[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Renall]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Now let's take Yasu:
By bribing and threatening she starts already to make harm.
The method of killing isn't practical, it doesn't imply she wanted to be stopped. It's insane.
The purpose for all of it? Basically she destroy her whole world, herself included if she have success. I wouldn't call this an improvement toward happiness.
If she fails her life will worsen.

If he/she succeeds his/her life will be worse off. There is literally no winning scenario that is rationally plausible. Saying "well, that's the chance of a miracle!" is nothing more than justification for evil by a person who in fact knows what they are doing is morally wrong.

So, Yasu is evil. I can understand that, but I refuse to sympathize with a coward who intentionally created an environment in which their own life would become worse and the lives of everyone they've ever cared about would as well. Fuck Yasu.

Originally Posted by Drifloon

I'm not sure it's fair to say you can't understand someone just because they're delusional; considering the amount of time that is spent telling us all about the constructs of Yasu's imagination (probably 50% of the whole Umineko cast can be counted under that somehow) and that we have a pretty good idea what exactly her delusions consist of, I personally find the motive reasonably satisfying and understandable. But, I know that most people here aren't able to accept that Yasu genuinely believes in magic or that she thinks the ceremony will accomplish anything. Of course, it's entirely possible that the motive only applies to PieceYasu in the first place, though it doesn't really make much difference to me whether she did anything in Prime or not.

Yasu knows that his/her actions are wrong. That is why Yasu wants to be stopped. These acts are evil. No matter how lost this person is in his or her own imagination, they're sane enough to understand that. Even if we accept full-on lunacy and a belief that everything will be okay in the Golden Land, this is a person who in fact knows that (1) killing is morally wrong, and (2) it's wrong to attempt to force on other people a way to live (or die). To then tell me this person is a culprit even so leads me to conclude they are an enormous hypocrite and coward who is in no way deserving of any sympathy or understanding. Their "heart" is black and rotten and deserves to be crushed until the poison seeps out and melts into the unfeeling earth. They deserve to be exposed, mocked, and promptly forgotten, and their victims vindicated.

And that would be a pretty lousy conclusion to draw, I think, but necessary in such a circumstance. So I choose to believe Yasu's innocence because it's the only way I can possibly feel anything for the character. And I already hate the character for ruining a better one, so I'm seriously giving him/her as much benefit of the doubt as the story will allow. Because the alternative is a monster that deserved all the righteous anger early Meta-Battler threw out. We're supposed to believe otherwise, because he came to believe otherwise, right?

[Drifloon]

I kind of get the impression that Ryukishi was fully aware that a lot of people would feel that way, though. You say you "refuse to sympathise" with her, but I don't think Ryukishi would begrudge you that. After all, this is the person who wrote that only one in a thousand people would be able to understand Clair's heart, and (in Our Confession) that it didn't matter whether the reader's feelings towards Beatrice were love or anger.

I personally feel like I can understand Yasu's conflict of purposes, her committing the murders despite knowing deep down that it was wrong, that she knew that the chances were that she was doing something awful but that she was so hopeless that she felt she could do nothing more than pray for a miracle.

I feel like I am at a point where I can feel pity rather than loathing for Yasu for her foolish decisions and poor judgment. But I don't expect everyone else to be able to feel that same level of compassion. And that's why I understand the desire to theorise about Yasu not being the culprit in reality, and heck, it's certainly possible and I enjoy speculating about it too. But to be honest, deep down I don't really think it's what Ryukishi intended; when I read interviews I get the impression that he wanted people to be able to understand Yasu even though she WAS a mass murderer, not to try and think of ways that she might not have been. After all, trying to understand why people do terrible things, even if you cannot condone them, is a huge theme in all Ryukishi's works.

[Renall]

If he wanted that, he shouldn't have pushed the "nothing to gain" angle so hard. If a person truly has nothing to gain from evil and does it anyway, there's simply something about them that isn't particularly human.

What could be "gained" doesn't necessarily need to be something of substance, but it ought to at least make sense. For example, the Golden Land is portrayed as an acceptable substitute for everyone existing as they are, but not really pushed as a superior option. At least if Yasu were so convinced that the family cannot be saved in any other way that sort of thing could be seen as a motive that is actually somewhat selfless, if dangerously deluded.

But I don't see why anyone should sympathize with "Eh, this works. Or not doing it, that works. Or partially doing it, that also works." That's a really wishy-washy desire. We either want the culprit's desire to be something that must be thwarted, or be sympathetic to it as something that is desirable while regretting their attempts at obtaining it through acts of evil. I just don't care why Yasu thinks anything he/she is doing is right, because Yasu doesn't seem all that committed to any particular outcome either.

