[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think what Bern was implying is that in a series of events that leads to the existence of Ushiromiya Lion (who might or might not carry that name) the situation of the Ushiromiya family is so full of tragedy that a bloody result is almost given. The fact alone that for him/her to exist Kinzo needs to sleep with his daughter creates the necessary tension.

She also never said that there is no world where "Lion" exists in some form and is happy, just that the chances of finding one are close to zero.

The thing is, the chances of finding one aren't close to zero. They're 100%... if you are allowed to keep stretching the bounds of what parameters you are willing to accept as inputs, which Bern does in the first place to even find the Lion Fragment.

Bernkastel makes a big show of the statistical likelihood of Lion's acceptance, but the thing is she's basically lying (or mathematically mistaken); in a sea of infinite possibilities, the set of Lion Fragments may well be millions upon millions of times less probable and thus less represented than the set of Yasu Fragments which comprise the majority of the worlds she can see.

But there are an infinite number of each, just a smaller infinity for Lion*.

If we look at every Fragment that exists, there are an infinite number of "tragic Lion worlds" and an infinite number of "happy Lion worlds." There are an infinite number of "Ange's family comes home" worlds and an infinite number of "Ange's family never comes home" worlds. The only reason the set we focus on in Umineko has the tragic parameters we view as existing is because those parameters were narrowed by a very specific set of start circumstances designed to make tragedy a near-certainty. And even then, that merely means there is a smaller infinite set of stories of Oct. 4-5th where everything works out okay than the larger infinite set of horrific tragedies.

Beatrice selected the tragedies intentionally, as an act of will to make her point. Bernkastel is doing the same thing, but is passing it off as though she is merely using her powers and oh, would you look at that, this is the only one I can find. Well, either she wasn't looking very hard or she was intentionally just looking for a horrible one to shit all over Yasu. And I mean, it's not hard to figure out what that means.

Now I suppose one could argue from a meta-fictional perspective something like "no one has ever written a story in which you're happy" or "no one has ever written a story in which Ange's parents come home," but that doesn't mean nobody ever could. And as Tohya shows, reality is not beholden to fictional speculation on what is likely to have occurred.

* Don't think about it too much, you'll get a headache. But it's mathematically valid: The set of "all real numbers" has a different cardinality than the set of "all numbers," but both sets are infinite.

[haguruma]

I agree with Bern being mean-spirited, but I wouldn't know about the lying part. She likes bending the truth, but I would place her above downright lying..at least I do not remember any point where she did.

Originally Posted by Kealym

I disagree ... I think there are several other factors much more relevant to the type of tragedy Bern showed, those being that Kinzo was dead, the adults were conspicuously given a large number of loaded guns, and that some o the gold had already been converted to money.

You are mixing things up here I think. The tragedy Bern showed and the fact that Lion will definitely suffer a horrible fate are two different pair of shoes. The factors you named are important about her solution for Rokkenjima, but they do not play a central part in the question whether Lion has a chance at happiness.

We've already discussed before why only changing the detail of "Oh, the siblings suddenly disagreed with Lion succeeding the Headship so young, so Kinzoi through the Epitaph at them" still leaves the situation as silly and lacking a motive. Not to say Kyrie would NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE end up shooting Lion in the face, but in Lion's world Kinzo is still present to solve the inheritance problem, and while the siblings financial situation may be tense, it's a pretty big jump from "I need money" to "Let's murder absolutely e everybody, even Maria."

The problem I see with this scene is, that it is equally placed out of context as the Eva/Battler scene at the end of EP3. Thinking about it, isn't this scene actually perfectly mirroring that moment? We see one of the characters with crazy eyes, wielding a gun and shooting a central character, but what is the context?

Yes, Bern showed us that even in the unlikely chance that Lion lived there is a high chance of Kyrie shooting him. But how did this situation come to pass? What preceded it? What succeeded it? What was any participant of that scene actually thinking?

I find it more fascinating to consider this not being a cheap move to heighten tension, but should actually tell us something about the events. That the tragedy is not entirely the work of the person who became Yasu in almost every other scenario. People still died, the explosion apparently still happened, people even still ended up wielding guns.

