prof | Let's Play Umineko, Episode 1 Scene 15: The 19th Person

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Eleven people all hiding in the same room for hours will start to slowly go insane.

People are occasionally stepping out for a breath of fresh air. Maria has returned to her old self. It seems like it's been long enough since the incident began that everyone is starting to lose their sense of danger.

When Maria starts to talk about witches, her whole personality changes. Jessica says this isn't the first time it's happened.

Everyone has a time when they're young when they want to be unique. They do whatever they can to distance themselves from their peers. So, if they know something that nobody else knows, it becomes part of their identity.

That's what the occult is to Maria - it's her leg up on the world.

Whatever you think about it, she's a weird kid.

Kids like any sort of fantasy where they can add to their experience and quickly become an adult. Magic gives Maria power, which she can use to stop being like the other kids. If she's possessed by a thousand-year-old witch, she gains 991 years of experience for free.

Except she doesn't. Right? Magic is fake.

That's the theory, at least.

Rosa is... was well aware of Maria's dual personality, and hated it. It was causing Maria to be isolated from her classmates.

But can that really be the whole explanation?

It wasn't just been Maria who went into that weird different mode. Genji, Kanon and Kumasawa had been in on it, too.

How many people are there on Rokkenjima?

How many of them are human?

It's different for Jessica, who lives in the mansion all year. In the mansion, whether they believe it or not, people quietly accept Beatrice's existence as a matter of course.

It's hard to tell whether the servants treat it as a fun ghost story, or if they're taking it seriously.

Maybe it's somewhere in between. To quote Stephen King: You know that the monster under your bed isn't real, but you also know that if you keep your feet under the covers, it can't get you.

And so Beatrice becomes the culprit of anything and everything that happens on Rokkenjima.

And that is where we turn the board around.

The fact that Beatrice is blamed for any unexplained phenomenon makes her existence even less likely. This is somebody capitalizing on the ghost story for their own gain.

If the 19th person was trying to hide their existence, they wouldn't have done any of the sensational things that went along with the murders.

If the 19th person was trying to prove their existence, they would have committed the crime at a time when everyone else had solid alibis.

Instead, they committed it in a very obvious, but vague, way. Why would they do this?

Because there is no 19th person. There's just one of the other 18, trying to make it look like a 19th - Beatrice - exists.

George thinks back to the letter. It said that Beatrice is taking back interest on the treasure it gave. That interest is in the form of everything the family created.

That includes people. Grandfather's offspring are the interest.

There are a lot of family members left. Beatrice's interest has not yet been satisfied.

We're alive because of the last clause. The epitaph.

If we can solve the epitaph before Beatrice's harvest is finished, we can survive.

This is a lot of crazy, tenuous logic.

But that's just fine.

Setting aside the question of the 19th person, Battler puts forward his theory about the culprit's motive. Hideyoshi is interested, Natsuhi thinks it's ridiculous.

Never mind that Natsuhi has proof of the existence of the hidden gold. She and Nanjo fire off a compelling question: If that's the goal, why did they kill off three of the highest-ranking members of the family right off the bat?

Also, if they wanted us to solve the riddle for them, why not just interrogate Kinzo? He actually knows the answer.

That part, at least, is a matter of knowing what the head is like. You could probably torture Kinzo for days without getting any information out of him.

Battler's got another crazy idea cooking up.

That's how he fights - loose one idea, loose a hundred ideas. Sooner or later, one of them will stick.

Battler's new theory:

The murders are a threat to grandfather.

If he doesn't reveal the location of the hidden gold, his family will be murdered, one by one. In other words, the one being forced to solve the riddle isn't the family - it's Kinzo.

By this theory, Kinzo has been abducted, and is being held somewhere unknown until he reveals the answer to the riddle.

Natsuhi has had the key to Kinzo's study this whole time. She now returns it to Genji.

This makes Eva think of something.

Nope. No secret passages out of the study. Just the one entrance, and just the one key.

Eva asks again, to confirm - apparently she has a theory that depends on this.

Genji, Kanon, Kumasawa and Nanjo all confirm it. There is no secret passage, and only one exit.

Natsuhi saw Kinzo at 9:00 AM.

After the bodies were found, Eva and Natsuhi went to the study again, and Kinzo wasn't there.

Eva still has a receipt on her - it's from some candy she bought at the airport.

But this is a very important receipt.

The receipt was stuck in the door hinge just after Natsuhi saw Kinzo. Then, the receipt remained there until Natsuhi came back with Eva to check on him again. Furthermore, it was at the exact same height as when she put it in - if Kinzo had opened the door and then replaced it, it would have fallen out before he could see it, so there would be no way for him to know how high up it was.

During the intervening time, the door to the study wasn't opened once.

The first time, Natsuhi saw him, and reported back. The second time, Natsuhi and Eva checked, and he was gone. The door didn't open between the two times.

So, where did Kinzo go?

If Eva's theory follows, the answer is simple. Kinzo wasn't there when Natsuhi checked on him.

What if Natsuhi was lying?

What if Kinzo is already dead?

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