[Drifloon]

Eh, that's fair enough. I'll concede that Ryukishi could have definitely done it better, although I do still find a lot of beauty in the last parts of EP7 regardless. But he could certainly have made it more clear exactly how Yasu imagined the Golden Land and he could have given Yasu better reasons for her deep feelings of hopelessness and resignation than he did. I guess I'm just able to appreciate the point he was making even if he did it in a flawed way, and that's kind of how I feel about a lot of Umineko in general.

I do think it needs to be stressed that Yasu did definitely go down a path that was wrong, and this was illustrated very well in that one scene with Ange and Sakutaro in EP4. I talked about it a while ago here, but I do tend to see this as the turning point for Yasu. She clearly made a big mistake here when she agreed to teach Maria 'black magic', and I think this mistake is what led her way of thinking to the point where she would eventually commit the murders.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

Eh, that's fair enough. I'll concede that Ryukishi could have definitely done it better, although I do still find a lot of beauty in the last parts of EP7 regardless. But he could certainly have made it more clear exactly how Yasu imagined the Golden Land and he could have given Yasu better reasons for her deep feelings of hopelessness and resignation than he did. I guess I'm just able to appreciate the point he was making even if he did it in a flawed way, and that's kind of how I feel about a lot of Umineko in general.

I do think it needs to be stressed that Yasu did definitely go down a path that was wrong, and this was illustrated very well in that one scene with Ange and Sakutaro in EP4. I talked about it a while ago here, but I do tend to see this as the turning point for Yasu. She clearly made a big mistake here when she agreed to teach Maria 'black magic', and I think this mistake is what led her way of thinking to the point where she would eventually commit the murders.

I like to think that all Ep 4 wanted to imly is that Maria and Beato fantasized about making such things as Maria never tries to kill Rosa and it can be that PrimeYasu merely wrote mysteries in which she murdered everyone.

Anyway for me there are various problems with the way Yasu (and the people she killed) are portrayed and her motive for doing it and the idea we should 'understand' her.

What PieceYasu did is planning a quite horrible crime and executing it and we're invited to... feel love for her, to understand her motive.

To do it she needs to have a very good reason for her own actions one that can make us say: what she did was wrong but in that moment she couldn't know better.

Yet her own motive seems too vague, not strong enough to accept the horrible things she did with an 'yes, she did wrong but in that moment to her it probably seemed right'.

That's why I wanted a deep insight in her mind, to figure out how it become okay to her to kill:
- the people she, for her own admission, had judged like a mother and a father (Kumasawa and Genji) and who had always been partial toward her
- the people whom she had judged friends, with whom she had grown up, who cared for her, who loved her and whom she loved (Jessica, George and Battler)
- a child who was also her best friend (Maria) and that had never done something wrong
- 2 apparently friendly adults who're never shown taunting her or doing something against her (Hideyoshi and Kyrie)
- a doctor who's responsible only of saving her life

I won't go into the others as they did/could have done things she might have judged worth of killing them (although I've met people worse than Gohda and never killed them).

It's really annoying when I think we've a better look into Kyrie's mind when she considered to kill Asumu than into Yasu's who actually killed so many people and is one of the main characters.

[GuestSpeaker]

And I already hate the character for ruining a better one

I understand that you may not be an author, and certainly aren't the author of this series, but I am interested; what is this better character that you can see? You must have some general ideas about them or you would throw out the whole thing. Is it mostly motive?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by GuestSpeaker

I understand that you may not be an author, and certainly aren't the author of this series, but I am interested; what is this better character that you can see? You must have some general ideas about them or you would throw out the whole thing. Is it mostly motive?

I'm referring to the original pre-Chiru Beatrice. The human behind Beatrice really needed to live up to the meta-character or it would damage both of them pretty badly. And well... I don't think Yasu cuts the mustard.

[Valkama]

I always felt like the insane killer was the Beatrice personality and Clair was just what Yasu was feeling on the inside and what brought about the Beatrice side of her to ruthlessly kill everyone. It's better if you don't try and sympathize with insane mass murders as no matter what the motive is for mass murdering people it will never fully make sense to you. It just has to make sense to the insane killer.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

If he wanted that, he shouldn't have pushed the "nothing to gain" angle so hard. If a person truly has nothing to gain from evil and does it anyway, there's simply something about them that isn't particularly human.

What could be "gained" doesn't necessarily need to be something of substance, but it ought to at least make sense.

