Let’s read Umineko! - episode 3 - part 6

originally posted at https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/163655...

So we’ve established

• 19 years ago, there was a human named Beatrice in a secret mansion on Rokkenjima called Kuwadorian.
• she seems to believe she lived there her whole life, and is deeply unaware of the outside world.
• she died shortly afterwards, when Rosa accidentally discovered her and led her to the shore.
• according to meta!Beatrice, and partly herself, she is the soul of the original Beatrice trapped in a new human body created by Kinzo.

We have still yet to establish

• the identity of ‘silver!Beatrice’ who seems to have visited Kuwadorian at some point in the past, and is portrayed as having similar powers to the familiar ‘gold!Beatrice’.
• who silver!Beatrice was talking to at that time.

Battler immediately questions whether Rosa was correct to believe that Beatrice had died at this time.

Red text in 3… 2…

No, actually, meta!Battler inspects the body from his vantage point (what is that exactly?) and concludes she’s really dead.

He still asks for confirmation, and gets it. She’s definitely dead, says meta!Beatrice.

Well, who are you then, Ms. Not Dead, says meta!Battler. Nevermind that confirmed dead people have shown up in ‘Purgatorio’ before…

Beatrice explains the death of her ‘vessel’ simply broke the cage keeping her tied to the physical world. ‘Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can even imagine’, indeed.

Fine, says Battler. He sips tea as we return to the narration.

Suddenly we are in first-person narration as the spirit of Beatrice, watching Rosa shake her corpse.

“אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה”, huh Beatrice?

Beatrice’s memories now quickly return to her. She is now vulnerable to the sun, and finds it easier to maintain a butterfly form than a humanoid ghost form. She resolves to bide her time, regain her magic powers, and ultimately take her revenge on Kinzo.

Meta!Battler steps back in, summarising.

Sneering is very important when you’re a witch.

Kinzo, apparently, quickly moved to trap Beatrice on the island and prevent her regaining her power. Battler suggests a butterfly net, and Beatrice says the magical equivalent is the small Shinto shrine on a reef off the coast of Rokkenjima. Wasn’t that there before Kinzo ever arrived?

Ronove says something curious.

Beatrice explains that the old Shinto shrine, built by an ‘Eastern mage’, had long since lost its power, but Kinzo repaired it to trap her there. The fact it was Eastern, not Western magic meant Beatrice didn’t have the expertise to counter it effectively. The Eastern magic reduced the effectiveness of Western magic, meaning it would take many times longer than a thousand days for Beatrice to regain her power.

For the next twenty years, Kinzo used various kinds of magic to try to recapture Beatrice, but luckily for her, failed every time.

The mysterious hierarchy of mages pops up again.

Battler recalls all of Kinzo’s talk about, as he puts it, ‘probabilistic miracles’. Beatrice says he ‘worked out’ the 13-sacrifice ritual as a means to revive her. Kinzo would have a 5 in 18 chance of surviving and seeing Beatrice again.

Beatrice says she does feel some gratitude for having a few decades that weren’t boring.

Beatrice would definitely be organising raids on 4chan if this story happened in the early 2000s.

Battler refuses, naturally, to accept this magic story. He demands to know who Beatrice is. Beatrice says she is indeed the 19th person, but uses Battler’s catchphrase (one of them) right back at him.

The audacity!

And then she drops that serious redtext we’ve been waiting for.

There are no more than 18 humans on this Rokkenjima! Battler doesn’t like this one bit.

Beatrice compares blaming one of the 18 to castling, a last resort defence. (Don’t some chess strats do it really early though?)

Now, she says, comes the hard part.

She will, she says, come at him all at once. She already has a ‘thorough knowledge‘ of what Battler is vulnerable to.

We get a montage through the various characters, ending with Beatrice manifesting in front of her portrait and the clock striking 12 (even though it only rings five times…).

Next: The Beginning of the Ritual.