I almost got killed because I screwed up crossing a roundabout today… but I didn’t! Wouldn’t that be a stupid way for this to end. You’d have to invent a multiverse of alternate fragments in which various versions of me complete this liveblog.
Anyway, I didn’t die (or you’re in a fragment right now…), so we’ve got more Umineko! Today we’ll meet this Erika. I think I’ve seen fanart of her going around without knowing she was an Umineko character… I assumed she was from Touhou or something.
Before we start, though, a brief thought on genre and games, since Bernkastel brought it up the other day…
A brief tangent
Is Umineko a game? In one sense, yes, because it’s an interactive program that you run on your computer for entertainment, sold alongside other computer games. In another sense, no, because it’s a purely linear ‘kinetic novel’ with no choice points. But in a third sense, which I think is more interesting…
I once read an amusing, copypasta-worthy critique of detective stories by a guy called Edmund Wilson, who slammed them in the 1940s them for lacking literary quality. (If you’re wondering, I came across it by way of funny post by azdoine which rewrote it to be about “rational” webfiction.)
I’m not gonna argue about whether Wilson’s literary judgement was fair, since I’ve not read most of the books in question—I’m more interested in a thought that occurred to me, that he’s making a category error. Mystery novels are best judged not as novels but as a form of game. While literary aspects may make it more fun to engage with just like a well-written computer game, the point is to provide a strange, misleading scenario, and challenge the reader to figure out the solution before it is revealed. It’s a game in the Suitsian sense: the most efficient way to find out whodunnit would be to turn to the last page of the book or look up a summary on Wikipedia, but you voluntarily take on the restriction of reading through the book in order, so that you can enjoy the challenge of trying to solve the mystery with limited information.
Under that defintion, mystery novels are games, and so is Umineko, though the mystery definitely seems to be of a different sort than a classic whodunnit. For whatever reason, the form of the detective story seems to be a pretty fertile one for literary experiments in unusual formats… see for example Disco Elysium, which adopts a detective premise to draw you in to a very expansive story indeed (and give you a narrative reason to go poking around the place), but nevertheless ends with a reveal of the murderer (and something else, which I won’t spoil). On another part of the site, I’ve been liveblogging a webfiction called The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, a work explicitly inspired by Umineko that also frames itself as an abstruse metafictional variant on a ‘fair play’ mystery.
The webfiction genre known as ‘quests’, where readers write commands to a character that are interpreted by the author, also frequently takes on a mystery structure where the context and rules are not immediately clear. That goes back at least as far as Problem Sleuth, which opens as a parody of noir detective stories.
And of course, the potential for mystery stories as actual games has long been recognised, resulting in the modern genre of very stylish detective games where assembling evidence to find out whodunnit is the main activity: Ace Attorney, Paradise Killer, Murders on the Yangtze River…
I think this link is interesting because Umineko is about something that is framed as a game in the fiction. Player!Battler is in a similar seat to the reader, trying to guess at what is being hidden, though he does not have our guarantee that the story will eventually answer the mysteries in another three and a half episodes. Anyway, in the spirit of the lusory attitude or whatever (the phrase “you stand accused of failing to embody the lusory attitude” is revolving in my head at the moment), I am taking on an additional rule to constrain my playing of Umineko: I have to write down all my thoughts and guesses here in this liveblog. It definitely makes me pay attention! But it also makes it more fun, because it becomes a shared thing with all of you. <3
OK, let’s meet Erika!
Chapter 4: Furudo Erika
We open at the 1986 Famicom. …wait, that’s something else.
Battler, Jessica and George are hanging out in the rose garden. This time, Ange gets a brief mention. Battler says she’s alway getting diarrhea.
This does not go down well.
The narration suggests Battler (and the other characters) is regressing to a 12-year-old mindset, as he was six years ago. I promise I won’t make any more than one ‘age regwessy’ joke…
Cut to Natsuhi. The adults suspect something and have been pressing her to show them Kinzo. She frets and gives instructions to Genji. Beatrice appears over a dark overlay to reassure her that as long as the door is not opened, it will be fine. For this year, at least.
Ronove shows up in Natsuhi’s mind space as well. I imagine that this is just an embellishment on the part of the game board: if you are engaged in creating a falsified narrative, then you get to play around with the whole gang.
Natsuhi reacts with surprise when he shows up. I guess there is another magic-aware ‘layer’ of Natsuhi operating in the game board embellishment..? I don’t feel like we should assume that Natsuhi started spawning tulpas en masse.
Oh, Gaap’s here too! I was wondering where she’d gotten to, since she hasn’t shown up on the ‘out of game’ layer yet.
