relationship with “Beatrice”, even she says that she thinks solving that epitaph is just impossible (for them, at least). She does note that she doesn’t KNOW if she could solve it (why bother, Beato will take her to the Golden Land), but still.
And then rosa returns with Genji and Shannon in tow as though nothing is unusual, despite whatever she must have found when she went to the study. It’s also the point where Rosa’s personality and behavior shift for the rest of the arc – now much more commanding than before, even if she IS the only one of the siblings left.
“the atmosphere around rosa, accompanied by Genji and Shannon, was somehow cold, and yet dignified… Completely different from how she had seemed before she left.””
And then, despite kinzo being dead and rosa having just been to his study to see him definitely NOT there, she lies and says
“father was alright, but he was slightly distracted by these sudden events.”
And then basically writes off the fact that they won’t be seeing kinzo for the rest of the arc with
“… Fortunately, he said that he won’t leave his room, so he’s probably safe. Now, we should do all we can to gather in the same place.”
She’s then quick to MAKE SURE that everyone goes to jessica’s room together, rather than let Battler, George and gohda go as a group. First mention of the wolves and sheep puzzle, her running theme for suspicion throughout the ep, but I still say that whole scene in jessica’s room feels incredibly staged… But I’ll get to that.
George: “Shannon, thank goodness. I was worried when you took so long to get back.”
Shannon: “I am sorry to have worried you. The Master ordered me to copy down something…”
George: “Copy down?”
Genji: “………Shannon.”
Shannon: “I………I am sorry, excuse me…”
I still have a hard time understanding whether or not this scene in Jessica’s room is all Rosa’s doing (she’s proven herself in other EPs to be quite intelligent when she’s not letting herself be bogged down by the complex her siblings put on her to make her think she’s stupid, like EP3 and 5 regarding the epitaph for instance), or if she and Genji/Shannon made some sort of deal (or blackmail of some kind) earlier in the study. The whole thing feels extremely staged to me whenever I reread it…the way she so quickly comes to the conclusion (however logical) of the master key situation, and the likelihood of Kanon or the other servants being potential culprits. Is it just her making reasonable judgements considering the situation? Or is this done intentionally to try and cause discord and make the family distrust the servants? I just can’t understand Rosa’s state of mind in most of EP2. There’s so much about her actions that feel like there’s not enough information behind them…
This is the part that specifically makes it seem as though Rosa is collaborating with Genji and Shannon on some sort of scheme:
Shannon: “I…it wasn’t us…!! We were following the master’s orders…
Rosa: “Yes. At least you and Genji-san are alright. That is backed up by what I heard from Father. The two of you were in Father’s room the whole time, copying and witnessing for him. Father and I can guarantee that.”
Genji: “…Thank you very much.”
IF ROSA WENT TO THE STUDY – AND SHE MUST HAVE, BECAUSE SHE CAME BACK WITH ONE OF KINZO’S WINCHESTERS – THEN SHE WOULD HAVE KNOWN FOR CERTAIN THAT KINZO WAS DEAD. IF FOR SOME REASON SHE STILL DIDN’T FIGURE THAT OUT, SHE STILL WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH HIM, CONSIDERING HE’S BEEN DEAD FOR MORE THAN A YEAR. SO WHY IS SHE COVERING FOR GENJI AND SHANNON SPECIFICALLY, WHEN THEY WOULD IN FACT BE THE MOST SUSPICIOUS CHARACTERS, AND ROSA WOULD KNOW THAT?
If she were thinking for herself and just placing reasonable suspicion on the characters who A) aren’t in the family and feel more like scapegoats in a life or death scenario like this and B) have master keys and an intimate knowledge of the mansion’s layout, then she would be suspecting ALL of the servants, and realize how Genji and Shannon, with their fake alibi, would be the most untrustworthy. But not only doesn’t she doubt them and attack Kanon, Kumasawa and Gohda instead, but she defends their alibi that is of course a complete and utter LIE. What exactly happened that caused her to take their side? When did it start – just when she went to the study, or was it going on before that? The whole deal with Rosa being the sole survivor of the Halloween banquet is weird enough on its own, and that whole scene with the siblings in the chapel had ‘blackmail’ written all over it…buuuut, I do feel like Rosa was acting more in-character at the point where they discovered the chapel and the bodies. It’s only once she comes back with the gun together with Genji and Shannon that she adopts this attitude, and it’s extremely weird…especially since she DOES seem to turn against Shannon and Genji later on (unless that’s all part of the scripted plan, which it could well be actually, since she’s pretty forceful about Battler not touching Shannon’s corpse later on and probably knows she’s not really dead)…bah, I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Just, fuck. This scene, man. This scene.
