Headscratchers / Master Detective Archives: Rain Code

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

"I haven't seen Halara anywhere, Yuma."

• Where in the world was Halara at the beginning of Chapter 1 and how did they know Yuma pulled a Chronic Hero Syndrome moment at the clocktower to be able to intervene in time?
  • Where they were at the start is hard to say, but most likely they heard about the murder at the clocktower and wanted to take a look themselves, appearing just in time to save Yuma.

Memory and Makoto

• If both Yuma and Makoto forgetting Shinigami was all that happened from ending the pact it would be one thing, but she also says they will forget the Mystery Labyrinths. But Makoto's change of heart and decision to reveal everything happened because of what happened in the Mystery Labyrinth. So how is it he still maintained that change of heart? Is it that he remembered the debates with Yuma but not where they happened?
  • I personally interpret it as the latter, wherein individuals who have memories of the Mystery Labyrinth will remember the conversations or events of what happened in the Mystery Labyrinth, but they won't remember when or where they occurred after Yuma ends the pact. I also would like to add this would also apply to how Yuma left the Book of Death in Kurumi's hands, as he says he'll come back for it after he solves all the world's unsolved mysteries which suggests he does, at least, remember Shinigami and his promise to her.

Memory and Vivia

• Similar to the above, Vivia is the only Master Detective able to remember what happens inside the Mystery Labyrinth due to his spiritual affinity, and even uses it to Yomi regarding about his email exchange with Dr. Huesca. Do you think that he'll forget what happened in the Mystery Labyrinth after Yuma ends the pact? Or will he be able to retain some vague memory of it?

"Yuma" vs. the true Number One

• If the "Yuma Kokohead" we play as is actually the true Number One, then why is his personality so different after getting Laser-Guided Amnesia? Shouldn't he be thinking the same way but have no memory of who he really is instead of becoming the opposite of his true self?
  • I'd argue we don't know enough about the true Number One to fully judge how different Yuma is. The biggest difference seems to just be a lack of confidence which causes him to be very dependent on and willing to get help from others, a natural thing when he has no memory of the work experiences that gave him such confidence, plus Yuma believing the manufactured backstory that he is a trainee. In other respects where we can compare them, Yuma is very similar, namely in his desire to help others by solving mysteries, and his kind, empathetic nature.
  • Yuma's a total idiot compared to the famed intelligent Number One he actually is. Not just his confidence. Seems he lost all his intelligence somehow too, can that be explained?
    • How much of an "idiot" Yuma is depends to a degree both on choices the player has him make and one's own subjective perspective on things he does outside the player's control. Generally though, his more questionable decisions can be chalked up to inexperience and lack of confidence, both of which can lead him to panicking. Further, several times he figures out various things but subconsciously keeps from voicing or acting on them until later due to fear.

