Live-reviewing Umineko: When They Cry
Progress: End of Umineko Episode 1 + Tea Rooms
It is crazy how big a difference aesthetics can make. And I do not merely mean physical appearance, I mean the whole manner in which a piece of media carries itself. Umineko sets its tone with much more confidence than Higurashi ever managed. And I am eating it up. Maybe I might be just showing my own biases, but reading Umineko is twice as pleasurable as reading Higurashi was, even if I am yet to have the slightest clue if the story will fall into the same pitfalls or not.
And that is my real worry here: Umineko seems in some ways to not be an entirely new idea, so much as a revision of the things that did not work in Higurashi. Umineko is much more honest about where it is going, but it seems to be going to much the same place. As I am only done with a single episode, I cannot be sure whether that will be enough to elevate it beyond where Higurashi was. There is plenty of time left to drop the ball, after all.
But, I can say this in its favour: Unlike Higurashi, I don’t want to spend too much time writing this post, not because I want to stop thinking about Umineko, but because I want to get back to reading it. The characters are all a tad more interesting, the setting is a tad more comprehensible, the flow of the narrative more honest and interesting. Umineko episode 1 stands so far above Higurashi’s Onikakushi-hen that it is a little shocking.
However, I must wonder where it will go from here. It established the basic boundaries of the story with such lightning speed that I am worried about how much it will push on those boundaries in order to maintain a sense of escalation and momentum. With how quickly it has gotten interesting, there’s a risk it will also get stupid even faster than Higurashi did as well.
Anyway, let’s move on from the abstract impressions, and start talking about things in concrete terms. This is a mystery blog, more or less, let’s try our hand at some of these mysteries. (Although, I am more than aware that like Higurashi, the clues will not all be assembled until the end of the fourth episode.)
As I am reticent to even bother thinking about the underlying mystery of Beatrice and the “rules of the story” at this point, what I would instead like to do focus on the locked-rooms of episode 1. This is not to say I am putting my foot down one way or the other in terms of the question of the “existence of Beatrice”. Instead, I think it is important to clarify the ways in which these locked-rooms work. After all, even if Beatrice “exists”, the basic format of this mystery seems to be that some avatar, limited to human capacity, is imitating Beatrice in order to ensure her “existence”. And so, even if we can’t solve them, we must categorise the tricks of Umineko episode 1.
The actual first locked-room
Although it may seem appropriate to start with the six corpses in the storehouse, the real first locked-room among the mysteries of Rokkenjima is the Maria’s Letter incident: Who could have collected the family head ring after it was thrown from a window, and then entered the rose garden in order to give Maria the letter and the umbrella? As a prologue, I do wonder where the rose actually went, and whether its removal was an arrangement to ensure Maria received the letter. However, it seems like a stretch to imagine such a thing could be so perfectly arranged.
Anyway, time for an alibi list!
The exceptional number of ironclad alibis present, and the number of alibis that may as well be ironclad, is the first locked-room of Umineko. After all, I don’t think anyone can be expected to believe Gohda ran off while cooking dinner, crossdressed convincingly as a witch, and then handed Maria a letter, returned to the mansion and then still managed to finish dinner perfectly. Such an answer is absurd. As would be similar explanations for most possible culprits.
Even Natsuhi’s status in lacking an alibi is weak. After all, while she was not seen by anything during a crucial period, while she was apparently sleeping, she issued orders to servants shortly before then, and exiting the mansion without being seen would have been a challenge given that Kanon left the mansion around this time as well.
And so my answer is: There are no clear suspects, this trick remains unsolved.
The second locked-room
The next morning, the murders begin for real, and we get our next locked-room. Six corpses are mysteriously stored in the garden storehouse, which is locked from the outside. Due to the six hour timeframe available to the culprit, there are functionally no valid alibis for this crime. However, the sheer physical difficulty in secretly moving six corpses from the mansion to the shed without being spotted is remarkable in its own right.
There are two possible solutions to this problem: Firstly, if moving the corpses from the mansion to the shed is impossible, it is reasonable to deduce that they must not have been killed in the mansion but closer of the shed. Some may posit that the blood in the dining room proves the opposite. But, that is a dubious answer on its own. If one of the killer’s goals is to make each crime appear impossible in order to ensure the “existence” of Beatrice, the moving of the corpses may be an illusion created by the deliberate spreading of blood within the dining room — the last known location of most of the victims. After all, were the victims killed in the mansion, the victims would be more likely to have been killed by poison or similar means, moved to the shed, and then mutilated there. Therefore, even if they were killed in the mansion, the presence of blood is incongruent and suspicious.
