Hey friends, welcome back to Rokkenjima! Is this the last chapter of episode 3? Let’s find out…
Where last we left off, Krauss and Natsuhi had just been murdered and dragged out of the guest house. George was killed in the mansion. This leaves Eva, Nanjo, Jessica and Battler as our four survivors, presumably due to receive the blessings of the Golden Witch, although whether Eva Beatrice will play ball we have yet to determine…
But first, the bodies need to be found! As it turns out, they’re in the gazebo. It claims another victim.
OK, the narration instead calls it an ‘arbor’. The art definitely depicts a gazebo though. Fight me.
Consistent with what we saw the magic do, they’ve both been strangled with something thin, like a garrotte. (Getting to use some fun words this time!) They’ve also been staked posthumously in the thigh and calf. Eva is quick to recognise the epitaph ritual is now complete except for the ninth twilight, in which none will be left alive.
Since we now have more deaths, lets add them to our list:
- Krauss
-
Corpse discovered in the rose garden arbor.
The cause of death is assumed to be strangulation by a cord-shaped object. A stake-shaped weapon was sticking out of his thigh.If not for the epitaph, stakes wouldn’t even be needed. What a pain.
- Natsuhi
-
Corpse discovered in the rose garden arbor.
The cause of death is assumed to be strangulation by a cord-shaped object. A stake-shaped weapon was sticking out of her calf.Why does the epitaph even need to be followed in the first place? A game?
So pretty much what you’d expect.
Jessica is furiously upset. She insists she’ll kill the culprit as soon as they appear. Eva argues that George might somehow still be alive, and takes off on her own to look for him (despite, as far as we know, being the only armed person left… unless of course they just don’t have gun sprites for the rest lol). But the rest of the gang catch up with her at the front door.
As they arrive, she’s fumbling with the lock, and then it abruptly unlocks of its own accord. The narration builds up the tension, talking about the smell of the regrets of everyone who died in the mansion.
Inside, they find that the Seventh Pentacle of the Sun (see: episode 1, part 8) is still on the door to the parlour. Incidentally, here’s what The Key of Solomon actually says about that pentacle:
Figure 38.–The Seventh and last Pentacle of the Sun.–If any be by chance imprisoned or detained in fetters of iron, at the presence of this Pentacle, which should be engraved in Gold on the day and hour of the Sun, he will be immediately delivered and set at liberty.
However, alongside it is an addition: the number 07151129. This is helpfully rendered for us in a kind of Goosebumps drippy font:
OK, let’s wildly speculate about what this means. The format suggests a date, although it seems long enough ago to be unlikely to be relevant. If we read it in the American MM/DD/YYYY date format, we get 15 July 1129… whoah, the 15 July was yesterday, that would have been really spooky if I’d played this a few hours ago! Did anything happen on that day? The only specific reference I can find is the purchase of some land by a Portugese abbess, which seems unlikely to be relevant. And ummmm… a few days later, on 24 July, the emperor Shirakawa would die during the Heian Period, although this doesn’t seem especially important.
Yeah, I don’t think this is it somehow!
Nanjo proposes that it is instead a magic square, which has been used as a ward against evil. Cool idea but uh there would need to be one more digit right?
Battler hits on the idea of it being a date. Turns out his birthday is on July 15th. Happy birthday Battler! Anyway, Battler reasons that the 1129 is actually a separate date rather than a year, so 29 November. Everyone tries to think whose birthday it might be. It is not, we establish, any of the Ushiromiyas, nor Kanon, Sayo or any of the other servants. So that rules out the obvious guess that it could represent George or Sayo.
Eva tries to open it and finds it’s locked (probably relevant to any locked room puzzles coming up). She unlocks it with the master key. As we’d expect, George is dead. Here’s his death screen:
- George
-
Corpse discovered in the mansion’s parlor.
The murder weapon is assumed to be a gun or spear-shaped object.In exchange for his soul, the witch granted an 8-digit number.
07151129. When spoken, a small Golden Land will be opened.
Sayo’s is unchanged.
So that’s curious. I wonder if it’s some kind of numeric code, e.g. letters as numbers? The zero throws that off though. Still, if we ignore it, we get… ?GAEAABI… OK, probably not that either lmao.
Another idea is that it has something to do with the riddle. We are, after all, missing a ‘key’ which will advise us how to start deleting characters in order to manipulate the riddle. However, I don’t think this is the key, if only because we’d think Eva—who knows the solution—would react to seeing it printed on a door. Even if it is, I haven’t the first clue how to apply it.
Exhausted, Battler sits down and reminisces the day before when everyone was alive. He seems to have burned out on grief, and be somewhat resigned to the fact that if the murders continue at this pace, he’ll probably die within the next four hours—with the boat not coming for twelve. But we learn one useful piece of information from this, which is that Ange is six years old. I was advised she was mentioned very briefly in the first episode, but she’s definitely getting mentioned more and more now…
He’s brought to because the girls are fighting. Specifically Jessica and Eva; Jessica is accusing Eva of having done the murders of Krauss and Natsuhi. Her reasoning makes sense: Eva was the only other person downstairs at the time. Eva retorts by saying that, by the same logic, the rest of them must have known George left (she stops short of saying they murdered him).
I’ve got to admit, as ‘mundane’ explanations go, Eva murdering Krauss and Natsuhi while Battler and Jessica murder George is kind of hilarious.
Anyway, Nanjo of all people is the one to go for the witch explanation.
I predict: they’ll both accuse him.
Oh, actually it’s even more exciting than that. Eva fucking shoots Jessica. She immediately denies that it was intentional—they fought over the gun and it discharged. Luckily the wound isn’t fatal, but Jessica is blinded by the discharge.
Honestly, with all the people waving loaded guns around constantly, this was just a matter of time.
Eva is screaming “it wasn’t me”, which makes me wonder: did Eva Beatrice manage to front in her body just for long enough to shoot Jessica? I’m not sure if that’s an option once she’s become a full embodied witch.