I think one of the problems is that to Yasu these things make a weird kind of sense. I agree with you that for us to fully understand and love the character of Yasu, in the way we are thinking the author wanted us to do, he should have elaborated a little more on characterization. But I also still think that your consideration of a culprit is too much lead by your love of justice to draw the same conclusion that one of the detectives, Will, in the story drew.

But (and that's the bigger but) I reread some of the earlier TIPS and came upon something that I completely forgot Ryukishi talked about so early on. I'm talking about the Later Queen Problem.
What actually lead us to the conclusion that Will is completely right in the conclusion he draws? He concludes that, because very likely the horrible incident that happened on Rokkenjima was not the one that 'Beatrice' had planned, she is innocent and worthy to be loved.

I think that for the actual truth to be reached it is important to consider "with love you become unable to see things", but to gain at least AN understanding of why it COULD have happened "without love it can't be seen" comes into play.
"This is a crime that no human could have committed, therefore we need the witch" does not only count for locked rooms and vanished keys, it also helps in making sense of a tragedy that IS beyond human.

The problem is that Yasu was never taught to handle a crisis by facing it but from a young age on was allowed to push it on the witch. That is why she decided, no matter what happened on Rokkenjima, to conceal it by using the witch. To Yasu it does not matter what happened on Rokkenjima, it was always the witch. Whether we come to a conclusion that makes Yasu the culprit or not, for her/him it is always Beatrice who takes the blame.

That's why I wanted a deep insight in her mind, to figure out how it become okay to her to kill:
- the people she, for her own admission, had judged like a mother and a father (Kumasawa and Genji) and who had always been partial toward her
- the people whom she had judged friends, with whom she had grown up, who cared for her, who loved her and whom she loved (Jessica, George and Battler)
- a child who was also her best friend (Maria) and that had never done something wrong
- 2 apparently friendly adults who're never shown taunting her or doing something against her (Hideyoshi and Kyrie)
- a doctor who's responsible only of saving her life

On the other hand, looking at it without love, you could say:
- the people who had pushed her into accepting Beatrice (Kumasawa) and had pushed her into becoming the successor of the Ushiromiya name and fortune (Genji)
- the person who is so desperate not to be alone that she tries to force her into loving her (Jessica), somebody who is so insecure that he tries to force a solution (George) and somebody who left without ever feeling a single shred of remorse (Battler)
- a child who had so much destructive potential and was so driven by revenge fantasies, hung up in her delusions, that she would never grow up a healthy adult
- 2 adults. One who seems to suck up towards being liked out of shady reasons like money (Hideyoshi) and another who incidentally appeared on the scene again right after the former wife had died (Kyrie)
- a doctor who only saved her for the money and connection to an influential and wealthy family. A doctor who screwed up her life by making her live in a "broken body".

The question comes down to what perspective you choose again.

[GuestSpeaker]

Speaking of ep 8, now that the manga is licensed here I guess that means we will be waiting, what was it, about 4 years to read it now? I am all for buying the printed version, but I can't imagine that so many people will be interested in a dead series 4 years on....

[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think one of the problems is that to Yasu these things make a weird kind of sense. I agree with you that for us to fully understand and love the character of Yasu, in the way we are thinking the author wanted us to do, he should have elaborated a little more on characterization. But I also still think that your consideration of a culprit is too much lead by your love of justice to draw the same conclusion that one of the detectives, Will, in the story drew.

Well I'm certainly not going to apologize for valuing justice over loving a (potential) criminal, but of course I don't think you're asking me to. I do agree I needed way more elaboration to be able to put that aside even a little bit.

But (and that's the bigger but) I reread some of the earlier TIPS and came upon something that I completely forgot Ryukishi talked about so early on. I'm talking about the Later Queen Problem.
What actually lead us to the conclusion that Will is completely right in the conclusion he draws? He concludes that, because very likely the horrible incident that happened on Rokkenjima was not the one that 'Beatrice' had planned, she is innocent and worthy to be loved.

I posted about this earlier. You're entirely right. We trust Will because he seems to have his shit together, but we can't forget that Will is willing to flub the truth a little bit out of compassion. That's kind of his entire character.

So could he have made up a solution that Clair liked, but which wasn't necessarily true? Sure. But how can we know?

The problem is that Yasu was never taught to handle a crisis by facing it but from a young age on was allowed to push it on the witch. That is why she decided, no matter what happened on Rokkenjima, to conceal it by using the witch. To Yasu it does not matter what happened on Rokkenjima, it was always the witch. Whether we come to a conclusion that makes Yasu the culprit or not, for her/him it is always Beatrice who takes the blame.

