But like, most likely, Ryukishi just got a bit too cute and screwed up, because he wasn't looking at what Erika would perceive in this scenario and carefully thinking about its implications for the rest of the story because the entire piece was written from Battler's perspective- or he did know that and was just hoping nobody would really notice.
Honestly i think the most likely explanation is that he just forgot about this.
In Ep 5 itself, Erika knowing that something is up with Kanon isn't a problem at all - Erika isn't here to show the truth, she is here to troll around. She has no need at all to investigate the Kanon issue, because her theory works well enough anyway - even at the end, Battler can't disprove it, he can only offer an alternative to end in a draw.
In Ep 6, of course, the situation is different and Erika could have easily saved herself at the end, but that was written like - checks notes - two years later and R07 probably just forgot by that time.
Honestly i think the most likely explanation is that he just forgot about this.
In Ep 5 itself, Erika knowing that something is up with Kanon isn't a problem at all - Erika isn't here to show the truth, is here to troll around people. She has no need at all to investigate the Kanon issue, because her theory works well enough anyway - even at the end, Battler can't disprove it, he can only offer an alternative to end in a draw.
In Ep 6, of course, the situation is different and Erika could have easily saved herself at the end, but that was written like - checks notes - two years later and R07 probably just forgot by that time.
Also possible, I'm looking at it from the perspective that Ryukishi probably had at least a broad sense of what was going to happen in 6 (and probably 7 though that's more incidental here) when he wrote 5, in which case it's a little careless because he knows Erika is going to be in a position where not having seen Kanon would be really important to at the very least bring up at some point, if only to get deflected or distracted by something, which she doesn't do. In that case, it's more an issue of not thinking everything entirely through, which in itself is decently excusable but disappointing. If you think 6 was at most very roughly sketched by the time he was creating 5 and he didn't know the position Erika would be in at the end(1), it's at most maybe a sloppy writing practice and lack of planning ahead.
1. Which I'm honestly skeptical of, in part because having no sense of what Erika's endpoint was going to be in the narrative before 8 would in my opinion be kinda weird, and in part because you're writing VNs of this length you probably want to have things sketched out ahead of time in at least broad strokes; like, from the way the story is structured and how it's written, it's immensely likely he didn't have 5-7 (8 is kind of its own thing) at least fully thought through when he wrote 4, which like... is fine.
But 5 and 6 are essentially a two-part story, right? 6 largely exists as a follow-up to 5, and not having a significant sense of how you want Part 2 of a narrative could go when you're finishing Part 1, especially in the context of a central character, just seems... really odd to me. I think it's more likely, given that you do have to be thinking of things from a perspective pretty distant from the prospective he was actually writing in at the time, that he had an idea where he was going to go, he just didn't fully think the implications through when writing that specific line of Battler saying that Erika had gathered everyone- because Battler merely saying that isn't a problem. But unless he fully breaks down his writing process and discusses this line specifically, which he has no real reason to do, we'll probably never know.
The reason why Erika taunting Battler about not putting his arm around Ange's shoulder and telling her things directly is so funny is that Erika is saying that for a couple of reasons. First because Erika herself is not capable of interacting with people in any other way and in this rare case she's found a situation where that is the best approach. Erika recognizes the extent to which Ange is a kindred spirit to herself and is telling Battler that this "implying" bullshit doesn't work with Ange. You have to tell her things directly.
Battler and Beatrice are high on their own supply of everything being couched in metaphor and implication, but I think that everyone who has successfully communicated with Ange, for good or for ill, has done it by speaking as directly as possible and explaining their metaphors. When Okonogi spoke to Ange about "without love it cannot be seen" he used a metaphor but then tried to explain as clearly as possible what it meant. Bernkastel's "manipulations" of Ange have not been subtle. Bernkastel tells Ange what she thinks directly and bluntly. When Amakusa talks to Ange about child soldiers, she tries to pretend she's not listening but she takes it very seriously and can't dismiss it. Ange only really understand Maria's magic once it was explained to her as literally as possible.
Some people here seem to get very indignant about comments that amount to "I do not personally find the argument this story is trying to make convincing."
For my part, as I've said, I've never played Umineko. I'm experiencing it secondhand, through Briefvoice's playthrough. But it seems to me that there's a big problem with Team Ignorance-Is-Bliss's case. If you really want to say that Ange must not learn the historical facts of October 1986, that it can only lead to tragedy, and that it's vitally important that the facts stay hidden, then…
*gestures at the last 12 years of Ange's life*
How's that been working out?
The core psychological idea here -- knowing your history being antithetical to bringing peace and understanding and the ability to move forward, and not a vital component to it -- feels deeply strange. Yes, yes, people need things to believe in that can't be proven, that one Hogfather bit and all, but those don't have to be falsifiable historical facts. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. The contents of Eva's diary are a real thing (and for now, I'll assume we can trust her account's truthfulness). I can't believe that any belief contradicted by historical evidence could be so vital to someone that they must not see the evidence.
If the core crisis here is that Ange can't see any reason for living other than finding the Single Truth, I don't see how that's a problem that can be solved by keeping it from her. Unconvincing stories about 1986 (or 1984, when she would've last met Kinzo) won't help her find something to sustain her in 1998.
Some people here seem to get very indignant about comments that amount to "I do not personally find the argument this story is trying to make convincing."
For my part, as I've said, I've never played Umineko. I'm experiencing it secondhand, through Briefvoice's playthrough. But it seems to me that there's a big problem with Team Ignorance-Is-Bliss's case. If you really want to say that Ange must not learn the historical facts of October 1986, that it can only lead to tragedy, and that it's vitally important that the facts stay hidden, then…
*gestures at the last 12 years of Ange's life*
How's that been working out?
The core psychological idea here -- knowing your history being antithetical to bringing peace and understanding and the ability to move forward, and not a vital component to it -- feels deeply strange. Yes, yes, people need things to believe in that can't be proven, that one Hogfather bit and all, but those don't have to be falsifiable historical facts. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. The contents of Eva's diary are a real thing (and for now, I'll assume we can trust her account's truthfulness). I can't believe that any belief contradicted by historical evidence could be so vital to someone that they must not see the evidence.
If the core crisis here is that Ange can't see any reason for living other than finding the Single Truth, I don't see how that's a problem that can be solved by keeping it from her. Unconvincing stories about 1986 (or 1984, when she would've last met Kinzo) won't help her find something to sustain her in 1998.
The core psychological idea here -- knowing your history being antithetical to bringing peace and understanding and the ability to move forward, and not a vital component to it -- feels deeply strange. Yes, yes, people need things to believe in that can't be proven, that one Hogfather bit and all, but those don't have to be falsifiable historical facts. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. The contents of Eva's diary are a real thing (and for now, I'll assume we can trust her account's truthfulness). I can't believe that any belief contradicted by historical evidence could be so vital to someone that they must not see the evidence.
Okay, let's back up on this part for a moment. In what sense is the truth on Rokkenjima falsifiable? Everybody that knows anything about the event either died at the time, or afterwards didn't tell anybody about it. Yes, as you say we have the diary that contains "the truth", but how much truth is "the truth"? Keep in mind the real world, there is no magic. It isn't going to be some kind of omniscient perfect perspective akin to the perspective of the EP7 tea party, it's going to be entirely from Eva's perspective. So it's true, but- how much did she see? Did she see anything she could have misunderstood? Could have been wrong about certain things, or her recollection be slightly faulty? Could she have remembered things that put her in a better light than the others, or put others in a worse light, in a way that isn't necessarily entirely accurate, but is a faithful enough capturing of the events that it would be equally unfair to call it "untrue"? Like, this assumption that Eva's Truth is some magical thing that will resolve the entire issue for everyone, as has been postulated here, is simply relying on a good deal of facts that are absolutely not in evidence.
A point that Umineko has in some ways been trying to drive home from the start is that relying on a single perspective is deeply problematic. When we see things from Rosa's perspective, she comes across as a genuinely put upon mother who loves her daughter and just wants the best for her, but as we've seen that is at the very least... a very simplified verion of the situation. For the first few episodes we continually essentially saw Kyrie from Battelr's perspection as basically just a Smart Cool Mom, and then we get the perspective later on that things are far more complex than that. And so on. Why would Eva's standalone perspective be more reliable, especially when Umineko has tried to drive home again and again that truth is in the end a very floaty concept, and the fact is that red is something that is dependent perspective and often ends up having caveats that can be significant enough to drive a truck through?
but how much truth is "the truth"? Keep in mind the real world, there is no magic. It isn't going to be some kind of omniscient perfect perspective akin to the perspective of the EP7 tea party, it's going to be entirely from Eva's perspective.
The fact that Eva diary isn't definetive truth isn't a good enough reason to just outright ignoring it. It just means you can have to consider that testimony and contrast it with all the others before making a judgement.
Battler position in Ep 8 hasn't been - "Consider this before reading the diary" - it has been "Consider this, and then please don't read the diary". Which is why it comes as condesdending.
The fact that Eva diary isn't definetive truth isn't a good enough reason to just outright ignoring it. It just means you can have to consider that testimony and contrast it with all the others before making a judgement.
There are three different witnesses of what happened in the island, this should be pretty obvious at this point.
Sayo (Not quite a witness, since the bottles were written beforehand, but they still contain a ton of valuable info of what happened)
Eva, assuming the diary is her actual testimony and not an outright falsification.
And "Toyha-sama" who obviously knows a great deal of what happened there.
(I will specifically note than he wrote Ep 4, which fits more or less perfectly with Ep 7 tea party/Eva testimony).
------------------
Aside of those there are other valuable minor witnesses - The sons of Kumasawa and Nanjo tell us that someone in the family had hundreds of millions of yens to gift around. And we know that someone had the same handwritten as the "Beatrice" than wrote sections of Maria diary, and the bottles.
(And the method used to transfer that money works the same way as the Ep 7 cash card and the "little golden land" of ep 3 - more evidence than Toyha knows stuff).
*(I will also add, the number of people who could pass as Beatrice to Maria is really small, being basically only Shannon, Jessica and Natsuhi - mayybe Rosa, although that one is a bit of an stretch.
Eva get discarded because they she doesn't really have the time to hang around with Maria during the family conferences and she doesn't visit the island aside of those).
And we know that Rokenjima exploded at exactly 00.00 hours - which on it's own could just be a freaky coincidence, but it also fits with the scenarios written in the bottles - so that pretty much discards an accident outright.
So yeah, there is actually a pretty decent amount of evidence to consider.
We don't know if Sayo is alive, or that they want to talk about what happened, if literally nothing else. So that one is purely suppositional even if I do grant a decent amount for the sake of argument.
I just discussed the issues with Eva's testimony- that it probably contains true elements but we don't know exactly what those elements are, if it's entirely true, true in what it's reporting, or true on the core facts- all of these more or less fit the red, I woudl argue, and certainly would not mean that Ange would get the full picture. Let's not ignore the fact that red doesn't exist in Ange's actual world, and she has no reason to believe that this is actually as true as it actually is if she doesn't want to, at a bare minimum. (and let's recall how actively resistant she was at the end of the very last episode...)
We don't know who exactly "Tohya" is, why they know what they know, how complete or reliable the source of their knowledge is, and so on. They probably have some information, but that doesn't mean they have a lot of what Ange cares about here, that what they have is totally reliable, or remotely complete. And that's all presuming that Ange can actually meet some person whose name she doesn't actually know, she doesn't know where they are, and has no real way of finding them. At the very least, I think it's fair to argue that it isn't testimony she can count on at the moment.
Which means the only real evidence she has from "Tohya" is the actual text of Alliance- which, if you assume contains the magic scenes, is the most heavily obfsucated of any of the gameboards by magic except maybe 6. Now, I agree that even in the context of the magic scenes it contains valuable information, but a lot more of it has to do with Sayo, who is not the culprit, and very little actually ties Kyrie and Rudolf to the murders, which at the end of the day would be the core point here, yeah?
If you don't (this was a frequent topic of debate back when Umi came out)... it's really sparse in actual things that have happened, really? You get the phone calls to Battler, Battler discovering the bodies, Battler meeting up with Beatrice at the end, stuff at the beginning, and probably a few other things that are slipping my mind. You can feel decently confident that Battler isn't some grand mastermind, but I'm not... sure what else you really gain from it? Especially since it's supposed to be solvable in the context that somebody who wasn't the culprit is the culprit.
So I think we can conclude that aside from Eva's diary, the context of which are very speculative, the other two sources are speculative at best, or unreliable at worst. Let's move on.
Aside of those there are other valuable minor witnesses - The sons of Kumasawa and Nanjo tell us that someone in the family had hundreds of millions of yens to gift around. And we know that someone had the same handwritten as the "Beatrice" than wrote sections of Maria diary, and the bottles.
(And the method used to transfer that money works the same way as the Ep 7 cash card and the "little golden land" of ep 3 - more evidence than Toyha knows stuff).
And we know that Rokenjima exploded at exactly 00.00 hours, which fits with the scenarios shown in the bottles and pretty much discards an accident.
I mean, who wrote the message bottles is interesting, but not strictly that relevant to what Ange really at heart cares about here?
And the culprit potentially having a lot of money, like, again is an interesting fact, but doesn't really tell you that much. Especially if you assume that this was in the context of finding whatever the treasure that existed on Rokkenjima took the form of, exactly. (I'm being vague because this is something Ange certainly isn't in a position to know.) And I'm not sure you can inherently tie the giver of the money to being the culprit in any sense? So that is kind of useful but honestly potentially deceptive if anything.