Originally Posted by Renall

* Don't think about it too much, you'll get a headache. But it's mathematically valid: The set of "all real numbers" has a different cardinality than the set of "all numbers," but both sets are infinite.

Honestly? That is not that much of a difficult concept, it is just taking the concept of infinity as what it implies, actual infinity.
The question then would be how navigating the sea of kakera works. has everybody access to everything at once, like in a perfectly organized search engine, or are there certain key phrases that prefer certain results because of previous searches? Or is it even like the physical library we saw at the end of EP8 and finding certain kakera requires going further away from a speculative starting point? Like, at the entrance you find some central Kakera and the more the events change the further away they are from you. By what would that be determined? Maybe by the original world the searcher originated from?

The question is whether we are to take this idea of infinity for what it actually means or just as an expression for a indefinitely high number that even some witches have not traveled completely. Going by how most witches are shown searching for entertainment, I suppose they do not immediately gain knowledge of all kakera once they become witches, rather they use their time to travel this indefinitely high number of kakera. The question then again would be, if these kakera are actually different from the beginning, but only unfold differently by the witches interacting with them on a highly subconscious level.

And yes, it is not unlikely that there might be a world where sheep have become the worlds overlords and enslaved the people of the earth in 1908 which led to Kinzo and Beatrice being imprisoned in a human facility on the Bahamas, where they conceived their first child, the Beatrice died and Kinzo was forced to create another child with his daughter. Yet before that child, Lion, grew up, they freed the world by a peaceful revolution and everybody lived happily ever after.
And yes, I know there are less ridiculous ways to construct a potential world in which Lion is happy, even on Rokkenjima, but as you also said, that is not the story we are concerned with and their likelihood of occurring from the perspective of the people that are close to Battler and Ange's 1986 is incredibly low.

[Renall]

My problem with that is that it's a very cynical and deterministic view of the world, especially when the human characters have been constructed to appear redeemable.

I mean what was the point of Rosa Musou if not to show that somewhere, behind and despite all the horrible things she thinks and says and does, Rosa has the potential to seek forgiveness from her daughter and resolve to change herself? To then turn around and say "ah, but this is inevitable in some fashion!" takes a big steaming dump on that notion. What of the Fragment where everyone seeks to be redeemed?

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think Bern is not that far off when it comes to Lion or Yasu's chances at happiness due to some factors that have to be in place for Yasu or Lion to even exist.

1. WWII must have happened in a way that lead up to Beatrice Castiglioni reaching Japan and meeting Kinzo
2. Kinzo must have gotten the gold from Castiglioni to buy Rokkenjima, build Kuwadorian and get his daughter pregnant.

In both cases the mystery of the gold exists which lead to several very likely events. Like his children searching after the gold and the situation boiling up to a critical point. Whether Yasu exists as the hidden heir or Lion exists as the obvious heir, it does not seem to change the fates of the siblings to a great deal.

I think what Bern was implying is that in a series of events that leads to the existence of Ushiromiya Lion (who might or might not carry that name) the situation of the Ushiromiya family is so full of tragedy that a bloody result is almost given. The fact alone that for him/her to exist Kinzo needs to sleep with his daughter creates the necessary tension.

She also never said that there is no world where "Lion" exists in some form and is happy, just that the chances of finding one are close to zero.

Actually I think there can be a lot more possibilities. Kinzo could have died way earlier, let's say when Lion was a small kid of 4. The siblings could have ignored his will and shared the inheritance yet Krauss might have continued to raise Lion as his son. Kinzo might have had a heart attack in front of his children just before telling them the epitaph.
Lion might have decided to turn off the inheritance and the title and leave.
Lion might have broken off relations with his family because he disovered who his mother was.
The siblings might not have economical problems or find an agreement over it.
And we can go on and on.
After all there could also be a Lion variation of Ep 8 in which Lion got the title but the inheritance was equally shared.

The only possibility for Lion to surely not have a happy ending is if you start searching only among the fragments that lead you to Ange's world.

