Let’s read Umineko! - episode 5 - chapter 11

Hello Umineko fans!

Before we continue the story, I got an interesting comment from anon on episode 4, chapter 14, which is where I resumed the liveblog back in October…

The story never quite explicitly states in text what Ange sees in that futon shop that makes her freak out like that.

However, the answer is there in plain sight, in that very picture of it you posted, if you inspect the things in there very carefully. You might just spot what it is that Ange saw!

OK, well, you know I gotta go over the image with a fine-toothed comb now. Let’s take a look. Here’s the background in question, Kawabata’s futon shop…

Since I downscaled this for web, time to dive back into the game files and take a closer look. The file in question is called kaw_r3bn.png. I was going to go poking around the image to find the important part but actually I spotted it almost immediately, cleverly blending into the background…

Shock! Kuma shock!

So yeah, a whole bag of Sakutarōs. Which is interesting, because Sakutarō was supposed to be a unique special bear made by Rosa, of which only one was ever made… until Ange seemingly made another. But actually she found a bunch in Kawabata’s futon shop? No wonder she was talking about fate!

In any case, does this mean that Rosa lied about handcrafting Sakutarō and just bought Maria a mass-produced toy? So the source of Ange’s miracle is just industrial capitalism! But we did have Beatrice declare in red that Rosa made it…

Rosa made it for her daughter’s birthday, and in the entire world, only one of its kind—

But maybe she reused the design and had it mass-produced. After all, she does run a clothing company called <Auntie Rosa>. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for them to make a plushie.

Chapter 11: Ten Wedges to Pierce Witches

It is 8:04am on Sunday October 5. We open with Natsuhi at Kinzo’s door. She’s pretending to talk to Kinzo, so the other relatives must be there. Indeed, they are, and Eva hammers on the door. Nanjo and Kumasawa do their best to provide cover by going on about Kinzo’s moods…

Kyrie, wisely, asks who was the last person to see Kinzo. Since Eva has heard Natsuhi’s voice from inside Kinzo’s study, Natsuhi has to claim she saw him then… tricky…

Eva pulls rank as the third in line to demand the door be opened. However, Sayo and Kanon report that both keys are inside the study, with Kinzo. This is a lie since we know Natsuhi has both keys. Erika gets all excited at the thought of a locked-room murder. But Erika’s bloodthirstiness can’t distract from the suspicion falling on Natsuhi, whose insistence on not opening the door is becoming increasingly hard to explain…

Erika goes on a little infodump about mystery novels… she says that the highest serial murder in the genre so far is in a ‘well-known work from England’ in which ten people were killed; the Japanese record is lower, but she mentions the detective is an astrologer.

She goes on like this for a while, mentioning in passing the 新本格 (shin-honkaku) genre of mystery novels. This merits a grimoire note, which is great because I’d never heard of this one…

新本格 (Shin-Honkaku, New Orthodox) is a genre of Japanese mystery novels intended as pure logic puzzles to be solved by the reader, taking inspiration from the works of Golden Age detective fiction and the ideas of S.S. Van Dine. The rise of the New Orthodox movement, which revived and revolutionized the genre of orthodox detective fiction in Japan, can be attributed to Shimada Souji’s “The Tokyo Zodiac Murders” in 1981 and Ayatsuji Yukito’s seminal work “The Decagon House Murders” in 1987.

Shin-Honkaku is the third wave of detective fiction in Japan, preceded decades earlier by less well-known works such as “The Case of the Murder on D. Hill” (Edogawa Rampo, 1925) and “The Non-Serial Murder Case” (Sakaguchi Ango, 1949). The latter was part of an earlier movement known as 新戯作 (Shin-Gesaku, New Burlesque) which bucked the trends of pre-war Japanese literature.

Cool! The only author I’ve heard of on this is Edogawa Rampo, who I mostly know of in the context of horror rather than mysteries. (I found a short film anthology called Rampo Noir in a charity shop a little while ago, which adapts some of his stories. Haven’t watched it yet… maybe I will after writing this liveblog!)

Anyway, Battler challenges her otaku infodump. He objects that there was an earlier Shin-Gesaku novel which tied for the record.

Battler: They tie for the record, but if you pay attention to the fact that the Shin‐Gesaku novel asked its readers to search for the culprit, it’s a far more fitting example. If you know so much about this, shouldn’t your examples have been based on more than simply the number of victims, like perhaps the approaches of each work?

Getting shown up like this leads to the most aggrieved Erika expression we’ve had so far. Incredible stuff.

