First as a disclaimer: Without the means to read the story right on my own and form my personal opinions about I'm obviously also delving into this habit of analyzing 2nd information sources and maybe even fakes facts you like to discourage. But as all this talk "about" EP8 for the most part ironically has little to do with those easily messed up small details of EP8 but with the big picture of direction, tone and intention IMO I don't really take to much guesses here.
Beside I have read enough of you highly analytical and often unexpectedly critical posts about the progression of the tale to know how to take this first impression.
I think the core of this controversy and discussions flaring up right now stronger then ever and IMO also the reason why the Umineko fan community will never come to term with it lies in how its aggressively tackling the more unconventional concepts of Postmodern storytelling. Or in short: I assume if you don't actually see a point bringing up the special flavor of Postmodern ideology you may also have a hard time seeing what Umineko was trying to do the whole time.
Just as a short reminder how much Umineko fits this concepts:
- Umineko goes to great lenghs to challenge the idea of universal / absolute values like truth or too narrow-minded (but otherwise tried&proven) approaches to riddles. Always pointing towards great revelations in subjective and even contradicting interpretations to find the final answers.
- Its complete build around the idea of metafictionality as the standard layer for storytelling by constantly blurring the lines between the author, reader, the books tale and the "actual" plot while also referring to numerous other authors as well as story writing paradigms, standard tropes and tutorial-like sessions dealing with the genre convention... and all of this in-story.
- Their is also the idea that some postmodern works heavily focus on an rather distorted interpretation of reality giving the story a really magical or dream-like flair..... I guess no need to discuss this part any further.
So I guess Ryu07 is a big supporter of all this postmodern idea as a means to craft a unique and deep tale but the problem is that Postmodernism isn't everybodys cup of tea which lead to the general impression that its most of the time producing weird or comprehensible, pretentious mindfuck.
The real question obviously should be is if its really suited to tell a compelling story this way but just taking this concepts to heart a lot of the more disliked spoiler reveals about EP8 make a lot of sense and are really consistent with his themes.
E.g. I also was a bit sad to read about this "robbed solution" problem everywhere but it just makes sense after forcing this idea of "subjectivity is king" at every occasion. Essentially its just taking this idea to the logical extreme by kind of denying or at least questioning the need for the often cited "word of god" knowledge. You phased it something like "its truth really important?" but you could even take that onto the meta-level and then it sounds to me like "Am
I - the author - really this important to
you while reading and analyzing this story? Come on make up your own mind what value can be found in here!". And if you are of a more "modern mindset" approach you won't like this question at all.
Umineko wouldn't even be the most well know story to try and force this reaction. Serial Experiment Lain was intentionally constructed with the same idea of forcing to find a subjective interpretation of its story (and also as some kind of cultural experiment for comparing western against Japanese reactions to it) and it had the same results: Lain is considered on of the most weird and incomprehensible concepts in anime history and has in conclusion a really niche appeal.
My only problem about all of this (and seemingly many others) is how this story always seem to be advertised as mystery in the first place which now may or may not be complete misdirection. Perhaps some of the more vocal haters right now are right and this really was never intend as a proper mystery and mystery topics were just a hook instead of a goal... That wouldn't even be an asspull, as Ryu07 always teased with this answer (but nobody believed his "trolling") and all the core arcs would have prepared this reveal anyway. Its just suuuch a big and fundamental red herring that is really hard to except that this was his best idea to craft this story.
But beside this drama over this there was one little part of your comment that put a big smile on my face:
"Was it mystery? Was it fantasy? I honestly can't answer to that for the moment."
Well if thats your first impression (and maybe even your final impression) that this still has relevance "after the end" then IMO we can say that Ryu07 (besides all the hiccups in the mystery solution) really pull off his thematically concept brilliantly. Actually that was the reaction to EP8 that I really hoped for. And I don't just think about the idea that he build a unusual moral question but about a much broader success in concept, which I have to elaborate a bit more:
Actually I always wondered that nobody ever seemed to address one specific part of this series when discussing his fame. Their is always the hype about how he is a genius in twisted and emotionally involving storytelling and also in mystery construction (well he may have to endure some cracks in his image for the latter in the near future
) but actually he doesn't seem to understand this story just as literature but as games as well (even before choices in EP8)... and not in just in the sense of "its on dvd and sold in game stores" but he seems to construct them which the idea of an "interactive" experience in mind even if the actually lack any kind of really interactive elements (even less then the already minimalistic VN gaming concept). I always thought of that concept as cool and really innovative but he even gave us himself a point of reference (for those not that versed in mystery) that this idea was rather old and already got "perfected" in context of fair play mystery and the golden age. But he seem to do even more then those stories tried. E.g. he is giving every single of game a explicit game-like difficulty rating which I have never ever seen before for ... well.... stories/books/whatever comparable, so he most likely seem to think about them in terms of learning curves etc. like more traditional video games and some bigger parts of the story could even be called tutorials to teach us how to "play" his games. Their are also so many rules and "tools" present in Umineko that we could easily compare them to fundamental game mechanics of those more traditional games.