The other thing I have to wonder is…well, no matter what Rosa was let in on, it’s almost guaranteed she doesn’t know the truth about Shannon and Kanon. So like, when she spends all this time blaming Kanon. Was it just to try and draw attention away from her…I don’t want to say accomplices because I honestly don’t think Rosa has anything to do with the murders, but, the people she’s covering for – Genji and Shannon? Did they TELL her to make Kanon out to be the culprit? I just kinda doubt that even if they WERE working together, that Genji and Shannon would reveal such sensitive information about Shannon/Kanon’s real identity. But…again, it’s all so uncertain.
Paraphrasing:
Rosa: Jessica probably would only allow someone she trusted into her room, so Kanon, being a similar age, makes the most sense.
Gohda: Um, I feel like I’ve also earned Milady’s trust.
Rosa: Ooooh? I figured that she might not like you, so she probably wouldn’t let you into her room, but are you a suspect after all?
Gohda: Oh, uh, I mean, I’m afraid to say Milady might not have accepted me. But what about Kumasawa?
Kumasawa: No way man, I’m an old lady who can’t understand the heart of a young girl, she wouldn’t open up to me, right Gohda?
Gohda: Yeah, totally, there’s no way she really trusted us, she definitely wouldn’t have let us into her room when she was so upset!!
“Gohda-san and Kumasawa baa-chan each rubbed their hands together, affirming each other with forced smiles on their faces. It was a really unpleasant rondo.”
The question is whether or not Gohda and Kumasawa are in on whatever Rosa/Genji/Shannon are, or if they’re just trying to cover for each other, hoping the blame will fall on the more suspicious Kanon and let them both off the hook (I do personally doubt their explicit involvement). The latter feels more in character for both of them, but the former is reasonable also because, again – the whole scene feels so staged, the way Rosa leads them to the room, Gohda finds the body, Rosa immediately starts talking about the keys and blaming them, and so on. It feels like the scenario was agreed upon beforehand, but since Gohda and Kumasawa were chillin’ in the parlor when Rosa/Genji/Shannon were off together…and even before that, the two of them weren’t in the same place as Rosa, or in the study with Genji and Shannon. I feel like it might be more of a stretch to assume they were all in on this plan together since Gohda and Kumasawa were never alone together with Rosa, out of Battler’s sight.
Gohda: “The people who had close relationships with Milady were Kanon-san, and then you, Shannon-san, right?!”
Rosa: “…Yeah, isn’t that right? …Jessica-chan might also have let Shannon-chan into her room. But you should have been with Father. …but in reality, were you the culprit…?”
George: “Sh…Shannon couldn’t be the culprit!! Didn’t you just say that she was doing some important work with Grandfather?!”
Rosa: “Yes, I understand. Neither Shannon-chan nor Genji-san is the culprit. Father also admits that they were together the whole time.”
There’s pretty much no way Rosa is thinking entirely for herself here. Of the five servants who are all equally suspicious, she’s explicitly excluding Shannon and Genji from the equation. She must have been bribed to go along with a script beforehand, I just can’t figure out exactly HOW much she knows.
Rosa: “Of course, I cannont deny that Kanon-kun is a victim without a corpse. But until we find his corpse, I definitely can’t deny the possibility that Kanon-kun is a suspect. …There’s a chance that Kanon-kun was attacked by the culprit and confined somewhere…and with that as an excuse, he may appear unexpectedly. But take care. Maybe, no, definitely. …KANON-KUN KILLED JESSICA-CHAN.”
Rosa also seems a little contradictory, or just plain uncertain perhaps, with her thinking here. She seems to be going back and forth from saying ‘well maybe Kanon was also a victim’ to being certain that he was the culprit who killed Jessica (if not the other 6). And when George and Shannon defend Kanon, Rosa is all ‘then it had to be Gohda or Kumasawa, right? Right? Right?’ like, ‘wink wink, nudge nudge?’. It’s as though she’s saying, either it’s the two people who are standing right in front of you, or you can play the easy card and suspect the person who isn’t here right now. The natural human reaction would of course make the latter easier, no matter how much you don’t want to…it’d be easier to say ‘yeah it was probably him’ than accuse the people who are right in front of you. But still, not once does Rosa point to the mystery guest Beatrice as a potential culprit, it’s only the servants…and Rosa is one of the two people who confirmed actually meeting her the day before (the other being Kyrie, who’s dead now). So it’d be pretty weird for Rosa to have just forgotten that this mystery woman is on the island, and is the stranger who would be even EASIER to suspect than Kanon, who she could have killed and taken the master key of just as easily.
“…Then if Beatrice was the culprit without a master key…do we have to accept the argument that she really is a witch…and locked the door with the power of magic…?”
NO, idiot, Kanon is missing, you could ALSO assume that he’s dead and she took his master key, geez, it’s not like the servants have master keys for hands and no one else can use them.