On the game board layer, Lambdadelta finds this absolutely hilarious. Bernkastel loses her shit as well, even though it’s her piece getting pwned on mystery novel trivia. So I guess this isn’t something she made piece!Battler do? (Also, did he not do it on the previous run-through of the game, before they rewound it..?)

Hideyoshi butts into this adorable otaku dick-measuring contest to remind them that preventing a record-breaking mass-murder is probably the play here…

Kyrie suggests going in through the window rather than the door—easier said than done since this is a third-floor room. Gohda, who isn’t in on the whole Kinzo scheme, cheerfully suggests fetching a long ladder from the boiler room. I’m kind of enjoying Gohda staying alive for longer in this game, his obliviousness is really funny. He accidentally volunteers himself.

We head out into the courtyard, which is a new location I think. The backgrounds use this painfully digital brick texture. One thing I notice—whether this is an intentional architectural choice or not!—is that there are no obvious ground-floor windows.

Rudolf ends up being the one who goes up the ladder! There is a rather cute way of depicting this, sliding Rudolf’s sprite up behind the window layer with cutout animation.

Rudolf makes a passing reference to figure skater Ina Bauer, which Kyrie riffs on, meriting another cultural note…

Ina Bauer never dies

Ina Bauer (1941-2014) was a champion German figure skater, whose name is associated with a move in figure skating that became famous in Japan.

However, the reference goes deeper than this. Rudolf’s voice actor, Koyama Rikiya (小山力也), was the Japanese dub voice for Jack Bauer in the TV series “24” (2001-2010). “He never dies” is a reference to one of a number of comedic Japanese TV commercials for 24, in which Koyama Rikya sings: “I am Jack Bauer, always in danger / I am Jack Bauer, I never die”.

Wow, deep cut! As far as I know, the original releases were not voice acted, so they must have added this joke in the PS3 version?

Inside the study, the figments of Beatrice and Kinzo are discussing what to do. I kind of wonder what they’ve done with Kinzo’s actual body. Presumably not just left it up in the study..? Kinzo agrees to ‘hide under the bed’, whatever that means on the physical plane… At first, Gaap volunteers to hide Kinzo, despite the danger posed by the ‘toxin’, but then Beato abruptly decides she’d rather do it herself—narratively, a means to protect her friends. What that means… hmm. I guess it means that if the magic narrative that Battler and Erika are trying to deny centres on Beatrice, then she’ll be the one to take the hits if it’s undermined.

Beato resolves not to let it become a locked room, and have Kinzo escape through the doors, windows, future or past if necessary. I like that metaphor!

We get another cool multilayer composition for Rudolf appearing outside the window…

Ironically, the time that a character breaks a window is not depicted with the breaking-glass chapter-transition effect…

So Rudolf investigates. Not often we get Rudolf as the POV character, is it? He notices how cold and clean the room is. It seems deserted, but there are marks on the bed, chairs askew, that kind of thing…

Once the others are let in, Natsuhi looks for excuses. She suggests that Kinzo is prone to going on nighttime walks, getting Nanjo and Kumasawa to back her up. It seems pretty clear the jig is up though, and with the excuse that Kinzo might be tied up somewhere, the others get to searching the study…

Erika announces another convenient Detective power: she has a photographic memory.

Erika: ……My memory is photographic in every detail. If any attempt is made to hide evidence or alter the scene, I will know at once. ……Please don’t commit some stupid blunder here and disappoint me. Don’t you agree that any whodunit in which the culprit is unmasked by way of some silly mistake or slip of the tongue is dreadfully third‐rate?

Kanon and Sayo comment quietly about how Natsuhi is about to get caught for all the lies she’s told. Natsuhi, for her part, is chatting with the cast of her mental war room…

Beato reminds Natsuhi of the Devil’s Proof.

Erika demands everyone’s attention—the narration once again notes how some strange effect lets her act so presumptuous—and starts talking alibis. (Which is an English loanword, アリバイ. Where does it come from in English? Latin, apparently!)

Once again, Erika plays the ‘this story would suck if this were true’ card, saying there’s no way the ‘most suspicious person’ (Natsuhi) should have dunnit outside of a third-rate mystery. She throws around the term ‘third-rate’ a lot, wonder what that is in Japanese? Ah, 三流 sanryuu, pretty damn literal!

Her suspicion is based on the fact that Natsuhi was immediately sure she was the last person to see Kinzo. This is inconsistent with the claim that Kinzo is prone to go walkabouts late at night…

Beato pops up to give Natsuhi some reassurance.

