firemtn

Uh. Hi. It's. It's been a week since I finished episode 4. This post took me a sec! (ahem)
The Question Arcs Are Completed. Let's keep thinking. It's another long post. Like. Really long. I'm not even sure if it makes sense at this point. But that's fine.

good god so much happened in that episode. It's unbearably dense, with multiple timelines literally interweaved with each other. Let's start with...

• Ange & Maria : Fantasy vs Reality Part 2
  I dont think I can really separate Ange and Maria here even though their stories happen in totally different time periods, they're so interconnected. Maria and Ange's stories are incredibly depressing, and it honestly felt very overwhelming to me while reading. So much of my notes for these sections are just, various expressions of upsetness for both of these characters, it was intense! But their stories tie in really strongly with my thoughts I was already having about Fantasy vs Reality in the previous episode. Ange and Maria both escape into the world of Fantasy because of their miserable lives, both horribly bullied at school and victimized at home. And god, Rosa is so fucked in this episode it felt like Ryukishi wanted to get back at me for saying Eva was worse than her in my post about Episode 3.
  As I read both girls' stories, it struck me that being a witch is an incredibly sad thing. As much as Maria initially cultivated her own happiness in fantasy, as much as Ange can have One Good Day Ever through fantasy, they end up in these places through their own broken lives. And we need that to go on. We need escapism to unchain us from reality for moments, to help us believe in something better. In spite of the sadness of our witches, Magic is still something that is built from hope, from belief, from certainty. That one essential element of love brings light to all of our lives. Maria was happy playing with Sakutaro and her friends, and god, the scene with Beato and Virgilia playing with them as well is so heartwarming. They seem like genuinely good figures to have in Maria's life, they understand the happiness Maria has, they want to support it! But that happiness also doesn't change the reality Maria lived in. Rosa was a horrible mother, turning hot and cold at any given instance, her moments of affection making her wrath all the more terrifying. Magic can't save Maria from that. It can only offer moments of relief, or else become a dark tunnel to lose herself in when she realizes the love she seeks from magic isn't there anymore, turning to hate and curses and killing her family inside her mind for all eternity. Magic can't save Ange from the torment she goes through in her boarding school life, either. Even if she can summon herself a cute demon girlfriend with magic, Mammon can't protect her, can't kill for her. All the Fantasy can do is support and encourage us through our trials. All Magic can really do is what we ourselves can already accomplish. It's fantastic when we challenge the odds and win, but that magic comes from our certainty that we can do it to begin with.
  Ange goes through a lot of different feelings about magic, from playing witches with Maria as children, to telling her actually it's cringe to pretend a stuffed animal is real, to wanting so badly to believe in it to give herself any connection to the family she lost, to give her any companionship at all, to realizing magic can't save her and rejecting it entirely... and eventually as she reaches Rokkenjima in 1998, she comes to a final answer. She will fight the idea of a witch that killed her family and expose the truth, but she won't deny magic itself. I've learned since finishing ep4 that at least ep3, I believe, held the tagline "Anti-Fantasy vs Anti-Mystery" on its Comiket release, which is like the whole thing, isn't it? Battler is Anti-Fantasy, trying to tear down the artifice and find the real, Beato is Anti-Mystery, creating a fog of magic to deny the idea that truth can really be found as one objective solution. Ange denies the premise of both: she isn't Anti-Mystery or Anti-Fantasy, she's literally the third perspective, as she announces when meeting Battler in the meta world. She knows the truth's value, she needs to understand what actually happened and won't turn away from it, but she also knows that denying fantasy is denying the interiority of others. In spite of what Rosa says, Maria's magical world isn't what hurts her, and to enter that world and tear it apart as fake is violence. Even if magic can't save anyone, denying it won't either. I have to agree with Ange here as well when it comes to the story as a whole -- Battler can't end this game simply by finding a solution to all the mysteries and smashing Beato's world of magic. As much as a mystery can be fun (and I mean, I'm certainly trying to solve this shit too!), looking at everything as a puzzle box to be "solved" distances us from the emotions that make up each of our realities and locks us off from connecting just as much as hiding in fantasy.

