Let’s read Umineko! - episode 4 - chapter 16

Jessica makes her way through the spooky Ushiromiya mansion to her room to get ‘tested’. We get a few bgs of Jessica’s room, which is both huge and also I think new to us? Maybe we saw it a few episodes back. Anyway, she locks herself in, so I guess we’re not done with locked room puzzles… or maybe they just like to tease us.

Ronove manifests just as she decides to unlock the door again, just in case it’s against the rules. Applauding her prosocial instinct to try to protect the hostages, even at risk to herself. We can add ‘how did Ronove get inside’ to the list of puzzles to solve, although at this point one extra secret door seems pretty small compared to the network of hidden tubes we were positing to get everyone into Kuwadorian… assuming this scene is even ‘happening’ anyway.

Ronove declares he serves as ‘head furniture for the Master, the 27th of the 72’—these being the 72 Goetic Demons, but which Master does he have in mind? Probably Kinzo since he uses a different title for Beatrice.

Anyway, Ronove says something very interesting here…

Ronove to Jessica: '......Ah, yes, ...Genji is like my little brother. Or perhaps he was my true form in this world. ......Perhaps you could even say he was a vessel.'

We previously observed Virgilia ‘hatching’ out of Kumasawa; does this then mean we should consider that all the major demons bear some relation to the human characters? Under the ‘fictionalised account’ theory, we could imagine that Ronove is a character constructed with heavy inspiration from Genji, or perhaps the role he holds in the house. His mannerism could hardly be more different from Genji, but a heightened fantasy version of the ‘head butler’ role?

Genji sends out some gold butterflies, which manifests as a letter describing Kinzo’s ‘simple test’. Which comes in the form of a question. Of course, we cut away before we get to know what that question is. Really loading a lot of guns to fire all at once, it seems.

George’s test takes place in the infamous gazebo of proposal. Gaap appears to administer his test. If all the demons are supposed to correspond to human characters, who is the ‘vessel’ for Gaap? We’ve already ticked off Kumasawa and Genji. Sayo and Kanon both seem to already have some supernatural stuff going on, so they probably have another role. That leaves… Gohda, Nanjo? (Trans Gohda theory, let’s go.) Or perhaps one of the non-Eagle-qualifying Ushiromiyas, such as Natsuhi or Kyrie? Assuming the ‘Beatrice’ author is a resident of the house, most likely a servant, it would be more likely to be Natsuhi than anyone.

(I should probably check whether Gohda is ever onscreen with Ronove.)

So, what is the test? Sacrifice one to gain two, or die. Sounds like it will be the other three cousins? In that case it’d be a “vote to kill” situation.

No, not quite, it’s character dependent, and it’s whoever’s ‘most needed and most loved’ for each. George gets:

And Jessica gets:

So it’s a trolley problem! Classic! This sort of ‘choose which to sacrifice’ choice was really popular in games for a while, particular for Bioware who for a period seemed to have a mandate to include at least one such choice per game, however contrived it felt. Another example appears, if I remember right, in a modern Wolfenstein game where a Nazi commander forces you to choose which member of your squad to kill.

One thing I’m not sure about is how the ‘everyone else’ clause interacts with the other tests. Like if George and Jessica both choose to ‘everyone else’ and save their preferred hostage, will that combo shield Kanon and Sayo, and George and Jessica themselves for that matter? If so, would it be meta to have multiple people pick ‘everyone else’? Probably not, since there are people who aren’t shielded. But I don’t think Kinzo would do that, so… we take the characterwise OR of the individual sacrifice choices? And if any player picks to sacrifice ‘everyone else’, tough shit for whoever tried to save them? …ok, I’m being daft imagining there’s some consistent rule for something like this. The point is clearly just to fuck with the kids.

Gaap offers George a coin, and hilariously he replies…

George: ......A coin? How would you choose between three options with something that only has two sides?

