Let’s read Umineko! - episode 5 - chapter 2

what’s up gamers, SMASH that subscribe button ‘cause it’s ya girl Lambdadelta here in Rokkenjima with another EPIC round of 360 nostake trick kills—

No, no, I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re a year earlier, at the 1985 family conference. Nobody’s getting nostaked today.

Chapter 2: A Proper Mystery

How long do you think it will be before I start forgetting to put the chapter titles in the liveblog again?

We get quite a nice new bg of the rose garden, which I will now dutifully downscale for you…

Kinzo and Natsuhi are praising Kanon for taking good care of the rose garden. Hey, nice things happening to Kanon for once! I’ll take what scraps I can get.

The rest of the family will soon be arriving to squabble over the inheritance. Krauss’s debt repayment comes up, so I suppose this takes place after Kinzo’s death, and this is Natsuhi’s personal Kinzo advisor-tulpa. Unfortunately, Krauss’s Business Curse strikes again, and his real estate deals are not paying off. What a shocker!

Beatrice butts in to warn that the relatives all bear the ‘toxin’ so Kinzo will not survive an encounter. He accepts, but not without a nice yare yare… Natsuhi sends Kanon with Kinzo’s ghost back to the study. I assume all the servants are in on the scheme by now..? Probably not Jessica though.

Beatrice tells Natsuhi that she would have had potential as a witch, given that she’s doing magic even with all the toxin that’s built up over her life. I guess in this sense it means a kind of conceptual flexibility, to assert a different reality.

Lambda butts in to declare a <break time>. We go over the principles of magic. Since we know Kinzo is already dead, how’s he up and walking around? Battler is here, so I guess the girls have rewound to the beginning of the game for him. Lambda mocks him, suggesting that he should theorise a variety of hallucinogenic drugs. But I mean, Battler knows how the ‘board’ works by now, so…?

Battler in turn asserts a statement in red, albeit a rephrase of a previous red statement: Grandfather is dead at this point in time. He says that everything is behaving according to ‘the lie that Aunt Natsuhi’s creating’. He goes over the Braun tube/’cat box’ analogy… hey, why don’t we start calling the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment ‘nekobokusu’ in English too? That’s so much cuter.

He phrases it as follows, which seems like an important statement:

Battler: This world is like a Braun tube before you’ve looked in it. ……It’s the world of the cat box before you open it. As long as Aunt Natsuhi says that she took a walk with Grandfather, and as long as no one can confirm that that’s a lie, it’s possible to display “Aunt Natsuhi taking a walk in the rose garden with Grandfather” as Natsuhi’s reality. That means it’s possible for Grandfather to appear.

Why is this interesting, don’t we already know this? Well, according to Battler, we are seeing someone’s lie within the story—in this case Natsuhi. That suggests the depictions might not be entirely orchestrated by the game master, but have to reflect someone within the board?

Lambdadelta seizes on this to raise an objection: Kanon is also a witness. Easy: Kanon is also orchestrating the lie. Battler says Natsuhi must have ordered Kanon to keep to her story, allowing him to ‘see’ Kinzo’s ghost.

The witches agree that this is merely an ‘appetizer’, but Battler still needs to state his claim in blue. So:

The reason Grandfather is strolling around like nothing happened even though he’s already dead… is that people who want to make it seem as though he’s alive created an illusion of him. Everyone with the same intention can share in that illusion. Then, they talk as though Grandfather actually exists and was with them until a second ago. That’s why he’s strolling around like it’s perfectly natural.

Because of this, the illusion of Grandfather is unable to appear in front of people who aren’t in on this with Aunt Natsuhi. That’s why they needed to set it up so that he would shut himself away in his study and not come out.

This feels like it’s intended to clarify the exact workings of the ‘game board’. I will admit, my assumption had been that when Battler isn’t on screen, Beatrice could basically show whatever she likes. Well, she more or less still can, but if Battler’s right, there has to be an agent within the story working to deliberately produce that illusion.

He states the principle more concisely:

Because they all stuck to the same story, an illusion of Grandfather was able to exist on this island, making it seem like he was alive.

Bernie says Battler couldn’t propose some ridiculous hallucinogen mystery drug because ‘supposing such a thing exists would be just as bad as surrendering to the fantasy genre’. Look at you doing a metafiction! She brings up Knox’s commandments, which I think might have come up before?

Bernkastel: Knox’s 4th: It is forbidden for unknown drugs or obscure scientific devices to be used. ………It’s a rule that these cannot be used for murder.

These are referring to the ‘rules’ of a ‘fair play’ mystery story conceived of byCatholic priest and mystery writer Ronald Knox against cliches in mystery stories as of the late 20s. I have no doubt they’re about to get explained, but just in case, the full list:

Notably, the whole story is already in violation of Rule 5 by virtue of being set in an Asian country… This is also not the only such list of rules for mysteries. I think there’s one that bans servant characters from being the culprit, which, you know, wouldn’t easily fly here.

