Let’s read Umineko! - episode 5 - chapter 9

Hello again! Last time I didn’t really comment much on what happened in Chapter 8 because I was eepy. So, quickly then:

Big question is, is ‘Phone Man’ even real? Well, we know for sure that he’s not (even if Natsuhi doesn’t), because Lambda declared the number of people on this island in red, and Phone Man was not present in the ‘roll call’ scene in the parlour earlier.

That leaves two possibilities:

• Phone Man is another narrative that Natsuhi is creating, i.e. it’s a representation of a personal ‘truth’, perhaps that she is feeling guilty over what happened 19 years ago
• Phone Man is someone else on the island, pretending to be Natsuhi’s son in order to manipulate her

There’s not much to do with the first item—and anyway, we’re already up to our necks in Natsuhi’s constructed fiction about Kinzo, adding yet another strand seems a bit much. So let’s consider the second. Phone Man’s voice doesn’t obviously resemble another character, but I doubt the devs of the PS3 version would give us such a clue. It has to be someone with access to Natsuhi’s room so they could set up the ‘autumn’ card. I think it’s quite likely they hid four different cards for different seasons, so they could direct Natsuhi to pick up whichever one she said.

It is unlikely to be any of the characters in the parlour, because Battler is there—at least assuming we can treat him as a ‘detective’ like Erika. That leaves Genji (who, notably, has been the person to inform Natsuhi of the call both times), Krauss, and the people outside the mansion: Nanjo, Gohda, Kumasawa, the cousins, and Erika.

In the opening video there is a mysterious man in a trenchcoat with an anchor necklace, swinging a cutlass around. He looks kinda like Battler, to the point that at first I thought he was Battler. And we could say that, if someone was to try and pass themselves off as Natsuhi’s 19-year-old son in-person, Battler would be a good candidate! Alternatively, ‘it’s Jessica crossdressing and doing a voice’ would be hilarious.

That leaves the question of who knocked on the door to deliver the letter. We know this happened moments before midnight, thanks to the clock. We also have a scene claiming that when the clock struck midnight, Genji was with Krauss and Natsuhi. However, if Krauss, Natsuhi and Genji were conspiring together to deliver the letter, Lambda would have license to show a scene like this, since their ‘truth’ is that they were off having a strategy discussion.

As far as motive, the most obvious people I can see who’d want to stress out and manipulate Natsuhi are the relatives, as a ploy in the inheritance thing. But, we shouldn’t discount the non-Ushiromiya characters…

For now we can only speculate!

Chapter 9: Revenge for 19 Years Ago

We open this chapter to seaside ambience. We’re in a Natsuhi flashback. She is thinking about how she went to great efforts to have a child, because her place in the Ushiromiya family depended on her ability to bring Krauss an heir. (Of course, nobody seems to consider that Krauss might be the one who’s infertile…)

I tried every medication that was said to promote fertility, every incense or herb, ……but nothing I tried had any effect.

Beato is pretty sweet at least on the ‘Natsuhi’s mindscape’ layer. It’s the stork’s fault, she says. As for Kinzo wanting a grandchild…

Well said, Beato! But also, I am really amused by the idea of Kinzo spending his fortune investing in mpreg research. That said… maybe this is what Kinzo actually did do? Like, all that shit about creating furniture with human hearts, i.e., homunculi…

…except, wait, no, that is exactly where they’re going with this. Natsuhi brings up the ‘Gospel House’ orphanage.

Natsuhi: As part of their work training and public activity, the head employed Gospel House children with exceptional grades as servants. ……All of the servants in the mansion with the character 音, in/on/non in their names—Shannon, Kanon, Lunon, Manon, Lenon, and more besides—were children from there.

Natsuhi sees this in a positive light: she says they are well-payed and working for the Ushiromiyas is quite the resumé item, so most of them could leave after just a few years.

We flash back to a scene in Kinzo’s study. He’s ordering Natsuhi to raise a child as his grandchild. Kumasawa is there holding the baby.

But is this Jessica or Phone Man? Either way, it seems possible that Battler isn’t the only one who has a kind of dodgy parent situation. Did something similar happen with Rudolf?

Beatrice seems genuinely pretty angry with Kinzo here!

Unable to bear these insults, Natsuhi prays again ‘to angels and demons’, the former to grant her a child, the latter to curse the baby and make it disappear. She ordered ‘one of the older servants’ to look after the baby, while she went to the rose garden, wishing they would take the baby away altogether. And this person went for a walk, wandered off the path, and fell down a cliff, despite the fence in front of it. Both the nameless servant and the baby died.

