[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[ErenselTheJester]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

The rule is that it changes as a literal shifting maze. :P

That doesn't stop the fact that it is still the same maze. Think about it like this, Shannon, Kanon, and Beatrice are all the same person, however that person changes persona to suit his/her needs. Still, either way, whether that person chooses to be Shannon, Kanon, or Beatrice, that person is still his-/herself. Its the same with Rule Z, no matter how it changes in any episode, it is still Rule Z, not rule ZX or ZY or ZZ or anything different, it is just Rule Z. What allows Rule Z to change is that it is indefinite in shape. Think of something within each of the episodes that doesn't have a definition and, at the same time, disguises something else.

Originally Posted by Kylon99

I was just over on the EP6 thread where the discussion was whether Kanon counted as a person in red and in EP6, no, he wasn't really, it seems.

If we're talking about shifting rules, could whether Shannon and Kanon (and maybe even Beatrice, i.e. EP2) be counted as real people shift every episode? Because EP6 very cleanly dodges the existence of Kanon...

And maybe it doesn't shift randomly, exactly, but maybe there's a natural progression towards favoring Shannon, somehow... hmmmm.

EDIT: Hmmmm, I dunno. Going over EP1-4, it seems like Shannon wins out every time and eventually becomes the surviving persona...

True but what does that hide exactly? Rule Z is supposed to disguise Rule X and Y. So if Rule X/Y was the Explosion at the end of each episode, how does Shannon and Kanon's existence have to do with that?

[Renall]

Well, we certainly spent all our time talking about it.

[Wanderer]

I bet rule Z is "love".

[cronnoponno]

Rule Z is the zombie rule, technically everyone's dead, but they're zombies so they're alive, meaning you can use reds about them being alive and dead and technically not contradict yourself!

Rule Z:

The rule that fucks rules.


No but seriously...What is this ''our confessions'' thing anyway? IS it going to be something that Ryukishi will copy Ikuko on and kinda, ''not release the real our confessions and make the actual copy have something dumb written in it''?

[AuraTwilight]

We Don't Know.

[bigemperor]

Mi biggest issue is finding what is real and what not, until episode 8 i always thought that everything that happened in 1998 was ABSOLUTE true but now in the end we are shown that the whole killing of the sumadera family never happened or ange meeting hachijo until decades in the future, even 1998 seems like a big WHAT IF, how can we know that ange meeting battler is the reality and not a what if?

I don't care r7 didn't show the truth from 1986 but i would have love if he had show us AN ABSOLUTE THRUTH of everything that happened in 1998 and afterwards.
what do you think of these?

[cronnoponno]

Well, Ange meeting Battler from the future satisfies me, I didn't understand the end though, was it the happiness of the children at the end that gave a similar feeling to what the Beatrice he wrote(?) about tried to do for his family or something?

[Oblivion]

And about the trick end, why does it bring Ange back on the boat? And does she stil decide to become an author in that end or does it only apply to the other one? Seeing as how she gives up the name Ange in both.

[Smeckledorf]

Originally Posted by bigemperor

Mi biggest issue is finding what is real and what not, until episode 8 i always thought that everything that happened in 1998 was ABSOLUTE true but now in the end we are shown that the whole killing of the sumadera family never happened or ange meeting hachijo until decades in the future, even 1998 seems like a big WHAT IF, how can we know that ange meeting battler is the reality and not a what if?

I don't care r7 didn't show the truth from 1986 but i would have love if he had show us AN ABSOLUTE THRUTH of everything that happened in 1998 and afterwards.
what do you think of these?

My one problem with Author theory was that no one on the island survived. Without a survivor the credibility goes to 0. Ange meeting Battler had to be true.

