[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[DaBackpack]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

Looking back, actually, that whole scene seems pretty out of place. I'm not really sure what purpose this conflict between Natsuhi and Krauss could serve, and it doesn't seem to happen at all in any of the other episodes. I guess this is one of the earlier planned threads that Ryukishi never followed up on (or just forgot about).

I think it's used to build up Natsuhi as a character for EP1, since she's the main adult of that story. Yeah, it's not really addressed later on, but I'm not too sure it -needs- to be. (Since it doesn't serve any role outside of EP1)

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

Looking back, actually, that whole scene seems pretty out of place. I'm not really sure what purpose this conflict between Natsuhi and Krauss could serve, and it doesn't seem to happen at all in any of the other episodes. I guess this is one of the earlier planned threads that Ryukishi never followed up on (or just forgot about).

It's a high stress situation, and I get the sense Krauss is pushing her away deliberately in order to avoid a situation like her fight with Eva. This is entirely consistent with his later characterization in ep5, where he's contemplating suicide just to spare Natsuhi his own dishonor. I think he's expecting to have to get taken to the cleaners or grovel a bit, and he'd rather Natsuhi not be there because she'd try to defend him. So he lets her get mad and feel like she's being ignored so that she'll actually go.

[GreyZone]

Maybe the scene is another "lie", just like Kanon, Genji and Kumasawa being shocked when discovering the 2nd Twilight in EP1.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

Krauss and Natsuhi's relationship does seem to have gotten a lot better as the series goes on. In EP5 they seemed really close, but in EP1 they didn't get along well at all. Natsuhi seems loyal to him for the sake of duty, but Krauss actually seems to find her more of a nuisance than anything. I mean, just look at this part:



Looking back, actually, that whole scene seems pretty out of place. I'm not really sure what purpose this conflict between Natsuhi and Krauss could serve, and it doesn't seem to happen at all in any of the other episodes. I guess this is one of the earlier planned threads that Ryukishi never followed up on (or just forgot about).

It's possible this scene is also due to the reader subjectivity.
Krauss is the sort of guy who's apparently not good at dealing with others.
He might have meant to deal with the problem alone so as to spare Natsuhi, but Natsuhi misinterpret it and the reader went with it.

There's a scene with Krauss that stuck me. He's telling Eva to be more ladylike then Kinzo come in and hit him for his poor dealing with his siblings but then Kinzo argues with Eva and says he'll disinherit her if she doesn't do how he says and Krauss tells Eva to leave, adds Kinzo didn't mean it and that he'll take care of him.

If you look at the scene at first you've the feeling Krauss is being a jerk with Eva and that Kinzo is violent with his children and doesn't care about Eva.

But then Krauss tried to reassure Eva that Kinzo didn't mean to chase her away (when for Krauss it would probably be good if he didn't have to deal with Eva who wants his place, is smarter than him and looks down at him... not mentioning he'd just been hitted by Kinzo sort of due to her) so maybe was he, in his books, really trying to teach something to her?

Sure, what he's teaching is male supremacy but maybe, at the time, their world wasn't really into women's equality and Krauss didn't think it would so he believed Eva would have to learn to deal with a world in which women were vewed as inferior... or he was simply so influenced by Kinzo he didn't believe women could be equal because 'Kinzo couldn't be wrong'.

Also Kinzo... he seems to be a jerk to Eva, but he'd just hit Krauss, and not Eva, because he was handling his sister poorly.

So could it be the whole scene is seen by Eva's subjective point of view. A bit like when Battler said that that to Ange Kinzo was scary because she saw him yelling, but that was her perspective of that scene and not the TRUTH about Kinzo?

Eva took Krauss' words as an insult so they're represented in the scene as such, while Krauss meant them as a suggestion. Kinzo meant just to scold her while here he sounds like he looks at her like an inferior being because that's what Eva perceived, not what he meant.

And the same can be applied to the scene between Krauss and Natsuhi we were discussing above. Krauss meant to have Natsuhi rest and not be insulted but that's not what Natsuhi perceived. The scene is seen from her point of view so Krauss looks like a jerk.

(by the way no one thinks how odd is that Kinzo rant about girls knowing how to make tea, cooking and sewing when his beloved Beatrice claimed she can burn pasta to ashes implying she's a rather bad cook?)