Natsuhi blames herself for wishing for their death. Beatrice objects, in strong terms…

This is why demons exist, Ronove says: to act as scapegoats in situations like this. And Beatrice says, as such, she’ll take on the fight with Phone Man—her duty as the family alchemist. She spins a scene in the past where ‘the middle-aged female servant’ is drawn off the path by her golden butterflies and hypnotic gaze. They are drawn into the golden rose garden of Beatrice’s magic mansion, and Gaap teleports them into the sky. We even get an aerial view of it, before the world resolves back to the base of the cliff…

Back in the flashback, Natsuhi found that they had fallen, and ran to get help. The pair died in hospital.

(OK, so, mundane explanation… Natsuhi pushed them off a cliff and now she’s in denial about it?)

Natsuhi says the only people on the island were Natsuhi and Kinzo. (And… how many servants? Surely the woman who got pushed off the cliff wasn’t the only one.) The baby was entrusted to her, and died, within three days.

Kinzo’s reaction to two people dying was… strange!

So… this baby thing was his effort to resurrect Beatrice? Like, the original Beatrice who lived in Kuwadorian back in the day? In any case, this pushed him way deeper into his occult obsession.

Natsuhi starts denying any of it ever happened. The fact that this nameless servant was killed… it doesn’t matter to her, apparently! It was three days of phantasm. (I mean, they can always hire more servants, right?)

Gaap and Ronove observe that, even though the baby definitely died, someone could easily be pretending otherwise in the human world where no red truth exists. And honestly, if Natsuhi fucking murdered someone to get out of having to raise this baby, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone wanted revenge…

Beatrice offers to entertain this phantasm of nineteen years ago as a guest. She makes one of her faces…

Beatrice ends the scene by questioning whose piece Phone Man is, if Erika belongs to Bernkastel…

And strangely, we already get a scene from the other side of the phone line! Except… no, Phone Man’s voice here also has the phone filter. Someone is tapping the line?

We cut to the ‘player’ level of reality and we see… Lambdadelta is the one doing the voice, phone filter and all.

The last three segments there are spoken by different voice actors, complete with sound effects.

Erika appears on the ‘outside game’ layer as Lambda praises her.

Lambdadelta: The pleasure is mine. ……Mmm, she really is wonderful. Super adorable. I’m dying to break her spirit with my witch illusions and see her face twist in humiliation.

Bernkastel: ……Hear that? ……Don’t embarrass me, okay? Show me that you’re a much more useful piece than Ange was.

Lambdadelta: “Yes, leave it to me. Lady Bernkastel, my master. ……I’m nothing like that gloomy, dull, utterly charmless piece.

Yeah, they’re really smug about getting to mess with Beato’s game board while she’s out of it, huh. Indeed, they get to taunting her over it. Her piece, they agree, is now more of a bowling pin than a chess piece.

Bernkastel: *giggle*giggle*giggle*giggle*giggle*. Both Natsuhi and Beato are sacks of filthy, rotten truth, just entrails wrapped up in a thin layer of skin. ……Tearing that to shreds and dragging the insides out will be one of my—no, one of our few pleasures.

Hey, I think being a witch sounds like it kinda sucks?

We go to Battler on… well, it’s got the border that represents a higher level of reality but I think this is more kind of Battler’s soliloquy space. A new music track, Spiral enters, with slow, mournful vocals and strings.

Erika has a brief word with Battler. Battler refuses her offer to work together: he’s only really interested in Beato’s original games, and what this game can tell him about those.

…Hmm. Do I call Erika on this level of reality ‘player!Erika’? I don’t think so, because Bernkastel is the player here. Like Ange, this Erika’s considered a piece who left the gameboard somehow. Well, if the difference matters, I guess I’ll figure something out.

Battler defiantly declares that he won’t take any help. The witches taunt him for his incompetence. And the next day begins…

OK, let’s see, stuff that’s probably significant:

At least on this game board, Natsuhi definitely murdered someone, right? Even if she’s rationalised it as wishing a curse on them in the story she tells Beato. Maybe that’s even how she remembers it.

Gospel House came up again, and we specifically see it being used by Kinzo as a means to gain a successor, in classic alchemist fashion… or perhaps more specifically, to resurrect Beato. If Kinzo was indoctrinating one or more of the kids there not just to think of themselves as furniture, but to be a potential reincarnation of Beatrice, that could explain a lot!

Other than that, our Gamer Lesbians are doing their usual trash talk. It’s fun. Let’s see if Lambda’s game can live up to how much she’s gassed herself up…