[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Renall

I don't know about you, but in my profession when facts are inconclusive to support claims we most certainly don't make the assumption that such claims are true. There isn't an ounce of evidence to support the factual contentions made about Kinzo and Yasu's supposed crimes. That doesn't mean they didn't happen, but I certainly wouldn't presume I'm supposed to believe they did such things and then forgive them anyway.

The point is that they are fictional characters anyway, therefore applying the logic of tribunals makes little sense. Not to mention the fact that the assumption of innocence is meant to minimize false positives and it's not really based on strict logic. There's no point in applying that to a story.

Anyway Ryuuishi constructed a scenario where he makes you believe that person X did Y, and yet he wants you to understand them. There is absolutely no denial in the sins of the Rokkenjima victims through EP8, in fact EP8 confirms many of those, and yet while it confirms their sins it depicts everyone as a "happy family".

We're not talking about what the "real" Ushiromiya did, we're talking about Battler's last story.

Originally Posted by Renall

The distinction here is that Ryukishi appears to associate "understanding" with some level of condonement of a person's actions or at least acknowledgement of their motive. And that's crap on a cracker.

I don't think that's true. If you reread the scene from EP7 where Yasu meets Kinzo you realize that she doesn't forgive him even if he asks for that at one point.

Originally Posted by Renall

That means he either thinks we must be sympathetic toward an utter sociopath - which is absurd - or he's trying to tell us that either the culprit wasn't a sociopath or Yasu wasn't that culprit.

To believe otherwise is basically to think he knows nothing about people in general.

I'll quote Ryuukishi again here. This is from the Meakashi commentary. Reach your own conclusions, but to me it's pretty obvious, and somehow it seems to foreshadow what he did with Yasu and Umineko:

Do you think that a murder can be justified depending on the motive?

Hi, this is Ryuukishi07.
Thank you for playing "Higurashi no naku koro ni -Meakashi-".

Although I depict many deaths in my work, I often ask myself.
The question is, is there a justifiable murder?

In our world, a murder is prosecuted, and the degree of punishment varies depending on the motive and circumstances.

Having different degrees of punishment means that we are putting values on the dead person's life.

Some scenes justify murder in "Higurashi".

By degrading the life of the victim in those scene, the players can sympathize with the character more easily.

The degree of sympathy should be different from person to person.

The people who could sympathize probably felt catharsis, and the people who disagreed with the character might have felt uncomfortable. [...]

In "Meakashi", there are also a number of murders.
[CENSORED CULPRIT'S NAME] tries to convince herself for each murder.

How did you feel?
How much did you agree with her decision?

If you did not agree with her at all, please call her a crazy murderer.

If you agreed with her to some degree, please sympathize with her.

If you agreed with her almost entirely, please also sympathize with her.

If you agreed with her absolutely entirely, please consider yourself as crazy as [CENSORED CULPRIT'S NAME].
(Just kidding.)

What about me?
.....Well, that's a secret.

I'd like to reverse my question this time...
What kind of murderer could you sympathize with if you were to be killed?

A murderer who doesn't care about people's lives?
This death must be remorseful.
It is extremely sad to be killed in denial of all your values.

A murderer who begs for forgiveness in tears?
This must be remorseful, too.
They shouldn't kill you if they beg your forgiveness, ha ha.

So, what kind of murderer could you sympathize with...?

In the end, "sympathy" might be just an element to make the story interesting or not.

It would be fun if you could sympathize.
If would be crazy if you couldn't.

We cannot put a value on human life.

It is sinful to try that.

A murder is a murder.
There are no differences.

I just hope everybody can live happily together.

How does that sound?
Would you agree to that?

If you wouldn't.................. Hee hee hee hee hee.

[...]

Originally Posted by Renall

Kinzo may be forgivable if what he did really occurred, but only because he was sorry about it and tried to make amends for it. Yasu expresses no remorse and takes no steps to make amends (and in fact, if she was guilty, willfully committed to making Ange an orphan).

Sorry but that sounds a bit ridiculous to me. Are you expecting Yasu to be remorseful of what she did while she did it? Was Kinzo? I doubt that's how he felt when he had his orgasms.
It seems to me you are making an unfair judgement based on the fact that one had the time to feel remorse and the other didn't because she killed herself. How the hell Yasu was meant to make amend to that if she didn't live much past her evil deeds?

The difference in your judgements is based on an external situation and not on the persons themselves.

Who said that Yasu wouldn't feel sorry, or well, what if she actually felt sorry in the end?



Her metaself did say she was sorry.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Whatever happened to the possibility that the fantasy narrative was the primary one? EP7 talked about Yasu's fascination with the idea of a mystery being a duel between a human detective and a magical witch. What stops her from writing a fantasy story about a witch who likes creating locked room howdunnits that don't require magic? Then you can stop trying to force silly motives on Piece Yasu, who doesn't exist, and neither the mystery nor the fantasy gets thrown out.

The fact that the gameboards are stories inside a story doesn't prevent me from judging those stories.
Going by what emerged repeatedly from the narration of Umineko we know that those stories:

1) Are mysteries meant to be solvable by human means (no magic)
2) Are meant to make Battler (and you) understand the culprit's heart.

The problem that everyone here is having is that they read those stories they have more or less understood what's going on on those stories and yet they can't understand the culprit's heart.
Adding a metamotive to the culprit of those stories would mean to break the first point, because the mystery would be no longer solvable by human means if the culprit's motive was not part of that world.
At any rate I think that Ryuukishi's interview makes clear that he thinks we should understand why the love gone wrong experienced by yasu made her kill people, not that we should understand that she really didn't do anything bad.