A lot of my argument is founded on assuming that the meta-narrative of witches and demons metaphorically or allegorically informs the magic-less Rokkenjima narrative, or vice-versa. I base this idea on the following points: two inquisitors I know would share that there ought to be no prose outside what is needed or helpful to solve the who, how, and why of a mystery (van Dine #16) and further, that this reader’s interpretations are super heckin’ valid (Knox #9).
Also: she didn’t like being called Yasu. So I’m calling her Sayo.
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The First Twilight: Externalized Internal Conflict
Towards the beginning of the episode, Kanon and Shannon find themselves fighting BEATRICE, with Genji and Kinzo’s flaming bod along for the ride. If we lift the veil of magic, we find that this room currently contains two people and a corpse.
As Kanon desperately battles the stakes to defend his own life and his potential future relationship with Jessica, Shannon steps in to help him, despite being fully satisfied that George loves her and that even her death couldn’t change that. BEATRICE, in a polite turn of speech, loses her fucking shit.
BEATRICE is very prone to wild fits of joy and schadenfreude-fueled gloating – but not of rage. To my knowledge, there are two times total where BEATRICE is portrayed as truly angry. I intend to do another, shorter article on these two moments: but they are both directed at Shannon claiming to be at peace in her relationship with George.
Instead of delving too much deeper into this particular rabbit hole, I’ll just state this: BEATRICE, here, is an embodiment of Sayo’s gender dysphoria and regret for the already-ruined fate of her relationships with the cousins. Beatrice is stated to be an avatar of the game’s rules – and the rules are only in place because of Sayo’s unique, tragic circumstances.
So, in an allegorical sense, what is going on in the scene is a fight between the romantic connections Sayo has made with George and Jessica (represented by Shannon and Kanon) and her regrets about how her body and heritage have ruined those relationships (represented by BEATRICE). And who resolves that fight? Well, oddly enough, it’s neither BEATRICE, nor Kanon, nor Shannon. It’s Genji. As below:
Genji is killed shortly after by Ronove – peacefully, “like a puppet with its strings cut”.
Now, Genji deserves an entire piece to himself – why did he stick with Kinzo? Why is he so dead-set on finding ‘rest’? What is ‘rest’? Why did he handle Sayo’s situation in…uh, uh, in the worst way imaginable? For now, I’ll posit only this – that Genji killing Shannon and Kanon, Sayo’s personal attachments, is allegorically significant.
My theory is as follows: in this episode, perhaps as with all episodes, Sayo is deeply conflicted with her plan to kill the Ushiromiya family. Her connections to George and Jessica are “fighting” the regrets about her body, circumstances, and heritage that drive her towards homicide. As she fights this fight within herself, she turns to Genji for his guidance. And what does he do?
He puts her reservations to rest and offers his life to her murder mystery.
Why would he do this? Does he want to die that badly? Or does he want his rest specifically in serving the Ushiromiya family head in the only way he can now? Is he so certain that Sayo cannot achieve happiness in her circumstances that he thinks this is the best way forward for her?
I’m fully aware that many a reader could take issue with this – my test reader certainly has. But you have to admit – it’s a pretty metal thought space.
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The Second Twilight: From one Beatrice to another
Eva solves the epitaph and discovers the gold. BEATRICE gives her title to EVA-BEATRICE, and the two butt heads over murder methods as the killings continue. I think this is pretty spicy, because beyond the veil of magic, what is happening?
When Eva finds the gold, Sayo would follow her own rules and bring her murder plot to an end. This is represented in-narrative by the ceremony naming EVA the new BEATRICE. It’s even likely that Sayo could have feasibly found out – in the locked room ring that makes up the first twilight, Kanon is discovered last, and in the chapel to boot, directly where Eva would be heading to solve the epitaph.
To construct a thought that seems to follow with the rest of the episode, and fits with episode 7’s teatime’s precedent: Sayo interrupts Eva and Rosa. “Congrats, you’ve discovered the gold, and you have the headship.” Due to the time constraints, they make plans to talk further and establish how the hell they’re going to move forward now that they’ve got 10 tons of gold plus a murderer and four dead bodies on their hands now.