So. Eva has a panic attack and legs it, with Battler following. Nanjo escorts Jessica to the servant room, which has a first aid kit. The narrative POV goes with Nanjo and Jessica. He suspects cornea damage, so dresses the wound, leaving Jessica blind.
Jessica treats us to a furious rant: she’s convinced that Eva is behind everything, starting with Kinzo. Nanjo attempts to reassure her, displaying a rather unwarranted faith in the power of forensic science. Jessica’s anger gives way to grief, particularly for Kanon—she’s afraid she won’t even be able to see him now before the police take his body away.
Assured that Jessica has calmed down, Nanjo steps out into the corridor, and finds himself face to face with Eva Beatrice. It’s funny, it’s almost like a jumpscare in presentation.
I get the feeling that Eva Beatrice isn’t in a hurry to welcome anyone to the Golden Land. Also: RIP blind people! That’s pretty damn harsh.
Anyway, here are Nanjo’s last words, heard by Jessica inside the infirmary:
Nanjo: S-……stop, please……! Please don’t kill me…!! I have a sick grandchild…! I can’t die here…! For mercy’s sake, spare me…!! HIIIii!!!
That has to be the most emotion Nanjo has expressed about anything at all. Sick grandchild, huh? First we’ve heard of it. Jessica begs him to tell her who’s killing him, but all she gets is a
Nanjo: Please, nooooOoOOOo, ahiiieeeEAAHHHhh!!
Eva Beatrice’s staff makes a sound like a gunshot, and we basically immediately get access to his death screen…
- Nanjo
-
Corpse discovered in the hallway outside the servant room in the mansion. The murder weapon is assumed to be a gun or spear-shaped object.
One last push, and he too would probably have been home free. But at the last possible moment, she did not permit him that.
EB moves in on Jessica, taunting her inability to escape. She announces her intention to play with Nanjo’s corpse and still-living Jessica. Jessica panics, and tries to escape the room, but newly blind, she can’t easily navigate and just crashes into everything, EB occasionally poking her head in to taunt her.
A seriously weakened Beato manifests in the corridor. ‘Even just the power to hold a human form had become scarce for her.’ Damn, things aren’t looking good for our protagonists at this point huh. …whoever our protagonists even are at this point. I guess Beato has pretty much had a full face turn by this point.
Ronove is still reporting to her. She admits her guilt at toying with Jessica’s feelings. He declares:
Ronove: ……Love (愛) is the single element (一なる元素). Romantic love (恋) is even more pure, more sacred. …Though, for some reason, you hate it very much, Milady.
I don’t know a single straight Umineko fan, but is anyone explicitly gay in Umineko? Like, discussed anywhere near as explicitly as the hetero relationships? Eh.
Beato still wants to earn the qualification to be Battler’s opponent, bless her. There are worse reasons to help people. She acknowledges that the ‘witch’s banquet’ that will begin ‘when the door to the Golden Land opens’ will brutally kill Jessica regardless, but it would still be a more compassionate death than what Eva Beatrice would do to her with Endless Magic.
I have to admit, if the true purpose of magic is allegedly to help people and make people happy, why exactly is there a portal to hell with dozens of hungry demons eager to come out and chomp the living? I feel like Virgilia may be deploying some wishful thinking here…
Ronove warns her that she has no way to escape if she gets spotted this time. Beato takes it in stride.
Beato: ……The road to that goal may be long and difficult. …However, if I do not take a step forward here and now, ……I cannot call myself a witch.
Her plan is to somehow channel Jessica’s magic power. In fact, she’s planning to apply the same trick she did with George, channeling the pool of mana in Jessica in order to ‘knock on the doors of Hades’. Ronove warns that this would use up the last of her magic power, leaving her completely vulnerable—and since he’s now employee of EB, he won’t be able to help her in that situation.
Hm, subplot where the Seven Sisters of Purgatory try to form a union? Probably a non-starter when your boss has power over life and death.
Beatrice comments that she will never be able to compensate for her sin except by saving the same number of lives as she’s taken. So a Seirei no Moribito concept, only with a lot more deaths on the ledger. And she is ‘just a golden butterfly’ with nothing to lose. So off we go!
Got to admit, that’s would be a pretty badass parting line. Somehow, though, I don’t think she will die here! Wouldn’t exactly be able to star in five more episodes of this…
Apparently she’s not done, because she adds this:
Beato: Go, my friend. …If there is enough ink, pen the story of my foolish life, and hand it to some fool attempting to walk the same path. Farewell, Ronove…!
Very poetic.
So supposing she successfully resurrects Kanon… what can Kanon do? He* couldn’t beat six of the Sisters of Purgatory teaming up (although admittedly Genji intervened before the attempt), and we’ve established the Chiesters are even stronger. But maybe a decapitation strike against a distracted witch who thinks she’s won has a chance? And of course, what could Kanon do with access to the battery of Jessica’s magical energy?
(*I still 100% think Kanon’s got massive egg vibes. But the (he) thing felt a bit presumptuous, so I’m not going to ‘pressure Kanon to come out’, if you will.)
Kanon’s voice reaches Jessica through some kind of psychic link. Apparently he’s only been given a short lease on life this time around. When Jessica ‘calms her heart’, Kanon is able to manifest in a sort of transparent ghostly form. So this is different to Sayo, who was physically resurrected. Lack of sight is no object:
……Even though she was unable to see, ……somehow, she was still able to sense him clearly.
The parameters of this manifestation are pretty limited.
Kanon I am now even more fragile than smoke from a candle. …So much so, that if one of the living such as you were to touch me, I would be wiped away instantly. ……So please, don’t try to touch me. …Because I am also……holding back my desire……to touch you, Milady.
Know that feel. Sorta. OK, it’s not exactly the same as loving someone on the other end of a computer tube a world away. The person behind the pixels won’t die if I touch their image..!