• Rokkenjima Murders Lap 4
  In a lot of ways the murders are a relief -- The whole situation is very action packed and often pretty jokey which is like, a huge release of tension from how overwhelmingly depressing and miserable Maria and Ange's lives are. It's very appreciated, the pacing works well. I don't know if I could have gotten through all of the Ange stuff without also seeing Krauss triple cross counter a goat.
  That said, they're also bizarre. The thing about previous episodes of Umineko is that it was very rare, if ever, that anyone other than the actual victims of murder witnessed magic and demons. The only exception I can think of is in Episode 2, when the servants talk about the Strange Kanon that attacked them. And not only do a lot of people witness magic and survive, they tell a lot of people about it... most importantly, Battler, our special guy who never witnesses a single spell being cast, who is always our grounding point. In previous episodes, I've taken the stance that if Battler doesn't see it or hear directly about it, it might as well not have happened from the Mystery standpoint. Obviously Fantasy is, of course, just as important in Umineko, but if this is a game that can be "solved" then I can't just trust it. This time Battler hears others recount the supernatural occurrences almost exactly. This is terrifying to me. While Battler does have the line of defense that someone else saying they witness magic does not prove magic exists, it's also hard to explain what the other characters witnessed if not what they describe. I ran through a number of theories during these segments including the idea that 24 hours had passed without the people in the prison realizing it due to being drugged or something (would require the same thing to have happened to the people in the guesthouse) or that maybe everyone in the prison were actually the perpetrators and thus are lying about the magic stuff (why'd they all die then?). Nothing really feels satisfyingly like it explains what went on here.
  Gaap is a ridiculous character. It's very obvious Ronove and Virgilia are connected to both Genji (I HAVE TO MENTION I forgot to say it last time but I noticed Ronove matching with Ronoue Genji immediately it just didnt end up in the post bc i forgot) and Kumsawa so like, who's Gaap? My, best idea is, that... Gaap is Gohda? The main witch/demon henchpeople are people Not in the jail -- while Genji's supposedly dead, and Kumasawa and Gohda are eventually locked up in the shed, they all match up with a demon on the game board, and those deaths could have happened at any time -- all three of them basically disappear before Battler finds the bodies of their corresponding humans. Gaap's self importance and over familiarity also fits in the vein of Gohda's self importance and smarminess. Anyways what I'm saying is Gohda trans real.
  I had actually lamented in my notes that sometimes it feels like Jessica gets kind of sidelined among all the other characters, so it was really exciting to see her get a big dumb anime fight against Ronove. It rules for her, I love her determination, her drive to protect! She's so cool!! I wish we had more Jessica all the time. I wish she was the protagonist instead of Battler. This is also a scenario where Jessica and Kanon stuff works so much better than George and Shannon stuff, again. Gaap honestly comes off seeming cooler than George... his "ah a kick that just barely doesn't connect is actually more meaningful than one that does" shit is boring and overall it doesn't feel like it says much of anything beyond George being, a thinky guy? He's... prepared? It's weird, it feels like ryukishi is just trying to hype this boy up but coming up with very little, it kind of makes me like George even less in a way because it feels like ryukishi doesn't get that he's kind of empty. I genuinely can't tell if it's self aware or if I'm actually supposed to think George is cool and George and Shannon's love is beautiful? Anyways, this segment really is the "yeah that's why there's a fighting game huh" bit of the series, it ruled. I love seeing Jessica and George tap into magic through sheer determination and certainty (and honestly, it's not called out as such, but Krauss absolutely did as well). It's fascinating to see "certainty" become magic for everyone, and without a doubt, Jessica and George possess the one essential element of Love as well. So much of this episode is about that relationship between Reality and Magic, and the big stupid fight scene granting magic to the humans feels like an intentional merging of the two. Same goes for the undeniable recounting of magical events to Battler -- Fantasy is inescapable on Rokkenjima.

• Battler & Beato
  God Battler and Beato go all over the place in this one, it's great. I love Beato worrying over the fallout from Beato's Trick (and Ronove's Trick he pulls on her!!), I love Battler getting all serious and being like "dont do that again." and Beato thinking he's gonna laugh and they're gonna be friends again and then realizing she has to be the one to laugh and put the evil witch mask on again. She wants to have fun with him so bad, she wants to be friends but the situation cannot allow it!