Beatrice: In the court of hell, all of the demon jurors will declare you innocent.

That’s an amazing line, I gotta start saying that to people.

Natsuhi points out that Eva can verify her alibi. Eva immediately pops out her paper fan to hide behind…

This is all setup though for Eva to drop the big accusation… but Erika preempts her.

Erika: How long has Kinzo-san been gone……?

The other survivors join in and level the accusation. Erika is disappointed at the straightforward motive.

Gohda, ever-oblivious helpfully provides a list of accomplices, and in the process seems to realise how long it’s been since he last saw Kinzo…

Erika confronts Kinzo on the magic layer and tells him straight-up that he doesn’t exist.

At that point, Beatrice abruptly steps in to a techno beat. She acknowledges Erika as Bernie’s piece. Points out that a witch has just appeared before her, doesn’t this make it fantasy..?

Erika: Well, parallel worlds like this are popular even within the mystery genre these days. Are you familiar with that detective who reasons from an armchair in a meta‐like space (メタ的な空間)?

Beatrice: Mind your anachronisms. That author doesn’t make his debut until next year.

Erika: You certainly are picky for a witch.

I’m not sure which series Erika is referring to, but yeah she is for sure not a creature of 1986.

Beatrice calls up Lucifer to deliver a ‘stake’ of blue truth. We don’t get to see it immediately. That’s interesting, though! Blue hypotheses in service of the magic side rather than the mundane side…

Beatrice: You can’t eliminate the possibility that Natsuhi met with Kinzo at 11 p.m. In the six‐plus hours between then and the time you all barged into the study, Kinzo had every opportunity to escape! Because of this, you can’t state decisively that Kinzo doesn’t exist.

As a guest with no established backstory, Beato says, Erika doesn’t have any special information to contradict this. Beato declares checkmate. Which is interesting, and I guess that answers my earlier question about whether Battler could try stating the Riemann hypothesis in red to see if it’s true or not: the red truth is not simply a measure of truth but of knowledge, in the sense of ‘justified, true belief’ explored by philosophers. (Of course, there is the Gettier problem, but at least as far as the game goes, it seems that to declare a red truth you must have a valid justification for your claim.)

Erika responds by saying she’s a poorly-suited piece for dealing with witches, she’s there to find the human culprit. So, it’s time to introduce… ‘Miss Dlanor’. (Pronounced ドラノー doranō in Japanese.)

Lambdadelta talks this character up a bit: ‘the ten witch-hunting wedges, the archbishop of witch hunting, Dlanor!!’

Ah, wait, I see what’s going on here. ‘Dlanor’ is Ronald backwards.

We don’t have to wait long for Dlanor to get a sprite. It’s described as ‘resembling a cleric’. For some definition of cleric, I guess…

Naturally, her accent colour is Bernkastel’s blue. The design definitely intends to call to mind a Catholic nun’s habit, at least insofar as she is wearing a coif, though not a wimple or a guimpe. Hey, isn’t the internet great? I can go from knowing nothing about what a nun wears to throwing around words like ‘guimpe’ as if I’d been able to do so all my life…

Anyway, the armoured-up arm definitely departs from the lace cravat, cuffs and so on. That thing looks awfully impractical. Lift up your arm and poke your eye out…

Dlanor’s full name is Dlanor A. Knox, which means she’s the namesake of Ronald Knox, whose rules we discussed earlier. Going to the character screen gives a rather different impression of her design. Ryuukishi just can’t resist that zettai ryōiki!! I am not entirely sure how those trousers are even supposed to work… bahahahaa… it’s like he has to one-up himself each episode.

Here’s her description, get ready:

Dlanor A. Knox

A member of the Eiserne Jungfrau, the Seventh District Repentance Enforcement Agency of the Great Court of Heaven.

Chief Inquisitor. Ranked Archbishop, First Class.

Goes by the name “Dlanor of the Ten Wedges” or “Death Sentence Dlanor”.

She gets the name “Death Sentence” because, though Inquisitors normally judge their targets to determine whether they deserve the dealth penalty or not, Dlanor, as the Chief Inquisitor, is only dispatched after a case has been vigorously inspected by the Great Court. Therefore, the very act of dispatching her is equivalent to a death sentence.

Her father was a legendary Inquisitor, but he broke the rules and was executed. She was the one who interrogated and executed him. Since that time she has stopped growing, and both her body and mind remain eternally those of a young girl. It is whispered that her heart also died at that moment, but she does not see it that way.