Sure. And I have issues with that, but it may be understandable, even acceptable to some degree... if we know as readers what he/she was covering up. And it wasn't Yasu's fault because seriously screw Yasu if so.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

So could he have made up a solution that Clair liked, but which wasn't necessarily true? Sure. But how can we know?

I think that's the point that could be taken from this.
That IS the whole point of the Later Queen Problem after all. Sure, we are being considered that the detective speaks the word of God and thus is in control of the situation at all times, but it was already criticized through the character of Erika, who spoke in the name of God but fulfilled exactly the first critique of the Later Queen Problem, the detective not knowing a crucial part of the puzzle due to limitations of being a character of that world.

Thus, isn't it exactly that which made Bern's (probably not that unlikely, though lacking) interpretation hit so hart? Because she used all the evidence that Will put aside in order to built his interpretation full of love.
Will's inherent flaw is that he thinks that cases have to be seen with love indiscriminately.

I think in that case Umineko is very similar to the big three Anti-Mysteries it has been likened to because, like Dogura Magura, Murder in the Mansion of Black Death and An Offering to Nothingness, it not only refuses to give an outright solution it depicts within the story that a perfect solution (like in a classical mystery) is impossible.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think that's the point that could be taken from this.
That IS the whole point of the Later Queen Problem after all. Sure, we are being considered that the detective speaks the word of God and thus is in control of the situation at all times, but it was already criticized through the character of Erika, who spoke in the name of God but fulfilled exactly the first critique of the Later Queen Problem, the detective not knowing a crucial part of the puzzle due to limitations of being a character of that world.

Thus, isn't it exactly that which made Bern's (probably not that unlikely, though lacking) interpretation hit so hart? Because she used all the evidence that Will put aside in order to built his interpretation full of love.
Will's inherent flaw is that he thinks that cases have to be seen with love indiscriminately.

I think in that case Umineko is very similar to the big three Anti-Mysteries it has been likened to because, like Dogura Magura, Murder in the Mansion of Black Death and An Offering to Nothingness, it not only refuses to give an outright solution it depicts within the story that a perfect solution (like in a classical mystery) is impossible.

Honestly I think Will's solution for the gameboards is correct.
This doesn't necessarily mean the gameboard solution can be applied to Prime. The problem of the gameboard solution however is that it generates a sharp difference between the two Yasus.

One reacted to everything that went wrong in her life by writing mysteries, the other turned those mysteries into truth.

Unless the Yasu writing mysteries was seriously thinking to turn them into reality as well and was only stopped by something minor becoming, as Kyrie put it, a killer who didn't get the chance, the difference between the two Yasus is not a minor one, a small 'what if'.

Umineko seems to imply that we should believe Yasu wasn't a murderer on Prime and, if I've to consider Yasu as merely a mystery writer, the datas I have are more than enough to understand why she wrote such stories to try and reach Battler.


Problems come when I'm supposed to try to understand PieceYasu.
Sure, it can be that PieceYasu isn't supposed to be understood. After all BlackBattler says he'll kill everyone because 'witches want him to'.
However when Black Battler says so I think 'this character is so poorly characterized...' and automatically hope the real Umineko culprit is better characterized.

There's to say maybe Ryukishi with that sentence didn't mean to point out how poorly Battler would be characterized but how weak of a motivation pushed his author to make him as a culprit.

In short 'relieving himself from boredom' is weak and less important versus 'trying to get your loved one to understand your feelings'.
Which is opinable (witches litterally die of boredom) but can still be the message Ryukishi wanted to deliver.

Originally Posted by haguruma

On the other hand, looking at it without love, you could say:
- the people who had pushed her into accepting Beatrice (Kumasawa) and had pushed her into becoming the successor of the Ushiromiya name and fortune (Genji)
- the person who is so desperate not to be alone that she tries to force her into loving her (Jessica), somebody who is so insecure that he tries to force a solution (George) and somebody who left without ever feeling a single shred of remorse (Battler)
- a child who had so much destructive potential and was so driven by revenge fantasies, hung up in her delusions, that she would never grow up a healthy adult
- 2 adults. One who seems to suck up towards being liked out of shady reasons like money (Hideyoshi) and another who incidentally appeared on the scene again right after the former wife had died (Kyrie)
- a doctor who only saved her for the money and connection to an influential and wealthy family. A doctor who screwed up her life by making her live in a "broken body".

The question comes down to what perspective you choose again.

