[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[qno2]

Setting aside Ryukishi's odd opinions about men and women...

Ryuu: If she actually left the island and “they were together for the rest of their lives” became an established fact, then within Beatrice, it would lead to the loves of the other two couples being denied. In order for those two couples to remain happy, the cat box named Beatrice has to remain shut. But if Battler took her away from the island, then that cat box would be opened… No, at this point I want to be evasive.

[...]

Ryuu: Yes, that’s exactly right. At that moment, her love was complete. Beatrice was able to imagine, “Ah, the person named Beatrice and Battler were able to be together for the rest of their lives.” So that was enough. And because continuing any further would open the cat box that must not be opened, it was better to let it all fade out as a beautiful memory.

[...]

Ryuu: Depending on whether or not you understand why she decided to jump into the sea, your impression of that scene will be completely different. In that sense, I think that anyone who doesn’t understand that scene surely didn’t understand the story either.

I'm trying to look at this from KNM's Rosatrice...

Originally Posted by Jaden

The love duel is explained something like this:

For Rosa to fulfill her plan and to get Battler to understand her, everyone has to die and be resurrected in the golden land or whatever. She's delusional and doesn't really have a chance in this duel to begin with.

George is the second culprit and his plan involves escaping with Shannon while the bomb kills everyone else, especially Battler. George is about to be betrayed by Rosa so only one of them can survive anyway, bomb or not.

Kanon and Jessica can only end up together if both Rosa and George fail (either die or get arrested)

Why would Rosa/Beatrice care about the other pairs? Why would she jump to ensure their existence? She just wants Battler (for some odd reason) and revive Kuwadoriantrice, neither George/Shannon nor Jessica/Kanon seem to really interest her aside their role as sacrifices. [Unless, of course, there is more to it that adressed this particular point.]

I am aware that KNM argues that both EP8 and most of Ryukishi's interviews are ridden with lies, but a statement such as "if you don't understand this, you don't understand the story" seems really strong and unnecessarily misleading, even if you are intentionally trying to deceive those "without knowledge" to honor those who "achieved knowledge" (or, in KNM's words, are one of "the chosen"). What chance does one have to "gain" the knowledge then? Except asking Guru KNM of course.


Meanwhile, trying to save all three romances in the Golden Land has been hinted at during the Love Duel, and is probably the most we've got in terms of a gameboard "motive" for Shkanontrice (and is more like Yasu's "wish" from a Prime perspective), if there is such a thing in the first place.

Of course we could now claim that he only implied that this is the reason Beatrice jumped off, therefore never outright said it, and that it is therefore possible that he tricked us yet again. If that would be the case: well... sorry Ryu, I don't think I have enough "love" for you to see 'it'. Then again no love in the world would be able to trust you at that point. What twisted love consists of doubting your every word anyway?

Originally Posted by Valkama

He also believe that Ange's world is a lie that spawned from the third arc and prime is actually the second arc. Battler also never returns to Ange considering it's a fake reality and instead died in a boat crash fleeing the island. Everything going on is not from message bottles but is actually going on in Battler's head as he slowly dies. His evidence for this is at the end of the Second arc that says no one survived in red.

I ... kind of like this thought actually. Not the one claiming that "EP2 is the only true one" and "EP3 is the lie that spawned large amounts of Chiru" but that each of the first four episodes spawned a new culprit that can be used in all the others and is, in terms of red, equally possible and at least remotely usable in Chiru... Therefore 4 different solutions, Rosatrice and Shkanon being two of them (EP2 & 3). Could be nice, although I don't know how feasible it is.

Of course, everything is possible with duct tape semantic cheats so it sadly degrades to lol"who do we want as culprit"lol. Don't you agree, Kyrie? I knew you would, after all we did for you in that blasted chapel.

[GabrieliosP]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

Another side comment: It's a big deal that nobody would mistake anything for Kinzo. At the end of Episode 2, Battler met Kinzo. How are we supposed to reconcile these two items?
1) Battler was an unreliable perspective at that point?
2) Battler saw Kinzo's corpse, and wasn't mistaking anything for Kinzo? (For various reasons, I think that his corpse had been kept in his study, in a bathtub of formaldehyde or somesuch.)
3) Ryu screwed up.

