[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Renall]

Originally Posted by GuestSpeaker

Also besides outright lying, you only need so much real gold to create a pretty convincing huge mountain of the stuff. Though unrealistic as it is, the reds by Lambda sort of imply that there is just a huge pile of gold lying around.

Well there is... in ep5. The only time a detective (and Battler) has ever actually seen it. You have Will's investigation, but the later scene implies that Kinzo's narrative was nevertheless distorted somehow, which casts doubt on the story that Will was told.

At the very least, we have one red which applies to one game. I don't see any reason to try to twist Lambda's words, so I'd take her at that. For End. For the rest... I dunno.

[GreyZone]

Well in EP3 it was said in red that "that pile of gold is real" (paraphrased). The question however is, whether you want to interpret it as a "local red truth" or as a "global red truth".

[Renall]

For our purposes, it seems fine to accept it as real one way or another. It ultimately makes no difference since it ceases to exist when the island blows up, apparently. Unless it was all somehow spent prior, but as we've covered numerous times, the only real use of the gold is to secure loans because there's really no legal way of moving it.

[rogerpepitone]

Originally Posted by GuestSpeaker

Also besides outright lying, you only need so much real gold to create a pretty convincing huge mountain of the stuff. Though unrealistic as it is, the reds by Lambda sort of imply that there is just a huge pile of gold lying around.

Remember the scene in the anime with Evatrice and the gold?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv6oGgcQ1Iw

That scene overstates the amount of gold. I calculate that a solid gold cube with side 80 cm will have a mass of 10 tons. Even taking into account the air spaces, a 10 ton cube of gold ingots shouldn't be more than 1 meter on the side.

[AuraTwilight]

That implies, of course, that it's pure gold. Or that it's perfectly solid through and through.

...Or that Ryukishi knows anything about the physical properties of gold.

[Renall]

Or that Studio Deen's animators know anything about the physical properties of gold, which is so absurdly unlikely I think it rises to the level of red truth.

Ryukishi is reasonable in his vagueness when describing the size of the pile, mostly referring to it by weight instead of physical dimensions. I'm sure he wasn't 100% clear on how much space 10 tons of gold takes up, but who cares? What matters is its value, not how big or heavy it actually is.

...Actually I have no idea if he got the value right either, at least in 1986 terms.

[rogerpepitone]

Originally Posted by Renall

Or that Studio Deen's animators know anything about the physical properties of gold, which is so absurdly unlikely I think it rises to the level of red truth.

Ryukishi is reasonable in his vagueness when describing the size of the pile, mostly referring to it by weight instead of physical dimensions. I'm sure he wasn't 100% clear on how much space 10 tons of gold takes up, but who cares? What matters is its value, not how big or heavy it actually is.

...Actually I have no idea if he got the value right either, at least in 1986 terms.

I'm not taking Deen's representation as correct; it's just a nice illustration. (When it aired, people criticized it for having a small amount of gold, when they're actually overstating things.)

1 cubic meter of solid gold weighs just under 20 tons; scaling it down a bit, a cube of solid gold 80 cm on the side will weigh 10 tons. It's not something that overflows multiple rooms. It's something that would fit in the corner of an apartment.

[Renall]

Going by the Kinzo story, the only thing it really could've been was one, maybe two palettes of gold ingots, basically. I mean, you can't fit much more cargo than that on a submarine. The implication I got from the story and from OMK and other sources is that the "gold room" is more of a luxurious underground bedroom kind of thing that happens to also have the gold in it, probably near one of the walls. The actual room itself is probably mostly empty.

[RandomAvatarFan]

Well, I think at least in the VN, when you see the gold, it looks like a giant wall, and might be imagined taking up an entire side. So I guess that's where they were coming from thinking they made it too small.

Although, to be honest, how much bigger would a pyramid of the same weight have to be? A right pyramid with a base of 80cm will probably weigh less than a cube with a side of 80cm.

[rogerpepitone]

A pyramid will have 1/3 the volume of the containing brick.

A pyramid with equal length, width, height, that comes to a point would have to be 1.1m on the side. If the sides are steeper, and the top is flat, then it can be a bit smaller.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by RandomAvatarFan

Well, I think at least in the VN, when you see the gold, it looks like a giant wall, and might be imagined taking up an entire side. So I guess that's where they were coming from thinking they made it too small.

I can't speak for the PS3 version, but the PC version has only three images:

gold1, which is the single bar lying on a cloth on a table from the scene where Krauss shows Natsuhi in Legend

gold2, which is a side-angle shot of an indeterminate stack of gold bars. It's a close-up shot, so it's difficult to call it a "giant wall." It could very well be a small stack that's just being shot close-up.

gold3, which is a top-down shot. There are a dozen or so bars visible, but they stretch beyond the bounds of the image, so it's impossible to tell how many there actually are.