Nobody is arguing that it was an accident, so that also seems relatively irrelevant here.
So like, these witnesses tell us nothing reliably that we don't already know, or can probably decently assume, without really telling us that much about what Ange would actually care about. (Assuming this is a search for truth at all, which I reject, but my point is that even if you grant that... there isn't much here aside from Eva's diary, and the fact that we have no idea what exactly is in it was the thrust of my argument.)
The narration explains this is the door to the Golden Land, floating in a void where everything else has been devoured.
All the game board except the Golden Land has been eaten away. Battler and Beatrice lean against the door, dead tired. They have been fighting hard to protect the Golden Land. The positive side is that with everywhere except this gate eaten away, the goats have nowhere to stand and only end up falling into the void rather than being able to attack. (Erika's second wave army will probably have goats with wings.) Or rather, that's how Battler thought it was going to go, but the goats have somehow surrounded them anyway.
We get spectacular images of sailing ships on the ocean of eternity surrounding them. Several images flash by before settling on one. Check out that cat pirate symbol on the sail!
The decks of the ships are packed with goats. Battler says these pirate ships are the craziest thing he's encountered yet, but Beatrice is more focused on what they can do. They can probably break through into the Golden Land with those cannons of theirs. (Which metaphorically represent something or other I'm sure.) Battler asks how long the Golden Land perimeter can hold out against those cannons. Beatrice has no clue, but since the ships are still amassing more forces they must want an even more overwhelming attack to be sure. Battler agrees.
At least they have some time. Battler says (sarcastically?) that the weaker side can always hope for a miracle. Then something hits Battler in the forehead. It's "Konpeitou" (a sugar candy). Lambdadelta's voice says she knows where Bern and the others are, as the narration explains Lambdadelta has transformed herself into candy. (Witch turned herself into candy. Craziest thing I've ever seen.) Lambdadelta has disguised herself because she knows they're being watched and says they should talk "inside".
Battler knocks on the door to be let inside, and Shannon and Kanon let him and Beatrice and the candy into the Golden Land. Beatrice has the two switch places with her and Battler so they can keep a lookout. (Yeah, you're real familiar with switching places with Shannon and Kanon, aren't you Beatrice? WAKKA WAKKA.) Battler warns Kanon that the two are to be lookouts only. If an attack happens, they are to flee to the Golden Land immediately.
So the Golden Land is basically the rose garden with glowing yellow roses as we've seen before. Or at least, the entranceway into the Golden Land is that. It can supposedly unfold into entire endless worlds. A gentle rain is pouring "reflecting the hearts of those inside it" the narration tells us dramatically. The inhabitants can't do anything but wait here for the enemy's final assault.
When they get inside, the piece of candy turns back into Lambdadelta. Lambdadelta finds sneaking around like this to be pretty thrilling. Battler doesn't have time for her nonses and asks where Ange and Bernkastel are. Lambdadelta tells them the two are in Book City. Virgilia knows of this place, a sort of storage depot for Fragments used by those who travel the sea. Beatrice identifies Featherine as Book City's ruler. Makes sense that's where Featherine's two mikos would hang out.
Gaap is impressed Lambdadelta picked out the spot from all the possible hiding places. (Hiding? Why does Bernkastel need to hide?) Actually, Lambdadelta says pretty much exactly that, because far from hiding the big party being thrown for the destruction of Beatrice's cat box is being advertised far and wide. Beatrice realizes the reason the ships haven't attacked is they want to time the destruction of the Golden Land with the beginning of the party.
They work out the centerpiece of the party is going to be Ange using her key to open the Book of the Single Truth. It's a big event, the first party Aurora has held in a long time. Battler thinks that gives them enough time to take Ange and the book back. But Lambdadelta points out the problem. Book City is under the supervision of the Senate and protected by a holy barrier. Only a witch of the Senate is getting inside. Well... normally. This time some non-Senators have been invited and they're being given special invitations that allow them to enter the sacred realm.
Gaap has PTSD about "invitations". (Well not really, but she does say the word thoughtfully.) Lambdadelta knows what they're thinking and then adds another premise to the situation to make it more exciting and thrilling. The party is strict about punctuality, so you have to use the invitation before the party begins! If you don't do that, they're automatically useless. (It's definitely improv here, where someone chucks ideas into the story and then everyone else does a "yes, and" to play along with it.) And the party started a short while ago!
They can't steal an invite from a guest running late. So what then? Lambadelta asks for candy flavored popcorn to eat while she watches them try to solve the puzzle she has set.
Krauss and Natsuhi step forward to represent the ghostly population. They're done for. Rosa asks if the Ushiromiyas really have no moves to play. Eva and Hideyoshi say all they can do is keep on struggling for each moment of survival and hope for a miracle. (All the Ushiromiya family members get to say something and have their moment to remind us who they are.) Maria says the miracle they're waiting on is that Ange will change her mind for some reason and come back. One in a million chance.
Silly Maria, there's no way that would happen because Bernkastel has said there will be no miracles and definitely isn't having her piece gloat continuously to Ange about how the ghosts of her family which are all that remains of them will surely be destroyed. Why would she do that? Kinzo thinks a one in a million chance will happen nine times out of ten be a true miracle.
The non Shannon/Kanon servants (plus the concierge physician Nanjo) all get to speak their piece too. Then we move to the mook fantasy characters like the Chiesters and the stakes and the iron maidens. Absolutely nobody wavers, though if we cut to one of them trying to sell out to Bernkastel that would be an impressive twist. (Got my eye on you, Gohda.)
Lion ends the round-robin by directly asking Lambdadelta to help. Lambdadelta says she already scouted for them; why should she do more than that? Lion points out that as a Witch of the Senate, Lambdadelta is qualified to enter Book City even without a special invitation. Battler and Beatrice and the marriage demons start coaxing Lambdadelta to help, even she doesn't want to "do more work".
Lambdadelta says crashing the party to rescue Ange (if that's what we want to call it) would mean getting getting on the bad side of Aurora, and they have nothing to offer her that's worth that. Lion says it means Lamdadelta would get to see a happy ending. (Also while it might tick off Bernkastel, I don't think Featherine cares too much.) Beatrice says it would be a thrilling adventure. Battler says, uh, they really want her to help.
Lambdadelta crushes her cup of popcorn and appears to get genuinely angry. I'm pausing right here to think if there is any alternative solution. Have any of these characters ever ventured "off the game board"? ...YES! Remember back in Episode 7, Virgilia brought Babytrice into Featherine's lair and they had a short conversation with Ange there. I know the rules are all wibbly-wobbly, but it seems like if they could repeat that trip then they could petition Featherine for admittance to her party.
Lambdadelta insists she's nothing but a spectator, a guest invited by Beato to come and watch the game. (Not exactly how I remember it, but okay.) Lambdadelta says even if Ange came back. Bernkastel and her forces would sweep through 'mad with rage' and wipe them out. The sole reason Lambdadelta is here is because Lion promised an interesting show. It may be that "interesting tale" is a sad tragedy as Bernkastel wipes them all out. Pretty soon all of them will be dead (yeah, I think that ship has sailed) but as a spectator there is no reason for Lambdadelta to die with them. (Lambdadelta seems way more worried about death than seems reasonable. If she could die, she wouldn't have so many problems.)
No one can say anything back, and Lambdadelta deflates and calls herself "totally lame". If only she stood up and said 'leave it to me' she could probably make top three in the next character popularity poll. (Obviously she isn't going to dethrone Gohda.) The trouble is... Lambadelta explains it very confusingly, but I think she's saying she's a different type of character than they are and can't possibly be the one to solve the problem.
Lambadelta collapses into a chair and seems to stare off into space, perhaps abandoning this body. Whether she can hear it or not, Battler apologizes for trying to force this on her. Battler says they'll fight here in the Golden Land until the last moment and bet on the miracle of Ange choosing them over the Single Truth.
Battler tells everyone else he's going to switch places with Shannon and Kanon outside. When the enemy comes, Battler wants to be on the front line resisting them. Beatrice says she'll join Battler, reiterating her faith that Ange will return. As they leave, George tries to organize everyone else to prepare for the fight. Lots of characters get beats to declare their determination to fight. (I don't quite understand why Ange needs to 'come back' as such. She could just not open the book and not return either.)
We cut back to Book City, with Ange and Erika waiting in the alcove. EVA-Beatrice shows up to join them. Ange asks EVA-Beatrice how Bernkastel is coming along with breaking the seal on the book. (Look Ange, it gets broken when narratively appropriate and not before.) Which apparently is NOW because EVA-Beatrice says she came here to tell them the seal is broken.
Erika congratulates Ange on discovering the truth marking the end of her life. (Wow, Bernkastel is getting less subtle with every Erika utterance.) EVA-Beatrice says one of Bernkastel's cat familiars will guide Ange to Bernkastel. Ange tries to depart casually, like she's not going to her death, but Erika makes a point of doing a formal farewell. Ange disgusts her! Yeah well, Erika makes disgusting tea, replies Ange.
EVA-Beatrice asks if Ange is happy to finally be learning the secret Eva hid from her for 12 years. Ange says exposing a secret that Eva tried to keep hidden makes her super happy. Then Ange follows the black cat familiar off the balcony, diving like she's swimming. Behind Ange, EVA-Beatrice wishes Ange good luck. Ange is eighteen now and can choose how to live her own life.
EVA-Beatrice is going to go watch "the ceremony" but Erika has got business on the ships. Erika is supposed to be leading the attack on the Golden Land after all. Erika tells EVA-Beatrice that Erika is going to retrieve Beatrice's corpse. (As always, Erika is your go to for the worst and creepiest metaphors. It's her awful talent.)
Erika points out that as a Rokkenjima piece, this is the end for EVA-Beatrice as well. EVA-Beatrice doesn't care. It's not a piece's business to worry about thing things. Erika is also a Rokkenjima piece and says the same is true for her. They agree to enjoy the time they have left and go their separate ways.
And without even a scene break, title card, we suddenly cut to what the narration describes as a "high class hotel" in the real world.
Luxury cars are driving up and guests stepping out. At the reception desk, a voice greets Professor Ootsuki. It's a fellow attendee of this "convention". The narration explains this is a Rokkenjima Witch Hunters convention, though an upper class one where members are "rich and cultured" meaning they have time and money to burn on this hobby. There are rumors that the secret diary of Ushiromiya Eva is going to be displayed. Ootsuki buys that such a diary exists. Humans are incapable of keeping entirely quiet about secrets that they know.
Because of these rumors, it's not just guests showing up. The press is there as well. In addition to the rumored display of the diary, the forger "Itouikukoro" is going to appear publicly for the first time. It is now known that Itouikukoro and Hachijo Tohya are the same person. It will also be the first public appearance for Hachijo, so double score, and the revelation that Hachijo is a woman so triple score. Speaking of which, Hachijo appears at a press conference in the hotel.
A reporter asks why Hachijo is revealing herself after using a male body double in the past. Hachijo says showing herself is a sign of respect for the demise of the Rokkenjima witch legend. A reporter asks if Hachijo has already read the contents of the diary. Hachijo implies but doesn't quite say she has, instead saying that soon the contents will be revealed to everyone.
A reporters asks what guarantee there is the contents of the diary will be the truth rather than some story Eva made up. Hachijo says she guarantees it- and then in front of a room full of reporters, speaks in red text. (I don't know how that even works.)
(red)The truth is recorded in this diary.(/red)
The reporters all take pictures and absolutely no one contradicts this or questions it further. This is declared to be the end of the interview, but the reporters will be allowed to take photographs of the diary. A cart covered by a veil is pushed forward, and then a hotel worker removes the veil and displays the diary. Hachijo picks up the Book of the Single Truth, holding it and laughing.
The hotel staff directs everyone to move to the assembly hall as Hachijo (and the diary) are escorted from the room. Hachijo ducks out through an "Authorized Personnel Only" door and as soon as she does, time and space twist behind her. The hotel employees turn into black cats wearing capes and Hachijo turns into Featherine.
Bernkatel appears and chats with Featherine. Calling the diary "heavy", Featherine tosses it to Bernkastel and says she will rest in one of the waiting rooms. Bernkastel warns her master that Featherine will be up again pretty soon, so Featherine calls it a "short break". Bernkatel has to borrow the book since she promises Ange could see it first, and you can't make a red text liar out of Bernkastel. Featherine has no real issue with that and promptly leaves.
The scene shifts to Book City and the same balcony room backdrop, but the narration assures us this one belongs to Bernkastel rather than Erika. Ange has been waiting for a while, leading Bernkastel to declare herself 'late' on arrival. But that's not important, what's important is that Bernkastel as the Book of the Single Truth. Ange take the book and looks at it, preparing her key to unlock it.
Bernkastel is careful to say she is not rushing Ange, and Ange can open the diary when she's ready. Ange verifies one more time this includes the truth of what happened at midnight on October 5 1986. Once more, Bernkastel promises that it does. Ange is torn between two versions of herself. Part of her wants to open the book immediately, but another part feels like she's betraying her brother and family. Ange's hand shakes as she brings the key towards the lock. Urging herself on, Ange pushes the key into the lock and twists it, making the lock open with a click.
