[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Kealym]

...I won't even claim to know the in's and out's of the Author Theory, as I've never actually seen it stated, per se', just used. I guess One sort of HAS to have at least a vague understanding of it after reading EP6, though, moreso after EP7, and EP8 doesn't exactly sound like it goes against it or anything. COUGH GOATS COUGH.

I'm currently of the opinion that:
1.) The Meta-World exists, but it can't affect the real-world for jack shit
2.) The episodes, as we've seen (except maybe EP7?) are fictions
3.) Many Meta-World beings are actually dependant on the real-world to exist, as they're more an abstract "idea" than a "person". We've had this since Bern's EP1 examination of Beato, really.
4.) To carry this farther, certain Meta-World beings exist insomuch that those who read the fictions are willing to acknowledge them. I hold this tab mostly open for Lion, though Erika and Kanon have similar ideas behind them.
5.) The existence of multiple real-world kakera is irrelevant to Umineko's plot. It really only affects your view on Bern's / AuAu's brainstorming processes.

Again, I'm not sure which "theory" that puts me under, but that's where I am after reading up through EP7, and a summaries of EP8. I think Will urging Lion to fight for his existence was literally Will saying "MAKE the fandom consider you as a real alternative to how this person's life could've turned out. You can do eet!!"

Kanon seems to have a similar ... deal. Erika seems the same as far as her Meta-existence, though she has the benefit of having a provable existence in R-Prime or whatever.

Any-broo-haha, as far as 'Beatrice's cruelty', if you think all the Episodes are real, then it's straightforward - killing people with unnecessary excess and laughing about it a pretty bitch move. If you believe the Episodes are fictional, you still have the fact that they're being written about REAL PEOPLE (...lol?) who died in a REAL TRAGEDY that was, even in Ange's timeline, barely 12 years ago. Even if those people are dead and beyond being offended by a cavalier distreatment of their characters, it's still, how-we-say, incredibly insensitive to write that sort of tale.

The only person who could've called "bullshit" on any particularly undignified fiction would've been Eva, and frankly : "LOL, the public's opinion of Eva at that point in time."

[FirstTwilight]

Well, Beatrice wanted to be blamed so she could hide the truth, of course she'd act all evil and such. She also wanted to encourage Battler to solve her, like in ep IV, where she teases him about the Angerburger.

We know the real Beatrice is nothing like that.

And for the kakera... she doesn't really have a choice, doesn't she? Even assuming meta didn't exist, the game still would have been played in all the framents.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Well, someone went to the effort of making it. I would hope it was meaningful or else the writer was just facefaulting the keyboard like a mental invalid.

This is what Land of the Golden Witch actually was, and Beatrice was just BSing.

"'On the first twilight, sdlkgjsguiehsjcjkinvxd.' What does that even mean?"

"It's code. Witch code."

"I don't think it is."

"Look, typewriters are hard, okay?"

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Well, someone went to the effort of making it. I would hope it was meaningful or else the writer was just facefaulting the keyboard like a mental invalid.

Is that your opinion of what Ryuukishi did when writing the arc 7 tea parties? Or perhaps "to troll a fictional Ange" is really what you consider meaningful? (just to say, that's your opinion of arc 7 tea parties, not mine).

Being fictions makes them a lot less meaningful then reality. If they have meanings it depends on how much it is related to reality at all.

As Renall pointed out when I was theorizing about what possibly happened, we have no idea how accurate anything in the serie is. For instance if George/Shannon is a romance created for the sake of the fiction, as well as the adults' financial troubles, then the fictions that are the arcs become a lot less meaningful.

Especially if the non-ficional Ange and everyone else actually knows that, which we have no ways of knowing either.

Edit: Not to mention that there's stuff like hentai parodies that you just declared meaningful with your statement.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

And to that, I respond that if she wasn't overly cruel to Rosa, Battler wouldn't of continued playing for EP3 to even happen.

Exactly. As we've seen angering Battler only makes him more dangerous, especially in EP4. Why would Lambda want that?

Beatrice definitely tried to anger Battler to raise his determination, but helping your opponent is definitely not something that someone who wants to win at all costs should do.

So it's impossible that Lambda made her do that. Even if she deep inside wants the game to continue indefinitely as the witch of certainty cannot tell Beatrice "hey don't try too hard to win", and in fact she does exactly the opposite.

Originally Posted by Judoh

But... but... most of Ryukishi's fans (in Japan) LIKE the gore Jan_Poo! How could that possibly seem evil to those beloved goats?