Secondly, one must consider all of the scenarios in which the victims were murdered within the mansion. The original assumption is that this would be implausible simply because moving six corpses at once would be unfeasible, and leaving several corpses in the dining room is a significant risk. However, there is absolutely no proof that all the victims were killed at the same time. With six victims, they could have been killed one at a time within each of their rooms and moved over the course of the six hours. Or they might have been killed and kept in their separate rooms or a similarly out of the way location, and slowly moved to the shed cautiously.
The commonality with both of these solutions is that the assumption that the victims were killed in an impossible location and moved to the shed in a way that could not be hidden is in fact a post hoc illusion. And so my answer is: There is a simple trick, and anyone of able body could have committed the crime.
(On that point of ablebodiedness, we can preliminarily exclude Maria on those grounds; and also Kanon, who failed to properly push or lift heavy gardening equipment when we first met him. Additionally, the wheelbarrow used by Kanon offers a reasonable explanation for how the culprit could have moved a single victim at a time.)
Also of note is that unlike any of the other locked-rooms, this is not a case of a room that is sealed from the inside, creating a paradox, as is typical of locked-room puzzles. Instead, the storehouse was locked from the outside. Although it is not at the point of being a theory, it is worth emphasising that if the purpose of a locked-room from the inside is to make it appear impossible that the culprit has left the room, the purpose of a locked-room from the outside is to make it appear impossible that the culprit is still inside the room. Therefore, perhaps there is some trick related to the culprit still being inside the storehouse.
However, before we move on. It is important to note that three of the victims, Rudolf, Gohda, Rosa, and Kyrie, had their faces entirely removed. Therefore, they could have used this crime as an opportunity to exit the closed circle of suspects by faking their death. Although this requires them to acquire another corpse. Rudolf or Gohda could easily so do with Kinzo, but no female corpses are available to make this easy for Kyrie or Rosa. Noting whenever a victim could exit the closed circle is essential in order to deduce a culprit, since all suspects die throughout the story, and therefore the culprit must fake their death at some point in the story or be one of the last ones standing.
The third locked-room
While the simplicity of the second locked-room should open up most of the cast to suspicion, it is massively complicated by the nearly simultaneous third locked-room. Whereas the second is an open ended challenge, that is difficult but not impossible for anyone, the third is a seemingly perfect locked-room. Within the text, two scenarios are presented:
Firstly, it is possible that Kinzo’s assailant entered the room, disposed of Kinzo via the window, and then they themselves entered the way they came. Due to the presence of the “receipt seal”, the only viable culprit in this scenario is assumed to be Natsuhi.
Secondly, it is possible that Kinzo exited the room after the “receipt seal” was dealt with. And then was killed at another time.
On first examination, these seem to be the only valid solutions, but even these are dubious. So, before tackling the puzzle of the room and seal, let’s start with an alibi list in order the establish the rules of the meta-locked-room before tackling the physical locked-room.
The combination of these two closely timed locked-rooms presents a fundamental problem. If we assume a single culprit, the exceptionally tight alibis for the third locked-rooms exonerates many of suspicion in the second. Naturally, this would most lead us to suspect the four who have left the closed circle of suspects by their apparent deaths. If any of those managed to fake their deaths, they would have been granted a perfect opportunity to create the third locked-room.
However, there is a contradiction in this theory. If we assume that a replacement body had not already been prepared by the one who exited the closed circle of suspects, their only option would be to make use of Kinzo’s corpse as a replacement corpse. This would narrow the suspects down to the two males: Rudolf and Gohda. However, in order for this plan to work, they would need to breach the third locked-room. The timing for this just does not work.
Kinzo was alive right up until just before 8:30, when he was visited by Natsuhi. The storehouse was investigated approximately five minutes later after Kanon returned to fetch the keys. While it would be theoretically possible for someone outside of the closed circle of suspects to enter Kinzo’s study immediately after Natsuhi, push Kinzo out of the window, exit the mansion, and then prepare his corpse as a replacement extremely quickly, two key facts neutralise this possibility. Firstly, the receipt seal suggests that the locked-room was not breached any time between 8:30 and 8:45, which would be essential for this plan. Additionally, Kanon monopolised the key to the storehouse during the short interval when this scheme could have been enacted. It is therefore impossible.