The problem is that Yasu never chose to present others in such perspective.
Even in Ep 7 she says Kumasawa and Genji are sort of like her parents.
The only moment in which we get she's not so happy is with the red truth Bern gives about her wound... but this could be related to merely hating herself, not necessarily to hating the people who tried to save her.

Also... as motives they're pretty weak to kill people.
It's reasonable for her to hate Natsuhi who basically tried to kill her. Even to hate Rosa because she can think she was the cause of her mother's death (maybe she feared Rosa pushed her down like Natsuhi did to her) and because mistreat Maria. But really neither of the those people aimed to harm her or hurt her feelings. Jessica isn't forcing Kanon to be his boyfriend using her power as grandaughter of his master. When he says no she... deal with it.
Punishing her just because she liked Kanon enough to wish for him to be her boyfriend is not a valid motive, is a sign of insanity.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Honestly I think Will's solution for the gameboards is correct.
This doesn't necessarily mean the gameboard solution can be applied to Prime. The problem of the gameboard solution however is that it generates a sharp difference between the two Yasus.

It is at least a valid solution to Beatrice's boards in which she painted herself the culprit (EP1 and 2, because written by Yasu) or at least left enough room for herself to be A culprit (EP3 and 4, because written by amnesiac Toya).
The problem is that, as depicted in TIPs like the Interview with a Certain Witchhunter or Forgery No.xxx, there is enough room in the world of the Rokkenjima Incident to theorize all sorts of terrible events and murderers into this 3 day space, because almost all traces of the real events are gone. Bern's tea party in EP7 and her game in EP8 showed that it is entirely possible to construct events in which Yasu is not the killer but simply prepared the stage for another tragedy.

The problem with Will's theory is, as is the core of the Later Queen Problem, we have no choice but to believe that his theory is correct, at least if we want a sympathetic outcome of everything. It is still obvious though that he either chose to ignore certain aspects which we learned in the course of Umineko as a narrative presented to us or he simply was not aware of them.
The interesting thing is that he is unable to beat Bern with usual means at the end of EP7, not because her FANTASY is so elaborate, but because her MYSTERY is foolproof.

Unless the Yasu writing mysteries was seriously thinking to turn them into reality as well and was only stopped by something minor becoming, as Kyrie put it, a killer who didn't get the chance, the difference between the two Yasus is not a minor one, a small 'what if'.

I think this is something we have to consider.
I would heavily dislike the idea of just discarding a large portion of Umineko, which is displaying the potential of evil in people, just because the display of good seemed more sympathetic. Sure, Bern's game hyped the "everybody is a potential murderer" aspect up by 100, but I think it is something that has to be considered in the context of Umineko and also in the context of Yasu.
You don't write fiction like this JUST to reach somebody. I think that is also what Dlanor was hinting at in Our Confession, the frustration and hatred for certain aspects of people that 'Beatrice' did not want to admit of having. We also have the depiction of Maria in EP4, who also carried both, the potential of endless good and also the wish for destruction and death (she created magic to hurt her classmates, teachers, she even dreamt of killing her own mother a thousand times). I think Maria depicts how Yasu grew up to a great deal and also shows how Yasu got twisted through all the stories she lived out.

I don't believe Yasu to be the culprit of the 1986 Rokkenjima incident, but he was an important trigger to events that created such a tragedy.

However when Black Battler says so I think 'this character is so poorly characterized...' and automatically hope the real Umineko culprit is better characterized.

I think here you have to distinguish between BlackBattler (the meta incarnation of every Battler-culprit ever created) and the Battler culprit on a gameboard (e.g. Forgery No.xxx). The one we witness talking in that TIP is the meta incarnation, which is similar to MetaBeatrice in the sense that he not only encompasses all possible Battler-culprits, he is constructed from them and exists because of them. Similar to how Eva-Beatrice exists because of Ange's and other people's Eva-culprit theories.

How well that culprit is filled depends on the individual author and perspective again.
The Battler-cuprit even in Forgery No.xxx will likely not be motivated by "witches wanted him to do it", that is just the metaphor for us readers (the theater-going witches) demanding BlackBattler (any Battler-culprit theory) to appear on stage again.
Like BlackBattler also said, with each well written Battler-culprit story he grows in strength, like Beatrice grows with each story depicting her as the culprit. This is just showing that we, the people who are simply interested in the tragedy, tend to believe in those versions of events that have the most backing, which does not necessarily mean that they are the actual events.

It's things like this that make me still like Umineko, not as a mystery, but as an anti-mystery.

Also... as motives they're pretty weak to kill people.
[...]
Punishing her just because she liked Kanon enough to wish for him to be her boyfriend is not a valid motive, is a sign of insanity.

