Umineko 25 – Kasumi, Ange and the Black Witch

This episode was another Ange centric episode and it basically wraps up Ange’s journey in 1998 to find the true meaning of magic.

best sisters ever

Kasumi and Kyrie – The Two Sisters

In this episode Kasumi’s motivation for going after Ange is revealed – a plot for revenge against Kyrie. The story goes like this: Kyrie was the older sister and Kasumi was the younger sister. Unlike the Ushiromiya family, which is male dominated, the Sumadera family is female dominated. Kyrie being the oldest daughter of the main family meant that she would one day succeed the family and become the head of the Sumadera family. Because of this she was put under rigorous training by her family. And looking at what kind of family the Sumaderas are it couldn’t have been the most loving environment. Kasumi on the other hand lived a very easy life – she was mostly ignored by the family and never had to work hard to be in a good position. She lived basically like a princess.

So everything goes well for Kasumi until Kyrie finally gives birth to Ange, who is considered by the Sumdera family as a bastard child. Keep in mind Kyrie had an arranged husband beforehand, but they apparently weren’t married yet from what Kasumi implied. So Kyrie marries Rudolf when Asumu dies and the Sumadera family is disappoint. Now Ange says that considering how the family hands traitors, Kyrie would probably be killed for doing something like this. However Kasumi implies that under the table money deals between the Ushiromiya family and the Sumadera family occurred, thus allowing Kyrie to leave with the mere punishment of disinheritment.

Now the Sumadera family needs a new heir. Since Kasumi is the second oldest she becomes the new candidate. However she’s not nearly as bright as Kyrie and the family probably gives her an even worse treatment than they gave to Kyrie. So Kasumi becomes hateful and decides to one day take revenge on Kyrie. But then the Rokkenjima massacre happens and Kyrie dies. So Kasumi eventually decides to kill Ange instead, using her as a proxy for her revenge on Kyrie.

There are two routes with Kasumi – you can pity her or you can think she’s justified in her hatred of Kyrie. Honestly I think the former. Kasumi got a huge dose of karma from Kyrie’s actions and didn’t like it. As Ange said, there’s no reason to hate Kasumi. She’s not evil she’s just extremely pitiable and pathetic. I mean seriously, ripping up the diary of a dead little girl and kicking around an 18 year old with your bodyguards. Wow you look sooo big and tough right now. Kasumi is basically a loser who thinks she can become happy if she takes revenge on Kyrie in some way.

But enough about her.

The Black Witch

The Black Witch was spoken of before by Maria in the 2nd arc – she’s described as the personification of hatred inside of everyone, but especially in cases where anger is pushed to another person to make someone feel better about themselves.

Now we see the Black Witch as Eva-Beatrice. But is she really the Black Witch? Certainly not. As I mentioned in this post here the Black Witch is seen in the form of the person the viewer hates (or in Ange’s case ‘hated’) the most. Because Ange hated Eva she saw the Black Witch as a younger looking Eva. Eva-Beatrice specifically because she is considered to be the part of Eva that always hated her family and wanted to get back at them for rejecting her, so I can see why Ryukishi decided to make it her rather than sailorfuku Eva.

As far as Eva showing up to murder Ange – basically what happens is the Black Witch, realizing that Ange sees her as Eva-Beatrice, decides to summon Eva from the dead to kill Ange. However it’s more likely that she lied and just transformed into Eva’s form. Either way Eva comes back from the dead to murder Ange (surprisingly bringing a Winchester rifle with her) but Ange ends up getting her killed by summoning Mammon.

The death of Kasumi and everyone else.

This is probably the most peculiar part of the entire scene. The stakes seem to appear and kill all the bodyguards, along with Kasumi. Yet neither the men nor Kasumi can see the stakes and the girls themselves are transparent. Now Ange says they can’t see because they lack love, but it’s most likely this: they can’t see because the stakes aren’t actually there killing them.

So the question is who killed all of those people. My guess: Juuza.

It was a very foresty area after all – he might have thought Ange was taking too long to return, went after her, saw Kasumi and her bodyguards attacking and sniped them all with his weapons (considering he’s a private military soldier I don’t doubt he has some arsenal of weapons which he brought with him). It explains why the bodyguards couldn’t see the stakes, but somehow they were still dying one by one.

Also another interesting part. The anime doesn’t include any types of endrolls, but here’s a particularly curious part from the endroll of the 4th arc.

According to endroll Ange died in 1998, presumably on Rokkenjima. However in the final shot of her on the island she was alive and well. So it makes you wonder how much of what we saw was fake? My bet was that everything from Ange summoning the stakes to kill Kasumi’s gun men became fake. Or perhaps did someone kill Ange right after Kasumi died? Another thing – in the same endroll Kasumi isn’t listed dead either.

Well that’s it for this analysis. Next week is the end of the season. Of course there are rumors of a 9th episode, but nothing confirmed just yet. It would be nice, but I doubt it. After the season ends I’ll put up my thoughts for how the murders occurred in each game.