[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by mizou

Spoiler for speculation:

why everybody are saying that's a bad end, but the ending roll with the song tells that beato and battler meet again!

Yes.

Spoiler:

In the Golden Land. Which is where you go when you're dead.

[Sheep_]

Ok from my understanding the two ending or at least what seems to be what happens due to what choices you pick are.

Spoiler for 1:

Battler being taken in by Hachijo, he lost his memories and what we are reading is him trying to remember what happened. In the end in some unknown year decades after what happened he "dies" and is welcomed in to the Golden Land.

Now that part is from the ending song / end of the game bit. But, the memory thing is fake right? I mean thats got to be the worst thing I've heard.

Spoiler for 2:

Ange summons Erika and avoids being killed by Amakusa? / She kills Amakusa and hands over the money to Okonogi in order to avoid any more trouble. he she becomes a writer and thinks everything that happened in the meta world was real.

I really have no idea if any of this is real. I just keep seeing people say stuff about Ange not dieing.

[immblueversion]

Originally Posted by Sheep_

Now that part is from the ending song / end of the game bit. But, the memory thing is fake right? I mean thats got to be the worst thing I've heard.

But it makes sense in context.

[Rias]

Originally Posted by Sheep_

Ok from my understanding the two ending or at least what seems to be what happens due to what choices you pick are.

Spoiler for 1:

Battler being taken in by Hachijo, he lost his memories and what we are reading is him trying to remember what happened. In the end in some unknown year decades after what happened he "dies" and is welcomed in to the Golden Land.

Now that part is from the ending song / end of the game bit. But, the memory thing is fake right? I mean thats got to be the worst thing I've heard.

Spoiler for 2:

Ange summons Erika and avoids being killed by Amakusa? / She kills Amakusa and hands over the money to Okonogi in order to avoid any more trouble. he she becomes a writer and thinks everything that happened in the meta world was real.

I really have no idea if any of this is real. I just keep seeing people say stuff about Ange not dieing.

I am not going into the whole bit about trusting other people spoiler messages, let's just say that your endings are mixed, and includes objective information not presented in the story.

[Mcjon01]

Originally Posted by Sheep_

Ok from my understanding the two ending or at least what seems to be what happens due to what choices you pick are.

Spoiler for 1:

Battler being taken in by Hachijo, he lost his memories and what we are reading is him trying to remember what happened. In the end in some unknown year decades after what happened he "dies" and is welcomed in to the Golden Land.

Now that part is from the ending song / end of the game bit. But, the memory thing is fake right? I mean thats got to be the worst thing I've heard.

Spoiler for 2:

Ange summons Erika and avoids being killed by Amakusa? / She kills Amakusa and hands over the money to Okonogi in order to avoid any more trouble. he she becomes a writer and thinks everything that happened in the meta world was real.

I really have no idea if any of this is real. I just keep seeing people say stuff about Ange not dieing.

The first one seems about right; the second one is kind of half-and-half.

Spoiler for Trick End:

Basically, it starts with Ange on the ship going toward Rokkenjima with Amakusa. They never land, though, because Ange confronts Amakusa. Tells him that she's decided to stop living as a human and that she knows about the conspiracy to kill her. Things happen, she spouts some Erika catchphrases, and then double-taps him with a submachine gun, then when the boat captain comes to investigate she accuses him of working with the Sumaderas and pops him through the forehead. Then Erika shows up and says she exists wherever there are people that expose the truth, and Ange muses that Amakusa's expression when she saw through him "wasn't bad". Ends on Erika going <Good!>

I only skimmed it, but it's probably more accurate than /jp/ spoilers.

[Dr. Akagi]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

It's a serialized piece of pulp fantasy (that also functions as a alternate reality game) with really interesting themes, homages to the golden age of detective fiction, a vast host of silly, crazy characters, genuinely emotional and heartstring-tugging moments...

I can't disagree with the above. And it makes me sad, because it makes Umineko just another "serialized piece of pulp fantasy" on the block, when it clearly could have been so much more.

I believe it was Gilbert Adair who proposed a theory that the real source of the reader's tension as he approaches the final pages of the mystery novel is not that he (the reader) is afraid his speculations would be proven wrong, but instead his fear that the author is incompetent and may perform some kind of asspull. In other words, the reader is not rooting for himself or the detective, he is rooting for the author to surprise him with his "magic", to prove his competence.

And I was really rooting for R07.

In my time I've read 65 Christies, 15 Stouts’, several Carrs’ and Queens’ and countless others mystery novels, be they Golden Age or not. I've been always fascinated by the mystery genre.

