I mentioned on the About Page that, initially, my reread wasn’t a liveblog. That’s why there are huge gaps of content between the screencaps I did post, which were mostly things I wanted to shitpost about or highlight the more glaring bits of foreshadowing.
Instead, I jotted down most of my personal EP1 thoughts into Evernote, just like I had for Higurashi. This includes random commentary as well as theorizing and attempts at explaining the various mysteries…and yeah, no small amount of ranting because I was still trying to get over my years of anger at Umineko.
While these notes were never meant to be viewed by other people, I’ve decided to make at least some of these notes public here for my own archival purposes. Please be aware that these were my thoughts in 2013/2014, as someone who bailed on Umineko back in 2010 and never read Episode 8 (knowing only the core details about it from /jp/ spoilers).
For the most part these notes no longer reflect my opinions and theories about Umineko.
ALRIGHT!! It’s September 9th (a bit early, but I’m going to be busy with this commission job through the end of October and I don’t want the 4th and the 5th to pass me by), a month since I finished the Higurashi VN. This time, I am going to really try to reread Umineko and stick with it. Having just come off Higurashi (which I started late June and finished early August) I feel like I’ve reacquainted myself with Ryukishi’s writing well enough already, so it’ll be easier than the past two years when I hadn’t touched a VN in ages and tried to dive right back in. And since I enjoyed Higurashi so much, maybe I’ll be able to give myself more incentive to try and appreciate Umineko again like I used to – sure, I know everything, but did I not know all the secret plot reveals of Higurashi as soon as I started Onikakushi-hen? And did I not enjoy the Hell out of it anyways?
At any rate, I’ve been debating about where I should start. I don’t think it’d be right to skip EP1, but the beginning is so slow and drawn-out that it’s not really the best way to make me feel excited about Umineko again…and since I happen to have Vol. 1 of the English manga publication sitting on my desk, it may be better to just give myself the summary version. Might I miss some subtle, minor hints if I do this? Probably. Do I care all that much…? Probably not. I’d rather miss those than be told that they all needed a lot of money, right away!! over and over again and have to go on for pages to hear about how beautiful the rose garden is. Besides, the manga artists all worked closely with Ryukishi so the important subtle hints should be in there anyways (I remember Kanon’s lingering look at Battler when he takes the wheelbarrow, for instance). Then I’ll read the rest of EP1 once it gets to the good stuff, probably around the time Maria reads the letter at dinner.
First observation: it is actually really difficult to read a volume this xbox huge. Like, it’s one of those things where it’d be easier the closer you got to the middle, or even the end (because it reads right-to-left) but just holding the book open with one hand and trying to flip the pages with the other is surprisingly difficult…
Second observation: I forgot the manga started (after the brief Kinzo scene) when they were on the boat to Rokkenjima, so I guess I’ll read the airport scene in the VN. That’s where a lot of the initial character development starts, after all.
Probably after that I got bored and fell off the Umineko wagon again, then came back a year later in 2014. I probably owned EP1 Vol. 2 by then and just read through the whole thing that way, but then ended up popping open the VN for the Kinzo’s study scene (can’t resist dat system0) and the tea parties. That’d also explain why I don’t have a single VN screenshot of any of the murders, from the first twilight all the way to the end when the bomb goes off. I was reading my own physical manga volumes, after all, and posting caps of the manga would require me to dig it up online and we all know I’m far too lazy to have bothered with that. Thus I’d be willing to bet that 90% of my notes were based on the manga version after all.
The MangaGamer version of Higurashi didn’t let me use the left and right keys to advance text/read the backlog, but the up and down ones. Umineko doesn’t let me use left and right or up and down…but I am now used to hitting the down arrow…IT’S LIKE THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO MAKE IT DIFFICULT FOR ME TO READ UMINEKO FROM THE GET-GO. [nitpick]also the text speed is slower unless I set it to spit out a full sentence at a time, and I like the Higurashi font better…[/nitpick]
Oh yeah, the manga also trimmed down Kinzo’s intro scene to a single page…I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, you lose a bit of that Kinzo/Nanjo interaction and a chance to see Kinzo’s state of mind both before and after he goes into Beatoriche Mode, but on the other hand…do I really give enough of a shit about Kinzo to care?
