[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Overall Game Impressions

[Jan-Poo]

Wow really, Renall? Having seen that movie dubbed in my own language I totally didn't notice that. I don't know if it was "fixed" or if that was simply lost in translation.


Anyway there is a scene in Misery that explains very well the indignation of a reader/spectator in front of those "bait and switch". And yes it's been done a lot of times, but it is universally accepted as a cheap trickery that a good author should never make.

Can we all just calm down and agree that Umineko is less of a bullshit mystery than Heavy Rain?

Oh my, yes! But if you can find a story that has more plot holes than Heavy Rain I'd be extremely surprised.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Wow really, Renall? Having seen that movie dubbed in my own language I totally didn't notice that. I don't know if it was "fixed" or if that was simply lost in translation.

How was it done in yours? In the original...

Spoiler for The Conversation Again:

The line is gradually "refined" to the very clear "he'd kill us if he got the chance." I mean there is absolutely no way you could get the intonation that comes in at the end of the film out of it. It's impossible. And that line is played dozens of times in the movie.

Anyway there is a scene in Misery that explains very well the indignation of a reader/spectator in front of those "bait and switch". And yes it's been done a lot of times, but it is universally accepted as a cheap trickery that a good author should never make.

Annie Wilkes is insane, but the rant about the serials is spot-on and she's absolutely right. The movie version is best of course, with Kathy Bates just tearing up the film.

[Sherringford]

The most plot hole filled series in the existence of fiction is the Mario series. Mario's relationship with bowser is never properly explained. One moment they are bro'ing it up with each other, the other has Bowser kidnapping peach for no apparent reason.

The accepted fan theory is that Mario and Bowser have a bromance going on, but because of Peach, who was made as a metaphor for Yoko--there is time travel involved-- and as such keeps getting in the way of their bromance, Bowser is forced to kidnap her because that's the only way the damn old ball and chain will let him go have fun with Bowser over at his bitchen castles.

What we see about Mario and Bowser fighting is nothing more than an unreliable narrator we should have seen it coming from a mile away really. The bromance is there if we compare the undeniable evidence that they are always broing it up with sports.

And since we can get to that conclusion, no matter how cheap it feels, it means it's good, right guys?

((Note in case a mod is reading this while sleepy: This is on topic. It's just dancing around a certain issue.))

[naikou]

Originally Posted by Sherringford

But having an unreliable third person narrator feels cheap. There are a few well done novels like that, but they are few and far in between.

Why would a character lie? Because he is the culprit, of course. Why would he lie to himself? Because he isn't lying. He's just being elusive with words.

Umineko is a story being told to someone. A character would lie in their own thoughts, because Beatrice (or whomever the storyteller is) wants them to lie.

Which means...

Originally Posted by Renall

Thinking about it that way, I actually have a lot of problems with disclaiming scenes in which a person is thinking in the first-person. I mean, who is the audience for Natsuhi or Rosa's thoughts? No one. Why would they just make something up?

Battler is the audience for Rosa and Natsuhi's thoughts! And we are, from an even more meta perspective.

Basically, all of Umineko is unreliable because the culprit is the one telling us the story. And the culprit happens to love mystery novels.

Edit: on an unrelated subject, Coppola's only good movies are Godfather I and II, and Apocalypse Now (some of my favorite movies of all time!). The rest of his catalog ranges from mediocre to shockingly bad.

[Judoh]

Umineko: It's And then there were none with a little bit of House of Leaves.

[naikou]

^ and the butler maid did it (with the help of the butler).

[Renall]

Originally Posted by naikou

Battler is the audience for Rosa and Natsuhi's thoughts! And we are, from an even more meta perspective.

Basically, all of Umineko is unreliable because the culprit is the one telling us the story. And the culprit happens to love mystery novels.

That doesn't actually help Ryukishi, because that means Beatrice is telling Battler a crappy story instead of him telling a crappy story. Assigning your offenses against literature to your in-universe storyteller is sometimes acceptable, but I'm not sure how appropriate it is in this case.

[naikou]

Originally Posted by Renall

That doesn't actually help Ryukishi, because that means Beatrice is telling Battler a crappy story instead of him telling a crappy story. Assigning your offenses against literature to your in-universe storyteller is sometimes acceptable, but I'm not sure how appropriate it is in this case.

We weren't discussing overall quality at the moment, we were discussing how much sense it makes to have unreliable narrators in Umineko, right?

I'm not passing the lack of good explanations off on Beatrice - she wasn't even narrating in the Chiru episodes, so that's a different issue altogether. But I think you'll agree that the use of unreliable narrator isn't inconsistent with Umineko's universe, as you claimed before.

[Sherringford]

Originally Posted by naikou

Umineko is a story being told to someone. A character would lie in their own thoughts, because Beatrice (or whomever the storyteller is) wants them to lie.

Which means...

Battler is the audience for Rosa and Natsuhi's thoughts! And we are, from an even more meta perspective.

