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Old 2010-12-02, 18:20   Link #19321
Cao Ni Ma
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But seriously guys re-read EP5 first scene, it only takes about 1 minute. Dont be surprised if EP8 has path choices and you decide to take the proposed happy lovey dovey route only to have the witch kill of the furniture and taunt you in the face.
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Old 2010-12-02, 18:28   Link #19322
chronotrig
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Well, I think we should remember all of the scenes hinting about Beatrice. There was a fairly huge portion of EP4 describing Maria's and Ange's lives, saying that they were 'witches'. And then, we hear Ange say that the only way to understand Beatrice is to understand witches. Reading through that section again, it seems to me that it's a pretty direct hint that "Beatrice" is the same sort of kid as Maria and Ange. i.e. extremely introverted, lonely, bullied a lot, creates lots of imaginary friends to pass time, and wants that imaginary world to be acknowledged by those around them (though most strongly in Maria's case). Since we also know that someone was playing witches with Maria a lot, and it's hard to imagine an ulterior motive for that, there's plenty of evidence that a person matching this description lives on the island.

Also, everyone knows about the evidence that Beatrice might have been a servant, and that both Shannon and Kanon were likely candidates (especially because we see them meeting Beatrice in EP2, which is the same sort of 'meeting' that Ange has with MARIA and the stakes). Plus, if we follow the definition of 'witch' that applies to Ange and Maria, Beatrice is almost certainly either a kid or a child-like person.

Just put those two things together, imagine a servant living a life similar to Maria's, and I think that gives you Yasu pretty clearly. And all based on evidence from EP4 and before.
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Last edited by chronotrig; 2010-12-02 at 18:44.
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Old 2010-12-02, 18:36   Link #19323
musouka
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Renall View Post
That's a very backhanded way of telling me I'm interpreting the story wrong.
Was I annoyed when I typed that out? Yes. I apologize for insulting you, as that wasn't really my intent, but it's quite irritating to try to have a positive conversation on this site only for it to be inevitably dragged down into general complaints about the quality of the series. I was looking forward to discussing Yasu, not getting into another pissing contest about the relative merits of Umineko as a work of fiction.

Quote:
But did you? She wasn't there. This character didn't exist. You only claim to see her now in what was there then, because before a thing was presented to you to accept as that existence behind the mask, all you had was the assumption that there was anything back there.
Let me tell you something. Based on discussions with a friend, we both came to the conclusion by the end of EP4 that there was a person we hadn't been introduced to that was behind Beatrice. You are welcome to disbelieve me, but discussing this elsewhere is what directly led to things like Jessitrice and the Pony Theory, as people took what we had discovered and used it to create their own theories. This included noticing and documenting things like:

1. Shannon was described as being different, unlike everyone else Battler had previously met when he had come to the island six years ago.
2. The fact that Beato is able to hold a conversation with herself.
3. The consistent switching of personal pronouns, especially when Beato is emotional and losing track of herself.
4. The red at the end of EP4.
5. Beato's shock at still looking like "herself" right before the EP3 Tea Party.
6. Lambda's discussion of actresses in the EP4 Tea Party.
7. The focus of EP4 being generally on miserable young women who turn to "witchcraft" as an outlet and escape for a feeling a lack of control over their own lives--Maria and Ange were pretty obviously paralleling Beato pretty strongly.
8. The broad hints that Beato was and still considers herself "furniture".
9. The only thing we knew regarding Battler's behavior six years ago, when his sin was committed, were promises he had thrown around indiscriminately.
10. A pattern established by Kuwadorian Beatrice of Kinzo believing that Beatrice's soul could be transferred to other bodies.
11. Hell, we even figured out that Genji and Kumasawa were in on "hiding" Beatrice based on Gohda's TIP--which also hinted at an "unknown person is behind Beatrice".