This is problematic because the original two solutions are both problematic for separate reasons. Firstly, while the Natsuhi window theory does hold together, it has the dramatic downside of eliminating all suspects who are not Natsuhi. One could modify the Natsuhi theory into a theory of Eva entering immediately after Natsuhi, pushing Kinzo out the window, and contacting the receipt seal as a lie to secure her own alibi. Of course, just like the Natsuhi theory, this variation eliminates all suspects who are not Eva.
Moving on to the Kinzo initiated escape theory, it falls for altogether psychological reasons. Kinzo explicitly states within the text that he would only voluntarily leave the study if he was selected as a sacrifice, or Beatrice successfully revived. Since Beatrice had not revived by the third locked-room, we can take this statement to mean Kinzo was removing to leave the study whilst alive. Therefore, the theory fails completely before it can even begin.
This is one possibility, however, that remains entirely plausible. If any of the four who’s deaths are ambiguous managed to prepare a replacement corpse by some other means, they would gain a means of breaching the third locked-room. They would merely have to enter the room before Natsuhi. If the culprit entered the room prior to 8:30, they could wait until Natsuhi had entered the room, murder Kinzo by pushing him out the window, and then wait for Natsuhi and Eva to check the room again before leaving in much the same manner as the Kinzo escape theory. There still remains an important point again this theory. It is unclear how the culprit would initially enter the room.
In order for this plan to be as smooth as possible, one would want to secretly enter the study. However, only two keys exist for the study, and both were accounted for at this time. While it would be peculiar, it would be possible to enter the study openly at Kinzo’s invitation, and for him to merely fail to mention the arrival of the culprit to Natsuhi. Of course, if there were some means of acquiring the keys, this theory would become vastly superior. Therefore, I have one last crackpot variation on this theory.
If the culprit were Rudolf or Gohda, they had the option of perfectly breaching both the second and third locked-room, so long as they were able to impersonate Kinzo. If Kinzo was killed much earlier in the night, he could be prepared as a corpse within the second locked-room at the same time as the others. The culprit would then wait in Kinzo’s study, dress as Kinzo, imitate his speech, and then escape around 8:45 according to the Kinzo escape theory. By doing so, they would fake their own death and create a perfect locked-room incriminating whomever checked on Kinzo last (Natsuhi) as the culprit. However, the final lethal problem with all of these theories still remains: How would any culprit know of the receipt seal planted by Eva, and therefore manage to evade it?
So, my answer is that the locked-room was either created according to a variation of the Natsuhi window theory or the Kinzo impersonation theory. This means that the culprit is among Natsuhi, Eva, Rudolf, or Gohda.
The fourth locked-room
Play time is over, now we’re up to the most difficult locked-room. Unlike the others, the fourth locked-room is a true, classical, brutal, perfect locked-room.
A chain prevents entry and exit. The separate locations of the corpses significantly complicates any remote murder contraptions. And the angle of the door makes killing them through the door almost impossible. There is no simple psychological trick which allows conditional ways to breach this locked-room. It is perfectly terrifying.
So, time to give it a quick shot.
The key to this room is the chain. If the chain cannot be circumvented, there’s no need to worry about alibis or other such tricks, because the murder is itself impossible. However, alibis are important for the secondary component of this incident: The magical circle that was drawn on the door in the gap between Kanon arriving at the scene of the crime and returning with bolt cutters.
In other words, this magic circle, and crime, simply could not have been done by any of the remaining members of the closed circle of suspects. There are only two explanations; either the culprit is among those who appear to have died, or the criminal is the witch Beatrice.
Finally, onto discussion of the mechanics of the locked-room. In order to explain the locked-room, I must first offer an amended floor plan, with the addition of an important piece of the room: The window.
If we assume the culprit is among those outside of the closed circle, and thereby disregard any need to concern ourselves with alibis, the window becomes an essential piece of the puzzle. Firstly, the culprit prepared the window in the room to be unlocked, or else prepared a replace pane of glass if they needed to break the window forcefully. They then entered the room via the window, killed Eva and Hideyoshi, and exited the way they came. However, not before replacing the window pane if needed and fixing a rope to the lock on the inside of the window and having the rope on the floor near the door. They then closed the window with themselves outside of it, went around to the door, open it with the chain closed, locked the window from the inside using the rope, and took the rope with them.