Basically, all of Umineko is unreliable because the culprit is the one telling us the story. And the culprit happens to love mystery novels.

One culprit who loves mystery novels and doesn't understand them, in that case. But jokes aside, episodes 1 and 2 were written before any crimes were committed while 3 and 4 were written by Battler, who was presumably not the culprit, yet contain the same mistake.

...So...

Yeah, I'd attribute this to Ryu over his characters.

[Jan-Poo]

Renall made a good point, even if it's so then you have Beatrice first and Hachijo later who write stories that completely break one of the fundamental rules of narrative.

And we are put in the same situation of the "victims" of those stories (which are the various people that read those stories inside the umineko universe).


That's why I said that Umineko is a borderline case. Yeah you can find this explanation but that really just sounds like a cheap excuse that allowed Ryuukishi himself to break the rule by diverting the guilt to his own characters.

Since this is a very delicate issue you usually need a very good explanation for fake scenes. It is acceptable for a character to lie, yes, but he must have a reason. "He lied for the hell of it" isn't really something that a reader can be satisfied with even if it could happen in reality.

Using the same logic one could say that even Heavy Rain can be justified because the culprit is just a wacko that likes to pretend he's a good guy even in his own thoughts. But that sounds incredibly lame to me.


Unfortunately no definitive conclusion can be reached on Umineko, simply because we really can't say anything for certain about it.
Your explanation naikou isn't a fact, and I know people who would strongly deny it.

However as much as one tries to deny an interpretation it's of no avail as long as there isn't any way to prove or disprove it. I have my own interpretation, and I base my judgement on that, and even then I've yet to see a different interpretation that actually made me think that everything can be explained perfectly without cheap tricks or lame explanations.

I even tried to do something that I usually never do. Something that I even hate when I see someone trying it. I tried to completely ignore thinking what the author actually had in mind, and tried to create by myself a theory that would explain everything nicely.
I couldn't. The best I could do was to get to a 90%, but there's always some stuff that doesn't fit.

[naikou]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Your explanation naikou isn't a fact, and I know people who would strongly deny it.

Which explanation is that? You don't agree that Beatrice is telling the story? Or you don't agree that Beatrice would use an unreliable narrator?

The only reason Battler doesn't catch on to Beato's lies is because he's incompetent. Just imagine as if Beatrice were telling the story, rather than showing Battler via magic powers.

Beatrice: "So everything is completely normal. Then suddenly, Kanon shoots a lightsaber out of his arm and starts killing demon goats! *shwoom* *shwoom*"

Battler: "What the hell!? What the fuck, that makes no sense."

Beato: "No dude, I swear. A fucking lightsaber."

Battler: "What the fuck. Virgilia! What the fuck is this?"

Virgilia: "I dunno dude, she's probably trying to trick you. By the way, that's a nice coat you've got there. Mind taking it off for a sec?"

Battler: "Sure, whatev."

Beato: "Anyway. The next day everything is completely normal again. Rosa can't get into the chapel because it's locked. But then she opens it with a key from Maria's envelope and everyone is dead inside, but the murderer isn't there."

Battler: "Yeah you probably wouldn't lie to me. Now let's see how this locked room stuff works..."

Beato: "IT'S MAGIC, YO"

...
*much later*
...

Beato: "You were all talking to Kinzo, man. Then you started crying. Then I made you get naked and wear a leash. Then you got eaten by demons. The End!"

Battler: "That didn't happen."

Beato: "You were so shitfaced dude, no wonder you don't remember. Ask Genji, he saw the whole thing."

[Jan-Poo]

For example chronotrig has always tried to explain the fake scenes with someone inside the games telling lies to someone else inside the games, that's one of the reasons he never liked the author theory.

I often told him: "you don't need to think too hard about that, they are fictional stories, the one who lies is simply the author to the reader." But I never really convinced him.

And that's probably because he realized that regardless of the fact it's a character that does it, it's still a cheap trick.

[naikou]

Ryukishi confirmed that Kinzo was dead at the end of EP4. Before he revealed any of the answers, he went and said, "Hey look, guys! Looks like I've got some unreliable narrators in there! Might want to check on that!"

How that is cheap, I don't know.

[Sherringford]

Originally Posted by naikou

Ryukishi confirmed that Kinzo was dead at the end of EP4. Before he revealed any of the answers, he went and said, "Hey look, guys! Looks like I've got some unreliable narrators in there! Might want to check on that!"

How that is cheap, I don't know.

You can argue on how fair it is, and that's fine. But it's bad writing. That's what we are discussing here, or at least what I'm arguing. It violates a few rules in literature, and those rules are there for a reason, not just to keep the man down. You gotta either be an amazing writer to break them, or they stay, if only to protect your story from your nice-but-unpolished ideas.

This amount of unreliability decreases the mystery's quality. Hell, it decreases the novel's quality. As for why it's cheap from a mystery perspective, I think I made a few posts on that topic already.