But you know what? My favorite author of all time would probably have to be one Philip K. Dick, an American writer of "serialized pieces of pulp fantasy", so to speak. During his lifetime he even attempted to write a Golden Age inspired mystery novel, based on a certain Christie novel (you may easily guess which one). The novel is called "Maze of Death". Needless to say, it turned out as just another "piece of pulp fantasy". And the author died in poverty and relative obscurity, but that's another story.

Funny thing is, all the works of Dick has been posthumously reevaluated and received universal critical acclaim. He was the first "pulp writer" whose works were officially included in the American Canon, so to speak, and published by The Library of America.

Dick's style was spotty at best, his plots were pulpy to the max, his endings either contrived or plain stupid. At the same time, many people, professional writers included, consider him a genius. As for me, I'll take a book of Dick over Christie any day (and I love my Christies, yes I do), because I consider Dick a far superior writer. So why is that?

On the surface level, that is because he's the master of the plot-driven narrative. His plots are complex, multi-layered and endlessly satisfying (that, unfortunately, does not apply to his endings). In them, parallel realities conflate, multiple secret conspiracies interlock, double/triple agents abound, and most importantly, paranoia runs amuck.

But that would be just pulp, as interesting to read as it is. What truly elevates Dick to superstardom in his field is his ability to make profound statements about the human condition using his limited "pulp artist" skills. And boy does he deliver on that one!

The penultimate chapter of Ubik defines existentialism better than all of Sartre's and Camus' works combined. Ubik on the whole is dealing with the hopelessness and loneliness of the human condition far better than serious works supposedly written on the subject.

The 10th chapter (the scene in the police department) of "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" is full of paranoia so palpable that it's, for the lack of a better word, uncanny. I've never ever felt so strong an emotion from words written on paper, no, scrap that, from any medium be it music or motion pictures (and I consider music to be far superior to literature in general). That is genius, right there. And that is "merit" for you.

The problem with R07 is that he clearly aspires to do something along the same lines as Dick, but unfortunately he is nowhere close now. But he has potential, and that's why he pisses me off with his every asspull, not because he's a bad mystery/fantasy/romance writer (Dick was awful at those too, for that matter). It’s because I believe I can see what he is trying to accomplish there and I wish him the best of luck, really. He's clearly ambitious, his strengths as a writer lie mostly in the plot development and narrative gimmicks department and he clearly is THE master of mindfuck if i know one. That's why I had high hopes for him. That’s why I’m slightly broken-hearted now. And to write him off as "just another crazy Japanese hack writing serialized shit for money" is doing the man a disservice.

But maybe it’s just me.

[MeoTwister5]

I smell elitism in the air about and no, I'm not talking about anyone in particular, just my observation as to why I've really disliked interacting with the rest of the fanbase for almost 8 months.

[Dlanor .A. Nox]

Eh Umineko amuses me so that is ENOUGH. If it didn't then I'd just drop it aside from a few tiny complaints I like Umineko OVERALL.

Still there are a few parts I got right, there was some mechanism for actually gaining access to the gold. I thought about that part and got to the conclusion there was some kind of mechanism involved but I imagined it all wrong.

I always thought of Beatrice as Oyashiro and I get the feeling that's probably not too far from the truth that someone using her in place of the real culprit. Of course I also had the idea that I wouldn't be surprised if Kyrie turned out to be the culprit but that was as far as I got I didn't take much more into account since in the first and second game Kyrie was killed in the first twilight and that brought that possibility down a few notches.

[Dr. Akagi]

It's not elitism, Meo. Consider it a professional opinion.

Wait, let me rephrase that so that even you could understand.

When you are prescribing medicine to your patients, wouldn't it be irksome if they started calling you an elitist jerk?

[Circular Logic]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

I smell elitism in the air about and no, I'm not talking about anyone in particular, just my observation as to why I've really disliked interacting with the rest of the fanbase for almost 8 months.

I can't agree more.

[Dlanor .A. Nox]

Originally Posted by Circular Logic

I can't agree more.

Ditto for ME.

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by Dr. Akagi

It's not elitism, Meo. Consider it a professional opinion.

Wait, let me rephrase that so that even you could understand.

When you are prescribing medicine to your patents, wouldn't it be irksome if they started calling you an elitist jerk?

You do know I said I wasn't talking about anyone in particular, and I wasn't talking about you, right? I understand some of your concerns, but now that for whatever reason you may have to think that I was referring to you that has apparently hit a nerve enough for you to directly insult me, maybe I misunderstood my attempt to empathize with your concerns as a clear mistake on my part to study the arguments for and against Umineko, because I actually find myself in neither the "R07 is a is a god" or the "R07 is a hack" but somewhere in the middle. I WANTED to support some of your issues but now I don't even feel like it anymore.