Don't get me wrong. We didn't figure everything out. For example, we thought that Kinzo was probably using orphans from Fukuin to transfer Beato into, and we refused to believe that Beatrice was (technically) Shannon. But all of those things we got from the first four episodes. The character we discussed was very similar to Yasu in personality. We just couldn't figure out how to make her fit into the plot.
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Old 2010-12-02, 18:41   Link #19324
Renall
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Oh, I don't disagree with your second point. You're hardly alone in that conclusion; I believe Jan-Poo, chronotrig, and myself all had similar notions, although we approached them from profoundly different angles (just ask those two how often they agree with me).

The problem is that last part you said. Making her fit. I just don't get the impression that Yasu "belongs" here, let alone in the role she's cast.
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Old 2010-12-02, 18:52   Link #19325
chronotrig
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Originally Posted by Renall View Post
The problem is that last part you said. Making her fit. I just don't get the impression that Yasu "belongs" here, let alone in the role she's cast.
What about the letter though? The absolute first mystery in Umineko, which appears in nearly every game, is the letter that Beatrice gives to Maria.

That in itself isn't particularly difficult to get around, but when we hear that Maria has been meeting with and playing witches with someone who claims to be Beatrice for years, that should set off some alarm bells pretty early on. What motive could someone have for doing that? Was it all just a scheme to make Maria read the letter in 1986? It's very hard to find any answer, unless we end up with a person like Yasu.
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Old 2010-12-02, 19:05   Link #19326
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There are a lot of people we can end up with, not just one, and not just the one we have.
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Old 2010-12-02, 19:05   Link #19327
CrystalStarlight95
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Hmm, I haven't read EP7 yet, so I haven't really seen how this Yasu is.

Thing is, we've got all these people, and yet a new character that hasn't been seen for 6 episodes and we don't even see his/her face and this person may as well be the culprit? It'd be probably a tiny tiny TINY bit disappointing for me...

Of course I understand Yasu's shitty life and how she probably developed an alter Beatrice personality, sure. Perfect motive. Thing is, I guess it's just weird that Ryukishi07 just decides to bring in some random girl/boy, and expect us all to believe she was the one doing all the killings. (I was actually thinking Ryu07 would pull a ShanKanonYasuTrice, which is still possible.)

Ah, maybe it's just me being dumb. I like the regular mysteries where someone in the original group was the culprit (which would be so if Shannon was the culprit). Bringing in someone you haven't even read about the whole time just sort of makes me P.O.d. *shrug*
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Old 2010-12-02, 19:15   Link #19328
Keriaku
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I've felt this since EP6, and it's been magnified a lot since finding out about Yasu, but I feel like a very core and overarching theme to Umineko is being able to empathize. Being able to see things from other people's perspectives. The whole story seems to be an exercise in this, directly and indirectly.

I think the fact that many people will not like or understand Yasu is something that Ryuukishi would know very well. I think altogether he's made an ambitious move, making a character such as this a central figure in the story.
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Old 2010-12-02, 19:20   Link #19329
CrystalStarlight95
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Yeah, I guess. If it turns out Yasu turned into Shannon and Shannon created Kanon and then Yasu, Shannon and Kanon created Beatrice together that's okay. Maybe Yasu's not that important right now. Maybe Ryu07 is trying to hint at something?
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Old 2010-12-02, 19:29   Link #19330
chronotrig
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Originally Posted by Renall View Post
There are a lot of people we can end up with, not just one, and not just the one we have.
There's a lot of people that could work, yes. I agree that it's impossible to prove that Yasu is Shannon (let's call it part a), and that you can't prove that Yasu is a boy/girl similar to Maria (part b).

However, for the EP4 description of witches to fit, there must be someone on the island called Beatrice who is a girl or boy similar to Maria and Ange. Maybe an adult, but it's hard to imagine an adult playing with dolls. So, unless Ange's hint in EP4 is a lie, part b is very likely to be true.

And in the EP2 description of Shannon, Kanon, and Beatrice, the only time in a question arc that someone sees Beatrice and doesn't die or go missing immediately (other than Maria and EP2 Rosa), we see Shannon watching Beatrice floating around Natsuhi, invisible. Which is what Ange and Mammon did in EP4. Which means that part a is likely true.

