[Renall]

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.

That's fine, but then what was the point about discussing motive? There's no real need to get into the whole notion of motive if the point of the stories is not to present a plausible culprit motivated by any particular thing, but merely to establish a set of mystery scenarios.

It also doesn't seem to make a lot of sense that she'd stop doing what she's doing if a completely unrelated puzzle is solved. It also kind of makes light of Battler's struggles and makes it seem like him not being serious enough for Beatrice is hypocritical. If she's just messing around, why does he need to care so much? She's the one who made him treat it as something other than an amusing challenge, then got mad when he didn't get it.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

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 decision to kill herself (if she did, of course) is her own act of cowardice to escape consequences. So it is entirely her fault that she cannot make amends for it. The point is that any apology offered by her or a character associated with her is false. It's a lie. She was never sorry about what she did, or else she would try to live with it and fix it (or, you know, not do it). Maybe she would have been, but she never actually was, because she died (maybe).

If she is truly a killer, she was never made to acknowledge that what she did was wrong and completely unnecessary. What she did was evil, flat out, and your presentation of her is unequivocally an evil character. There's no need to understand her heart because she is heartless. The matter is actually worse if she actually believes in the whole Golden Land thing, because it means she believes she can murder people and then kill herself and gain their love and forgiveness without facing any punishment. It's the logic of a spoiled child.

Granted, I'm still not sure I'd buy that. I'd rather the whole thing just be an accident than to have to accept a person who was just sick and evil.

Her metaself did say she was sorry.

Her meta-self isn't her. It's basically Ange or Battler wishing she was sorry. We have no way of knowing she actually would be sorry, and frankly I cannot buy her killing and being sorry. I can buy her not doing it and being sorry that she led them to think so, and I can buy her doing it and not being sorry, but the middle ground is absolutely impossible.

It's entirely Ange and Battler's prerogative to forgive, but the fact of the matter is her actions really shouldn't be forgiven. If Ange wants to pretend the person who deliberately ruined her entire life (and the lives of whoever else may have survived) is contrite, fine. If that makes her happy, I guess she can do that. But ultimately it's just another sham fantasy that Ryukishi thinks makes people's lives better when all it does is harm their growth and maturity. It's her own business how she chooses to respond to all that, but ultimately it isn't right to choose to believe the person who harmed you is a tragic figure deserving of your sympathy. It's basically a desperate search for reason where none is to be found, at least according to Ryukishi's supposed motive because if that's true then Yasu was mentally ill and everyone died for nothing. I'm sure that is difficult to accept over "she was a tragic figure acting out of lost love and regrets what she did," but it's also not shifting undeserved sympathy away from a genuine victim and over to a murderer who believed killing completely innocent people was justifiable if it made her better off.

The difference with Kinzo is that Kinzo's acts, if true, at least had some clear effect on him and drove him to repentance, and concrete steps were taken to actually atone. It isn't necessary that he be forgiven (and if everything said of him is true, perhaps everything he did isn't enough to make up for it); again, forgiveness is the prerogative of the people he wronged (and he wronged more than Yasu). But Kinzo's cowardice was far less than Yasu's alleged cowardice, so he at least stuck around to suffer for his own wrongs and do some good, suggesting he understands that his actions were not right.

I'd still prefer to believe she's innocent, because as a culprit she makes absolutely no goddamn sense and anyone who is satisfied with that should seriously reexamine why in the world they'd accept such a thing.

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.

If such a clear answer is intended, why is he being so evasive? For example, why didn't he just come out and say that in ep8? Why doesn't he very explicitly state the who/how/whendunnit? I don't disagree with you that it's true he teases this notion, but he also seems to try to dance around confirming or denying the specific interpretations of the facts. That's just awfully weird. If it's so clear-cut he can joke about it in interviews, why is it something he couldn't write in concretely to the work?