Anyway, about the whole rules thing. Let's say rule X is the explosion, the source of magic would be the Devil's Proof. The bane of her magic is evidence it did not happen. I can't agree that the the books being fictional is rule Z. R07 said a solution was possible and I would hate for him to be lying, unless the solution is that there is not solution. This would be even more true for an ever-changing culprit. What seems to hide everything to me would be the explosion, but that is rule X. So assuming rule X is the explosion, I would say rule Z is Beatrice's game. Her game hides the actual murders with fake murders.
However, if I went at rule Z the other way, considering it is 'bad affinity' for Bernkastel, I would say rule Z is the toxic atmosphere on the island. Everyone needs money, there is love and hate hand-in-hand, an evil witch controlling the island, Rosa's abusive nature, the huge list of secrets being kept, the lies being spewed, the untrue loyalties, etc. There are so many factors involved that the chance everything came in line for a different reality is almost zero.

Originally Posted by Oblivion

And about the trick end, why does it bring Ange back on the boat? And does she stil decide to become an author in that end or does it only apply to the other one? Seeing as how she gives up the name Ange in both.

I would say she doesn't end up an author in that one. I don't know if I would call it Ange giving up her name as much as I would call it Ange doesn't want to be arrested for ruthlessly murdering two people while she also avoids two groups of people who want her dead.

[jjblue1]

I don't know if it can be connected to Rule Z but somewhere Bern said the difference between her and Beatrice is that Bern wants to get a certain result when she tosses a dice (or was it a coin?) while for Beato any result is fine and that this caused a bad affinity between them (I can't find the exact quote though).
So I wonder if Rule Z is connected to Beato not aiming to a definite goal but merely abandoning herself to the wheel of destiny.
In a fashion this work at Bern's disadvantage because if for Beato any result is okay there's no more a result that she's opposing against so whatever goal Bern would try to pursue would be a goal that wouldn't trouble Beato making Bern without goals that contrast with Beato.

Can this maybe being interpreted with 'since there's no way to find out what had happened in Rokkenjima Prime everything goes'?
Every theory can be tossed in the catbox but none can be proved.
So, even if you guess right you'll never know.
Chance to guess isn't 0 but chance to prove you've guessed right is as Beato's catbox accepts all the theories and doesn't deny any of them.

Just a thought.

[PsychoShion]

You guys seen the movie "CUBE" where the people are locked in an endless chain of rooms but the rooms go up and down on the floors they realize they are in a cube but dont realize that the rooms are moving around at certain intervals making it random chance to find the exit. Since the rooms are rotaing around itself it makes mapping it out with any type of coordinates a moot point.

Maybe" The CUBE" is like rule z or how Bern feels trapped in an impossible maze. She has to find a pattern in the random sequence to solve the encryption shes stuck in if not then thats why shes the Witch of Miracles.

[Wanderer]

Rule Z is love. Seriously. It is something Bernkastel really sucks at and it gives the truth an indefinite shape.

And remember, this is RK07 we're talking about here. Without rule Z it cannot be seen.

Originally Posted by Oblivion

And about the trick end, why does it bring Ange back on the boat? And does she stil decide to become an author in that end or does it only apply to the other one? Seeing as how she gives up the name Ange in both.

Hmm, well I tried the Trick End first and it didn't unlock the Tea Party and the ????. Do they unlock once you do both Ends, or just when you do the Magic End?

[Oblivion]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Rule Z is love. Seriously. It is something Bernkastel really sucks at and it gives the truth an indefinite shape.

And remember, this is RK07 we're talking about here. Without rule Z it cannot be seen.



Hmm, well I tried the Trick End first and it didn't unlock the Tea Party and the ????. Do they unlock once you do both Ends, or just when you do the Magic End?

To unlock the tea party you need to do both IIRC and to unlock the ??? the tea party needs to be finished. I don't remember if the magic end alone can unlock it but I'm sure about the ???.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Oblivion

To unlock the tea party you need to do both IIRC and to unlock the ??? the tea party needs to be finished. I don't remember if the magic end alone can unlock it but I'm sure about the ???.

Guess I'll find out when I replay the second half of EP8 (now that the English version is out)

[Misuzu]

I'm pretty positive neither the tea party or the ??? showed up for me when I got the trick ending.