So, if we just connect the dots a little, we can guess who Yasu is and what personality she has. If the games are supposed to be a message, why can't this be the message?
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"The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the letter 'q' into a privet bush. But, unfortunately, there are times when it is unavoidable."
--Hitchhikers


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Old 2010-12-02, 19:42   Link #19331
musouka
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Originally Posted by chronotrig View Post
If the games are supposed to be a message, why can't this be the message?
It obviously is the message. The point of the game is to figure out the existence of Yasu, and for Battler to be reminded of the hope he had once given her and then carelessly forgot.
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Old 2010-12-02, 20:01   Link #19332
Cao Ni Ma
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Originally Posted by musouka View Post
It obviously is the message. The point of the game is to figure out the existence of Yasu, and for Battler to be reminded of the hope he had once given her and then carelessly forgot.
Then the mystery is over and there is no reason to read EP8. Detective mysteries dont end this way, not without one final dénouement by the detective of the series. Not without one final twist that spins everything under a new light. Of course you could argue that everything from EP5 last scenes till episode 8 are that but thats a long winded one . Or that this isn't a detective novel at all and just a estranged love story.

Im just one of those that wont take anything at face value, I try to find every little detail, how It could be spun differently under a different perspective. How it could be used to anticipate something later or how it could be a herring, never discarding the possibility of anything to the very end.

Like the idea of Battler simply forgetting something causes all of this or at least Beatrice wanting to seek him out. If this was following the standard mold of detective novels this wouldn't happen not because it involves a love story, but because people just dont forget anything in them. Everyone has photographic memory, no matter how minute the thing was, they'll remember it. If they tell you something contrary to the evidence it wasn't because they forgot, its because they lied to you.
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Old 2010-12-02, 20:01   Link #19333
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Except he might not have forgotten. That's in there too.
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Old 2010-12-02, 20:29   Link #19334
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Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma View Post
Like the idea of Battler simply forgetting something causes all of this or at least Beatrice wanting to seek him out. If this was following the standard mold of detective novels this wouldn't happen not because it involves a love story, but because people just dont forget anything in them. Everyone has photographic memory, no matter how minute the thing was, they'll remember it. If they tell you something contrary to the evidence it wasn't because they forgot, its because they lied to you.
No that's really just not true. What makes the classic scene where the detective unravels the truth so great is that he points out the important things that the innocent and the Watson overlooked when they were trying to solve it. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, for example will get distracted by other mysteries that are not important to the central one. He remembers only what he thinks is important. Sometimes it's even because the culprit forgot something that he makes a mistake and says or does something that gets him caught.

Besides there are probably a lot of tropes in Japanese mysteries that we generally wouldn't know about.

If Battler didn't forget the sin it would mean he's not as much of a Watson as we thought. He wouldn't be incompetent in that case either.

Last edited by Judoh; 2010-12-02 at 20:56.
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Old 2010-12-02, 20:36   Link #19335
Renall
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This does not preclude the red stating Meta-Battler is incompetent, though!
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This story is a redacted confession.

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Old 2010-12-02, 20:38   Link #19336
Cao Ni Ma
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Maybe it was the promise, maybe it was something else. Chances are he didn't forget but rather found it irrelevant to the mystery and discarded it as a possibility.
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Old 2010-12-02, 20:41   Link #19337
Judoh
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Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma View Post
Chances are he didn't forget but rather found it irrelevant to the mystery and discarded it as a possibility.
You're talking about Meta Battler? A couple of scenes in episode 5 make me doubt he'd think it was completely irrelevant.
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Old 2010-12-02, 20:43   Link #19338
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About the point of whether Yasu was the person we've been looking for until now; I'm not sure you guys are actually arguing the opposite sides of the same problem.

