[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

I could buy Yasu being Ikuko if there was any reason to even consider it, but as far as I'm concerned Yasu=Ikuko is an entirely fanmade construction. There is basically nothing in the whole series that even remotely implies it, really; the only reason to believe it is that you WANT to believe it, not because there's actually anything pointing to it. (I guess you could take Meta-Beatrice being portrayed as the Game Master of Ikuko's EP3/EP4 as evidence, but...well, that still doesn't explain why Lambda is portrayed as the Game Master of EP5, does it?)

Hum... I wouldn't confuse Featherine with Ikuko as Featherine is supposed to be Ikuko+Tohya, not just Ikuko.
Lambda though is the one that supported and aknowledged Beato as a witch, so she has a connection with her and with Battler as well as she'll support and aknowledge him as a wizard as well.
Considering in Ep 5 Beato is dormant and Battler didn't play for most of the game I wonder if Lambda's presence is supposed to symbolically tell us something... though she can be there merely for narrative necessity.

And I think that in the past the stuffs that could point to Ikuko being Yasu were listed more than once and since neither theory was confirmed (Ikuko being a stranger vs Ikuko being Yasu) it's just a matter of which theory you prefer.

We've other points of Umineko in which there are more than 1 theory and we can't prove which one is good after all.

[Renall]

The issue is ultimately the fact that Battler has amnesia at all. Ikuko is necessary as a device to make sense of Tohya being able to function and thrive with serious amnesia. If Battler didn't have amnesia, she wouldn't really be necessary for the story. But instead, a new reason would have to be explained as to why Battler isn't revealing himself. My guess is the author got mad that everyone was guessing Amakusa was Battler nothing the author could cook up made more sense to him than amnesia.

I don't exactly think of her as a deus ex machina, though having said that Ryukishi goes to great lengths to make her seem exotic, magical, ephemeral, and super-powerful, so it's almost unfair to just dismiss her as an unimportant side character.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

The issue is ultimately the fact that Battler has amnesia at all. Ikuko is necessary as a device to make sense of Tohya being able to function and thrive with serious amnesia. If Battler didn't have amnesia, she wouldn't really be necessary for the story. But instead, a new reason would have to be explained as to why Battler isn't revealing himself. My guess is the author got mad that everyone was guessing Amakusa was Battler nothing the author could cook up made more sense to him than amnesia.

I don't exactly think of her as a deus ex machina, though having said that Ryukishi goes to great lengths to make her seem exotic, magical, ephemeral, and super-powerful, so it's almost unfair to just dismiss her as an unimportant side character.

Battler could have merely have reached land, be involved in a car incident (after all Ikuko was about to pass him over) and turn out amnesiac and partially disfigured (also the traumatic experience might have caused his hair to whiten before time). His clothes might be ragged so they can assume he's a homeless person. This way people wouldn't recognize him for Ushiromiya Battler nor would connect him to Ushiromiya Battler as they would have met him on land, apparently involved in car incident.
While he's at the hospital someone (a nurse, a doctor who sees in him his long lost son, whatever) could have grown fond with him, taken him home and help him to find a job and then he could grow engrossed in the Rokkenjima mystery anyway and write novels about it just the same.

And no, I'm not saying this is perfect (I come up with it just now so probably there are holes) but it involves the weirdness that Ikuko is.

[GuestSpeaker]

Her sister, Kyrie, is revealed to be the culprit.

is a statement too contentious to be appearing on the umineko wiki page for Kasumi. Whoever is in charge of that should really fix it.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

While he's at the hospital someone (a nurse, a doctor who sees in him his long lost son, whatever) could have grown fond with him, taken him home and help him to find a job and then he could grow engrossed in the Rokkenjima mystery anyway and write novels about it just the same.

No offense, but that is basically the same thing that happened with Ikuko, only with a local deferment and a bridge-character being inserted into the plot. Be it a doctor or a nurse, people would be asking the very same questions of, why would she risk her job to help him, why is that person infatuated with Battler in the first place. Making them see a lost family member in Battler would actually spark more "that person is actually Ushiromiya XXX" theories.
On the other hand Battler being disassociated from Battler was necessary for dramatic tension to build around his very fate. Thus amnesia is the only logical conclusion unless you write a reasonable explanation for him avoiding his other surviving family members.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

No offense, but that is basically the same thing that happened with Ikuko, only with a local deferment and a bridge-character being inserted into the plot. Be it a doctor or a nurse, people would be asking the very same questions of, why would she risk her job to help him, why is that person infatuated with Battler in the first place. Making them see a lost family member in Battler would actually spark more "that person is actually Ushiromiya XXX" theories.
On the other hand Battler being disassociated from Battler was necessary for dramatic tension to build around his very fate. Thus amnesia is the only logical conclusion unless you write a reasonable explanation for him avoiding his other surviving family members.