It might be a life-or-death situation where you’re having to choose which of your family members to sacrifice, but it is never a bad time for pedantry.

The different demeanours of Gaap and Ronove are interesting. Both of them give a little speech about how it’s now a demon island in which morality can be set aside, but for Gaap it is a vindictive, while Ronove presents it with his usual arrogant humour (‘dunked fully into the netherworld like cheese fondue’).

Anyway, the other question is, what answer is Kinzo looking for? Given his actions in the story so far, ‘everyone else’ seems like the obvious one. (Surely Kinzo has nothing but contempt for anyone who’d choose to save the town in Life Is Strange).

In fact, here’s Kinzo, ready to give one of his classic Kinzo Speeches and tell us what the correct answer is… He asks the Chiesters. Chiester45 hesitates, which gets her a chewing out. Chiester00 declares that she would sacrifice her own life to protect others, as a weapon should. I think it’s very funny that she has a little scar on one of her fuzzy rabbit ears.

Kinzo, lecturing Chiester00: 'You are merely answering the way you have been told to answer, repeating the answer you have been indoctrinated with!! You are the same as that other rabbit a second ago. You still live without having chosen a purpose or a goal to live for...!! Filth whose life has no value...! It would fit you well to crush you down and use you as fodder for the other livestock!!'

Of course, there is a correct, un-indoctrinated answer of what purpose you would choose, and it is exactly what Kinzo would choose, and he will do violence until you agree with him. That’s how you get people to choose their own path in life.

Chiester00 does not take very well to being berated by her commanding officer and having to thank him for it.

Chiester410, meanwhile, declares that she would immediately sacrifice the one she loves and get it over with.

Chiester410 If you don’t have anyone to love, you won’t be hurt, and even then, you still might be able to love someone again someday.

I don’t think Kinzo will like that one, somehow. He proposes a variant, where she’d lose memories of the one she loves instead.

Anyway, I suppose I’m not giving Kinzo enough credit, because he says the real correct answer is to choose quickly with conviction and put a good reason behind it. Because you have to be the Übermensch to command the Ushiromiyas. (The funny thing is, I feel like the adult Ushiromiyas would probably go straight to ‘everyone else’ if they took this test, though I doubt their reasons would satisfy Kinzo.)

Kinzo declares he was once given that question himself, and it’s obvious which one he picked, resulting in gold, possession of Beatrice etc. So presumably at some point Kinzo massacred his family to secure hold of the original Beatrice.

So, time to see what we get from the kids. Jessica elects for the self-sacrifice option. Makes sense; it’s the obvious ‘good-aligned’ choice, but well, idk, is her bravado all talk? She’s had to accept a lot of shitty circumstances. Let’s see if we can predict the rest.

I see it playing out one of two ways. One is, four kids, four choices, which means George would be the ‘sacrifice loved one’ person (I don’t wanna delete an incorrect prediction after reading the chapter but during editing, I’m not even sure why I thought this… just general anti-George sentiment I suppose.) The other is, everyone picks ‘sacrifice self’ until Maria.

OK, let’s see if I’m right.

Jessica says that she chose her answer because the other two would both be absolutely unacceptable. Ronove calls this a pretty mid reason, and prods her to give a better one. She says she couldn’t imagine living the rest of her life having sacrificed Kanon, as a horrible unforgiveable woman living in regret. And killing everyone else would be a ‘cross she has to bear’, and Kanon would have to bear, for the rest of her life. Curiously Christian phrasing, let’s check the Japanese… no it is literally that term, 十字架 (jyuujika): “cross (for crucifixion); the Cross (of Christ)” per jisho.org.

Jessica asks Ronove to take Kanon a message, saying to live to the fullest (人生を、思い切り生きて, jinsei wo, omoi kiri ikite) the life of the ‘real Kanon-kun’ whose name she still does not know.