So whats the point in spelling this out in such great details? Well IMO with Umineko he may not only have proven that he is a good writer but that he's actually quite good in the "game design" area as well. Well he address one specific challenge about game design in IMO really innovative fashion where many "normal" games fail to deliver: The idea to create meaningful choices.
See there is this guy on YouTube (and by now also on The Escapist) who makes those cool small lecture video about important topics in modern game design and their effect on the quality of games (because its his job you thing about them anyway) and he likes to share all this "insider knowledge" with the world..... and one of his videos (
link here) was going in-depth about the topic mentioned above. Some day I wondered if this stuff he is talking about - in a really weird way - may actually have some kind of significance to the Umineko games and by now I'm convinced they do.
To borrow the videos terms Umineko (as well as most mystery tales) are easily placed in this "only exercise in problem solving" part.... that simple the fun about them to reason out what did happen. Actually mystery by construction really has very little need for deep choices because most of them would also fall in this trap he explains that they would just be part of the bigger problem solving idea.
But here is Umineko turning this idea on its head: The central theme of the game... the main conflict and theme of all games is one big moral / philosophical choice and its quite innovative in its realization.... its always the question which side to take....
Some for the Umineko "players" may not even have realized it by then but when the "intro" to the game was completed with EP1+2 these story constantly forced this choice onto every gamer because if you wanted to "play" this game you had to at first justify to yourself the side you wanted to take and use your reasoning accordingly.
Well at first it didn't even seem that interesting or even comprehensible as a choice (remember how many anime-only viewers reacted to the central dilemma and called the story nonsensical and Battler a stubborn idiot). The big essay about "Anti-Mystery vs. Anti-Fantasy" from the Extra TIPS first the first time made all of this explicit but still at first glance it seemed rather pretentious and trivial to find the "right choice". I even thought his reasoning for Anti-Mystery was really weak and sounded like comparing apples and oranges.
But the more the world building of Umineko grew the more the implication of this conflict also grew and the more it also WAS reflected in the story as one of the most important topics. All the player again and again had to revise their reasoning, their assumptions and theories but most of all to reflect on this one choice and if its still right.
Still I always wonder if this would really work... the final assessment... the option to doubt what is dictated by common sense / logic / whatever....
But well there you have it... You said you don't know what to conclude.... It seems his whole experiment really did work.
Your comment is all I have hoped for and I'm curious to see if I will interpret it this way, too. But I just see you as one of the really open-minded "players" here so I guess I have not to much to worry. ;P
But its not just this statement but this whole forum is testament to how well this worked out. How endlessly has this been discussed in all this different threads after every game and how much variate in opinions (and how often did you have to step in as a mod and remind people to calm down and also accept other peoples opinions as valid reasoning... well actually thats one thing I wouldn't really want to know
)
I also wasn't that surprised by his sudden reveal that EP8 would have real multiple choices. It just fit all this assumptions details here so well to actually explicitly spell out this one choice in game mechanics and make it effect the result of the story. But I guess this also proves your warning that spoilers are really harmful to the intended experience for EP8.
In the end the route about "subjectivity is the way to go" makes totally sense if he wanted to enforce this dilemma in every reader.... and also the complete dual nature of all of Uminekos "reality" was essential to making this work.
Considering all of this said I would also say Ange could really be seen as the central character and represetation for this whole problem. So the under this asumption the whole discussion about how she was a worthless addition in EP4 (or similar complaints) really became absurd. Its also funny how everybody was suspecting a trick about a decoy protagonist in Umineko and now he may have put the most unexpected twist on this by making Ange kind of the protagonist for the "greater interpretation" of the tale replacing Battler. O_o
BTW: If anyone is wondering why this guy from the video was so all over this idea of crafting good choices in games
here is another video describing one personal experience of his team and one example of a well crafted scenario about Mass Effect 2 to illustrate this.