I think murder is always a sign of a certain amount of insanity. Even if it is a cry for help, desperation alone is mostly not enough to kill a person, a certain degree of insanity is necessary, because people in countries like Europe, the US and also Japan are brought up to despise killing too much to simply choose it as a conscious option.
Thus, searching for a motive that makes our killer NOT insane (or what our society would refer to as insane) on any level is extremely hard and leads us to the question if murder can ever be justified. To me the answer is....nyaaeeeeuuuuh
Murder is wrong on many levels, no matter how much classical mystery stories tend to paint a romantic image of the sympathetic murderer. I think it's not wrong to feel a certain amount of sympathy towards somebody who saw no other option than to kill people close to him- or herself, it shows that we are still human and don't get drawn to the same level or deeper. That does not mean on the other hand, that we have to condone the deed.

I'm not talking about "hate the sin, love the sinner", that is a very stupid concept, but trying to understand what drove a culprit to such a horrible act is not wrong, demonizing such a person is much worse, because then we forget to search for reasons.
That is pretty much shown in Bern's EP7 solution. She gives us a culprit who we can hate, who is a horrible, greedy, self-centered monster, but we know that this picture is incomplete because we already got to know Kyrie from several perspectives. Even if she did commit the crimes as Bern depicted on a surface level, we immediately start making theories. "She probably knew Eva would feel driven to care for Ange that way", "Maybe the Sumaderas held Ange captive", "If she had known all that Rudolph and others kept from her, she wouldn't have done it". All theories that try to see the human in Kyrie.

[Renall]

Non-insane killers exist. I would dispute that highly. Now, a mass killer is far harder to believe. Possible yes, just hard.

The problem with Yasu is I can't even see a kinda-sane reason to kill anybody individually, but there are characters I could see with motive to kill at least one other (George, Kyrie) or themselves (Krauss, Yasu). Maybe. And nobody has an especially great reason to kill everyone.

If then the alternative is to embrace error, escalating passions, or accident, I will gladly prefer those to ridiculous insanity.

[Kiltias]

Originally Posted by Renall

And nobody has an especially great reason to kill everyone.

What about killing everyone part the Servants?
As in the target being the Family, the servants being killed simply due to being servants, furniture, looked down upon by the culprit as well as wanting no survivors or simply to silence them.

Put yourself into the Culprit's shoes, would you keep them alive if you plan to kill the family?

Or for all we know it's like the A,B,C Murders from Agatha Christie.

Spoiler for ABC:

The Culprit in this was trying to pass a murder as a part of multiple murders, they killed 4 people in order to surpress the truth.
Alice Ascher
Betty Bernard
Carmichael Clark - The actual target the culprit wanted dead.
George Earlsfield

As in:

Spoiler for Perhaps:

What if the Culprit had some true targets as well among the victims but killed everyone to hide the truth behind the motive.

[Renall]

No one in the family really benefits from killing the family. In fact, doing so largely makes the situation worse.

And killing the servants for being in the way is needlessly psychotic and sloppy.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

The problem with Will's theory is, as is the core of the Later Queen Problem, we have no choice but to believe that his theory is correct, at least if we want a sympathetic outcome of everything. It is still obvious though that he either chose to ignore certain aspects which we learned in the course of Umineko as a narrative presented to us or he simply was not aware of them.

Honestly I don't believe Ryukishi was planning for Will's solution to be 'wrong'.
It's possible in the gameboards of Umineko there's space for another solution but I think that, up to the moment in which he finished Ep 7, Will's solution was the right one, the one he wanted us to reach. After all an extra Umineko series wasn't planned in the same way as it isn't planned a follow up to Meakashi-hen.

So, for me, Will's solution of the gameboard is correct not for a matter of being sympathetic but merely because it's a matter of putting a end to things. If I don't plan to disclose extra material that will lead me to a different way I don't need to come up with a different solution.

Of course, in the future, Ryukishi might decide to revise his original idea and write a new Umineko in which we'll learn that the culprit wasn't Yasu but... character X... or actually there was a 19/18 person or actually the murderer were the members of Kyrie's family or whatever.

It's not a problem I feel like worrying about now as, as of now, as far as we know, no such thing exist/will exist.

What however I think can exist are hints about what happened really in Rokkenjima Prime at least in the books Tohya wrote as he probably knows the truth and Ryukishi said it's possible to figure it out.