Why would they risk their job? He'd been taken into a hospital and he's assumed to be a homeless guy involved in a car incident. Even if they made researches they wouldn't connect him to the rich Ushiromiya Battler who was supposed to be on island. Battler is harmless and nice and when I said they would see a lost family member in him I didn't mean due to his look but due to his behaviour or his young age.

With Ikuko is different as she bribed a doctor to keep the fact he cured him hidden and didn't try to find his family which is weird to say the least. Not mentioning that Battler isn't disfigured or something but clearly recognizable so and Rokkenjima incident must have filled the news so either Ikuko or the doctors should have recognized him.

And I didn't deny the amnesia thing.

The problem with Ikuko isn't that she grows fond of Battler is how she acts when she'd just met him, by basically committing a crime (as i don't think bribing someone is legal in Japan) to keep hidden the fact she'd found him.

Unless she was really the one who passed over to Battler and then denied it and didn't want the police to discover it, her whole behaviour is... well not what any normal people would do.

In short she didn't look like an ordinary person who helped a memory less one but someone who's suspicious.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

On the other hand Battler being disassociated from Battler was necessary for dramatic tension to build around his very fate. Thus amnesia is the only logical conclusion unless you write a reasonable explanation for him avoiding his other surviving family members.

Well that's a bit silly. It's essentially "Amnesia is the only logical conclusion, unless you actually invent a logical conclusion." The very problem with the amnesia subplot is how silly it is on its face. And I say that as someone who finds Tohya a pretty interesting person, but still, amnesia is pretty dumb as the sole explanation.

Especially when there could very well be others, particularly given the way that concepts were developed like "Eva became paranoid in her old age" or "there are theories about Battler and his family being the killers" or even "Battler feels enormous weight from realizing the extent of his sin and doesn't feel he can face his sister until he can explain." There are lots of reasons Battler could be perfectly fine but still have difficulty getting back in touch with Ange.

Saying "he'd totally have shown up in public by October 7th but whoops, he forgot" kind of feels cheap. Especially when you put forth the notion that Battler could be alive and not give a reason for his disappearance. It encourages us to speculate, and the very first thing we'd hit on is amnesia... then reject it for being far too stupid. As a consequence, nearly any non-amnesia solution sounds better just because it feels like more thought was put into it.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

The very problem with the amnesia subplot is how silly it is on its face. And I say that as someone who finds Tohya a pretty interesting person, but still, amnesia is pretty dumb as the sole explanation.

I realize how faulty my reasoning at that point was
What I meant was more, at this point of the story it would have been difficult to introduce a whole subquest of events for Battler that explained away why Battler would be dead yet still alive and not contacting at least Ange. There are of course ways to make it much less abrupt and oversimplified, as the amnesia element did, but we already discussed how rushed EP8 appeared at several points and it wouldn't surprise me if he just glossed over it because of time and space...well and possibly imaginative restrictions.

The big problem I have with the amnesia explanation is that there is not much information given how it came to pass. There must have been a traumatic trigger, but if that was Beato/Yasu's death or his own guilt in the events is left open as many other elements, especially those introduced in EP8.

[Renall]

True. I could stomach it a lot more if we knew the exact cause and how his memories return, when, and why. It presumably arises from his continued association with the whole Rokkenjima story. Which is interesting, because he's uncomfortable with it but pursues it anyway. There's a lot to work with there! If only it didn't come so late.

[GabrieliosP]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

no one noticing it has horns?

Mind you, they DO notice. Keiichi attempts to ask Hanyuu about them in Matsuribayashi-hen but decides to stop after noticing that she has some sort of complex over it. Other people like Takano also point it out (Takano even said that "[Hanyuu] looks like a monster".

People think that they're just accessories, but it's implied that the club sort-of thinks that MAYBE the horns are true (it's pretty obvious that Hanyuu has a complex over being called a "monster", as you can notice from her backstory and she lets it slide sometimes). So they probably think "She somehow was born with horns and bullied for it. But she's a cute girl and we don't mind at all".