[GuestSpeaker]

Right, which makes the migraines thing reasonable. But my mom had pretty bad migraines and my dad didn't not ever sleep in their bedroom. He might take a nap in a guestroom or on the couch, but it'd be pretty extraordinary for them never to be together.

Hmm, anecdotally my grandparents stopped sleeping in the same room for reasons of snoring (at least that is what they always said).

As for the bathrooms, how could you forget Hideyoshi ep 1? We learned about them long before the logic error

[GoldenLand]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

I'm not really sure what purpose this conflict between Natsuhi and Krauss could serve, and it doesn't seem to happen at all in any of the other episodes. I guess this is one of the earlier planned threads that Ryukishi never followed up on (or just forgot about).

I heard a while ago that one of the plot threads Ryukishi abandoned was one of Natsuhi and Gohda having an affair. If so, it wouldn't be strange for Natsuhi and Krauss' relationship to be worse in ep 1 and improve later.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

(by the way no one thinks how odd is that Kinzo rant about girls knowing how to make tea, cooking and sewing when his beloved Beatrice claimed she can burn pasta to ashes implying she's a rather bad cook?)

Nothing about Kinzo's subsequent behavior has ever been very easy to reconcile with the small bit of romance we actually see in ep7. He either learned nothing from being with her (which is fine, but curiously underdeveloped thematically), the relationship was not as we perceived it or changed drastically (in ways we never get to see), or it's just weird writing.

[Kealym]

It's highly possible that he didn't learn anything from their relationship, like Renall says, and regarded Bice as a sparkling exception to his regular biases. Like, someone who casually drops homophobia in a conversation, but when you ask them about their gay friend Brad, it's just "... ... oh, that's Brad, though. Brad's cool."

I think it's more likely, though, that Kinzos character just changed a lot. What we see of him is the weepy old man we're already used to, and the then-unknown "middle aged, vaguely suicidal, alcoholic Kinzo" of 1945. It's only after those events that he took his position as Family Head seriously, and if the other elderly characters are to be believed (har har har), he got really wild with it, too.

It also bears to mind that his relationship with Bice was never under public (or anyone's, really) scrutiny. I remember reading this one story about this mixed race woman, whose father was a Senator who openly advocated for segregation and such, publicly, but he kept contact with her, even though she was illegitimate, and would apparently be all helpful and supportive and basically pretty decent when they spent time together, privately. People are strange.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Kealym

I think it's more likely, though, that Kinzos character just changed a lot. What we see of him is the weepy old man we're already used to, and the then-unknown "middle aged, vaguely suicidal, alcoholic Kinzo" of 1945. It's only after those events that he took his position as Family Head seriously, and if the other elderly characters are to be believed (har har har), he got really wild with it, too.

The problem I have with it is that he fell in love not just with her beauty, but with her intellect and kindness. So much so that he made the means of proving oneself to be Beatrice (or Beatrice's child/grandchild, or Beatrice's successor, whatever) an intellectual exercise, a puzzle. This woman's spirit revitalized his very will to live, apparently to an extreme. But the next we see of him (chronologically, anyway), he's yelling at his daughter for being intelligent and then some time thereafter he's trapped his other daughter in a cage, seemingly left her grossly ignorant of just about everything, and is taking advantage of her trust in horrific ways.

It's fine to say "people can change" or "people are different under different circumstances," and Kinzo might be an object lesson in that. The problem is... we don't really get to see any transition, just the after-image of a man decades after the transition event(s). We never see how Bice's immediate death affects him. We never see into his head to get a sense as to whether Eva's independence might be bringing up painful memories and that's the real reason he snaps at her (which would be cool, but again, kinda hard to know). We don't know how much of his late weepiness is genuine contrition and how much is just a selfish desire to see someone he loved (and used?) again.

If Kinzo's changes were meant to be a theme, we don't get enough meat to really dig into that. If it's meant to be a point about him that culminates in Battler's ep8 "You think that's how he was? Well, you must not remember then" argument, it doesn't quite get hammered home enough. It's not merely that there are questions unanswered (which can be fine under the right presentation), but that there are barely even hints as to how something changed, only hints that something did change.

[Simplice Cantabile]

Here's an interpretation:

The story is a tragic coming-of-age story for Battler.