So, here’s the plan: Kanon erects a ‘stealth barrier’ to cover them, and advises Jessica on how to get out of the room without bumping into everything. With a bit of help, she’s able to quietly walk out of the servant room without being noticed. She feels like it’s a dream, and is afraid to do anything to disrupt the transient miracle… and when the moment comes where she’d enter a safe room and Kanon would leave, she refuses to go. But Kanon promises to stay for as long as possible in the bright and painful world of the living once they get to safety.
Bless…
Anyway, Kanon takes the opportunity to confess that the feelings are mutual. Damn, it seems an age ago that Jessica was singing in that Union Flag dress…
I do hope someone reads this with a screen reader. All this alt text takes so long to transcribe… would hate for it to be for nothing lol.
Jessica asks for one thing: to be called Jessica, not oujosama. Kanon obliges, this time. Ronove sees them leaving, but Ronove is not the type to dob someone in. Indeed, Ronove summons a small gold butterly to help bolster the stealth spell. The narration casually drops a really major lore tidbit.
Kanon was surprised at the magic that butterfly held.
Because it was far more powerful than the stealth barrier Kanon had.
…He may not have known, but that power had originally been Ronove’s.
…An imitation of that had been given to Kanon by Kinzo, and that was what Kanon was using now.
So… Kinzo has definitely encountered Ronove, but did not create him, and made the various ‘furnitures’ in Ronove’s image? Is that right? Inchresting…
Their line of retreat takes Jessica and Kanon to the parlour. Not exactly my first pick of ‘safe room’, but apparently the curtain bundle by the window is a good hiding spot.
Beato arrives in the room as well. Kanon still views her with hostility, and she almost plays it off as a ‘whim’, before admitting the real reason, or something like it.
Kanon and Jessica both thank her for giving them the opportunity to see each other one more time. Kanon especially is very magnanimous, considering she is the one who killed him earlier…
Kanon: I give my gratitude to good witches as a parting gift. …I don’t care about what happened before now, or what will happen in the future. ……All I know is that, in this very moment, …you are without a doubt…a good witch.
Beato leaves and uses the last of her power to seal the door. (She has a lot of ‘last of her power’ to spare huh!) At this point, she’s detected by the Chiesters. The sniping analysis screen pops up, and Chiester45 informs us that the parlour is now guarded by a 72 layer thick wall, ‘attack barrier and magic reactive armour’ that prevents sniping. So there is a defence against this!
Eva Beatrice gives the order to shoot Beato—but non-lethally, since she has something she wants to ask. Ronove and the Chiesters are sent after her.
Truly she has the imagination of a NSFW animator. Any hole will do, but you can be sure penetration will be involved…
The question turns out to be: how did Beato fake her own death? And why come out again? And especially, why are you suddenly going soft?
Beato answers with a wink:
Beato: ……Well, …who knows? ……*cackle*cackle*…!
She doesn’t offer much more than that. It was all just her fickle whim. So EB orders the Chiesters to ‘sew’ her. Oh my. Where’s this going?
Apparently the gold sniper snake thing draws a ‘cross-stitch’ through Beato’s chest. So it’s torture then. She really wants to know.
Eva Beatrice: ……But you’ve always been in the way. You always say warm, pleasant things that shock me. ……What changed you? You explored the depths of evil for one thousand years, so I let you live just to find out…what happened to overturn that millennium?
We get a CG of Beato’s presumed death:
She died as she lived: winking like she just ate something really sour.
So EB continues to torture her with the ‘sewing’, and Beato continues her gay little taunts, and in the end says this:
Eva Beatrice: …So, in other words, the power of the infinite is the power of God! A wonderful power where the more you play wiht it, the more fun ways of playing you find! You used that power as you pleased for one thousand years and went on a rampage! Why are you having a change of heart only now? Don’t tell me you just miss it now that you handed it over to me?
Beato: How could I miss it. The Endless Magic is not magic as you believe it to be. …True magic is in a deep abyss that you most certainly cannot reach.
Eva Beatrice: And you realized what that is……? What…is it?
Beato: *cackle*cackle*cackle*! Wander around for a thousand years without realising that, you foolish witch.
EB gives up, and orders the kill. But Beato refuses to die for the sake of Kanon and Jessica. “She resolutely… refused to die!”
I think this is Beato deploying the ‘real’ sort of magic that we’ve seen used by the various other characters—the type driven by strong emotion and drama. Interesting… if we are to believe Beato, this is a superior form of magic that even Endless Magic can’t stack up against. She requests giving Kanon and Jessica an hour together, in which time Kanon will likely disappear. EB of course refuses and Beato gets her heart sewn up some more.
She’s not immortal, she says. But…
The power of dramatically saying ‘just one more’. The Chiesters, at a loss, discuss exploding her heart from inside. Each time they do something we get a brief animation clip of a glowing stream of light rapidly arcing around. I’ll have to see if I can dig it up in the game’s files. Beato continues to resist.
Eva Beatrice: …………What in the world……are you…?
Beato: ……*cackle*cackle*cackle*. ……You probably cannot understand. ……Even I didn’t understand. ……But still. …Somehow or another, it seems that this is true magic. ………In other words, ……I have now……become it. …I have become……a true witch!!
That’s a suitably dramatic final showdown I think. Resolving the big question of this arc.
And to give us a suitably powerful image to accompany it, the Chiesters blow up Beato’s body, but her heart remains beating, now in midair. This prompts a ‘bakemono da!’ from Chiester410. The narration notes that this magic power is indeed infinite and endless.
So uh… does that mean future episodes of Umineko are going to look like…
The Chiesters say they cannot destroy the heart. Ronove assesses the situation thus:
Ronove: ………….It is probably impossible. No number of people could crush that heart. Much less the likes of the soldiers who serve under His Highness the Dragon King.
Eva Beatrice: In that case, an Endless Witch like me should be able to crush it, right? My power is a god’s power!!
Ronove: I am afraid to say, that your power…cannot leave a single scratch on Beatrice-sama’s endless nature.
I imagine we’ll find out more about this Dragon King eventually. Interesting that he places them on a level below ‘people’. He adds…
Ronove: In the same way that there is no light without knowledge of shadows, ……there is also no endless without knowledge of the limited. ………Before Milady Beatrice’s true endless power, your flimsy magical power is very, very lacking.
