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I want to talk more about that bag. Why is it there? If the culprit really did manage to convince/order Ibuki to hang herself, then what's the purpose of the Monomi bag? If the culprit had been capable of convincing her to off herself, then just having her do that on video, sans bag, would be far more effective at diverting attention from the true culprit. Regardless of whether the footage is live or staged (I think staged, especially now that we know both stepladders are missing), there must be a reason for the bag. So far, Ibuki hasn't shown any tendency to just randomly wear bags on her head, so the culprit probably arranged it for some purpose - most likely they needed to obscure the face of the person in the footage. The most likely reason has already been stated... it's probably not Ibuki in the footage at all. It could be the culprit or an associate. The footage cutting off early supports this hypothesis. If the culprit really was recording Ibuki hanging herself, they could've simply let the camera record the deed and eliminate all doubt as to the cause of death. But the culprit wanted people to think the person in the footage is Ibuki, yet they clearly couldn't arrange for her to actually hang herself. Two possibilities: Either Ibuki simply wasn't receptive to orders that were obviously suicidal, or she was already dead/unconscious by the time the footage was recorded. We don't really have any reason to suspect the latter at the moment, so let's just assume the former. But it is possible the culprit was able to order Ibuki to manage the recording. They could've ordered Ibuki to give her hospital gown to the culprit, operate the camera while the culprit staged the hanging, and blow out the candle at the predetermined time. From there on it's just a matter of actually killing her, possibly by ordering her to put her neck in the noose (a non-suicidal order by itself), then raising the lighting rig. There are unsolved matters, though, and a lot of them come back to the order of deaths and methods of killing. The blood on the ladder and on Ibuki's slippers. We can only assume the blood belongs to Saionji, as no one else has bled copious amounts lately, which means Ibuki was alive when Saionji died. (Alternately, someone else was wearing the slippers at the time, but then the culprit would probably not have made Ibuki wear them, especially not post-mortem.) And then there's the case of the mis-tied obi... Crazy hypothesis time: Saionji catches wind of Ibuki's suggestive state and plans to kill her by making it appear as if she'd committed suicide. She sneaks out of her room, switches her robe for Ibuki's gown, and they record the footage. At this point they are interrupted by the true culprit, who cuts Saionji's throat and appropriates the plan. They move Saionji's corpse to the Titty Typhoon and hide it in the fake pillar, then the culprit kills Ibuki via the lighting rig, obscuring the true order of the killings. It explains why the obi is backwards (Saionji had recently been wearing something else - the hospital gown) and why the person in the footage appears to be so short, but there are still too many loose ends. Why was there a need to obscure the order of the deaths in the first place? When did this happen? Why is there a patch of badly wiped-up blood on the stage, and why is there blood on the stepladder, if Saionji died elsewhere? How did Saionji know about Ibuki's suggestibility, and how did she sneak out? Ibuki's foreshadowed ability to pick locks is another concern, and cause for alternate speculation. What if the culprit used her as a means to get to Saionji? If the culprit knew about Ibuki's lockbreaking shenanigans, he or she could've ordered her to fetch Saionji, kill her, then stage the hanging to clear up any loose ends. But the blood means Saionji's murder would have to have happened on the stage, and I doubt Saionji would go quietly with Ibuki, given her paranoia regarding despair syndrome. If the culprit was capable of subduing Saionji, there would have been no reason to leave such a messy trail. He or she could've just slit her throat somewhere convenient and moved the body postmortem. Rather, the badly wiped blood implies Saionji died suddenly and impulsively.
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Feb 11, 2014 10:27
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There's another thing about the fake pillar that really bothers me: what's the purpose of that whole song and dance? What was the culprit trying to hide when they came up with that? Building the pillar must have taken quite some time and effort, as it's pretty huge, so it's not likely to be something the culprit did on a whim. Nor is it something someone would manage to throw together in a panic. Faking the pillar must have been planned, with a very specific purpose in mind. It's not simply to keep Saionji from being discovered, since the pillar stays up a grand total of about ten minutes after Ibuki is discovered. Speaking of which, what happened to the pillar? A theory seems to be that the glue somehow melted or something, but surely that would leave a mess of paper lying around near the stage. Again, that thing is pretty big. Someone must have been in there not just to tear down the pillar, but dispose of the parts, after Ibuki's corpse was first discovered. This just raises further questions about the purpose of the pillar, since whoever tore it down is likely the culprit - in other words, not only did the killer plan to hide Saionji behind the pillar, he or she planned for her to be discovered ten minutes later, for... what purpose? Just to confuse the order of the killings? Do we even have any idea why the order of killings is important? The killer seems pretty drat intent on keeping that detail secret. Given the deliberate, planned execution of this entire event, what did the culprit try to obscure by doing all this?
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Feb 11, 2014 16:24
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Half the fun of it is the thread (and the rampant speculation therein), and oren and Fedule's comments. That's what makes the whole thing special, so I would hate to see all that go away. Speaking of rampant speculation, who wants to talk about murders?  The reason I'm even suspecting Saionji in the first place is her disheveled clothes and backwards obi. How'd it get in that state? If it got that way from struggling with the killer, I'd expect there to be a lot more blood on her clothes, and the Monobear file explicitly tells us she died quickly. She still has her key, so unless the killer dressed her up in her outfit and nestled the key way deep in there somehow, she was carrying the key around the whole time and still had it when she died, which makes me think she left her room voluntarily for some reason or another. By the way, I wonder if the game is going to show us the inside of her room... if that place is a bloody mess, whelp, we've got ourselves a brand new crime scene. Maybe Saionji has been dead way longer than we think... she could've died ages ago, shortly after locking herself in her room.
