Red Truth, Blue Truth
Alright, so the witch named 18 people and said whether they were alive or dead, and then she also declared that there were no more than 18 people on the island, but the two statements aren’t necessarily referring to the same people, so there’s a chance that one of the dead people is not actually on the island.
Battler (and Kirie) came to the conclusion that it has to be Kinzo. This would actually maybe solve one of the questions I’ve had since the beginning, which is my suspicion surrounding Kinzo’s death, because every single time, his body got burned in the boiler room.
Though, something that confuses me a bit here is that there still very much was a body in the incinerator. So presumably that body counts as one of the 18 people even if it’s not actually Kinzo. So I guess I don’t really see room for that slot to be occupied by the killer, unless they burned one of the other bodies that was already counted as dead. I think I had that theory way back in episode 1 or something? Haha.
Regarding Beato’s new restrictions on the red truth, this from Ange kind of took me by surprise because it was way more direct about the literal game mechanics than I was expecting:
「…それは、人間側が提示する"トリック説"、即ち復唱要求は必ず、そのゲーム内、つまりエピソード内に反論されなければならないという、魔女側の制約という認識でいいのかしら？」
I guess we should keep track of the times that Battler asks Beato to repeat something back in red and she doesn’t do it? Well, first up, he asked her to confirm that Kinzo was included among the 18 people on the island, and she wouldn’t do it.
Ange also proposes that if the human side has successfully proposed an explanation via humans and tricks for every mystery and the witch side cannot refute them, the human side may declare victory. Beato and Ange haggle over it a bit more and also add a clause where the witch side is given the opportunity to refute the explanations, but if no rebuttal is made within one minute, the humans can declare victory. The same rule also applies to the human side: they’ll be given one minute to refute the riddles, and if even a single unrefuted riddle remains, the witch side wins, and the game ends.
And the deadline (for explanations/rebuttals as well as Beato answering Battler’s requests to repeat things in red) is 12:01am on October 6.
Beato also granted Battler the ability to declare in blue when explaining her magical murders using human perpetrators and tricks. Beato is obligated to refute every line in blue with red before the end of the game. But anything he says in blue must be something that negates the existence of witches.
Okay, here’s Battler’s first blue truth: “右代宮金蔵はすでに死亡している。よって島の本当の人数は１７人！そこに未知の人物Ｘが加わることで１８人となっている。この人物Ｘの存在の仮定によって、１７人全員にアリバイがあっても犯行は可能になるッ！！”
Also, just a random observation, but it’s interesting to me that Kirie sort of tends to parallel Battler’s own line of thinking in these episodes. She’s always just a little ahead of him. Even though she’s not his biological mom, it feels like he takes after her, haha.
Hmm, ok, random thought: What if it’s not Kinzo who’s already dead, but someone else? Like, say for instance, Gohda, who is only recently employed by the family? What if he isn’t who he says he is and is only masquerading as Gohda Toshiro??
This chapter leaves off with the siblings successfully bullying Krauss into trying to beg Kinzo to attend the meeting, and then Krauss somehow successfully talks him into actually doing it? That was a surprise to me. It’ll be the first time we see Kinzo at this meeting. Kinzo seems to have realized that the Ushiromiya name is really all he has that technically doesn’t belong to Beatrice, so he decided he actually does care about it. Or something.
That’ll be interesting to see…
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