Virgilia is, helpfully, broadcasting the scene of the decisions to the prisoners in the dungeon with a magic mirror. Kanon immediately volunteers to be sacrificed in Jessica’s place, but that’s not an option.

The Chiesters appear and draw Virgilia away. Apparently Kinzo’s whole routine really got to them. Don’t they have drill sergeants in the King Arthur Space Corps? Anyway, this feels like a setup for Kanon doing some heroics. Though given all previous episodes, I can’t help but think it won’t end well.

Before that, George gets to decide. I think given the scene that just played out, it wouldn’t make a lot of narrative sense for George to do anything but self-sacrifice here. Probably setup for the Sayo/Kanon team up we’ve been enjoying for the last couple episodes…

Gaap, apparently wanting to stir the pot a bit, leaks that Jessica went for self-sacrifice.

OOH. He didn’t go self-sacrifice. So perhaps we’re on the ‘one answer per kid’ branch. C’mon George, I wanna hear some incredibly inhuman George Logic.

He isn’t choosing Sayo, so my prediction was wrong. Not giving George enough credit. George surprises me by going for option 3!! Which means ‘sacrifice loved one’ and ‘reject choice’ are still on the table for Battler and Maria.

Gaap uses the phrase “I’m alright, Jack”, which is unfamiliar to me, even though apparently it’s British! In Japanese, 自分さえ良ければいいと: something like, ‘as long as it’s me, if it’s good it’s good’. Nice idiomatic translation.

George denies this, though. He says what he means is that he is willing to make enemies of his family by declaring his engagement to Sayo. So he’s already prepared to sacrifice his relationship to them. He says he was prepared to make the entire world his enemy for her sake.

Somehow I’m less into this when it isn’t gay.

Anyway, by this logic, the rest of the family can die in a basement. “You’re going to become a terrible demon in the future.” she says, comparing him to Kinzo. She acts like it’s a foregone conclusion that he will succeed.

Notably, George’s glasses get shiny when he’s being cold and severe like this. You know, Gendo Ikari style. But the glint goes away, and then comes back with a… fascinating expression.

George looks to the side as Gaap says 'Ehheheheheh...... I'm impressed... I didn't expect you to be able to say so much.'

He just looks kind of peeved.

But what of Battler and Maria? Not yet. Gaap challenges George to carry out the sacrifices himself. Aha, that’s a good twist. George’s face is getting increasingly twisted up… he’s not gonna do it.

George glaring at the camera as Gaap says 'Ha, ............hahahahahaha! Then return to the guesthouse right away, and kill Battler and Maria! When that is done, I will bring you the other hostages. Execute each of them except Shannon before her eyes! You can do it, right?'

He looks like he’s a minor delinquent character who’s about to get beaten up by the MC in a shōnen manga.

George insists that he can do it. And, ok, I have to give him this one: he declares he’ll start with Gaap. Here’s George Expression #3 to round out the set:

George grinning and looking at the camera, saying '.........Well, for lack of a better option... the first one will be you, then—I hope that won't be a problem?'

Didn’t think I’d be saying this but well played George. He’s got the whole wizard act down.

And since ‘Ushiromiya kids turn the tables’ is where we’re actually going with this chapter, we cut back to Jessica punching Ronove in the face. And she’s performing the ‘I deserve to be head’ narrative now—her previous answer was ‘as a maiden’ (乙女 otome, young girl).

I’m not giving the siblings enough credit—I figured it would be Battler to pull something like this but that’s not how Umineko rolls, every time someone gets put in an impossible situation like this they come out swinging. So it’s time for a battle scene. And that means… risque Gaap battle CGs, check this out:

Gaap launching a kick against a red background. The camera is positioned underneath her, really emphasising all the sideboob in her outfit.