  And then of course at the end of the Rokkenjima story, we come to Battler's test. Beato still wants to play, she wants to have fun, but Battler just wants answers. Why is she doing this? We get a strange sort of explanation: Battler is one of the causes of this tragedy, and she wants him to repent for a sin he committed that seemingly led to all of this. Battler is clueless, and this devastates Beato -- in the Meta World she then weaves twisted logic to declare the boy to not be real. I don't really believe Beato actually buys into what she's saying here, as she uses some pretty dishonest premises (it was infuriating it took Ange to break through the obvious trick here!), it seems like she just wants to end things because she no longer believes she'll get anything out of it. In the same way that Battler declares Beato can't be his opponent in Episode 3 because something important to him doesn't matter to her, she no longer wants him here because something she cares about very clearly wasn't important to him. I don't believe that she isn't involved -- there's enough Beatrices in this story to disregard the red truth that states the sin she wants him to remember is not between Ushiromiya Battler and Beatrice. More about this all below, though, as this all ends up being about the final question of the arc.
  The red truth about Battler did take me by surprise. I expected the stuff Kyrie was talking about in the previous episode to come back this time, but not in this way! A primary assumption, that Battler's mother is Rudolf's previous wife who passed away six years ago, has been proven to not be true. I'm left with a number of questions here: Is there a second Battler? At one point it is stated in red that Battler Ushiromiya was born from Asumu Ushiromiya but Battler cannot state in red that he himself was born from her. (in fact, Beato even states in red he wasn't) I am inclined to believe Battler's complete and total loss of his sense of self after this revelation more than Beato's suggestion that he might be a body double, so like, yeah, I still think he's "the real Battler", but this is still an odd statement implying at a potential second guy being out there, somewhere. The next question is, of course, if this means that Kyrie is Battler's biomom. To be honest, I actually wrote in my notes what a shame it is that Kyrie resented Battler for being Asumu's son because of their shared similarities and how much Battler seems to genuinely admire her. I'm not suggesting here that Kyrie and Battler's shared personality traits (like their detective's spirit) are genetic of course, I'm just saying it feels like they could have a really strong, healthy relationship if they tried at it. This is, of course, also the episode where Kyrie calls Battler her son in an emotional moment and Battler responds in turn by calling her mom, maybe implying further at this conclusion. The issue with this is that Kyrie does claim to have suffered a miscarriage around the same time Battler was born; this would require the miscarriage to have actually been a stillbirth situation, AND for there to be a fucking maternity ward swap'em up Kyrie is unaware happened. It's not impossible, and given what Kyrie seems to think about Asumu's character, it doesn't feel implausible for her to have done such a thing -- it would also explicate the "second Battler" without there needing to be an actual living second guy -- but it requires so many things to line up simultaneously it feels a little absurd as a theory. There's also a possibility Kyrie genuinely knows Battler is her son and some other circumstance forced her to give him up to Asumu (Possibly her family's pressure?), but why lie about that in the middle of a fight with the stakes when no one else is around? And then of course there's another possibility that Rudolf is the one who orchestrated this swap, too... But none of these answers really jump out as being The Right One with the information I currently have, especially because they all require some serious stretches. It's entirely possible that Battler can say "it was from Ushiromiya" before having to stop simply because Rudolf is his father, not because his mother's surname is Ushiromiya, and he's just the child of some unknown third woman. There's not enough information to answer this yet.

• 1998
  Amidst everything else is Ange's post-facto detective work in 1998. There's a bunch of random new characters here, because there has to be, and a lot of interesting information that comes up. The string of numbers from the previous episode is revealed to be a bank account containing a ridiculous sum of money which would be equivalent to what Beatrice's gold should be worth. That basically explains the whole "saying these numbers aloud leads to a miniature golden land" thing from George's postmortem profile last episode nicely, and honestly a bank account being the number string makes so much sense that I can't believe I didn't consider it. That said: why the fuck did it end up on the door George's body was behind? What's the meaning behind that? It certainly implicates Beato as George's killer, if nothing else. Was it meant to be akin to the letters sent to Nanjo and Kumasawa's children (and Ange), to let anyone who might survive on the island about the bank account?? That doesn't make any sense, though...