And before I lose you:
Sayo and Eva definitely interacted with each other in some way after Eva discovered the gold.
How can I say that in red? Because the Eva Ushiromiya of 1988 has the head’s ring. Even if Sayo had a conversation with both Rosa and Eva, Eva would take the ring – Rosa has no interest in the headship.
To make an excuse for her absence so that she can talk to Sayo, Rosa takes Maria out into the garden. Eva, meanwhile, has thought this through. There’s no way to explain away 4 dead bodies without police swarming over the island and potentially discovering the gold (as in episode 7’s teatime). Eva wants to keep the gold to herself – she is EVA BEATRICE here, after all. So Eva makes a decision under duress – to escape this situation with the gold, she needs to eliminate the other witness. Eva gets her adorable smoothbrain husband Hideyoshi on her side – and murders Rosa and Maria.
Sayo, meanwhile, probably sees the aftermath of the murders and perhaps even takes issue – killing is needless now. But Eva is in charge – she’s the golden witch now – and dismisses Sayo’s concerns, maybe attempting to placate her, but mostly telling her to lie in wait for the time being. Sayo, like BEATRICE in the metaworld, acquiesces uneasily to Eva and her plans.
Isn’t this just a wild series of interactions? Sayo having to interact with Eva and Rosa mask-off at all is wild in and of itself – but in some way, I think we can all probably agree that Sayo would have to come in contact with Eva in some way, and I would love to be a golden butterfly on the wall for that conversation.
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Not a Twilight: The Room Where it Happens
George is spirited to the mansion with Beatrice’s help, Shannon is revived, and then both George and Shannon are killed by EVA-BEATRICE.
When we pull the veil away, it’s fairly simple – Sayo contacts Nanjo in the guesthouse, Nanjo lets George out of a window with the promise of seeing Shannon again, and Sayo murders George in the mansion.
A great little meme I noticed this time around is that Nanjo gets uncharacteristically superstitious as soon as Battler starts talking about how George could’ve gotten out of the guesthouse’s locked room easily if someone else locked the window up after him:
Now for the spicy meme: George and Sayo have some time together, and George is probably looking for an answer or two. Let’s assume that Sayo at least knows that Eva has found the gold, and that she killed Rosa and Maria over it.
So why did Sayo call George to the mansion? We’ve established that she knows that Eva found the gold, so Sayo’s not killing to the tune of the epitaph anymore. Two options: she either regrets listening to Genji and wants to keep her relationships intact, or she intends to ask him to talk down his mother from spilling any more blood. Maybe it’s both – she wants to keep her relationship with George intact, and his mom is a direct danger to that now.
I find this possibility space incredibly fascinating – because Sayo has to face down her own fiancé (who is also her nephew), reveal her original plan to murder the family to him, and uuuuuh. Can she even get past that? How does that go down? How does she even explain her motive, when that reveals the unethical nature of the relationship she wants to preserve? Let’s see…
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The 177013th Twilight
Sayo fails to convince George, and the conversation’s aftermath is so, so damaging to her that she kills him and writes the name of a rival love interest’s birthday paired with hers on the doorway to the room he died in.
That’s a bit much – but still, we can assume things went so catastrophically badly that Sayo is forced to kill George – or does it in a fit of passion, and sees fit to write down the pairing of her and Battler on the doorway. That’s gotta hurt George’s lordly pride.
Eva herself, despite being terrified at the prospect of George in danger, takes the time to write down the number herself, hinting further that she and Sayo spoke to each-other – she somehow knew there was some variety of 8-digit code involved with the liquidated gold.
Another thing to consider – Sayo added that code specifically after George met his end (or shortly before), so this is not meant to thicken the presence of the witch – the magic circle was already there. There may be a gesture here towards some deal Sayo made with Eva – if George dies, she’d share the code? But Eva is very calm here, so she’s not aware of that deal unless she is totally emotionally divorced from George and his fate in this episode, which is possible.