Oh, I bet he’s been itching to drop that speech.
After showing up Eva Beatrice quite so dramatically, it seems that Beato is back to being the Beatrice of this joint. We see her form is still faintly there. Kanon seems to be done, and thanks her—telling her she’s done enough with this one kind gesture.
Ronove makes it official:
Ronove: I am afraid to say……that the name of Beatrice-sama should be taken by the person who can be crowned as the Endless Witch. By now, the term ‘predecessor’ refers to you. …Pukkukukukuku.
So! The witch who was on trial was actually Beato. (I might keep calling her that in case the name Beatrice gets passed around again.) Or, I suppose, both Beatrices. It turns out, Eva Beatrice didn’t fail on some technicality of performing the ritual, but on the basis that Beato is better at Beatricing than her, even without her usual powers?
The recipe for serious magic seems to be: get into a really clutch situation and then you’ll find magic will help you rise to the occasion and do something cool as shit. Kanon and Beato agree that they’ll meet ‘in the nightmare of a new night’, which I think strongly suggests that Kanon will now have cross-episode memory? And that perhaps the same 18 souls are getting pulled in and out of Hades for each go-around of the Rokkenjima scenario?
With Kanon gone, Beato’s heart finally shuts down and splats, albeit still beating weakly. An affronted Eva Beatrice taunts her. She seems to have un-exploded by now, because she’s able to smile. Here, let me put the CG without text.
Shoutout to the CG artist for meticulously drawing the specular highlights on her cleavage.
At this point, narrative!Battler shows up in the hallway. Back in Purgatorio, Beato talks about how hard she’s ganbatte-ing to become a good witch to the meta!Battler. She pops the question…
Battler replies: “No good.” (駄目だな。). Beato swears she will definitely one day make the great to oppose him. But Battler means something else, and he drops the catchphrase…
Battler: Yeah, it’s no good. It’s no goddamn good at all. You aren’t my opponent.
Back in the narrative, Eva Beatrice is about to stomp Beato’s heart. And Battler shows up and… in huge letters:
I didn’t crop that by the way.
Anyway Battler somehow full on summons Eva Beatrice to Purgatorio.
Ahahaha god the payoff. Well played, Ryuukishi07. We get a whole new song to accompany this with dramatic brass fitting for a hero.
She immediately calls on the Chiesters to shoot Battler down. But he completely no-sells it, because of course he does. This is Battler we’re talking about, and moreover a Battler who’s had a whole episode to build up his confidence. His magic resistance must be off the scale.
…OK, it literally is:
Chiester45: A-anti-magic resistance, endless nine… E-even mythical-class magical attacks have no effect on the target!!
So I guess there really are straight up RPG stats implied by all of this. Indeed, we’re told that normally magic resistance is measured on a nine-digit scale, with even gods rarely exceeding eight digits so Battler has the value 999999999. He laughs off the attack as if it’s kids playing. It’s reminiscent of Reigen at the end of the first season of Mob Psycho 100, actually.
Now like Battler’s just some kid who doesn’t especially believe in magic, he’s had his confidence broken down before and been killed and resurrected. What happens if you point the scouter at, idk, James Randi?
Anyway, here’s Battler’s explanation of the situation:
He calls Virgilia up to help him fight. So I guess her heroic sacrifice was… not much of a sacrifice? If she’s still chilling in Purgatorio! To Beato, Battler says this:
Battler: Beato, stay back and watch!! I’ll tear it off!! I’ll take this fake witch completely apart!! I won’t let someone like this call themselves a witch!! You protected the honor of true witches!
So, ‘true witches’. Has Battler accepted that witches are real, but still playing the role of the doubter in order to bring down sadistic pricks like Eva Beatrice? That’s a fun development. Although I’m looking forward to Battler squaring off against the new Beato post character development.
Ronove, meanwhile, takes a minute to explain how the game works to Eva Beatrice. Offscreen, so we don’t get to hear about how and when she’s allowed to deploy the red truth.
Battler goes straight for it: not surprisingly, the theory he’s presenting now centres on Eva as the culprit. I don’t know if the previous red text is still in play, but I assume it most likely is.
So, let’s see if we can anticipate Battler’s moves.
- the deaths of Kinzo and all the servants—the circular locked room—have been explained: someone, most likely Kinzo, carried out the murders, and then either committed suicide or died by accident after locking themselves in a room. It’s not clear how this could be pinned on Eva, except perhaps by saying she blackmailed someone into it.
- the deaths of Rosa and Maria: we have confirmation (due to Hideyoshi’s presence) that Eva was in the guest house at the time of the murder, but it’s possible that Rosa killed Maria by accident, and then threw herself on the fence by accident. Alternatively, Hideyoshi could be an accomplice, and lied about her staying indoors with him.
- the deaths of Rudolf, Kyrie and Hideyoshi: Eva was feverish during this incident and out of sight of the others in her room (iirc). She could have been faking the fever, and gone out the window to kill these three, then returned the same way. The state of the corpses was not special. Alternatively, an accomplice Hideyoshi could have shot the other two and then committed suicide.
- the deaths of Krauss and Natsuhi: Eva strangled them, took the corpses out through the window Battler discovered, and left them in the gazebo. George may have seen her leaving or returning in the corridor, so she killed him, took his body to the outside of the parlour, and broke a window to enter before writing the number on the door for an unknown reason.
- the death of Nanjo: happened in a corridor without visual witnesses. nothing to explain.
Since Eva Beatrice wasn’t making much effort to make locked rooms to stump Battler, this is pretty much easy mode. But some redtext could really throw a wrench in things. Let’s see how the inexperienced opponent does against Battler!
He starts with the second twilight. Virgilia has the power to reconstruct scenes on whatever the ‘screen’ is in Purgatorio. Eva Beatrice uses the ‘come, come, try to remember’ incantation to bring Hideyoshi up to testify in her defence.