Her primary weapons are the Conceptual Arms “Red Key” and “Blue Key”. They take the form of a longsword and a shortsword.

OK, you know what? If I ever intimated Berkastel was the boring one, I definitely take it back. She can match Beatrice, chuuni for chuuni. I wonder how the Great Court of Heaven relates to King Pendragon and the space war?

Eiserne Jungfrau is German of course, and it means ‘iron maiden’, as in the mythical medieval torture instrument (most likely made up by the Victorians).

Dlanor speaks in an odd way, randomly writing certain words in small caps.

Dlanor: The same goes for me, Miss Beatrice. Eiserne Jungfrau has a detailed file on you 600 pages long. I always look over those, so this doesn’t feel like a first meeting to me either.

What does that look like in Japanese? Ah, it seems like there, her typing quirk is that the last word of certain sentences is written in katakana.

Dlanor: こちらこそ、ミス・ベアトリーチェ。アイゼルネ・ユングフラウは、あなたについての詳細な資料を６００ページにまとめマシタ。それに常に目を通していますので、私も初対面の気がしマセン

The first line is slightly hard to tell one way or the other, but ‘Miss’ is written in katakana-English, rather than a normal Japanese honorific.

They shoot some English wordplay at each other. Beatrice says her 600 word file could be summarised as ‘danger’. Dlanor and Erika retort that it will be extended to 8, for ‘executed’.

Beatrice: ………So I’m <cute> now, cackle! Flattery will get you nowhere, my guest…!

Beatrice is definitely winning on swag points.

The argument in the game board naturally follows the argument on the magic layer. Eva announces that she has a proof that Kinzo couldn’t have gone off somewhere. ‘Someone’ was watching she says. And then… Gertrude appears?

Gertrude is evidently in the same sort of uniform as Dlanor, but we don’t get a character screen until a little later this chapter. Let me grab it from the future, though:

Gertrude

A member of Eiserne Jungfrau, the Seventh District Repentance Enforcement Agency of the Great Court of Heaven.

Senior Assistant Inquisitor. Ranked Minister, First Class.

As an Assistant Inquisitor, she is tasked with aiding during interrogations and hearings.

In practice, execution ends up being the primary focus of most missions, and so she is usually assigned the job of using barriers to block the target’s means of escape.

On duty she is calm, flawless, expressionless, and emotionless; however in truth she is quite compassionate and is loved by many of her juniors.

She has already passed the exam to become a full Inquisitor and was offered a position in a different district, but she refused. She continues to serve alongside Dlanor, to whom she owes a great debt, waiting for a reassignment under her.

Therefore, though she is an assitant, she is treated as an Inquisitor (Archbishop, Third Class).

Cornelia

A member of Eiserne Jungfrau, the Seventh District Repentance Enforcement Agency of the Greater Court of Heaven.

Assistant Inquisitor, ranked Minister, Third Class.

She has obtained high grades in academic exercises, but this is her first time on the job

She posseses a strong sense of justice, and is currently cramming for exams to become an Inquisitor like Dlanor. Her current goal is to become more like the veteran assistant, Gertrude.

She actually has a zealous personality, but she pretends to be emotionless in imitation of Gertrude.

She is too innocent and pure for one connected to heresy hearings, and she knows nothing of the dirty jobs and dark side of the profession.

Gertrude intentionallly selected her for this mission, which stinks of Senate conspiracy. She did this to give Cornelia a chance to ask herself whether this sort of job really is the right one for her.

Ryuukishi can really spin up some lore when he wants to! Like, these characters have had barely any screentime, but we still have a heavenly bureaucracy, and all sorts of internal politics, private personalities, public faces…

One thing will always be true, though. No matter what universe, no matter what military organisation or witch’s furniture, it will be girls, and you will see their thighs.

Gertrude and Cornelia both have the same catchphrase: ‘For your attention: I beg to inform you of the following.’ In Japanese: 謹啓。謹んで申し上げる。 So a formal greeting like you’d use in a letter (dictionary has stuff like ‘dear sir or madam’), then something like ‘I respectfully say…’ The Witch Hunt puts it as ‘Please, allow me to speak.’ I think I like the Umi-Project version more, although it’s a bit more wordy than the Japanese line.

She summons Chiester410 and Chiester45. Damn, they’ve switched sides!

Chiester45: Chiester45, right here! It has been some time, Great Lady Beatrice! We were dispatched in accordance with Alliance Agreement #1516 and a request from the Great Court of Heaven. We apologize for the rudeness that is to follow…!