  There's also the revelation of the message bottles which washed ashore detailing the events of the Rokkenjima murders ... just not the ones that actually happened in this timeline, because Eva was listed as a victim in both. We're not given the luxury of getting to actually read these messages, so I can only speculate, but the implication seems to be the details of previous episodes were written out in them, having been planned by the mastermind of these events, supposedly Beato. That's an assumption, though, and we can't be sure that any of these events match up at all until we actually see the contents of one of the message bottles, and maybe also until we see every version of the Rokkenjima Murders. They could simply just be distractions in the end... all we can really say is that the letters and the message bottles definitely mean the murders were premeditated, and that Beato was heavily involved in that.
  We also learn who all knew about Kuwadorian, and let Ange know that Beatrice really existed in the 60s as well. The people who knew are Kinzo, Genji, Nanjo, Kumasawa, and the boatman himself. Kumasawa lines up very well with Beato and Virgilia speaking in Kuwadorian in the intro of Ep3, and she's someone who could clearly pass down more information about Beatrice. She also was trying to solve the riddle of the epitaph, it seems, which is very interesting -- I do wonder just how much Kumasawa knows that she won't say. There's one other weird thing about this though -- the boatman says he stopped making trips to Kuwadorian in 1968 -- a year after we've been told Beatrice died. So something was still going on there for a year, but what??
  Of course also huge is the display case in the Boatman's House; I lost it when we got a chapter break and didn't follow up on it to find out what was in there, but I have to hand it to Zeno on this one -- there's no way it wasn't the second Sakutaro. This is, of course, the key to getting Maria's soul to leave the Golden Land Beato makes for them to hide themselves in their despair, and it's also something only Ange would realize is significant. Obviously magic cannot revive Sakutaro, and Rosa is the creator of Sakutaro ... so the only answer is that Rosa made a second lion doll. But when she did is completely unclear, and for that matter how did the boatman get ahold of it? The only thing that makes sense to me is that Rosa made a second out of regret for what she did. I believe that's what Ange thinks, at the very least, because that's what would make it real magic. That's what would save Maria from the despair of believing she was unwanted, unloved. It's hard to believe given Rosa's, everything, but that's what would make it magic. Perhaps he was left in a package on the boat?
  Stepping back in the timeline slightly, I have to admit, the Kasumi stuff is sad -- she's so angry at her dead sister, and she can only take her anger out on Ange in Kyrie's stead, which will never satisfy her. Of course, the real source of her anger isn't Kyrie at all, it's the shitty expectations of upper class japanese society... Earlier in the episode Ange equates nobility to a wound, and while the damage being rich does to people is, uh, omnipresent thematically in Umineko, it certainly comes through quite dramatically here with Kasumi. I wasn't really sure what I felt about EVA Beatrice reappearing and "controlling" Kasumi at first, but I think it makes sense as a representation of the cycle of hate and pain at the core of everything -- where the witch in the rokkenjima case involves looking away from reality, here it feels like Ange is seeing through to the way pain is controlling Kasumi instead. It's a very interesting choice.
  It's clear to me Amakusa must be the reason all of Kasumi's goons and later she herself die, but it's fascinating the way Ange's certainty seems to bring her protection about. I genuinely don't know if I believe Eva actually showed up -- Ange seems so unsurprised by it, and honestly... I buy it too, honestly, since Eva's weird "oh I'm dying" thing seemed entirely overblown, but it's also a question of if it's even important if she was actually there or not. It's about the emotions, Ange breaking through the things that have weighed her down and letting go. What is real (I assume) is the final gunshot, though. To be honest, when reading it, I believed this was Amakusa shooting Eva to ensure her death after the first shot incapacitated her ... but it's just as possible he killed Ange so Okonogi would get the Ushiromiya fortune. We only ever see her in the golden land and the Meta World after this, and she outright dies there! It feels so depressing for that to be what happened, though -- I don't want to believe 1998 Ange died on Rokkenjima, because it feels like it means she was right to not trust anyone, it feels like it invalidates her arc even if she still goes on to believe in love in her last scenes. Also I just don't want to say goodbye to her after one episode, Ange rules!