And, as a third option, it can be it's possible to create a solution Ryukishi hadn't planned and that would still be 'correct' with the datas at hands. It still wouldn't be the intended solution, the one we were supposed to find but I guess there's a possibility it exists.

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think this is something we have to consider.
I would heavily dislike the idea of just discarding a large portion of Umineko, which is displaying the potential of evil in people, just because the display of good seemed more sympathetic. Sure, Bern's game hyped the "everybody is a potential murderer" aspect up by 100, but I think it is something that has to be considered in the context of Umineko and also in the context of Yasu.

It's not because it's more sympathetic, at least as far as I'm involved.
It's because Yasu as a killer is poorly presented while she's more effective as a writer. For me it's a matter of characterization, not of sympathy.

It's entirely possible to write a story about a person that kills many people and make the reader feel like... well, that guy did something wrong but he had his own reasons. The litterature is plenty of characters like those.

I wouldn't need Yasu to be innocent to feel 'understanding' with her as long as she could have a reason I could grasp and that lead her to snap and do something so wrong.
For example, I can understand how Natsuhi lost it and pushed the servant, although i don't condone her actions.
However Yasu's reasons are so blurry I can't say 'well, in her place I might have lost it as well and done it'.

Plus there's the whole bit of Battler saying that Beato didn't kill anyone in Ep 8, which I like to think is a reference to how the real Yasu didn't kill anyone in the real world (if she inadvertitely caused someone's death, well, that's another matter).

Also, in Ep 6, Beato wasn't capable to kill anyone by herself, not even Natsuhi. It was Battler who did the work for her.
(it'll be pretty ironic if in Prime Yasu tried to kill someone but failed and was attacked, Battler thought that someone was trying to kill her and killed that person to protect her...)

Originally Posted by haguruma

You don't write fiction like this JUST to reach somebody. I think that is also what Dlanor was hinting at in Our Confession, the frustration and hatred for certain aspects of people that 'Beatrice' did not want to admit of having. We also have the depiction of Maria in EP4, who also carried both, the potential of endless good and also the wish for destruction and death (she created magic to hurt her classmates, teachers, she even dreamt of killing her own mother a thousand times). I think Maria depicts how Yasu grew up to a great deal and also shows how Yasu got twisted through all the stories she lived out.

Undoubtely in the fiction Yasu wrote there was part of her frustration but this doesn't necessarily means there was murdering intent otherwise all the mystery writers would also be killers. Also considering she's a pretty young girl with little experience of the world outside Rokkenjima it makes sense she placed her stories on Rokkenjima and used the people she knew as character instead of having to make up place and characters from nothing.

After all it's Maria the one that can give life from 0, not her.

Originally Posted by haguruma

I don't believe Yasu to be the culprit of the 1986 Rokkenjima incident, but he was an important trigger to events that created such a tragedy.

Undoubtely Yasu did something. Apparently she paid people, if what we learn about Ange's world from Ep 4 is to be taken into account and someone handed to Eva the ring and the way to Kuwadorian, someone who probably passed that information to Battler as well as he expected to reach Kuwadorian, although he ended up in the wrong place. Yasu also wrote the messages in the bottles who, along with the books Eva sold, created in the public the idea 'a witch did it' and also, prior to the tragedy, she fed the idea a witch existed, so we likely had Maria and the servants who worked on Rokkenjima spreading this rumour.

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think here you have to distinguish between BlackBattler (the meta incarnation of every Battler-culprit ever created) and the Battler culprit on a gameboard (e.g. Forgery No.xxx). The one we witness talking in that TIP is the meta incarnation, which is similar to MetaBeatrice in the sense that he not only encompasses all possible Battler-culprits, he is constructed from them and exists because of them. Similar to how Eva-Beatrice exists because of Ange's and other people's Eva-culprit theories.

Honestly I don't know if he's the meta incarnation or the fantasy incarnation. To me he seems more like the fantasy incarnation than the meta one, sort of like the Beato of Ep 5 who defended herself on the trial more than the MetaBeato of Ep 5 who was comatose. BlackBattler himself defines himself as a piece, after all.

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think murder is always a sign of a certain amount of insanity. Even if it is a cry for help, desperation alone is mostly not enough to kill a person, a certain degree of insanity is necessary, because people in countries like Europe, the US and also Japan are brought up to despise killing too much to simply choose it as a conscious option.

Undoubtely but it has been proved that under a certain strain even a normal mind can break and push you toward the temporal (or permanent) insanity that will make you commit murder and that this breaking of a normal person can be 'understandable' by other normal people if not justifiable.