So I guess the GCOH is an ally of Dragon King Arthur in the bunnygirl space war. I hope you’re keeping notes.

Gertrude gives us a red text:

Gertrude: For your attention: I further inform you of the following. From last night at 23:00 until the present time, the study door was not opened even once.

What Eva actually meant is that she crammed a small piece of paper into the crack of the door, and it was still there when Rudolf opened it, so there’s no way Kinzo could have left the room. I guess Dlanor’s influence is… to assert some sort of pressure on the narrative to retcon this in? We’ve hinted at this sort of trick with the piece of tape Erika left on the servant room door, but there was no explicit mention of Eva doing something like this outside Kinzo’s study in Chapter 7.

A third member of the Eiserne Jungfrau appears on the magic layer, Cornelia, to confirm something else in red…

So that’s…

Cornelia: the windows were all locked

for the red list.

Gertrude permits use of ‘forbidden weapons’: ‘red warheads’.

Chiester00 Chiester Troops, precision blockade for study door and all windows complete. The Great Lady Beatrice is hereby warned that if anything is caught passing through these physically, conceptually, or by any other method, we will fire without warning…!

I love that ‘conceptually’ is on that list.

What’s Beato’s counter-play going to be? We could reveal a secret tunnel—if anywhere in the mansion is likely to have one, it’s Kinzo’s study. On the magic layer, Beatrice opens a portal. The mundane analogue of this is… indeed that, Natsuhi claiming that Kinzo might have escaped by a mechanism. She claims that there are ‘several’ such mechanisms and hidden doors in the mansion, known only to Kinzo. Her accomplices frantically assent that such a thing would be in-character for Kinzo to build.

Beato—who seems to be playing Battler’s role right now!—asserts it in blue:

Beatrice: No proof is required!! It’s a Devil’s Proof! The existence of a hidden door is impossible to discover or disprove!! Therefore, no one can eliminate the possibility that Kinzo escaped from this study through a hidden door.

Yeah, I think this is where Knox’s rules come into play, right? Like, there can only be one secret room or passage.

Indeed, Dlanor literally slices Beatrice’s attack in half with a red sword. A discordant organ track called ‘Predator’ comes in on the soundtrack.

Dlanor: I will not allow a hidden door to exist in this room.

Precisely this. Erika asserts the Knox rule in red:

So, we have in red:

Erika Knox’s 3rd: It is forbidden for hidden passages to exist.

I guess since Beatrice is trying to play to the terms of a mystery here, and not a fantasy story, she can’t have secret passages. That is not Knox’s third rule (which allowed a maximum of one secret room or hidden door), but I guess as far as this story is concerned, this is the variant of Knox we’re going with.

Dlanor: In this world, gods other than our God do not exist, and hidden doors do not exist. They must not exist. We will not allow them to exist. They are a blasphemy.

So the religious getup is not just aesthetic, these girls are actually Christians? Or some fantasy spin of that? It’s really funny the idea that hidden doors are blasphemous. Robert Knox was indeed a religious man, but I don’t get the impression that his rules for mystery novels were a matter of faith. Fun interpretation, though…

Lambda finds this hilarious. What’s she angling for here? She seems to be watching the only magic we’ve seen in the game so far get set up for elimination. Does she have some magic scenario of her own to set up once she’s finished dancing on Beato’s grave? She’s not leaving herself much time…

Beato isn’t done yet, though, so it’s time for some subtler plays. It’s time for a red/blue volley, so I’m going to be quoting a chunk of the game text again, just in case any of these turn out to be key to solving the mystery later…

All such magical and scientific devices are forbidden by Knox’s fourth commandment:

It is forbidden for unknown drugs or obscure scientific devices to be used.

This isn’t quite what Knox wrote. What he actually wrote is:

4: No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

But he also wrote

2: All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

So declaring Knox’s rules are in effect as far as magic is concerned seems to be kind of begging the question.

Beatrice declares it’s time to get serious. (Aha, it’s that beat in the fight.) She says that she will accept the locked room. But maybe Natsuhi talked with him on the phone…

Beatrice: Natsuhi claims to have “talked with Kinzo in the study”, but she never said that she spoke with him face to face. Therefore, if Kinzo was in a location other than the study, there is no contradiction as long as they held a conversation!

Natsuhi used the internal phone line in this study to speak with Kinzo, who was in another place! There’s nothing strange about Kinzo, who hates the relatives, predicting that they would enter his study and leaving to go elsewhere. He might have gone to the hidden mansion, Kuwadorian!