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Feb 12, 2014 11:04
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Maybe some variety of "black-hearted" could have worked if one wanted to preserve the black/white thing (arguably a good idea), although maybe that just veers too far into the other direction, being melodramatic to the point of silliness. But, heck, anything to avoid making the culprit sound like a delicious Cajun-style fish dinner.  As for "Ultimate", eh, I guess that's okay. There are a lot worse ways that could've gone (Super Duper...), but it would be nice to have some kind of reference to school in there.
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Feb 13, 2014 18:26
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Nanami's "two of us are girls" comment has driven me to concoct theories that are far too elaborate, wildly implausible, and unrelated to any case at hand, and thus worthy of utmost consideration.  What if the game is trying to pull another crossdresser twist on us, except reversed? Kuzuryuu is looking kinda thin and waifish, isn't he? Perhaps enough to be a girl dressing up as a boy in order to net more respect as a crime boss, right? If you're asking me, Nanami is looking more and more like a robot in girl clothes every update. Tendency to space out for periods of time for lack of available CPU cycles, spends all her time around electronics, clearly possesses a small chemical analysis module in her mouth... it's an open and shut case, people.
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Feb 19, 2014 08:47
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Well, there was a significant amount of chortles in that
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Feb 19, 2014 14:27
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orenronen posted:
The combination of speechlessness and utter dumbfounded disgust that face manages to convey is just fantastic, even if it is sheer coincidence.  So... a second bag, huh. The evidence in favor of the recording not being of the actual crime scene seems to be piling up. It also enables the recording to have been made after Mioda's death. Before, the recording (if it truly is one) would have to have been made before her death, when the bag was still available for use. Not sure what else there is to learn from the movie, though.
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Feb 19, 2014 21:48
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Bean posted:I bet you cashmoney that the execution follows the tin man. Well, I guess there are worse fates than being torn apart by an angry bear. (No there aren't.) I do think the "third victim = camera" theory has a certain insane charm to it though. I keep coming back to the question of why though. A lot of things with this case don't seem to have any discernible reason for them, and the movie only adds to the pile of inexplicable goings-on. If the movie isn't just a giant coincidence, then the killer must have had some reason to copy the killings in the movie. What could they possibly stand to gain from doing that? It's not like the last time something like this happened, when the game revealed something about the motivations involved. This just seems arbitrary.
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Feb 19, 2014 23:24
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Well, Monobear is a weaselly bugger, and that "true" in "one true culprit" is worrying. Besides, it's not like we can vote for Saionji anyway if she did kill Ibuki. I can see Monobear saying something like that if the only culprit he really cared about anyone voting for is whoever killed Saionji. Unless... Ibuki killed Saionji on someone's orders and Monobear is invoking the whole "someone who is just a tool is not the culprit" clause from way back. I'm beginning to fear at this point that we won't have the answers we want until the trial has already begun, meaning someone has to slip up and reveal something crucial.
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Feb 20, 2014 00:01
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PlaceholderPigeon posted:the desire to make Saionji look like she was killed later makes me think it's just just a clever diversion. That's a lot of work to go through for a diversion. But if that's the case, then the question becomes: What was so important that such an elaborate diversion needed to be set up, and why did the culprit think the diversion would be effective? If the order of killings is actually irrelevant on their own, then the killer would've had to know that diverting people's attention to the movie would mean some other detail would go overlooked - what would that be? What is the diversion actually good for, in the mind of the killer? I'm beginning to feel that maybe Saionji didn't kill anyone after all. However, I am wondering if someone didn't order Ibuki to kill Saionji. Way back in the Pekoyama case, Monobear found the idea of a person being a tool rendering them blameless as the culprit very appealing, and the case ended up at least partially hinging on Pekoyama's motivations being her own after all. So, if someone did order Ibuki to kill Saionji, then killed Ibuki or ordered her to hang herself, then Monobear may well consider that person the true culprit. That would also explain the key business. Ibuki broke open our lock earlier, so it's possible she could've gotten into Saionji's room, too. So, who else knew Ibuki could do that? Looking back at the update, we only told one other person... unfortunately, that person is Nidai, who appears to be out of commission. Or is he?
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Feb 20, 2014 00:26
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Clarste posted:We can and have voted for dead people in the past. That's the main reason they get replaced by a picture when they're dead. Yeah, but if there's only one killer, then it's not really possible for Saionji to be the culprit here unless there's some massively weird and out-of-character reason why she would kill herself and make someone else tie her to a pillar. At least in the last game, Sakura had motivations that made sense to her, and Junko... well, I think it's too early in the game for it to try pulling that sort of thing on us again. I guess that leaves Ibuki as a potential sole culprit, but in her suggestible state I don't think that's very likely. Kuzuryuu is kind of suspicious, but I'd hate for the game to make him a suspect immediately after being present at the previous case's murder. I know "this game has better writing than that" is a lovely reason to discount someone as a suspect, and this game does seem to want to throw you for a loop, though, so heck if I know.
