2012-07-24, 03:33 | Link #29804 | |
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Umineko basically just stopped after the Tsumihoroboshi of Umineko and instead gave us a very long TIPs section followed by a sneak peek into Umineko's Minagoroshi (EP7) and a commentary by the author (EP8). Which approach is better basically depends on your personal likes and dislikes when it comes to storytelling...the fact that theories existed as much during Higurashi as during Umineko shows that both deliver in terms of hints and possible speculations, the difference is only that in Higurashi's case we can check whether we got all the answers the same way the author would have given them to us. Even in Higurashi some answers were fairly obvious and again others were so obscure and ludicrous that getting them was mostly a question of luck: Spoiler for Higurashi solution:
It didn't actually make Higurashi the better Mystery (I'd argue that it's a pretty abysmal one) it just made it complete in a very traditional sense of storytelling. I really do believe that Umineko has solutions as well, we're merely not being given any...for better or for worse. |
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2012-07-24, 03:57 | Link #29805 |
The True Culprit
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I should clarify I was coming from the position of those who complain about Umineko but not Higurashi; I'm not one of them, nor do I think they're right.
Umineko's worst flaw is that it's incomplete as a story, however, I will say that.
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2012-07-24, 11:43 | Link #29806 | |
Mystery buff
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Gone Fishin!
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Spoiler for Higurashi:
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Last edited by Judoh; 2012-07-24 at 12:05. |
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2012-07-24, 12:44 | Link #29807 |
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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In my opinion the abuse of furtuitous coincidences in a story is a lot worse than the overuse of a particular device, especially when the coincidences cannot be explained if not by a precise design of the author, and therefore it's a sort of deus ex machina. This is even worse when you're dealing with a "mystery" where you're supposed to use reasoning and logic, and therefore by logic you shouldn't consider plausible that a series of events that clealry follow a design are just coincidences.
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2012-07-24, 13:38 | Link #29808 | ||
Detective, Witch, Pirate.
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Ruins of the Golden Land
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The solution of Tatarigoroshi was nothing like that. Though I'll agree, it is the hardest arc to understand. Reading it for the third time, I still had a hard time following it at some points.
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2012-07-24, 13:57 | Link #29809 | |
Mystery buff
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Gone Fishin!
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I don't think it's abused in Higurashi though. Weird coincidences are like a trope the horror genre uses to invoke the fear of the unknown. If you knew what happened, and it made sense it wouldn't be creepy. Like in real life weird coincidences sometimes happen too that are creepy like that. I guess it's just preference. But that's always how I thought of that scene.
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2012-07-24, 14:45 | Link #29810 | |
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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I've seen quite a lot of horror movies but I don't really remember that trope. Even if we mention "Final Destination", which is borderline ridiculous, the point of the movie is that there is indeed some kind of supernatural force at work and not just a series of funny coincidences that have no connection whatsoever with the mystery. In my experience the trope of horror movies is actually the total opposite: "If in a horror movie you see a series of "strange coincidences", those are definitely not coincidences".
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Last edited by Jan-Poo; 2012-07-24 at 15:05. |
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2012-07-24, 15:19 | Link #29811 | |
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There is also often the way of leaving an actual explanation out, thus leaving the reader to wonder whether events were truly supernatural or just a string of coincidences (an early example would be many of Edgar Allan Poe's stories). I think in Higurashi he tried to bend it to a point where for some people it just breaks apart. Especially because he tries to reassign a rational (or at least narratively logical) explanation to most of the preceding events, so the ones he failed to do so stand out even more. There is questionable logic behind clearing up so many events, yet leaving some stuff so blatantly uncommented. The story tries so hard to rationalize the influence of the paranormal on everyday life (so far that it creates concrete rules and limitations for anything that might be considered supernatural), that the ambiguity of such events stands out as rather annoying than creepy because it breaks the narratives internal logic. For me this is one of the more positive aspects of Umineko, because it doesn't give us one definitive way to go for, but leaves it open. Actually it could be considered that each other's way of telling the story would have been more appropriate for the other stories mood...though not for the intent the author had, so that nullifies it |
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2012-07-24, 15:23 | Link #29812 | ||
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
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It's important there actually be a solution other than pure coincidence, even if those alternatives don't make sense. If there's only two explanations, that is, "things work exactly the way the character believes they do" or "everything was just chance," it doesn't work. So in the example given, it'd have to be something like "either I can cause deaths by predicting them, or a creepy serial killer is intentionally making my predictions come true, or I'm blacking out and killing the people in the manner I predicted in order to make them come true, or... etc. etc. etc." The point being, and this is key, that it's horror and we know that no coincidence in this genre is truly just a coincidence. Every one is meant to convey some narrative weight. The only exception is when pure coincidence is played up once or twice, usually in a horror comedy, or to set up a surprise scare where we realize some twist was pure coincidence... only to have another one entirely dropped in our laps. If it's just a binary choice between one particular explanation and random chance, it isn't really all that scary.