Ronove describes himself as ‘a Genji of the magic world’. I’ve been wondering about the correspondence between Beatrice’s ‘furniture’ characters and the ‘real’ ones—after allVirgilia ‘hatched’ from Kumasawa in episode 3. Not sure, though, who Gaap would be…
We cut to the ‘out of game’ layer, where Battler is complaining about the pacing. Honestly, by the standards of previous episodes, we’re steaming along, but he wants to get to the murders.
Bernkastel drops in to discuss first-move advantages (sente). She says there is a mystery to solve even on Oct 4th. Lambda taunts him as incompetent. I mean, it has been said in red, so we can’t disagree!
The mystery they have in mind is the epitaph, which is introduced on Oct 4. Battler starts wondering why it’s an element of the game in the first place—why Beatrice would put it there.
Great question, Battler! I am also wondering that now. Since it’s been a factor in all four games, and also mentioned outside in the Ange storyline, I assumed there actually was an epitaph ritual on ‘Rokkenjima Prime’. But now Battler raises the subject, it could be the case that there was no epitaph, just like Kinzo was dead all along.
As a narrative element… as well as giving us a fun puzzle to solve, the epitaph centres the idea of succession, and perhaps more importantly provides a ritual structure to the whole thing, which absolutely helps sell the ‘magic’ theme. But there’s probably more to it than that…
Over in the parlour, the relatives are trying to figure out how best to manipulate Krauss into lending them money. Rosa is eepy so the others leave the room to let her sleep. Hmm… We’re told that the ‘Rosa berating Maria in the garden’ scene has already happened (clock for this chapter is 11:00 on October 4) and Maria is now out in the garden trying to find her rose.
Someone introduces themselves with a small, polite 今日は. Whoever it is, they are unknown to Maria. But we cut away before finding out who.
Genji: ……A short while ago, someone came to the mansion…claiming to have drifted here after an accident at sea.
Huh, Lambda is really fucking with us. After all that effort to narrow it down to 17 characters for absolutely certain, now we throw one more into the pot. Or maybe it’s Bernkastel… Bernie doesn’t want to go to the immense effort it took to set up Ange as a piece last game, and is resorting to a half-assed measure like this to get her ‘avatar’ piece on the board?
Whoever this person is, Nanjo is tending to them. OK, so, in terms of the ‘hidden variables’ of the mundane scenario, this could represent someone else setting up a ruse. Instead of pretending to be Beatrice, they’re pretending to be this new person. Perhaps representing two different falsified narratives playing off against each other. Maybe the other relatives set this up to attack Krauss…
Krauss seems surprisingly chill about some random person showing up on his remote island unannounced during a period of immense skulduggery. Natsuhi is a little more anx, fearing it’s this mysterious son of hers, but she’s reassured to hear that mystery guest is a girl of Jessica’s age. Rather improbably, she showed up in a lifejacket and swimsuit…
In the parlour, first Gohda then Nanjo appear to assure everyone that the girl is uninjured.
Seriously, who goes out boating near Rokkenjima on the day of a typhoon?
Everyone else, besides the cousins, arrives, and we get our first proper look at her…
I spent a while trying to figure out what this type of hat is called for the alt-text. I think it might be a fascinator.
Apparently the Ushiromiyas just had this outfit lying around ready to go! Maybe Jessica had a lolita fashion phase…
She speaks in a small and very polite voice. As the chapter title suggested, this is indeed Furudo Erika, and she gets a spot on the character screen:
- Furudo Erika (古戸 エリカ)
-
Fell from the pleasure boat “Eternal Maid II” mid-cruise in the waters near Rokkenjima.
She washed up on Rokkenjima on October 4th, 1986. The Ushiromiya family welcomed her as a guest.
She managed to drift to the island unharmed thanks to several miracles, including the life jacket she was wearing.
If the character design wasn’t enough to tip us off that this is related to Bernkastel, the ‘miracles’ line clinches it… and then Bernie comes out and says it outright.
So this is literally Bernie’s self-insert fanfic character. We are, in a sense, about to see Bernie’s fix-it fic about how she would figure everything out if she was the one on Rokkenjima! Wild.
Battler doesn’t like this modification of the scenario—understandably!—but Beatrice isn’t in a state to object to anyone modding her game.
Bernie offers a ‘detective proclamation’ (探偵宣言) to reassure us.
Bernkastel: I proclaim that Furudo Erika is the detective.
The detective is not the culprit. No proof is needed to show this.
So pretty much the role that we were assuming for Battler so far. Though, does that mean Battler himself is now on the table for having dunnit?
To make sure there are no reference-ambiguity word games, which she apparently hates, Lambdadelta adds:
Lambdadelta: Furudo Erika is not the culprit.
Battler immediately raises the question of the previous games. We get the following helpful clarifications in red (skipping over the intervening text):
Lambdadelta: Furudo Erika had no influence on any of Beato’s games before now.
