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Old 2012-10-18, 20:25   Link #30910
chronotrig
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Join Date: Sep 2007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kiltias View Post
Just sounds to me like as if Ryukishi kinda implies that while there is an actual truth which is correct, there is also another truth that is correct and far better when overthinking the obvious and seeing the mistakes to reach a conclusion that is superior than the actual one.

Which is why I think there are two answers to Umineko.
Shkanon and something else.
It makes sense to me, if we go with the whole chessboard thinking thing. Nearly all really good detective novels have at least one fake culprit or fact that gets taken for granted for most of the story, only to get shattered in the big reveal. More fun for the writer, and more fun for the reader, who's forced to rethink everything they took for granted rather than just saying "oh, I guess that's what it was".

While it's certainly true that most of us didn't suspect that Shannon was the culprit or the heir until very late on, the servants as a whole have been obviously suspicious the whole time. In fact, they're so suspicious, you don't even have to think up explanations for most of the closed rooms, since they depend entirely on testimony from those people.

Even more suspicious than this is the character of Beatrice. We've been outright told that she's the culprit constantly, and the old witch pranks tie her pretty clearly to someone living/working on the island.

This is the biggest problem with Shkanon. It has plenty of details that we might find interesting and/or unexpected, but in the end, "crazy person who was Maria's friend, lives on the island, and has a love of the occult killed everyone for an insane ceremony" is the most obvious answer early on in EP1, and remains the most obvious answer throughout the whole series.


Remember the EP3 Ryuukishi, who gave us a half-dozen plot twists in the last few chapters of each game? I find it hard to believe that game's biggest twist is supposed to be which one of the servants was actually the ringleader.
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