Geez. The PS3 OP (well, it’s the original PC OP song but I’m assuming the video was the PS3 version’s) is so spoilery. Tons of characters and magic right out of the gate that won’t show up for a while, and it sorta ruins the mysterious nature that I loved about EP1 so much, where you had no reason to think the actual witch would show up at the end. It’s like how Onikakushi-hen managed to be so scary because you couldn’t tell if Oyashiro was real or if Keiichi was just being paranoid. Umineko never really got to feel that way again after EP1, which was always a sort of bittersweet feeling even if I still enjoyed the direction EP2-4 went in.
Witch-Hunt why…I never reread EP1 with the most recent patch so I didn’t know they changed Battler’s ‘suspicious drugs’ to ‘shady mail-order performance-enhancing drugs’ ._. muh memes…
I love how openly Eva is all ‘tell your aunt about [your stories as a lady’s man] later because nothing like that ever happens to George’. Like, wow, way to be supportive of your son, Eva. George a shit, guess it can’t be helped.
I still call shenanigans on Kyrie and Rudolf choosing to leave Ange at home. Yeah she was sick, but it’s not difficult to use controlled doses of medicine to induce symptoms like that, which would be just enough to have an excuse not to bring her. That’s probably one of the things that’s answered in EP8 though, so maybe I shouldn’t speculate too much about it? It just always felt so strange to me that they HAPPENED to leave her home on the day that they’d end up committing a mass murder…but I also don’t think there’s any reason to believe they’d have known about Yasu’s schemes so it’s weird. In EP5 Kyrie says some shady stuff when they’re talking about Kinzo being dead if I recall but I don’t think that’s enough to go on. Hmm. Either way I don’t believe in Bern’s cruel touches in the EP7 tea party like the things Kyrie said about not loving Ange, and she did kinda have it in for Battler, so assuming Kyrie maybe did have some mayhem planned it would make sense to me that she’d protect her flesh-and-blood daughter from that while not giving a shit if Battler came or not.
Battler notes how surprising it is that someone as old as Kumasawa is still working as a servant, and that her body is definitely showing its age. Truly, she can’t be of all that much use that they’d keep her around to be a servant. More likely than not it’s the fact that she has such an important connection to the true family head (Yasu) that not even Natsuhi could likely fire her.
Wow, I never noticed that Battler invokes the goddamn chessboard flip this early, when he is talking about falling over the boat.
“Apparently, the max speed I can tolerate is ‘extremely slow’.”
I laughed harder than I should have.
I wonder though if Kumasawa knows that Shannon blew up the shrine…I also wonder what the significance of Maria’s freakout is really supposed to be. I think it’s really just to A) draw our attention to the fact that the shrine is missing and that’s a big hint and B) show us the way Maria can suddenly get really creepy and fixated on something that was there before and is missing now.
Jessica probably shuts Kumasawa up because she’s shown on other occasions that she just dislikes it when everyone plays up the whole ‘spooky ghost story’ aspect of, y’know, her home. However, her reaction here stands in sharp contrast to the scene in EP2 where she explicitly asks Kumasawa about those old ghost stories, which was one of the cornerstones of my EP2 Jessitrice theory.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of if we’re all together.”
Lolololololol
George: “I don’t lie.”
A certain letter that Battler sent and Shannon never got would seem to say otherwise, Mr. George.
Alright, now that the first chapter is over with, in the interest of time and actually accomplishing this rereading goal, I’ll be resuming with the manga from this point, and probably pick up the VN again on the morning of the 5th, before the First Twilight. Notes for the portion in-between will be related to the manga specifically and may differ from the VN, and I might miss some minor details, but oh well.
Jessica responds quickly and casually to George’s ‘how’s Kinzo’ question by saying he’s as healthy as always. I refuse to believe that someone who lives on the island would not have been able to see her grandfather for 2 entire years and would fully believe that he’s just locked himself in the study…she has to know the truth. Now, I can see Gohda being oblivious to this ruse even as a regular servant, because he’s still only been a servant for 2 years and doesn’t have the eagle. Kinzo has presumably been dead since he started as a servant (that, or he died shortly thereafter), but given his reputation I can see Gohda being left out of the loop…assuming Kinzo is just a very grumpy old master and buying into the lies. After all, in his TIP he talks about the reason he goes along with the Beatrice lie…out of respect for his employers and work environment, even if he doesn’t believe it. So maybe he’s just savvy enough not to try and force the whole ‘why can I never see the family head’ business because it’s such a touchy subject and it’d be disrespectful. Everyone else is confirmed to be aware of the situation…Natsuhi and Krauss obviously, Nanjo obviously, Genji obviously, and even Kumasawa was noted to have helped the previous year with distracting the family and whatnot so she knows too. Shannon/Kanon of course know, since Yasu was there when he died (though the cover story is probably that Genji told them since they also bear the eagle, and Natsuhi probably couldn’t complain about that).