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Feb 20, 2014 09:34
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I noticed something in a previous update. The camera junk wasn't there when Hinata first rushed over to the club:  You can clearly see the pink outer shell of the receiver unit in the first picture, but the additional pile of black junk - presumably the camera - isn't there until later, after the body discovery announcements. To me this is further proof that the culprit was still in the club when Hinata first barged in. They had to be, anyway, to tear down the fake pillar - but this also indicates that they smashed up the camera at this time. It's also even more evidence that the filming couldn't possibly have taken place at the stage, since the camera isn't there until later. It also implies that the footage was live, not pre-recorded, and furthermore that it was most likely filmed somewhere in the club (or the killer had to be keeping really close tabs on Hinata's movements and rush in as soon as he left the club to get help). To me that seems to put the final nail in the coffin on Saionji being the person in the filmed footage, since she was dead and hidden behind the fake pillar by the time Hinata found Ibuki, sans camera fragments. However, more importantly... if the culprit was in the club at the time of the fake suicide filming, then that makes it less likely that Mikan is the culprit, or at least it strains the timeline even further.
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Feb 20, 2014 11:04
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Knicknevin posted:words Yep, you nailed it. Mikan being the culprit strains the timeline into utter implausibility. For all the suspicious things she's been saying and doing, unless the timeline is radically different from what has been presented to us, I can't see how she could have pulled all that off. You can get around some of the issues by pre-recording the video, but the camera is clearly not in the club when Hinata first walks in, so the killer would still have to smash the camera and stash it in there along with everything else they've been up to. The killer, whoever they are, was probably hiding in the club when Hinata first came in. I might even go so far as to speculate that the fake suicide was enacted somewhere else in the club, giving the killer a nice opportunity to smash up the camera, tear down the pillar, and rig the door to close behind them while Hinata was running to the motel. If we can discount Mikan here, we can probably discount Kuzuryuu as well since they were ostensibly together for much of this time, looking for Ibuki. Komaeda and Owari were feverish, Nidai is who knows where, and Nanami and Gundam were at the motel when Hinata ran into them - I can't see any way they could have set everything up at the club and then somehow beaten Hinata there. So that leaves... Sonia and Souda as the sole persons whose whereabouts are unaccounted for at this time? Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 15:41
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Meeks Sisu posted:The only location we've seen that has a wooden floor similar to the stage at the club is the second floor of the hospital. Hum. The floor being wood rather than concrete is a good point, though I don't know if that necessarily means it had to be filmed in the hospital. I don't understand what all this mirror malarkey is about. I don't even understand what is being suggested. How is this mirror involved, exactly? At what point does that become necessary? Besides which, there is plenty of evidence suggesting duplicate crime scenes: two stepladders are missing (and the one found at the club has a conspicuous bloodstain the one in the video doesn't), there are two Monomi bags, and the curtain at the club was replaced (presumably because the culprit couldn't duplicate the actual one at the club, so they had to make it match the one they could use). There's also the smashed up camera at the club which mysteriously appears halfway through the events - if the suicide was filmed at the stage, why didn't the culprit just smash the camera right away and leave it there for Hinata to find? The fact that it appears only the second time around implies the camera wasn't in the main club hall immediately prior to Hinata barging in, but had to be transported there while he was running to the motel for help - presumably, because it was in use somewhere else to film the fake suicide.
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Feb 20, 2014 18:43
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I used to like the "Saionji tried to murder someone" theory, but as we've been noticing new evidence, I'm not so sure anymore. The smashed camera only showing up on the second trip to the club means that the footage most likely was live, which in turn means it cannot be Saionji in the video, since she was almost certainly long dead by that point. So, what is Saionji's involvement in the whole case, other than as a victim? If she planned and prepared the thing but died before she could execute it, then when did she have the opportunity to do all that preparing? Everyone saw her lock herself in her room, and no one seems to have seen her about since. I'm also growing increasingly skeptical of the "murder of opportunity" theory. The most elaborate part of the crime is the way Saionji's body is hidden, and the way the criminal tried to obscure the order of deaths. Why would someone who killed Saionji in a fit of passion, who didn't plan the whole "scarecrow, lion" bit and likely didn't have a chance to hear about it from Saionji, want to do that? But on the other hand, why would someone planning a murder choose to murder two people when, as Nanami said, that just increases their likelihood of leaving traces behind? Mikan snapping is tenuous, and as mentioned, such a murder followed by such an elaborate coverup seems an unlikely result of a crime of passion, not to mention ill-fitting with Mikan's personality. (Unless this is another Genocider Sho situation that's gone entirely unforeshadowed? That would be... dumb.) I still think there's some crucial piece of information we haven't gotten yet... E: Hey, I remembered something. In that video, we can see the person's hands clearly. Mikan wears a bandage over her left hand. Did she remove it and put it back on? Does it even come off? Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 22:44
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iw posted:This pretty clearly shows that the first debris is just the pink cover of the camera, the second debris is the working camera part itself. [...] There isn't a camera with a pink cover and internal parts; the set comes with a receiver unit (looks like a pink PSP, just has a display in it) and a separate camera unit on a small stand. They are two separate items. You can see it in some of the updates. The pink junk is the receiver unit, smashed up whole; there was no need to take apart a camera.