As we’d expect, Hideyoshi testifies that he was taking care of Eva in her room during the murder. Battler demands that she state it in red or he won’t believe it.
Hideyoshi gives us the following red statements:
- I was in the room the whole time.
- Both before and after the time period of the crime.
This is a less absolute statement than he made before. Evidence that it is physically impossible to lie in red text? Anyway, firstly he only claims he was in the room, and the second statement leaves out the period of the actual crime. Battler picks on the first problem, and demands a declaration that Eva was in the room the whole time.
Eva of course has to decline it. Because, well, in the magical account, she—one version of Eva—was out there doing the crime. Anyway, Battler is immediately able to crush that weaksauce move and declare ‘checkmate’.
Battler’s move for the fourth through sixth twilight is precisely as expected. Eva has no alibi.
Eva Beatrice counters with the following argument: one single woman Eva couldn’t overcome three armed adults. But we’ve already suggested Hideyoshi is an accomplice, so…?
Battler of course has the Devil’s Proof right there ready to go. Poor Eva Beatrice. She has no idea how developed this meta is.
Ronove and Virgilia are having a fantastic time acting as pseudo-referees. ‘The witch side cannot object to this move.’
Eva Beatrice is now extremely tilted. Battler meanwhile is being… almost, hell, no, definitely flirty with Beato.
He is fully showing off for her at this point, huh.
Battler: If I accept her as a witch, ……all of your stubbornness counts for nothing! I don’t care what kind of irrational argument or twisted logic I have to use, I’ll crush her with all of my heart and soul!!
Beato really couldn’t have picked a better way to show off for Battler than that stunt with the heart. Stubborn defiance, standing up for his friends/family, grandiose gestures, he loves that shit. No wonder he’s so fired up now lmao.
The seventh and eighth twilights are passed over in summary, they’re apparently so uninteresting.
But then the music changes to another new dance track (it’s quite a vibe, it takes the witch harpsichord themes and puts them to a strong beat) and Eva Beatrice drops an ahaha.wav. She declares she’s grasped the rules, and rewinds to the fourth through sixth twilights and has Ronove reconstruct the death of Kyrie.
Virgilia grasps what’s going on pretty quick, saying it’s a ‘rare attack’ (the rewinding, I presume). She brings up the improbability of the three survivors going out for food when they had been prepared to go without until the next day. We get the following declarations in red.
- Kyrie didn’t think that they needed food.
- Since going without food for about a day wouldn’t kill them, she claimed that they should not leave the guesthouse.
- And yet, she herself… suggested that they leave the guesthouse to get food.
This seems pretty unconvincing to me. People change their minds about stuff all the time. It’s possible that Kyrie’s assessment overwhelmed her prior rational judgement about the danger. However, Eva Beatrice claims that she manipulated Kyrie magically to bring this about. She states she can justify the existence of this magic with a devil’s proof.
Battler responds in the same way I did, although he sounds rather hesitant. He says there’s good reasons Kyrie would change her mind.
Virgilia advises him that he is obliged to explain Kyrie’s change of heart. That seems like a big ask. This seems like a situation where both sides could present a devil’s proof and leave it ambiguous. Battler is not permitted to summon a ghost witness, presumably because that’s an act of magic which he’s trying to deny. She further tells him he needs tangible evidence of the reason for Kyrie’s change of mind.
Again, I call foul. There’s no reason a mundane worldview can’t permit people displaying contradictory actions.
EB jumps in with more red:
- no reason for her changing her mind was ever told to anyone, nor was one ever written down
Ronove says Battler only has ‘that move’, something that was Beatrice’s specialty. Are they driving back around to the contrapositive? Beatrice begs him to tell her, and Virgilia chides her for not thinking.
Meanwhile, more red:
- Until the last instant before she died, Kyrie maintained her pattern fo behavior which states ‘I won’t go to the mansion to get food’
This is interesting. It suggests Kyrie has an ulterior motive for going to the mansion.
Frankly, if your best proof that witches are real is that someone took a hypocritical and misguided action while tired and hungry, I’m going back around to thinking witches are fake.
Battler starts to get flustered. This is his big Gamer Flaw. If he’s in familiar territory, he plays with gusto and crushes his opponents with ease, but as soon as he sees a new strategy, he panics.
EB notices that the game is kind of unbalanced: the witch needs only win once.
I am honestly a bit confused by this. It seems like the goalposts have shifted. Previously, Battler could use the Devil’s Proof to summon up various accomplices, traps, and devices, but now he suddenly has to provide objective evidence.
But this is clearly driving for a use of the contrapositive, the other big theme from this episode. The contrapositive starts with the fact that \(A \implies B\) is equivalent to \(\neg B \implies \neg A\). So, in a situation of uncertain inference, observing A and B together (a black raven) is evidence of \(A \implies B\) (‘all ravens are black’), and so is seeing a non-black non-raven (‘if an object is not black, it is not a raven’), so finding a green apple is evidence that ‘all ravens are black’. This is sufficiently counterintuitive that it has been deemed a paradox, as we discussed earlier.
So, Eva’s argument is essentially all irrational actions are magic, i.e. if something is irrational, then it is magic.
- the contrapositive of this is all non-magical actions are rational, i.e. if something is not magical, then it is rational.
- the inverse is all rational actions are non-magical, i.e. if something is rational, it is not magic.
- the converse is all magical actions are irrational, i.e. if something is magical, it is not rational.
Only the contrapositive is logically equivalent to the original statement.
So, Battler’s argument could be to construct the contrapositive, and then point to a non-magical action that is irrational as disproof of this claim. That people make irrational decisions for reasons other than magic basically goes without saying.
Anyway, the fact that Kyrie didn’t want food but went to get food is still an odd, irrational action that it is interesting to try to explain. We could hypothesise that there is something else in the mansion that caused Kyrie to propose going out there, and the food was just a convenient cover story.
Ronove announces that there is a time limit. Is there a chess clock behind all this? It must be a pretty long one lol.
Virgilia is about to declare Battler’s resignation, and then Beato butts in—on the human side. Love itttttt.