Of course! And that's why Beatrice made all those gruesome scenes. Gore is entertaining.
But of course unless you are a total psycho, it's entertaining as long as it's fiction. If you know it's real it isn't that fun anymore.

Originally Posted by Kealym

Any-broo-haha, as far as 'Beatrice's cruelty', if you think all the Episodes are real, then it's straightforward - killing people with unnecessary excess and laughing about it a pretty bitch move. If you believe the Episodes are fictional, you still have the fact that they're being written about REAL PEOPLE (...lol?) who died in a REAL TRAGEDY that was, even in Ange's timeline, barely 12 years ago. Even if those people are dead and beyond being offended by a cavalier distreatment of their characters, it's still, how-we-say, incredibly insensitive to write that sort of tale.

Well in Beatrice's cases and her three novels it doesn't work, because she wrote the stories before anything happened.

As for the many forgery makers, yeah they are all a bunch of assholes with no life. Tohya's case is a bit different, but I still think he had better options to cope with his problems.

Still that's a looong shot from torture and massacre on the moral level.

[AuraTwilight]

Exactly. As we've seen angering Battler only makes him more dangerous, especially in EP4. Why would Lambda want that?

Beatrice definitely tried to anger Battler to raise his determination, but helping your opponent is definitely not something that someone who wants to win at all costs should do.

Beatrice does not want to win. It is infact impossible for her to do so.

So it's impossible that Lambda made her do that. Even if she deep inside wants the game to continue indefinitely as the witch of certainty cannot tell Beatrice "hey don't try too hard to win", and in fact she does exactly the opposite.

Actually, she tries to make Beatrice "win, without fail. This isn't a gameboard for you. It's a birdcage that Bern must never escape from...for all eternity."

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Of course! And that's why Beatrice made all those gruesome scenes. Gore is entertaining.
But of course unless you are a total psycho, it's entertaining as long as it's fiction. If you know it's real it isn't that fun anymore.

If we believe in a correspondence between Beatrice-the-Author and Beatrice-the-Character, then Beatrice-the-Author did not write these scenes because she enjoys gore, or because she wants to torment anyone, or out of hate for them. Certainly, it's possible to write a story where terrible things happen to good people and not enjoy it; Upton Sinclair sensationalized the horrible conditions of meat industry workers in The Jungle not because he enjoyed people dying of frostbite or losing limbs, but to call stark attention to his political cause. Okay, maybe you can argue it's a little crass, or perhaps a bit heartless, if you really want to be critical... but is it cruel? No; cruel is the idea that the things he wrote about could be true.

Beatrice-the-Author did not have as her objective to right a bunch of torture porn. I think we can probably agree there. Buuuuuuuut...

As for the many forgery makers, yeah they are all a bunch of assholes with no life.

I think it speaks less to the producers of forgeries (who might have many reasons for doing it, none of which we see because we're exposed only to sources made by people close to the event), who Featherine-Hachijou suggested could write a story which touches on The Truth if they understood it, and more on the morbid tastes of the consumers of the forgeries. After all, we're led to believe to some extent that Tohya and Ikuko became famous in part because of these forgeries.

So the idea that, in-universe, the people following the whole Rokkenjima Incident are rather depressingly eager to see gore, violence, and torment. It doesn't help that Tohya himself is going along with it.

Well in Beatrice's cases and her three novels it doesn't work, because she wrote the stories before anything happened.

Man, I still dunno about that...

[Leafsnail]

My theory was that the novels were written beforehand to help mystify the planned dissappearance of the Ushiromiya family. I dunno what anyone else thinks about that, though... certainly, it doesn't make much sense that she could write all that in about 48 hours, although there's the possibility that she survived.

Originally Posted by Renall

If we believe in a correspondence between Beatrice-the-Author and Beatrice-the-Character, then Beatrice-the-Author did not write these scenes because she enjoys gore, or because she wants to torment anyone, or out of hate for them. Certainly, it's possible to write a story where terrible things happen to good people and not enjoy it; Upton Sinclair sensationalized the horrible conditions of meat industry workers in The Jungle not because he enjoyed people dying of frostbite or losing limbs, but to call stark attention to his political cause. Okay, maybe you can argue it's a little crass, or perhaps a bit heartless, if you really want to be critical... but is it cruel? No; cruel is the idea that the things he wrote about could be true.

