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INUH2011-01-10 08:01:28

You know how I said this would probably be a short installment? Yeah, that didn't happen.

Before I move on to Ep. 2, I want to think about Ep. 1 a little more. My explanation, while it held up pretty well for most of the story, got progressively more ridiculous starting with Kanon's death (although I nevertheless find the mental image of Kinzo coating himself in fuel then jumping into a furnace and stabbing himself in the head hilarious in a Crazy Awesome sort of way) and then completely stopped explaining anything shortly afterward. So I'm going to go back over it. But first, I'd like to talk about Episode 1 as a whole.

Episode 1 impressions

• Since I've seen the anime for the first two arcs (though I barely remember the second), I'm mostly going to have to describe my impressions in terms of differences between them.
• I found that I cared about some characters a lot more than I did when I watched the anime. Specifically, all of the parents. The long character introductions certainly serve their purpose, and by omitting them, I feel like the anime made all of the parents unlikeable where in the visual novel, we see them as people before they get to Rokkenjima and start going at each other's throats (possibly literally) and trying to out-Xanatos everyone else.
• That said, I feel like the anime did a better job of making Maria seem creepy, which I find rather odd, considering that the Higurashi anime was much less creepy than the sound novels.
• They aren't kidding that this is a "sound novel." The music is great, and what's more, we aren't actually shown all that much beyond the backgrounds and characters. It's the narration that matters.  ^*
  ^{though more on that later.}
• There seems to be some sort of connection to Higurashi. I get that impression even more than I did when watching the anime. I hope you don't have to have read the sound novels to get it, since while I've watched the Higurashi anime, I'm still fairly early on in the novels.

More Episode 1 speculation

• So, my current theory fails to explain some stuff. Here's the most obvious ones I can think of:
  • For starters, my explanation of Kanon's and Kinzo's deaths are really sketchy.
  • Why, if at all, Natsuhi committed suicide.
  • While Maria is my best suspect so far for taking out Genji, Nanjo and Kumasawa, it's a bit of an odd thought that she'd be capable of it.
  • What happened to Natsuhi's letter, if it even existed to begin with?
  • How much of the narrative is unreliable? I had a tendency to assume that the Unreliable Narrator stuff didn't start for real until episode 2, so I spent too much time trying to reconcile some of the more fantastic elements with the real ones. Thinking back, I wonder how I would have explained everything if I'd skipped over every scene narrated in third person, i.e. everything Battler didn't see himself.

Episode 1 alternate theories

• The first bodies. The idea that one of them might be fake was mentioned.
  • We can eliminate that possibility for Shannon and Krauss (and possibly Gohda, though I'm not positive on him) by the fact that only parts of their faces are gone. The remaining victims are Rudolf, Kyrie and Rosa (I'm leaving Gohda out of this because his characterization doesn't seem to indicate the slightest motive. I'll revisit this if later stuff changes my mind.).
  • What we have to consider next is how one would provide a fake body. None of the remaining corpses lived on Rokkenjima. Therefore, they would have had to smuggle either a live captive or an anatomically realistic fake corpse onto the island. All of them went through airport security, and while we're not exactly talking about post-9/11 American security here, it still doesn't seem likely that they could manage that. Thus, I'm going to assume for now that the corpses are all real.  ^*
    ^{I changed my mind about this one pretty quickly. I'm leaving this in because I'm trying to go in order of my thought process.}

• The letter. Going back over the alibis, it occurs to me that there are a few possibilities I missed.
  • Again, Battler, Jessica and George couldn't be the ones. I gtet the impression that that narration, being first-person, is reliable.
  • Rosa claims to have gone inside and fallen asleep. We see Genji meeting with her right at the end of the nap, but even before we question whether the non-Battler narration is reliable, she could have left Maria, dressed up as Beatrice, gone back, given her the umbrella and letter, gone inside, changed and pretended to go to sleep. I can't remember the amount of time she had, but I get the impression it was quite a while.
  • Gohda... Huh. He has no witness. Another really minor reason to be suspicious of him. That's...interesting. Nevertheless, he claims to have been preparing the meal, and he has an elaborate meal to show for it, though maybe he had a little extra time? I still don't see a real motive for him (other than maybe "get the gold"), but he's otherwise really suspicious. I'm going to continue putting this on hold, but I'm watching him.
  • Krauss, Eva, Rudolf, Hideyoshi and Kyrie can't all be in on it. I'm willing to accept their alibis.
  • Shannon, Kanon and Kumasawa were preparing the guest house. But Shannon is one of the confirmed victims the next day, so I doubt she was in on it, so if she says the other two were there, I'll accept that.
  • Kinzo and Nanjo were playing chess. Not sure if Nanjo would lie about this.
  • Genji has no alibi. None. Again, couldn't reasonably disguise himself as Beatrice, but hey. You never know if a disguise was even necessary. Why didn't anyone ask Maria for more details?