Or what about the error in the flashback in Episode 5?

Battler was drunk at this point, so we can affirm that he didn't have a reliable perspective. Dunno how he saw Kinzo there, maybe Kinzo's corpse was put in the room and he halucinated it talking thanks to being drunk. Either way, the majority consensus is that he doesn't have a reliable perspective at that scene thanks to drunkenesss.

And what flashback in EP5? Can you be more specific?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by GabrieliosP

Battler was drunk at this point, so we can affirm that he didn't have a reliable perspective. Dunno how he saw Kinzo there, maybe Kinzo's corpse was put in the room and he halucinated it talking thanks to being drunk. Either way, the majority consensus is that he doesn't have a reliable perspective at that scene thanks to drunkenesss.

And what flashback in EP5? Can you be more specific?

Being drunk shouldn't matter. A drunken mistake is no different from a sober mistake. A hallucination would also count as "mistaking" something for Kinzo. This isn't possible according to the red.

That doesn't mean the scene couldn't have happened. Just that it couldn't have been Battler mistaking something for Kinzo.

[rogerpepitone]

I don't mind an unreliable perspective. Those are very tall orders.

I greatly mind an insincere perspective.

For example, the opening to John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins aka The Hollow Man stated that several characters were not deliberately lying or omitting anything, but were recounting the events as best they understood them.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

Being drunk shouldn't matter. A drunken mistake is no different from a sober mistake. A hallucination would also count as "mistaking" something for Kinzo. This isn't possible according to the red.

That doesn't mean the scene couldn't have happened. Just that it couldn't have been Battler mistaking something for Kinzo.

I am not really sure what the resistance is to just saying it was a meta world scene. Battler looked a living, talking, laughing Kinzo in the face in a way that the red truth explicitly forbids from happening on the game board. That's even if you ignore him getting mocked by Beatrice after her piece shot herself in the head. By contrast, End has the detective parading around the meta-layer of the study with her magical assistants, so we know that's possible.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

Does this mean that Yasu planned for the love trial to happen since the very beginning? Or even that she later decided the love trial was a good thing and rewrote her history to include her support of it?

You can see a type of love duel in EP4 at least. It wasnt Kizno that prepared the test since he was dead, so it had to be Yasu/Beatrice. Instead of pitting Kanon/Shannon to fight she tried to test George and Jessica.

I still think that the choices were symbolic and actually meant something like "Abandon your family to stay with me, abandon me to stay with your family or if you cant make a decision like that, just kill yourself". Yasu/Beatrice probably thought their idea of having it both ways was naive, but it actually fits in with what Dlanor said at the end of Our Confessions.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

Does Dlanor know something I don't?

I think it's not about knowing something you don't, because Ryuukishi made Dlanor say as well, that she only started understanding this triple structure when she went over this script.

"It does not matter whether what you feel for that woman called Beatrice is love or hatred when you read this.

But, if somehow possible,
I want you to arrive at what is hidden on the deepest layer of this story, her feelings.
It was said that she constructed this story in twofold, but released only one form.
But that is actually wrong.
This is a story that exist thrice and was released only in one form.
Through this incomplete manuscript, two of those three become exposed.
I want you to struggle towards an idea for the last one out of your own strength.
That is what I strongly wish to implore all of you readers to do, as a woman myself.
"

She doesn't say that this understanding comes from being a woman, Dlanor's understanding has lead her to liken her own motivation for releasing this story to be the same as what Beatrice should have realized.

Originally Posted by Renall

He also said some weird things about both men and women in one interview that AuraTwilight is fond of mocking.

It's like he hasn't even read his own story.

I would agree that his view of men and women is certainly very different from a current Western perspective of Gender, but that shouldn't keep us from trying to understand what he is telling us.

He also said in an interview I translated once, that you can understand Umineko better if you have been "like a young girl in love". I think it is less his direct idea of Sex that comes into play here, but his idea of understanding the heart of another Gender.
This is going very deep into analysis here, but I think he actually does make a personal difference between what is expected from men and women and what they actually feel. Umineko as a whole is basically also a huge comment about Gender and social roles, people not conforming to their expected roles or not being able to fulfill them because of personal "shortcomings".