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Feb 21, 2014 08:08
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iw posted:Another thing I missed: if the scene is indeed filmed in the hospital, then the culprit must be Tsumiki -- she was the only one allowed in the hospital overnight. You don't have to stay overnight, technically; someone (e.g. Kuzuryuu) could sneak in early in the morning and do the recording. It does open up the question of when they set up the room to look the stage. iw posted:* The curtain pattern on both the video and the music club is identical. I think we can chalk that up to art re-use. What's important is that the curtain at the club was not the curtain that was normally used, but a more narrow curtain taken from the supermarket. The purpose should be obvious: the culprit couldn't duplicate the curtain that was normally at the club, so instead they had to replace the club curtain with something they did have duplicates of. In fact, Nanami explicitly points out that this would've been a heck of a chore to do, meaning the killer really cared a lot about this whole misdirection. See, that's what grinds me about this whole thing. The killer has spent an insane amount of work on this murder. Duplicating crime scenes, setting up a fake pillar, dragging around huge bulky curtains and ropes and cameras all over the place, all on this incredibly strained timeframe. It takes foresight, planning, and tight execution. Did they do all that just so they could mislead people into seeing parallels between the murder and Monobear's movie? There doesn't even seem to be anything they would gain from that little diversion. There must be some deeper reason why the killer felt compelled to go to such lengths just to cover up the order of deaths. It's not like knowing Saionji died first would make everyone go "Aha! That obviously means the killer can only be THIS person!", you know? iw posted:* If it's really Tsumiki in the hospital staging a scene from upstairs, pretending to be Ibuki on the stepladder.... who turned out the lights? I can think of one person that might be willing to assist her in that endeavour: Komaeda. But I have no real evidence that he did. Also, to remind everyone of that other thing: if that's Mikan in the footage, what happened to the bandages on her left hand? Are they just decorative? Can she take them off and put them back on as she pleases? E: ^^^^^ Also the whole "person being a tool thing" from this very game. If someone ordered suggestible Ibuki to kill Saionji, then I'm sure Monobear would consider the person giving the orders the true culprit, since Ibuki just went along with what anyone told her. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 10:30
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The big issue with accomplices is that they stand to gain nothing unless they're planning to immediately betray the true culprit (in which case you kind of expect them to have done so already). If the culprit gets away with the murder, then the accomplice is executed, but if the accomplice betrays the culprit, the accomplice gets off scot free. There is no incentive for anyone to ask anyone else to be an accomplice unless they're planning to kill the accomplice, and knowing that, no one would ever willingly become an accomplice, at least not out of selfish reasons. Komaeda is the sole exception, given that he appears insane enough to let himself get executed in the name of hope. So, if there is an accomplice involved in this murder, they could really only be one of three people: Komaeda, Ibuki, or Saionji.
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Feb 21, 2014 15:09
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iw posted:Did the club have a curtain in the first place? The decorative background looks like a curtain to me, not a flat wall. You can see it more clearly in this picture: 
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Feb 21, 2014 18:54
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Oho, that's a very nice catch. So, Saijonji was looking for a camera - for what purpose? This was before the despair fever incident, and before Souda ever had the idea of building the communicators, so whatever purpose she was after doesn't have anything to do with that. To have her wind up dead in an incident involving cameras can't be a coincidence. Maybe she was suspicious of someone and wanted to catch them doing something incriminating, but who, and what? At that point in time she was mainly hating on Kuzuryuu.Brownhat posted:It's very possible the camera parts are from whatever camera Saionji found, not from the camera used to broadcast the hanging. I'm not so sure about that, though. The camera parts appeared halfway through proceedings. If the parts belong to a camera not linked to the suicide footage, then the killer could've just smashed it up and dropped it there along with the pink monitor unit. The sudden appearance of the smashed camera parts imply the killer couldn't smash the camera before that time, and currently the only camera we know of that hypothetically fits that bill is the camera linked to the monitor unit in the hospital.