In this case, unless he and Battler both ended up into hiding and being amnesiacs, Lion is going to be killed along with all the others.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

I mean what was the point of Rosa Musou if not to show that somewhere, behind and despite all the horrible things she thinks and says and does, Rosa has the potential to seek forgiveness from her daughter and resolve to change herself? To then turn around and say "ah, but this is inevitable in some fashion!" takes a big steaming dump on that notion. What of the Fragment where everyone seeks to be redeemed?

This might be just the cynic in me speaking, I like this notion by acknowledging her attempts at redemption, but at the same time realizing that it is too late to actually grant that redemption. That is what the concept of fantasy in Umineko is all about to me, granting people chances that they just did not have in real life.
Even a fragment in which everybody seeks to be redeemed they would still have to die from our perspective, unless you accept the fantasy of them continuing their life in the Golden Land.

Rosa likely was a horrible mother and it was too late for her too turn that around.
Maria was maybe a child with destructive fantasies, probably wrecked beyond complete repair.
Krauss was probably a terrible business man and embezzled money.
Natsuhi likely did kill a woman in a panic attack.
Eva probably was a control freak.
Kyrie might have been so wrecked with jealousy and despair that only one small thing could make her crack.

Would they have had a chance at redemption and turning around if things had developed differently? Maybe, possibly even likely, but from the perspective of the 1998 we are given that is something we cannot know.
To go back to what Hanyuu and Rena said in Saikoroshi-hen, we have to decide whether we want to be witch or human.

It's basically the same message as Saikoroshi-hen, only much bleaker. Sometimes we just have to accept that life does not give us the chance to reach a happy end and we have to realize we are powerless against what has already passed.
I hate it to bring that up, but considering what Ryukishi probably went through while writing Umineko, I'm not at all surprised by that message being a little bleaker.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

Rosa likely was a horrible mother and it was too late for her too turn that around.
Maria was maybe a child with destructive fantasies, probably wrecked beyond complete repair.

Yeah... because they blew up. What if someone resolved to give them a chance to save themselves? There are still good people on that island... or at least a good person. As long as that possibility exists, we can always hope for a miracle, eh?

And the thing is... a miracle must've happened somewhere. And if there's a chance of Rosa and Maria seeking happiness, any chance at all, then there's also a chance (again, however small) of it working out, and so on and so forth. It might be one in a quadrillion compared even to finding a Lion Fragment, but it's gotta be there somewhere.

That just didn't happen to be Beatrice or Tohya's concern or the point for them. But I want to believe there's more infinities of happiness or redemption than infinities of collapse and despair.

It does come down to the way you look at the world, I guess.

It's basically the same message as Saikoroshi-hen, only much bleaker. Sometimes we just have to accept that life does not give us the chance to reach a happy end and we have to realize we are powerless against what has already passed.
I hate it to bring that up, but considering what Ryukishi probably went through while writing Umineko, I'm not at all surprised by that message being a little bleaker.

Saying that life is unfair doesn't mean we have to accept the unfairness, and it certainly doesn't mean we can't believe in the better natures of even those who disappoint us. What happened may be unjust, but it need not be meaningless... but for it to have meaning, it has to be understood. That's part of what's always stuck in my craw about Battler's ep8 attitude. It seemed like he'd rather invent meaning to cover over injustice than to permit meaning to be extracted from it.

Although the very notion of committing this act at all is why I just can't accept a Yasu culprit concept, because it's basically denying the people she supposedly loves the chance, however slim, of their own miracles... out of what, spite? Frustration? Depression? I just can't accept that from someone who isn't even portrayed as evil. And someone who did believe that happiness is impossible for everyone around her would just be so depressingly fallen that it would be hard to spare any hatred for her.

Really, the question of "do any Fragments contain <happy thing x>?" is a mirror of that attitude. Could Yasu see any way out for anyone, even if not for herself? Was she just too selfish to ask that question? If she was that selfish, why be so elaborate and excessive? If she wasn't being selfish, did she not see a single chance for anybody? Just what was she thinking? I think it's a critically unanswered question that was raised by Chiru, and it could be that the author just doesn't know himself.

It would've been interesting as an elaboration on Bernkastel as well; when she looks into that sea of possibilities, does she see only the ones that conform to her own fatalism? Are the miracles she finds miracles only in that they somehow managed to get through to her even so? Or is there really usually nothing good out there to find, outside the occasional statistical anomaly?