I think the same that he made Dlanor say about Beatrice, there being more personal bias in her story than she let herself believe, can be said for his story as well...and maybe his motivation to create "Our Confession" was this realization.
He himself wanted to make us see that "there is love in everybody", but looking back at what he wrote he realized that he clearly despised certain actions no matter how motivated they might appear from another perspective.

[GabrieliosP]

Originally Posted by Renall

Being drunk shouldn't matter. A drunken mistake is no different from a sober mistake. A hallucination would also count as "mistaking" something for Kinzo. This isn't possible according to the red.

That doesn't mean the scene couldn't have happened. Just that it couldn't have been Battler mistaking something for Kinzo.

Wait, so hallucinating Kinzo's corpse as a living Kinzo is mistaking something for Kinzo?

Also, it's stated clear that Kinzo's pre-series death is valid for all games (except for the two last ones), but is it stated that "people wouldn't mistake something or someone for Kinzo" is valid for all games?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

I don't mind an unreliable perspective. Those are very tall orders.

I greatly mind an insincere perspective.

In your mind, what is the difference? An unreliable person could be lying or mistaken as suits their comprehension or objectives, but an insincere perspective is just being deliberately false for no reason but to fool the reader? That's how I interpreted what you said.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

I am not really sure what the resistance is to just saying it was a meta world scene. Battler looked a living, talking, laughing Kinzo in the face in a way that the red truth explicitly forbids from happening on the game board. That's even if you ignore him getting mocked by Beatrice after her piece shot herself in the head. By contrast, End has the detective parading around the meta-layer of the study with her magical assistants, so we know that's possible.

There's no real problem with it being exactly as you said, or what others have proposed with the "it took place post-explosion so it's all whatever Beatrice wants" thing. I'm just pointing out that if we say Battler "mistakenly" identified Kinzo, it doesn't matter if he's drunk or high or sick or whatever, he can't do it in that particular fashion. If he in fact did see Kinzo (e.g. Kinzo's corpse, Meta-Kinzo, a "resurrected" Kinzo due to Beatrice's victory, or anything really), there's no issue anyway.

It's hard to take the last part of Turn seriously as some kind of information pump to begin with. Sometimes a witch party is just a witch party.

Originally Posted by haguruma

I would agree that his view of men and women is certainly very different from a current Western perspective of Gender, but that shouldn't keep us from trying to understand what he is telling us.

He also said in an interview I translated once, that you can understand Umineko better if you have been "like a young girl in love". I think it is less his direct idea of Sex that comes into play here, but his idea of understanding the heart of another Gender.
This is going very deep into analysis here, but I think he actually does make a personal difference between what is expected from men and women and what they actually feel. Umineko as a whole is basically also a huge comment about Gender and social roles, people not conforming to their expected roles or not being able to fulfill them because of personal "shortcomings".

Isn't it rather presumptuous of him to act like he understands that? When he makes comments about "putting women on a pedestal" and then asks me, his reader, to accept that he, a male writer, understands the motivations of a female character who is willing to commit horrific acts because "women think differently about it..." well, I have to question it when taking into account the totality of things he has said. Assuming he actually meant it that way.

I'm not saying a man can't write a woman plausibly and relatably (or vice-versa). However, taking into account many of the perspectives he's put forth in interviews, he comes across as being far less understanding of gender than his actual precedent texts suggest he is... or was, prior to Chiru. Either that or he's just not getting his feelings across the way he intends to, because his morality and attitude toward gender roles is markedly different (and, I think, mostly competently-handled) in-story.

Of course, the entire thing could be more of a reference or example, a metaphor for something else. I suppose it depends how autobiographical you see Yasu as being. He may be conveying something considerably more personal but no fundamentally different than the more commonly-understood expectations of ordinary masculinity/femininity within the culture of his reader base. It may be something he can't come out and say, so he has to continue to use examples when discussing the matter with people. In so doing, perhaps he says things off-the-cuff that he doesn't entirely mean, things which contradict his earlier standpoints which he arrived at after having more time to think about it and get his thoughts in order. Because he wasn't actually talking about that thing, he was talking about himself and how he personally feels about an issue that he hopes people will understand in the same way they understand the more overt themes of identity in his novel.

