PinkuBentoBox

I’ve had this entry half-written sitting around in my drafts for months now. I actually went straight on and finished Umineko episode 3 after writing my thoughts on the second one, but never got around to finishing this entry off. Now that Witch-Hunt have released the full patch for episode 4 I thought I’d dig this entry up and complete it prior to commencing play through the next installment.

Overall I think this was the best episode so far, and it practically has me salivating for the anime adaption. There are a number of sequences in this episode which will be absolutely epic when animated. Assuming, of course, that the execution is good - I have my reservations about some of their casting decisions. Additionally this installment was interesting because it significantly built upon a lot of the characters, included the first in-episode appearance of one of the framing story characters, and started expanding on some of the backstory. This also resulted in us being able to finally begin to see an overall structure to the story emerge. Everything is beginning to solidify and it is now apparent that any speculation before getting through this episode is pretty much useless since until now we really were trying to solve a puzzle blindfolded.

Finally, Beatrice has to have committed one of the most epic, elaborate trolls in literature. She had me completely convinced by the end - and she would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids.

This episode really helped me solidify a lot of my thoughts. Some things were confirmed, and I think we’re finally at the point that we’re getting an idea what sort of questions we actually need to be asking. It also clarifies the rules of the contest between Beatrice and Battler - we now know that what we’re seeing happen is Beatrice’s explanation for the events that Rokkenjima Battler (as opposed to Meta-story Battler) experiences. For Battler to win he needs to provide a complete mundane explanation for everything, but within the bounds set up by Beatrice’s red letter statements. Those statements will actually probably help us as much as they hinder, honestly, as they reduce Beatrice’s ability to come up with crazy magical explanations too. Less wiggle-room. Though the exact wording of some of the statements will probably allow for loopholes at times.

There were a lot of interesting developments regarding Beatrice herself. One of the major ones was the revelation that her name, her powers and her title is passed on to her successor. Beato several times mentions that she’s thousands of years old, but this may actually be misleading - Beatrice, the Golden Witch, may be that old. But it’s entirely possible that when she says this, she refers to the title and powers, not her physical self. Bearing out with this is the suggestion that the previous Beatrice, (Virgilia) appears to be Kumasawa. I don’t believe that Kumasawa is thousands of years old - if anything she’d be close to Kinzo’s age. Additionally we have Eva taking the title from Beato, and then we’re told in the epilogue that Ange will inherit the title from Eva.

The other interesting development on the backstory front is that Rosa had met Beatrice before, in the flesh, and had seen her die. The way that this was all set up suggested that Beatrice was Kinzo’s illegitimate daughter (with Kumasawa? It seems possible, though odd), concealed in the forest to hide her from everyone. Personally I don’t entirely buy Rosa’s story about her. Given the way that Rosa flips out and starts beating her daughter all the time, and that the second and third episodes have showed she certainly has a fair bit of ambition and drive herself, it’s entirely possible that she realised exactly who Beatrice was and (in the grip of one of her wild mood swings) pushed her off the cliff. This would seem to fit with some of her other behavior too. The way that she comes down so hard on Maria’s love of witches, and especially when Maria talks about meeting Beatrice, would be because Rosa has a lot of guilt about killing her. It could also explain the excessively cruel way that Beato treated her in the epilogue for episode 2.

I’m not so happy about some of the logical arguments that were put forward this episode. Hempel’s Ravens (note it should be Ravens, plural) isn’t a name of a logical argument at all. It’s a logical paradox. The explanation given in the game is fine. “All ravens are black”. Negating both sides via the rule of implication gives us “everything that is not black is not a raven”. This is still valid (if being black is a trait of all ravens, then if the object isn’t black it can’t be a raven). Furthermore, Hempel has a raven he has observed which is black. This lends evidence to the first statement (”my raven is black so all ravens are black”). The paradox arises when we take an object that is not black. “This object is not black so it is not a raven.” This is a negation of the first statement being used to apply evidence that the contrapositive is a valid statement. It’s logically equivalent, but it is also incorrect - the colour of the object tells us nothing about Ravens. I’m really not sure how this paradox has any bearing on the game, though, aside from reinforcing that we cannot use inductive logic if we don’t fully understand the whole problem space. If anything, being forced to use a logical paradox to defend an argument strikes me as slightly desperate. However describing Rokkenjima as being like Schrodinger’s Cat explained a lot to me. At the moment, both the magical and the mundane explanations exist, and the resolution of the game will be the equivalent of opening the box and finding out if the cat is alive or dead.

The real question that I had at the end when Beatrice’s absolutely masterful deception is revealed at the final moment, was how much of her act was fake, and how much was actually a glimpse of her true nature? In previous entries I’d suggested that she seemed to be so utterly evil that it almost felt like overcompensation, and additionally the way she practically reveled in breaking apart pairs of lovers seemed to be suggesting envy was a major motivating factor in her behavior. The question is whether she was planning her elaborate deception from the beginning of the chapter onward, or if it was something she came up with later.