Or maybe it is a taunt from Sayo – meant to enrage Eva and push her towards making a clumsy mistake that could prevent her killing spree from continuing. Or it’s a grim “gift” from the golden witch – burdening Eva with even more of the cursed gold that marked the destruction of Sayo’s life. Or it’s simply a twist of the knife – your son is dead. In compensation, toss another meaningless zero onto the end of your bank account.
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The Miracle Love in the Parlor at the End of the World
Let’s review positioning, shall we? After George’s body is discovered alongside Shannon’s, Jessica accuses Eva of killing her parents, Eva’s gun goes off, and Jessica’s eyes are damaged. Eva flees, searching for the person who killed her son, followed by Battler. Jessica and Nanjo retreat to the servant room to un-fuck Jessica’s eyes.
EVA-BEATRICE kills Nanjo slowly and painfully. Meanwhile, Jessica is led by Kanon’s ghost to the parlor. Behind the veil: Sayo kills Nanjo and lures Jessica away with Kanon’s voice.
Now, my instinct is to treat EVA-BEATRICE killing Nanjo as allegorically significant – but I can’t figure out a way it could be, short of Eva poisoning him at some point. Mostly it winds up as the foundation of EVA BEATRICE’s web of red truth later on in the metaworld – because since Eva and Battler are off somewhere else, the murder isn’t solvable without Sayo’s existance, or some other body/name trick. So I will admit that as a failing – I can’t think of a fun justification for why EVA is the one murdering Nanjo, but I do think it makes for a very good mystery that points directly at the Shkanon theory. So I’ll chalk this up to the metaworld setting up a good mystery, rather than the metaworld acting as an allegory for Sayo’s murder adventure here.
Now, here’s the punchline – Kanon lures Jessica away to the parlor, where she hides behind the curtains. And they stay there. For hours. By the VN’s count, the group leaves the guesthouse in search of George at 6:03 PM. Jessica dies on the tenth twilight – which is reserved for those killed by the bomb. Being generous and assuming it took an entire hour to examine Natsuhi, Krauss, and George, that is still a solid five hours together.
Presumably, Sayo could stay with Jessica until the 12th hour – she has nothing left to do, unless she intends to attempt to kill Eva somehow – which I don’t see much evidence for now, though it is a possibility.
However, there is one flourish here that I think makes this an incredible moment to think about. The manga doesn’t do it justice: so we turn to the visual novel. As Jessica asks to touch Kanon, he says this:
They go on to have a genuinely touching moment, as Kanon laments that he did not accept Jessica’s feelings earlier, and Jessica is so happy and accepting and hurts my heart. BEATRICE, who earlier embodied Sayo’s body dysphoria, guards the door to the parlor with her life. Something very rare and precious to her has been created in that room.
I hope that I’ve done my job and convinced you all that episode 3 has some wild possibilities hidden in there. The last few in particular paint a very strong, loving picture to me. And, since no witch exists to counter me with red, below I have written the truth.
this is maybe overly dramatic but i like umineko dammit
Sayo, perhaps distraught by Eva’s continued killings, perhaps in a bout of sorrow for allowing Genji to talk her away from Jessica and George, calls Nanjo and gets him to slip George out of the guesthouse, with the promise of seeing Shannon once more.
Sayo and George speak with one another. Sayo, despite all that has happened, reaches out for emotional or romantic gestures from George. He rebukes her. Betrayed and hopeless, Sayo ends George’s life and paints the 8 digits onto the door to the parlor. She conceals herself within the mansion, considering her next move – George’s rejection as fresh as his blood on her hands.
As Eva and Battler flee the parlor and Nanjo and Jessica head to the servant room, Sayo is able to see her chance.
She kills Nanjo – the man who cursed her to live in a body unfit for love.
Sayo uses Kanon’s voice to speak to Jessica and bring her back to the parlor, saying that he is a bodiless ghost that she cannot touch. With Jessica blinded, the veil of magic hides Sayo’s body, ridding her of regret and dysphoria for a short time, and she is able to love Jessica unreservedly.
For the first, last and only time in her life, Sayo experiences the love she deserves.
The bomb carries everyone besides the unlucky Eva to the Golden Land.