Fucking called it on the contrapositive and the ulterior motive. It uses the contrapositive in a slightly different way than I did. How exactly does this use the contrapositive? Let’s see if we can break it down into syllogisms. Here are our premises:
- If Kyrie does not have a sufficient reason, she will not go to the mansion.
- ‘Getting food’ is not a sufficient reason.
- Kyrie went to the mansion.
So, the contrapositive of (1) is:
- If Kyrie went to the mansion, she had a sufficient reason.
(3) and (4) combine by modus ponens to give
- Kyrie had a sufficient reason.
Actually, both sides are essentially making this argument. The argument establishes that a reason exists, but it does not supply those reasons. (A similar argument is used to suggest ‘dark matter’ in cosmology, and leaves the puzzle of explaining what the ‘dark matter’ is.) Eva Beatrice is proposing
- Magic is a sufficient reason.
And heavily implying, without proof:
- There are no other sufficient reasons to go to the mansion.
Essentially therefore Eva is making an argument by the excluded middle: Kyrie’s reason for going to the mansion was either to get food or magic, and it was not to get food, so therefore it must be magic. In short, this is the fallacy of the false dilemma.
Beato adds this is not what she refers to as a “Hempel’s Raven” argument, but an example of Battler-style “chessboard thinking”. Damn these two are gonna be a really dorky power couple!
I would argue it is sufficient to demand proof that there are no other plausible reasons to defeat Eva’s argument, but it seems that Beato and Battler want to go the extra step and provide a constructive proof by providing a plausible, evidenced reason of their own.
It seems that it is within the human side’s rights to reconstruct a crime scene from any part of the game, even if they can’t call witnesses. Eva Beatrice laughs, and reiterates that
- Kyrie did not leave anything written down
As the one individual on Battler’s side who can cross the border between worlds, Beato has to be the one to inspect the scene.
So, ulterior motives then. Something important enough for Kyrie to risk death to go into the mansion. What could it be? Beato finds the following in Kyrie’s pockets:
- handkerchief
- tissue
- key to her house
- stub of a plane ticket
- lighter
- cigarette butt
- hundred-yen coin
So some possibilities. Possibly Kyrie was on some vitally important medication that she was not keen for the others to know about. Possibly Kyrie had received a message from the culprit, perhaps an offer to negotiate privately, and she took Rudolf because she wanted to bargain for their lives. Possibly she just imagined such negotiation would be possible regardless. Possibly she had deduced that the culprit was Eva, and left with Hideyoshi to propose a deal with Eva behind the scenes—but the deal went south and she was gunned down. Or possibly she suspected Krauss and Natsuhi were the culprits and wished to get away from them.
Anyway, Eva Beatrice trash talks a lot. Blah blah. Get to the arguments!! Beato begs Kyrie’s corpse to give her something, saying she will bear whatever humiliation. She despairs at finding anything, but Battler appears (guess he can step in? it’s the same mansion backgrounds) to assure her she’s done enough.
Battler goes for the cigarette butt. So perhaps that’s the key—it’s drugs maybe? Not exactly: he drops a big piece of evidence…
Which means: either she had a meeting with someone who does smoke, or that ‘cigarette butt’ is something else entirely. Sometimes a cigar is not a cigar. Perhaps there’s a document she had to burn? Hmm.
EB counters by saying she must have just picked up a cigarette butt dropped by Rudolf. Battler pulls a fucking Sherlock Holmes type of move and declares it’s the wrong brand of cigarette, which Beato and Virgilia confirm. (Virgilia has now fully become the referee.)
Eva Beatrice just has to show what a baaaad girl she is…
That’s so fucking funny that’s like pantomime villain shit. Also, it seems it’s fine for Eva Beatrice to just casually make up motives when she wants to?
Battler continues to get Beato to rifle through corpses. This time, Hideyoshi. It turns out that Kyrie was holding one of Hideyoshi’s cigarettes. This is apparently the key piece of evidence Battler needs, and he gets back on his game. We rewind to the point right after Rosa and Maria’s bodies had been found…
So maybe the cigarette paper was used to communicate a message and then burned to hide it?
Not quite. (I am thinking in totally the wrong genre with all this spy shit!) Here’s Battler’s argument:
Battler: ……As you’ve just heard, after the second twilight, an inspection was done for all the rooms in the guesthouse. ………At that time, Kyrie-san found something that shouldn’t exist, in a place where it shouldn’t be.
So she found one of Hideyoshi’s cigarettes somewhere? Indeed, Battler says, in the ash tray of Hideyoshi’s room. But Eva hated Hideyoshi’s smoking (as we saw right at the beginning of this episode! Wow, full circle.) so he wouldn’t have smoked if she was in the room.
Which means that Kyrie had found this cigarette butt, followed Battler’s chain of logic to deduce that Eva must have left the room, and thus she and Rudolf went to interrogate Hideyoshi?
So we get to the repetition request. Damn, this is some convoluted logic, but I think it is actually valid mystery story logic. We were told about the cigarette discomfort thing during one of the boat rides (I can’t remember if I noted it here in this liveblog since it didn’t really seem that important), so it’s not new information. Although not knowing about the cigarette butt, I think it would have been very hard to deduce exactly why Kyrie decided to go to the mansion. But it fits what we know of her character: quick-thinking, good at working through chains of counterfactual logic.
Battler demands this to be repeated:
This cigarette butt was stubbed out in the ashtray of a room in which Uncle Hideyoshi and Aunt Eva were resting!
This is denied, not surprising since we’ve already established that Eva left this room.
So yeah, now we have this piece of information, the rest follows pretty naturally. Kyrie informed Rudolf of her suspicions, and then attempted to isolate and interrogate Hideyoshi. But Eva followed them out there and ambushed them.
Since this defeats Eva’s excluded middle argument, it defeats her claim to magic.
Eva Beatrice is the one to be flustered now.
She’s now conflating herself with Eva. Curious.
We get a whole series of variants of this CG of Battler pointing at the camera and poking your eye out with different expressions as Battler presses the point home.