I thought that yes, in terms of facts and figures, whoever Yasu is fits what we've been told. i.e. the one playing the pranks, the one living on the island, playing with Maria, etc.

But I think what Renall is saying that while the facts fit, the 'feeling' doesn't quite. In other words, the motivation. Isn't this what we were warned about regarding Bernkastel casting the facts in a wrong light? I've always felt that since the very beginning when Bernkastel introduced this person to us as 'Yasu' that that name was synonymous with 'Culprit.'

Basically if in a detective novel, or hell, any kind of story, you call one of your characters "Mr. Culprit" and you write the whole story up with that person ACTUALLY being the culprit... it gets a little suspicious, doesn't it? Of course this isn't the end of the story, so I still expect a twist coming in EP8.
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Old 2010-12-02, 21:18   Link #19339
Judoh
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Just a thought. The culprit being a new character rewriting Beatrice's character strikes me as turning Umineko into something sort of like a reverse whodunnit mystery (also called the "howcatchem"), where the culprit is declared to the reader at the beginning (as being Beatrice) and the detective has to figure out who he is and how he did it. In Umineko though it sounds like it would make it a bit unfair because the culprit was declared indirectly instead of directly. That makes it sort of a spinoff of a reverse whodunnit rather than a strict one. It's also a little unfair because the story would be written implying there was someone else you had to look for.

Tell me if I'm wrong because I personally don't like reverse whodunnit mysteries.
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Old 2010-12-02, 21:39   Link #19340
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Originally Posted by chronotrig View Post
I guess that's all a matter of opinion. Personally, I'd feel sorry for Yasu if her life's the way we've been shown. She doesn't have things much better than Maria did. No parents, no friends for most of her childhood, spent most of her free time alone in her room, bullied by the only other kids she knew, and forced to act as a servant from such a young age. Plus, she seems to be naturally introverted, possibly even on Asperger level, so making friends would be hard for her, even ignoring the rest.

To me, she's very much deserving of pity and compassion from the very start. As a character that needs to be saved, she fits the part perfectly. Just because she's hard to understand doesn't mean she isn't likable, in my book. Especially if she turns out to be the culprit only in the games, not in reality.
Sorry If I come late, but I want to add my 2 cents on this discussion. I completely agree with the bold part. Yasu is pitiable, and in the thesaurus "pitiable" is just next to "pathetic".
I can't see how Yasu can be considered "charming" considering this. From what we have seen Yasu could as well be schizophrenic, her fantasies are clearly crossing the boundaries of "healthy imagery" by a a very good degree.

I think I'd probably be more compassionate of her if it wasn't for her vindicative personality. She basically spent a good portion of her life harboring feelings of anger and grudge towards the other senior servants but without having any chance to do anything about it. As soon as she found a way to pull pranks on them thus getting revenge she became ecstatic, she was inebriated by that "power". But this is basically the same as a kid who's been bullied for years who suddenly realizes he can now be the bully and finds pleasure in it.

If Yasu was born in the internet era she'd become an internet troll. And like many internet trolls she's a kid who's been kicked hard in the butt irl and so she needs to compensate in a "virtual space".

And if you think that those servants deserved it, well personally I don't really think that Asune and Berune were that evil, but let's pass on that. What about Jessica? What exactly did she do wrong? Did she deserve to be scared that much? Please. Yasu's practical jokes go way too far for my tastes.

And even worse, apparently one of the servants got scared by one Yasu's pranks and fell of the stairs getting a bad injury in the process. Is that a responsible thing to do?

And why all of this? Because they dared to challenge "Beatrice"? Because they dared to question her "powers"? Because she wants to punish everyone who doesn't "respect" her? But the kind of "respect" she tries to earn is a respect obtained through fear. That's the same kind of "respect" bullies and gangsters strive for.

Yeah of course Yasu had a very bad life. Yeah but so what? Being a victim in no way justifies becoming a villain. At best I can say I understand, and I do. I don't hate Yasu, I pity here. But that means she's not a character I esteem. What I feel is contempt.
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