The key shudders and looks reduced somehow, and Bernkastel explains to Ange that the magic leaving the choice to her has fulfilled its role and disappeared. The key is just a key now. Ange guesses that she has no more use for the key, so Bernkastel asks for it. Bernkastel wants to lock up the diary again after Ange has read it. Opening the lock (again) can be part of tonight's ceremony. Ange doesn't give a damn and hands over the key.
After much build-up from the game, Ange opens the diary. A brilliant light pours out, and Ange's mind goes hazy. Like messages from aliens to someone not wearing their tin foil hat, the truth is beamed directly into Ange's brain without letters or words. The game flashes a bunch of Rokkenjima images in black and white.
Ange's consciousness returns to her. There's nothing written in the book in front of her. "This was my own blank and empty notebook." Ange is at school with her notebook open, and the world has stopped. The clock has stopped, and no time is passing. Somehow in this world of suspended time, there are shapes moving in the shadows of the suspended students. (I have absolutely no idea where this is going.) Okay, the shadows are the girls with goat heads we saw before. More and more goat head students gather.
The goat students say something, but it's not reaching Ange as words. What reaches her is emotions and meanings. The goats open their jaws and come forward to bite at Ange. Ange refuses to move when they bite at her so as not to acknowledge them. Ange is humiliated and injured and stripped naked as the bites shred her clothing and pierce her flesh. One of the goats pulls Ange's hair and speaks with the red truth of the witch world.
This is... (red)the truth of the Rokkenjima incident!!(/red)
Ange says she won't accept it. They respond it doesn't matter if she accepts it.
(red)After all, *********, ******************!! *********************************!!!(/red)
Censorship in the original. Ange won't accept a truth like that.
(red)Whether you accept it or not, that doesn't change the truth!! After all, this is the Single Truth, proven in reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!!(/red)
Ange's narration doesn't care about the truth anymore. Even if it's red truth, she won't acknowledge it, won't forgive it, and won't accept it. We cut to the city scape at night again, and Ange says the red truth is not absolute for her. She denies it.
Bernkastel appears floating in the night sky and tells Ange to calm down. Ange is the one who wanted to know, right? Ange laughs and says her truth is that Aunt Eva is the culprit. Everything's her fault. Or maybe it's no one's fault. There's more laughter and rambling from Ange as she promises to deny the red truth and the whole world.
Wow, what happened to that determination to accept the truth in the diary no matter what it was? That sure didn't last long.
Bernkastel invites Ange to write her own red truth, and Ange says there's a red ink that only humans can write with. (Blood?) We hear a male voice calling for Ange to calm down, presumably the security guys trying to talk her down from jumping off the roof. Ange rants she'll record the truth with the real red truth. (Pretty sure she doesn't mean tape recordings.)
The male voice radios for support and asks Ange to hold on, think this over, look out! In english Bernkastel says, <Goodbye, Ange. Have a nice day.> (What, no 'see you in hell' as is traditional?) Ange screams she'll write out her blood red truth and passes the edge of the balcony.
She can't seem to swim through the air anymore, and she plunges into the darkness below. Bernkastel watches in silence. On the radio, a guy reports that Ange has jumped off the roof. They call to investigate the ground area, and the guards chatter back and forth. One hopes Ange might have been caught by the safety net and says they should check.
Bernkastel thinks that a safety net can't save you from this height, then says aloud. "As the Witch of Miracles, I Bernkastel, guarantee that such a miracle certainly won't occur." Then she laughs.
Back in Book City, Ange's body falls down the side of the book skyscraper and slams against the floor. From Bernkastel's balcony, her body looks like "a lovely red pressed flower". Nah, says the narration, that's imagination. You can't see it at all, just like the death of a single lonely girl who rejected the world doesn't matter to anyone in the world.
She probably died instantly, says the narration. She might have tried to write something in blood after hitting, but the red blood from her corpse has run over it all. EVA-Beatrice says even this was one of Ange's choices. EVA-Beatrice says when you think about it, Eva did all she could but really it was Ange's fault for never trying to live in the future that began after the age of six. So after 12 years Ange returned to where she started.
I don't know EVA, maybe you could have found a nicer school environment where she could make some friends?
EVA: Really entirely her fault when you think about it.
Ange's corpse melts away and becomes a messy lump of flesh, with only a few parts recognizable as human. Chunky meat after falling from such a height. EVA-Beatrice says Ange might have manged to die, but this doesn't mean everyone will be waiting in heaven. After all, she reached this place by rejecting all those in heaven. <See you in hell.> EVA-Beatrice reflects and says that's probably where they are right now.
Well luckily Ange also surely has some relatives in hell, so I guess she's covered either way.
KUMASAWA: Ohohohohoho, they got me for that stuff during the war!
Isn't there anyone who benefits here?
KASUMI: I absolutely do. I'm not going to be sniped to death on Rokkenjima!
AMAKUSA: And I won't have my gun explode in my hands and then die!
TOGETHER: It's all coming up for the killers!
Bernkastel orders EVA-Beatrice to clean up the scrap meat.
EVA-BEATRICE: Can't you make Kumasawa do it?
Bernkastel says she's going to take the key and the book (locked once more) back to the party. Bernkastel then disappears and EVA-Beatrice summons some cat familiars and orders them to "clean up" by devouring Ange's corpse by throwing the pieces into a tin bucket instead of eating her corpse. The narration says that even in this miserable form, Ange's soul is still living. Or rather "unable to die". From now on she will drift along in the deepest depth of oblivion until finally she disappears.
In oblivion, Ange will continue to question herself about the truth, what is right, and what place she can call home. As her flesh cools, her energy to keep asking will fade until she forgets everything. She'll forget everything except her anguish. By the time the cats dump her into the sea of nothingness, Ange has forgotten even her own name.
Cut to the rain, and let's cut it there for tonight.
Manga Update
Chapter 22 ends with Battler and Beatrice seeing the ships sailing to attack the Golden Land. Chapter 23 is "Towards the Golden Land".
We cut briefly to Erika describing the second wave of goats, then back to Battler and Beatrice contemplating the attacking fleet. It follows the game for a while, but when they are talking in the Golden Land's rose garden Battler says that he made a mistake in hiding the truth from Ange. Maybe it would have been better to talk to her directly and ask her to live instead of trying to lead her there with deception.
When Lambdadelta is refusing to go after Ange, she goes beyond just saying that she would be risking herself. Lambadedelta asks what they would say to convince Ange if she was brought back. Would Beatrice trap her until she agreed to do what they say, like in the chapel? (A fair question.) Chapter 23 ends with EVA-Beatrice telling Ange the seal on the book is broken. On to Chapter 24, The Book of the Single Truth.
In the manga, after Hachijo uses the red truth to declare the diary contains the truth... it convinces nobody because they can't see red text and regard it as just another claim. So she might as well not have said it!
We get shown Eva's preamble on the first page of the diary. "I write this down in order to forget. No. I might write this down because I actually don't want to forget. Aah, the reason doesn't matter in the end. If I don't spit out everything about that day, I might just go insane."
The silent manga panels that are supposed to depict excerpts from the diary are more informative than random game sprites and seem to roughly follow the events we saw in the Episode 7 Tea Party. There's also some commentary from Bernkastel about, "I told you countless times there was no game master."
In the manga after declaring a miracle won't occur, Bernkastel adds in red, "Ushiromiya Ange definitely dies in 1998."
This better not be another "Kanon is dead" type red truth because I've had enough of that!
Ange's corpse is thrown into oblivion right at the end of Chapter 24.
Coming back the next day...
Look, if Ange doesn't want to buy into this red truth stuff, that's fine. None of the reporters at Hachijo's press conference seem too impressed with it. If Ange thinks Eva's diary is a pack of lies, I guess she can think that. I don't think jumping off a building or a bookshelf over it is good response, though. Fairly obviously obvious, but I wanted to say it.
So I guess this is the real nadir, the point at which it can't darker for our heroesprotagonists characters we're following. Everything has gone according to Bernkastel's plan, and she has an unsealed diary to show off. Ange is dead, or at least consigned so thoroughly to oblivion she might as well be dead. The Golden Land is surrounded and about to be overrun.
Episode 8, Part 4 Flashback Battler claims he's a man who loses strategically to win in the end. (Let's remember that claim.)
Well at this point events have to start to turn or cut the story to a close, surely.
Everybody sure does seem intimidated by Aurora Augustus Featherine, who doesn't seem all that invested in anything and pretty difficult to actually anger. Classic hidden master trope.
I would like Ange not to die, but honestly I'm not that concerned with the fate of the cat box or the Golden Land or whatever you want to call it. None of the characters there are going to die, because they're already dead. There's no need for endless speculation about their deaths and the lives they could have had any more than there's need for endless speculation about any other dead people. I got no problem seeing the whole thing put to rest.
Hmmm... is there anything else to say? I don't know where we can go from here, where the next Turn of the story will be. In the manga we're about to hit Chapter 24.1 Interlude – Hachijo Ikuko. Then we're running into the three part "Confession of the Golden Witch" arc which is supposed to explain stuff that the game never makes explicit. So that'll be exciting! Let's get on to it.
Lambdadelta crushes her cup of popcorn and appears to get genuinely angry. I'm pausing right here to think if there is any alternative solution. Have any of these characters ever ventured "off the game board"? ...YES! Remember back in Episode 7, Virgilia brought Babytrice into Featherine's lair and they had a short conversation with Ange there. I know the rules are all wibbly-wobbly, but it seems like if they could repeat that trip then they could petition Featherine for admittance to her party.
I mean, sure, that's a good Plan B, but if you can get a Witch of Certainty to help you, that seems like a better route to at least try.
Also, I just wanted to go through your example to make sure it's comparable... and I can't find it? It looked through the climax of 6 and all of 7, and it isn't anywhere. Are you sure it's not at the beginning-middle of 6 or somewhere in 5? Or that you have the characters correct?
Not a big deal, but you remember incorrectly. From Chapter 2's ???
BEATRICE: What an honest person *Witch laugh.avi* Even so, it would be a shame if the contest between me and the great Lady Bernkastel was resolved without at least one observer."
BERNKASTEL: "...You called her here, didn't you. That child.
*Lambda then immediately makes her appearance*
...
BERNKASTEL: "...You're dumb too, Beato. If this kid's in your game, she'll make a mess of everything."
BEATO: I certainly didn't just bring Lady Lambdadelta here to watch from the sidelines.
Now, Lambda and Bern have reasons beyond purely just Beato inviting them to participate, but they were absolutely explicitly invited by Beato.
She... can die though? Lambda and Bern talk all the time about how a key part of their motivation is to fly around fragments for their own self-satisfaction and entertainment, because if they sit still they'll get bored, which will kill them. Given that she's playing around with Bern like this, she fundamentally doesn't want to die. (I could explain what I think this means more conceptually, but not really relevant atm.)
Erika congratulates Ange on discovering the truth marking the end of her life. (Wow, Bernkastel is getting less subtle with every Erika utterance.) EVA-Beatrice says one of Bernkastel's cat familiars will guide Ange to Bernkastel. Ange tries to depart casually, like she's not going to her death, but Erika makes a point of doing a formal farewell. Ange disgusts her! Yeah well, Erika makes disgusting tea, replies Ange.
Bern isn't Erika. Erika is her own independent being- she was created by the idea that somebody that in one timeline fell off a ship by Rokkenjima, and was never heard from again, and therefore it could be theoretized that she ended up on Rokkenjima, and that gave birth to the core concept behind her. Now, Bern did a lot of smoothing out of the edges defining her and whatnot, and Erika is obviously immensely loyal to her, but she isn't just some artificial being Bern puppets.
EVA-Beatrice asks if Ange is happy to finally be learning the secret Eva hid from her for 12 years. Ange says exposing a secret that Eva tried to keep hidden makes her super happy.
That is not wrong... but kind of a weird way to summarize that line? Let me get it.
ANGE: I am happy. Yeah, now I can understand how Erika feels. It feels like I've taken a shot back at you, exposing the secret that you kept until your death.
She's happy because she gets to spite Eva by revealing something she wanted to keep hidden. Like, this might seem like a distinction without a difference, but here it's really not. Ange doesn't really care about the secret (the truth) per se. She wants to learn it, but only because after she learns it, she'll know the answer and can let herself die. The joy she gets isn't in any sense from revealing the secret, it's from spiting Eva. I think that's worth emphasizing.
A reporters asks what guarantee there is the contents of the diary will be the truth rather than some story Eva made up. Hachijo says she guarantees it- and then in front of a room full of reporters, speaks in red text. (I don't know how that even works.)
So in a sense, there is red in the real world, I honestly forgot about this part.
But yeah, this bit is weird, but this character in general is really weird. I assume it's Ryukishi's way of completely assuring us that the diary is not nonsense and contains "the truth" (though that still hasn't really been defined.) as well as using this bit to confirm that this character is the RL stand-in for Featherine, as it were.
I mean... this again may seem like nitpicking, but it's really not. This confirms that Ange never really cared about the truth. Her reaction here is identical, essentially, to her reaction at the end of 7. She has not changed at all, she has learned nothing.