And then, of course, as has been the pattern every time, the cool ‘don’t fuck with humans’ moment is followed up by the character getting the shit murdered out of them by magic. Gaap kicks George in and out of portals and all sorts of shit. But rather than kill George, she stops time to give him a lecture on the three kinds of power: 権力 (kenryoku) influence, 財力 (zairyoku) wealth, and 暴力 (bouryoku), force or violence. Essentially, even if George can talk a big game, he has to be able to follow it up with actual force. In short: silly George, don’t you know political power flows from the barrel of a gun?

Jessica gets a CG too…

Jessica swings her knuckledusters at Ronove.

I love that she’s just been carrying knuckledusters this whole time.

Ronove is unfortunately a pro fighting gamer and matches all of her attacks with frame perfect dodges and so on, while telling her vague martial arts aphorisms. Her retort game is strong at least:

Ronove: ……Doing boxing with just your arms makes you but half a man. Your arms must be the roaring lion, burning with power. And your legs the snake, cold as ice as it closes in on its prey.

Jessica Snakes don’t have legs!

She even calls her attacks. She’s the best. Unfortunately Ronove decides to turn on magic at this point, complete with a CG of his own, and yeah, you know how this goes.

This is obviously a Magic Scene now, complete with not just the magic vfx but the sudden reserves of heroism and standing up to power. Going by the “author’s fantasy” theory, well, we’ve spent this entire episode exploring how an inner world of magic can help relieve unimaginably bad circumstances. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could just use sheer grit and human willpower to break the demons? But then, it’s as if this notional author is unable to truly accept this, and the demons have to win after all.

Having made her point, Gaap taunts George to go ahead and play Game Where She Forces You To Kill Everyone In Your Squad. (Haven’t read that one? Go ahead, I’ll wait here. …fucking brutal, right? Nobody does it like Charity.)

Gaap insults Sayo, which… ok, that’s what the villain has to do but like, come on, obviously this is just setup for George to make a big speech about how important she is. (And then die.) Kyrie and Nanjo get to be the Greek chorus for a moment.

OK, not quite… I mean it is about that but it’s also sort of about the power of love in the abstract. Gaap insults his parents, and as a retort to that, George gets to get back up and do a whole nother round… kick CGs for everyone!

George delivers a high kick, saying ............Side kick. Nasal bone fractured.'

Don’t look too close at how that leg connects.

You see, he got his martial arts moves from Eva! Callbacks! He gets to play the sort of ‘cold, analytic fighter’ role. He counters Gaap’s portal trick by doing the splits over the hole. Absolutely incredible. Also he has the moon as a sort of motif here, dismissing the typhoon (which is associated with Gaap) when he does something cool so he can have the moon behind him. He calls his attacks and announces the intended injuries, but also pulls them so they fall just short (I think that’s also an Eva thing).

I feel like if this was anyone but George I’d be crazy about this. Instead it sort of ends up… fucking hilarious. He’s so chuuni.

George: I learned the power of kicks from karate, speed from tae kwon do, and freedom of range from capoeira.

The ultimate magic: MMA.

Anyway, he simultaneously delivers a little lecture on political theory. The ability to threaten violence for the sake of coercion, says George, is the important thing. He’s really going all in on larping the figure of the monarch. George-kun: one man monopoly on legitimate force.

But it has the force of a narrative beat on its side, so Gaap backs up and calls for reinforcements! I guess she doesn’t have Ronove’s magic shield. Anyway, since she summoned the goats, I guess the prison is now unguarded, so, Sayo and Kanon have an opening.

Also, George’s whole will to power thing is actually manifesting as magic now. He gets a counterattack barrier. Jessica, too, starts to overcome Ronove’s shield. Naturally, her manifestation of magic power also comes with a manifesto…

Jessica: No matter how hard someone’s heart is, words are gonna get through to them a little bit each time, and eventually, you can make a crack…! I believe it!! I believe that there’s no such thing as useless effort in this world!!

The narration emphasises how much this reflects her ‘stop self-deprecating and live’ speech to Kanon earlier. You know, Ryuukishi07 is right: the best way to express personal conflict is through having an awesome martial arts anime battle.