But all of this is cut from the anime, sadly.

Note: This gave birth to a meme. Someone on 4chan attempted to post "Why can't anyone see her horns?", but instead typed "Why can't anyone her horns?", to which someone answered "I'd her horns". The joke is about which verb goes in the sentence.

[DaBackpack]

I think pretty crazy things can happen with near-death drowning experiences, though I'm not sure Tohya's case is -possible- exactly as it is. It was convincing enough for me, anyway. My bigger problem is "if we believe that he fell off of the boat, how likely is it that his body made it all the way back to shore?"

I can't really think of a non-convoluted way of setting up the same situation, honestly. "Battler's death" is something that's pretty important for the story he creates with 1998+ (not that I necessarily agree with this choice, but that's how it is). The only other thing I can think of is "to cope with the sadness, Tohya dissociates himself with this persona and tries to become another person". But then he'd be a real dick to leave Ange alone like that, which doesn't seem entirely in character. And "shedding a persona", while it is something Yasu does and is not entirely out of the question, is certainly not something any old person can do.

It would have been cool to have more elaboration though, I agree.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Well, considering that Yasu is:
Beatrice (elder, younger and first)
Shannon
Kanon
TMF19YA
Kinzo's grandaughter
Kinzo's daughter
Kuwadorian Beato's daughter (yes, I separed her various family relations, if you feel like counting them as one suit yourself)
Clair
and I won't go into her assorted roles (hidden family head, culprit, maker of the assorted magical creatures and gameboards, writer of the message bottles, each cousin's love interest, supporter of the Beato's cult) and the fact it's unsure if she's a she or a he...

... well, I wouldn't be surprised if she were to be also Ikuko. I guess I wouldn't be surprised not even if it turned out actually she's Okonogi in disguise...

Also GreyZone has a point. She showed up too late and yet she was sort of important and part of the solution about how we never heard of Battler.

We could have guessed Battler managed to escape and have amnesia or was hiding and even that he was writing books about Rokkenjima but to figure out he'd been helped by a random rich stranger that kept the fact she found him hidden and is willing to pay a doctor to have his silence... well, that's too random and too uncommon for us to guess... and reminds me of what Kinzo did with Bice Castiglioni.

In short as far as I'm involved if Ikuko is Yasu it's probably lame (and either she lied to Tohya or most of the backstory we learnt is a lie Tohya told us) but it makes more sense than having her as a random stranger.

1. I should've been clearer - when I say "icky", I don't mean the incest stuff, which I'm pretty neutral about, really. I just find Ikuko=Yasu a heinously unlikable person, and the relationship with Tohya irredeemably creepy.

2. Okonogi is actually Yasu.
Amakusa is actually Yasu.
Kasumi is also actually Yasu.
Ange never witnesses any of them at the same time, right? Kihihihihi..!!

But no seriously I would literally prefer that TOHYA was somehow actually Yasu, with Ikuko still being a random stranger.

3. I'm sure I've mentioned this opinion on the subject before, but I just didn't see any reason to doubt Ikuko's narrative, as it was given. To say nothing of the logistical leaps of faith Ikuko=Yasu would require. I also wouldn't compare Ikuko to Shannon / Kanon / Gaap / Clair etc., because all of those selves are literally based in/on Rokkenjima, and we're told more than once that for Yasu, Rokkenjima was pretty much the entire world. Ikuko, on the other hand, is completely unrelated save for living (apparently) somewhere nearby. She has past misadventures, and siblings, and employees. Hell, when did Yasu learn to drive, even?

To go further, I kinda like the idea of Ikuko=Random because it reinforces this idea that uh, how to phrase this ... "real life is not fiction". Or rather, sometimes, stuff just happens. Completely inexplicable stuff. And Tohya's / Ikuko's narrative is occurring in (by a somewhat generous assumption, I admit) the realiest level of real Umineko is probably going to give. Though, as Renall has already stated, she's really only necessary because of lol Amnesia™, which is pretty bull-shitty on Ryukishi's part to begin with.

Of course, I'll have to accept any clarification that's given when the manga reaches that point, but maaaaan, I would totes declare Ikuko=Yasu the villain of the entire series.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Kealym

Of course, I'll have to accept any clarification that's given when the manga reaches that point, but maaaaan, I would totes declare Ikuko=Yasu the villain of the entire series.

