Let’s read Umineko: episode 2: part 12

originally posted at https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/163177...

So we now have death descriptions for the first six to die.

The family tree screen. The six dead characters are now shaded red.

Each one now has an identical description of how they were found dead, and a varying line at the end addressed to Maria from Beatrice:

Anyway, this new chapter is called “Jessica and Kanon”. Perhaps they are the next sacrifices, not Sayo and George?

Gohda and Kanon are trying to persuade Jessica not to confront Beatrice.

What I’m finding somewhat odd is that if Beatrice is in control of the narrative still, she pointedly didn’t show the murders of the six adults by magical means on-camera. If that was described explicitly, the only grounds we’d have to disbelieve magic would be to accuse the narration of lying.

Jessica intends to grab Beatrice ‘by the collar’ where she’s sure Beatrice will confess. Undeterred, she goes straight to Beatrice’s room. It’s locked.

When Jessica demands, Gohda doesn’t want to let her in, but Kanon goes along and provides the key. Beatrice, however, is nowhere to be seen.

She has, at least, left a note - apparently to taunt them. Jessica flips out a bit.

We see the contents of the letter. Beatrice basically wrote that Jessica and her parents are stupid and ugly. Playground level taunts, sure. But they really fuck with Jessica, and she ends up having an asthma attack as she cries. Kanon understands her best, and asks Gohda to leave.

We follow Kanon and Jessica back to her room. There’s a sweet and quiet scene from Kanon’s POV trying to comfort Jessica, while wrestling with the ‘furniture‘ self-hatred narrative. Eventually, Kanon goes to wait in the corridor, not realising - or allowing [himself] to realise - that Jessica probably wants [him] to stay with her while she grieves.

Beatrice appears just to make that same point and repeat that Kanon is ‘furniture’. Because she’s just a horrible person, you know? She says some gendered crap about the worst way to betray a woman being to betray her hopes. She accuses Kanon of hurting Jessica massively.

Kanon, I’m counting on you, tell her to go fuck herself.

Yay! Kanon does!

A smiling Beatrice and a furious Kanon. Beatrice is saying ”*cackle*cackle*! Still, even though you may not be worth it alone, if the two of you are gathered, that’s more than enough. ……I never get tired of the pleasure that comes from laughing at the fate of a young couple.”

Beatrice isn’t much put out. She says Kanon and Jessica are perfect sacrifices for twilight2. Kanon’s like wait, hold on, we’re not dating, what.

So Beatrice is like, whatever, I’ll just murder Jessica to get a rise out of you.

Beatrice with a n extremely exaggerated evil smile and a shadow over her eyes, saying “It’ll be fun to kill her and see the pained look on your face, why else?!!”

That’s… some… kind… of… face… D:

So then Beatrice fills Jessica’s room with golden butterflies. This is narrated. It’s compared with ‘gold leaf inside a snow globe’… interesting. I mean, Beatrice does have a lot of gold, witch or not.

But this gold is more naimated than mere gold leaf. The butterflies try to suffocate Jessica, and when Kanon intervenes, dance a ‘rondo’ around the two.

Also: ominous chanting and that repeating ‘magic noise’ that I’m not really sure how to describe.

Kanon is like, fine, I’m gay for her, are you satisfied. Beatrice manifests. ahahaha.wav plays. She calls them a duck with green onions, which gets a cultural note.

Cultural note: Duck and green onions are the primary ingredients for a duck stew, and this gave rise to the Japanese phrase “a duck comes bearing green onions”, in which a duck approaches carrying its own seasoning, ready to be eaten. This metaphorically refers to a situation where a series of lucky coincidences benefits you without any effort, or alternatively, where a naive person brings you what you want while unaware of the disadvantage to themselves. Perhaps because of this, a “mark” or a “sucker” in terms of scams is often called a “duck” in Japanese.

Of course, Pokémon fans are familiar with this one.

Ken Sugimori's watercolour of the Pokémon Farfetch'd, literally a duck carrying a green onion like a sword.

So, confrontation.

Beatrice surrounded by golden butterflies. She’s saying “It’s essential that the witch appears when the princess and the knight are together. ……Come now, won’t you show me how much power Kinzo’s furniture holds?

This didn’t go so well for Kanon last time.

Out of a ‘mound’ of butterflies, Beatrice summons someone or something.

A muscular, broad-shouldered demon in a suit with a goat’s head and orange eyes. Narration: ‘That which was crawling up……was probably an attendant serving the witch.’

A large friend in a questionably tight-fitting tux shows up!

With the power of goat furries on her side, Beatrice is truly unstoppable.

Also it has a cool magic sword.

The same goat demon, now with the outline of a sword blade drawn over the back of its hand.

Beatrix is really blowing the VFX budget here.

But oh, this is unexpected.

Kanon, looking serious with a similar red magic sword!

Kanon has a magic sword too! wtf! This abruptly became a shonen anime.

Kanon says it “can’t even be used to trim the roses”. Apparently this relates to [him] being a ‘subhuman being’, i.e. ‘furniture’.