• Blue Truth
  Blue Truth gets introduced so early in the episode and then does nothing until the very end -- it felt like a sort of joke to introduce this new "mechanic" and then have no moments where Battler really uses it because we so rarely went to the stage of arguing over interpretations of events. But they were saving it for the end, which, wow, what a showstopper! I was not expecting to recap every episode and for Battler to try to solve them all like this until during the Answer Arcs (hence, uh, the name). I... regret having read it so late at night though, I feel like my recall of everything is going to be a little weak, haha.
  I gotta give Battler credit -- I was in fact wrong to think Kinzo was still alive, he totally had it when I was skeptical! Ironically, Battler himself gave me the wrong idea -- as I mentioned above, I tend to use Battler as my grounding for what I should take as being real, so when he met with Kinzo at the end of Episode 2, I took that at face value, only assuming Fantasy took over after the ending scroll, when the demons' reception for Beato begins. I'm wondering if maybe it's when Battler first gives up that his perspective becomes untrustworthy in that episode, or if I really can only trust information in red...
  That said, I actually went over to Battler's side when during Episode 4 Kinzo heard Battler's voice while he was on the phone with Kyrie, but Kyrie had to tell Battler what Kinzo said in return -- It was way too weird that Kinzo could hear Battler's voice but Battler couldn't hear his. On top of that, I was also skeptical of Battler's theory because it was meant to open a hole for an unknown party to take the place of "18th human on Rokkenjima", when I have been confident Beato must be one of the characters we already know. And in that sense, I still had it right, since Beato immediately also states there are no more than 17 people on Rokkenjima. It didn't feel like Kinzo was going to be the solution Battler wanted, and in the end he kind of wasn't. Sort of relatedly, Battler's explanation for this episode hinges on the idea that someone else took the name of Kinzo, which Lambda doesn't dispute, but to be perfectly honest, I have no guesses for who that person would be. Maybe Genji or Kanon are secretly legally named Kinzo??
  Incredibly cool as the battle between Battler and Beato is, Battler fires off a lot of shit here that's obviously not what's going on, like the bombs in the lasagna and Rube Goldberg himself being Natsuhi's killer in Ep1 and whatnot, and Lambda later takes down a number of his ideas as well. I do have an idea about Episode 2 myself, though:
  Beato states that in Episode 2 the chapel key in the envelope never changed hands between when Maria received it and Rosa opened it. This leaves the possibility that Rosa opened the envelope much earlier than we have assumed, making it entirely possible for her to have committed many of the murders of this episode. Further, I'm going to suggest that it's possible Rosa herself may have discovered the gold in Episode 2 given she also solves the Epitaph in Episode 3, leading to her desire to take out the rest of the family. Some of the servants may also be working with her in this episode, particularly Gohda, who has opportunity to kill Jessica, George, and Shannon. My main issue with this theory is I can't explain Gohda's death except that Rosa killed him at some point, but I don't know if such a window really exists.
  I'm stumped when it comes to episode 1 -- My best guess is to implicate Kanon with Genji and Nanjo as potential accomplices, as Kanon could have committed each murder before reporting it (as, to the best of my recollection, he cuts the chain and enters Eva and Hideyoshi's room before telling the family they are dead). Kanon's death is only reported by Nanjo after being taken off screen, making it possibly false.
  My thoughts on Ep3 remain as it was last time. Kanon killed Nanjo, and the declaration of his death was invalid due to a loophole in the red truth.
  I have absolutely no clue for Episode 4. There's too little concrete information to work with... and much of it falls apart with the reveal Kinzo is dead -- it is honestly as if this episode basically didn't happen. All I can reach for is, as I said above, if the people in jail are possibly the actual culprits (with Gohda and Kumasawa also as accomplices), but I don't know if that logically holds through, especially considering they all died. That said, basically every one of these theories ends with potential accomplices to the killer dead, so I guess it remains possible? God, and what was the test even about if Kinzo was dead? Why would anyone else care to do all that?

Of course, this whole scene ends with the most important question of all, the one I've been thinking the most about this whole time...

• Who aaam I...?
  Who is Beato? Battler finally has to think about this! This is of course basically like. The Question. This is The Fucking Question of the series right, because in the end, all the mysteries like how locked rooms worked and what happened to bodies aren't nearly as important as WHO this person is and WHY she wanted to do any of this. That stuff is just puzzles. This is the core. We've fucked around with How too long. It's time for Who and Why!