That makes Jessica the only character (not counting the offscreen servants we never meet) to be on the island on a regular basis who we’re never informed whether or not she’s in on this secret…and I find it very hard to believe she would be so oblivious to not notice it. Even if Jessitrice obviously didn’t end up being the truth, Jessica had to have known that Kinzo was dead, right? Maybe she didn’t know her parents were in on this big secret coverup but I feel like she must have noticed. I think she even comments on the smell coming from the study later on in EP1. It’s just way too suspicious and it makes me wonder if maybe Ryukishi originally planned on having her be one of Yasu’s accomplices (which explains the other ‘suspicious’ things that fueled the moon-chan theories) but then changed his mind later, leaving behind little bits of false evidence by mistake as a result.
I still don’t understand the fucking significance of Maria’s Rose and it makes me really angry that I don’t.
So, of course there’s that scene where Battler picks up the dropped bags of fertilizer for Kanon, and when they leave Kanon gives him a lingering look (and says something, forget what it is in the VN but the official English manga has “I wish I could…”). Then shortly thereafter (it happens like immediately in the manga but I’m pretty sure the cousins’ discussion dragged on longer in the VN, as most things do) Shannon shows up in the guest house. Okay, so Kanon waits for everyone to leave and goes to change into Shannon then arrives at the guesthouse a bit later, no biggie.
Then of course is the infamous ‘Battler tries to grab Shannon’s boobs’ scene, which…makes a lot more sense and suddenly has a plot significance when you realize her breasts cannot possibly be real. That resigned posture probably isn’t ‘I’m furniture, do what you will with me’ so much as ‘this is it, if he touches them he’ll know they’re fake, and maybe he’ll finally understand’. Shannon has already resigned herself to fate and to let whatever happens happen. But I wonder about Jessica…was her hitting Battler just another attempt to cool off his perversion, or was it because she knows the truth about Shkanon and is trying to help out? Again, Jessica remains a wildcard to me who I think is perfectly capable of being an accomplice in at least some arcs (most notably EP2), but the story never really pans out in a way that I think she is supposed to be.
Jessica: “Remember Kanon-kun outside? He’s her little brother.”
Shannon: “So you met my brother? …I hope he wasn’t rude to you.”
>_>
“Aunt Rosa is level-headed and welcoming”
LOLOLOLOLOL
“Kyrie-san is dad’s second wife, not my biological mother.”
LOLOLOLOLOL
WHY CAN NO ONE EVER MENTION GOHDA WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT HOW TALL AND IMPOSING HE IS. It’s always like WOW YOU LOOK MORE LIKE A BODYGUARD THAN A COOK or GOHDA, WITH HIS HUGE BODY, DID A THING or EVEN THE HUGE GOHDA WAS AFRAID AND IT LOOKED WEIRD and so on. Like, c’mon guys, are big guys not allowed to be chefs or be afraid of witches and goatmen or whatever else? :/
I’m pretty sure Eva singles Shannon out specifically because she doesn’t like her going out with her precious little Georgie. But it could also just be Eva being Eva, maybe she’d do it to any servant who made the same mistake…but it does seem like she specifically asked the question knowing Shannon’s reaction, and it was probably just as much to trip her up as it was to make Natsuhi look bad.
And the second Shannon closes the door behind her, Kanon is there. “You were watching…” “That’s my job.” The only others present in the room with them are Kumasawa and Genji, so even this early on the only times we see them together are when it’s in the company of the other servants, after all…
Krauss: “Well, he doesn’t look like a man with only 3 months left to live to me.”
That’s no surprise, considering he’s been dead for a year already.
I cannot read the scene where Eva yells at Natsuhi without having to go watch this.