This is presented as Asmodeus piercing Dlanor’s foot, and a triumphant turn in the music. But this still looks rather bad for Natsuhi, given that she has been pretending Kinzo was in the study all along…

Beato layers this up with more suppositions:

Beatrice: There’s a chance that the Kinzo mentioned by Natsuhi does not refer to the person himself! The Kinzo spoken of by Natsuhi might have been another name for this room! Kinzo had taken refuge in Kuwadorian and was impossible to contact. Perhaps Natsuhi called this room “Father”, and by contemplating inside of it, she felt as though she had received some sort of revelation from Kinzo!!

Ooh, reference-ambiguity, Lambda’ll hate that.

She’s got more too.

Beatrice: Even if, as you say, this is a locked room and impossible to escape from, you can’t deny the possibility that he is still hiding in this room. I’m not talking about a hidden door! He might be under the bed or above the ceiling! He might be hiding in such a subtle blind spot that even a demon would not recognize it!

Or, it might be that Natsuhi, ordered by Kinzo to act as his proxy, considered herself both his representative and another Kinzo! In other words, it’s possible that Natsuhi was also Kinzo!

I’ve got plenty more!! At eleven o’clock last night, Kinzo escaped out the window! Natsuhi watched him go, then locked the window!! This doesn’t lead to any problems. In fact, it might be the most beautiful blue truth yet!

She’s good. I like that last one. I assume all the Ushiromiyas are frozen in time while this epistemic state resolves itself…

Erika opens up another front, attacking Natsuhi directly. She asks Natsuhi if she means some other Kinzo. Eva immediately picks up on what she’s getting at because all the Ushiromiyas seem to be wired into the underlying red/blue debate here…

Erika demands a repetition request. Does that mean that Natsuhi can use red truth on the board now? Hmm, no, she answers in normal white text. On the magic layer, it falls to Gertrude to provide the red.

Gertrude: For your attention: I beg to inform you of the following. The “Kinzo” Natsuhi mentions refers to nothing other than Ushiromiya Kinzo.

Cornelia: For your attention: I beg to inform you of the following. Natsuhi claims that she was face‐to‐face with Kinzo in the study at 11 p.m.!

The narration explains it:

Because Natsuhi, the one who knew the truth, had denied them, those denials had gained the power of the red truth…!

Kind of confusing, I’m not sure this follows. Like, let’s say the counterfactual scenario that we’re building is one in which Kinzo has run away to Kuwadorian and Natsuhi is trying to cover it up. This is consistent with Natsuhi lying when she’s questioned by Erika. But I guess the point is that this can’t exist as a ‘truth’ on the game board unless someone is trying to suggest it? Like, if Natsuhi had changed her story and ‘admitted’ that Kinzo was actually at Kuwadorian, the blue wedge would remain intact?

Dlanor presses Beatrice on where, exactly, Kinzo is hiding. She replies…

Beatrice: Heheh, who knows… Maybe he’s under the bed?!

I thought this was a crazy play where Beatrice had set up something for them to find under the bed, since she’s been suggesting that since she appeared in this chapter, but it’s simply shot down with red. Beatrice drops a downright Dr. Seussical list of possible hiding spots. Kinzo is not

in the bathtub, inside the closet, under the desk, behind the curtains, behind the bookshelf, behind the closet, under the carpet, under the floor, above the ceiling, behind the wallpaper, inside the sofa, inside the chair. Inside the bed, inside the blankets, inside the walls, inside a rock, inside a stone, inside the room.

Dlanor responds…

As usual, the delivery of the English lines is incredible.

From the fact that Kinzo has been shown to be absent by her detective’s investigation, and the locked room proof, Erika deduces that Natsuhi was lying about Kinzo being here. She apparently judges it time to drop the catchphrase…

Erika: *giggle*giggle*, ……ahahahaha, ahhahhahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahaha! What do you think of that? All it takes is the presence of this room, and a deduction like this becomes trivial for Furudo Erika! Your thoughts, ladies and gentlemen?! Ahhahahahahhahhahhaaaahh!!

With Kinzo’s death now pretty much locked in, Beatrice reminisces. She says in his youth, Kinzo was ‘annoying like Battler’…

And as for Battler, he’s not happy. It’s time for him to make his move.

He wasn’t feeling compassion for Natsuhi because her lie was about to be exposed. However, he couldn’t forgive Erika, who was simply enjoying the “intellectual rape” of cornering Natsuhi, or any of the people going along with her.