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

This might be just the cynic in me speaking, I like this notion by acknowledging her attempts at redemption, but at the same time realizing that it is too late to actually grant that redemption. That is what the concept of fantasy in Umineko is all about to me, granting people chances that they just did not have in real life.
Even a fragment in which everybody seeks to be redeemed they would still have to die from our perspective, unless you accept the fantasy of them continuing their life in the Golden Land.

Rosa likely was a horrible mother and it was too late for her too turn that around.
Maria was maybe a child with destructive fantasies, probably wrecked beyond complete repair.
Krauss was probably a terrible business man and embezzled money.
Natsuhi likely did kill a woman in a panic attack.
Eva probably was a control freak.
Kyrie might have been so wrecked with jealousy and despair that only one small thing could make her crack.

Would they have had a chance at redemption and turning around if things had developed differently? Maybe, possibly even likely, but from the perspective of the 1998 we are given that is something we cannot know.
To go back to what Hanyuu and Rena said in Saikoroshi-hen, we have to decide whether we want to be witch or human.

It's basically the same message as Saikoroshi-hen, only much bleaker. Sometimes we just have to accept that life does not give us the chance to reach a happy end and we have to realize we are powerless against what has already passed.
I hate it to bring that up, but considering what Ryukishi probably went through while writing Umineko, I'm not at all surprised by that message being a little bleaker.

If we can assume things went differently as Bern does in her fragment (Kinzo surviving, Natsuhi accepting Lion) we can also assume that Maria's father never leave Rosa, this helping her to become a better mother.

Or Rosa might have never met him, thus never having Maria but also never having the problems he caused her financially.

The point is with her universe Bern showed us a world were things aren't set in stone and people can act differently which can lead to different solutions.

So yes, the Rosa of Ange's world was probably a horrible mother but if I can play with settings like Bern did, I can avoid the setting in which she becomes as such and so on.

It would be different if I had only that small window of time during which the people were on the island. If I could only change things in it there would really be less chances of salvation but, if I can play with 19 years... then I can completely change the shape of the Ushiromiya family. Asumu could have died of childbirth along with her baby, allowing Kyrie to marry him and raise Battler.
This could have made her more stable... or Battler more unstable.

With Kinzo still alive Krauss and Natsuhi would probably be less worried as they aren't hiding his death. Kinzo might be willing to help his children if he knows they're in need of money and who said they would end up in such situation? Kinzo might have helped them earlier so they didn't get in such troubles.

Of course, in a world where Lion existed it could also be possible that Lion and his cousins, while playing, ended up finding the gold room, inadvertitely turned the switch and caused everyone to die when Lion was only a kid.

No happy ending here but the mere fact we can play with 19 years... really it generated a lot of possibilities.

And what about the worlds in which Yasu didn't become Lion but where he/she can still have a happy ending?
If we can mess with such a huge windows of time we can assume there's a world where Asumu didn't die or one in which she died but Rudolf didn't make Kyrie pregnant with Ange and therefore when he married Kyrie Battler didn't leave the Ushiromiya.

It's true that some things might seem set in stone due to the character of some people (if person X is offered hot chocolate he's always going to accept) but actually the law of casuality make impossible to assure things will go as planned (X however might not manage to drink chocolate because someone bumped on him and caused his cup to fall).

If we destroy casuality as well as the possibility someone will pick up a different yet possible option and we go for "to action Z character X will always answer with reaction S" we destroy the idea there are more than one fragment.
Everything is already set to stone and nobody can't be saved because nothing can be changed and therefore only a fragment exists.

[Kuroberus]

Well I don't think Kinzo/Genji would tell them about the bomb. Why?

Kinzo loves his grandchildren.

Genji won't touch the bomb since of course why would he deviate from Kinzo's wishes?

[RandomAvatarFan]

Are the Fragments really other worlds, or are they just random forgeries that people posted on the internet. Your view of Bernkastel's powers rely soley on the first interpretation, but by applying the second, you can understand that there may have only been one writer who ever wrote a forgery in which Lion exists, and in that one forgery, Lion dies.