Natsuhi overreacts though…like I mean I know that’s just how she is, but it’s when Krauss tells her to sit down and relax that she goes crazy and runs out of the room. She sees it as him not defending her but…he’s doing it for her. He knows full-well how easily she gets riled up and it just makes her chronic headaches worse. He’s telling her to relax because he wants her to relax, he’s not saying ‘butt out I’m the man let me handle the business’ the way she perceives it. EP5 showed pretty clearly how much Krauss depends on her. I think people are unfair to Krauss just because of that EP3 flashback, as though he’s still a misogynistic asshole, even though I’d argue there are plenty of moments that show the exact opposite in other episodes. But much like people who demonize Rosa without also acknowledging what a rough life she had (not that it excuses her actions, mind you, but it does explain them), without love it can’t be seen, I suppose.
Kanon’s visit to report the inheritance discussion to Kinzo is weird because, well, Kinzo is dead. I never noticed it much before but it’s very similar to Shannon and Genji’s little trip to help him write his will in EP2. What the fuck are they (because yes, Genji is of course also present) actually doing in Kinzo’s study? Also, it’s not in the manga, but I remember Kinzo tried being nice to Kanon in the VN, I think he offered him a piece of candy and told him to loosen up or something, maybe not in so many words…but really, what is the significance of this scene, Kinzo you are not there, go home Kinzo you’re dead, stop being ridiculous
Though this line of Kinzo’s would make perfect sense of Shkanon was the one who said it:
“Will a miracle come to pass, or will the fools discover the gold first?”
If the miracle = Battler remembering his sin, and ‘the fools’ = anyone other than Battler, or maybe Jessica and George, solving the epitaph.
Also when Battler is leaning over the epitaph…the English manga replaced the Japanese text engraved with English, reasonably, but the first panel they just…erased it, and it looks ridiculous, because Battler is leaning over just a big empty slab of nothing.
Know what’s really bizarre? Like, it’s such a small little passing remark, but it’s incredibly bizarre…when the kids are at the beach and Maria reads the epitaph out of her notebook, she says the reason she wrote it down is because her mother said…Maria forgets things all the time. Um? And yet later we see countless evidence that Maria has a nigh-on photographic memory for certain things…she fixates on them because she remembers (like the shrine that used to be there and is now gone, or the rose that should be there and is now gone even though it’s a huge garden full of roses and she’s dead-certain she knew exactly where this one was). She sees the magic circles and knows what they are immediately, what they mean, what psalms of the Bible they quote, etc. She may forget other things but anything that interests her…Maria remembers well.
I won’t say that Maria could have memorized the entire epitaph after only seeing it a couple times over the past 2 years, but I’m saying, specifically, it’s interesting that Rosa thinks she forgets things all the time. That and the fact that she wrote the epitaph in her notebook because Rosa told her to, and not Beatrice? There’s a good chance Rosa wanted to have it copied down for herself and used Maria to do that, that doesn’t surprise me. It’s just the whole ‘Maria forgets things a lot’ business that caught me off guard. Maria tends to…not forget things. And like it or not, or especially because she does not like those creepy traits, it’s something Rosa should be well aware of.
I can’t help but notice Shannon seems to try giving the gang a subtle hint when they’re thinking of Kinzo’s hometown as Odawara as they try to solve the epitaph. She’s all ‘um considering the Master speaks of the Great Kanto Earthquake as though he wasn’t there he probably lived much further away’ (somewhere like Taiwan), because obviously, she’s already solved the epitaph and her goal is to get someone else to solve it. But they’re doing it wrong so it’s like she’s trying to nudge them that NO IT’S NOT ODAWARA TRY AGAIN
Love dem crappy sketches of Beato, Bern and Lambda in Maria’s notebook, even if things like this are just easter eggs that make no logical sense XD
And then Shannon’s ghost stories about Beatrice which suddenly make so much more sense. Open windows that should have been closed? Clumsy head-in-the-clouds Yasu forgot to close them but thought she had. Things going missing? Clumsy Yasu, basis for the original Gaap appearance of Beatrice. Kanon having seen golden butterflies? 100% bullshit that never happened. Reason for these stories? Possibly twofold – like George, she seems to be trying to smooth over Maria being upset about Battler and Jessica not believing (as she is fond of Maria), but quite possibly to also give Battler more reasons to join the believer’s side. Battler’s reaction to her stories is being a bit creeped out…admittedly, in the same kind of way as a group of friends at a slumber party exchanging ghost stories, and something he’d probably (under normal circumstances) forget about within the hour, but still. The more she spreads these tales, the more doubt she plants in peoples’ heads so that, when something bizarre does happen, they’ll go back and think ‘fuck, I heard those stories about a witch…and since I can’t make sense of what just happened, could it be…?’. It’s like what Elder Beato said in EP6, basically. These little things seem minor, but bit by bit manage to cause people to believe in the witch.