Can you remind me where she says that? I'm not even doubting you, but if you look back at the context of the rest of that scene, Ange frankly doesn't care at all about the truth at this point. She just wants to know it, partially as one last shot at Eva, partially so that she can die without regrets. Whether she accept it or not is not something she remotely carews about, and that is likely because of this narration right here
ANGE's NARRATION: Regardless of why Eva decided not to talk about what happened... The real events of that day... probably weren't anything earth-shattering. Some sort of malfunction made the bomb in that secret underground base explode. Yes. It was just... an accident.
But... the public believed that some sort of conspiracy surrounded the events of that day, so that's what they expected. If Eva, who was a suspect herself, claimed that nothing strange happened, it's doubtful that anyone would have believed her. Of course, this included Ange. In that case, shutting up like a clam would just make things easier. It was hardly surprising... that Eva chose to say nothing.
So basically she's decided that the truth is clearly that nothing mattered, it was all an accident. Which kind of doesn't mean that she'll accept that her bullies who tormented her were right all along, and that her beloved parents were murderers.
So by the time we get here, whenever she says that probably isn't contextually relevant to her at this point, unless you can point out something I've missed?
EVA-Beatrice says when you think about it, Eva did all she could but really it was Ange's fault for never trying to live in the future that began after the age of six. So after 12 years Ange returned to where she started.
I don't know EVA, maybe you could have found a nicer school environment where she could make some friends?
I mean I think it's a very Eva move to decide that the bad things that happened to Ange weren't really her fault if you think about it. Especially in the context that Eva-Beatrice is almost certainly on some level created from Ange's perception of who Eva was- and she absolutely believes Eva was the kind of person who would wipe her hands of Ange after she kills herself.
Look, if Ange doesn't want to buy into this red truth stuff, that's fine. None of the reporters at Hachijo's press conference seem too impressed with it. If Ange thinks Eva's diary is a pack of lies, I guess she can think that. I don't think jumping off a building or a bookshelf over it is good response, though. Fairly obviously obvious, but I wanted to say it.
She wanted to die completely irregardless of what it said. She makes this clear in the scenes preceeding this several times, I don't want to make this post even longer but I will give quotes if you need me to. This merely meant she died out of despair, rather than a nihilstic feeling of nothingness.
I mean, sure, that's a good Plan B, but if you can get a Witch of Certainty to help you, that seems like a better route to at least try.
Also, I just wanted to go through your example to make sure it's comparable... and I can't find it? It looked through the climax of 6 and all of 7, and it isn't anywhere. Are you sure it's not at the beginning-middle of 6 or somewhere in 5? Or that you have the characters correct?
I miswrote and this was actually during Episode 6, Battler's game. Obviously it had to be because it involved Babytrice. If you want to check the thread it was in Episode 6, Part 5 - Reading the Room
A light summons Virgilia and Babytrice to Featherine's study, where the "great old witch, and her miko" wait to greet them. Virgilia greets Featherine with the greatest of politeness. Featherine informs the two she brought them here so that Babytrice could use her library. Ange will see to her needs, by which I think Featherine means pulling books on their behalf and such.
Virgilia is like, great to be here but I got to gtfo, you take care of Beatrice now. Ange tells Babytrice that the Beatrice she wants to be was "suffering". (And making everyone else suffer!) Does Babytrice really want to take on that suffering? Of course she does, or we wouldn't have a story!
Not a big deal, but you remember incorrectly. From Chapter 2's ???
BEATRICE: What an honest person *Witch laugh.avi* Even so, it would be a shame if the contest between me and the great Lady Bernkastel was resolved without at least one observer."
BERNKASTEL: "...You called her here, didn't you. That child.
Yeah, that's what they said in episode 2.... but that turned out to be a lie, or at least incomplete. Lambdadelta is the one who found Beatrice and transformed her into a witch. So if Beatrice is "calling Lambdadelta as an observer" she's calling in someone who helped make all this possible in the first place to see the result of her scheme.
See the Episode 3 Tea party
Beatrice protests that her game board is perfect and Bernkastel can't possibly win in it. Lambdadelta agrees that Beatrice's game board is perfect. "That's why I made you a witch in exchange for letting me borrow it." OH SNAP.
Lambdadelta makes it clear that if she stops being Beatrice's guardian, Beatrice will go back to being a Human. No matter how much magic Beatrice has, she is only a temporary witch. Beatrice protests that she understands and is grateful. Lambdadelta then tells Beatrice to not speak casually to her. That's okay only when Bernkastel is around. (I suppose that would be because Lambdadelta loves Bernkastel... in her way... and enjoys playing the fool to entertain her.) Beatrice starts to stammer in fear, so Lambdadelta calls her disgusting but then says Beatrice can relax and talk how she normally does. As long as Beatrice is more mindful in what she says, that is.
But yeah, this bit is weird, but this character in general is really weird. I assume it's Ryukishi's way of completely assuring us that the diary is not nonsense and contains "the truth" (though that still hasn't really been defined.) as well as using this bit to confirm that this character is the RL stand-in for Featherine, as it were.
Saying that Hachijo is the real life stand-in for Featherine is going to be a VERY interesting topic for discussion when I post the next part, which I have already entitled "Umineko: Gothic Romance Edition".
Been following this and finally caught up! I am very curious to see what you think of Confession.
Also! While most of the side material doesn't really impact the main story, I do recommend looking at "The Witches' Tanabata Isn't Sweet." While not strictly necessary, it adds some additional context to Eva and Ange's relationship.
Chapter 8, Part 17 - Umineko: Gothic Romance Edition
Umineko Episode 8, Part 17 – Umineko: Gothic Romance Edition
Message from the Future: This is honestly one of my favorite segments in all of Umineko, short though it is.
"What's this sound I keep hearing?" asks the narration as we cut in on a scene of rain falling. It immediately answers itself. This is the sound of rain, and two bright lights are coming towards "me".
The lights screech to a stop, revealing themselves to be the headlights of a car. The car narrowly stops in time and honks at the narrator, though they seem to be pretty out of it and unable to understand what's happening or even moving.
A car door opens (with sound effects). The narrator realizes they're laying on asphalt under open rain. The driver opens an umbrella and approaches. "Is this your backyard?" she asks. The driver (I think she sounds like Hachijo) makes some sarcastic remarks about how this must be the narrator's backyard for him to be taking a nap outside in such "fine weather". Ah, except one problem... this is a public highway. Yeah, it's Hachijo.
Is this the fabled "meet cute"? Hachijo asks if the narrator wants to become roadkill, laying in the middle of a highway like this. Or is already roadkill? The narrator can only manage a groan in response. Ah, not road kill yet, says Hachijo. "And that... was how I met Ikuko." says the narrator.
DAMN IT WAS A MEET CUTE.
The scene fades to Hachijo's mansion in the daytime. A sober-sounding man is saying that the patient's body is in very frail condition and may have "memory loss". (REALLY. MEMORY LOSS.) There might even be brain damage. (No, Battler has always been Like That, doctor dude. Oh I'm sorry, did I spoil it with my assumptions?)
Hachijo says they're lucky it's just damage. Longer in a spot like that, and it would be worse. The doctor recommends getting the patient checked out at a hospital, and Hachijo immediately responds that they should keep this "off the record", giving him "some money for your troubles".
NANJO: I also know what it's like to get "some money for your troubles".
So the doctor is bribed to keep his mouth shut, and Hachijo returns. The narrator is awake, and Hachijo asks how he feels. The narrator responds with a non-verbal nod but has no idea where he is. It's a room he doesn't know in a house he doesn't remember and an extremely hot woman he's never seen before (that last bit may have included some editorializing on my part).
Hachijo introduces herself as "Hachijo Ikuko". The narrator is welcome to call her Ikuko casually or "Hachijo-san" formally. The Hachijo family owns a large amount of land and is fairly famous in these parts, she says. (Also I'm sort of a goddess, she does not add.) We get BACKSTORY for Featherine's mortal identity, as she confesses to having accomplished brothers but being eccentric herself, until she got into too much mischief and her parents kicked her out. (Probably there is some Japanese mythology reference here I could figure out with enough wikipedia trawling.)
Hachijo is now "confined to this house" and as a hobby likes to read detective novels and write them. Her age is... a single woman's secret. She has a girl's heart but is approaching the point where calling herself one is absurd.
The narrator's mind is hazy and having trouble following this, but he can tell she's trying to cheer him up. Hachijo asks the narrator's name. The narrator cannot remember their name. In fact, the narrator can't remember anything at all. The narrator stretches their brain and all they can remember is that they are 18 years old.
Hachijo declares that until the narrator remember their name, she will give them the name "Tohya" written with the characters for "18" until they remember. "Hachijo Tohya". Sounds pretty cool right? Hachijo Ikuko gives a laugh at that one. From then on the narrator takes the name "Hachijo Tohya". They are unable to move their body due to the "traffic accident" or so it is presumed happened before Ikuko picked them off the street. (Later on the narrator suspects Ikuko might have been the one to hit them, but her front bumper appears undamaged so maybe not.)
Ikuko lives in a "small mansion" (what a contradiction; just like Kuwadorian) atop a hill with a view of the sea.
The narrator gradually rehabilitates themselves and recovers their ability to move. However their memory of their past does not return. Thinking on their past identity gives them headaches and eventually they stop trying and accept an identity as "Hachijo Tohya".
We cut to a random morning with "Hachijo Ikuko" asking how Tohya feels after a storm the previous night. Sleep well? The narrator had trouble sleeping and so read Ikuko's manuscript instead. Read the whole thing very fast, taking it in like a speed reader. The narrator liked it a lot but thinks there's a part that Ikuko needs to explain more thoroughly to be a fair mystery. Ikuko loves these detailed opinions and thinks they are very helpful.
The narrator vaguely recalls themselves fighting and arguing about mysteries or something like that. Mysteries... fighting... it has a lot of appeal. The narrator has a headache and lets us know that the frequency of headaches might be lessened by "brain surgery" but there's no guarantee it would do their memory any good. Hachijo will pay for the brain surgery if the narrator wants it, but they are refusing. The real them is somewhere in there waiting to wake up. As long as the narrator doesn't think too much on the past, the headaches don't torment them.
The narrator starts to tell us about Hachijo Ikuko. She's from a rich family, but her "mischievous incidents" got her a hair from being disowned. She got sent to this house and ordered to live quietly and alone. Ikuko didn't mind this too much and lived how she pleased with some servants to take care of her. Ikuko has no friends, no visitors, and other than Tohya only talks to an old black cat named "Bern". (Wow if an old black cat survived for 12 more years that would be weird, huh?) The narrator doesn't know Ikuko's real age, though she doesn't seem too old to marry if only she met anyone.
Her everyday life is either reading through detective novels or writing detective novels herself. She never lets anyone read the manuscripts she writes, other than Tohya. The narrator asks why Ikuko never shows the novels to anyone, and she says, "I show them to you." The better ones anyway. Ikuko doesn't think her works can stand against that of the pros, and this is just an amateur's pastime.
Ikuko seems very happy to be sharing her manuscripts at least with Tohya. Thinking about how great it is to share your 'world' with someone else gives Tohya a headache, which Ikuko is immediately concerned over. Tohya shakes it off and says the next chapter of Ikuko's manuscript is more interesting.
Seasons pass, and the narrator spends their time debating detective novels and plots with Ikuko. Hachijo Tohya finds this life to be satisfying. The cycle of night and day passes indicating the passage of time, and Ikuko fades in as narrator saying the curtain closes on the strange tale of Kurokubi Island. The end. They're full fledged collaborators now, with Ikuko "using your plot". Ikuko claims that next to what she has achieved with Tohya's help, everything she's written before now is scrap paper. (This goes on for a bit.)
Tohya explains that they have a lot of ideas for adding twists to traditional mysteries, but it's Ikuko's writing skills that turned those idea into a real work of fiction. Working together they can create a masterpiece. Ikuko declares Kurokuhi Island to be the best thing they have written, and they call a servant o bring champagne to toast.
That night Tohya has an idea. Ikuko loves hearing their ideas, "as long as I'm not in the shower or on the can". (And even then I bet it just has to be the right idea.) Tohya wants to submit the book they have created for publication. Ikuko tried submitting work once in the past and go nowhere, but that was before her collaboration with Tohya. Together they agree to submit the story.
Cut to the Hachijo mansion on a rainy night. Tohya and Ikuko have had too much to drink, and Tohya passed out on the sofa in the study. When they wake the lights are out, but the computer monitor's glowing. Tohya thinks the rainy day is just like when Ikuko found them. Ikuko apologizes for waking Tohya, but Tohya has had plenty of sleep. After chatting about the weather, Tohya asks what's so interesting about the computer.
IKUKO: I found a usenet group about something called the Rokkenjima Incident.
I mean yes, of course that's exactly what she's interested in, even if she doesn't name "usenet groups" as the biggest discussion forum of the day. (Folks, it was the Reddit of its day.) Ikuko reminds Tohya she told them about the Rokkenjima mystery a few days ago. It's been huge on the internet lately, and the discussion, the theories, and even the Forgeries are all entertaining. (Ikuko explains forgeries are bottle fanfiction.)
A huge bell is clanging in Tohya's head every time they hear about Rokkenjima. (The screen pulses red.) Ikuko has the same voice actress as Featherine, but the distress in her voice as she sees Tohya's pain is something you'd never get from that cynical old goddess who doesn't get excited about anything.
