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Old 2008-01-21, 01:27   Link #39
chronotrig
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Buffer overflow
There's a big problem with Battler's last scene. You can try to write it off as a hallucination or him being drunk (assuming we're viewing it from his point of view), but neither is actually possible. Ryukishi has written a lot of weird things, but they all have some explanation in the end.

There is no way Battler could have dreamed up Frederica. He could not have known what she looked like.

Although he might have some knowledge of her from the Higurashi novel, he still wouldn't know what Rika looked like, nor would he have any reason to think of her at that time. This also brings up a more interesting question. Frederica must have appeared in that last scene, and must have either been a real person or something with the appearance of a real person. We can guess from the ???? that she is the same Frederica from Higurashi. That means that even if the Umineko universe is not the same as the Higurashi one, the both exist in the same set of worlds that Frederica can travel to. If that is the case, then there must be some significance to the novel in the first chapter and the highlighted section the lyrics of tsuru pettan (though I hate to admit it.) This only makes sense if there are some major secrets from the previous games that are going to be unravelled.

The thing that confuses me most is that Beatrice said that Frederica had the power to make any event that was possible definitely happen. But if we look at the normal interpretation of the Higurashi games, each universe existed separately and Rika and Hanyuu only travelled between them. In other words, they didn't change any of them, but only found one of the rare ones in which it was possible to survive 六月. In other words, they should have been extremely powerful from their own point of view, but as useless as any other omniscient girl would be in the eyes of anyone that did not follow them every single time they jumped. Does Beatrice's comment mean that only the last world existed and that the multitude of カケラ were only "possibilities"?

This might also clear up the thing that confused me about the first series. It seemed that only in the last few iterations of Hinamizawa did anyone remember the past worlds clearly. In Tsumihoroboshi hen Rika admitted that she had never seen it before. In the very next chapter, almost everyone recalled clear memories from previous worlds. If Hanyuu and Rika were just transferring to different worlds without changing the histories of the previous ones, there is no reason that any world would be any more likely than any other to show these impossible memories.
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