Even Krauss gets to try to kick reason to the curb and do the impossible. And this proves enough to get Kanon and Sayo to act, and get out their magic oxyacetylene torches lightsabers. And we finally get… the line…

Sayo, next to Kanon: We are human.

Fuck yeah, girl.

Virgilia has a little temper tantrum and orders the Chiesters to fire on the escapees. This could be a problem. For all that the humans are unlocking magic movies, do we really have a counter to Chiesters?

On the way out, we get a little preview of some of the BGs that belong to the tunnel under Kuwadorian. I think I remember one from the gold sequence in episode 3… hmm, it’s not in my screenshots, so here, check out this cave.

A background painting of a rough rock wall with two sets of bars and some electric lights.

Kyrie, bless her, asks Kanon about the working principle of the lightsaber. Krauss cuts her off… as much as I would be Kyrie in this situation, I have to give him this one.

Unfortunately Virgilia has magic’d the bars. Why she didn’t do that on the original prison, I’m not sure—maybe it drains the batteries to run this barrier. Speaking of barriers, Sayo has to use her shield—apparently it’s strong enough to block Chiesters now, she’s been levelling up?

The Chiesters launch ‘guided cluster rounds’, aka ‘individual homing F&F’ (fire and forget). Cluster munitions are against the Convention on Cluster Munitions but since this is set in 1986, I guess that wasn’t in effect yet… assuming Dragon King Pendragon ratified the Convention anyway…

Kanon and Sayo get to link up to do a combo move to counter the golden arrow. Oh, I hope this gets a sick CG…

Curiously, the military/sciency technobabble skin on the magic also gets used by Sayo and Kanon.

Sayo Checking guided cluster round division. 46…7…8, …48 sub-rounds, all locks acquired. Interception control. Data link to Kanon.

There is no special CG for Kanon intercepting the missiles, just a combo of already-seen animations and CGs. The Chiesters switch ammo types, but Sayo announces that she will pre-empt this with “spirit particle combat”. This gets a new animation with revolving text in a mix of Japanese and Greek, or perhaps English-transliterated-into-Greek like we saw back in episode 3:

A ring of bright red text in a roughly spherical shape.

I can make out… データー収集開始 (data collecting start) but I’m too tired to decode the Greek right now.

The spirit wave attack crashes the Chiester’s systems. It overwhelms and stuns Chiester45 so that her floopy ears collapse and she can only say ‘kyuu’. And takes out 410 as well, albeit only after she gets to exposit what happened. And 00 gets got too. Because they raised their spirit particle sensitivity. Yeah, don’t ask me, it’s obviously calvinball at this point.

Virgilia makes a weird face while saying 'So, furniture was able to repel weapons, if for but a moment. .........I see, the plots which entertain that child truly are filled with unexpected turns!'

She makes this incredible face.

Virgilia is not all that put out, and summons more goats. At this point it’s pretty evident that different characters on Team Witch/Demons have quite specific powers:

And to add one more to the list, Virgilia can neutralise spirit particles. I guess if you’re a full-fledged witch you can do pretty much whatever you please. Anyway, all that said, even aside from the scifi skin brought in by the Chiesters, it’s a very video-game/comic approach to the idea of ‘magic’: that magic grants specific capabilities, which have predictable effects and costs.

Krauss, Kyrie and Nanjo get to join the fight at least, stabbing the goats with metal bars. Nanjo even gets a medicine-themed oneliner. Kraus… hits on Kyrie?

Krauss to Kyrie: 'You seem like a great wife. That Rudolf, I'm starting to think he grumbled a little too much.'

Apparently this is the time, because she flirts right back.