Tohya very briefly recaps the Rokkenjima Explosion Accident for us (seriously a few sentences), lingering on Ushiromiya Ange whose name definitely means something to them. "I am Ushiromiya-" We are shown very rapid images from Umineko. To narrow it down for you, they include everyone except Battler. Even including Kinzo and I think Beatrice right at the end, neither of whom should be images in Battler's head but okay. Tohya (or I will edit, "someone") awakens to the sound of wind and rain.
We hear a voice call for "Ange" repeatedly. Then we hear Eva's voice saying, "Please, please say something." The narration remembers "voices calling to me". In 1986 on Rokkenjima... Mom and Dad … says the narration.
Rudolf's voice calls, "Ange hang in there! Can you hear Daddy's voice?" Kyrie's voice calls, "Please say something!! Ange!!" The narrator wants to say it out loud.
Rudolf's voice sounds again, "Ange, thank goodness." I could feel my body being lifted up firmly and hugged roughly, says the narration. The narrator says their eyelids have been open a while and light is returning to their eyes. The scene around them comes into view. The screen cuts to Rudolf and Kyrie in the Golden Land.
Ange is being held tightly by her parents with all their strength. As her eyes adjust, she sees other people there. George, Jessica, and Maria are there. So are her uncles and aunts. Even Maria's imaginary friend Sakutarou is there. There's Virgilia and Ronove and- Ange's sprite materializes and she asks where they are.
Beatrice says that Ange is fortunate. By chance they found her drifting in the waves of the sea of emptiness. Ange was in a terrible state, and ti took some time to make her remember her true form. Ange realizes this is the Golden Land, and Rudolf tells Ange her whole family has been waiting for her return.
Let's cut it here tonight.
Manga Update
The manga doesn't show us the face of the narrator as they are sprawled out on the street, but I can tell you they're wearing a shirt and pants and their hand looks very scuffed up. Holy hell, that close-up of Hachijo's face when she leans down to look at our narrator in the road....
In the manga, the doctor actually seems to refuse the bribe though he promises not to say anything. The patient has bandages atop their head to hide their features when we look from an overhead shot. But come on, we all know it's Battler. (Well probably, just on a conservation of characters front.)
When Tohya remembers exchanging arguments on mysteries before, we get a fuzzy shot of the rose garden arbor. Ikuko's age may be a secret, but Tohya estimates her as being "just about still marriageable" which I dunno, 30?
When they discuss how Ikuko used to let no one read her manuscripts but now lets Tohya read them, there's a reference to "sharing your world with somebody" that seems to harken back to the "at takes at least two people to make a world" thing we've heard before. (Sometimes that's said as "Game Master" and "Player" but I think it applies equally to "Author" and "Reader".)
After a "time passes" montage, Tohya idly comments on how long the black cat Bern seems to be living. He asks if she's actually a ghost cat, which of course she hisses at.
After the discussion of the island mystery, Tohya and Ikuko formally agree to team up as co-authors and seek publication together. They even toast it with wine glasses. And then... Ikuko brings out a wine bottle that she says she planned to open after they finished the manuscript. Only it doesn't contain wine but "something which might be way better than alcohol". INDEED. (Obviously this is a witch bottle that Ikuko got her hands on somehow.) Tohya is really tired and falls asleep before she can show it to him.
Later Tohya awakens from the his nap on the couch while Ikuko works on her computer in a dark room. (Complete with the old school PC big tower and huge CRT monitor.) Referencing what she's looking at online, Ikuko talks about the motives people have for killing each other. Social standing, honor, revenge, and money are the typical answers but that's in "the world of novels". Ikuko says in reality most murders are unplanned events from a trivial quarrel or "some strange tension just in that moment".
Then Ikuko moves into talking about the Rokkenjima incident. Ikuko reveals the bottle she showed earlier really is something she picked up floating in the ocean "near the road where I picked you up" just a few days ago. She thought they could read it together. Ikuko has already looked at it and says either it was a skilled forger's work or maybe even the real deal. As in the game, Tohya starts freaking out from memories of Rokkenjima.
As Tohya collapses, we see the manuscript that Ikuko has is titled "Confession of the Golden Witch". End of Chapter 24.1, and of course the next manga chapter, Chapter 25, is the beginning of a three chapter Confession of the Golden Witch arc.
Coming back the next day...
Let's set aside Ange washing up on the shores of the Golden Land (though I hope she's not going to have amnesia yet again). I want to talk about Umineko: Gothic Romance edition, or "The Gothic Romance" as we can call it. It might be a little more obvious if I flip the genders to tell this story...
On a dark and stormy night, a man finds a woman sprawled out on the road, battered and injured. After making a smartass remark to show his rakish humor, the man bundles the girl into his car and takes her to his hilltop mansion where the summons a doctor to treat her.
After the girl awakens, the man introduces himself. He's very handsome and older than her, though "still within marriageable age". The son of a wealthy family, he was was very nearly disowned for reckless mischief in his youth and now exists in semi-exile in this hilltop manor attended by servants who see to his needs as long as he stays home and doesn't make trouble. As for the girl, she can remember nothing of her past except that she thinks she's 18 years old (and the man seems to find this plausible). The man invites her to live with him as she recovers, even inviting her to take his own last name along with a new first name he provides. (The ambiguity with whether this orients more with adopting her or marrying her and how it's left to interpretation is very gothic romance.)
As they live together in happiness, the girl and man discover a shared love for literature. The man not only reads, but writes... writes works that he shares with no one. Shyly, he allows the girl to read his work and is impressed with her comprehension and appreciation. Soon she is providing suggestions and feedback that make his writing better and better, a partnership of minds and souls. Truly, this younger woman is the muse that the older man has been waiting for his entire life!
They propose to become partners... writing partners, ah-hah. But then as the man begins to tell the girl about a real life mystery that has caught his attention, headaches and strange visions overwhelm her. The girl's past may just rise up once more to threaten her new life....
This is so gothic romance. I admit that the game does not openly impose a romantic frame on their relationship, but the point I make above about Tohya being Ikuko's "muse" (though that word is not used) is true, and the record of artists becoming romantically involved with a partner who inspires them is incredibly long. One might say it's more often than the case than not. But whether they're fucking or not (to be very crude about it) there is clearly a deep bond here.
If there's a second act twist where it turns out the dashing hilltop writer knows more about the girl's mysterious past than he has been willing to reveal... well, frankly that would also be very gothic romance. (Is it plausible that Ikuko has been browsing Rokkenjima webpages and not seen photographs of all the supposed victims?) It's not a gothic romance without dark secrets threatening the relationship!
So yes, making Hachijo the central figure of a gothic romance right in the middle of the last episode of Umineko was sure unexpected. I found it pretty great. Love this twist. But what does it mean?
Tohya is pretty heavily implied to be Battler. Ikuko mentions (in the manga) that she found the bottle in the ocean near where she found Tohya. One can imagine Battler landing on shore from whatever boat he was on and staggering to the road, then being struck by a car in the dark (that definitely didn't belong to Ikuko, see her front fender is fine and she didn't use her god powers to fix it or anything) that does a hit-and-run only for Ikuko to find him later. Battlers suffering "convenient amnesia" is pretty convenient, but well- I'm sure he wasn't any more fond of "the truth" than Ange is and with some brain injuries he might repress everything.
Anyway, issuing some congratulations to Tohya, one of life's winners. You might ask, what even with the terrible injuries and the amnesia and the brain damage and the constant headaches all of that? Well nobody's life is perfect, but let's see what is on the other side. Tohya lives in a beautiful house where his every need is attended to. He has a beautiful partner that he might as well be married to, said partner may possibly have godlike magical powers, and they spend every day doing something they love in mutual bliss. Moreover, they are so incredibly successful at what they do that dudes from publishing companies offer to fix contests on their behalf. (Frankly, a mystery writer being that successful is the best evidence yet of Ikuko's godlike powers.) I say he's one of life's winners.
But what does this mean?
Let's try taking it on the Featherine level. If we take Ange as being correct, that the different between Hachijo Ikuko and Featherine is nothing but changing the backdrop in a play, then they must share the same feelings. Even in this brief Gothic Romance interlude, I think I can say that Hachijo loves Tohya in some manner and therefore so does Featherine. Still, to be a mortal beloved by a god has usually been a dangerous thing in mythology. We've seen plenty in Umineko that someone loving you does not necessarily mean that the way they act is always to your benefit (though it's better than them hating you).
From Episode 2 or so I've been asking what the hell "Crimelab Battler" actually even is, and that's never been well answered. Beatrice was insistent that this Battler was not her piece, he was a player that sat on the other side of the board. But... if he's not her creation then where did he even come from? Who made him?
Augustus Aurora Featherine is talked about by the other witches as though she was basically omnipotent. Surely it would be nothing for her to create a new version of Battler that could go to Beatrice's game board and contest it in order to create a reality where he made up for his sin in abandoning Shannon? Something to balm the suffering of her mortal lover muse. Of course, then why is she trying to destroy the same game board now with her press conference stunt? Well, if Battler of the game board was nothing but a tool to aid Tohya, perhaps he has served his purpose somehow? (Or is she 'trying'? Surely if Featherine 'tried' to destroy something then it would be destroyed already?)
Then there is her cat, Bern. In one of the threads I've been posting this WIR, those following along in the thread have been making a significant criticism of Bernkastel that she's forcing her way into a situation that has nothing to do with her and messing with everyone for her own satisfaction. Bernkastel only cares about winning, and all of this is some massive petty display because she's angry she lost. She's utterly uninvolved otherwise, and it's terrible of her to mess with all these people who never did anything to her. Honestly, that was pretty tough to argue with.
Bernkastel is Tohya's pet cat.
Okay, okay, technically she's Ikuko's pet cat, but the wife's pet is the husband's pet. Now I don't know exactly what this means for Bernkastel's motivations. Bernkastel has expressed that sticking around Featherine isn't voluntary. Is it a case that Bernkastel is mad at Featherine but can't hurt her and is therefore made at Featherine's lover but can't hurt him and is settling for third best by hurting a version of him that Featherine isn't protecting?
Or is the chronology all backwards in the witch world, and Featherine invented Hachijo Ikuko and then invented Hachijo Tohya and retroactively made them real in response to Bernkastal and Lambdadelta involving themselves in the Rokkenjima game board? That seems plausible as well. Anyway it's interesting. And it means Bernkastel is having a good old laugh every time Ange talks about the failed dream of her family coming back.
Okay, what's going on with the world of mortals level? Did Tohya regain his memories? Did he contact Eva? Did Eva send her diary to him in preparation for her death? Or did Tohya repress his memories, but Ikuko realized who he is and is acting in secret behind his back? Did she get the diary through money and connections and dark magical powers?
The message bottle forgeries of the third and fourth games seem like they were written by someone who 'knows the truth', but why would Tohya write them? Or does he only subconsciously know the truth? Or did Ikuko write them using the truth she learned from Tohya? Important to remember that the forgeries were not published under the name "Hachijo Tohya". They were published under the name "Itouikukoro".
Is Ikuko keeping Tohya from meeting Ange? I don't know, this Witch Hunters meeting where she unveils Eva's diary seems like a big deal and is getting a lot of press. There's no way she could be sure of Tohya not hearing about it, right? So he probably knows?
There are... a lot of questions here.
Chapter 8, Part 18 - In which Sayo rants for 3 chapters
Umineko Episode 8, Part 18 – In which Sayo rants for 3 chapters
Let's check out the Confession of the Golden Witch arc in the manga. Chapter 24.2, Confession of the Golden Witch Part 1.
Unlike the other message bottles, this one starts out by saying, "If I have but one wish, let this message bottle never be seen by anyone's eyes. If you, by any chance, should read this, please deal me my just punishment."
This is presumably the message bottle that Hachijo Ikuko found (in the manga anyway). The next page declares Rokkenjima to be a cursed island. We cut to Shannon writing the confession.
Shannon gives us the short summary of what we learned in Episode 7. Raised in an orphanage, brought to Rokkenjima to work while very young, bullied by the older servants. Then we're shown some of her early character design work.
Shannon confirms the trick with the key ring worked just like I said it did. Shannon took the master key off her own key ring and planted it in the target's locker, then simply switched their two key rings in an instant. Then we get confirmation that the incident with breaking Kinzo's vase happened to Shannon, and Kumasawa helped cover it up by blaming it on a cat. Shannon says Genji, Kumasawa, and Doc Nanjo always keep an eye out for her and help her out. They act sort of like parents.
Shannon tells Gaap and Beatrice (Clair version) that her dream is to "marry a boy I love", then get children and have a real family. Soon after she falls for Battler, and we get a little recap of them talking together. (Battler's statement he wants a blonde girl with big boobs is based off him getting into Rudolf's porn. That is not a joke.)
Battler makes his promise about coming for you on a white horse, and Shannon starts obsessing. (Including trying to learn how to talk like Jessica and doing exercises to promote breast growth.) Then Battler doesn't return in 1982, and still doesn't come back in 1983. We have a brief scene at school where a girl in the bathroom asks Yasuda if she has a pad, and she says she "hasn't had it yet" (meaning menstruation). Next page there's more direct talk about how Yasuda is beginning to feel ill at ease with her body. She hasn't had a period and does not seem to be growing breasts.
Beatrice (Claire version) reassures Yasuda she's only in middle school and puberty comes late for some girls... but of course Yasuda is actually three years older than everyone thinks. Yasuda smashes a mirror, beginning to hate the image it shows. "Boyish-looking, flat-chested thing with a worn-out face." Sitting alone in a room with no friends or family, talking to herself.