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2012-07-24, 15:40 | Link #29813 | |
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Though in Umineko all those coincidences are often particularly bad because they aren't just fortuitos or unprobable but sometimes not even stricktly necessary to the plot or, when necessary, feels like forced deus ex machina so as to test to the extreme your suspension of disbelief. In Ep 5 Erika never noticed that she never see Kanon and Shannon together? It's possible but... Erika? The detective? The one with a perfect visual memory? The one who was aiming to find a solution? The one who knows how the game work? Shannon and Kanon are the same person and no one notices it? They don't even mention how the two of them have exactly the same face despite not even being related? On Rokkenjima arrives a damaged Italian submarine conveniently filled with gold, conveniently about to sink, conveniently without the leader of the mission and conveniently with aboard an Italian beauty who conveniently knows English and who conveniently falls for Kinzo? And the Italian and Japanese soldiers conveniently kill each other so that only Kinzo and Beato survives? There's a little too much conveniently in this story... Sort of like how Rosa conveniently finds Beato 2's house that conveniently has a passage in the gates so that she can enter in and conveniently find Beato that's out and conveniently no one notices Rosa is there or that the two escapes... wasn't there any servant in that house? and note that conveniently Beato never mentions she just had a baby or cares for the fact she's leaving her baby behind and conveniently looks so very innocent it's hard to figure she's a mother. |
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2012-07-24, 17:56 | Link #29814 |
Artist
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Yesterday!
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I'm thinking there are two different approaches fundamentally to a given mystery. The most obvious example I can think of is the Virgilia vs Beatrice battle of arc 3. Battler at first is trying to explain how that scene can be possible. Later he learns to deny the existence of the entire scene.
Most mysteries within Umineko are like that, and I'm starting to think most of arc 7 is what happens if you try to explain everything rather then doubt some points. It could be that all has to be answered and nothing be simply denied, but even should that be the truth I feel more content in not accepting what I find unacceptable. Many things can be said about Umineko, but at the very least this is possible, which isn't the case of most other stories. There is something I wonder about tho. Ultimately, was Umineko supposed to praise the Mystery genre or be a sort of critic of it, at the meta level? It feels like the answer to that could taint in white or black my appreciation of Umineko. The without love it cannot be seen thing bugs me. It sounds just too much like "if you love Umineko you'll accept anything about it" which is just twisted. I'm playing around with the meaning and how it's meant to tell us to approach the story, but all I can see is a failproof comeback. "I don't get this" "you lack love" "this sounds stupid" "you lack love" "I think the truth is something else" "you lack love" "hey wait a min you made a mistake there" "you lack love". Yeah. From the guy who called love a misunderstanding in Bern's letter. The only way I can see it really positively is if it's meant to tell us not accepting the story as it is (as a fantasy) might bring us answers/truth but not satisfaction. Something else to sorta think about... I've been thinking about Fate/Tsukihime sorta, and tho I haven't read then in a long time so I might mix things up, there is like magic and sorcery, I think. One (magic, I think) cannot produce results that would be impossible with other means, while the other (sorcery, I think) can attain results beyond that (meaning technological advances pushes the limit between the two further up). If we suppose that this definition of "magic" is what Beatrice possess (and Ryuukishi is a big fan of Nasu), the story we see could be possibly an actual fantasy. Last edited by UsagiTenpura; 2012-07-24 at 18:47. |
2012-07-24, 20:13 | Link #29815 | |
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For that we have to look at what the scene actually shows us: Kumasawa turns into Virgilia. Virgilia was at the beginning said to have taught magic to a young girl living in Kuwadorian. We learn that a Beatrice lived in Kuwadorian. Beatrice calls Virgilia her teacher. This sets the basic idea that whoever Beatrice is was taught about something, that is substituted with the term "magic", by Kumasawa. Now Virgilia says that Beatrice understands magic the wrong way and has strayed from the path. She tries to bring Beatrice back to "what she was before" and tries to make her "remember the form she had" (Yasu). This is of course refuted by Beatrice who is intent on carrying out "the ritual" (which could be understood as a substitute for Yasu's attempt at trying