Ep 7 apparently would want us to follow Yasu's story and learn of what broke her and turned her into a killer however as far as I'm involved it fails. It sugar coat the story too much so that when I try to picture in mind mind the extent of Yasu's desperation that pushed her to do so I don't feel like I'm merely following the canon, but as if I'm giving her an extra backstory, as if I'm making up things.

Originally Posted by haguruma

Thus, searching for a motive that makes our killer NOT insane (or what our society would refer to as insane) on any level is extremely hard and leads us to the question if murder can ever be justified.

It's not a matter of justifying murder, it's more a matter of explaining how a person can reach the insanity level required to commit it.

Higurashi in this sense handled things much better in Onikakushi and Meakashi or in the first two murders at the beginning of Tsumihoroboshi. You can see that the characters reached the necessary stress to break and do what they didn't want to do.

In Umineko however it's pretty difficult to rationalize what Yasu did.

Originally Posted by Kiltias

What about killing everyone part the Servants?
As in the target being the Family, the servants being killed simply due to being servants, furniture, looked down upon by the culprit as well as wanting no survivors or simply to silence them.

Put yourself into the Culprit's shoes, would you keep them alive if you plan to kill the family?

Or for all we know it's like the A,B,C Murders from Agatha Christie.

Spoiler for ABC:

The Culprit in this was trying to pass a murder as a part of multiple murders, they killed 4 people in order to surpress the truth.
Alice Ascher
Betty Bernard
Carmichael Clark - The actual target the culprit wanted dead.
George Earlsfield

As in:

Spoiler for Perhaps:

What if the Culprit had some true targets as well among the victims but killed everyone to hide the truth behind the motive.

I've been considering the idea the servants were killed so that they wouldn't be able to talk about it. Problem is that once the bomb comes into picture everything seems meaningless. All the culprit had to do was to turn it on and leave the island while making sure the others couldn't leave as well.

In short if, for example, the scenery of EP 7 Teaparty took place Kyrie didn't have to go around killing everyone. She could have said they were having a reunion than wait for the night and escape after turning the bomb on. If she had played well her cards she could have waited enough to have the time to check if the credit card worked and even to hid some ingots in Kuwadorian.



By the way is someone familiar with the movie Knight Moves?

It has a bunch of things that are pretty similar to Umineko. First of all the culprit and the 'detective' knew each other from childhood. The culprit deliberately sent messages to the detective, challenging him to stop him/solve the mystery. The story takes place on an island that, for the culprit, is the world. There's a chess motive and murders follow a certain order (a chess game instead than the epitaph but still). In the taglines the whole thing is referred as a 'game'. The murders take place to send a message to the detective and there's more but it's escaping from my mind right now.

[Renall]

I went over this before, but I see Black Battler as the meta version of a particular type of piece. That is, he represents a "culprit Battler." We distinguish him thus from the "detective Battler" we know from the series. In any given story you can't tell the two apart visually; each is merely "Battler." However, only one can exist at a given point as each story has just one Battler.

He's given a new representation for our purposes, and arguably may have his own meta-existence. He probably wouldn't be a magic character though, as that would kind of give the game away.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

I went over this before, but I see Black Battler as the meta version of a particular type of piece. That is, he represents a "culprit Battler." We distinguish him thus from the "detective Battler" we know from the series. In any given story you can't tell the two apart visually; each is merely "Battler." However, only one can exist at a given point as each story has just one Battler.

He's given a new representation for our purposes, and arguably may have his own meta-existence. He probably wouldn't be a magic character though, as that would kind of give the game away.

I wonder though if BlackBattler is actually like Eva-Beatrice. Eva wasn't the real culprit in the story and Eva-Beatrice is sort of a different person. So maybe in Land we would be presented with an apparent Battler culprit theory that could have given life to Black Battler but Piece Battler would have been innocent... sort of like how Battler proposed a Battler culprit theory in Ep 5 although Battler wasn't the culprit and we could have seen MetaBattler having to deal with BlackBattler (though to see this Battler shouldn't have been the detective... but wasn't there an Erika-like character planned as well? If Land planned to use a detective different from Battler we could be allowed to see things from Black Battler's perspective...).

Note that in the beginning Beato made clear that Eva-Beatrice and Battler weren't supposed to interact as they were in different worlds.

It'll be interesting to make a division of the characters according to their position:

Bern and Lambda for example are solely meta.
Beato is meta but she's also... 'fantasy' and a piece on the gameboard as she technically resides in Yasu's body.
Gaap is meta and fantasy but she has not a matching piece on the gameboard.
Battler and Erika are pieces but also meta.

hum... it's a bit confusing...