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Feb 22, 2014 11:42
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TKMobile posted:wasn't Hinata the only person aware that she had a door-busting talent apart from her SHSL music abilities? Not exactly; Hinata brought the subject up with Nidai immediately afterwards. He's probably still wounded somewhere, but he could have told someone else. Additionally, Ibuki might have well broken open someone else's lock the same morning, only we never heard about it. So while we have no immediate proof that anyone else knows apart from Nidai, it's still a possibility. TKMobile posted:And even moreso, how did NOBODY notice one of the fever patients breaking quarantine by being in the motel, breaking open a door, and finally slicing and then dragging off one of the kids? This is by far a bigger problem, and one I can't explain. Even if the "Ibuki was ordered to open the lock" theory makes sense, extrapolating that into somehow slicing Saionji's throat without anyone noticing takes a great deal more. Van Dine posted:Saionji could have been investigating something suspicious, doing something suspicious herself, or trying to put the kids in quarantine under secret surveilance, but she could also have had totally benign motivations for wanting a camera. I know this kind of meta-thinking is a dangerous road to go down, but the game made a point of Saionji looking for a camera, then never mentioned it again before she died. This feels way too much like Chekhov's Camera for me to accept that it was just a pointless contrivance. It's far too specific, and eerily relevant to the circumstances surrounding her death. The writers wouldn't put something like that — essentially half of a subplot — in there only to immediately abandon it. E: vvv True, but we seem to have a little bit of investigation time left. It may still pop up in the main investigation. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 17:59
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Knicknevin posted:Perhaps this means the video was both real, and live? Two problems: First, the ladder in the video doesn't have a bloodstain on it, so if it's the same ladder that we see in the club (which, to remind, it doesn't have to be since two stepladders are missing from the storage room), the bloodstain would have to have gotten on there in the scant few minutes between Hinata seeing the footage and entering the club. Second, if it was real, then there would be no need to blow out the candle prior to seeing the actual suicide; just show Ibuki hanging herself and erase all doubt as to how she died. Edit: I should say that I think the most likely reason the blood got on her slippers is the killer did order Ibuki to climb the stepladder and put her neck in the noose, but that the killer had to raise the lighting rig themselves to actually kill her. Knicknevin posted:That is to say, what if the murderer wanted the fact that it wasn't really a copycat crime to come to light? [...] The characters in the movie are allegories of the people involved in this crime. I don't think there's any evidence to suggest this Princess Bride-esque next-leveling is required, and I doubt this plot could take any more convoluting. Besides which, we still don't have the foggiest why any of this is necessary. Does it matter in what order they died? We've been looking at this thing from a lot of angles by now, and nothing makes more sense no matter what order you assume the killings took place in. To say that the seemingly pointless effort to confuse the order of deaths is just a ruse to cover up the equally pointless fact that the order of deaths is actually what it seemed to be all along... I mean, it's all pretty incredible. It would take a lot for me to believe it, is what I'm saying. Anyway, about allegories... it works for Ibuki, but only tenuously for Saionji. It's a much better fit for Owari, and the heartless tin-man could possibly fit Komaeda, though I admit it's a stretch; Ugh, there's still so much that doesn't make sense about this case. So many things the killer did that seem to serve no purpose. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 00:33
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I wouldn't put it past Monobear to ensure the right people got infected, i.e. the people he felt would create maximum havoc. But nevertheless I think it's more likely that the movie was designed to provoke some particular person into action, much like the arcade game in a previous case. To most viewers, the movie comes across as a banal puppet show devoid of any meaning or content, other than to stroke Monobear's ego. But maybe to the right person, the movie has a hidden meaning, and whatever that is, it may have made that person sweat and decide to start killing, either because the movie revealed something that incensed them, or because they want to keep something hidden. Maybe one of them has killed before, in the manners shown in the movie? That would make them very nervous indeed, but I'm not sure why it would make them target anyone for killing, unless they suspected that person knew, too. Maybe there's another secret connection between two characters. Like, what if Saionji saw the movie, saw similarities to something in her past, and confronted the culprit with it? Maybe that's why she needed a camera - hoping to coax a confession out of that someone and record it? Instead, she gets a knife to the jugular, and the culprit ends up having to stage an elaborate coverup. Heck, Saionji could have been dead for days for all we know.
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Feb 26, 2014 08:49
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I'm really excited for the next update. With all the speculating we've done, I have to feel like the last bit of investigation should offer up something that might make it possible to zero in on a single hypothesis as the most likely. Right now it's all over the place and everything seems stupid.
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Mar 8, 2014 21:14
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Oh boy, my favorite thread is back in action.  So! Lots of new information here. I think we can safely say the footage was A) Live, since Souda confirmed the cameras don't have recording capabilities, and B) Filmed in the upstairs conference room, as it matches the floor, is lightproof, and out-of-the-way enough yet not cluttered like the rest ward. We also know where the hospital gown that was used in the footage came from. However, I don't buy the decoy camera theory. There is no evidence pointing towards it, and at least one piece of evidence against it: Remember when Hinata first entered the club? There was debris on the floor, but only of the receiver unit. The camera was missing and only appeared later, when Saionji's corpse was discovered. If there was a decoy set involved, the killer could have just smashed a complete set and eliminated any chance of someone detecting the shenanigans. However, I feel like we're no closer to resolving the timing difficulties. Now that we have Kuzuryuu's testimony as an evidence bullet, it seems to me we're going to have to use it to disprove the idea that Tsumiki did it. The relevant piece of information in the testimony is that the two were only separated for a short time, and there is just so much the killer would have to have done in that short timespan. By the way, where did the stray stepladder go? It's not visible in any of the pictures of the rest ward or the conference room.