People like tragedy, people were interested in "disturbing the dead", no one who showed interest in the Rokkenjima events were interested in creating a happy ending, just a possible chain of events that led to their demise.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by RandomAvatarFan

Are the Fragments really other worlds, or are they just random forgeries that people posted on the internet. Your view of Bernkastel's powers rely soley on the first interpretation, but by applying the second, you can understand that there may have only been one writer who ever wrote a forgery in which Lion exists, and in that one forgery, Lion dies.

People like tragedy, people were interested in "disturbing the dead", no one who showed interest in the Rokkenjima events were interested in creating a happy ending, just a possible chain of events that led to their demise.

Sure, that's a possibility... except it's incredibly easy to change that instantly:

"There was a world where Natsuhi accepted Lion. 19 years later, nothing bad happened and everybody went home on October 6. ~FIN~"

Wow, now a Fragment exists where everything's cool for Lion.

If Bern's point is that nobody had done this, that's fine, but saying nobody has isn't the same as saying it's impossible. "This doesn't exist" is not the same statement as "this can't exist." Although it would be quite hilarious if this is exactly what Lambda did in order to rescue Will and Lion, but she's not really a Creator... guess she could've inspired somebody though.

EDIT: Also, confining Bern's selection to Fragments actually written as stories would suggest that there are millions of them written. That would make the Rokkenjima Incident more popular than Harry Potter or something in fan fiction terms. I'm not sure the writers were that prolific.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

EDIT: Also, confining Bern's selection to Fragments actually written as stories would suggest that there are millions of them written. That would make the Rokkenjima Incident more popular than Harry Potter or something in fan fiction terms. I'm not sure the writers were that prolific.

I don't know if that's a valid restriction though. From EP8 it seemed like a fragment could just be any kind of half-formed idea or theory about what happened, not just a complete forgery.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

I don't know if that's a valid restriction though. From EP8 it seemed like a fragment could just be any kind of half-formed idea or theory about what happened, not just a complete forgery.

That just makes it even less likely that there'd be an unhappy Lion Fragment if there's any Lion Fragments at all. I imagine you'd have to come up with the idea of the happy world before you'd come up with the idea of a tragedy also happening in that happy world.

I mean, to create that in the first place one would be operating from a very different starting attitude, so surely the idea came first and the "massacre happens anyway" notion came later? That's almost how ep7 reads, honestly; there's no suggestion that anything bad is brewing in the world Will encounters. It's only when Bern injects herself that we get that particular ending, and ending that feels tacked-on and thematically nonsensical.

Basically, I don't buy it unless Ryukishi is just suggesting nobody, anywhere, ever could imagine Yasu's happiness... for all time. Because it only takes one thought, or work, or possibility, or whatever the metric is. Either Bern's full of shit or the author is.

[theacefrehley]

From my experience with Higurashi, Kakeras are not that flexible as:

Kakera 1: WWII happens
Kakera 2: WWII doesn't happen

And both are as likely as each other.

The gist, imo, is that the further is gets from the original 'blueprint', the rarer it gets.

Lion existing is already a big extrapolation (Just like Takano's happy world, where her parents don't die), and even so, all it took was a small change in attitude from Natsuhi.

Kakeras where Kinzo doesn't meet Beatrice I (because the submarine did sink, for example), too, would be a very rare Kakera.

Just my impression, though.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by theacefrehley

The gist, imo, is that the further is gets from the original 'blueprint', the rarer it gets.

Yeah, but that's the thing about infinities.

There are fewer worlds in which Kinzo and Beatrice never meet than worlds in which they do meet. !Beatrice < Beatrice.

However, there are infinite worlds in which they meet, and infinite worlds in which they don't. !Beatrice < Beatrice still holds, but it's just "the set of infinite possibilities in which x happens is greater than the set of infinite possibilities in which y happens."

Based solely on the parameters selected by Beatrice, the beginning state of her stories is always the same pseudo-Prime state in which Kinzo did meet Beatrice, the gold was found by Yasu, etc. In Beatrice's reckoning, the chance of a world in which Kinzo and Beatrice never met is zero, because she's self-selecting only worlds where that was a necessary component of her history. So for most Rokkenjima stories, it would be pointless to theorize about a world where Kinzo and Beatrice never meet, because it's irrelevant.