Chapter One

• They really went for quantity over quality on the four murders. They were either way too easy to figure out, don't add up, or both.
  • Yuma identifies Priest as the culprit because he was the only one who could've plausibly committed all four. But who's to say that the same person did all of them? We have four suspects and four murders, all of which were separated by weeks, couldn't they have all collaborated? Hell, the third one was done by someone else! Yuma's logic is beyond insufficient here. And why were they the only suspects? Sure, Halara's Forte conclusively proves that Worshipper did the third one and only a clergy member could've done the fourth, but anyone could've done the first and second ones.
    • The Nail Man murders all shared certain details (except the copycat) that were not made public, making it much more likely the same person did them. Further, Shinigami only allows Yuma to enter the Mystery Labyrinth after she senses enough evidence has been gathered to solve the mystery, meaning the culprit had to be someone Yuma knew about.
    • While the non-public details do imply that they were all committed by the same party, which must have involved at least one clergy member, there's no reason that that had to be a party of one.
    • Serial killers tend to operate alone, at least in popular media, and if nothing else proving it was a party of one is one of the advantages of the magic of the Mystery Labyrinth. Yuma knows when entering it that he will find the truth behind the case, that everything he needs to do so is already available, and once he succeeds he basically gets a confession.
  • For the first one, how did the culprit put the cover back on the vent when he went through it head first?
    • This I might chalk up to a animation oversight.
    • If you mean that the culprit should've been portrayed in the Deduction Denouement as having entered feet first, that leaves the question if how they managed to get into the vent that way (while holding the vent cover, no less). If you mean that the vent should've been portrayed as being removed, that can't be because it was on but unscrewed when the scene was viewed with Postcognition.
  • The second murder involved the culprit precisely tossing a key to where the body would rest on it, then letting the body down and pulling back the fishing line. But what if they missed? That is a very difficult shot, there was no way for them to retrieve the key from outside, no way to re-enter the room, and there's nothing to indicate that the Priest is so exceptionally good at this that he was confident enough to land it on his first try (in contrast to Leon Kuwata in Danganronpa's first case).
    • If he had missed then the key would just be laying near the corpse. A bit less mysterious, but wouldn't change things otherwise.
  • Again on the second murder, the blood on the lower half of the corpse went downwards towards the floor, but the upper half flowed towards the waist, indicating a sitting position. But that only works if blood loss/flow primarily happened while the body was in a sitting position, but that doesn't add up. The corpse would've been laying flat while the culprit drove in the five nails, then propped up only as long as it took to secure the line, lock the door, throw the key and cut the line. After that, the blood would've had all the time in the world to flow downwards until drying, and this was across the victim's clothes instead of something more smooth. Seems as though the blood was nice enough to barely flow at all until the body was propped up, then flow like crazy, then stop almost entirely after it was let back down, all to provide a clue.
  • How did the culprit nail the key to the painting in the third one? The Deduction Denouement makes it look like he casually pressed the nail in, but that was through both a doll and the wood frame of the canvas. You'd need some way of bracing the painting so that you don't just push it over as soon as you start applying pressure, not to mention that it doesn't appear as though the window was large enough or gave enough clearance under the glass for someone to both hold the nail in place and hammer it in.
    • My impression is the Deduction Denoument is showing him pushing the painting over, rather than the actual nailing process. As for the other questions, the painting is taller than a person and depending on the material for the frame may have quite a bit of weight to it, perhaps enough to not need any bracing if the person hammering the nail in is careful and takes their time.
  • The shutter at the clock tower automatically closes and locks on its own so long as it's not fully raised. Setting aside the fact that the characters continue to wonder how the shutter was locked from the outside for even a second after learning this (seriously...), the explanation of how the culprit got the rope ladder out doesn't add up. Even if he did cut the ladder rung-by-rung as he descended and pulled on one side, half of the thick knots of the ladder would've had to slip under the shutter while it's trying to close itself, slip past both nails and then go back out the shutter again, while there are other knots attempting the same thing. He would've ripped the shutter and nails clean off before he managed that, not to mention roughing up the dolls on the nails, which there was no evidence of.
    • There were rope fibers left on the nails so it wasn't entirely smooth slipping out. As for why there wasn't more of a disturbance, to play devil's advocate, that might depend on how heavy the shutter is (which would effect how easily the rope could get past it pressing down from above) and on how the rope being wet from the rain may have let it slide more easily.

The poison that is blatantly not in the bottle

• Karen and Waruna drank from the same bottle, but only Karen died. Therefore, the poison couldn't have been in the bottle, therefore Kurumi's ability to poison said bottle is irrelevant and she is no more suspicious than anyone else. Why did Yuma not lead with this blatantly obvious fact when trying to prove to Martina that Kurumi couldn't have been the killer? And why was it not even contemplated by anyone at all until a good ways through the Mystery Labyrinth? Why did they even write in a time limit for the poison if all it does is prove that the bottle couldn't have had poison in it when this simple logic proves the same thing and serves the same purpose in the plot? And why triple-down by having forensic testing prove that there was no poison in the bottle? And in Martina's Reasoning Death Match... why, why in the triangular Earth is the Solution Key that proves that there was no poison in the bottle the poison's time limit instead of the one that point-blank states that there was no poison in the bottle!?
  • For the first question, at this point in the story, Yuma most likely wasn't confident enough to deduce and assert that deduction on the spot at the Peacekeepers, and only made a rebuttal after Shinigami pointed out the time limit, which ultimately failed. Either way, the Peacekeepers probably would have come up with some other reason, considering they're corrupted. For the second question, mystery labyrinths control the flow of uncovering the mystery, so it probably didn't come up until the mystery labyrinth didn't bring it up. Also, they probably didn't need to deduce that point to themselves since they knew Kurumi wasn't the killer. For the third question, the time limit is also to prove that for the poison to work, it would need to be applied at around 15 mins into the play for it to kill Karen, which suggested that only Yoshiko had the opportunity to do so, as opposed to the other two. In terms of the last question, I'm guessing that proving that Kurumi had no opportunity to apply the poison as a result of the time limit is a way of proving she couldn't do it. Either could work, but in all fairness, the time limit of the poison is more important to deducing the mystery as opposed to there being no poison in the bottle, since the latter mainly proves Kurumi didn't do it, which Yuma already thinks anyways, so is only really important for progressing a small part of the mystery labyrinth.