[naikou]

I would think that Ryukishi was skilled enough to pull it off well. The only reason I can think that lying in third person would be bad writing, is that it might be confusing. But Umineko was easy enough to follow.

And even still, confusing is not necessarily bad, there are many, many works of art which are both confusing and good. "2001: A Space Odyssey" does not explain itself well at all, but it is nonetheless great, based on "fan theories" (read: critical interpretations) about the work, even. "Ulysses" is often regarded as the greatest novel ever written, but it is confusing as fuck and features multiple conflicting perspectives. Its greatness also relies on critical interpretation (holy cow James Joyce was clearly a lazy hack because he didn't explain anything!)

Originally Posted by Sherringford

As for why it's cheap from a mystery perspective, I think I made a few posts on that topic already.

I don't recall your arguments. But you can't fairly say that something is "cheap" when the author tells you it is there. You can use twins, or secret passages, or whatever mystery faux pas you like, as long as you tell the reader about it. Isn't that what that "Sins of Father Knox" novel was all about?

[rogerpepitone]

Except he only revealed that Kinzo was dead in Episode 4 because plenty of players had guessed it.

And as I've said, just knowing that some of the narration is unreliable is useless if there's no rule to distinguish reliable from unreliable. As is stands, Ryu can declare of any scene that doesn't support his intended solution "That was an unreliable narrator; Battler was absent (or drunk)." Fine. But then he can't expect us to use any scene where Battler was absent (or drunk) as evidence.

[naikou]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

Except he only revealed that Kinzo was dead in Episode 4 because plenty of players had guessed it.

I don't see how that makes one whit of difference to Umineko as a work of art, even if it is true. Your argument is much like saying "You only won that game of cards because you got lucky!" Yes, well. Winning is winning.

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

And as I've said, just knowing that some of the narration is unreliable is useless if there's no rule to distinguish reliable from unreliable. As is stands, Ryu can declare of any scene that doesn't support his intended solution "That was an unreliable narrator; Battler was absent (or drunk)." Fine. But then he can't expect us to use any scene where Battler was absent (or drunk) as evidence.

Battler's perspective is reliable, when he is not obviously incapacitated. The red truth is probably mostly reliable (yes I know any given statement could be a lie, that doesn't mean any of them are lies). Would an answer based on those two perspectives satisfy you?

[rogerpepitone]

Except you were making a point about it being "before he introduced any of the answers".

I've got a problem with red truth being only "mostly reliable", but otherwise, if a solution only depended on scenes directly witnessed by Battler, I'd probably accept it.

[Jan-Poo]

And even still, confusing is not necessarily bad, there are many, many works of art which are both confusing and good. "2001: A Space Odyssey" does not explain itself well at all, but it is nonetheless great, based on "fan theories" (read: critical interpretations) about the work, even. "Ulysses" is often regarded as the greatest novel ever written, but it is confusing as fuck and features multiple conflicting perspectives. Its greatness also relies on critical interpretation (holy cow James Joyce was clearly a lazy hack because he didn't explain anything!)

I've heard that kind of argument before but when you use those examples then you have to admit that "Umineko is not solvable".

There isn't any truth in 2001 space odyssey, it isn't meant to have one. I remember a critic of the movie that once said: "if you think you understood everything about this movie you didn't understand a thing".


There are stories that simply aren't created to have a solution or even to be consistent. "The naked lunch" is an example, there are many of those. But it's simply not possible to compare them to a mystery or even a story with mystery elements.

It'd be the same as to say "Space Balls" isn't consistent at all and it's full of plot holes why aren't you bitching about it?

You simply cannot compare a parody to a serious work, and you can't compare an abstract story with one that is supposed to be solvable.


For many years people have argued that umineko must be solvable and there are ways to reach the solution, I myself assumed it was this kind of story. If you think it's the same as "space odyssey" then it isn't solvable at all.

[naikou]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

Except you were making a point about it being "before he introduced any of the answers".

Perhaps I should have said, "Before the challenge to the reader"? I suppose "Kinzo is dead" is something of an answer.

Anyway, I don't know that you will get your solution. I suspect Ryukishi might leave things as they are. It would be an arguably stronger artistic choice to do so, in my opinion, and I like Umineko as it is, anyway. It would make it a weaker mystery novel, granted, but I haven't considered Umineko to be a mystery novel at it's heart since midway through EP4.

Speaking of. We're nine pages into this thread, and it's becoming increasingly apparent that I am a one man army, and that I am failing to convince anyone that my cause is good. Did no one like Umineko? Half of you have Umineko avatars or sigs or quotes, yet none of you even liked the damn thing, in the end? Very depressing.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

If you think it's the same as "space odyssey" then it isn't solvable at all.

Funny thing. You know what genre "Space Odyssey" is listed as on IMDB (besides sci-fi).

Mystery.

Umineko is solvable, it just doesn't have a single correct solution (yet). Which is altogether fine.