Kanon says there’s no way [his] powers can kill Beatrice - it would be like throwing a rock at the moon to smash it. But… oh I’ll just screenshot it rather than quote the entire line.

Kanon, armed: “There’s no way I can kill you with my powers. ……You are the moon. There’s no way I can smash the moon by throwing a rock. ……However, in order to manifest yourself, you had to reflect your image on the surface of the water.”

So. Kanon knows considerably more about magic than the narration has let on so far, and there’s something more to this ‘furniture’ thing than just a narrative used to abusively indoctrinate children into serving Kinzo.

Kanon intends to disrupt the ‘water’ and therefore Beatrice’s manifestation. It won’t kill Beatrice, but it will give them a respite.

The swordfight is semi-animated - as in we see the lines traced out by swords in the darkness. It gets really shonen.

[Note from the future: I’m not exactly sure what past Bryn considered to be shōnen, but the limited animation here is brief arcs in the dark and one single exaggerated held pose, i.e. certainly Kanada-school influenced.]

CGI of Kanon attacking with the sword, darting to the right, with the sword pointed back to the left.

Really shonen.

In short, Kanon takes a hit, but wins by teleporting behind the Goat Butler and pwning it with a massive sword combo. So that’s a thing Kanon can do apparently.

Kanon tries to hit Beatrice, but succeeds only in disrupting her form for a second. For that, she says she won’t let the two of them get away after all.

Jessica makes a speech in defence of Kanon not being furniture.

Jessica shouting, beside Kanon, with butterflies in the background. “………Self-sacrifice is part of the noble spirit that only humans have!! So kanon-kun is human!! So take it back! Don’t ever call Kanon-kun furniture again!!

Unfortunately, this perfectly suits Beatrice’s purposes in seeking ‘two who are close’.

Beatrice summons another servant? Apparently the ‘stakes’ of various demons are not just flying magic stakes, but wielded by anime girls that Beatrice can summon?

A girl, resembling a student, with blonde pigtails in a red suit and tie. Her eyes are red.

Funny, I was expecting something a bit more like this:

An illustration of Asmodeus from a medieval bestiary. Asmodeus has three heads: a cow, a human with a crown, and a sheep, as well as wings. He’s sitting on the back of some kind of snake-necked lion-headed monster with a long tail.

Here are some Asmodeus facts:

Asmodeus (/ˌæzməˈdiːəs/; Greek: Ασμοδαίος, Asmodaios) or Ashmedai (/ˈæʃmᵻˌdaɪ/; Hebrew: אַשְמְדּאָי‎‎, ʾAšmədʾāy; see below for other variations) is a king of demons[1] mostly known from the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit, in which he is the primary antagonist.[2] The demon is also mentioned in some Talmudic legends; for instance, in the story of the construction of the Temple of Solomon. He was supposed by some Renaissance Christians to be the King of the Nine Hells. Asmodeus also is referred to as one of the seven princes of Hell. In Binsfeld’s classification of demons, each one of these princes represents one of the seven deadly sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride). Asmodeus is the demon of lust and is therefore responsible for twisting people’s sexual desires, as seen in the book of Tobias especially. He is also said to be here on Earth after millions of years in hell. In Jewish and Islamic lore he is the king of the demons (Shedim/Jinn).[3][4]

So as for characterisation here…

Schoolgirl Asmodeus, leaning forwards with a smile. She’s saying “……How lucky am I, to be granted such gorgeous prey. ………*giggle*giggle*giggle*, you scared? How cuuute. *giggle*giggle*giggle*ggigle*!”

Yeah.

So she’s much more powerful than the Goat Demon, and in particular, much faster. She executes some frame-perfect strats to turn into a stake and rattle around the room, and poor Kanon has no chance - but Jessica intervenes and sacrifices herself to save Kanon, predicting she’d hit [his] back.

After satisfying herself with Kanon’s ‘oh shit’ face, Beatrice summons Satan, the stake/demon of wrath. Satan turns out to be a very similar-looking anime girl.

Beatrice revealing another anime girl. She says “……Satan the Wrathful. Right here.” Satan is dressed identically to Asmodeus, but has white hair with ringlets instead of pigtails.

At last, at least, Kanon refuses to be called furniture. Apparently Satan remembers the last episode as well, since she killed Kanon the time before.

So, Satan kills Kanon too, again way too OP. Kanon apologies to the not-quite-dead Jessica for not protecting her. But Jessica says it’s fine, and Kanon is not furniture any more. Then, to squeeze an extra drop of overwrought tragedy, she dies before Kanon can give [his] real name.

Beatrice takes the chance to gloat over Kanon and vow to mutilate [his] corpse and ‘disgrace’ [him] further. Wow, she’s insecure.

She summons a magic space mouth to eat Kanon, and the narration promises we’ll soon see what worse humiliation she has in mind.

New chapter: ‘New Rule’. I guess we’ll find out what that means.

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