But on the topic of the rose, I was reading some of the old forum threads a bit and I saw someone mention in passing that the entire purpose of the rose scene was for Maria to meet Beatrice. I didn’t like that at first because it seemed like too easy an answer, but when I thought about it more, and the way Maria fixates on these things (one of those tiny details that you forget when it’s been several years since you last read the story), it made sense. Shannon (as Beatrice) has spent a lot of time with Maria and they definitely have a strong bond. She would know very well how Maria can be in these situations. Furthermore, one rose in the meticulously cared for rose garden that’s in the front row (easily spotted) is unhealthy? Especially with the way Genji (in all the episodes) is always all MAKE SURE YOU DO YOUR BEST BECAUSE WE HAVE IMPORTANT GUESTS COMING, also Natsuhi would probably be a hardass about that even moreso because she knows Eva finds little things like that to pick at on purpose.
It was specifically Kanon’s job to tend to the roses, too, so it’s not even like another servant was accidentally careless enough to leave an unhealthy rose in the garden. That kinda thing doesn’t even seem possible if not deliberately engineered ahead of time…you’d think otherwise there’d be a couple of wilting roses, not just one, and that it just happened to be in the front row is also pretty telling. It would have been easy for Yasu to carefully ensure just that one rose didn’t get enough fertilizer or sunlight…or if there were more than one, just snip all the others and leave one unhealthy rose behind. She could probably have even plucked a wilted rose from elsewhere and replanted it in the front on purpose. Either way, thinking about it, it really does feel pretty deliberate like it was set up in advance, and that’d be a really unusual thing to do on purpose if it wasn’t part of Yasu’s plan.
Thus most likely Yasu set it up so there’d be something insignificant enough for most to overlook but just enough to draw Maria’s attention specifically. The rest is just relying on things she already knows about the family – Maria’s tendencies would make her fixate on the rose, and Rosa’s quick temper and impatience for Maria acting like that would cause her to leave her behind rather than drag her back to the mansion where she’d make a scene. George tying the candy wrapper onto it was probably not specifically planned, but didn’t cause any harm either. It basically just creates the opportunity for Maria to be isolated in the garden by herself, letting Yasu then appear as ‘Beatrice’ and hand her the letter (the script for which was likely memorized beforehand, hence Maria having no trouble reading through something filled with words well above a 9-year old’s reading level) and umbrella.
It’s also worth noting that as soon as Kanon comes to get the cousins THE FIRST THING HE DOES is check to see Maria isn’t with them and ask where she is. The cousins wouldn’t have thought anything of it otherwise, since they assumed she already went back inside with Rosa. Since Kanon would have just left her as ‘Beatrice’ (remember ‘Beatrice’ doesn’t need to look different for Maria to acknowledge her personality, I think that’s from EP7, so no need for a costume change between the rose garden and guesthouse) after giving her the letter and umbrella, all Yasu had to do then was draw the cousin’s attention to it. That would then prompt the discussion at dinner over who gave her the umbrella, slowly but surely putting that suspicion of the witch into their heads.
Yeah, it’s one of those plans that requires an oddly specific course of events to play out, but that’s all part of Yasu’s roulette philosophy anyways, so even if it didn’t go that way it’d be fine, too. And that’s without even going into how EP1 was fiction written by Yasu so even contrived coincidences like that could easily still happen
Honestly, based on their reactions to the letter, I don’t think any of the adults are in on the Beatrice scheme in EP1, at least not until after the letter is read. Eva and Hideyoshi had to have been convinced to go along with something later on for some tricks to work, but they probably weren’t pulled into it until after this point – likely, just like they say, they went to bed early while the other adults were still arguing in the dining room, and maybe Yasu pulled them aside while she had them alone, showed them some ingots, and asked them to cover for her later. But at this point? Everyone seems outraged and in disbelief over the letter, and most likely the adults other than Krauss and Natsuhi think it’s just part of their scheme to cover up Kinzo’s death (EP5 showed that they suspected this before the conference after all). Krauss and Natsuhi in turn probably think the other siblings planned this as a trick to get them in a tight spot, either because they suspected Kinzo may be dead after last year’s close call or simply just to corner Krauss for his suspected embezzlement. Either way I don’t think anyone at the dinner table knew anything about Yasu or her plans…not sure if that holds true for every Episode, though.