There's quite a good reason for the brutality involved in the first twilight of episode 1 (if the corpses had just had small bullet wounds in them, everyone would've wanted to see Shannon. However, if you saw 5 horrifically mangled faces... you probably wouldn't want to see another one, and it would remove the "I want to see her face one last time" possibility). I'm not so sure about episode 2, though.

I would say that it's not torture though - I don't think any of the killing styles imply unnecessary suffering (it's said during the episodes that the face smashing and gut dragging were probably post mortem). There aren't, say, non lethal wounds or mutilations.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Renall

Man, I still dunno about that...

While playing the PS3 game I noticed that Ange said something important about the messages in the bottles. "The amount of pages is massive".

That made Ange conclude that it was impossible that they were written on those two days or even shortly after. She concludes that it must have taken a lot of time.

(which makes the Ange problem even more important...)


Now it was said that the police found the first bottle soon after the incident. The other bottle was found "several years later" (yeah it wasn't 2, sorry, but 2+), and I think people would notice that the pages weren't several years old.

I think we can conclude that the probability of those messages being written before the incident is incredibly high.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Beatrice does not want to win. It is infact impossible for her to do so.

Irrelevant for the argument at hand, I'm not denying that.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Actually, she tries to make Beatrice "win, without fail. This isn't a gameboard for you. It's a birdcage that Bern must never escape from...for all eternity."

In other words in Lambda's plans Beatrice's job is to "win without fail", while she takes sides depending on the situation.

So in other words it is impossible that Lambda made Beatrice do any move that would lower her chances of victory. It is therefore impossible that Lambda told Beatrice to anger Battler since that's what ultimately made Lambda lose.

With a non angered Battler there was a definitely higher chance of the game going on forever. In fact angering Battler was Bern's strategy.

[UsagiTenpura]

Concerning Ange and all the future scenes, what bothers me is the future scenes themselves are part of the mystery.
I am less and less certain the more I think about it that any of the future is real.
I'm not just saying for instance about Ange's journey being possibly nothing but a fiction, but things on the level of if Eva survived or not and if the Rokkenjima events even really occured.

It was obvious IMO for a long time that the "message bottles" are huge and contains every level of narration. Otherwise we wouldn't have gotten a scene in arc 6 where Hachijou consciously writes her "experience with Ange" inside of arc 6.

But now that the debate over the time it would've made to write them is out of the way, many things becomes way too suspicious.

- Prediction that Battler came back.
- Prediction that Ange would get sick.
- Prediction of the storm stucking them there
- Apparently good prediction that no one would've figured any of the secrets before october 5. (For instance, what if a bored Jessica on a weekend decided to try to solve the epitaph and succeeds in doing so, or exposes that her parents are hiding Kinzo's death, etc)
- Prediction of everyone's behavior on the boat so that Kuwabata's testimony doesn't go entirely different from what's written.
- Prediction the the message bottles would be found is prehaps the most disturbing of them all.
- Yet that they weren't found by anyone prior to the Rokkenjima events while they were being written.

I'm sure there's many more things that shouldn't have been possible to predict if we assume the stories were written a relatively long time before.

[Mirrored]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

- Prediction that Battler came back.
- Prediction that Ange would get sick.
- Prediction of the storm stucking them there
- Apparently good prediction that no one would've figured any of the secrets before october 5. (For instance, what if a bored Jessica on a weekend decided to try to solve the epitaph and succeeds in doing so, or exposes that her parents are hiding Kinzo's death, etc)
- Prediction of everyone's behavior on the boat so that Kuwabata's testimony doesn't go entirely different from what's written.
- Prediction the the message bottles would be found is prehaps the most disturbing of them all.
- Yet that they weren't found by anyone prior to the Rokkenjima events while they were being written.

I'm sure there's many more things that shouldn't have been possible to predict if we assume the stories were written a relatively long time before.

I don't think these were written insanely far in advance, in fact, it's possible that Ep1 and Ep2 were written on October 4th. Under this scenario, Maria is left alone in the Garden, Yasu has Maria write the messages, gives her the umbrella, and then the murders begin and Maria is preconditioned to accept witches even more as she's already had everything written out for her.

Alternatively, Yasu could just call Maria the day before the conference and dictate via phone. Rosa is really unlikely to be home.

Yasu would need to know who was coming to the island at least a day or two in advance in order to prepare guest rooms. They would also have the weather forecast.

This is assuming that Maria really is the physical writer of Ep1 and Ep2. Other tricks with just Yasu writing it mean the bottles could be written the morning of Oct 4th.