Battler at the start of VN is afraid of risks and is attracted to shallow things in women, both things that are make his character seem childlike. He says about the new boat, "as long as we get just a little less time exposed to the dangers of sinking, that's really just awesomely great." And he makes jokes about boobies.

As the VN progresses, he jumps out windows and takes confesses his love to Beatrice for mature reasons. Numerous references are made to the laws of probability and gambling, in analogy of the risks Battler takes fighting against the metaverse / Bernkastel to find a fragment with a happy ending. Beatrice showed Battler her seductress side and later her tragedy; Battler responded by becoming her protector.

Spoiler for Ending Spoiler:

The ending isn't really a tragedy because Battler gives a figurative "fuck you" to the metaverse. Beatrice has taught him to ignore the world and its constraints. Battler grew up and transcended the metaverse. Perhaps Ange learns this through her journey, and this helps her to move on.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

If Kinzo's changes were meant to be a theme, we don't get enough meat to really dig into that. If it's meant to be a point about him that culminates in Battler's ep8 "You think that's how he was? Well, you must not remember then" argument, it doesn't quite get hammered home enough. It's not merely that there are questions unanswered (which can be fine under the right presentation), but that there are barely even hints as to how something changed, only hints that something did change.

I think the one big problem I have with Umineko, despite still preferring it to many other genre critiques and/or mystery attempts in popculture, is that it didn't do well in reconciling it's different themes in the end.
On the one hand there is the whole story about emotions hampering a complete understanding, both in the absolute good sense as also in the absolute bad sense. This was mainly portrayed by Battler's inability to blame anybody in the first four arcs and Erika's willingness to blame anybody in Chiru. So in a way it is saying, you need a certain amount of distance.
On the other hand it gives this idea of the incapability to ever have a complete understanding of anything, even yourself, because you never are in a position of distance to anything. By this it basically refuses the basic idea of detective fiction and drives the Later Queen Problem to an utmost extreme.

I wouldn't say this can't be done, but I understand why it bothers people. They were introduced to this story as a detective mystery and they end up with not knowing who any of these characters were. This is all well and good as a commentary, but as a story it is actually lacking I'd say.
In fiction we are used to characters being round and Umineko's characters, like people we know in real life, are missing several areas of that. It's like the pictures and stories we get presented by your grandparents, about their adventures in the war, anecdotes from life before that. I heard stories of my grandfather being a farmhands son in Silesia under Prussian rule, I heard excerpts from his youth and that he had to join the army in Nazi-Germany but then defected, I can't ask him now since he died. I was told my grandmother worked in a factory in Germany during the war and helped a family escape SS control, but she died when I was very young. These are points in time, but I will for example never know or understand in details, how the man from the pictures around 1941 became my grandfather whom I spoke to about the picture in 1996.
Similarly, learning about Kinzo is a very real experience, but it is equally frustrating, because fiction "is supposed to strive towards rounding a character" in classical theory. This becomes especially important in a mystery, because missing information becomes an eternally missing piece of the puzzle.

This is why I still think Umineko makes an interesting comment about mystery puzzlers...while not exactly being a very good "novel".

[DaBackpack]

At some point, we realize that the character of AUTHORSHIP of the stories is more important than the characters of the stories themselves. This is probably after EP4 when the focus turns to "Who is Beatrice?" Once we realize that Beatrice is telling these stories to show something to Battler, we have to know that the narrative is subject to bias. So instead of asking "How come Kinzo did such-and-such here but something else there?", we need to ask "Why did the author choose to change the character of Kinzo? What does this say about the author/Beatrice?"

The problem is further complicated when we realize that Beatrice isn't actually the one writing "what WE see" and that all but EP1&EP2 message bottles are Forgeries in 1998. Yet, Battler and Beatrice both acknowledge, in EP4, that Beatrice has changed in both character and game strategy since EP2. This is why I subscribe to the theory that even though EP1 and EP2 are based on the message bottles, the same author of EP3-EP6 adapted the message bottles into Episodes that falls in the same continuity as the others. The author analyzed the writing of the message bottles and decided "This is a love story", created the motive he/she thought was indicated in the message bottles, and wrote EP1-EP6.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by Renall

It's fine to say "people can change" or "people are different under different circumstances," and Kinzo might be an object lesson in that. The problem is... we don't really get to see any transition, just the after-image of a man decades after the transition event(s).