Personally, I suspect that she came up with the plan later in the act, because I got the distinct impression that her reaction to Battler’s vehement rejection of her seemed far too genuine, especially if we consider the revelations regarding her past. She was kept in isolation in her mansion on the island for years. Battler is quite possibly the first person she’s had significant interactions with since her ‘death’. She has no social skills, and her power has most assuredly broken her respect for life. I got the impression that a lot of the reason that we were suckered in so magnificently was that everything she says about her change of heart and perspective seemed so extremely plausible, and I suspect that the reason for that is that there’s more than a hint of truth in a lot of it. Her life of isolation and her untimely death have, in my opinion, stunted her ability to empathise with people. So when she is furnished with the power to remake anything she breaks or resurrect anything she kills indefinitely, she ends up with an extremely childish understanding of the consequences of her actions. Her wanton cruelty in the second episode was entirely to provoke a reaction from Battler, in entirely the same manner that a child might deliberately do something they know is wrong for the same reasons. It’s also worth noting that the same is true of Eva Beatrice - the Eva that gains the power of the Golden Witch is a vindictive, rebellious teenager, a part of Eva that she had buried. Where Beato’s cruelty is more of a casual disregard, Eva Beatrice is malicious and excessive, and I suspect that the difference there is at least partially due to differences in upbringing. The four siblings all seem to hate each other and with a father like Kinzo it’s no wonder the lot of them have some serious childhood trauma. I suspect that if any of them were to inherit Beatrice’s power they would probably end up doing the same sort of things, though probably in different ways.

Eva’s solving of the riddle and inheritance of the Golden Witch’s powers was a surprise to me. I had been expecting that solving the riddle was the way out, when in fact solving or not solving it in the end makes no difference. It was however quite interesting to see that the person who solves the riddle inherits Beatrice’s powers. While they undoubtedly fell into the wrong hands in the case of Eva, it strikes me that if they were inherited by someone with less mental issues. I thought that the epilogue was actually the most interesting aspect of this. Specifically, Eva inherited the powers of the golden witch, she slaughtered her entire family and apparently completed the whole resurrection ritual. If that’s the case, then she should be the all-powerful Endless Witch and should have been able to resurrect George and Hideyoshi. Instead we find that she’s a bitter, twisted old woman hooked up to life support and on the verge of death. Which means that her resurrection as Beatrice was not complete. Or more accurately that those abilities never existed in the first place :P.

Another puzzling issue there was that I believe Eva described Ange as being the ‘final’ golden witch, i.e. when Eva dies her title passes to her. This doesn’t seem to make sense. Eva intends the title to be a punishment or a curse, which makes sense given that she slaughtered her whole family and may have some regrets, but I’m not sure how this precludes the possibility of Ange ever passing the title on herself. I’m not sure if this was an inconsistency or if I missed a point somewhere in there. At first I thought that the title might be hereditary, passed down through the male line and thus unable to propagate past Ange, but if that was the case then it would not have been stated several times that anyone who solves the riddle will inherit the Golden Witch’s powers.

Probably the most important thing to keep in mind though is that the whole magical explanation is a theory. In fact, it seems like that weekend is the only time that those powers may exist. I assume that this ties into the game between Battler and Beato. If Beato wins, then magic exists and the golden witch’s powers will persist. Otherwise, it’s assumed that normal reality persists. Which in turn means that as long as Battler doesn’t give in, he will eventually gather the solution and will win. This would also explain why Beatrice tries to break him down so hard - she is actually hiding the fact that she’s at a disadvantage the longer the game lasts. I’m actually going to posit that the reason for this is that her powers are actually something gifted to her from MiyoLambdadelta because the whole ‘game’ is actually on another level a contest between her and RikaBernkastel. The entire scenario was engineered and Beatrice herself may not have ever been anything more than some kind of angry wandering ghost before LD set things up.

We have to constantly keep in mind that the magical explanation is just a theory, Beatrice essentially describing how she does things, but not necessarily the actual truth. Beatrice’s ‘truth’ only becomes reality if Battler agrees to it, after all. It seemed like Eva-Beatrice left a lot of holes open because she was a bit careless. It’s true that she completely blindsided everyone with red text toward the end, but I’m still not convinced that there wasn’t an explanation. In fact, the fact that she placed such tight restrictions around the situation by speaking in red (I wonder how they’ll do that in the anime?) could well have made the whole situation quite brittle, just needing a single hole to bring the whole thing down. Though I have no idea what the hole is, that one seemed pretty much airtight at this point. However it could well be that the solution for that situation will be the final key that unlocks Battler’s win in the end.

The other thing that bugs me is that even if Battler wins, and he can come up with a physical explanation for all the murders, it doesn’t change the fact that they’ve been murdered. In fact, if he proves that it’s the case then Beatrice becomes a normal girl with no powers, so there is no way for the world to reset. A phyrric victory indeed. So to truly beat her, he must not only solve all the murders, he must somehow prevent them from taking place. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how he achieves that.

Looking forward to playing through episode 4!