However, what's really ironic about the predictions is that they seem to be all wrong.

Yasu predicts in Ep1 and Ep2 that they won't even try to solve the Epitaph.
Ep7 shows us this is false and that they can easily solve it. In fact, that's what causes them to kill. It's not because they can't find the gold that they die, it's because they can. I see no reason for everyone to discredit Ep7 so readily.

Yasu believes that she has been forgotten by Battler and that he doesn't remember.
My speculation is that this is even more ironic and that she's the reason he's at the conference in the first place.

As for the other parts of the message bottles--

-If they were dropped on the day before or day of the story, by definition they can't be found prior to the events of Rokkenjima.

-Predicting that they would be found is REALLY easy. Because in order for them to be read at all they have to be found. It's really safe to state in a letter a "prediction" that the letter you are writing will be found, because for anyone to read it, it has ALREADY come true.

Ultimately, I think it's the things that didn't match up with the predictions of Ep1 and Ep2 that are more interesting.

However, it makes me really wonder how they know about Battler's birth, as the author has Rudolf talk about it in Ep1.

[UsagiTenpura]

@ Mirrored - I wrote this with this in mind. There shouldn't be any more theories about the message bottles being written on the days it occurred. I guess you could disagree with Ange's opinion but what'd be the point of Ryuukishi to bring this up if it wasn't to clear up that exact issue?

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

While playing the PS3 game I noticed that Ange said something important about the messages in the bottles. "The amount of pages is massive".

That made Ange conclude that it was impossible that they were written on those two days or even shortly after. She concludes that it must have taken a lot of time.

(which makes the Ange problem even more important...)

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

While playing the PS3 game I noticed that Ange said something important about the messages in the bottles. "The amount of pages is massive".

That made Ange conclude that it was impossible that they were written on those two days or even shortly after. She concludes that it must have taken a lot of time.

...

Now it was said that the police found the first bottle soon after the incident. The other bottle was found "several years later" (yeah it wasn't 2, sorry, but 2+), and I think people would notice that the pages weren't several years old.

I think we can conclude that the probability of those messages being written before the incident is incredibly high.

The same evidence leads me to the opposite conclusion.

• If the works are a massive undertaking, it would be more reasonable to believe they were written over a long period of time. This means they were either written well before the incident or well after, but not during or very shortly before or after. Too far in advance, and certain details seem impossible to guess (Ange's sickness, Battler's return, the storm's specific duration). After the fact, and this is not a problem at all.
• We don't actually know when the bottles were really found or that they were "found" at all. We have anecdotal reports, stories basically, about how they were uncovered. Ange certainly never spoke to a police officer (for obvious reasons) involved or to the fisherman who actually supposedly found it. Even then, it's not a guarantee that they were set adrift before the incident even if they are found washed up somewhere.
• The people in possession of the messages in 1998 believe what they want to believe, and they desperately want to believe the stories are authentic. That aside, it's pretty easy to fake the age of paper or just overlook how old something really is if it appears kind of ratty. You could try to have it tested, but paper that's only 10 years old isn't going to be obvious.

About the only problem is Beatrice talking about Land, as a hoax wouldn't have had difficulties ensuring the third message reached someone who would publicize it. It is possible, however.

I'm just deeply suspicious of the idea that the message bottles have to predate the incident. That line of thinking causes more problems than it solves. Postdating the message bottles creates only one, though it's a doozy (namely, that Beatrice would have survived).

[AuraTwilight]

So in other words it is impossible that Lambda made Beatrice do any move that would lower her chances of victory. It is therefore impossible that Lambda told Beatrice to anger Battler since that's what ultimately made Lambda lose.

But she also wants her to win endlessly, and she can't do that without Battler as an opponent. The game can't end, but Beatrice still has to "win". An endless draw is Lambdadelta's desire.

- Prediction that Battler came back.
- Prediction that Ange would get sick.
- Prediction of the storm stucking them there
- Apparently good prediction that no one would've figured any of the secrets before october 5. (For instance, what if a bored Jessica on a weekend decided to try to solve the epitaph and succeeds in doing so, or exposes that her parents are hiding Kinzo's death, etc)
- Prediction of everyone's behavior on the boat so that Kuwabata's testimony doesn't go entirely different from what's written.
- Prediction the the message bottles would be found is prehaps the most disturbing of them all.
- Yet that they weren't found by anyone prior to the Rokkenjima events while they were being written.