Hm, I think it's very fair to feel dissatisfied with that. Going by EP8's treatment of Genji, though (a.k.a "Oh hey I wonder what actually happened during those transitive decades to make him like this, well, none of my business, really") the plot itself seems to want us to just accept that that's how Kinzo was in 1945, and that's how Kinzo was by the time he'd died, and we're vaguely told about a bunch of rather vicious behavior in between.

Ryukishi seems to reflect on this problem briefly in the EP8 TP, via Featherine's pondering on knowing when she's written enough :
"...my old friend, who is now gone... once said that a human's life is an adventure from beginning to end, so there is never a correct time to set down one's pen.

... ... I do not agree. I think one must put away the pen at some point. I believe one should write a tale to an appropriate point, then leave the aftertaste and opinions to the minds of the spectators."

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

At some point, we realize that the character of AUTHORSHIP of the stories is more important than the characters of the stories themselves. This is probably after EP4 when the focus turns to "Who is Beatrice?" Once we realize that Beatrice is telling these stories to show something to Battler, we have to know that the narrative is subject to bias. So instead of asking "How come Kinzo did such-and-such here but something else there?", we need to ask "Why did the author choose to change the character of Kinzo? What does this say about the author/Beatrice?"

The problem is further complicated when we realize that Beatrice isn't actually the one writing "what WE see" and that all but EP1&EP2 message bottles are Forgeries in 1998. Yet, Battler and Beatrice both acknowledge, in EP4, that Beatrice has changed in both character and game strategy since EP2. This is why I subscribe to the theory that even though EP1 and EP2 are based on the message bottles, the same author of EP3-EP6 adapted the message bottles into Episodes that falls in the same continuity as the others. The author analyzed the writing of the message bottles and decided "This is a love story", created the motive he/she thought was indicated in the message bottles, and wrote EP1-EP6.

Well, I know that the story I'm reading was written by a man in Japan who goes by Ryukishi, and I'm assuming he knows his own characters, especially since those characters are more consistently portrayed than they are not.

This is kinda what upset me a bit about Chiru, though, as you say, the story became about the story, and the humans were more or less reduced to being, well, "mere pieces". Not gonna lie, it was kind of hard to swallow when the tone of the story left no doubt that "Yeah, they are all definitely, definitely totally dead for ever and ever and nobody can ever stop that from having happened."

I'unno, I was definitely holding out hope for that Happy Ending for a long, long time.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

At some point, we realize that the character of AUTHORSHIP of the stories is more important than the characters of the stories themselves. This is probably after EP4 when the focus turns to "Who is Beatrice?" Once we realize that Beatrice is telling these stories to show something to Battler, we have to know that the narrative is subject to bias. So instead of asking "How come Kinzo did such-and-such here but something else there?", we need to ask "Why did the author choose to change the character of Kinzo? What does this say about the author/Beatrice?"

Two things about this, though:

• We barely know anything about the supposed authors. In fact, we barely even have it fully pinned down who wrote what. For the original message bottle writer, we're missing several crucial years and have to negotiate three self-inserts and only vague ideas as to how autobiographical those characters' thoughts and words actually are. For Tohya and Ikuko... well, we really don't know that much about them at all, especially Ikuko. Their writing might be able to tell us something, but between the fantasy/meta layering and Featherine's "reader" conundrum it's hard to know which parts reflect them as authors and which parts are being read in or paved over by the meta-narrative. And then we have stuff like Requiem where we don't know who wrote the individual parts or if anyone even did, and Twilight where we don't know whose head any of this is even going on in specifically and whether they know anything at all about the authors to begin with.
• Even if the character is being used in their portrayal, they need to be a fully-formed character within that context, and over time they ought to be fully-realized within the context of the greater canon. The Kyrie/Rudolf Culprit thing kind of throws a wrench in that, and while discussion of that idea could be an interesting theme - If one portrayal is completely at odds with another, can they both be right? Can neither? - it doesn't really get much discussion.

Originally Posted by Kealym

Hm, I think it's very fair to feel dissatisfied with that. Going by EP8's treatment of Genji, though (a.k.a "Oh hey I wonder what actually happened during those transitive decades to make him like this, well, none of my business, really") the plot itself seems to want us to just accept that that's how Kinzo was in 1945, and that's how Kinzo was by the time he'd died, and we're vaguely told about a bunch of rather vicious behavior in between.