Still, by relying so heavily on unknown ‘device X’-es, Bernie says, Battler has been fighting diagonally rather than directly against Beatrice. She insists that he must observe the rules of the mystery genre—a proper mystery—in order to properly deny the witch fantasy.

That really sounds like a false dichotomy, but sure, if that’s the game we wanna play…

Anyway, Bernkastel says all the arguing about hidden entries of locked doors is against Knox’s #3. She presents it as outright forbidding hidden passages, though Knox allowed an author to use at most one…

Bernkastel really seems to be trying to fit this story into a certain sort of straitjacket. She might have a point about fantastical scientific devices, but hidden doors are an eminently plausible thing, if not quite so prevalent as they are in fiction. As it happens, they’ve almost entirely been ruled out by this point, but nevertheless…

Lambda agrees with Bernie’s interjection, claiming Knox’s rules are a great weapon against the fantasy side. Bernie tells Battler that simply finding excuses to deny the witch novel is ‘anti-fantasy’, and Battler must come up with a positive counter-narrative belonging to the mystery genre.

Why does this story have to follow genre conventions at all, though? Let alone ones from the 1920s? OK, the whole ‘whodunnit’ framing is certainly suggestive of a mystery story, I don’t think framing it as, say, a sports story, Colombian magical realism, a spaghetti Western or a comedy of manners would get us very far… Still, I feel like we’re accepting Knox’s definition of a mystery story without much argument. I guess that’s the point, to play around with genre conventions once more.

Beatrice appears to be suffering as the game turns against her. Battler is not happy about this: he wanted to send her off peacefully.

Meanwhile, on the beach, we skip forwards: the family is departing and still arguing about the inheritance. Here in 1985, the usual adults are here, plus Maria and a five-year-old Ange(!)… presumably also George, though we don’t see him. Rudolf and Eva are convinced that Kinzo overheard them arguing.

Kumasawa seems to be having a great time tricking everyone by acting as Kinzo from behind closed doors.

Natsuhi gives Genji, Sayo, Kanon and Kumasawa a bonus for helping cover up Kinzo’s death, implying that the other servants (notably, Gohda?) do not know.

Natsuhi enjoys some tea with ‘patis’, which are compared with age-gyōza stuffed with curry-flavoured mashed potatoes—I was curious and looked this up but only found a Philippine fish sauce rather than a type of dumpling? Even checking the Japanese パティス, that’s all that comes up. Maybe there are dumplings that use the fish sauce? In any case, She gives a little lecture on the proper snacks to have with various types of tea.

Natsuhi talks about her past. She insists on not calling her upbringing ‘restrictive’, contra Beatrice. Mmhm. Afterwards, she and Krauss travelled around Asia: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.

Beatrice remarks, oddly:

The Japanese are strongly influenced by the West. When they think of foreign countries, only Western ones come to mind. But the East exists as well.

Natsuhi seems to agree, saying she knows very little about ‘the Orient’ (東洋, touyou). This is a very fascinating exchange for me, because as far as social attitudes in the West are concerned, Japan is unequivocally categorised in with the rest of East Asia, with all the strange Orientalism that entails. It is kind of startling to me, even with all the colonial history in the 1900s, that people in Japan would regard other Asian countries (which are generally west of Japan itself!) with a similar frame—like an English person talking about Germany as the ‘mysterious West’. Is the ‘not like other Asian countries’ attitude really that strong?

We get a flashback to Krauss attempting to explain how to chew and spit out areca nuts (aka betel nuts) to a naive young Natsuhi as a romantic gesture that falls a little flat. We note the bright red stains it leaves. Yeah, I think someone is likely to use this to fake their death later in the episode. (It’s not mentioned which country they’re visiting, but it’s one that uses hanzi on the shops and signs, so Taiwan or Hong Kong? It’s remarked that Kinzo also liked betel nuts, which may be a hint towards where he was stationed during the war, and perhaps the ‘beloved home of old’..?)

Beatrice is getting really excited at the romance… but the conversation turns to their shared imprisonment on Rokkenjima. Krauss is no longer a world traveller who gets childishly excited about betel nuts.

She praises Natsuhi’s ability to orchestrate the whole ‘Weekend at Kinzo’s’ routine in detail, comparing it to a ‘high-level magic circle’. I told you about the magic circles bro!! This is Lambdadelta-style magic, says Beatrice.

Out in the ‘meta’ layer, player!Battler helps player!Beato sip a little tea herself. The narration really emphasises her physical enervation. He questions what has even happened to Beato to get her in this state, whether it’s another ruse.

Aw, he really does care, etc. But for real, I get the feeling Battler lives for games as much as Beatrice does. Possibly because he was invented to be Beatrice’s opponent… yeah, I’m gonna keep that one in my back pocket just in case…

Bernkastel shows up and says Beato will never smile again. Then, on a black screen:

Bernkastel: Congratuations.