Yasuda decides to try life as a boy, appearing as Kanon. Kumasawa and Genji played along to help with "secret agreements and shift scheduling". (I never bought that they would do that, but okay.) Part of the reason for Kanon's cold and silent act is Sayo thinks that's what boys are like, but it's also practical. Talking as little as possible and staying away from everyone made it easier to fool them that Kanon was a separate person.
New scene. While serving hot soup or something to Kinzo, Shannon fumbles it and accidentally dumps it on her leg. She has to rush to strip off her sock. And Kinzo sees a scar on her foot that he seems to recognize or at least is able to make some kind of guess about. It's at this moment that Kinzo seems to guess Yasuda's true identity.
Next page we cut to Kinzo offering Shannon a chance to shoot his rifles. Cut to Shannon and Jessica hanging out and being friends. Cut to Shannon making friends with Maria so they can play witch together. Cut to Shannon being romanced by George and reflecting that though she "may not be gifted with big breasts" they can still have children together eventually. (When that menstrual cycle comes, it's definitely coming, right?)
Cut to Shannon looking at Beatrice's portrait on November 29, 1984. Over the next couple of pages she solves the epitaph and uncovers the gold. Cut to Yasuda dressed as Beatrice and receiving Kinzo's apology. Right after Kinzo dies, Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo break the news about Yasudo being a horrible incest baby, which makes her realize how closely she's related to George.
Then Nanjo tells about how Natsuhi shoved the baby Lion and some servant lady off a cliff. Nanjo explains the baby "suffered a large laceration on your lower abdomen and genital region". These injuries mean that Yasudo will never be able to have children, explains Nanjo, which upsets her even more. In fact, Yasudo "pulls an Ange" and yells that it can't possibly be true. Goes Genji have any proof she is this Lion?
Yep. That scar on her left foot that Kinzo recognized is from an operation to remove her sixth toe. (An operation that really shouldn't have left such a massive, ugly scar. Folks, I'm beginning to think Nanjo isn't actually a very good doctor.)
Yasudo wishes she had been left to die rather than live with a body like this that can't "make love" or have children. She declares she is not human, nothing more than furniture. (See, I thought of an irreverent wisecrack here but will refrain from making it.) It must surely be a lie, and that she's related to both Battler and George, that must be a lie too. "It's a lie that I can't become happy with the person that I love!!"
End Chapter 24.2. Begin Chapter 24.3, Confession of the Golden Witch Part 2.
Yasuda sulks in the underground VIP next to the gold, while Beatrice (golden-haired, big boobed version in the classic dress version) appears and mocks her pain. In response, Kanon appears and declares he will shield his sister from the witch. Kanon isn't totally on Shannon's side, though. He warns Shannon that they are furniture and cannot love people. She must break up with George.
The stuff at the end of the epitaph about the four treasures and putting the witch to rest turns out to just be putting the letters back and restoring the epitaph mechanism to its original configuration to hide the gold again. Speaking of putting things back, Shannon decides to ignore the gold and pretend everything is like it was, just as we saw in Episode 7, pretending that crazy night in November never happened.
The deception by Krauss and Natsuhi that Kinzo is still alive helps a lot with that, obviously. But while part of Shannon is grateful, a different part (the Kanon part) can't help but feel like Natsuhi's talk of honor is being revealed as garbage and she's pissing on Kinzo's grave by denying him a proper funeral and grave. There's even a panel from Jessica commenting on the "stench" from Kinzo's study, which makes Shannon think they need to work harder to preserve Kinzo's body.
Shannon asks Genji about all the skeletons in the underground base, and Genji repeats Kinzo's story about a mass conflict between the Japanese and Italian soldiers. Shannon thinks it's weird the skeletons are piled up in one room like they were dumped in a garbage pile. Kinzo never bothered to bury them. Shannon thinks this means that Kinzo somehow killed them all to monopolize Beatrice and the gold.
Plausible! Genji has no answer. He can only know the story that Kinzo told him. From that dark scene, we cut to Shannon and Jessica talking about romance. After teasing Shannon about her relationship with George, Jessica asks about that cute Kanon kid and if he has a girlfriend.
Listen, I like Jessica a lot, more than almost any other character, but even Confession of the Golden Witch can't do anything to explain her blindness. In all the world of Rokkenjima, she is the only one (other than Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo) who really looked at both Shannon and Kanon, who tried to see them both as people she cared about and who mattered to her. Everyone else turned their eyes away and allowed themselves not to look too hard at servants. Even George, who looked at Shannon, had no reason to look at Kanon. But Jessica looked at them both.
Does Jessica's blindness even after that speak to some deficiency in her character? Perhaps. Jessica seeing the truth would not, should not, have taken one of Bernkastel's miracles. People in the WIR threads have said before that the possibility of happiness between Jessica and Kanon was the most minuscule of chances of all of Yasuda's "romances" the least likely because it started so late and because Kanon was the weakest of the many. But if we look at Jessica instead of Kanon, she had every opportunity in the world to be the one to understand Yasuda and say, "Hey. I see you. I see all of you. Want to talk?"
Kanon was supposed to be where all the ugliness inside Shannon gave vent, but he was also an opportunity for life as a boy. Shannon knows it's a mistake, but to soothe the ugliness, to give life to that opportunity, she can't resisting agreeing to "introduce" Jessica to Kanon. Jessica giving Kanon that kind of regard would make him into a real boy compared to all the fantasy creations.
Of course, Shannon also realizes she's starting another incest romance and despises herself for that all the more. "The only people who make me feel needed... are my blood relatives." Yikes.
Both romances continue to develop, and Yasuda is seduced by the feeling of being loved. She thinks the aquarium trip will the chance to confess the full truth to George, but he insists on separate rooms and the chance slips away. Now he's talking about getting engaged. She has to tell George the- BEATRICE INTERUPT. Looking positively demonic, Beatrice assures Shannon that love means lust and George will despair and never accept her. She can't give George the children he's always talking about! KANON INTERRUPT. Oh also by the way, Kanon loves Jessica and doesn't want to give up on her in favor of George.
Then Kanon and Beatrice start to argue, with Kanon saying that of Beatrice knows so much she ought to step forward and use her gold to solve all the problems of the household. Beatrice says there's no way that would work, if she revealed herself the greedy family would fight her for the money and bring them all to ruin.
Yasuda realizes any possible choice will bring pain, but now that choice is on a deadline. George will propose on the day of the next Family Conference, and she will have to give an answer. Tell George the truth, or deny him to continue to hold her secrets. There is no way to accept and continue to keep the secrets. Sayo literally has nightmares of George rejecting her.
Then Say gets the news that on top of everything else, Battler will be returning for the family conference. A vision of young Shannon from six years ago appears, excited that Battler will come save her from her fate and take her away as his bride.
The witch stands behind chibi-Shannon supporting her point of view. Adult Shannon says harshly that Battler has forgotten them. After all, he didn't even send a letter. A black-eyed chibi Shannon and Beatrice call Shannon a liar. She's still howling in pain, hoping for something from Battler. There is a lot more Sayo angst over multiple pages.
Sayo starts to have dangerous thoughts. Thoughts about how the problem here is really that they're all tied down by these prisons of flesh. If only they could be in a world without ties or obligations, freed and connected by their souls, she and all the ones she loves. That's when Shannon decides to return Rokkenjima to the Golden Land. With explosives. She tests one of the bombs on the shrine. Works great. The rest can be used on the day of the family conference.
End Chapter 24.3. Chapter 24.4, Confession of the Golden Witch Part 3.
Shannon tells Kumasawa and Nanjo that she wants them to play along with "exactly as I say" during the family conference this year, promising them as many gold ingots as they want. Both say they don' need any gold; they owe her all the help they can give. Of course they both think it's going to be "a murder mystery game". Harmless fun! Well, non-lethal fun anyway. I bet neither of them have been too impressed with plan "cover up Kinzo's death". They've been going along with it because Sayo wanted to go along with it, but how low must their opinion of Krauss and Natsuhi have fallen? A grand finale that humiliates those two might be a great idea.
Genji is different. Genji is loyal furniture. Sayo asks if Genji will do whatever she commands. He will. Even if what she commands is to commit suicide with this whole household? Yes. Genji is to blame for driving Sayo into this corner. If she wants to die and kill everyone, he'll go along with that.
Sayo begins to write down potential plans for the crime, but they all have some rules they must follow.
Rule X: The accomplice is different every time. The adults are all in financial trouble. It is easy to bribe them.
Rule Y: Lies agreed on by everyone can be depicted as actually happening. In a locked room situation anything goes. People who observe the golden butterflies are either accomplices or dead. Those who were not bribed can only see the golden butterflies in the time space of 30 minutes before their death.
I think Gohda in episodes 2 and 4 kind of bends these rules. He's not particularly in any money troubles as far as we know, but in both circumstances he's convinced to tell some pretty egregious lies. It seems more likely he was threatened than bribed.
Sayo writes endless tales of potential versions of how October 4 and 5 might go, all of them embellished with magic. Being so used to "playing around with delusions" these are less plans and more parallel worlds that her soul is being let loose to experience. Endlessly killing the family in them over and over is its own kind of delight and entertainment. She even gets to kill Kinzo, who had the luck to die a satisfied death already and so escape paying for his sins.
Sayo has reasons why all the adults are bad. Krauss is heir to Kinzo's awful legacy, Natsuhi pushed Lion off a cliff, Eva and Hideyoshi want to break up Shannon and George, Rudolf and Kyrie chased away Battler, Ange Genji/Kumasawa/Nanjo were accomplices to Kinzo. And Gohda he, uh... he tried to get personal gain out of striking a deal with Natsuhi!
You mean Gohda got a job, Sayo. Your complaint about Gohda is that he took gainful employment. (SCORNFUL LOOK) Just admit you don't like the guy, okay? You got a personal beef with him, and that's it.
She has this little pin-up board of their sins. Gohda was fired from his hotel job because of a sexual affair. But frankly, given corporate culture of the 80s it's more likely that he had a totally consensual relationship with someone his superiors disapproved of than that he committed what we here in the 2020s would consider sexual misconduct. (Because in the early 1980s pressuring subordinates into sleeping with you and that sort of thing was not a firing offense.)
Anyway, enough about Gohda. All the adults go to hell, and the kids will play happily and innocently together in heaven, freed from their awful prisons of flesh and the dark future that would come from being guided by such wicked adults, seems to be more or less Sayo's plan.
Sayo considers who all the adults can be manipulated. Krauss and Natsuhi can be shown the gold as a bribe or threatened with their embezzlement or exposing Kinzo's death or even killing Jessica. Though best to use a fake identity when doing it, as they know Shannon too well and are contemptuous of her. Of course Natushi is "not very intelligent" so there's not much point making her a pawn. Torturing her will be more fun.
Eva and Hideyoshi can be manipulated with George. Rudolf and Kyrie can probably be straight up paid off to kill people, though Kyrie is "fast to doubt people" and dangerous. If Kyrie isn't made a pawn early, she needs to be killed fast. Rosa won't give a shit about Maria's life, but she can be bribed with gold. "A petty villain like Gohda" can be easily bribed. However the pawn with the most value is Maria, who adores the witch and will do whatever Beatrice tells her to do with absolute faith. Sayo promises herself that Maria body will never be disgraced and Maria's deaths will either be instant (as with the explosion) or painless poison (or so I interpret the manga panel visual).
Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo will follow orders. Nanjo can falsely declare people dead and also provide drugs and poisons if Sayo needs them. Of course, the ones who think it's a "murder mystery game" will freak out when people start dying for real. Sayo will have to lie and either tell them fake bodies were prepared with money or oh no there's an unknown killer doing this for real or kill them herself if they won't calm down. Guns can be prepositioned around the mansion so Sayo can access them whenever she wants without having to carry them around. The stakes can be used to disguise the cause of death. The phones can be shut off with the flip of a circuit breaker.
All the possibilities make Sayo feel like a true witch. That's when a formless figures that is probably Lambdadelta appears and asks, but are you really?
A few more pages of witch talk, and once Sayo is transformed into Beatrice she can see Lambdadelta properly. Lambdadelta will become Beatrice's guardian and the one who acknowledges her as a witch.
Then we get some of the tricks explained. The chain of locked rooms in Episode 3 functions as expected, with a declared-dead-by-Nanjo Shannon sneaking out the broken window of the parlor to go lock herself in the chapel and pretend to be dead a second time as Kanon. For Natsuhi's room in the second game and dying by the well in the fourth game, she used a trick where the gun's trigger is pulled with a piece of string so the blast from the shot catapults the gun behind a piece of furniture (or into the well)to hide it. The deaths of Kumasawa and Gohda in the shed in the fourth room was conducted by switching the shed key out with a different key with the shed key tag, since Battler wasn't going to know the difference.
There's some panels that seem to indicate that Shannon and Kanon respectively met George and Jessica in the fourth game. Shannon killed George with a concealed rifle, and Kanon convinced Jessica to read a fake script to Battler then shot her in the head from behind. (Cold as ice.)
Well cold as ice in the tale. Writing that (or something like that since episode 4 was a Hachijo tale) in reality seems to break Sayo a little, Maybe all of this is a terrible idea. Maybe "the people I love" (George, Jessica, Maria, and a Battler whose adult face she does not know and must therefore picture in silhouette) should actually live? Okay, new rule.