I may have 2 and 3 mixed up, but that's the extent of it. If the gold were on a pedestal or palette or table or something roughly 1m high, and the volume of gold as roger described were about 1m tall, the whole pile would be just above the head height of a particularly tall person (such as Kinzo or Battler). Essentially you're looking at 2m tops, or about 6-8 feet in height. That's enough to inspire awe, but it's also just small enough to actually contain a 10 tons worth, and the table/stand/pedestal would create the illusion that the gold pile is far larger than it is.

[GreyZone]

Maybe Kinzo was not as successful as everyone though. Maybe he made LOSSES, but could compensate them with MORE GOLD and because of that he seemed to somehow get more and more money, which led to people assuming that he was a "great gambler" although he was not.

This would turn the "10 tons of gold" into "less than 10 tons of gold".

[Kiltias]

Regarding EP 4:

The first Twilight IMO is the very key to understand it but please tell if this might be too farfetched.

People who died:
Natsuhi
Rosa
Eva
Hideyoshi
Genji
Rudolf
6

Those who survived:
Kumasawa,Gohda,Kyrie,Shannon/Kanon,Krauss.Of course exluding Kinzo here.
If we count Shannon and Kanon as 1:
6

Demons that appeared:
00
45
410
Ronoue
Gaap
Vergilia
6

6-6-6.
The number of the beast but also:
Revelation 13:15 Verse 18.
"Here is Wisdom, Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast"

The number of the beast.
Roman Emperor Neros name value = 666.
I'm taking this from the wiki now:
Nero was adopted by Roman Emperor and his great uncle Claudius to become the heir.
When he became Emperor Nero ordered many Theaters to be built but is believed to have caused a grand fire in Rome in order to clear land to build his Villa, the Domus Aurea (The Golden House.)
The fire mainly affected the Aristocratic taking many of their lives.
Ultimately, Nero became a tyrant and ordered many executions among others his own family.
Nero's father was known for Adultery and his mother was stated to be a violent and ruthless woman who is still today suspected of being responsible for the Death of Claudius making Nero the Emperor.
After some time, Nero's mother (Forgot to mention the name) Agrippina and himself came to struggle for Power and among others, Nero threatened to quit as Emperor and leave her and the country with his lover Sporus a boy that Nero though took as his wife even making him wear empress jewelry and clothes and was referred as "Mistress" and "Lady" as he had a great resemblance to a girl, his former love Sabina and at times even called Sporus by that name.

[GuestSpeaker]

the only real use of the gold is to secure loans because there's really no legal way of moving it.

That reminds me of an oldish movie (maybe Sahara?) I saw where in the end the army gave these middle eastern refugees a bar of gold each and sent them on their merry way. I was thinking: What are these guys going to do with those in the middle of the desert, besides if they all have one they can't even trade it, and what will they do, crack it into a small piece each time they need to buy bread?

Gold is far, far more useful as collateral to wealth (which is what our banks actually do, money is a representation of gold) than it is at being wealth.


As for what happened to the gold, assumedly it vaporised and was dispersed into a mist in the underground room and is now spread over the island. Even if there were some reasonable lumps of it, no-one can mine it as the island still belongs to the Ushiromiya

[Renall]

You might be thinking of Three Kings. Regardless, Kinzo's gold would be doubly impossible to spend directly, because it's not even his. It belongs to a foreign government, or arguably to the Japanese government. Either way, somebody would certainly ask questions about it if anybody were to try to exchange it all at once, and that would more than likely lead to someone realizing where it originated.

[Wanderer]

On the other hand, Kinzo had almost 40 years to do it.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

On the other hand, Kinzo had almost 40 years to do it.

Which just makes not converting it all the more odd, doesn't it? I mean he could probably quietly have a few bars per year melted down and recast, then move them in another country like China or America. Presumably he preferred to keep them as a trophy of sorts, since he no longer needed the gold once he'd managed to establish his success through the loans he acquired using the gold as collateral.

So really the only reason he wouldn't do it is personal preference, which I could see. I mean, not many people can say they have a huge stack of gold in their basement. Plus he's sentimentally attached to it.

[Kealym]

All I can really add to the current discussion is to point out that the manga, which in several places has served to visually clarify ambiguous elements, consistently presents the gold as a big-ass mountain pile. You can get a pretty decent view of it in End, in particular, and it's definitely taller than everyone's heights, even accounting for the palette. At any rate, way way larger than the pile shown in the anime.

I'm not very knowledgeable about this sort of thing, so I assume it was, uh, artistic license, for the sake of making the amount seem impossibly grand? Also, aren't there several definitions regarding the word "ton"? Maybe there was confusion..?

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Kealym

Also, aren't there several definitions regarding the word "ton"? Maybe there was confusion..?

There are, but none of them are all that different in actual amount, relatively (we're talking like a 10% difference). Certainly not different enough to account for the drastic differences in the depictions of the pile's size.

[DaBackpack]

Well, we know why Kinzo kept the gold and didn't convert it to cash.
There's no reason why he couldn't have put cardboard boxes in the middle of the pyramid to stack them and make the pile seem larger.
There's no problem if "something else" occupies most of the inner space