Back with the kids, George’s counterattack barrier is working wonders, declaring a “policy” of “nonaggressive defence”. God. I’m just imagining George saying ‘you violated the NAP!’ now. Jessica, for her part, is also levelling up…

The permeation upgrade had already stacked several times, and those fists had also been given an impact upgrade, a piercing upgrade, and a speed upgrade, making them fists worthy to fight on par with a demon…

Extremely gamer logic for 1986, but hey, I guess Beatrice can see the future. Ronove decides to “get serious”, because the chuuni meter is going up and up, hell he even makes ‘magic signs with his fingers almost like a ninja’ so we can throw kuji-in into the syncretism pot here. It lets Ronove turn his shield ‘reactive’ so Jessica starts taking chip damage back. It’s very clear that we’re operating on something like hitpoint logic here.

It’s time for the pendulum to swing back towards Witch Team though. Do I need to narrate all the details? Well, the bunnygirls do get to make some computer jokes…

Chiester410 Why is it that the shortcuts and pulldown menus get all screwed up every time you change versions nyeh…! Did not shut down successfully last time? Administrator privileges?? What is all this nonsense!!

Maybe someone will have to compile a C program on Windows at this rate.

So if ‘furniture’ is some kind of homunculus, ‘weapons’—the Chiesters at least—appear to be straight up androids.

Anyway, after some real goat shenanigans, Virgilia catches up to the escapee group. Boss fight time! Of course, she also has a purple shield—shields for everyone! Krauss goes to wrestle her special smart goat. Also, we literally get powerscaling. According to Virgilia, Krauss is a 6, but the goat is a 1000. But Krauss has a ‘scaling factor’… as Virgilia talks, a number starts counting up in the top right of the screen, with a little chime each time.

Virgilia: 'But even so, your chances of defeating him are around perhaps 0.00001%.' There is a large number 2 in the top right of the screen.

I like this cute presentation stuff. Even with the limitations of the assets and VN engine, they can create some really fun sequences. Also this conversation is hilarious, Virgilia gradually throws away some of her advantage. Krauss declares he’ll bet it all on a tiny chance… well, that’s literally the working principle of Kinzo’s magic, this feels very According to Keikaku somehow.

Hold on a minute, where’s Kinzo in all of this?

We know where the Chiesters, Ronove, Gaap, Virgilia and the goats are. But Kinzo went upstairs with them, what’s he doing? Testing Battler and Maria? Hold that thought, Krauss is going to settle this with a single strike and he’s not explaining it to the audience upfront so it’s gonna work. Virgilia starts thinking some real bullshit powerscaling maths to predict the encounter.

Virgilia Hohhohohohoho, if you’re killed every time you take a hit, and your damage still accumulates, …….let’s see, perhaps you could finally win when we get to Episode 24?

But Virgilia, you forgot to consider logarithms or something. But for real, let’s try and guess what the number is. My first thought is like ‘points in favour of Krauss’, but I’m not sure it always incremented on that, and only seems to increment when the camera is on Virgilia or her goat… I’m sure it’s got something to do with the metafictional logic of the fight though.

Incidentally, the goat gets tragic backstory flashback, which is such an incredible sendup of the fights in previous episodes…

Goat recalling being picked on by one of the Stakes of Solomon. In the picture-in-picture, it's saying 'I'm gonna be eateeeen!' In the main text box, it says 'The hard days of training where his senpais had picked on him.'

The number is definitely incrementing for every step of goat-backstory.

Sorry, my little goat sister…your onii-chan caused you nothing but trouble.

He also mentions having a childhood friend he’s gonna marry when he gets home which gets three more points.

Virgilia figures it out: these are ‘loser flags’ for the goat. A grimoire entry explains it for the non-otakus:

The term “flag” here originally described an invisible state value in a game’s coding, which is said to be “tripped” or “triggered” when the player takes some action that influences future events.
The moment of the flag trip itself is usually not visible, and can only be detected through later changes in dialogue or events that signal to the player that they have impacted events or changed route.