Chapter 4, the big bad's lab lure

• The detectives knew nothing of a research lab until Vivia used Spectral Projection to hear someone in Kanai Ward's residence say it, and connected it to the homunculus. The only way they heard is that someone who could become a ghost was able to hear the public speak about an Amaterasu research lab. It turns out Makoto wanted them to hear of the research lab so he could lure everyone over... at the same time Yomi would get into position for him to expose him at just the right moment. But... if he was planning his gambit that way the whole time, how the hell did Makoto know that someone with ghost powers would enter Kanai Ward and how the hell did he get someone amongst the public to mention a research lab at the right time for them to hear about it...? This whole thing was like one big gamble. The only reason they knew is because someone in Kanai Ward mentioned one and Vivia, someone with ghost powers, just happened to enter Kanai Ward to be able to hear it. How did that happen? Why would he take such a huge gamble in a gambit like that? Isn't that a little reckless? How did he know it would even work?
  • Makoto does seem to know about all the detectives fortes (mentioning Fubuki's for instance), presumably having Yuma's memories and some access to the WDO gave him that information, but all the same he probably wasn't relying on Vivia specifically overhearing things. Rather he could have given a lot of Amaterasu employees motivation to talk about the lab and hoped one of the detectives would eventually overhear in their investigating. And if it didn't happen then he would have just relied entirely on his main plan of taking advantage of Yomi's plan to use Yakou. The letter Yomi anonymously sent Yakou presumably explained where the lab was. Yuma coming to give Makoto another excuse to visit the lab could have just been a fortunate coincidence for Makoto. Indeed, he outright tells Yuma he was planning on inviting him to the lab, meaning Yuma coming to him simply saved him the trouble.

Recorded Warning Contradiction

• In the real Huesca's final message, he explains the weakness of the homunculi, and the consequences thereof, before he's attacked. Question is, why were the homunculi still berserk when sunlight is their weakness, and he clearly stated in the recording it was 2 AM?
  • For the Blank Week to have happened as described pretty much requires the homunculi to have been berserk the whole time, so presumably multiple hours of sunlight exposure causes them to remain berserk for hours upon hours after the sunlight is no longer on them. We only ever see the homunculi during the main story exposed to sunlight for a few minutes, and thus return to normal almost immediately.

Final battle body fakeout

• If the "corpses" of the Master Detectives were actually just skeletons beforehand... and the homunculi only eat humans, why were the homunculi surrounding the skeletons when there was no flesh to eat? Makoto is, of course, the one who did it all, but... I don't think that quite makes sense. The things that are supposed to be drawn to human flesh were... eating from something where there was no human flesh? Is there any valid way to explain how the heck this works? Unless they were whole bodies beforehand then the homunculi tore them apart and Halara/Makoto just misinformed us. On another note, that blood is pink, right? Homunculi only have pink blood, but if those fake corpses were initially homunculi too instead of bones, why on earth were they eating their own kind?
  • The simplest answer is simply that the bones and clothes were coated in enough human scent (or whatever it is they use to detect someone is human) to attract hungry homunculi. They likely weren't getting much they wanted from their efforts to eat the remains either, hence them all readily abandoning the corpses when meat buns are brought to their attention.

Coalescence Oddity

• In the epilogue, Halara stated that Makoto was able to copy their handwriting via Coalescence. Busn't isn't Coalescence all about copying the Forte of the person you're holding hands with? What does that have to do with handwriting?
  • It also allows a deeper level of mental "connection" with the other person, like how Yuma was able to feel Fubuki's fatigue by holding her hand. Presumably something like copying handwriting is a advanced use of Coalescence that Yuma with his memories lost had no discovered yet.

Blank Week Mystery Aftermath

• One of the scenes depicted in the final Deduction Denouement shows the defective homonculi attacking and eating the human residents of Kanai Ward, but wouldn't this leave behind skeletons, thus leaving a clue as to what actually happened?
  • In the video message he left, the original Dr. Huesca claims the homunculi devour people completely, even their bones and every drop of blood. When berserk they must be strong enough to chew bone (evidenced by how they tore through metal doors to escape the experiment facility).

Why the kid's dad?

• Why did the priest frame that kid's dad, someone to his awareness, did nothing wrong instead of someone who may very well be guilty of some crime?
  • The priest didn't frame the dad. The Peacekeepers arrested the watchmaker because he was nearby and had the key to the clock tower.