So it’s time for a dame da!!! Battler answers Erika’s catchphrase with his own, and gives this quip to boot…

What has Battler seen..? Right now my best theory is the wiggle room in ‘Natsuhi claims’, which could suggest some other motive than ‘covering up Kinzo’s death’.

He even pops up on the magic layer briefly to tell the ‘new girls’ that their victory is premature… and that he was disappointed at Kinzo’s weaksauce plays. I guess this is symbolic of Battler joining Natsuhi’s conspiracy…

So something flashy..? Whatever it is, Battler’s sheer baseless confidence demonstrates what it means to be the head, at least as far as Chiester410 is concerned.

Battler’s scenario is this:

• Kinzo falls asleep, or pretends to sleep
• Natsuhi thoroughly inspects the room and leaves
• Kinzo’s study is like a small house in itself
• at some point, Natsuhi would not have line of sight on Kinzo
• at this point, Kinzo got up

Gertrude interjects to let us know

Gertrude: For your attention: a loud noise is produced when the lock on the study door is released. Know that you cannot leave through the door without drawing Natsuhi’s suspicion.

For your attention: I beg to inform you that Natsuhi did not hear the sound of the door opening while in the room.

For your attention: I further inform you that Kinzo entering or exiting through the door will not be permitted.

Not to mention, Eva is standing right outside.

But Battler was actually angling for the window. Cornelia, evidently less experienced at this kind of thing (as her character screen says), does her best:

Cornelia: I beg to inform you that this is useless, Ushiromiya Battler…! For your attention: my windows are sealed from the inside, and Natsuhi did not help Kinzo to escape…!!

Battler finally gives his blue:

Battler: I’m not saying Aunt Natsuhi helped Grandfather escape. ……What if Grandfather snuck out, keeping it a secret from Aunt Natsuhi?!”

Why would Kinzo do that, Erika says. Kinzo basically says bc i’m crazy lol

Chiester45 observes that Battler has ‘endless nine’ (99.999…%) magic resistance, which as we know, is just another way of writing 100%.

Cornelia counters by pointing out

Cornelia: The window was locked from the inside

But of course Battler was prepared for this…

Battler: After Grandfather jumped out the window, Aunt Natsuhi probably noticed a slight draft. She then approached the window, realized that it was wide open, and quickly closed and locked it…!!

Kinzo: Natsuhi probably couldn’t even imagine that I had slipped out the window!

Battler: Yeah!! So it’s only natural that Aunt Natsuhi thought Grandfather was sleeping in bed!!

With her red barrier (explicitly compared to Ronove’s barriers) broken, Cornelia resorts to the following blue:

Battler’s answer is to jump out the window.

So Battler and Dlanor go and have… a metaphorical aerial battle. Presumably over whether Kinzo actually lived or died. Piece!Battler is straight up staking his life on whether there’s a way to survive this fall… but also we know he’s gonna live because of the flash forward earlier. But how? Well, first of all, we need to check whether Battler’s solution is Knox-valid.

For the first time in the game, we get red and blue in the same text box…

The original statement of Knox’s eigth is:

The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.

So more or less equivalent to her

Dlanor: It is forbidden for the case to be resolved with clues that are not presented…

Battler can answer that easily:

Battler: When we entered the study, its structure was mentioned clearly.

Referring to an earlier narration line which is now quoted in red.

― It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Kinzo’s study was a small villa he had created inside the mansion.― A study. A book archive. A place to sleep. And a bathroom and washroom. It was divided into multiple rooms.

Oh my god they’re close reading the narration prose now…

Battler cuts down Dlanor and survives the landing strangely easily, and calls for Beato to follow him as Erika loses her shit behind them. When she does… we full on get an entire CG of him catching her…

It’s got like, shoujo-manga roses and everything…

Oh no he’s hot, says Gaap. Ronove says…

Ronove If you were to chronicle all the daring exploits of Ushiromiya Kinzo, ……you would probably have a tale longer and wilder than all the grimoires in the study put together. It seems the tale of the next head will be worth writing down as well. In fact, it already is being written. It’s already a very, very long tale. ……Pu ku ku ku.

I think it might be around somewhere like book 5, chapter 11 at this point, eh Ronove?

With this showy demonstration of not-incompetence, Battler insists on his exclusive right to the mystery of the Golden Witch. Beatrice gets all blushy as she manages to say…

Beatrice My riddle is…yo‐……yours……yours alone…!! Ushiromiya Battler! I won’t let anyone else solve it…!!