In casual usage of the term, and especially when applying the concept to a non-interactive medium, these moments that indicate clearly to the genre-savvy that events are unfolding a certain way are themselves called “flags”, and it is in this sense that the phrase “loser flag” is used here: to refer to the occurence of a cliché that is almost always followed by total failure for a character in a story.

Kyrie is apparently in on it, and tells Virgilia that she couldn’t make a composed decision, thus sealing the goat’s fate. Apparently in this system the loser flags explicitly multiply the damage of an attack. Flag 20 comes as Virgilia orders the goat to break a promise.

Anyway here’s how the logic breaks down:

This is an absolutely hilarious combat system and I am so here for it. When Umineko is good it’s so good. Kyrie apparently calculate that fully ahead of time, and tricked Virgilia into calling off the attack. Somehow Nanjo also understands the logic of this: there’s an additional level of boxing rules which give Krauss an 8x multiplier for a right straight following a deflected cross-counter. No I don’t know what the fuck that means.

If that is crossed… By the principle of leverage, the triple cross then multiplies the destructive power by 12!

So you increment the multiplier by 4 for each step in the parry combo, something like that?

Time explicitly straight up stops during this punch for the characters to iron out the detail of the power level. It really feels like a TTRPG (with a fair helping of Pratchett). Obviously Krauss wins this one.

Similar anime logic is playing out in Jessica vs Ronove. She’s got to do a single all-out final attack that will break his shield but rebound on her. Ronove’s telling her to give up and save herself. We’ve just been given the tools to understand this system. Also Gaap and George are trying to finish it with a single strike. Yeah, ok. Gaap puts George into a portal loop, and winds up to finish him, but…

Closeup on George. Narration: .........Even though he was in midair, he was calmly adjusting his glasses with the middle finger of his left hand.

Yeah he gets to play the whole ‘I predicted you would do that’ card. And deliver a whole lecture while flying through the air. And then… loser flag ping.

Gaap finally puts a ‘I predicted your prediction’ on the stack in turn and portal George to hit Jessica. This is a narratively compelling conclusion to the rising tension throughout the arc, and pays off the previous setup, so it’s uncounterable.

Setup, twist payoff, but I will admit I didn’t quite make the connection of how team witch would resolve this one. We finally do get to see Beatrice, who hasn’t been onscreen in a hot minute…

Narration: Beato and Gaap gave each other a high five.

Beato praises Gaap for following the script perfectly. She makes fun of George for his ludicrously clichéd fight persona:

“It really was fun, kiddo. ……But you play with words a little too much. ……I think ‘If you’re ready, may I fight back’ was the absolute classic? Eheheh, you’ve been reading a few too many light novels or something, you know?

Finally, she reassembles George’s corpse and stabs his head (gouge the head and kill). Jessica for her part is said to be splattered, and then unsplattered and she’s briefly resurrected. She uses her brief return to life to phone Battler in the guest house, and let him know she’s been got.

“Nah, ……it’s too late. …I’m…already dead, apparently… Ahahaha, by the time you get here, I’ll be a corpse with half my head spilled out.”

Obviously all these events contrive to not take place in front of Battler. Let’s consider things from his point of view, which is the only one we can take as ‘canonical’ for solving the mysteries:

We will definitely have a locked-room puzzle to solve for Jessica. It’s unclear what the mystery will be for George’s death.

The chapter isn’t quite over yet, though. Time for the other shoe to drop. Whenever humans succeed for a while…

We see Kyrie and Krauss emerge from a fake well behind the main mansion. As Kanon comes up… the Chiesters take the shot. Kanon dies, in the well, with a chest shot. Sayo gets taken out with a headshot. Nanjo, headshot. Krauss and Kyrie make it to the mansion, and Krauss gets taken out with yet another headshot. (This doesn’t seem to be correct to the ritual…)

Kyrie makes it to a guest room and also phones Battler, allowing us to add one more Battler POV Event:

Notably this dialogue is summarised, and nothing about magic is noted explicitly in this part of the narration. It emphasises that she has claimed to have witnessed their deaths, and someone was presently trying to kill her. It does explicitly quote her as saying

something like a strange gold thread keeps flying in through the keyhole, spinning around and aiming for me.

and that it hit near her feet, then shoulders, then grazed her ear. Also she’s locked herself in.