  To briefly check in on something: I've previously stated I believe Beato may not be as involved in the murders as she seems, but I'm kind of letting this idea go now? It seems impossible to say she isn't heavily involved given what Ange unearthed in 1998, and she certainly says she's going to kill Battler irl, and yet I still don't know that I think that's all that's going on here. Even if Beato planned for everyone to die, it doesn't seem like she's actually been completely in control every time (see episode 3 and EVA Beatrice, for instance). On top of that, when Ange states in red "the witch before your eyes stole away my whole family, even you, onii-chan..." Beato responds in turn, "I stole Ushiromiya Ange's family away from her!" in white. You can't trust anything that's not in red, not even a confession. I'd say that Ange's red in fact implicates Lambdadelta, who empowered both Beato and EVA Beatrice to begin with... but that explanation also feels overly simple. To be clear, it's not that I'm trying to defend Beato from being The Killer (she can kill anyone she wants, it's fine by me) but that I feel there has to be something bigger going on than that. Saying everything is Beato's fault feels like a massive simplification.
  That's getting away from the real point of Beato's identity though. Based on the information of this episode, my feeling is that Beato is someone heavily associated with Rokkenjima, perhaps someone who feels similarly "trapped" there in the same way 1967 Beatrice did. Someone who is suffering, who is subjected to some kind of horrible treatment. Ange and Maria's stories both emphasize greatly the terrible situations they were in and the way magic became their escape. It's no coincidence their stories are detailed in the chapter that finally presents this question. And given Beato's insistence on a sin Battler committed, I believe they must have made a connection six years ago in some way. I think Battler was her one friend, and his disappearance for six years was the sin that caused her to spiral. That, along whatever torture she was going through, combined with seeing what was happening to Maria, led her down a dark path which eventually led to becoming Beatrice.
  Unless the event comes to pass that Beato is a heretofore unheard of character that only appears in the Answer Arcs, which, frankly, at this point would not make sense to me considering there are no more than 17 people on Rokkenjima and how hard the game seems to be communicating an Unknown Culprit strategy is not what they're looking for, Beato is someone on the island, someone we already know. And the only character I can imagine being Beato is Kanon. I suggested this last time, and the more I think about it the more it feels right. In spite of Beato's red truths, Kanon's deaths only become more and more suspect as time goes on. Both Episode 1 and 3 are constructed to make Kanon's murder impossible for anyone to have carried out, and Battler is merely given the out of "accidental death", which we know Beato initially intended to use red truth to say is impossible before Ronove warned her. The fact that Nanjo's word is entirely untrustworthy as he's been repeating the line that Kinzo is still alive in spite of his actual death also means his declaration of Kanon's death in Episodes 1 and 3 don't fly -- particularly Episode 1, where Kanon was supposedly not dead when he was found and then declared to be dead after being taken off screen. Kanon outright disappears in Episode 2 and his body is never found in Episode 4. Jessica vanishing entirely in Episode 3 also connects to this, as Kanon would want to escape with her (Yes, I'm saying that the scene between them at the end of Ep3 actually happened). Over and over, Beato has been sensitive when it comes to Kanon, either obscuring or overclarifying his death. The biggest hit she took in the logic battle was when Battler suggested the idea of someone using multiple names, one of which being Kanon, which took Lambdadelta to super paper over. It's easy to suggest Kanon is a name other servants have used in the past, and Lambda's red truth stating that a different person cannot claim Kanon's name could apply strictly to the 17 people on Rokkenjima, which is what Battler (stupidly) suggested, not the event that there was another Kanon who died in the past, which would potentially cover all red truths declaring Kanon's death. Wordplay involving a past Kanon potentially also being used as a sacrifice by Kinzo could also cover Beato's red truth stating he was the ninth death. Even more simplistically, we can also say that the red truth has also been shown to account for non-literal, emotional truths: Battler can still say Asumu is his mother because they had an emotional bond as mother and son even if he isn't biologically hers. If Kanon feels strongly enough that he is dead, or perhaps that his identity as "Kanon" is dead, the red truth could potentially support that. Kanon is repeatedly shown to be bitter towards the entire family other than Jessica. Kanon is also the only person to be anywhere near Maria when she received the letter and umbrella in Episode 1. Kanon and Beato's differences in personality can be explained by Kanon's extreme repression. And while Beato has no friends, she does have people on her side. The fact that the other servants have obvious analogues among Beato's comrades (if we consider Gaap to be Gohda) further points to someone among the servants as well. Also, obviously, Kanon is incredibly transgender, which ties in with Umineko's omnipresent themes surrounding gender and family/social dynamics as well!