It really does kind of reduce his backstory to a plot device, which I think is problematic. It's possible to use a character's development as a plot device in a way that actually assists the narrative. As an example, ep5 Natsuhi is a good culmination of what we've learned about her with a crucial bit of new information, and that information in aggregate lets us agree with Battler that she couldn't be the culprit even without specific "proof" of it. Because she has been developed to the point that we don't accept that she would be motivated in such a fashion. She has essentially become too human to be a suspect anymore.

The problem is the whole mess with the is-Yasu-or-isn't-Yasu stuff and the question as to whether the culprit is being humanized to the point that you can understand what motivated them, or whether we're meant to reach a similar conclusion about whether Yasu could really do it like we did with Natsuhi, and if so then has the actual culprit been humanized enough etc. etc. etc., and we really have no idea.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

If one portrayal is completely at odds with another, can they both be right? Can neither? - it doesn't really get much discussion.

I still think this is one of the centrak questions that Umineko is trying to ask, but ends up not asking because it dabbled along to much in the beginning. These several portrayals are at odds for considerably understandable reasons, both their creators being different and the intention behind them being different...basically leading to the result that EVERY reconstruction of the past is fictional to a certain degree.
That's why I still wana write a forgery including such inspirations like Goodman, Saussure, Levi-Strauss, and others, considering the importance of language and the act of writing the past.
I think the answer Umineko went for is, as long as people believe in them they are both right, as soon as they disbelieve one or both is wrong.

She has essentially become too human to be a suspect anymore.

That though is one of the central themes isn't it? The attempt to create an entity that is so free of emotional attachability that you have no qualms about accusing them.

The problem is [...] we really have no idea.

And I still think that this is the one thing that pisses people off about Umineko. We have this giant mystery, which spent years to built itself up and suddenly we are told to just leave it alone cause there will be no answer.
It's similar to how people are unable to let other great mysteries go. Who was Jack the Ripper? Who killed the Black Dahlia? Who was the Zodiac Killer? We obsess about it, because in the hyper-reality of a fictional mystery an answer MUST exist or else we have been betrayed. It must be more than real or else our time has been invested for naught.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think the answer Umineko went for is, as long as people believe in them they are both right, as soon as they disbelieve one or both is wrong.

And this is part of the reason why I find that moral - which I increasingly think was just poorly thought out and accidental - despicable and dangerous. It's historical revisionism of the worst kind, albeit painted with a smiley face. I'm sure that isn't quite what Ryukishi wanted us to think or how he wanted us to take it, but "the truth of the present erases the truth of the past" is a very insidious way of looking at Truth and history and an irresponsible way of responding to unknown information.

It also strikes me as vaguely hypocritical when faced with Erika and the goats. If the unknowable past is whatever it's believed to be, how are the malicious speculators any more right or wrong than the nostalgic optimists? Is a statement being made about what kind of portrayal we should choose to believe in, saying essentially that it's better - as in more moral - to choose the rosier one over the harsher one? Is it saying motive is important in choosing how to view the past? That means Truth is subject to one's reasons for seeking it and not in any particular fashion independent of it. If Natsuhi actually was the culprit, is Erika still wrong for accusing her for the wrong reasons, or is she right regardless, or is that not the issue we're supposed to be grappling with at all?

Morally, the Later Queen Problem is not really an issue for literature, because literature has rules and a structure and even if "the bad guy won," he isn't real so he doesn't "get away with it" any more than the happy lovers "live happily ever after." When the book closes, their stories both essentially abruptly end. The very mechanism of the LQP essentially means that if more is written, the moral trajectory of the story will also resume in some sense, so we have that assurance.

In real life, of course, that doesn't work. And applying the notion of narrative revisionism to real life events doesn't really work either (EDIT: Or rather, doing so may "work" to change the perception of what happened, but that doesn't change what did happen, just what people know about what happened, and even this is a very dangerous prospect). Now that's a neat point, and it's certainly something that by itself could make for an interesting conclusion to a story, but I don't know that it was ever the case for this one. It may have been something he thought about, as there's certainly some self-reflectiveness in ep8 about how things like red truth and detective rules don't exist in reality. But if that's the point he wanted to make, he sure didn't make it very well or explore it very deeply, and that leaves the morals that are in place feeling very rough and quite frankly irresponsible.