I've been enamored with the idea of Genji as a culprit lately, since you can pretty easily make an argument with ~personality death~ for him, and he's the only character I come up with a satisfying motive for. I'm one of the people who thinks Genji was in love with Kinzo, and I can see him just snapping after everything people ask of him. Being forced to cover up the death of the man he loved by his bungling son and daughter-in-law, being asked to be a part of ghost-pranks by Kinzo's secret incest baby. I can see him holding it all inside until Yasu's murder mystery game and feeling as though he needs to destroy everything so he can sleep at last. He fails, though, because of Battler- he can't bring himself to kill a man with Kinzo's face.

It needs a lot of fleshing out, but I'm planning a big replay session and it'll be fun to keep this in mind as I do it. I will deny Yasu as the culprit on Rokkenjima Prime for as long as I can, because I think the whole thing is awful and pretty loveless.

[Renall]

But is reading a motive like that onto Genji all that much better?

I mean, it honestly wouldn't surprise me if Genji was in love with Kinzo, but whether he could be pushed over the edge... well I don't see a lot of evidence for that.

[Zork]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

For the most part I agree with you in x and y. The problem with z is that it would literally make RK07 a plagiarist hack despite him saying that he really didnt want it to end that way.

Well, if he's a "plagiarist hack" then it's not because he wrote a no-culprit ending; he would have been one from the very beginning. The scenario on Rokkenjima uses an awful lot of elements from Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. He even calls it out in EP5 when Lambda describes Battler's self-culprit theory as "And Then There Were No More Ackroyds".

That said, while I do think that RK07's writing style leaves much to be desired, I don't think "plagiarist hack" is fair. Once you start reducing stories down to base components then basically everything has been done before. Even Shakespeare borrowed material; try looking up the origins of Hamlet.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by Zork

Well, if he's a "plagiarist hack" then it's not because he wrote a no-culprit ending; he would have been one from the very beginning. The scenario on Rokkenjima uses an awful lot of elements from Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. He even calls it out in EP5 when Lambda describes Battler's self-culprit theory as "And Then There Were No More Ackroyds".

That said, while I do think that RK07's writing style leaves much to be desired, I don't think "plagiarist hack" is fair. Once you start reducing stories down to base components then basically everything has been done before. Even Shakespeare borrowed material; try looking up the origins of Hamlet.

Alluding to pieces in a genre is one thing, lifting the whole premise and Aesop from another work is something else entirely. Regardless, a no culprit ending doesn't really make sense given what we saw in EP8.

[Misuzu]

Originally Posted by Renall

But is reading a motive like that onto Genji all that much better?

I mean, it honestly wouldn't surprise me if Genji was in love with Kinzo, but whether he could be pushed over the edge... well I don't see a lot of evidence for that.

For me, just about anything is preferable to the Yasu culprit situation as I perceive it, especially since Battler apologizes to her.

But you're correct, there's not really evidence for it that I'm aware of. It's more just something that's interesting me that I'd like to try and gather evidence for. The only bits I can think of right now are from the tips and character profile in episode 2, and that's really not enough to work with. I'll take notes and see what I can come up with.

I think there are characters with motive to kill all of the Ushiromiya siblings, and probably some of the servants as well. I can't think of any satisfactory reason why they'd kill the cousins though, except George.

I'm also really interested in taking another look at 3, 4, and 5. In my mind, whether they were written before or after the explosion, 1 and 2 or more about the planned mystery game/and or murder plot than what happened on the island. I suspect much of the truth of Prime is in 3 and 4- the drunken suit Beato scene in particular feels like something that really happened to me.

I think episode 5 has very little to do with anything that actually happened, and that's what makes it so interesting. To me, t's the game without love, a situation in which Yasu would've taken these actions that doesn't involve her feelings for Battler. It seems as though the murder game was created to take revenge on Natsuhi and make her and Krauss publicly admit to covering up Kinzo's death, but I'd like to see if a new look makes me see anything new. I'd also like to figure out what Tohya's reasons were for writing 3 and 5, but I'm unsure how much of what we read was actually supposed to be part of his forgery.

[ErenselTheJester]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Without rule Z it cannot be seen.

Actually, its quite the opposite, Rule Z is what disguises the truth, Rule Z opposes Love in that regard.