Rule Z: Please, somebody stop me.
If anyone solves the epitaph, Sayo will hand over the gold and do whatever they want. If it were one of her beloved, that would be the best. Battler maybe? Sayo knows how much Battler loves mysteries. Well, if that doesn't work they can all be happy in the Golden Land together.
On October 3, Sayo loads a bunch of these tales into message bottles and throws them into the sea. All of the bottle tales are written in such a way that you should be able to deduce the culprit (so Sayo claims), so each one is a confession. Then she mails out some cash cards to the bereaved families as an apology. Preparations complete. All that remains is to have Maria recite the invitation "I made her memorize" and let the fun begin curtain rise.
Some wrap-up text and end of Chapter 24.4, Confession of the Golden Witch 3.
Chapter 25 is The Cage of Obligations, but here we appear to connect back up to the game since the first page is the ghosts of the Golden Land discovering Ange's hamburger body floating in the void and the next page is them bringing it inside.
So we'll call it here for tonight on this manga-only WIR segment.
Coming back the next day...
So this is supposed to be yet another pocket on the roulette, a "tale" where Sayo simply writes the plain truth of what's going on and what she intends to do. It goes in its own bottle right alongside all stories that have been concealed with fantasy. If this happens to be a bottle that is discovered then oh well, guess that's how the roulette came up. At least that's my understanding. (Who knows what anyone would make of the 'and then I got transformed into a witch' segment.)
This does go a long way to explaining Sayo's psychology and what she's thinking at each step along the way. Having read then, I can see that a lot of commentators who have been making various remarks about Sayo's situation or motivations have been heavily influenced by these chapters.
….
You know, virtually every character in Umineko seems to get bound up in things where they just can't bring themselves to walk away even when they should. Battler looks a lot more impressive next to them all for being able, at the age of 12, to tell his father "It's been real and it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun," and simply walk away for six years.
As for Yasuda Sayo, AKA many other names, I understand the pattern of her thoughts better now, but it's still a bunch of bad decisions created from too much internal thinking without external inputs. Touch grass, Sayo.
Not sure what else to say. I guess we can go back to the game.
We're missing an explanation about the bottles written in Maria's handwriting.
If Shannon played witches with Maria she might have written stuff in the diary herself, but then there would be two different handwritings in it. Or else Shannon went to great lengths to copy Maria's, but why?
Then we get some of the tricks explained. The chain of locked rooms in Episode 3 functions as expected, with a declared-dead-by-Nanjo Shannon sneaking out the broken window of the parlor to go lock herself in the chapel and pretend to be dead a second time as Kanon. For Natsuhi's room in the second game and dying by the well in the fourth game, she used a trick where the gun's trigger is pulled with a piece of string so the blast from the shot catapults the gun behind a piece of furniture (or into the well) to hide it.
Ep 3 and 4 weren't written by Beatrice, those are Tohya (Battler) works!
Why is she explaining the tricks on those? She never saw them, they were written after her death.
Unless you say those were bottles made by Beatrice than Hachijo recovered later, i guess - but even so , Ep 3 features Eva surviving which doesn't make much sense for a Beatrice original.
Or maybe she adapted the tricks of a recovered bottle into a semi-original tale, i guess that works.
Regarding Sayo's motivations, I think it's interesting you haven't seemed to consider Lion having been assigned male at birth, which while not directly confirmed, I think is definitely a reading that can be supported by the text and IMO makes the most sense. Points that lead me in that direction (many of which have been noted by other Umineko fans and aren't necessarily my original thoughts.)
1. Why obfuscate Lion's gender and birth sex at all? Shannon, Beatrice, and the majority of Sayo's furniture identify as female. If Lion is AFAB there's really no there there besides Kanon, and by episode seven they're all but spelling the truth of that out to us, complete with Shannon's freak out when Will asks to see them both together.
2. Kinzo is sexist AF. We saw how he treated a female child of Beatrice the first go-round. Maaaybe Kuwadorian Beatrice's death could have triggered a change in attitude but I doubt it. Also you KNOW Natsuhi would have commented if the baby had been female that Kinzo was willing to have a female head of the family after all, just not Eva. And of course she accepts the premise of "the MAN from 19 years ago" without protest. The baby isn't gendered in the narration for the reader, but that Natsuhi was never like 'but that baby was a girl' is telling.
3. Genji doesn't seem to fear Kinzo 'making another mistake' (i.e. raping his child) until after the baby is pushed off a cliff. When Kuwadorian Beatrice died he could have made the baby disappear then, saying they both went over the cliff to the beach at the same time and stashing the baby at Fukuin House, as he did later. But he's fine with baby Lion being introduced to the family at that point. Obviously Natsuhi couldn't be trusted with the kid after cliff-gate, but why not tell Kinzo the baby survived and let him act as he will? What changed to make Genji fear the worst?
4. Sayo's preoccupation with having a body that "can't love." While obviously infertility is also a concern for her, that phrasing suggests a bit more than damage to purely reproductive organs, rather an inability to have sexual intercourse (at least in the traditional missionary sense). And not to get too graphic, but external genitalia is much more vulnerable to trauma than internal, and yeah there have been cases with infants with damaged organs or intersex characteristics where reconstructive surgery were used to create an approximation of female genitalia rather than male because I guess it's easier to make that look 'normal', and the child was socialized and raised as a girl. Her fears about George not accepting her and that she's never going to be able to have a relationship with anyone make a lot more sense through that lens as well.
5. Kumasawa, Genji, and Nanjo going along with the Kanon persona makes a lot more sense too since they'd know baby Lion was AMAB. Sayo's been raised as a girl likely because she's easier able to 'pass' as one pre-puberty and they were probably trying to avoid notice, but now that Sayo's older, maybe that no longer fits.
6. Check out Umineko Rom-Com edition again. Specifically Beatrice and Kanon during the Second Twilight and Beatrice VS Shannon and George (and Ghoda) in Natsuhi's room. Beatrice makes fun of both Kanon's inability to fill the proper masculine roles for Jessica and when Kanon is ashamed at 'pulling out his sword'. *cough* Freud *cough.* Meanwhile her taunting with Shannon is all about sex and Shannon's body.
Overall I think reading Lion as having been AMAB makes everyone's actions and motivations make more sense and helps explain why Sayo felt so strongly she was trapped with no way out.
Technically what is being explained is not episode 3 and 4 specifically but "the sort of tricks I could use" as being adapted from classic mystery devices. Tohya is drawing on the same knowledge of mysteries in writing episode 3 and 4, so it makes sense that these use the same tricks. The manga showing images from episodes 3 and 4 is for the same of us readers to help connect the dots that the trick Sayo is describing is the same kind of trick that was used in these other episodes.
For me, confession is mostly a confirmation of implied or unconfirmed deducible truths, which I still do appreciate. But the main new details for me out of it would be the gun trick to make a weapon be hidden after a suicide, the bones being still down in the tunnels in a pile and stating that rule z, plus that Krauss and Natsuhi apparently needed Genji and Sayo to watch over their Kinzo scheme, given it was her who told Genji to do something about the corpse issue getting worse.
The Gohda affair detail is, as I understand it, a wink to an abandoned idea where he was going to be having an affair with Natsuhi. Since it was ditched, Sayo bothering with that at all really does boil down to...
Kanon: I hate that guy.
Gohda's past does get covered by a tsubasa side story centred on him. That rumour Sayo mentions has no part in it.
In regards to changed details, it supposedly was Ryukishi's intent at one point to have Tohya and Ikuko get a romantic thing going. But that was objected to by part of the 07th expansion staff. I'm glad for that because, whatever the reason, it did result in the story having a platonic/aromantic pair who can create a universe and who look to be living a happy and contended unit. Having that other to romantic or familial love get that feels good for the work.
Right but to not have it discussed RE the chapters that lay out Sayo's reasons and emotional context, and particularly when the reader is determining how sympathetic or understandable they find both, the subject becomes conspicuous by its omission. 'No one can love me because I'm infertile' is vastly different from 'No one can love me because my body is not that of a cisgender person as they are expecting and/or I am not capable of having traditional sex.' And these chapters also add a lot of additional evidence to the 'Lion was AMAB' theory.
Again, trying not to get too graphic, but the issue seems to be a physical difference they believe George (or whoever) will notice VS simple infertility. I doubt Sayo cares too much about her personal enjoyment of the experience of having sex (and society at large generally didn't, and in many places still doesn't, when it comes to women/people with female presenting bodies.)
Sayo seems to believe George and her sharing a room during the Okinawa trip (and presumably George wanting to initiate sex) would have forced her hand in terms of revealing her secrets. That doesn't point to infertility alone being the issue, as that's something she can easily obfuscate.
Considering Krauss and Natsuhi's situation and the overall lack of children among the Ushiromiya adults, it wouldn't be too hard to delicately hint oh maybe the issue is on George's side, but she loves him anyway, yadda yadda. We know she can get Nanjo to lie for her under the right circumstances. Nanjo says she's fine! And Sayo's so shy she just can't handle going to another doctor for a second opinion and George would neverpush. Is that a terrible and drastic thing to do? Yeah, but it's a lot less so than group murder/suicide. But Sayo doesn't even consider that as an option.
Next, the incest may be gross to us as a reader but if she can't have biokids anyway there are zero practical consequences so long as she can keep that identity secret. Bice and Kuwadorian Beatrice's lives and deaths in Japan were unrecorded. Make Bice Genji's mistress instead of Kinzo's (or even she was still Kinzo's mistress but had a secret affair with Genji that resulted in a pregnancy), say Sayo was a surprise late in life baby, fudge Bice's death date, and erase Kuwadorian Beatice from the narrative and you're good. Or fudge Kuwadorian Beatrice's birth year and say she was Bice's child by someone other than Kinzo (which is how the Switch port censors Kinzo and K!Beato's realationship) and say that she was the one who had the affair with Genji, or Nanjo, or literally anyone who is not a blood Ushiromiya. Again, drastic and deceptive, but no one's dying. And we know Nanjo, Genji, and Kumasawa are willing to lie on Sayo's orders.
But Sayo fears something coming out that would force George "into a life in the shadows" with her. What, by necessity, likely went beyond the circle of Kinzo, Genji, Nanjo, and Kumasawa? What Sayo's body looked like following the fall from the cliff.
Sayo even rationalizes earlier that even if her breasts are small that's okay so long as she is capable of having sex/conceiving children. Her angst is probably not about telling George she pads her bra. Even if you don't subscribe to the 'Lion was AMAB' argument, clearly whatever physical trauma Sayo suffered as a baby was immense and physically noticeable.
Also, more information from the Umineko wiki:
When they initially meet in episode 7, Will calls Lion a 'bocchan' (a male-gendered term that indicates a boy or young man from a rich family) at one point and Lion doesn't protest.
I'm not trying to be lurid, I promise. But painting Sayo's issues as 'LOL hysterical (irony!) delusional girl had a freakout because she can't have babies,' to me, is a really reductive interpretation that ignores a lot of evidence that's been put in front of us and how devastating the weight of the information Sayo was given on November 29, 1984 really was.
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Chapter 8, Part 19 - Getting up after hitting bottom
Umineko Episode 8, Part 19 – Getting up after hitting bottom
So when last we left off, the "dead" Ange was plucked out of the Ocean of Eternity by her relatives in the Golden Land. What will Ange have to say about this? Rudolf and Kyrie are talking a lot about how glad they are to see Ange, saying she came here because she wanted to make it home to them.
Ange is speaking as her teenage self, no more six year old Ange. However she doesn't seem to know what to say. Ange's parents tell her this is a place she can always call home and they hug her, so she hugs them back.
To the side, Eva can tell Ange isn't "all right" but is still glad to have Ange here. Ange can't say anything but "Aunt Eva". Eva tells Ange, hate me as much as you want and love your parents. However Kyrie gives Ange a push from behind and tells her to say 'I'm home' to "your other mother". Ange does hesitantly address Eva as "Mom".
Ange regrets not being able to call Eva "Mom" on "that day". They might have been able to create a new world together. Crying, Eva says it's enough that Ange came home. There's some more back and forth along these lines.
Ange's narration explains that the truth isn't worth anything and is in the past. What matters is Ange living and prospering in the truth that is the now. Ange was a ghost trapped in the past (unlike now when she's in the past, trapped with ghosts). Ange promises that she will live and remember how much everyone loved her.
Ange does some black and white flashbacks to a rewritten past. Kinzo as the kind grandpa who spoiled her, entertaining aunts and uncles, and kind and gentle servants. (Even Kanon's sprite is smiling, which must have required a facial crowbar.) Ange was young and cruel and forgot all that. She thinks that, sure, the Halloween quiz party was an illusion. However it was representative of the kind of fun things the relatives would do when they gathered.
Ange goes up to each of the ghosts to greet them, thank them, and apologize. She also thanks and apologizes to the illusions. Ange remembers saying something horrible to Sakutarou in the past.
ANGE: And to you, Lion, I- uh...
LION: No it's all right, we're meeting for the first time, pleased to greet you.
Ange is totally submissive to every reality anyone ever wanted to push on her. Of course you were a real witch, Maria, sorry to ever doubt you. I know it's technically the same Maria sprite as ever without any new expressions, but- If you read it, the smugness coming off Maria is palpable. Maybe it's in the voice acting. Ange says if only she had believed in Eva, they could have used Maria's magic to create a world together.