But as I think the moral as it appears to be is unintentional, I'm not sure what he was quite meaning to drive at with respect to how we choose to look at the past, and how beholden we are to Truth when we have difficulty approaching it.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

And this is part of the reason why I find that moral - which I increasingly think was just poorly thought out and accidental - despicable and dangerous. It's historical revisionism of the worst kind, albeit painted with a smiley face.

I wouldn't necessarily call it revisionism, though that is one of the extremes it can be taken to, but rather a form of skepticism. I myself am very much part of that stream of thought that, though something like the truth might exist, we as humans inserted into a present discourse and discourse of presence are unable to effectively judge whether we reached it or not.
We are firmly inserted into the current moment and into our lifetime, everything we learn about anything from the outside is basically a "story", even history, which is often hailed as being true, is simply a story we constructed based on historical evidence that we consider true. History itself is not much more than a big detective approach with a giant LQP staring us in the face, which many of us choose to ignore.

Yes, the chance of many recent historical events being reconstructed close to the truth is high, still they are geared towards our worldview, moral framework, etc.
Saying, the axis powers were warmongering, is not wrong per se but also missing vital information that draws a larger picture.

how are the malicious speculators any more right or wrong than the nostalgic optimists?

This is though one of the points I highly agree with and could have been drawn with a little less showmaking during EP8. The finale seemed to be in high need of an antagonist (according to Ryukishi or his editors) to create a feeling of the story actually peaking and heading towards closure...something that the very structure and message of Umineko actually denies at several points during its run.

But if that's the point he wanted to make, he sure didn't make it very well or explore it very deeply, and that leaves the morals that are in place feeling very rough and quite frankly irresponsible.

I still stand by my point that Umineko is mainly clumsy in it's attempt to reach a broad audience, while talking within a very limited branch of discourse, mainly that of modern vs. postmodern mystery writing in Japan. While he seems quite in touch with what is being talked about in genre-magazines within Japan, he doesn't make much of an effort (though I'd argue he doesn't need to) to reach a wider audience. So from my POV Umineko is a fairly well inserted genre-piece but not a very well constructed novel by itself, since it refuses on many levels to open up to people.

[Drifloon]

Originally Posted by Renall

It also strikes me as vaguely hypocritical when faced with Erika and the goats. If the unknowable past is whatever it's believed to be, how are the malicious speculators any more right or wrong than the nostalgic optimists? Is a statement being made about what kind of portrayal we should choose to believe in, saying essentially that it's better - as in more moral - to choose the rosier one over the harsher one?

Out of curiosity, if this was the point that Ryukishi was trying to make, and he had put that across more clearly, what would your opinion be of that message? Because this is more or less how I would tend to take it, and I think it's at least defensible. If there's absolutely no way of knowing what a person's heart was, then what should we choose to believe about them? I'd tend to agree that it's almost always better to give them the benefit of the doubt. It's a similar concept to "innocent until proven guilty"; it's better to view a hundred people in a more positive light than they really warranted, rather than to view a single person negatively when they may have in fact been better than we gave them credit for. That's what's wrong with the goats' stance in the Golden Land battle; they choose to view the Ushiromiya family in a negative light because of circumstancial evidence, but they're condeming them for things that can never be proven, such as that Rosa never loved Maria at all or, to take it further, that Rudolf and Kyrie massacred everyone. They're taking the risk that they might actually be wrong and are unduly slandering someone for something that isn't true.

Of course, you'll find no disagreement from me on the opinion that EP8 handles its themes poorly, but I think it is possible to see what he's getting at here. The issue here is mainly that while his themes are mostly about how to approach things that we can't know, he introduces the diary as a device that could apparently theoretically give us that knowledge, which would of course be better than having to form a 'best guess'. But perhaps the point is that even the diary wouldn't give you the 'whole truth', and people would still ultimately be forming opinions based on incomplete information? For example, let's say hypothetically that Yasu really was the culprit, and that Eva's diary reveals that. Eva probably didn't know what Yasu's heart really was, so her motives would still be left to the interpretation of the readers. Thus you would still get goats saying things like "she was an inhuman monster" and "she was a psychopath who doesn't deserve to be understood" and such, and people would still be condeming somebody based on something that they can't actually prove, and who may have had reasons that they don't know about or can't understand. People always seek to interpret and evaluate information, and come to conclusions on it, rather than just taking the information as it is. Unfortunately, there is almost always more than one conclusion that can be reached, and in that sense, perhaps it's irresponsible to even say with confidence that anything is true if there's the slightest possibility that something else could be the case. But since human nature seems to require us to operate based on some kind of assumption, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that when forced to choose an assumption to work off, we should try and choose the one that has the least possibility of negatively evaluating someone who may deserve better.