That'd pretty much deserve a new zts track with even more menace than The Executioner and Yomotsuhirasaka combined

I have to agree with you there, because not only would that mean that Yasu had accounted for everything on the island to happen exactly like this, which would make her not only a mass-murderer but insane beyond repair, she would also be so selfish that she'd be not satisfied with having Battler all for herself after robbing him of everything.
It would be a heavily dick move from her to go one day:
"Hey, Touya, I found this article online and I thought it would go great in my book about this murder on a remote island...it's called the Rokkenjima Incident."
Her actual thought process would be like:
'I will make you solve my game, even if it kills you three times!!!'

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by haguruma

Well, there is few evidence to prove that Hanyuu was or was not actually part of the plot that Ryuukishi had planned at the point of Onikakushi, her first mention came at the exact same point as Ikuko/Toya's appearance during Meakashi, the 6th entry in the series, so criticizing Ikuko in comparison to Hanyuu seems unfair to me. I think it is very much up to personal interpretation and liking. Medieval dimension-travelling ghost ancestor of a protagonist from (possibly) outer space or vastly rich shut-in mystery writer who was in the right place to save a protagonist, I had a harder time to swallow the first one.

I'm not talking about realism here, I'm talking about their roles in their respective narratives.

If we aren't biased against magical explanations from the start, then there's no shortage of evidence of Hanyuu in early Higurashi (it's just that at that point we only know her as Oyashiro-sama and don't yet understand her motives very well). It wasn't the character of Hanyuu that came out of nowhere sp much as it was magic itself being real. Ikuko, on the other hand, shows up late (with completely no foreshadowing) and serves more to further complicate things than provide answers for them.

My problem with Ikuko=random isn't that she was in the right place to save the protagonist (it's quite natural that our helpless amnesiac needs somebody to take care of him). It's that she's a lot more than that: I mean, what narrative purpose does it serve to have a person completely unrelated to the incident have her hands in writing about it? Battler doing it by himself would be fine. Why inject her as a factor?

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Hum... I wouldn't confuse Featherine with Ikuko as Featherine is supposed to be Ikuko+Tohya, not just Ikuko.

Why do you say that?

Originally Posted by haguruma

not only would that mean that Yasu had accounted for everything on the island to happen exactly like this, which would make her not only a mass-murderer but insane beyond repair,

This would only apply to a pre-incident authorship scenario.

Here's a general outline to a Ikuko=Yasu scenario I'd prefer:

1. Yasu plans on leaving the island after the 1986 family conference, probably as Shannon living with George. Using the gold, she's already made arrangements including a mansion, and perhaps another identity. As a kind of goodbye celebration to her life on the island, and to Battler in particular, she orchestrates a murder game.
2. Something goes wrong in the game. Someone hijacks it to try to obtain the gold, or someone takes it as too real. In any case, somehow the mansion blows up with only Battler, Yasu, and Eva surviving.
3. Traumatized Battler loses his memory in the tragedy. Yasu takes him to the mansion she had arranged prior, and takes on the identity of Ikuko. Or perhaps they had been together for a while before Battler lost his memory.
4. Finally, wanting to express her feelings of guilt for her part in the tragedy, and to express herself anonymously to Battler, she arranges a hoax suggesting Beatrice to be the culprit who killed everyone.

Something like that.

-----------------------------------------------------

And, since it's related to the current discussion and has been on my mind recently, I'm going to bring up the topic of how real the "magic" ending really is. Aside from it being a so-called "magic" ending and requiring a liberal amount of "Rule of Drama" to swallow, there's also the one conversation between Ange and 'Hachijou' at the end of EP6:

Hachijou: As thanks for the considerable time you have given to me, .........I will someday write your tale.
Ange: Am I going to appear in another of your forgeries? ...I hope you kill me in a slightly better way this time.
Hachijou: ......Do you...like miracles?
Ange: Are you talking about opportunism? ......I used to hate it, but recently I've become a big fan. Still, I'm picky about what I'll accept, and falling from a skyscraper and ending up unharmed isn't what I'd call a miracle.
Hachijou: Then, one day, perhaps, I will write you a tale that you consider a miracle......

Honestly, it fits really well as foreshadowing. I mean, here we have a promise from Hachijou to write "Ange's tale" with a miracle she could accept... It seems veeerrrry likely to me that this is a reference to the EP8 ????.

To me, it seems to suggest that the EP8 ???? is not Prime, or perhaps that there isn't even a Prime at all. What do you think, everyone?