Erika objects at this aggressive insertion of romantic plot-beats into her hard-headed mystery story. She insists there is no way a human could jump out a third story window and live. The Ushiromiyas disagree: Kinzo is such a freak he could probably do something like that.

After some more Battler/Beato flirting, we get the final blue truth for the end of the game to resolve…

Battler: Ushiromiya Kinzo escaped from the study through the window when Aunt Natsuhi couldn’t see him. Aunt Natsuhi didn’t notice and locked the window. This way, Aunt Natsuhi can see Grandfather go to bed at eleven o’clock and Grandfather can escape from the study without contradicting the lock of the window or the door sealed by the receipt. I proved through my demonstration that this escape was physically possible. Therefore, this battle is over!!

Of course, we know this isn’t true… because it’s been asserted in red at the beginning of the game that Kinzo was dead, right? However, piece!Battler, and the Ushiromiyas on the board, don’t have that red truth available to them.

As a closing statement, Battler says…

Battler: ………Beato’s games are no walk in the park. It’s doubtful whether the conventions of the mystery genre even apply here. Your swordsmanship isn’t bad, but you should be a bit more flexible in your thinking.

He further says ‘Welcome to Beato’s and my game’ to Erika. So I guess piece!Battler has ascended somehow in his awareness of the game. It doesn’t really feel like Bernkastel is playing him anymore, like has player!Battler taken back control of his piece here?

I guess we’ll soon find out, because we cut to Lambdadelta laughing at Erika on the game board layer. Bernkastel too! No sympathy for her self-insert.

Erika swears revenge on Battler, Beatrice and Natsuhi, and the chapter ends with piece!Battler and piece!Beatrice swearing the game is only theirs…

Phew, holy shit, what a chapter. I think a full third of my screenshots from this episode are for this chapter alone!

What have we learned about the broader mystery? After all, this whole battle was about proving Kinzo could be alive somehow, when we know he’s dead. It’s a good emotional beat though.

In terms of narrative authority, does this actually represent player!Battler taking back control of the game? Are we no longer on track to the flash-forward scene in chapter 1? Both Bernie and Lambda seem to be finding this an absolute riot, so it feels like they can’t have seen it coming. Presumably, in the ‘original run’, Natsuhi was proven to be hiding Kinzo’s death at this point, and the game proceded in a different way from there?

How did Battler jump down a three-story building unscathed? Why was he so confident? ‘Well look out the window, he just did it’ may suffice on the game board, but it seems like a hard plot point to swallow in a mundane narrative. If we view this like an RPG, and player!Battler had declared “I jump out the window”, Lambda would declare he took falling damage, or roll a die to see if he’s unscathed, or something. Battler seems to be finding a way to wield Kinzo’s ‘magic’ here—the ‘reality distortion field’ of the family head, which can even override the laws of physics.

Maybe he slid down the ladder? Still, that seems like some crazy acrobatics.

Other than that, we have Dlanor now! I know Ryuukishi loves to spin up character designs, but I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of her. Her main gimmick is to insistently assert Knox’s rules are in effect, but what about when they aren’t? I guess we’ll see. Love to see yet more strange girls join this cast. Battler is taking it fully in stride now.

I have to admit though, I don’t have a fucking clue what Lambdadelta is angling towards at this point. Like, OK, Kinzo is dead, we know that, we’re spending a lot of time going over that. Meanwhile we’ve had the barest hint of a magic narrative, and piece!Beatrice has been furiously fighting to establish a mundane, detective-story narrative this time, in a way that is already readily interpretable as a metaphor.

We do seem to be quite aggressively setting up Battler/Beatrice romance here too. She truly contains multitudes, that Beato. However, last time we set up a conventional romance arc it was all a big ruse, so I’m suspicious of where this one is going…

I guess the big question I’m now very confused about is, of all the various ‘player-level’ characters, who is in control of what? Bernie scarcely seems bothered that her pieces are getting shown up so badly, unless Battler is still her piece and she’s doing this conflict between them… just to fuck around? But really feels like on some level the thoughts and actions of the pieces reflect what their players are doing. If player!Battler advances a hypothesis, piece!Battler seems to think on similar lines. If Battler and Beatrice argue about something, the Ushiromiyas probably will too. Is this just a wily GM taking that as inspiration to spin relevant scenes in the story, or is there truly (truly as far as anything is ‘true’ on the player level) a tug of war over narrative authority here?

I guess we’ll find out, soon enough. We have not seen player!Battler in a minute, have we?

That’s all from me, see you next time, phew… I’m loving having a substantial chapter but damn, I’ve got my work cut out for me if the next one’s this long too…