  To be perfectly honest, I'm not confident in my ability to truly explain away all of the red truth that says Kanon is dead, making him unable to act in the story. A second Kanon does feel farfetched, and it requires me to nitpick Lambda outright. Questioning the iron-cladness of red truth also feels potentially fraught, in spite of some Odd instances of red we've seen. But to me, narratively, there is no other character that makes sense right now other than Kanon. I don't believe any of the adults fit Beato's role -- Krauss and Rudolf are too up the ass of the collective ideal of masculinity to imagine willingly taking the guise of a woman, Kyrie and Rosa met Beato face to face (and there's a lot of other reasons I wouldn't buy Rosa as Beato, mostly centering around her relationship with Maria), Eva is out of the running based on canonically being a different Beatrice, and while I can absolutely see Natsuhi having the motivation to destroy the family, she only truly gained that motivation October 4th, when Krauss revealed to her the gold was real, cementing that he never truly saw her as a trusted and loved partner, meaning she couldn't have prepared any letters or message bottles beforehand. Jessica and George lack the motivation to take the role of Beatrice. If Maria or Battler are Beatrice, the story falls apart. The adult servants already have magical analogues among the demons. Nanjo is stated not to be a killer in red (I actually genuinely don't have a particular reason Beato couldn't be Nanjo other than "why the fuck would she be Nanjo, come on"). Shannon is not consumed by despair. Kanon is. Absent of all consideration for logic surrounding who is reported to be dead, Kanon fits narratively. I'll keep going! Kanon is also highly associated with Wrath, the sin stake which has impaled him in both episodes the stake which claims him is named (I literally went back into the game to double check anywhere in the Episode 4 Tips to see if it's declared but there's no game record for episode 4 that tells what stakes took each victim!!), and at its basest level, this is Beato's motivation in this game. Vengeance. Destroying the sources of pain. She grinds off the faces of the family, she opens their guts, laughs at their endless death, tells Maria her mother can die as much as she wants until she forgives her, machinates a massacre of at least 15 people to get Battler to apologize for something he doesn't even remember! What is she doing if it isnt wrath?! As Ange says, the essential elements of magic are love, sadness, and anger. But in the world of Mariage Sorciere, there is only sadness and anger. Beato wants love so badly, you can see from her interactions with Battler, and yet rejects seeing it in others as mere lust. And that's Kanon, exactly. He can't accept love, he only has sadness and anger.
  That's my theory. As strongly as I argue, I truly do not know and will freely admit there are absolute weaknesses one could shoot through it -- for one thing, according to Jessica, Kanon has only been a servant of the family for three years, which would require further explanation as to how he could have encountered Battler on Rokkenjima six years ago. Given he was in Kinzo's shady orphanage and Shannon was on Rokkenjima at that time, it still feels plausible. We'll see if I have to change my theories next episode. We'll see if I never do. Right now, it's my shot and I'm calling it. Kanon is trans real! Kanon is Beatrice real!!

• Other Thoughts
  George bringing up Battler's mom and suggesting he was genetically predisposed to fear flying because Asumu did (which, btw, NOT how genetics works George, c'mon) at the start of the episode was an amazing way to put the gun on the table before shooting it at the end when it's revealed she is not Battler's mother at all. Didn't even think about it until writing this post and seeing my note about it.
  Kinzo being revealed to be dead at the start of every game means Nanjo is completely untrustworthy, as I mentioned above. This obviously implicates him as being in on something, whether it's Beato's schemes or some kind of Krauss Scheme (or both), and he's also one of the only people who had been to Kuwadorian, so he must have some kind of Beatrice knowledge we're not hearing about. And yet, Lambdadelta says Nanjo is not a murderer, and on top of that he constantly spends entire episodes doing essentially nothing. He's very paradoxically important and unimportant. Something is up with this man!