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

If we aren't biased against magical explanations from the start, then there's no shortage of evidence of Hanyuu in early Higurashi.

If you are not biased against the author-theory from the start then there are hints towards Ikuko (she IS the writer after all) in the EP1 endscroll already. It is very easy to retroactively write something into the plot and I admit that it was done less skillfully with Ikuko than with Hanyuu, but retcons they still are.
It might just be that I found Hanyuu's insertion into the story much more jarring (cranking the necessary suspension of disbelief up another 200 points) than the insertion of random mystery author X into Umineko (even if she was suspicious beyond belief).

I mean, what narrative purpose does it serve to have a person completely unrelated to the incident have her hands in writing about it? Battler doing it by himself would be fine. Why inject her as a factor?

The purpose is exactly that Battler does not write about it, he is merely the muse for Ikuko's fiction, which in turn slowly becomes a battle for Touya himself.

This would only apply to a pre-incident authorship scenario.

What I dislike about any post-incident authorship theory is that it requires us to consider hints that are given to us as facts from 3rd party characters to be untrue without any apparent hint towards why they would be fabricated.
Police reports are said to have dated the letters in the bottle to a date shortly before or during October 4th-5th 1986. It is also said that one of the two bottles was found during the investigation started on October 6th. There is no clue within the stories that these stories could be wrong.

Finally, wanting to express her feelings of guilt for her part in the tragedy, and to express herself anonymously to Battler, she arranges a hoax suggesting Beatrice to be the culprit who killed everyone.

It would still make her a huge asshole, because she put Battler through this and now puts Touya through it, simply because she needs to do this. She would basically be exactly the evil witch that was introduced to us in EP1.

To me, it seems to suggest that the EP8 ???? is not Prime, or perhaps that there isn't even a Prime at all. What do you think, everyone?

I would rather say that it is a hint towards the basic concept of what EP8 is trying to be for Ange from Touya's perspective. For any theory regarding it to be specifically geared towards the ???? part of the ending we would have to disregard that Twilight of the Golden Witch itself was aimed at Ange by Touya to calm her, which failed miserably.

If the ???? does not depict any "Prime" then there truly might not be a prime universe at all, which basically puts all our musing about "what actually happened" at rest. We can concentrate on solving the mysteries of each world separately and any unifying element is simply fabrication by an author we can never truly be sure about.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Kealym

But no seriously I would literally prefer that TOHYA was somehow actually Yasu, with Ikuko still being a random stranger.

Who's to say he isn't? After all, Tohya and Young Kinzo have the same face, and Yasu is both gender-indeterminate and 75% Kinzo!

Which dovetails off your theory of Amakusa/Kasumi/Okonogi being Yasu... Literally every person Ange has ever met after the Rokkenjima Incident has been Yasu. Eva? Yasu. The bodyguards? Yasu. Her schoolmates? All Yasu. Professor Ootsuki? Yasu (how else did he recognize the handwriting?). Ikuko? Yasu. Tohya? Yasu. The Maria delusion from reading her diary? Yasu. Ikuko's cat? Assuredly also Yasu.

I'm not sure yet but Ange may also be Yasu.

Originally Posted by haguruma

It would still make her a huge asshole, because she put Battler through this and now puts Touya through it, simply because she needs to do this. She would basically be exactly the evil witch that was introduced to us in EP1.

Exactly. Stupid as amnesia may be, if we accept it as happening it makes Tohya a completely different person from Battler, which means Ikuko-Yasu would be tormenting a man who is literally an innocent stranger for her own satisfaction. There would be nothing redeemable about that.

Unfortunately, narrative simplicity and narrative morality are at odds there, and that's why her character kind of sticks in my craw. I want her to be something simple that ties things up nicely, but if she is she's a huge dick and not worth liking.

Originally Posted by haguruma

If the ???? does not depict any "Prime" then there truly might not be a prime universe at all, which basically puts all our musing about "what actually happened" at rest. We can concentrate on solving the mysteries of each world separately and any unifying element is simply fabrication by an author we can never truly be sure about.

Spoiler:

"Oh good, everything's just meta and I'm a wizard homonculus with fake memories. Fantastic."

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

Spoiler:

"Oh good, everything's just meta and I'm a wizard homonculus with fake memories. Fantastic."