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Mar 19, 2014 09:35
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ImpAtom posted:the murderer had to have done the 'unveil Saionji and lock the door" in the timeframe between when Hinata left and Hinata returned. That's not even up for debate. The murderer or an accomplice, yes, of course. But the question isn't whether they did it, but who did it. The dominant hypothesis right now, with additions from what we just learned, seems to be the following: 1) Saionji goes to the club to practice tying her obi in front of the mirror. 2) While Saionji is in the storage room, Tsumiki exploits Mioda's despair fever to drag her over to the club and the two begin to arrange for Mioda's apparent suicide. At this point, Tsumiki believes Saionji is still in the motel. 3) Saionji manages to tie her obi, although on her front since she was practicing with the mirror. She exits the storage room and runs straight into the crime scene in making. Alternately, someone goes into the storage room to fetch the stepladder and runs into her there; I prefer the former because of the blood on the stage. Tsumiki freaks out and slashes Saionji's throat to keep her from ruining everything. 4) Tsumiki and Mioda cover up Saionji's corpse behind the fake paper pillar. Mioda gets blood on her slippers. A patch of blood on the stage is cleaned up, though not completely, and at some point the stepladder gets blood on it. Tsumiki kills Mioda by hanging, possibly by ordering her to stand on the ladder with the noose around her neck and then raising the rig. (How exactly did blood get on the stepladder, and where was Saionji killed?) 5) Tsumiki smashes the receiver unit and takes the camera from the club, along with the remaining stepladder. She raises the temperature in the club to make determining time of death difficult. She also goes to the supermarket, grabs a heavy curtain and places it behind the dead Mioda to obscure the colorful curtain behind it, in order to make the club match the conference room. (This step could have been done earlier, while Mioda was still alive, if she needed her help to do it.) Tsumiki rigs up the fake crime scene in the conference room on the second floor, taking the hospital gown from the empty room. 6) Tsumiki crawls into bed with Hinata, and when he awakes, she points him to the lobby. Once he has left, she rushes to the conference room to stage the suicide. (Where did her bandages go? They are not visible in the video.) Hinata freaks out and runs to the club. 7) Tsumiki quickly dismantles the crime scene and hides the evidence. (Where did she hide the noose, gown and stepladder? No littering, remember.) 8) Tsumiki leaves the hospital and waits for Kuzuryuu to arrive, then puts on her little act. They split up. Meanwhile, Hinata is running to the motel and meets Gundam and Nanami. 9) Here's where things start getting strained. Tsumiki has to run back up to the conference room to fetch the camera; she brings it to the club, and smashes it, leaving the debris on the floor. She then removes the paper pillar and stashes it in the storeroom. On the way out, she plants the mysterious resin and drumstick. (Did she have time to do all this in the short time between Kuzuryuu and her splitting up and making it to the motel? What was the point of the resin and drumstick in the first place?) 10) Everyone meets up at the motel. Nanami, Tsumiki, Kuzuryuu and Hinata break back into the club and discover the crime scene. Everyone else arrives, and our investigation starts. Sounds about right? It's a plausible series of events, short of the problems with timing and hiding of evidence. E: Added a few additional unsolved questions. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Mar 19, 2014 |
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Mar 19, 2014 10:36
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I don't think it's particularly important whether she was strangled manually or by means of rising lighting rig. What matters is she was killed, most likely in the club due to the presence of blood on her slippers, and ended up hanging from a noose.
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Mar 19, 2014 10:58
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Er, I really don't think the finer points of "strangulation" vs. "hanging" are relevant here. Strangling by way of gravity forcing a noose against your throat and thereby constricting the windpipe, rather than having that force be applied manually by a person, is still death by strangulation.
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Mar 19, 2014 11:08
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I think we need to be careful not to get too hung up on the projector. There isn't anything in the current plot that requires it, and there is no evidence pointing towards it being used, nor is it an evidence bullet. I think it's just there to have an explanation for why the hospital has a light-proof room. And the reason for that is so that we can give a plausible explanation for where the footage was filmed, if it wasn't at the club. Remember, everything right now is pointing towards the footage being live and filmed nearby the hospital: 1) The mysteriously appearing camera debris implies that murderer couldn't just smash the camera up at the same time as the receiver unit, i.e. because they had to use it to film the staged suicide; 2) The cameras couldn't record and play back footage, and could only transmit what it was looking at right then; 3) The camera transmission range was very short; 4) Souda only prepped two camera sets (unless he's lying, but he has no reason to that we know and nothing to gain from lying about that anyway). We also know it wasn't filmed at the club itself, because the floor is wrong in the storeroom and the camera debris would've been there to begin with if it was filmed at the stage, plus the stepladder in the video is clearly not the blood-spattered one found at the actual crime scene. It really only leaves the hospital itself, and the rest ward is way too cluttered and small to be the site used. The game is screaming at us now that someone was in the conference room at the time when Hinata was watching the transmission. And as for strangulation... it's not a matter of "hanged vs strangled", because the hanging is what causes the strangulation, much like a stab wound causes hemorrhagic shock. The real question is, was she strangled by gravity (hanged), by someone garrotting her (which would leave a straight ligature mark), or by someone using their hands (which would produce irregular ligature marks corresponding to the murderer's hands). The last possibility is immediately discounted by the Monobear file, which shows a straight, narrow ligature mark indicative of a rope across the throat. So the real question is whether she strangulated from hanging or from someone garrotting her in a standing position. However, ultimately, I still say it doesn't matter, and the game doesn't seem to be making a big deal out of it. So what if Tsumiki says she was hanged? By all appearances she was, and even if she was garrotted, the simplest explanation would just be that Tsumiki was wrong. Besides which, the culprit has nothing to gain from obscuring a garrotting as a hanging; Saionji's corpse makes it abundantly clear that a murder has taken place, so any attempts to mask the whole affair as a simple suicide (which might have been the plan from the start) are out the window anyway.