Virgilia straight up calls Eva Beatrice a ‘false witch dressed up with truths and falsehoods’ at this point.
At this point, Eva Beatrice’s sprite actually starts flickering into Eva’s sprite. Well, isn’t that something. But, she gets back to her creepy expression and pointy-toothed smile. She says…
Eva Beatrice ……I admit it, I really can’t repulse al moves related to Ushiromiya Eva being the culprit. ……I may have been dragged down from the position of Golden Witch, …and maybe I am now being called Ushiromiya Eva…
……But you know what? That by itself doesn’t mean that witches and magic are denied!! …I’ll teach you now…
I’ll teach you that I am not Ushiromiya Eva, nor a human, ……but a real witch!!! Look and see this red truth!!
So at this point we cut back to the parlour in the present. Battler and and Eva are on their way there after finding Nanjo’s corpse. Even Beato feels apprehensive. Eva Beatrice starts boasting about her move.
What’s she gonna do, perform magic right in front of narrative!Battler? Open the Golden Land and start the demon party? Show him Beato’s corpse after the fight just now?
No, simpler than that. She axiomatises the following…
- After Jessica was injured, Eva was constantly under Battler’s supervision.
- Battler is neither the culprit nor an accomplice.
- By this, we can establish a perfect alibi for Eva.
- There are no more than 18 humans on this island.
This last one is shown with a red spiderweb…
The implication would therefore have to be that somehow a blinded Jessica was able (and motivated!) to kill Nanjo. She adds a brief aside about how she also needs to rule out animal culprits such as orangutans, so we also get…
- No life forms other than humans have any connection to this game.
This is an interesting claim. Are witches not ‘life forms’, even if they are not ‘human’? As she says this, the spiderweb expands to fill more of the screen.
Eva Beatrice then axiomitises a list of who’s dead and alive—all the characters you’d expect. [Originally I paraphrased this list, but I was told the exact phrasing is important, so let me copy it out in full.]
- Kinzo is dead.
- Krauss is dead.
- Natsuhi is dead.
- Hideyoshi is dead.
- George is dead.
- Rudolf is dead.
- Kyrie is dead.
- Rosa is dead.
- Maria is dead.
- Genji is dead.
- Shannon is dead.
- Kanon is dead.
- Gohda is dead.
- Kumasawa is dead.
- Nanjo is dead.
While:
- Battler is alive.
- Eva is alive.
- Jessica is alive.
[Edited to add: The Japanese here is 「Xは死亡すている」for each dead character, and 「Xは生存すている」for alive characters. These are both ongoing verb forms (the te-iru form), sort of like the gerund in English. So it could hyper-literally (and un-idiomatically) be translated as ‘X is being-dead’ and ‘Y is living’.
I am not sure how this exact phrasing has bearing on the case. The order they’re listed in is essentially going down family rank order: first Kinzo, then the subfamilies in order of precedence, then the servants with ‘one winged eagle’ servants first, then finally Nanjo who has no direct tie.]
Which means it seems like she’s trying to fork Jessica being an accomplice and magic being real—Beatrice’s strategy in episode 2.
Have we examined Nanjo’s corpse yet? Like, how was he killed, maybe he committed suicide or died by accident? And, further, while all of the other murders are premeditated, could Jessica have unintentionally killed Nanjo? She wasn’t exactly in a good state of mind there.
- Eva was with you the whole time.
- So committing a crime was impossible for her.
- Of course, Battler-kun isn’t the culprit.
- He wasn’t forging an alibi for her, and he took the possibility that she was the culprit into account, watching her actions carefully.
- No chance existed for her to do anything suspicious!
- In short, at the time of the crime, only Nanjo and Jessica were in the servant room.
It might be some small comfort that Nanjo was actually in the corridor outside the servant room in the narration we saw. Anyway, she also jumps to block accusing Jessica.
- Ushiromiya Jessica has not committed murder!
- She was not involved with Nanjo’s murder!!
- Her eyes were completely blocked.
- It’s impossible for her to carry out a murder like that!
The reference to ‘murder’ here is very specific. Note that she used the word murder and not death. If Nanjo was not murdered, then Jessica could not be involved in his murder by definition. So that leaves the possibility that Nanjo died by accident or suicide.
- Neither Eva nor Battler killed Nanjo, nor where they involved!!
So yeah, again, here’s my hypothesis: Nanjo died by accident. So repetition request: Nanjo’s death was a murder. That should get us on the right page at least. But damn, she just doesn’t stop.
- The culprit who killed Nanjo was neither Battler nor Eva nor Jessica
So now we have a culprit who killed Nanjo. I presume then that Nanjo’s death was a suicide. She says ‘in other words, it wasn’t one of the survivors. Get iit?’ but not in red, underlining my suspicion.
Battler’s first move is to propose that Jessica had an alter (he speaks in terms of ‘multiple personalities’) who did the deed. EB counters with the ‘murder was impossible because blind’ axiom. Still, she clarifies:
- No actions caused by Jessica’s body had any relation to or influence on the murder of Nanjo!
- This also applies to Battler and Eva.
The spiderwebs have gotten pretty wild by this point.
At last he mentions the suicide (自殺) theory. Which feels a bit early if that’s the solution.
So here’s the next declaration:
- Nanjo’s death was a homicide (他殺).
- …Of course, it was with a direct method of murder, not a trap.
- They readied their weapon, and killed him with it directly from the front at point-blank range!
- The culprit appeared openly before Nanjo’s eyes, and as they both looked at each other’s faces, the culprit killed him…!!
This doesn’t rule out the idea that Nanjo committed suicide in front of a mirror, assuming suicide is a type of homicide. Kind of a crazy idea but, you gotta have a certain level of moon logic to play this game with a witch.
Faced with this, Battler starts to doubt the red letters. Eva Beatrice says this is tantamount to doubting Beato’s honour. Ronove confirms that the red text is telling the truth. He and Virgilia begrudgingly praise the beautiful red checkmate before them.