Rudolf thinking he might be killed is obvious now. It’s all down to the soap opera bullshit behind Battler really being Kyrie’s child because babyswap. Why Rudolf decided he should tell them during the conference specifically is still a mystery – you’d think doing this in the privacy of their own home would be better – but for the sake of the story I still say it was Ryukishi’s attempt to craft a red herring regarding ‘the real Ushiromiya Battler’, which is an idea so prevalent in the early arcs. Though in EP1 Rudolf doesn’t imply it has anything to do with Battler’s birth, so to the reader at this point it’ll just come off as spooky foreshadowing for when he ends up a first twilight victim, anyways.
Ushiromiya Kyrie, being sketchy as fuck since Episode 1.
It’s interesting to me that Kyrie always refers to herself as Rudolf’s partner (paatona) and not wife. I’m guessing it’s a holdover from when she was just his ‘partner’ (business partner/mistress) and probably related to her resentment for Asumu…like, Kyrie is his wife now, but there’s probably still this part of her that doesn’t feel like she is, since she’s still holding onto her grudge against Asumu even now that she’s been dead for 12 years.
My first reaction to this was ‘son of a bitch’ for singling Shannon out specifically (I think there’s another moment in a later episode where Jessica does the same thing), but I also realized something. This scene is narrated from what seems to be Natsuhi’s POV, right before Krauss shows her the ingot. And yet, in ‘Natsuhi’s theory’ here, she’s thinking about how Kinzo probably planned this…when Natsuhi knows better than anyone that Kinzo is dead!! Unreliable narration at its finest…goddammit Ryukishi.
KRAUSS: NATSUHI, I’LL SHOW YOU A SIGHT YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE. /Free!
The ingot is described as the size of a grown man’s arm… How the fuck big is Maria’s purse that Rosa fit at least one or maybe 3 (I forget) into it?! The weight is always described, but not the SIZE.
Rosa’s ^_^ face really weirds me out. Stop that.
———-
…so it’s a year later, and once again trying to read more for Umineko Weekend. Apparently I stopped taking notes at some point even though I remember distinctly reading the first twilight on my phone in the dentist’s waiting room…actually probably why I have no notes for that whole chapter. So I picked up right after that, and wasn’t going to bother with the notes but I just apparently can’t resist. I did have a few things I felt like jotting down.
After the kitchen scene, the whole discussion about Maria’s ‘alternate personality’ and how kids all do that to distance themselves from childishness during their ‘growth period’ or whatever. And Battler’s all like ‘maybe multiple personalities are common after all?’ and etc, like, okay, obviously trying to foreshadow Yasu’s nature to us very early on.
Also at the end of the kitchen scene when Maria says Battler was only protected because of the scorpion charm she says something like, “if not for that you’d be in the shed right now with your face crushed too”. But like…the adults had a hard enough time telling her that her mom (and 5 others) died, did anyone actually tell her how they died? She wasn’t there. Did Yasu actually tell her in advance? Though I guess Jessica lost her temper at her and blurted stuff out, maybe she mentioned it there. Just seemed weird that she knew about the crushed faces despite not having seen it for herself…
When Eva is trying to blame Natsuhi for Kinzo’s disappearance, over the receipt trick. Before she comes out with it bluntly, and she’s kinda dancing around just saying ‘it was a receipt from when I bought that candy’ Hideyoshi seems to realize where she’s going with it. That’s normal – chances are she told him about it after she did it. Remember that Eva’s reasons for tucking the receipt in there before knowing anyone was going to be murdered makes perfect sense when you remember that Kinzo has been dead for a year and all the adults were suspicious of that and planned to try and corner Natsuhi and Krauss about it during this conference.