  Kinzo being dead also means Natsuhi's Big Win in Episode 1 is completely fake! To be honest, I've been kind of suspicious it was for a while now. That said, it also means Eva's suspicion of her as Kinzo's killer is unfounded still, since that's not when he died. I am not sure what to make of this scene. It feels like it would be enlightening to reread the previous episodes with the information I've gained at this point, but also that took me over a month! i dont wanna do that again!
  So like. When Beato creates the document naming Sakutaro to be a real being and gives him his catboy form. was she like literally just drawing catboy fanart of Sakutaro and showing it to Maria and Maria was like "wow sakutaro yes!!!"? Because that's what I think happened. ...I need to see what Beato's art looks like. I need to see her draw something and show it on screen.
  I like Virgilia and Gaap's weird attempts to have some kind of relationship that dont really work but also they're like trying? It's a relatively amusing (for being weird) bit among a lot of heart-straining shit.
  It's a shame Gaap doesn't seem to be in the fighting game afaik, the warp hole stuff would be really fun to fuck around with. Like I bet her disaster of an outfit would make her super hard to sprite but...
  Shannon and Kanon seem to have memories of prior loops! What the!! also uh, Shannon's whole thing about the golden land is really weird because outside of Episode 3, where everyone is in the fake golden land, she's never made it to the end of any of these loops! Is she just talking about the time she was dead in ep3 and came back to life?? Really odd bit there, I don't know what to make of it unless it's outright implying at versions of the murders we haven't even gotten the chance to see.
  I cannot believe the Chiester Sisters are Maria's bunny toys oh my god!! It took me a sec but I connected the dots while listening to 00 lament the fallen 556. Their armbands even have the same cross insignia that's on the little medal on Sakutaro's muffler! That explains why they were hanging out with Maria at the end of episode 3 too! Wow!
  I wish I had any idea how Eva constructed the "accident" that supposedly actually took everyone else's lives -- there's literally like around 16 bodies (depending on if Nanjo's killer died in the mansion or escaped), did she throw them all in the ocean or something? At one point I honestly was like "did she just blow up the mansion?" but Ange doesn't seem to think the mansion won't be there if she keeps walking down the path...
  I could not stop thinking about Jessica vanishing in Episode 3 during the 1998 segments. I was positive it had to come back in some way, but I suppose Ange has no way to track her down, or given how vague everything has been about the "accident" Eva conjured, isn't even aware she disappeared entirely. Maybe it will, still, if we ever go back to 98...
  Kinzo seems to be claiming responsibility for wiping out the Ushiromiya family of the past to take the headship and Beatrice. How, uh, seriously should I be taking that? I certainly believe he would...
  Also man, Kinzo's philosophies just outright suck. He thinks the essential element is money and that the goal in life is to crush everyone else! What a piece of shit, this is why Beatrice rejected you and you're never gonna have her back dude!
  Very curious what to make of the Two Beatrices that speak to each other after Battler says he has no idea what sin he committed. Like is it just her speaking with herself inside her mind, or are there actually two of her...? I've been running off of the idea of One Person being Beato, but maybe I should consider the possibility of two? (I guess I'd kind of arbitrarily give it to Shannon in that case, but idk...)
  We had another instance of something that wasn't a statement of fact, but a request, being spoken in red in this episode, when Ange begs Battler to come home to the Ange of 1986. There is something about the red truth we still don't understand, I'm sure of it.
  It's kind of nice to know that Lambda's whole yandere schtick is actually something Bern is into and the whole trapping each other in eternity puzzles is how they flirt. it's cute! They're like definitely fucked up for everything they do to Beato but it's cute that this is how they show they love each other, so really it's fine actually.
  I am honestly curious if Beato's loss is completely assured -- Bern and Lambda certainly don't say it in red, at least! I feel like even if Beato can't prove magic is real, a miracle could come with a secondary victory objective of getting Battler to remember and acknowledge her...

That's all for now. I have no idea what I'm in for with the Answer Arcs -- I thought it might be reviewing the previous episodes from new angles and then trying to solve each, but given the Tea Party this episode that now feels redundant. We'll see!! Can't wait for more!! Also hopefully next time I can go easier on myself and be freaking concise!!