Beatrice finally shows up and takes her own share of blame. "The message bottles I threw away half-jokingly distorted your future and wore you down." (Having read Confession of the golden Witch makes that make more sense.) Don't blame yourself, says Ange. You're right, those message bottles were terrible and they made the story of Rokkenjima into something crazy, says Ange.
Ange's narration thinks that the real message bottles didn't name any non-witch person as the culprit, but one of the forgers wrote a plausible tale (Episode 3) that had Eva as the culprit. Ange knew it was impossible but accepted it in the end. Ange then decides to let Beatrice off the hook and tell Beato it wasn't her fault, it was Ange's fault for being so suspicious.
So, Ange, we're just... not going to discuss that your parents killed 5/8 of the people on the island, huh? Okay, okay, I guess the past is the past, no sense in bringing it up, sure.
Beatrice tries to take responsibility again, and Ange is like, okay yeah maybe it was your fault after all. Beatrice is annoyed because Ange was supposed to tell her it wasn't her fault, and Ange admits she was fucking with Beatrice. (Both of them have a slight flaw in their character, we might say.) Both of them have faults, so there's no sense in attacking each other, says Ange.
Maria is smug some more about how she and her magic was right all along. Ange and Beatrice go with it. Virgilia pops her head in to say that bringing people happiness is the sole reason witches wield magic. (That and trolling people, Virgilia)
Maria welcome the Witch of the Future, ANGE-Beatrice, back into the Mariage Sorciere. Sakutarou is happy to welcome Ange's return. Mammon welcomes her as well. Ange apologizes for ever leaving.
Beatrice asks if Ange will be okay alone in the future, without a partner to help her create a universe. Ange says she'll be fine. She now has 'everyone' to live with her in the future. Ange vows to go out and teach the magic of Mariage Sorcière to other people in order to save them.
Beatrice asks if Ange can really do that, and Ange says of course she can... she's rich! (That's not a joke, though Ange uses slightly different words.) Looking forward to Ange creating a self-help empire around her book, "The Healing Power of Magic". 50 million copies sold, appearing on the Oprah Book Club, I'm sure. Ange laughs until she cries as everyone surrounds her with 'warm smiles'.
Meanwhile Battler stands alone in the rose garden maze, letting the rain fall on him. Ange finally finds him. (Battler still hasn't put his Territory Lord cape back on, so right now he's just being Battler the 18 year old doofus.) Battler pats Ange's head and asks her to confirm that the truth wasn't anything important. Ange agrees that the truth wasn't what she wanted to hear, therefore it was not important.
Battler says Ange learned the truth, and she agrees she did. Therefore any hopes Ange had of someone coming miraculously back have been crushed. Battler says Ange has a new mission and hope for living in the future. (That's right. Ange is going to found a cult religion based around witchcraft!) Ange says learning the truth was like opening Pandora's Box and letting everything, including hope, fly away to leave an empty box.
Battler says that's fine. It's open now, and at least an empty box won't fester. False hopes can bring you pain. Then Battler says it straight out. "We're already dead." Ange doesn't need to live any longer hoping they might still be alive.
Ange promises that from now on she'll step forward into a new life. Battler says Beato put Rokkenjima into a cat box. The next witch, Eva, guarded the lid of the cat box her whole life. Ange, the final witch, opened the lid. But so what? Why does the truth of the past matter?
Ange promises from now on she'll truly live and make her personal truth prosper. In her cult. Battler wishes his sister good luck. He keeps talking about Ange bringing Maria's grimoire to the masses, and holy shit, I think he really is telling her to found a witch cult. I thought I was joking, and it turns out I wasn't! The idea really is that Ange is going to find troubled and lonely kids who are as isolated as Ange was and indoctrinate them into the Mariage Sorcière witch cult. You think I'm joking, but reading between the lines that is literally the plan. You may not believe me, so I will show you the screenshot evidence.
Battler says he's gone, but he will always be behind Ange, watching over her. Then his sprite vanishes. Ange says she knows. Battler says all of us will love you forever. Ange must not forget that. Ange promises not to forget that.
The narration says that the only thing Ange has left to hold on to is her family's love. If she can just remember that and hold it tight, she can live on. She'll be able to stop before taking that single step into nothingness.
Battler's sprite reappears and says the Rokkenjjima cat box hasn't been opened completely. Ange took a peek at what's inside, but she can become the lid herself and not tell anyone else. (But why should she want to? If Ange has accepted the truth, there is no need to hide it from anyone else.) Anyway, Battler guilt trips Ange that she needs to protect everyone inside the cat box even if there is no reason in the world for her to do so. Battler, seriously, if Ange has learned to live with the truth then there is no reason to continue trying to protect all of you.
Despite my good reasoning on the subject, Ange agrees she will protect everyone. Whereupon Lambdadelta's voice asks, if such is Ange's intentions, shouldn't she hurry up a bit?
Lambdadelta says Bern is about to hold a big party for the Book of the Single Truth. Beings from heaven, hell, the spirit world, and parallel worlds are attending. (Look, it'll help sell more mystery novels and isn't that truly the important thing here?)
Ange says she'll go and stop it. She gave Bernkastel the key so it's her responsibility. (But I mean, who cares? Ange has said the truth doesn't matter and shes' ready to move on and devote her life to creating a cult religion for studying witchcraft. Whether the truth is revealed at a massive party press conference or not seems unimportant.)
Battler says there's no way to get into Book City to stop the party, but Ange has "this" which will let her come and go as she pleases. The "idiot" forgot to collect it when "she threw me away".
BERNKASTEL: … Look, I don't mind playing the heel. It's fine. But I wish the writer could manage it in a way other than making me an idiot.
HACHIJO: Sorry!
Ange has a bell with a blue ribbon attached, which Lambdadelta identifies as a temporary entry pass which you get when you turn in your invitation. It'll get one person into Book City, as long as they can travel across the Sea of Fragments first. Ange immediately asks that Lambdadelta take her to Book City.
Battler is concerned that Ange is taking this on herself, but Ange says it's her way of taking responsibility of making sure the Book of the SingleTruth isn't made public. (But would it really be so bad if it was?)
Lambdadelta thinks this is a dumb move. That place is full of monsters and without Bernkastel's protection Ange will be weaker than a fly. (Ah, but she also has Featherine's protection. Don't you recall when she became Featherine's miko in Episode 6? Who is going to mess with that?)
Battler snatches the bell from Ange's hands and tells Lambdadelta he'll go instead. (It's true, Tohya could probably stop this whole thing no matter what. Hachijo would halt it if he asked her to.) Battler says he's an empty creature, unable to exist outside the cat box, while Ange must live on to the future. (Until the year 2080 so she can live to be 100, right?) Battler has nothing to lose.
Ange and Battler squabble over the bell and who will be the one to take it and achieve the come from behind victory that surely awaits them. Lambdadelta doesn't care. She'll take one to Book City and it'll be fine and no one will be angry at her. Whichever one is more interesting will make the story better. But then Lambdadelta notices something that makes her cry "stop". Both of the siblings have bells!
Ange has no idea why they have two bells when she was only given one, but Lambdadelta says it doesn't matter. They have two bells, so they can come to Book City as a sibling team.
Lambdadelta says from the very beginning the game has belonged to the two of you.
LAMBDADELTA: That doesn't seem accurate, Ange basically didn't exist until the third game.
FEATHERINE: We're only talking about Episode 8. Also no one asked you for your input. Shut up and say your lines.
LAMBDADELTA: Yes ma'am!
Lambdadelta says this is a fight between Battler and Ange, who want to close the lid on the cat box, and Bern, who wants it opened. Ange has moved from Bern's team to Battler's team.
Battler formally requests that Lamdadelta take the two of them to Book City. Lambdadelta agrees on the grounds that she's just providing transport and after they arrive she's nothing more than a spectator. Lambdadelta is only there to see Bern make mincemeat out of them. (I dunno, I don't like Bern's odds. She's just a cat while Tohya can type on usenet groups.)
Title card, scene break. Shannon and Kanon stand guard on the door to the Golden Land.
Manga Update
When Ange is very young, Kinzo gives her some sort of horrific Hand of Glory present that scares the shit out of her. Typical Kinzo. These are all part of a series of memories from when Ange was very young and her family doted over her.
Finally Ange awakens in the Golden Land. Everyone (that is, all the ghosts and illusions) are looking on in concern. Beatrice says it took a long time for Ange to remember her form. Ange explains that she not only learned the Single Truth from Eva's diary but also Beatrice's Confession of the Golden Witch that told the other half of the story. Ange doesn't know who to hate, so Beatrice tells her in red.
(red)It is my fault. I have taken your family from you.(/red)
Ange can't believe we're back to 'a witch was to blame' but Beatrice clarifies she's talking as Sayo the human culprit. Even if Sayo didn't kill anyone in reality, she set the stage and was at the center of setting up the violence. Beatrice goes on about this for several pages, about how if she didn't set everything up all the violence wouldn't have happened.
This is really interesting and something that is unique from the game, actually. Beatrice, acting as Sayo, admits that she should have taken a chance and held out a hand to the people who loved her. If only she had the possibilities would have been "endless". By doing nothing she undid them all and locked the future out. Ange should hate her, says Beatrice. In fact, Beatrice apologizes to not only Ange but to all the Ushiromiya ghosts. Except not you, Gohda, fuck you. (You think I'm kidding? No, Gohda is not in the apology pictures.)
Kinzo says no, this is all his fault. Nanjo and Kumasawa and Genji say that no, this is clearly their fault. (Kumasawa in particular says that magic was never meant to be a tool to make unpleasant things disappear.) And... RUDOLF AND KYRIE APOLOGIZE for "not being the parents that you could be proud of". Yeah, it's elliptical, but at least here in the manga they manage to actually apologize for going on their murder spree. I appreciate that.
The other adults apologize as well. Maria wonders if she should have tried harder with Rosa, and Rosa tells her no, it was Rosa's fault for not accepting her more. Even George admits he should have, "paid a little bit more attention to my girlfriend". If only Shannon could have confided in him, he might have been able to save her.
Jessica says that she should have been a better friend to Shannon that Shannon could have opened her heart to. Mistake and misunderstandings made the day end in a dead end.
We get a double page spread about how it was everyone's fault. Then Maria explains that it is because "there are no ties binding us in the Golden Land" that everyone can admit their errors and forgive each other. Beatrice wishes they could do all this while being alive.
Beatrice tells Ange that Ange is making Beatrice's mistakes. Live, Ange. If Ange is not happy, go out and seek that happiness.
Yikes.
End of Chapter 25. Chapter 26, Ultimatum. Let's end it there tonight.
Coming back the next day...
So apparently finding out the truth was actually good for Ange, because after a releasing all her emotions in a metaphorical binge of self-destruction, she was able to finally regain herself and find a new determination to move forward. What? Am I wrong? Because it sure seems like that to me.
BERNKASTEL: Who could have predicted that? Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go work on my villainous monologue so Battler and Ange look cooler when they defeat me.
Look, just because a villain role is a necessary one, doesn't mean we shouldn't judge you for playing it in within the context of being in the story.
BERNKASTEL: Right, because obviously a metafictional character like me understands nothing about how stories work.
Touchè.
Ange "hit bottom" (heh) after finding out the truth, but she was able to take that and turn it into a sense of closure. She admitted to herself that her family was dead, that they were never coming back, and that the best thing she could do was clutch to her happy memories of them moving forward. Ange even did the thing I have been complaining about since the beginning and admitted that the "golden magic" Eva worked so hard to gather for her will allow her to do whatever she wants moving forward.
It was a bit of a sudden turnaround, but okay sure, I guess it's one of those things that has been building slowly over Ange's entire arc. Once Ange has her breakthrough, she changes her mind all at once. I did not need to see quite so much catering to smug Maria, but the back and forth between Ange and Beatrice was really fun. Though this is another case where the manga blew away the game. The game had nothing like that absolutely chilling manga panel of Beatrice surrounded by skulls, admitting this is where her refusal to face reality led her.
I suppose Ange does have her reasons to want to hide the truth. Now that Ange personally knows what happened and has satisfied herself, she probably benefits from letting the events on Rokkenjima remain ambiguous rather than admitting her parents were murderers. ALTHOUGH. Nanjo's son and Kumasawa's sons, while not obsessing over it like Ange is, probably would like to know what happened to their parent. Also whatever family Gohda might have had, I guess.
I'm not especially invested in Ange and Battler winning this one and continuing to keep the cat box lid closed. I think it would be fine if they fail. The important thing was that Ange isn't going to kill herself anymore, and she seems to have talked herself down from taking that final leap from the building in the real world. As Battler admits, the rest of them are dead and ghosts and will remain so whether the cat box lid is opened or closed.
So here's the bad news. I am out of buffer. So this reliable daily posting schedule might have to pause for a while and I'll either pause a few days to a week ti build a buffer again or go to posting a part only every other day or something like that.
Many people prefer the manga version of Twilight to the VN and Confession of the Golden Witch and The Cage of Obligations sequence in particular tend to be big reasons why, others. The general feeling among that contingent (which includes me) seems to be Ryukishi didn't quite nail the themes he was going for in the VN and the the manga almost reads like a more polished edit that hits those notes more clearly. There are even fanmade VN versions of both, as well as some videos of the manga versions set to music.