And for the record, no, I don't go through medical school for people to praise my name on a pedestal, I study to learn how to make people better regardless of what they think of me. I give them the facts plain and simple, to educate them, and it is there responsibility to understand the situation because a doctor-patient relationship is not a one-sides deal. You aren't being held prisoner, you're a participant who was told what was going to happen, and you chose not to bail out of your own free will.

Same goes for an author, especially when said author actually informed the fanbase of his intentions, what he did and is going to do, and even told them that this may as well not be the "mystery" they wanted it to be. Readers had clear information enough to make a choice whether to stay on the ship and jump off because they were indeed told this wasn't going to be what a lot of them thought and wanted it to be. You had a choice, and blaming the failure of this choice on the author who didn't make you read against your will is just poor form.

In short if this is tl;dr, insulting people out of the blue who weren't even talking about you doesn't do a lot to get other people to try and understand your POV, it only makes you look like an ass. Same goes for your previous direct insult of a moderator and another poster for whatever reason again that seems to easily piss you off. If you don't like it, fine, that's your own opinion about the game and the people who worship the author as a god. But if you have such a twitchy trigger finger to go at the throats of those who you even remotely think is making a comment against you or your opinion, then you're only just being a hypocrite.

[alviam099]

I've been reading Meo's summary is the hint that Battler is convinced he is the child lying is shown in the game ? Reading Kanji is one heck of a pain in the ass so I quitted reading and relied to your summary and yeah if that's it they're obvious

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by alviam099

I've been reading Meo's summary is the hint that Battler is convinced he is the child lying is shown in the game ? Reading Kanji is one heck of a pain in the ass so I quitted reading and relied to your summary and yeah if that's it they're obvious

Spoiler for Spoiler:

He went through a process of elimination to find which child it was. I actually thought he was referring to Ange at first due to her discovery of the bodies since he used gender neutral noun, but after a while I realized the purple was being blatantly vague about the child who was with the survivors who discovered the bodies.

This was actually my primary complaint with the murder game: this purple was extremely important, and it makes little sense for this to be purposely non-specific when everyone was there to see the "child" who autopsied their parent's bodies. It's as if the purple was purposely made this way because this purple was probably the most important purple in the entire game. R07 could have easily written it another way but he didn't. It felt rather out of place.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Dr. Akagi

It's not elitism, Meo. Consider it a professional opinion.

Now this, see, this is elitism.

By the way, exactly how many books have you written, good sir?

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

*snip*

You know, after Ep5, I actually didn't think we'd get any new colors of text. Silly me.

[MeoTwister5]

I still have no damn idea what the gold truth is actually, considering we only see it once. It had the potential for abject awesomeness but no, he forgot.

[alviam099]

You're not alone wandering what gold truth is

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

I still have no damn idea what the gold truth is actually, considering we only see it once.

Twice, actually.

I think it's literally supposed to be a "catbox truth", that is, truth that can only come from subjective interpretation. The exact opposite of the red, in other words.

[Bluemail]

The gold truth has actually been used twice.
I guarantee that this corpse is Ushiromiya Kinzo's corpse...!! and You used magic to create a golden flower petal inside an overturned cup. It was a splendid bit of magic.

I have read neither EP7 or EP8, but what I gathered from EP7 spoilers the golden truth could be observers' truth. So whatever everyone at the scene agree upon becomes a gold truth. I think it kind of makes sense, because usually nobody suspects Kinzo's corpse to be fake, and the magic scene was between Big Sister Beatrice and Chick Beato.

And I also highly dislike the way some people talk around here. We can't just have a friendly chat about a series we like, some people just have to be better than others?

[luckyssol]

No one was wrong for trying to solve this game as a mystery.

During episode 6, I placed this quote at the top of my theory because I knew it was part of the core of this game:

Originally Posted by Episode 5

Also, at the end of the 1st game, it was revealed that this tale was passed on to people in the future by that message bottle.

......Someone had written about this crime...this tale.

In other words, ......this tale is all part of a world which includes the personal opinions of an observer, namely, the person who wrote that message in a bottle.

In other words, the observer isn't God.
It's a human.

Therefore, there's no guarantee that this description is truly impartial.

By the end of the 1st game, it had already been made clear that we've broken the constant premise of the mystery genre: that the story itself must be seen through the eyes of God.

For that reason, it's possible to doubt even the observer, as well as the witnesses.

• We know nothing about any of the real people who were on Rokkenjima on that day.
• We know about the characters in the stories.
• This was presented to us in the end roll of the first game.

Regardless of what some people may say, this is the true challenge that was presented to us readers in the first game:

Spoiler for Challenge:

• No corpses were found.
• ’Please find out the truth’ could mean anything.
• It does not say ‘Find the culprit’.

Originally Posted by Renall

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and commits ritualized serial murders like a duck, it's a duck

No. See Above.