LOLOL!!!
Ikuko: But don't worry love. We're all Yasu anyway.
Battler: What do I get from that?
Ikuko: I could write you boobs...
Battler: Hmmmmm

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

I think pretty crazy things can happen with near-death drowning experiences, though I'm not sure Tohya's case is -possible- exactly as it is. It was convincing enough for me, anyway. My bigger problem is "if we believe that he fell off of the boat, how likely is it that his body made it all the way back to shore?"

I can't really think of a non-convoluted way of setting up the same situation, honestly. "Battler's death" is something that's pretty important for the story he creates with 1998+ (not that I necessarily agree with this choice, but that's how it is). The only other thing I can think of is "to cope with the sadness, Tohya dissociates himself with this persona and tries to become another person". But then he'd be a real dick to leave Ange alone like that, which doesn't seem entirely in character. And "shedding a persona", while it is something Yasu does and is not entirely out of the question, is certainly not something any old person can do.

It would have been cool to have more elaboration though, I agree.

Well, he technically was an 18 year old halfbrother who, being a minor, unlikely would have her thrusted in his care, that was possibly traumatized and that was leaving her to the cares of their aunt, whom he assumed loved her and could provide to her.

It's not as if he's leaving Ange in the middle of the street and, if his parents were involved in the invident, he could have been enough upset to not feel up to meet her and think 'it's better if she believes me to be dead'.

The real problem is that really, the future was sort of tossed there without any real explanation and Ange seemed to swallow anything Battler/Tohya told her without too much investigation.

It's obviously not the case but what if the person she met wasn't either Battler nor Tohya but someone who incidentally resembled Battler a bit (each difference can be waved off as him aging) and that planned to gain her trust presenting as his brother and sort of playing disinterested for later getting some money from her?

Originally Posted by Kealym

1. I should've been clearer - when I say "icky", I don't mean the incest stuff, which I'm pretty neutral about, really. I just find Ikuko=Yasu a heinously unlikable person, and the relationship with Tohya irredeemably creepy.

Well, I personally don't like much how Ikuko kept Battler hidden at first without even knowing him. Personally it always reminded me of 'Misery' even though Battler apparently ended on a wheelchair for other reasons than her cutting his foot.

Theoretically however we can assume that Ikuko is Yasu without Yasu being really a mastermind or something if we say that:

In truth once Yasu inherited she left the island however continued to toy with the idea of writing a murder placed on it and then would place her stories in bottles and toss them to the sea.

She's in contact with Kumasawa and finds out the new servant is sort of crushing with George while Jessica is interested in the boy servant and in her tales depict them as if they'd been her.

In that fateful year she found out the Ushiromiya were having economical troubles and sent money to help them although she did it in such a way it couldn't be connected back to her.

After the Rokkenjima tragedy she finds Battler out of luck and hides him partly because... well she's Kinzo's daughter/grandaughter and partly to spare him from the troubles of a police investigation.

She however finds out he lost his memory and that he's growing fond of her again and is tempted to live in her little happy heaven with Battler, even if she'd like for him to remember her, ence she involve him in the Rokkenjima mystery tales series. As she doesn't know what happened on Rokkenjima and fails to understand Battler couldn't take it so well she doesn't see anything wrong with it.

As her plan begins to show side effects since Battler doesn't react well to it she begins to grow concerned if what she's doing is right or wrong, ence she will encourage him to see Ange.

Battler will later fully recover his memory and sort of write a tale to explain he recognized her or something.

It would match with: Beato writing tales to make him remember about their promise.
Battler finding horrible the whole game Beato is playing with him and reacting to it not as if it was a game/tale but something really taking place.
Beato losing hopes and stopping to wait for him (Yasu left Rokkenjima)
Beato sort of resurrecting but as a different person
Battler writing a tale for her.

This would also insure that Yasu is innocent of the tragedy but could make her feel guilty because her tales whom she tossed gave the idea to people that there was a conspiration and that it was all the work of a witch.

And of course considering how little data we have on the future I'm sure a lot more theories can fit with the few info we have that would rance from Ikuko being Yasu, Yasu being Tohya who believes to be Battler, Ikuko being evil to being a nice albeit odd person.

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

3. I'm sure I've mentioned this opinion on the subject before, but I just didn't see any reason to doubt Ikuko's narrative, as it was given. To say nothing of the logistical leaps of faith Ikuko=Yasu would require. I also wouldn't compare Ikuko to Shannon / Kanon / Gaap / Clair etc., because all of those selves are literally based in/on Rokkenjima, and we're told more than once that for Yasu, Rokkenjima was pretty much the entire world. Ikuko, on the other hand, is completely unrelated save for living (apparently) somewhere nearby. She has past misadventures, and siblings, and employees. Hell, when did Yasu learn to drive, even?