Not to say I'm outright stating that he is homosexual, or has a gender identity issue, or anything like that. However, I think it's a perspective that has to be considered given the themes of the story, and it might reconcile his seemingly contradictory opinions on matters he doesn't fully relate to as a less-than-perfect effort to explain his unspoken personal identity development with more socially-acceptable metaphors. The idea is really more to be understood as a person (or as a "human" as he might put it); which identities and expectations clash will vary from person to person, but it is possible to put those into a form of expression (through fiction) that others can comprehend and empathize with. In other words, you need not have actually been a young girl in love, but you need some commonality of human experience to understand what that's like when it's presented to you.

Whether I agree with his conclusions on common experience and empathy (especially in relation to moral obligation) would be another matter entirely. But if that sort of empathy is what he's driving at, I can understand it even if I'm critical of the plausibility of his examples.

[rogerpepitone]

Originally Posted by GabrieliosP

Wait, so hallucinating Kinzo's corpse as a living Kinzo is mistaking something for Kinzo?

It depends on the semantics of what you mean by "Kinzo". Kinzo's body can arguably still be called "Kinzo".

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

You can see a type of love duel in EP4 at least. It wasnt Kizno that prepared the test since he was dead, so it had to be Yasu/Beatrice. Instead of pitting Kanon/Shannon to fight she tried to test George and Jessica.

I still think that the choices were symbolic and actually meant something like "Abandon your family to stay with me, abandon me to stay with your family or if you cant make a decision like that, just kill yourself". Yasu/Beatrice probably thought their idea of having it both ways was naive, but it actually fits in with what Dlanor said at the end of Our Confessions.

That makes sense, but did Yasu really set out to make the love trial happen before she started dating George? If indecision about whom she loves is what eventually drives her to become an illogical, irrational person, does it really make sense for her to have planned her self-destruction a year or 2 in advance?

And yet, Beatrice claims that she did plan everything out from the very beginning.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

That makes sense, but did Yasu really set out to make the love trial happen before she started dating George? If indecision about whom she loves is what eventually drives her to become an illogical, irrational person, does it really make sense for her to have planned her self-destruction a year or 2 in advance?

And yet, Beatrice claims that she did plan everything out from the very beginning.

I suppose she could've sparked relationships with George and Jessica in some sort of attempt to arouse Battler's jealousy, but that would kind of necessitate Battler being made aware that it was happening or it wouldn't have much effect. If that was the goal, we're not aware of any effort to make the subject of the whole affair know it was going on.

Plus Ryukishi has claimed the George/Shannon romance is genuine. He might mean between George and the fictional character of Shannon, of course.

EDIT: Haha, speaking of the Logic Error, reading over one of KNM's transcripts he commits a rather bad error of logic himself in discussing the "even if you join us" red. He posits that the inverse of a logical proposition is necessarily true (if p -> q, therefore if !p -> !q), which is not actually the case. Granted, it seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the point he's making, but it's hard to take someone seriously who doesn't know the difference between an inverse and a contrapositive.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

I'll try to explain with the opening to EP2.

On the face of it, this opening is a story of Beatrice tempting Shannon and Kanon with the promise of love, and then laughing at them when that love inevitably destroys them.

Does this mean that Yasu planned for the love trial to happen since the very beginning? Or even that she later decided the love trial was a good thing and rewrote her history to include her support of it?

Hmm ... I'm still having trouble understanding.

I'd say that anything we have before Oct 4, 1986, while it may be part of the narrative, isn't really "on the gameboard". It's more like an explanation of the setup, and every game does that (even Legend, which just introduces the humans and the dynamics between them).

What's it gotta do with gameboard PROOF that Shannon is a murderer?

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Kealym

Hmm ... I'm still having trouble understanding.

I'd say that anything we have before Oct 4, 1986, while it may be part of the narrative, isn't really "on the gameboard". It's more like an explanation of the setup, and every game does that (even Legend, which just introduces the humans and the dynamics between them).

What's it gotta do with gameboard PROOF that Shannon is a murderer?

If Shkanontrice is true, then this part of EP2 is our best hint to her character, and probably meta-Beatrce's as well. Since we don't yet have absolute proof that she committed the crimes, this section is probably our best bet for figuring out whether she was guilty or not.