• Next mystery: Kinzo leaving the locked room.
  • First up, let's recall that he had to be in the room to let Natsuhi in. That leaves us with some options.
    • First, he could have exited through the window, letting Natsuhi close it after him. He could have been either dead or alive.
    • Second, he could have hidden somewhere and left after Eva and Natsuhi checked on him. Or Natsuhi could have hidden the body somewhere, but then, I'm not sure (it's been maybe three or four days now since I read it) if she ever had the chance to move him.

• Next up is the locked-room murder. I've already specified how it could be done in the previous installment.
  • Everyone has an absolute, set-in-stone alibi for this except for Kinzo and any survivors from the first murder set.
  • Given my impressions regarding the first murders, I believe this limits it to either Kinzo or Gohda.
  • However, Eva and Hideyoshi said they would lock the door and chain it. Therefore, the killer must have been able to convince them to let him in (Kinzo) or hide in the room before they entered, using a key to get in (either one). Thus, the killer for them could be either of the two.

• That gives me a little more leeway for the next murder. It's another third-person scene, and therefore unreliable to an extent. The possibilities:
  • Kinzo, as described before. Not impossible, yet kind of ridiculous.
  • Gohda. Everything in the narration happens except for the butterflies. This makes Gohda also responsible for the locked room and for killing Kinzo.
  • Kumasawa lied. She did it. Maybe Gohda or Kinzo talked her into it somehow. She, like Gohda, is one of the least-characterized of the 18, so it's hard to speculate. She's pretty weak, but Kanon is too.

• Moving on, there's the letter in the study. The way I see it, the stuff I've said so far allows for two options:
  • Maria did it, acting either on orders from "Beatrice" or on behalf of someone she's working with.
  • Kumasawa did it, working with either Gohda or Kinzo. This requires her to be betrayed, but meh. This game should be approached with the assumption that someone's a murdering, traitorous douchebag. That or the assumption that witches exist, but I'm not even bringing Beatrice in.

• We're in the home stretch, now. Locked parlor. Only people in it are Maria, Kumasawa, Nanjo and Genji. Everyone else (except Gohda, if alive) is in the study. Maria claims to have had her back turned while the other three were then killed by someone claiming to be Beatrice. This one, too, has two options:
  • As I said in the first version, Maria could have done it. It made a lot of sense when I thought it was the only option, but I think it's less likely now.
  • Gohda, if alive, could have done it. He has keys, after all. He could get in. He would need to convince Maria, though.

• Then there's Natsuhi's death by gunshot.
  • I assumed before that Maria lied about the letter, then Natsuhi killed herself for some reason or other. This was where my previous theorizing falls apart. At this point, I'm going to conclude that I cannot explain everything unless someone thought to be dead is alive.
  • If Gohda (or someone else, I guess) is alive, we just have to assume that Kinzo had another gun, the survivor took it and used it to kill Natsuhi, took the letter away from her and hid.

• Finally, Battler's, George's, Jessica's and Maria's deaths.
  • By my old theory, the only one who was a suspect was also the only one confirmed dead. This is the point where I just started saying "What? What?! What?!"
  • By the theory that Gohda survived, it's simple. He just kills them all. That's really all there is to say. He had like six hours left do do it.