...Either way, if these are the kinds of things that Ryukishi really wanted us to think about, then he should probably have spent some more time exploring them and less on Bern and Lambda throwing candy bombs at each other or whatever. But still, the fact that the work can be used as a platform to discuss things like this gives it some kind of value in itself, I think. I'm sure Ryukishi would be pleased to see that we're putting so much thought into his work, even if we're going beyond what he actually wanted to say. I get the impression from his interviews that he's more concerned with people taking the time to really think about his stories and come up with their own interpretations rather than worrying about whether they reach 'the answer' or 'the message' itself. Maybe he'd even say that the message is whatever the reader wants it to be.

[DaBackpack]

To be fair, people died on an island where most of its residents were experiencing financial difficulties of some sorts. It's easy to see why people would make assumptions about character.

Of course, it could have been a true accident, but Eva's suspicious behavior in all of the 1998s we're shown doesn't make this seem likely.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

Out of curiosity, if this was the point that Ryukishi was trying to make, and he had put that across more clearly, what would your opinion be of that message? Because this is more or less how I would tend to take it, and I think it's at least defensible. If there's absolutely no way of knowing what a person's heart was, then what should we choose to believe about them? I'd tend to agree that it's almost always better to give them the benefit of the doubt. It's a similar concept to "innocent until proven guilty"; it's better to view a hundred people in a more positive light than they really warranted, rather than to view a single person negatively when they may have in fact been better than we gave them credit for. That's what's wrong with the goats' stance in the Golden Land battle; they choose to view the Ushiromiya family in a negative light because of circumstancial evidence, but they're condeming them for things that can never be proven, such as that Rosa never loved Maria at all or, to take it further, that Rudolf and Kyrie massacred everyone. They're taking the risk that they might actually be wrong and are unduly slandering someone for something that isn't true.

The problem is that not all speculation is created equal. Let's look at the example of Battler's ep8 Kinzo. Where is the evidence that this particular Kinzo ever existed? We know for a fact that, at least in the business world and in raising his family, he was apparently kind of an asshole. Now, that doesn't mean Battler's portrayal of him can't have been true, but it does mean that the position that "Kinzo was an asshole in general" is supported by actual evidence. Is it morally preferable to ignore evidence to give someone the "benefit of the doubt?"

Now the way it works in law is that different things have different burdens of proof. "Innocent until proven guilty" is more of a criminal standard and the criminal burden of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt." In that sense, it is probably true that we should give benefit of the doubt to Rudolf and Kyrie as to whether they were murderers, as it can't be shown that they even had more motive than everyone else present on the island, let alone evidence that they actually did anything. But there are certainly other burdens of truth that we could accept as reasonable; for example, it's more likely than not (preponderance of evidence) that Rudolf and Kyrie were unethical businesspeople. It's more likely than not that Rosa's emotional problems interfered with her daughter's development and rearing. It's more likely than not that Krauss was unfit to serve as the head of the Ushiromiya Group due to his poor investment sense. It's more likely than not that Eva's husband was something of an incompetent marketeer. These are factors supported by evidence (at least, as far as we can tell).

Where the goats go wrong is pretty much where they're written to go wrong: They jump to the most extreme possible conclusion because that's more narratively intriguing. But if you look at the foundation of what they're saying, aren't they at least basing their claims on evidence, on proof? Kanon probably didn't exist, at least legally; I suspect the Witch Hunters of the future just didn't find any evidence of him anywhere and drew that conclusion. Given what can be gleaned from the text, isn't that the most reasonable interpretation? That's ultimately the issue here; if Ryukishi's message is that given the imperfection of knowledge we should choose to be eternal optimists, he's hopelessly naive. That position isn't reasonable, and while we acknowledge that reason isn't perfect, it shouldn't likewise be ignored.