to make Battler remember) which finally leads to Virgilia being killed. Does that not seem as a pretty appropriate explanation to how Kumasawa could have been murdered in EP3? And while we are at EP3, I'd like to propose something about Eva-Beato, which I think hasn't been brought up in recent discussions, but which I think could benefit an explanation. Who created Eva-Beato? Was it actually Eva in the moment she found the gold? Was there actually an illusionary child-self that aided her in finding it? I think not. I think it is much more appropriate when we see her as a construct from the position of 1998. By whom? Basically by three people. Eva never told about what happened which gave Ange the opportunity to doubt her. At the same time Tôya created Banquet of the Golden Witch, which is possibly either his own confusion about the case or a clever way to hide the actual culprit, which was again read by Ange. To top that Ange knew of Maria's way of portraying people turning evil, it was not actually them but an evil double that existed parallel to them and took over their body. Thus Eva-Beato is the black witch (the horrible potential in people) given a shape by the thoughts of the future (Ange's wish for Eva to be the culprit). So any act that Eva-Beato commits could be seen as Ange's wish for that murder to have been carried out by Eva, despite actual evidence. I have to run now, but I think I'd like to propose a complete solution to EP3 later on. |
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2012-07-25, 01:48 | Link #29816 | |
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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What you just mentioned are a series of fortuitous events not overused themes (as in the case of people keep falling to their death). Anyway I think there is a clear distinction to be made regarding series of coincidences in a story. If the story is about a series of coincidences, that's perfectly okay with me. In the first place unless you're writing a slice of life a story is always about an exceptional event. So even if in the real world certain events are extremely unlikely to happen, in narrative they might be extremely common precisely because narrative tends to look for such events. If you take any newspaper you'll probably see the same disproportion in strange and fortuitous events. So when a series of coincidences is not okay? It's when it's completely tangent to the main focus of the story. If the story is not about that series of coincidences or strange events then it's just plain bad. The reader is already using his suspension of disbelief for the main focus of the story, if it's a story about vampires, fine I accept vampires. If it's a story about implausible futuristic technologies, fine I accept the technologies. And if it's a story about a series of funny and incredible coincidences, fine I can accept that, it's not like that's any less plausible than magic. But just because I accepted what the story is about, it doesn't mean I can accept whatever an author pulls out of his ass. Just because a story introduces the strange concept of "vampires" for example, that's not an excuse to ignore the law of physics, common sense, or the principle of cause and effect. Unless, again, it's a story that is about such things, as in the case of a warner bross cartoon. In the case of Higurashi that series of coincidences has nothing to do with what Higurashi is about, in fact it's completely unrelated, that's pure noise which is only meant to distract the reader from the real plot. If Ryuukishi didn't went overboard with that, especially the last event I mentioned, it would still be the same story. The unlikely background story of Umineko, however, is integral part of the exceptional setting this story is about. And there wouldn't even be a story in the first place, if that never happened. It's a very big difference to consider.
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2012-07-26, 07:23 | Link #29817 | |
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As for the ep 3 EvaBeto, I also thought that forgery XXX was implying the same thing: that Black Battler was the accumulation of Battler culprit theory, just as EvaBeato was. This to me implies young Eva is is the readership at large (or Ange) inserting Eva into these crimes because they decided she was the culprit (then again, this doesn't work so well when our confessions hinted that the meta was actually written into the stories, so....). Theoretically there could be a NatushiBeato in ep 5, we just saw the wrong side of the story. |
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2012-07-26, 07:44 | Link #29818 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2012
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Meanwhile, has anyone discussed the importance of the fact that it was Evatrice who got rid of the cat guards and allowed Ange to get to the book? Or the fact that the best way for Beatrice to destroy Evatrice would have been to whisper in red to her that Eva was not the culprit? |
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