• I was going to go through every path possible from the branching points above, but I think I've about figured out which single one will work at this point.
• Gohda has been established to be a douchebag who tries to frame other people for his mistakes while trying to make himself look good. Indeed, so far, that's the only component of his characterization that's been expanded upon.
• It follows that if he wanted the gold enough to kill for it (Not an unreasonable assumption, as that's a lot of gold. In modern currency, it's about $320 million.), he'd try to commit the murders in such a way that he was eliminated as a suspect and several other people were suspicious.
• As such, he decided to fake his own death. Now, the best way to do this is to have a corpse with a missing face. But if his is the only corpse with no face, then it's just too obvious. So to have multiple corpses with no faces, he decides to make it look like a ritualistic sort of thing.
• When he thinks "ritualistic," he thinks "that creepy epitaph." So he decides to wait until enough people are on the island to fit the number of sacrifices. In the meanwhile, he reads up on the occult. This is how he knows about those magic circles.
• When it's time, he gets a captive with the right general look. The forest would work for a hiding place and smuggling him on the boat (or his own rented boat or something) would be much easier than doing so on a plane.
• After Kinzo throws the ring away, he finds it. Or maybe he saw him throw it or something.
• He sets his plan into motion when he goes to the rose garden at some point while preparing his meal. He hides in a bush and disguises his voice (I guess I'm assuming he can do that) to pose as Beatrice, giving Maria the umbrella, letter and instructions, and possibly also the other letter for later when they're in the study. He'd know that it's the best shelter and that there's an excuse for Beatrice to be unable to enter.
  • Note that Maria never specified that she saw Beatrice in front of her (please correct me in the comments if I'm wrong. It's been a few days, but I think I'd remember that.). Furthermore, not seeing her now would explain why Maria didn't find it odd that she was ordered not to look at Beatrice later.
• Maria reads the note to everyone, and that night, he kills five people when on assignment to the guesthouse (it just now hit me that the murder method was never determined and poison was mentioned. He's the freaking cook! How did I miss all this?!), along with his captive, mutilates them, and puts them in the shed. He then hides somewhere, maybe an unused guest room or something, for a time.
• This next bit is the only part I have any trouble with. I'm not sure what exactly happened with Kinzo. There are two choices.
  • Option 1: Natsuhi was in on removing him from the room. I don't think she killed him.
  • Option 2: Kinzo snuck out himself.
  • Either way, Kinzo's out of his room for his own crazy old man reasons.
• At some point, then, Gohda finds Kinzo and kills him too. He takes the key and enters Kinzo's study, allowing him to get the stakes, then returns it to the corpse. He shoves the body in the furnace at some point. Either way, the goal in this version is not to confuse the time of death, as I speculated earlier, but to lure someone down to the boiler room so he can kill them.
• He hides under the bed in Eva's and Hideyoshi's room, since they're the only two who fit the next bit of the epitaph about "the two who are close." When they enter, he waits for them to be separated, when Hideyoshi's in the shower, pops out, kills Eva without Hideyoshi even realizing it, then enters the shower and takes him by surprise as well. Then he leaves the room by the means mentioned in part one.
• He heads down to the boiler room immediately afterwards to set up a surprise for Kanon. All of the narration there could be accurate except for the butterflies, as the room is dark enough for Kumasawa to fail to see someone. He then exits through the door.
• The survivors head into the same room. Maria does what "Beatrice" told her to do and puts the letter on the table and claims she didn't. This leads to the four of them being separated.
• Gohda then talks to her through the door (again, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Maria say that Beatrice did something like that?) and says to look away. He then unlocks the door with witch powers a key and kills Genji, Kumasawa and Nanjo and plants the letter to lure Natsuhi out to the portrait room. He hides there and kills her with a gun. Then he takes the letter. After that point, it really wouldn't be too hard to kill the rest.

• One last thing. Whether or not the scene with the gold bar actually happened or was an Imagine Spot or whatever doesn't actually matter in terms of my explanation. It's probably important in the grand scheme of things, though, so I won't forget about it.

A final note before moving on to Episode 2

• I feel like my current theory explains almost everything, but didn't Maria say that she actually saw the golden butterflies at one point? I guess there's some way to pull off that illusion, but I'm not sure exactly how.
• One last note on my impressions of the game relative to the anime: I was barely even aware of Gohda as a character when I watched the anime. He got a really small part.

Comments

Jhiday Since: Dec, 1969

Jan 10th 2011 at 9:09:06 AM

Wow, this is impressive. There are a few holes in this theory, and I of course won't say whether there is evidence in further novels that clearly contradicts it, but it's nicely comprehensive and far more detailed than I managed way back when I first read this first episode.

Also, it made me notice this :

it just now hit me that the murder method was never determined and poison was mentioned. He's the freaking cook! How did I miss all this?!

And this reminded me that this is indeed the simplest way to have a single culprit take out four of the parents in one go.

I agree with the sentiment that the Anime leaves out a lot, although there was really no way to keep those hours of exposition before anything happens.

As for the Unreliable Narrator in this episode, well... I won't tell yet. But I do find you a bit too trusting of some stuff that isn't even in the narration. Don't trust anyone !

(I really need to reread EP 1, though. It's been 18 months...)

PataHikari Since: Dec, 1969

Jan 10th 2011 at 11:42:57 AM

This is a pretty awesome and interesting theory.

I can't wait to see your reactions and deductions on Episode 2.

arbane Since: Dec, 1969

Jan 10th 2011 at 12:03:14 PM

One point of order: When Natsuhi went to see Kinzo, the narration made a big deal about Genji giving her his key to the study, so Kinzo wouldn't have to let her in. (Because he probably wouldn't.)

Just saying.

INUH Since: Dec, 1969

Jan 10th 2011 at 12:05:39 PM

^-facepalms-

That's what I get for writing this at 2:30 AM. For some reason I was thinking she only had it the second time. I'll take that into account really quick at the beginning of the next installment.