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Mar 19, 2014 17:36
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Spiritus Nox posted:No no no, this is wrong. Remember the movable lighting rig; the most likely way Mioda was hung was by lowering the lighting rig, fastening the noose around her neck, and then raising it back up again. A smooth ascent, with gradually increasing pressure on her windpipe, with no quick snap to break her neck. Also look at the position of the stepladder. If someone had merely pushed the stepladder over to cause her to fall, then it would be lying with its base underneath her, but it's all off to the side. It's very likely she was strangulated by the noose as it lifted her upwards, not that she fell off the ladder and broke her neck that way; and as others have pointed out, even if she did fall off the ladder, that is still not a guarantee that she would break her neck. Many victims of hanging died from strangulation, especially if the drop was too short to generate enough momentum; and looking at the height of the noose, even if she was standing up on the stepladder, the fall doesn't seem high enough to cause that kind of tremendous sudden force.
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Mar 19, 2014 18:35
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ImpAtom posted:"She was just nervous/excited and gave wrong information that happened to hide the cause of death" is absolutely not something that works from a mystery-writing perspective But again, everything points to Mioda actually dying from hanging. No one's hiding any cause of death here; the most likely answer is that Tsumiki is right about the cause of death and that it really is what it seems to be. We return to the fact that, right now, the case doesn't really change if the murderer garrotted her and strung her up or just hung her. They're still just as guilty of murder and we're no closer to learning anything about them. Everyone in the game right now is wrong about something. The order of murders, for instance, still seems to elude most of them. You can't just go "The only way anyone would say anything factually incorrect is if they're lying, because murder mystery", especially when there's nothing we know of she stands to gain from saying that in the first place, even if she is the murderer. That's just not a reason. Just a very insistent shrug. Edit: I don't see how that explains anything, though. Tsumiki was in the group, so why plant two contradictory pieces of evidence, one implicating her and one implicating everyone else? It's just a big evidentiary null. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Mar 19, 2014 |
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Mar 19, 2014 22:46
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ImpAtom posted:There is a difference between "a character is wrong because they made a wrong assumption" and "A character who is explained onscreen to be trained in a specific subject matter makes a mistake in the subject matter they are explained to be trained in." The medical fact of the case is that Mioda died from strangulation. About that, Tsumiki is not wrong. The rest is assumption on her (and everyone else's) part, and we don't know if she's even wrong about that - most likely she isn't. I don't think she's necessarily trained to know the difference between someone being garrotted and being hanged, and both would leave similar ligature marks anyhow. She's a nurse, not a forensic analyst. ImpAtom posted:And as far as what she stands to gain, it is what the murderer would gain from the entire setup: By faking a suicide, you disguise the actual cause of death. There's no other reason to fake the suicide. And the room at the hospital, the missing gown, and other factors make it really clear at this point that the suicide video was faked. Given that Monobear has outright stated that there is one culprit behind two murders, the idea that all this is intended to hide that Mioda was killed rather than committed suicide went out long ago, arguably when Saionji got involved. The culprit most certainly set out with the goal to disguise a murder as a suicide, but any hope of anyone falling for that went up in flames when Saionji ended up dead and the plan had to be revised. I think a lot of the circumstances we are faced with are basically a planned coverup and an ad-hoc coverup colliding. Some stuff (the faked footage) was a part of the old plan that doesn't really work anymore; other stuff (the fake pillar) is part of another coverup which wasn't as well thought out. ImpAtom posted:The drumstricks are the evidence people meant to find. They were obvious and in the open. The other piece of evidence was meant to be overlooked. The entire mystery is "this is what it looks like" vs "this is what it actually is." Still doesn't explain anything, especially not since the "more hidden" evidence - i.e. the one people are more likely to think is the true one once discovered - implicates her.
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Mar 19, 2014 23:23
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Mioda was absolutely the intended target. Look at the two coverups; Mioda's coverup required planning and extensive setup; coming up with the idea of the fake recording, changing the club to look like the conference room, duplicating elements from the real crime scene, all in an effort to make a crime look like a suicide (which would let the killer get off scot free if they voted it as such). This part of the crime had to have been planned. By contrast, Saionji's coverup is haphazard and spur of the moment. There isn't really any good coverup at all, the killer just hid her behind a fake wall for like 10 minutes in order to disguise when exactly she died. But there's no effort to hide that she'd been murdered, hardly any false leads, and the unlikelihood of anyone knowing she was going to leave her room means they couldn't really plan around it. All the components used in hiding Saionji are things the killer could easily find at the club itself, whereas Mioda's coverup includes several components from the supermarket and hospital.
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Mar 20, 2014 08:06
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Bobulus posted:a) Plans went wrong. I still kinda think this is what's going on. If you ignore Saionji entirely, the killer's thought process is crystal clear: Exploit Mioda's suggestibility to get her to the club, string her up, then perform the fake suicide in front of the camera and watch everyone assume Mioda hung herself due to despair fever. Clean up the conference room, dispose of the evidence, everything is neat and clean and the murderer gets off the island when everyone votes that Mioda killed herself. It's a neat plan, and that part of the situation shows clear signs of planning and preparation. If Saionji is thrown into the mix halfway through - perhaps because she happened to be in the storeroom practicing tying her obi when Mioda and the killer showed up - then the killer is now forced to deal with an unexpected corpse that has not only appeared in the middle of what they want to look like the site of a suicide, but the victim has died rather messily, getting blood all over the stage, ladder, Mioda's slippers, etc. But there is one huge issue which I still can't figure out: why did the killer feel a need to disguise the order of deaths? What's so important about everyone believing Mioda died first? It makes no sense, from the killer's perspective, to want to create that illusion. As you said, it would make for a far better ruse to make it seem like Mioda killed Saionji, then hung herself in remorse. But the killer went to a lot of trouble, constructing and removing a fake pillar under incredibly tight time constraints, just so that people would believe Saionji died in that short interval. Why? I can't figure it out, but it has to be important. I'm not buying the idea that the killer did unreasonable things just to make everything confusing. That's sloppy writing, for one thing, and you can apply that logic to everything about the case. It doesn't lead anywhere, it's just idle speculation. Focus on the things that move the case forward and shed light on the killer's motivations for doing things.