Well, it's more that Rokkenjima is the entire world for Beato.
Shannon left it with George and had been always planning to leave it, first with Battler and then with George. Plus she didn't study on Rokkenjima meaning each time she went to school she left it.
If she were to truly leave Rokkenjima it would make sense, considering how she is, she would take on another 'personality/persona' who's not the servant Shannon but neither is the witch Beatrice and become Ikuko the sort of not very wanted child of a rich family.

Also... it's all a matter of believing.
Pick up the other ending. Can we say for sure Amakusa wouldn't have killed Ange and that Ange was solely being paranoid? That Kuwabata actually wasn't in with the Sumadera? And at the same time: can we say for sure that Ange wasn't being paranoid but had good reasons not to believe them?

Plus Ange in that bit is aware that the witches said that Battler was dead with red truth... so for all we know it could even be all a fantasy scene and in truth Ange never met Tohya, she just build a fantasy over it.

So not only we can't be sure if what was said was reliable but if it even took place...

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Honestly, it fits really well as foreshadowing. I mean, here we have a promise from Hachijou to write "Ange's tale" with a miracle she could accept... It seems veeerrrry likely to me that this is a reference to the EP8 ????.

To me, it seems to suggest that the EP8 ???? is not Prime, or perhaps that there isn't even a Prime at all. What do you think, everyone?

Personally I've suspected by a long time that whatever Ange-ending is just a story, a tale in the catbox that's Ange's future, not Prime.

[DaBackpack]

Originally Posted by Renall

Yasu is both gender-indeterminate and 75% Kinzo!

I think this is actually a really important detail. Yasu is basically genetically Kinzo.

The reason the solution doesn't make sense is because you are putting it past Kinzo.

[GreyZone]

What I always found strange about Ikuko was Ikuko's "character development". The Ikuko we see from EP6 on seems to be a very confident and quite mysterious person.

And in EP8-??? she even appears like someone with "eternal youth" or something like that. I immediately had to think of Yasu, an experts in changing her own appearance.

And even though she appears as an "otherwordly being" here, she does appear as quite the opposite in Tohya's first memories. It gets revealed that she seems very inconfident about her scripts, a big contrast to the confident, almost arrogont person, she would later become. Also a parallel to Yasu again, because both are authors and both had problems about being "acknowledged".

Also both had a rich family, which neither had real stable contact with.
___

Well aside from all these reasons, I am not really saying that Ikuko must really be Yasu. The scenario that she "recreated Yasu in her own image" would be possible too, which would however mean that we NEVER see the real Yasu (aside from Legend and Turn) and that Yasu was merely a "self-insert" by Ikuko.

___

Which leads me to another matter: How did Battler get his "brain injury"? Well nothing speak against the possibility, that the reason Eva and Battler "seperated at some point" could be that she became too paranoid and then shot Battler, leaving a big injury, that was not immediate live-threatening though.

While this assumes Ikuko=Yasu again, I actually just try to make sense of EP7, escpacially "Kinzo's story", which seems very strange to me. Did we all of a sudden have a authorial narrator that "magically" speaks to the viewers? I think this would then be the FIRST TIME WE HAD AN AUTHORIAL NARRATOR in the whole of Umineko (aside from possibly the bit with after incident news reports or something like that, shortly before the scene, where Eva-in-deathbed and 1998 Ange were introduced). So of course I become sceptic? How did anyone in the post-Rokkenjima world get to know about Kinzo's past in the Rokkenjima-military base? Was Battler (and so by extension Tohya) was just told these things before Yasu died? (Which would be necessary for Ikuko=RandomStranger to work and seems very unlikely for me, but we had the message bottles written in 2-3 days, so I "wouldn't put it past R07"). Or did Yasu write it from what was told her by Genji etc. (If Ikuko=Yasu would be true).

Until now EP7 feels so disconnected from the story... was the content really just a "DEUS EX MACHINA authorial narrator", or was it just... "guessed" like this?

And since we had so many parallels between WizardBattler and Kinzo, could the scenes in the military base of Kinzo's past be a parallel to what happened in October 1986

Of course my premise could be wrong too (sudden authorial narrator being an "asspull"), that's why I would ask you: Did I get something wrong with my impression?