If you can’t accept the proposition that the culprit managed to enter via the window safely within eyesight of Eva, simply amend the above to include some device allowing the culprit to shoot a spear into Eva’s chest from the darkness of outside of the window. Hideyoshi would not have heard anything if the culprit was a skilled shot, because he was inside of the shower. The culprit would then enter the room, and kill Hideyoshi with ease. Once I’ve explained this portion of the incident, the later murder of Kanon is all too easy to explain: The apparently-dead culprit simply shot Kanon and then fled from the boiler room into the courtyard without any need to worry about alibis or any such nonsense.
Some may consider this explanation too forced on the whole, and too simple to explain all of the facts. After all, why did the culprit risk drawing the magic circle after Kanon appeared if they went to the door to retrieve the rope? That much is completely incongruent. Such a criticism would be correct, and even I cannot accept this theory of the locked-room. However, the essential point remains true: Once we accept the possibility of a culprit outside of the closed circle of suspects, one needs only imagine one of many simple varieties of physical tricks that can be used to breach a locked-room, and the incident moves from the category of impossible to seeming surprisingly plausible.
Before we move on, let’s throw out one more crackpot theory: Beatrice’s epitaph mentions that those who remain break apart those in love. If one were to take such an instruction literally, another culprit emerges. Perhaps Eva and Hideyoshi killed one another by some means. On account of the positions of their corpses and the apparent incompleteness of the murder weapons left behind, I cannot physically explain how this is possible, but it is an explanation worth considering.
Anyway, my answer to this locked-room is murder via the window, by a “dead” culprit. Combined with the prior theories, this narrows my suspects down to Rudolf and Gohda.
The last locked-room
This last puzzle is much less complex than the others, but perhaps that is why it is among the most mystifying. It involves the murder of Nanjo, Genji, and Kumasawa within the parlour, that was locked from the inside. Left with the minimal facts we receive for this incident, there is no way to make any special deductions about this case. Only this alibi chart remains.
Technically, the three victims this time were left in such a state that any of them could have swapped out their corpses with one of the corpses from the garden storeroom, and therefore have faked their own death. However, given the four previous locked-rooms, I think we can rule out all but a few of the possible suspects. If we assume that no one had a free store of corpses that they could use to fake their own deaths, there are only two suspects who could have faked their deaths.
Assuming we discard the possibility of Maria as the culprit, which flies in the face of some previous alibis (and a great deal of practicality, given the idea of a child massacring three adults at once). There are now only two suspects. However, we haven’t discussed quite the crucial piece of evidence. Let us return to the skipped over consideration of Kinzo’s corpse.
Kinzo’s corpse was found in the boiler room, being incinerated. Here’s a question: Why was it being incinerated? The most obvious answer is that the culprit not want the corpse to be inspected, likely to prevent the extra toe being found. As previously theorised, Kinzo’s corpse was likely in the garden storeroom, disguised as either Rudolf’s or Gohda’s corpse. However, once it had served its initial purpose, the culprit judged that the risk of it being reexamined was more problematic than the corpse disappearing.
However, this leaves a major contradiction: If they were worried about the extra toe, why did they simply not cut it off before the preparing the corpse as a double? I do not have a precise answer, but one possible answer is that the culprit themselves were not sure whether or not doing so was a good idea. The only possible reason for that is that they themselves had an extra toe. The only people for whom that could be true are those related to Kinzo by blood.
This leaves us with our one culprit: Rudolf Ushiromiya. The man who suspiciously predicted his death before the incidents even begun.
Of course, there’s a boatload of problems with this conclusion. For one, the corpse swap theory is thoroughly contradicted by the epilogue credit sequence. However, it is also possible that Rudolf replaced his original corpse with Battler’s. Even with that said, it is nearly impossible to make sense of the final scene of the episode without a female accomplice such as Kyrie. But such an assumption would break down the entire notion of corpse swapping with only available corpses.
The point of this elaborate post is to not to put forward a complete theory of Umineko episode 1 — I don’t even believe that most of what I’ve written here is the case. Instead, it is to prove a singular point: Even with basic deductions, these crimes are explainable by human hands. We don’t have all the clues that Umineko is going to offer us within its first four parts, not by a long shot. But we can answer one thing in the affirmative. Beatrice need not “exist” for these crimes to occur.