It's definitely possible for us to find evidence of Beatrice as the killer in this section. I think I was one of the first to try that post-EP6, at least on this board. However, Ryuukishi has made a point about giving suspects the benefit of the doubt several times in Umineko, so I'd like to look at this section again.

[Valkama]

Regarding Kinzo in Turn, perhaps Battler is in fact lying about seeing Kinzo do to his new found belief in magic he obviously didn't see butterflies. Perhaps when he accepts magic and becomes Beatrice's furniture he is actually because an accomplice to Beatrice and therefore hides the fact that Kinzo is dead.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Valkama

Regarding Kinzo in Turn, perhaps Battler is in fact lying about seeing Kinzo do to his new found belief in magic he obviously didn't see butterflies. Perhaps when he accepts magic and becomes Beatrice's furniture he is actually because an accomplice to Beatrice and therefore hides the fact that Kinzo is dead.

I always imagined him going insane at the sight of Kinzo mummy and Genji handing him a love letter that told him "bye-bye, now you go BOOM!"

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

Another side comment: It's a big deal that nobody would mistake anything for Kinzo. At the end of Episode 2, Battler met Kinzo. How are we supposed to reconcile these two items?
1) Battler was an unreliable perspective at that point?
2) Battler saw Kinzo's corpse, and wasn't mistaking anything for Kinzo? (For various reasons, I think that his corpse had been kept in his study, in a bathtub of formaldehyde or somesuch.)
3) Ryu screwed up.

Actually, someone posted something relevant about this a while ago. Although Battler was in the scene at the end of Turn, he wasn't narrating. Usually Battler narrates the scenes he's in in first person, but in that scene Battler was only referred to in third person.

[GuestSpeaker]

Regarding Kinzo in Turn, perhaps Battler is in fact lying about seeing Kinzo do to his new found belief in magic he obviously didn't see butterflies. Perhaps when he accepts magic and becomes Beatrice's furniture he is actually because an accomplice to Beatrice and therefore hides the fact that Kinzo is dead.

That would be reasonably hard to do at that point in Ep 2, as she was dead.




That interview sure is interesting, because Ryu is saying not that she couldn't choose between the three, but more that she was unwilling to let the any of the romances fail. It's like suicide was her plan all along, but she can't let a character die until their goal is achieved. Shannon can go at any time, as she gets the ring, Kanon does often die after a touching scene with Jessica and Beatrice dies once when she gives up and then once when Battler completes her.

Also while saying she sacrificed herself to keep everyone else on the island alive is sweet in the theory of the story, in practice it is a little bit bonkers.


FURTHERMORE, did he say Battler was fished out YEARS later? What?

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by GuestSpeaker

That interview sure is interesting, because Ryu is saying not that she couldn't choose between the three, but more that she was unwilling to let the any of the romances fail. It's like suicide was her plan all along, but she can't let a character die until their goal is achieved. Shannon can go at any time, as she gets the ring, Kanon does often die after a touching scene with Jessica and Beatrice dies once when she gives up and then once when Battler completes her.

Also while saying she sacrificed herself to keep everyone else on the island alive is sweet in the theory of the story, in practice it is a little bit bonkers.

Just a little bit. Honestly, I find it pretty creepy. I'm usually not a fan of Yandere. I prefer the murder game theory where all three characters die but the actor lives. It's somewhat less bonkers. Ikuko=Yasu ftw. It fit's with Will's analysis, too: "The only person who can kill a character (Beatrice) is their actor". The very fact that this distinction is made to me suggests that Beatrice's death does not mean Yasu's.

A side note, but I have to say dealing with Yasu's name has always been a bit difficult, because Yasu isn't Shannon or Kanon or Beatrice or Ikuko or anything. It's just the name we gave to the ultimate controller of that person's body. In Ikuko=Yasu, Ikuko is not really Yasu any more or less than Shannon or Beatrice is... Then again, even the personality structure of Yasu is a subject of debate and discussion.

[Drifloon]

Originally Posted by GoldenLand

Yep, here: https://sites.google.com/site/ralphm...neko-explained

It looks longer than I remember it being. Maybe it's still being updated?

Huh, upon looking at this...this actually goes very nearly to the end of the videos. It certainly covers everything in the first 3 of 4 parts. Anyone who's interested in KNM's stuff but doesn't want to watch his videos should definitely take a look at this.