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Mar 20, 2014 16:18
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E: Nothing to see here.
Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Mar 20, 2014 |
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Mar 20, 2014 18:06
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Dr Subterfuge posted:The unnecessarily complicated setup is to frame Hinata. Maybe Hinata did do it, has had despair fever all along, and we're not seeing what we're supposed to.  But in all seriousness, what purpose does faking the time of death serve anyway? Normally, you'd do something like that in order to provide an alibi for yourself. "I couldn't have done it, because she died at this time, and I was elsewhere then!" Except, no one has any kind of alibi for the fake time of death either. Pretty much everyone was on their own, so what does the killer think they stand to gain from faking the time of death? Framing Hinata is a possibility, but there isn't any other evidence implicating him other than him not having an alibi... just like everyone else.
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Mar 20, 2014 19:46
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Ditocoaf posted:I'd say that qualifies as an alibi for anyone who was spotted even briefly during that time But who would that be? Hinata was alone in the lobby, the despair fever patients were alone in their rooms, Tsumiki was alone god knows where, and none of the others mentioned seeing any of the others at the time of the murder, only afterwards. At the fake time of murder, literally everyone seems to have been on their own. E: ^^^^^ It doesn't do anything for Mioda's time of death, and it's a pretty watertight alibi for everyone for Saionji's murder, since everyone seems to agree no one could possibly have actually murdered her and taped her to the pillar in that short time. So that doesn't really help exonerate anyone, or cast suspicion on anyone else. The way the murderer faked things, there's one murder that no one has an alibi for, and one murder that seems entirely impossible. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Mar 20, 2014 |
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Mar 20, 2014 21:01
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HydroSphere posted:What exactly is Hinata referring to with thinking that he hopes the after effects of Akane's fever stay around a little longer? I think he's just creeped out by her normal aggressiveness and would like it if she were a little more meek, although perhaps not so much as when she was suffering from the fever. Anyway, I don't believe despair fever was ever really contagious, or possibly even a disease at all. Monobear probably just "infected" whatever three victims he felt would create the most havoc and then lied to the others to make them paranoid and give them another motive to kill. It's possible he would've extended the condition to someone else if enough time passed without any killings, but it never came to that. And then he mysteriously removes it from the survivors. I'm still thinking about the whole purpose of disguising the time of death. I was thinking at first it was to set up an alibi for the killer, to show that they were somewhere else at the apparent time of Mioda's death. But that wouldn't have worked in the first place, since the killer would by necessity be alone to put on that little performance, unless they had an accomplice. But I can't think of anyone who would willingly sacrifice themselves to aid in a murder, other than Komaeda, and he was out of commission and at any rate seems rather opposed to this particular killing. Tsumiki and Kuzuryuu had access to the hospital, but really, so did everyone else. It's not like the doors are locked. They're just staying away to avoid despair fever, but someone could just ignore that risk and go for it anyway. Tsumiki is probably the one that could move about in there best without arousing suspicion, so I guess that's one point in favor of her as culprit. On the other hand, this crime involved trips to the supermarket to get rope and club curtain, and she didn't leave the hospital at all the day before the murder (though Kuzuryuu did). Hardly helps though, since she could've just done all the work during the night.
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Mar 21, 2014 15:43
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I'd say there are really only two reasonable suspects at the moment: Either Tsumiki did it, or Kuzuryuu did it and is trying to pin it on Tsumiki. We have no reason to suspect Nidai, Gundam, Sonia or Nanami due to their lack of involvement with the whole affair; Souda is only marginally suspicious because of his technical skill with the cameras involved in the fake suicide scene, but there are no other connections and it's easy for a murderer to do the deed without his skills; Owari and Komaeda were both hospitalized and their involvement could stretch (in Komaeda's case) to giving advice at most. Ibuki was the intended target 100%, as the elaborate preparations show. Ibuki's coverup required collecting material from many different locations; Saionji's coverup used only material from the club, where she most likely died. Whatever happened to that camera Saionji was looking for, by the way?
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Mar 30, 2014 08:42
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 03:16 |
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Well, my opinion hasn't really changed - I like this thread as much as the game itself, and half the fun is the discussion and commentary. And I'd hate for that to go away. However... orenronen doesn't really owe us anything, and I can't fault anyone for wanting to break it off upon a western release, for the developer's sake or just because that person doesn't want to feel like they're wasting their effort. So, if that's the way this ends up going, then I guess I'll just have to wait until it gets released in my region, if ever. It wouldn't be the first time an LP has made me buy a game (Virtue's Last Reward, Darksiders, ...). But I do hope that, in some distant future three months after the official release, the LP can continue (presumably with the official translation). Plus, slowbeef has a pretty good point - whatever else orenronen's going to be up to in the meantime, I'm sure it's going to be good.
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Apr 3, 2014 20:40
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