I believe they know more than they’re allowed to say. Because obviously if you could just do a murder, then arbitrarily systematically declare no humans did it in red, it wouldn’t be much of a game. I think, despite my previous statement that magic is real, this game only works if it is possible to come up with a mundane explanation. The same reason Beato can’t just declare ‘a witch dunnit’ in red.
But Eva Beatrice just can’t stop herself. She declares…
- Absolutely no factors other than humans participate in this game board
And ‘therefore’…
- The one who killed Nanjo was definitely a human
- A human, with their feet on the ground, held up a weapon and killed with it
- Right before his eyes!
Which is straight up saying a witch didn’t dunnit. Though she attempts to clarify this to a human who may have been able to use magic.
Eva Beatrice needs to learn to when to stop, because at this point the witch story is increasingly contradictory. We know that no living humans exist beyond Eva, Jessica, Battler and Nanjo. So the idea that a witch is a type of human is inadmissble unless that witch is one of the four. However, she already said that no actions caused by Eva’s body had any influence on the murder of Nanjo. She herself—Eva Beatrice—is either an influence of Eva’s body or an additional human. Both of these possibilities are ruled out. She’s just dug her own grave.
Pretty sure it’s going to be suicide in front of a mirror.
Battler starts to give in, but Beato gives him a pep talk.
She reminds him that in chess, a game usually takes a long time… unless a player takes self-destructive moves to throw the game, creating a Fool’s Mate. Stopping thinking is equivalent to this. It’s a nice little interaction between them—a real testament to how far their dynamic has changed—but also I want to know whether my pet theory is right or not! I had this problem back in game 2 lmao.
Battler gives up and cries, so Beato decides to move in his stead. A move that humans cannot make, but witches can. “I will use the red… to deny witches!”
This is suicide, says Eva Beatrice—you’ll get yourself with it too. EB retorts that neither of them are real witches anyway.
Beato: ………Then that is convenient. In this place now, witches did not exist from the beginning. I will strip this deception away myself.
She says that if she is a witch, it is only a ‘false witch who got addicted to power, like you’.
Eva Beatrice begs her not to—“I don’t want to be human!” she says, so I guess this isn’t a murder-suicide so much as a… demystification? Ronove plays along and forces her to sit down, even though Beato is about to erase him as well. She apologises to Virgilia for drawing her into her disciple’s games.
Finally, she also lays out the exact stakes of the game…
Beato: ……If we let this move escape us, she will be revived as a witch in the true sense, and this time, she will control this whole island. …All nightmares will be hers to do with as she pleases, and this island will fall into the deepest hell of the evil witch’s constant fantasies, for all eternity.
Deepest hell of fantasies, you say? Normally that would sound pretty hot, but not with this host. In any case, why just the island? What exactly is Rokkenjima?
Battler begs her not to rush into a suicidal move, promising to think of a miracle. Beato says he’s already timed out. I swear he’s spent much longer deliberating in the past, but maybe that really ran up the chess clock? Beato jokes about how he was, not so long ago, fighting furiously to deny her.
Anyway, after all that, Beato asks him to cover his ears. So whatever doozy of a red truth she’s about to drop, we don’t get to hear it?? Oh come on, I get the character reasons why, but man.
Beato: ………In a few moments, I will deny witches in red. I will slice up the game board that she has laid out with her red.
……By doing that, ………I will probably lose my form as a witch as well. ……If you also hear the red truth I will tell, you will understand my true form.
………Even if you alone cover your ears, the truth will not change at all. ……However, …even so, I want you alone to cover your ears. ………………..I at least want to be a witch…in your eyes. …Please.
Eva Beatrice meanwhile throws a tantrum. Beato takes the stage, and makes her final speech.
She turns and smiles at Battler, who obliges her last request.
……To protect her final…honor as a witch, he put his hands against his ears, …rejecting the truth.
And he howled. So that not even a bit of what she was saying would slip into his ears.
So, with Battler screaming and so on, we only get told, not shown, how Beato slices up all the red text and counters Eva Beatrice. If Battler had listened in, we’re told…
……He would probably have understood all the riddles on the island, all of the magic and tricks, locked rooms, spells, curses, legends, …and the entire tale of anger and sadness.
However, ……Battler would only learn what that was when he reached the truth by himself.
Yes. …From the beginning, ……Beatrice had wished that Battler would reach that truth by himself.
It was something that shouldn’t be reached by being told.
It was a truth that Battler would have to drag himself to with his own power.
There’s a sizzling sound effect as her declarations take effect on Eva Beatrice.
Beato retorts:
……Learn that even with a mount of gold, even with magic to split the sea, there are some things you can never obtain. ………Come, show yourself. Show your true form, ……Ushiromiya Eva!!
We cut back to the narrative. Battler has figured out that Eva is the culprit. Somehow. She’s got the gun.
*cackle*cackle*cackle* ……ahhahahahahahahahahaha!! Took you long enough to notice, Battler-kun!!
And then she blows him away, ‘without hesitation or mercy’! We get access to his death screen immediately.
- Battler
-
Shot and killed by Ushiromiya Eva inside the mansion.
The murder weapon was a sawed-off rifle from Kinzo’s collection.Jessica lost her eyesight. There was only her and Battler.
Wolves and Sheep Puzzle.
As he dies, Battler (seemingly collapsing ‘meta’ and ‘narrative’ Battlers here) understands that, given we now know the explanations exist,
magic is fake as shit after all!!
…so in short, conclusive confirmation that this game is not just winnable but that in fact he is correct, or in his words, “one fact which is extremely unfair for us…….namely, ‘it is possible to deny all magic’”. (Not quite sure who the ‘us’ is in this sentence. The human side?)
But he also regrets that he couldn’t solve the game, and thus forced Beato to sacrifice himself.
And that, finally, is the end of the chapter. The final chapter is called The Witch Illusion. I think I’m going to press on and read it right now, but I’ll start another page of the liveblog to do it, since 10,000 words is already a lot.
Holy fucking shit though. What a finale!
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