She does not exist in the worlds before this one, nor does she influence them.
As for the number of people on the island:
Lambdadelta: It has only increased by one person: Furudo Erika.
Besides her, the number of people on this island is exactly the same as it was in the previous games.
This seems pretty ironclad, but I am immediately wondering if some trick could sneak through. For example, could Erika help the culprit, even if she isn’t the culprit? I suppose we’ll have to just keep that in mind.
The fact that Erika is so crudely inserted means this board cannot possibly be a possible variation of ‘Rokkenjima Prime’ from this point on. So the main information we can hope for relates to the setup of the mystery. Who knows what her presence will force Lambda to reveal..?
The question of the relation between Bernkastel and her avatar piece also occurs to me. I assume that she’s not directly controlling her piece any more than Battler is, so this is sort of… a piece tuned to follow her logic as much as possible but ‘running in’ a simulation? Either one that is autonomous, or one or that can be adjusted on the fly by the Game Master, because I’m also not sure if they have control over presentation or just events…
The other cousins arrive and get introduced to Erika. Lambda confirms in red that everyone on the island is now in this room:
Lambdadelta: In other words, the number of people in this parlor now is equal to the total number of people on this island.
Which Battler concludes is at most 18, including Erika. Since Sayo and Kanon are both in the room with both Battler and Erika observing, my wacky theory that they’re the same person is probably ruled out here… indeed, as if responding to this thought, Battler looks (through piece!Battler’s eyes, it seems) and observes the following people in the following order:
- Erika
- Kumasawa
- Shannon
- Genji
- Krauss
- Natsuhi
- Gohda
- Kanon
- Rudolf (“dad”)
- Kyrie
- Eva
- Hideyoshi
- Rosa
- Maria
- Nanjo
- George
- Jessica
We could possibly imagine that someone was moving around and rapidly changing appearance here, but that would be a bit much. This seems about as firm as we can get that this is the exact list of people in play, right?
Though I feel like I must be missing something. This is ‘Battler’s truth’, so if piece!Battler was fervently pretending an additional person exists, it’s possible that we can carve out some room here. At no point has anyone said there are exactly 18 people on the island in red, only that it’s at most 17+1 and also equal to the number of people in this room. For example, what if Battler and Jessica were somehow conspiring, so Erika is really Jessica? Maybe Jessica isn’t actually in the parlour outside of Battler’s imagination? This is a bit farfetched but let’s keep that interpretation around…
We end with Natsuhi and Genji, outside, discussing the fact that Jessica’s old middle-school clothes fit Erika improbably well. Mmhm. Nice way to crowbar Erika into the narrative…
Genji says he confirmed with the Coast Guard that Erika really did fall off a boat, and it’s unlikely that a spy could land a boat to come ashore. Even so, Natsuhi reasonably doubts this story. She tells Genji to keep Erika to the guesthouse.
Piece!Beatrice discusses the situation with Ronove, who says…
Ronove: She is probably Lady Bernkastel’s piece. ……Though she will follow the rules of humans, the player is a witch.
Which is interesting! This Ronove (piece!Ronove) is apparently aware of the game but he does not share a state of knowledge with the Ronove who exists outside the game board. Since we can’t really call the latter “player!Ronove”, I guess we can fall back to the old meta! terminology… agh, so many character variants to keep track of!
Beato isn’t too bothered. Gaap can beat any human, she says. Gaap warns her that ‘the definition of a witch’ extends beyond magic… what is the definition of a witch as applies to Umineko? I guess that’s one of the main mysteries!
Curiously, piece!Beatrice seems to be aware of the way the previous game played out, even though it left player!Beatrice comatose…
With that, the chapter ends and the clock advances to 19:00.
So, the question then: having introduced Erika, what does Bernkastel intend to do with her? Assuming Erika truly is just there as a ‘detective’, I suppose Bernie wants to use Erika to investigate the mysteries more proactively, using methods that piece!Battler never would? And, in general, she’ll use methods that constrain Lambda’s ability to control the scenario… to ‘measure’ more things and collapse superpositions, in terms of the quantum analogy.
I can kind of see what Ronove meant, though. The vibes are kind of off on this version of Rokkenjima! Though Erika has had little chance to really establish herself yet, so I withhold judgement for now. Compared to Bernkastel herself, the main difference with Erika seems to be that she is super posh. The narration is dripping with lines about how refined and classy she is, fitting right in at the Ushiromiya mansion.
It’s funny, though, in terms of affect, Erika so far seems a little similar to Ange’s more dispassionate moments, but she’s missing Ange’s delightful sarcastic streak so I have not warmed to her as much. I’m sure she’ll get a bit spicier once the murders kick off, though…
OK, not a lot of mysteries to solve this chapter, so see you next time!
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