The problem comes in when you start looking back and making changes. Nineteen years is a hell of a long time. Even if we accept that the chance of Lion being accepted is one in a billion, that only means there's one Lion Fragment in the case of a billion Yasu Fragments. But there aren't a billion Yasu Fragments. There are probably, or could probably be, uncountable trillions, or effectively an infinite number. By that logic, there is a set of infinite Lion Fragments one-billionth the size of the set of Yasu Fragments.

And you're telling me there's never going to be happiness in any of those? Very unlikely things are certainties given enough monkeys flailing at typewriters. And if the Fragments actually reflect stories genuinely written, then it only takes one kind-hearted truth-seeker to create something that cannot be attacked. We know people like that exist (Will appears to represent them, or at least one of them). It only takes one more step.

[theacefrehley]

(Kinzo not meeting Beatrice was just an example of rare events)


Why, among infinite possibilities, some possibilities can't be finite?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by theacefrehley

Why, among infinite possibilities, some possibilities can't be finite?

They can be, if they're impossible.

No one can give me a single good reason why tragedy must happen though. Because no one can, because that's ridiculous.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

They can be, if they're impossible.

No one can give me a single good reason why tragedy must happen though. Because no one can, because that's ridiculous.

And it's not so easy to make something 'impossible' when we're given an infinite amount of possibilities we can twist in past history to turn that fact 'possible'.

It can simply be hard as sometimes there are just too many variants we've to change and a mistake might lead us back to square 1 or in a worse option.

That's not Yasu/Lion's case though.

His story is sad because it's mostly also due to misfortune, to coincidences leading to the worst outcome.

Have Natsuhi not go out for a walk or the maid not following her and Lion won't fall from a cliff.

Nowhere is said that Natsuhi HAD no other option but leave and the maid HAD no other option but follow.
It was a matter of casual choices, same as it's Beato 2's death.
Rosa might have not found her and she might have not slipped therefore Lion might have remained with her and grown up to become a variant of the Beato we see in Ep 8...

[erneiz_hyde]

Originally Posted by Renall

Yeah, but that's the thing about infinities.

There are fewer worlds in which Kinzo and Beatrice never meet than worlds in which they do meet. !Beatrice < Beatrice.

However, there are infinite worlds in which they meet, and infinite worlds in which they don't. !Beatrice < Beatrice still holds, but it's just "the set of infinite possibilities in which x happens is greater than the set of infinite possibilities in which y happens."

Based solely on the parameters selected by Beatrice, the beginning state of her stories is always the same pseudo-Prime state in which Kinzo did meet Beatrice, the gold was found by Yasu, etc. In Beatrice's reckoning, the chance of a world in which Kinzo and Beatrice never met is zero, because she's self-selecting only worlds where that was a necessary component of her history. So for most Rokkenjima stories, it would be pointless to theorize about a world where Kinzo and Beatrice never meet, because it's irrelevant.

The problem comes in when you start looking back and making changes. Nineteen years is a hell of a long time. Even if we accept that the chance of Lion being accepted is one in a billion, that only means there's one Lion Fragment in the case of a billion Yasu Fragments. But there aren't a billion Yasu Fragments. There are probably, or could probably be, uncountable trillions, or effectively an infinite number. By that logic, there is a set of infinite Lion Fragments one-billionth the size of the set of Yasu Fragments.

And you're telling me there's never going to be happiness in any of those? Very unlikely things are certainties given enough monkeys flailing at typewriters. And if the Fragments actually reflect stories genuinely written, then it only takes one kind-hearted truth-seeker to create something that cannot be attacked. We know people like that exist (Will appears to represent them, or at least one of them). It only takes one more step.

I knew I've heard this kind of logic somewhere before.

It's similar to Cantor's uncountability proof, the cardinality of continuum in set theory.

[theacefrehley]

But is it stated anywhere that each possible world must have necessarily an equivalent fragment/kakera in the sea of kakeras/fragments?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by theacefrehley

But is it stated anywhere that each possible world must have necessarily an equivalent fragment/kakera in the sea of kakeras/fragments?

No, but why wouldn't they?