But more than that, Hideyoshi very quickly joins Eva with the Natsuhi Blame Game once she gets going. Like I DON’T WANT TO SAY YOU’RE SUSPICIOUS, BUT… well obviously you do. Reminded me a lot of the whole Jessica’s Bedroom scene in EP2 – how forced and faked it felt when Gohda and Kumasawa were arguing with Rosa. Like it was all an act. This gave me the same ‘rehearsed’ vibe, in a way, like the two of them had in fact met ‘Beatrice’ the night before and learned about the gold as we’ve seen has happened to the adults (explicitly or implied) in many other EPs. Remember that Natsuhi went to bed early with a headache while all the other adults argued. That’s probably when any epitaph-solving went down, and of course Eva and Hideyoshi are the only members of that group still alive, IE they’re in the same position Rosa was in EP2.
Based on EP5, we know that Yasu held a grudge against Natsuhi, and while ‘revenge on Natsuhi’ was never the goal of Beato’s games, the idea of her fucking with her just to see her squirm is in line with how she must have felt about her after learning the truth. Between that and the whole Kinzo’s death coverup, it would probably been easy to coerce Eva into being an accomplice in the same sort of ‘force her to admit Kinzo is dead’ game as they stage in EP5. There’s probably also a good chance they thought the murders were faked, too, given how calm and casual Eva acted earlier when talking to Battler about how she’s the most likely suspect. Hideyoshi is really the one that stands out – he’s usually the one to tell Eva to stop being such a bitch to Natsuhi, so it’s odd to see him sort of jumping on her in the same way over this. Most likely it’s because they were either bribed or threatened by Yasu into playing along with this game, so even Hideyoshi’s actions would make sense then.
OKAY, I ACTUALLY MANAGED TO FINISH MY EP1 REREAD…on November 2nd. I got up halfway through the scene in Kinzo’s study (after system0, but before the phone call) on Halloween, at least…I think since I didn’t end up taking many notes what I’ll probably do is make a separate document where I go through all of EP1 and try to explain the solution to all the crimes, since I already know who the culprit is. I think the EP7 manga sheds some extra light on Will’s solutions as well from what I’ve seen in caps on Tumblr, so I might also take a look at those.
Let’s see, any tea party notes at least…?
It’s interesting to me how Jessica is quick to believe in Beatrice like the others at the beginning of the tea party…but when they’re all in their death throes, while Shannon, Kanon and even George (and obviously Maria) are like BATTLER QUICK YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE Jessica is the only one who tells him to absolutely not surrender, and to fight because there’s no way a witch exists. It’s probably just because Jessica is the type of character who’d always been similar to Battler in temperament, just to show he wasn’t alone (she too explained her initial ‘Beatrice obviously did it’ as just not wanting to doubt family members) but it’s odd. The whole scene is like, a parallel of Minagoroshi-hen where the magic is falling apart because it’ll only work if everyone believes, and they’re drilling it into your head that it’s Battler’s fault because he’s the only one who refuses…BUT JESSICA’S RIGHT HERE REFUSING TO BELIEVE THE MIRACLE TOO?! Past!Me would surely try to find a way to bend this to suit the Moon-chan theory, but honestly it’s still a little weird that she’s the only one telling Battler not to give up (especially when the usually-rational George is also telling him to believe in the witch). Also the opposite of the EP4 phone call, I think, because she tells him to believe in the witch in that one if I remember correctly.
Geez the whole first half of the ??? is like
Bern: “you’re awesome”
Beato: “you’re awesome”
Bern: “nah man you’re way more awesome than me”
Beato: “no way bro, you’re totes more awesome than I am”
over and over again…HOWEVER, it’s interesting how Bern says she’s afraid of Beato’s power and would never want to fight against her (sorta like the rock-paper-scissors effect Lambda later describes…without the super paper). She’s probably being 100% honest – after all, despite her behind-the-scenes villainy, Bern didn’t really step up and become the main antagonist until after Beatrice was out of commission. She waited until the threat of Beato and her powers had safely passed from the board, precisely so she didn’t have to fight her.
In fact that’s possibly why she seems to ally with Battler in the first place, as someone who she can use as a tool to fight against Beato without having to pit her own powers against hers.
Well that was a fucking mess of a note. I knew I had started and stopped my EP2 reread a couple of times but I guess I didn’t remember doing the same thing for EP1.
Well, I’m still gonna keep it here for archival, even if it is just a pointless collection of ramblings.
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