Bernie recalls a line Battler once said, that the games would be equally torture for Beatrice, and he won because Beatrice lost the will to fight. If she wasn’t shackled to the game by Lambda’s ‘no quitting’ rule, she’d have forfeit already.

Bernie further addresses how she helped Battler in a previous game, arranging for him to get hints and subtly steering things his way. This should be interesting! Ah, but we aren’t told how. Alas.

Battler resolves to win the game quickly so Beatrice can finally die. But he still has reservations…

Battler: ………I’m starting to feel like the truth doesn’t matter anymore. …Who gives a crap about the game if Beato is satisfied? Beato resigned. I’ll ignore the truth of the witch illusions and return home with my family. ……What’s wrong with that?

Bernie plays the Ange card once more. In a classic gory witch metaphor, she says his display of mercy is the equivalent of tearing a fingernail off slowly instead of ripping it all off at once. Battler tells her to fuck off.

She declares in red:

Bernkastel: Unless this game is resolved, you will never be released.

After a couple more rounds of this we get back to the game. Bernkastel says re the appearance of Beatrice in the garden:

Bernkastel: The only reason it looks like the two of them are drinking together… is because Lambdadelta, who is the Game Master and the one who is telling the story, is interpreting it that way.

If you stare without a fragment of love for Natsuhi, you won’t see illusions like that. ………That’s why, with my eyes, all I can see is Natsuhi all alone, drinking her tea in silence.

Oh dear me. This makes it even more complicated. Now there’s not even a single version of events presented to all players of the game… But, OK, bringing this together, the rules seem to be:

• the events depicted must reflect a story that someone in the game world believes or tries to depict
• the Game Master has leeway to choose which character’s version of the narrative to depict
• this can be negated by holding no love for the character in question

Battler raises that there is another interpretation: a ‘person X’ disguised as Beatrice could be conversing with Natsuhi here. There’s no red text on that front. So, Battler says, there should be a superposition of these two possible interpretations. (I mean, a ‘cat box’.)

Bernie denies this. Battler asks why. Bernie says:

Bernkastel: After all, Natsuhi is drinking tea all by herself right there.

As soon as she drops this red, Beatrice disappears from the scene.

So… Bernie can use the red like this? Just flat-out deny the witch reality in red? What are the restrictions on this, because otherwise she could just say ‘witches aren’t real’ in red and end the game right then and there?

Battler contemplates how ruthless the red truth is, for denying Natsuhi her pleasant moment with Beato. He remarks that, like a blade, the red truth should be used sparingly, not ‘without reason’.

Battler: A blade is a tool if you use it as intended, ……but it’s nothing but a murderer’s weapon if you use it out of malice.

Here, he says, it’s just cruel to deny Natsuhi the privacy of her own story. He declares that his aim is to deny witches from October 4th to 5th, 1986, and everywhere else is not something he cares to question… I’m not sure Bernie will accept that. He says that, by the stalemate clause, he can no more declare ‘witches don’t exist’ than the other side can declare that they do.

Damn, Battler really is weak to a sad face…

Once again, he tells Bernkastel to piss off. This time, she actually explicitly refuses instead of simply ignoring it. Well, can he force her? He could start denying more witches, though given how much trouble this one is giving him, that seems difficult…

Not quite in so many words, Battler says “Your friends suck, Beatrice.”

And Natsuhi goes home alone, her truth ‘exposed’.

OK, comments!

While it’s nice to have something explicit, I think the mechanics of the board are more or less as we’ve been supposing. The biggest revelation is this principle that the ‘witch narrative’ told by the Game Master has to derive from some particular person’s narrative, it’s not completely freeform whenever Battler isn’t on the stage. Perhaps I should have inferred that already, but still…

Does that mean, then, that we should be reading between the lines in magic scenes, trying to figure out who might have reason to view the world in such light?

That said, given that in each instance the murderer is usually seeking to blame their actions on Beatrice (or Kinzo), this doesn’t change it all that much. But it is interesting how it affects our interpretation of the scenes where the characters go and drop some one-liners and have a wicked magic battle. For example, last episode, when George and Jessica battled Gaap and Ronove, whose ‘truth’ is that supposed to be? Is it just the murderer’s truth, wanting to imagine that George and Jessica put up a good fight before killing each other? George’s more-chuuni-than-he-lets-on fantasy that he’d be able to be all ‘actually, I predicted your prediction’ and fight back with martial arts? Jessica’s wish to be defiant to the end?

My solution to the magic scenes so far has been ‘Battler isn’t around so I don’t need to explain this’, but now it seems I may need to come up with a certain type of explanation after all; not ‘explain the VFX and goat men’ but ‘explain whose belief/deception this represents’… ara ara…