Let’s read Umineko! - episode 5 - chapter 3

New chapter let’s go… c’mon Lambda, show us how a true gamer plays ‘Rokkenjima murders’…

Chapter 3: Locked-room Barrier

We open with Jessica picking up a phone call from Battler! Piece!Battler is presumably not being controlled by meta!Battler at this point (if he ever was, I guess the control is more of an indirect influence anyway). She’s in high spirits.

Krauss is doing an architecture in the parlour. Oooh, I can’t wait to find out how this one’s turning out. Haha, we’re immediately told that he brought them over to tell Natsuhi what’s going on… she’s no longer trusting Krauss to handle the business shit. Maybe this project has a chance after all.

Krauss is of course insisting that it’s all fine. The project has grown bigger… he says words like ‘definitely’ and ‘certain’ a lot. He doesn’t want to cash out too early. And hey, even Kinzo’s ghost seems to think it’s gonna work out… as does Beatrice.

Beatrice: ……Hmmm. They’re pretty good even from my perspective. Everyone is confident in his victory and concentrating a significant quantity of magical power. As a result, that victory is growing ever deeper, gathering more and more people and magical power, and beginning to create gold. A perfect embodiment of the classic method of alchemy.

Yeah, using great mystical power as a moneymaking scheme is very alchemical isn’t it…

But of course they have to fake Kinzo’s life for one more year. (One of my fave wacky conspiracy theories is that the UK state was doing this with Elizabeth II for years, because of her unrivalled power as a reassuring symbol to stoke nationalist sentiment. There’s no good reason to think it’s true but it is really funny to imagine.)

Natsuhi’s plan is to ensure that the servants on the day are the ones who are in on the plan. Assuming this was also true in the other games, this is interesting.

Beatrice titledrops the chapter:

Beatrice: No matter how much the mansion is filled with the toxin, it will be impossible to deny Kinzo’s existence as long as the locked‐room barrier remains around this room. I shall guarantee that myself. ……However, if you choose to make a barricade, it is inevitable that you will be surrounded.

She insists that Natsuhi gives her an order, not a request, to act in a suitably Family Head way. Natsuhi does so, but still quite politely.

We seem to be spending a lot of time on the Kinzo question so far given that we already know he’s dead, but I suspect the revelation will come out sometime during the game, like it almost did last time before the shit hit the fan. Indeed, perhaps it will address the question of what happened in Episode 4: if Battler is right about someone declaring themselves the new Kinzo, how did they get everyone to go along with it?

Concerned for Beatrice’s health, Battler outright declares a blue truth to cover for Kinzo here.

In the last game, you said in red that Grandfather is dead at the start time for all games. However, you never mentioned whether Grandfather was alive or dead before the start time for the games. ……In short, even if Grandfather exists in this place right now, that doesn’t create any contradictions

And I also can’t deny the existence of the Beatrice in this place. The number of people on this island outside the game board…in other words, before October 4th, 1986, has not been declared in red. Therefore, there’s nothing strange about Beatrice existing here

Beatrice wins… by doing nothing? I realise Battler isn’t exactly a ‘thinking ahead’ kind of guy, but what sort of narrative has witches and magic existing except for a two day window in 1986 where they all got out of the way for a conventional murder mystery to take place..?

Battler says he wants to ‘fight like a stoic’ (ストイック) in the time period of the game, and not ‘bully’ her otherwise. I feel like this probably predates the modern Stoicism revival, but who knows.

Lacking a book of Marcus Aurelius quotations to ponder, he ponders Beatrice’s motivation. Time to make the ultimate chessboard flip, indeed…

So once more, for old times’ sake…

Cut to Genji, Kanon and Sayo planning the big ruse. Notably it’s only the ‘one winged eagle’ servants who are in on the scheme.

Kanon: I’m sure you’ll screw up right away, Nee‐san. Maybe it’s better to say you have a cold or something so that you can skip that day.

wow rude. (Even for the sake of protecting her!)

Genji gives a little speech to the effect of take this seriously, internalise that Kinzo is still alive doing his research.

We cut to some kind of café, which is fortunate because it gives me a different background so the screenshots don’t get stale, where it seems Eva and Hideyoshi have figured it out already…

Hideyoshi says that Takeda Shingen pursued a similar scheme during the Sengoku period, willing that if he died, it should be covered up for the sake of the war effort. Apparently so did his namesake, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who covered up Oda Nobunaga’s death. Shibata Katsuie tried it less successfully.

(Trust Hideyoshi to be a nerd about the Sengoku period! I feel like that’s a more Japan-specific instance of those businessmen who read Sun Tzu and Clausewitz.)

Rudolf and Kyrie, meanwhile, in a city with a great big full moon, seem to have a sense of how bad Krauss’s business is going… and of course that’s an opportunity to extort him for money that Rudolf desperately needs.

Rudolf remembers Krauss treating him violently as a kid. The narration notes that threatening Krauss will be confronting his own trauma… To prepare, Kyrie will meet some of her ‘Kyoto friends’. Perhaps this is where blue-haired girl will enter the story?

Finally, we have Rosa. Rudolf calls her up, to invite her to plot together with him and Eva to each extort 200 million from Krauss—enough to cover her debts.

Unfortunately, meeting to plot this means she won’t be able to take Maria to the new ‘Delsney Land’… She decides on the spot to punish Maria for staying up late and not keeping her room tidy by yelling at her and cancelling the trip.

Oh my god, she’s so awful… We’re spared seeing it on screen this time.

Back to Natsuhi! Genji phones her up. Apparently an unknown ‘yougng man’ has phoned without giving a name, claiming that Natsuhi would know him.

After a fair bit of anticipation, this character speaks:

???: ………久しぶりだな

???: ………It’s been a long time.

Whowever they are, they want Natsuhi to remember them… because he’s her child!?

Also he wants revenge for the ‘crime’ of 19 years ago. As you do.

If this is a prank call, it pays off handsomely. Natsuhi remembers ‘the roar of the sea from that day’.

If Beatrice liked to stuff her stories with wildly overcomplicated magic otaku stuff, maybe Lambda’s thing is cheesy melodrama? Anyway, 19 years puts us just before the death of Beatrice and birth of Battler.

Bernie doesn’t seem impressed.

She tells Lambda to confirm this conversation in red. But soon concludes that unless she makes a blue hypothesis, there is no such obligation. Bernie interprets it as setup for later.

She jokes about putting this card face down in the fold. Bernkastel hits her, calling it a <Direct Attack>—I’m guessing a joke about a card game I’m not familiar with. The Yu-Gi-Oh wiki comes up when I search, so maybe that!

With that, the setup is complete and it’s time for the game proper to begin…

The whole ‘crime’ of Natsuhi is so heavily flagged as a misdirection that the game lampshades it, but I wonder what it’s setting up? Seems quite a roundabout play, whether it’s a visualisation of someone’s scheme, or there actually is a guy!

In any case, the next chapter is titled Furudo Erika. The name of the blue-haired girl? If so, a friend described her thus:

now you have met the character everyone calls Worst Girl. whether that’s meant affectionately or not is an exercise left to the reader.

So this should be fun!