With Ange, I suppose the argument is that she remembers things that nobody else could about her own family. But that doesn't make other people less reasonable about the facts they're aware of, it just means Ange has more and better information. There's also a big difference between "my family were very warm and loving" (which is true, but unknown to many) or "my family were unethical criminals in their business dealings" (which is true, and painful to Ange, but still true), and "my family were mass murderers" (which cannot be known, and is probably not reasonable).

The problem as I see it is that by making Truth a matter of opinion, it allows for truths to essentially be cooked up by these half-baked conclusions rather than allowing the conclusions to stand as exactly as strong or weak as they clearly are and acknowledging that we can go only so far. Claims about the nature of the Rokkenjima victims are generally strong, but claims about their actions on the weekend they died are generally weak. It's fine to leave it at that, acknowledging that Krauss's business incompetence is more or less provable by evidence but whether he'd kill to cover up his crimes is unprovable and potentially even unreasonable (if he gets taken for a fool by moon investors, how in the world is he going to execute a murder without getting caught?).

Just because we can't be sure what's in a person's heart doesn't mean we can't generally speaking get a pretty good idea. That, I would argue, was sort of the point of ep1-4; if this were not true, Battler could never have reached the truth, which we know for a fact he did. And he probably wasn't even Battler at the time, so it's not like he was particularly special; indeed, Featherine in ep6 suggests plenty of people could do it, and Ryukishi's whole gamble on the character of Yasu depends on we the readers doing it. The facts that we know about Kinzo suggest a man who had a whole lot of sins wearing on him. Do we know enough to say whether he was truly repentant? Maybe not, but if we gauge his actions that we do know about we can possibly get an idea. Interpretation is valid at that point (i.e. did he create the epitaph to atone or just as a wacky gamble to make "Beatrice" real to him one more time before he died, for his own satisfaction?), but we can't simply ignore facts (he did create the epitaph, and placed it next to a portrait of his daughter).

Jessica can certainly argue that Kanon appeared before some people one time, but facts tell us he didn't have a birth certificate and nobody knew him until he started working on the island and Fukuin (probably) has no records of him or of who his parents were... and that makes it more likely than not that he didn't actually exist, and the person portraying him at that school festival was somebody else. That may not be the full Truth, but it's a reasonable interpretation that doesn't ignore facts, and that makes it non-equivalent to other theories about Kanon's existence. One can argue this opens the door to fact-distorters like Erika, but an honest interpretation of Erika's ep5 facts always failed to satisfy me because she intentionally avoided creating any means of alibi testing for the one person she ultimately decided to accuse, for a crime that didn't actually happen. Of course such a conclusion is wrong, because her web of alibis failed to account for the most reasonable solution (the crime was actually impossible, hence there was no actual crime).

"Only X could have done it!" is a step too far, in the same sense "Rosa never loved Maria!" is; it's a conclusion that the evidence doesn't necessarily support as most reasonable. The evidence suggests Rosa did love Maria... but it also strongly suggests they had a very strained relationship because of Maria's developmental issues and Rosa's emotional instability. A Golden Land where Rosa and Maria get along is a fantasy, and perhaps a happier fantasy, but it's no more true than "Rosa never loved Maria." The ep8 manga's suggestion that they might have eventually made up more or less tells me that the real tragedy is that they were never given the chance, so I still strongly condemn the entire situation as stealing away the opportunities for these victims to become better people.

So I do believe the benefit of doubt should be given in some sense, but I would strongly disagree with the notion that the inability to perfectly understand someone's inner convictions means that we should choose to revise history to the benefit of the solution we would prefer, as ultimately there's no difference there between Battler and Erika (except that one of them appears to be "nice"). It contradicts the message of the first seven episodes, which posit that such understanding is totally possible, at least to some sufficient extent. I believe that we can understand Yasu and we can understand Kinzo, but that understanding them means we should also accept that the evidence suggests Yasu was depressed and had self-image issues and that Kinzo was a dick to at least most people who knew him. It's possible we're wrong about that, but it's not reasonable that we are. What Ange ultimately has to do is reconcile that the people who loved her were human and subject to human failings as well as human kindness, and it's fine for her to conclude that kindness probably existed even in instances of people in her family that she didn't know very well. But she shouldn't fabricate kindnesses and use them to patch over their flaws either. I get the sense that might have been closer to what Ryukishi actually meant with the whole "Magic" thing, but it sure as hell doesn't come across like that to me (in fact, it comes across as suggesting exactly what I just said it shouldn't).