Umineko: When They Cry - Episode 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch - Visual Novel Informal Club

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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Got super busy all of a sudden and fell a bit behind on my Umineko reading, but I’m hoping to catch up a bit now. Then I was so tired today I couldn’t even read for an hour… maybe tomorrow will be better :weary:.

Finished Skirmish and started 9:00 The Key to the Golden Land, though I didn’t get far enough to have any comments on that chapter yet

I don’t think I’ve commented on this yet (can’t remember which chapter it was revealed in), but it’s interesting to me that Kinzo got burned in the furnace twice, and we haven’t seen him die any other way. Both times, they identified his body by his six toes. Beatrice confirmed in red that he did indeed die, and what we saw onscreen certainly suggested that, but why the furnace? And why for him specifically? I wonder if there’s something he would otherwise be hiding on his body or something…

Also, Battler finally got another one over Beatrice this chapter. Here’s what I commented as I was reading:

What Battler asked Beatrice to repeat was: “６人は全員他殺である”, and she refused to repeat that, but she did repeat (in red): “６人は誰も自殺していない！”. I can’t help but wonder if there is some distinction there that allowed her to say the second one but not the first. Maybe the theme of doubles like I’ve been suspecting? Looking at the Japanese definitions, 他殺 appears to mean “killed by another person” and 自殺 is “ending your own life by your own hands”.

So could the person been murdered not by another person but also not by ending their own life? I suppose something like mind control would result in that scenario, though “mind control” doesn’t exactly help Battler explain it without magic, haha.

Oh, right after I typed that, Virgilia also pointed out that Beatrice changed the wording of Battler’s requested repetition.

Battler suspected the person died of an accident, which somehow hadn’t occurred to me, but Ronove stopped Beatrice from saying it in red and forced her to take a timeout. Then she refused to say it when she came back.

So I’m guessing that Battler wasn’t exactly right, but that Beatrice was about to make a similar mistake and say something in red that would lead him to the correct answer.

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Also, this made me laugh because this was my first time seeing 前哨戦 outside of a pro wrestling context. That word is probably a frequency 1,000 word in pro wrestling, but you never see it in normal life lol.

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Oh that’s a fun bit of trivia, interesting. I think I’ve seen it a time or two before in the context of actual military skirmishes, but certainly not often even there. 哨 is a kanji I’m still a little shaky on. Guess I should be watching wrestling.

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Yeah, it’s kind of a weird one, haha. Usually I translate it as “preview match” in English. In Japanese pro wrestling, they’re typically tag matches that happen in the lead-up to a big show where the champion and the challenger get the chance to face off a little bit as a teaser for their eventual championship match.

Occasionally you’ll see the challenger manage to directly pin the champion in the preview match (or vice versa), which is supposed to add thrill and uncertainty to the upcoming title match (though ironically sometimes it actually does the opposite, because if the challenger is made to look really strong in the preview matches, often that’s setting them up to lose in the title match…).

That’s kind of the sentiment I interpreted the above example in, hahaha. Better to eat a loss in the preview match (where it doesn’t actually matter) than to give away something to your opponent that could help them beat you in the actual title match.

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Finished 9:00 The Key to the Golden Land

The wordplay stuff with the riddle was kind of doing my head in, trying to imagine how on earth they’d even translate that into English if that was the case… It was interesting reading the whole riddle conversation in Japanese while the version of it I had onscreen was in English, haha.

One thing I wanted to flag was what Rosa pointed out about the part about the tenth night. It’s 黄金郷 everywhere else, but on night ten, it’s 黄金の郷. In the English version, it’s “Golden Land” for most of it, then “Home of the Gold” for night ten.

Quick observation on the wordplay front: Gohda’s name has a 郷 in it: 郷田俊郎. I actually noticed that a while ago lol but thought it was a silly observation… It probably means nothing though lol.

Okay, Eva seems to have solved the epitaph, and it appears to be a regular riddle kind of solution because she was able to look it up in a normal encyclopedia. It also does appear to be some sort of wordplay situation where there is significance to it being six letters?? Eva found the solution but couldn’t get it into 6 文字 at first, so my best guess is maybe the solution was to romanize it to make it 6 letters? I dunno. Kind of just spitballing here.

I wondered if maybe this was a Japanese dictionary/alphabetization thing, like maybe as you travel down the 川 you will find 岸 (か is right before き in gojuon order), but then how would they translate that…

懐かしき、故郷を貫く鮎の川。
黄金郷を目指す者よ、これを下りて鍵を探せ。
川を下れば、やがて里あり。
その里にて二人が口にし岸を探れ。
Behold the sweetfish river, running through my beloved home of old.
You who seek the Golden Land, follow its path downstream in search of the key.
As you travel down to it, you will see a village.
In that village, look for the shore the two speak of.

It’s a pretty direct translation… no evident wordplay that I can see.

Hmm, maybe the 6 letters are characters from the first six sacrifices’ names? But that wouldn’t make sense with Eva’s confusion…

I’m at a loss, lol.

Started 10:00 Coronation

WORDS ON THE DOOR WRITTEN IN RED.

Alright, well, Eva found the gold. Game over…?

Apparently not, because she ran into Rosa on the way up the stairs, and after a tense standoff with the guns, they came to a sort of agreement.

I left off at the part where they started arguing in the rose garden about whether they should tell their brothers about this just yet.

I guess I’m confused that solving the riddle didn’t immediately end Beatrice’s game…

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I’m happy to see this is still going, EP3 is as far as I’ve gotten so I’ll probably join once you reach the next chapter!

Eva is my favorite character so this chapter makes me happy :slight_smile: I have no idea what the solution to the epitaph is but I assume it’s crazy wordplay and would also not rely on the English translation to provide any sort of meaningful hint/framework. I have Thoughts on the red truths in this chapter but think they should wait until the end…

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Yep, we’re still chugging along. Excited to have you! I’m enjoying the speculation about the epitaph from @fallynleaf a lot. I never managed to come up with too many theories for it – this has been a fun read but I don’t think this is the kind of mystery I’m cut out for :sweat_smile:

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Most of what happens seems pretty manageable, except for one scene that just makes me go “wtf???”. I think it’s EP3 (not EP2) but it involves Kanon (I think you’ll know it when you see it).

For the epitaph I couldn’t come up with anything about the sweetfish portion, I remember an idea I had the for ‘gouge’ portion was that it involved deleting a certain radical from a kanji. But that’s just a vague idea and I have no specifics

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Finished 10:00 Coronation

???

I’m just as confused as Battler after this, lol. So the child version of Eva is not actually Beatrice?? Er, well, she is Beatrice now, but not at the time I thought she was Beatrice, lol. Why does she have blue eyes when Eva’s eyes are purple? The way that she said 私 and then corrected it to 私たち when talking about solving the riddle also stood out to me.

Well, it seems like we’re not going to get proper answers here just yet, so I guess we’ll see how it plays out.

I imagine Eva Beatrice (I looked at the characters list and this is what they’re calling her there) is probably now going to have to carry out the rest of the murders to complete the ritual?

I don’t trust this 分身 one bit, though. Also, as soon as I saw her new outfit, I recognized her from the opening video, lol.

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This was one of my favorite developments first time through this episode, it’s really unexpected and wild. Fun seeing you go through this.

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This is Evatrice’s world, you’re just living in it

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