Battler's return was probably announced beforehand
Ange might have been in the manuscript and was then hastily written out when it was learned she wasn't coming.
Weather Channel.
People on Rokkenjima are pretty stupid.
I honestly don't think Kawabata's memory is that good. As long as the message bottles are pretty consistent with everyone's personalities he'll probably go "Yea, that's probably how it happened."
Well, if someone's reading the damn thing, it was obviously found.

[Mirrored]

Originally Posted by Renall

I'm just deeply suspicious of the idea that the message bottles have to predate the incident. That line of thinking causes more problems than it solves. Postdating the message bottles creates only one, though it's a doozy (namely, that Beatrice would have survived).

Well, it would create another problem.

Allegedly, Ange does compare the handwriting and bottles one and two are in Maria's handwriting (IIRC).

That's why my theory involved phoning Maria.

--

There's also another option that makes this even easier to do and it's similar to writing a visual novel, where it is split into scenes.

You could basically write out everything, separate it by page, and then change some of the pages the day before, add details, etc. Using that model, you could flesh out large sections and then make small changes right before-hand.

Since you keep 95% of the scenes consistent, the rest just exist for detail. For example, a typhoon isn't even really needed for Rokkenjima to be a closed island. If you take out the radios and phone lines it's already an island and the boat isn't scheduled to return anytime soon. So you could plan out the murders based on that alone.

---

This is similar to a theory that doesn't implicate Shannon in Ep5.

Natsuhi while on the phone with revenge child is asked her favorite season. She says "Fall", the revenge child tells her to look under the clock, and there's a piece of paper that says Fall. Shannon is the only one who knew that. So it must be Shannon, right?

Nope, what you do is, you just take 4 pieces of paper, one for each season, and hide them in different obscure places. Then no matter what Season is Natsuhi's favorite, you can just tell her to look where that paper is hidden. No matter what the answer, you're right.

----

In the same vein, if you just write out a lot of different scenarios for Oct 4 and 5th in advance, you can just change small things to make any of them work.

----

[Renall]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Battler's return was probably announced beforehand

Probably, yes, but that still dates it to a possible window of "whenever Battler was announced to be returning" into perpetuity. Perpetuity still has the edge.

Ange might have been in the manuscript and was then hastily written out when it was learned she wasn't coming.

Patently absurd. Do you know how much retooling would be necessary to remove an entire person from a narrative? Let alone a person who is entirely different from Battler (thus you can't just cross out "Ange" and fill in "Battler")? If Ange were in the manuscripts she'd have to become a victim, etc. and this never happens. It is somewhat improbable that this would not be accounted for, particularly with Rudolf and Kyrie dying so early. Unless Ange's role in the original story was "tail Maria around, never do anything she doesn't do," you can't just write her out like that.

Weather Channel.

To guess it perfectly, you have to be pretty close to the date. Weather forecasts are quite inaccurate and the entire narrative of the first two episodes requires that the family could not leave on Sunday as planned. That was controlled by Kawabata, not the family.

People on Rokkenjima are pretty stupid.

I can't debate this.

[AuraTwilight]

Patently absurd. Do you know how much retooling would be necessary to remove an entire person from a narrative? Let alone a person who is entirely different from Battler (thus you can't just cross out "Ange" and fill in "Battler")? If Ange were in the manuscripts she'd have to become a victim, etc. and this never happens. It is somewhat improbable that this would not be accounted for, particularly with Rudolf and Kyrie dying so early. Unless Ange's role in the original story was "tail Maria around, never do anything she doesn't do," you can't just write her out like that.

"Ange's sick a lot, so I'm going to stuff her in Nanjo's office or a bedroom or something and then kill her off."

[Leafsnail]

Let's say that Rudolf was in on a potential "fake our deaths and vanish" thing, and that was part of the reason he finally begged Battler to come back to the family. If Kyrie were also in on it, then that explains Ange fine too.

Storm is more problematic, certainly. I'm not sure how far ahead you can forecast that.

[AuraTwilight]

That does explain the Ange thing if we go with the Mystery Game thing; it doesn't seem implied that they knew beforehand, but if they did it would explain them being prepared to commit murders; I can easily imagine Ange was left behind because if she were a "victim", Battler might WIG THE FUCK OUT and take things off the rails.

[Renall]

It's possible, but we have to believe such a game was planned in R-Prime and not merely imagined in Beatrice's flights of fancy or fictions.