Finally, she repeats Jessica’s advice not to doubt that demons and witches are exactly what they seem, and any demonstration of magic is likely to be unspeakably cruel and that this final call will be worth it if he accepts the witch. And to add another layer, she apologies to Battler for mistreating him. Damn, Beatrice is really laying it on a bit thick with this.

Which means the only survivors are Battler, Maria, Kumasawa and Gohda (hopefully)… and of course, Kinzo. (On the basis that, even though we broadly can’t trust anything we see in magic scenes, we can at least trust that characters who wind up dead will be found dead soon after.)

Chapter comments

Yeah that delivered. Proper Umineko chapter.

I tried making some predictions at the beginning of this chapter and they were largely wrong because I didn’t think big enough. My template for prediction should have been the scene where Eva and Hideyoshi go into the mansion in Chapter 3, or when Sayo and Kanon team up to resist: an exciting, tropey action sequence where the humans become inexplicably cool for a bit only to end up dying horribly at the end.

I don’t want to dwell too much on the mechanics of magic because it’s really more about what are Beatrice’s preferred storytelling devices, since she has full narration control during these scenes. And her major interest is fucking around with storytelling tropes from much more recent visual novels, light novels, manga etc., particularly if it involves having one of her ‘pieces’ play a familiar role only to suddenly step out of that character to gloat at the last minute. For example, her whole tsundere act in chapter 3. As such, in this chapter, we have Gaap and Ronove pretending to lose fights, just to set it up so Jessica and George could ironically kill each other, while Virgilia is now reduced to something of a bumbling villain whose role is mostly to set up the joke. (Possibly one of the other witches is controlling her?)

At the same time, we should also do thematic observations. Broadly speaking, a theme seems to be that the source of magic is confidence, obstinacy, performance of authority and general panache. As much as she toys with the theme of ‘loser flags’, she doesn’t seem to ever undermine the idea that magic here is broadly along the lines of spiral energy.

The main things we have to explain, from the ‘backseat gaming as Battler/Ange’ pose, are:

This does not seem too bad, necessarily. The devil will be in the details, and what red text Beatrice gives us.

In terms of Beatrice’s play in the ‘game’, this is curious. It seems to follow similar lines to what she did last game: creating a scenario in which magic is not just ‘the thing the witch uses to hurt you’ but a chance to turn the tables with awesome anime powers. But we’ve barely had any actual mysteries to solve this game. So far Battler has spent most of the game holed up in the guest house. There’s no doubt as to the culprit: it’s Kinzo. He’s widely reported to have numerous accomplices. All we really have is multiple people have reported things on the phone they believe to be magic.

We’ve still got a few chapters to go before the end, mind you, and a lot can still happen. We have Ange’s visit to Rokkenjima, which is sure to be a major turning point in the narrative; we have Battler getting to confront Kinzo directly. And we did just speedrun basically all the twilights in this chapter so there’s a lot of mysteries that could be set up.

Still, it seems like Beatrice’s MO is moving on a bit from ‘you can’t explain how this murder is done so it must be magic’. What’s her broader aim? I wonder… Each episode, she doles out a tiny bit more information about the broader picture of what happened on Rokkenjima before the events of the game: the imprisonment of someone in Kuwadorian, the underground tunnels, the fact that the gold is somewhere on Rokkenjima.

I wish I hadn’t left it so long to write this liveblog, but I’m glad I feel able to pretty much pick up where I left off last time. I hope I’ll be able to keep up momentum until at least the end of episode 4 and it won’t fall into the ADHD hole again. We shall see. For now, it’s good to be back.

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