Also, Nanjo is one of the only people who knows about Yasu’s…situation. He KNOWS Kanon is Shannon. But he’s also like, ‘we should be cautious, I don’t want to blame Kanon-kun, but since he’s missing, he’s suspicious’, even though he’s looking right at Shannon in the same room as him. He’s probably in on the whole thing too, just like he was in EP1 and EP3, since having a doctor to falsify deaths is essential. But then why is he killed off so easily in EP2 compared to 1 and 3, where he lives until very close to the end when he’s outlived his usefulness?
That brings the people who are probably in on this to (in addition to the obvious Genji/Shannon/Kanon) Rosa, Gohda, Kumasawa, Nanjo. All the other adults are dead, and supposedly Jessica and Kanon are as well (the red truths from Beatrice about Jessica still trip me up though so maybe she was faking it at this point). That leaves the only people not in on whatever this all is Battler, George, and Maria. That’s a little weird to me…because that’d make them the only 3 sheep surrounded by wolves. Why them in particular? If not for Jessica being killed I’d wonder if it was something like EP4, where Yasu was trying to ‘test’ the cousins, since EP2 does have a lot of emphasis on the love aspect and struggle between Shannon and Kanon’s identities. Though maybe that’s exactly what it is and Jessica (and Kanon) were killed because she failed?
Rosa says it’s very likely that the crimes are related to the gold, and the culprit wants the gold all to themselves. That would clash with the idea of her knowing who Beatrice is, because of the 3 ingots in the chapel making it obvious that she knows the location of the gold already. She does say that since Beatrice didn’t have a master key she didn’t kill JESSICA, but considers her a suspect related to the other murders…but why would the person who basically proved the gold was actually real…be trying to kill other people who DIDN’T know it was real…so she could get it? In other eps I can see how you could make the connection, but it’s strange here because, as mentioned in the parlor – Beato mentioned nothing about wanting the gold, and in fact is the person (implied by the letter) who left those ingots in the chapel.
I love how Meta Battler is all ‘WTF, Piece Me, why did I say it’s all useless? I have no idea where I’m going with this.’
Also, the whole gem of “I JUST MET GOHDA YESTERDAY BUT I KNOW HE TOTALLY WOULDN’T KILL FOR MONEY, MAN!!” Ohhhh, EP2 Battler, you’re just so…frustrating.
“Wait. Before I argue about that, there’s something I want to make clear. I don’t want to talk about, if so-and-so is not the culprit, then so-and-so is the culprit. …I just want to talk about how it’s completely impossible for Kanon-kun to be the culprit.”
And yet by clearing Kanon’s name you’re putting suspicion on all the others, so good job once again, idiot.
Beatrice says in red that Kanon was killed in this room, but refuses that his corpse is in this room. Obviously, because he ‘died’, but didn’t leave behind a physical corpse at all. Kanon was just a role. So by that logic, ‘Kanon’ died in that room before/during/after whatever happened in reality with Jessica’s murder. Then whoever Yasu was when she killed Jessica……wait, does Shkannon carry around two master keys?
There’s 5, one per servant, but she’s ‘two’ servants…so she has two keys (so Genji, who knew she was both of these people, still gave her two keys?!). So in theory, while one of those keys was on Jessica’s person, Yasu still had one. After Kanon ‘died’ and Jessica was killed, Yasu simply left the room, locked the door with her other key, drew the magic square and so on. So I guess that ‘closed room’ is actually pretty simple.
Interesting side note, Beatrice describes Kumasawa as ‘that hag who wouldn’t be a loss if she died’, and then she treats Virgilia pretty shitty in the early portions of EP3. That DOES seem to be retconned out as Beato’s personality shifts away from the evil bitch she was in EP2, but I wonder if she had some reason to be upset with Kumasawa? I can’t actually recall anything that’d indicate that in the story, nor did Kumasawa ever get what felt like significant murders. She was always just sorta…killed, somewhere, never drawn attention to in any way. Even in EP3 as a First Twilight victim she was just one among the rest. Maybe she had a grudge against her for her role in keeping the truth about her birth a secret? Genji and Nanjo did that too, though, so it doesn’t seem like a special reason to her specifically.
My EP2 notes end here. This checks out with the fact that, when I finally returned to finish EP2 in 2015, I picked up where I left off just around the ‘Zombie Kanon’ scene.
These notes are kind of a trainwreck, huh. Honestly I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say in half of them. The only thing I kinda remember looking back now is that I did start getting frustrated during the Jessica’s room scene because I kept going around in circles trying to figure out what was up with Rosa, constantly spitting out new ideas but never settling on anything that satisfied me. I think that’s the point where I started to just feel fatigued about EP2 in general. I always thought the main reason I kept dropping it was the Yasu hints dropped throughout, and while I think that was for sure the case early on (I know I started/stopped a couple of times before we even hit 1986), the straw that broke the camel’s back seems to have actually been Rosa!!
Even with this much of the story left when I resumed in 2015 proper, I still don’t have a ton of screenshots, but I’ll post what I’ve got to round out the rest of Episode 2.
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