[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

What about the fact that money was addressed to Rudolf meaning that Kyrie and her husband were almost certainly brought in as Yasu's accomplices and thus have absolutely nothing to gain from shooting people up and everything to lose, including their own lives?

The problem is, the letters really don't prove anything. There could have been letters addressed to Eva, Rosa and Krauss as well, Ange simply would never know...hell, maybe the letters are lying in some post office in Japan because address unknown and sender deceased.
Nanjo's son said that there were a lot of bank vaults, the manga and the anime depicted it in a way that there would likely be enough for the whole Rokkenjima cast.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

I'm pretty sure Battler did not kill anyone, except possibly in defense of someone else (Yasu?). In every single episode he rails against the senselessness of killing even people he does not particularly know or care about. You would have to completely ignore his personality as presented in order to make him the culprit, which is why Black Battler exists.

Well, the problem is that Battler's personality is the one from the forgeries, in short the one that Yasu knew when he was a child. He might have changed and Black Battler might be more accurate than we know on Prime... even if totally wrong and pointless in the forgeries that are supposed to lead us to understand Yasu's heart, not Battler's.

A Battler culprit game would surely be viewed as worse than heartless by Ronove... but is Prime really caring about this sort of things?
In reality it was even possible that the Sumadera or a mad serial killer had managed to find their way on the island and attempted to murder everyone.
We're handling Prime as if it was a solvable mistery but truth to be told I'm not sure we were supposed to solve it beyond figuring that Ange's family surely is responsible for something and Eva is covering up for them.

Said this, I've no idea if Battler killed someone. If he did something though it would explain some stuffs that so far had been left completely unaddressed.

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

Sure - that's why we hear about the mind-blowing secret that Rudolf's been keeping from her for 18 years and the fact that she's capable of committing murder if she's pushed to the edge.

Well, we don't know if Kyrie knew about it. It's a truth well known in the future... but was it a truth known by Kyrie? How reliable is the Teaparty by the way? Is it really exactly the same as Eva's diary?

Originally Posted by Renall

What about all that other stuff? It puts Battler right back squarely in the position of being a patronizing ass about things and excusing away the actions of ruthless murderers to spare Ange's feelings because she supposedly can't handle it. And it... kinda makes the villains right, which does not make any sense at all.

Well, now we know for a fact that Ange can't handle it... but basically I think the meta has to be taken more symbolically.
MetaBattler doesn't really exist. He's either a fragment of Ange or Tohya's imagination. Neither Tohya or Ange know the truth of that day so what they created in their mind can't tell Ange the truth but it can try and tell Ange that the truth might be painful and she shouldn't succumb to the pain but also remember her family's good sides.

[AuraTwilight]

The money was sent to everyone, not just Rudolf. Gee, I guess EP5 was right all along!

Prove it. We really only know for a fact that letters were sent to Rudolf, Kumasawa, and Nanjo, and two out of three of those were definitely accomplices.

It sure must have been hard for Eva, taking care of Ange, running the family business, and spending the rest of her life in jail.

She's not in jail, but the amount of suspicion, media coverage, slander, and paranoia in her life literally destroyed her, ontop of the other stuff she was dealing with.

Nanjo's son said that there were a lot of bank vaults, the manga and the anime depicted it in a way that there would likely be enough for the whole Rokkenjima cast.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Assuming those all belong to Yasu, she could've set up an arbitrarily high amount of boxes ahead of time and just sent out the keys to as many as she needed to. You don't offer people money and THEN set up the boxes.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I believe that Kyrie would not have done anything if not somebody had died by accident.

That's fine and all, but why would she take no steps to mitigate things? What possible point is there in killing everyone versus just trying to prevent further harm? Self-defense arguments go out the window once they leave the gold room... although, admittedly, it's hard for Eva to say whether any of the other deaths were initiated by Kyrie and Rudolf. But at the very least Kyrie is claiming such, and somebody killed them (unless they were faking, but that's a whole other problem and not sensible given the epitaph solving timeline).

I'd be horrified in the same situation, and I can't say I wouldn't act in self-defense in the immediacy of the moment against the other adults. I can pretty confidently say I would not see any value in going out and murdering their children, and if somebody else did I'd need a damn good reason to lead Eva to believe it was me who did it.

Originally Posted by haguruma

I do wonder though were you saw the message about the strength and importance of family being central to EP8? That's not what I read from it at all...

Battler keeps wanting to show Ange things about her family. We know the things he is depicting are not fully true because, as Ange points out, something really did happen. The party, the games, there is meaning to those emotional connections and those farewells. Battler is even giving the (supposed) culprit or culprits their chance to be all nice.

Plus the whole story has kind of been trying to show us that these people are more three-dimensional than I NEED MONEY MUST KILL mystery story characters. The whole point of ep1 pointing out their financial needs was to cast suspicion on them, and the subsequent episodes fleshing them out was designed to cast doubt on that suspicion. Look how sad Krauss and Natsuhi ended up looking.

Originally Posted by haguruma

I have to say, I normally think you are an extremely clever guy, but I do not see any necessity for such a simplistic good and evil/black and white pattern to be applied to Umineko. Yes, Bernkastel is a bitch and she deserved to be punched in the face at the end, but she is doing it because she lost all touch with reality. Once they "taught her pain" they let her off the hook.
You can say a lot about Ryukishi's writing being flawed, but he does have a consistent style of not portraying anything or anyone as downright evil just for evil's sake. He portrays ignorance, arrogance, hybris.

Of course Bernkastel, Erika, and Featherine are kinda right. Ange was always spouting out lines about being ready and never being held back by anything, but she fooled herself.

That's not really the point. The point is that it would make Battler the asshole in equal measure to them because he's being just as manipulative without good cause. Remember, the point isn't that Battler isn't telling Ange the truth - we and Ange know he's not and Battler and Beatrice acknowledge as much - it's that there's a point they want to make that's more important. But throwing that back in there without explanation (of course, the manga still has plenty of time to go further than the VN ever did on the matter, so it very well may) erodes Battler and Beatrice's moral authority. It makes Bernkastel and crew intellectually justified without properly establishing that they aren't emotionally justified. We're supposed to cheer for Battler for a reason, after all.

Originally Posted by musouka

And you think she said that out of the goodness of her heart, because Kyrie feels bad for all the women who have had to deal with cheating husbands and lies about love? No, she was referring to herself as being dangerous. The quote is ironic.

That's your read on it. You're making up her sociopathy outright in the face of evidence to the contrary because you always had her "pegged" as the culprit. You are quite literally doing what Erika did in ep5. Being "correct" (although we can't be sure of that, merely that Eva seemed to think so) doesn't mean your read of her motives is correct, and I think that might be the point of where the manga is going. If Kyrie gets fleshed out no further, it's hard to conclude much more than what you're saying... which would make her a lousy culprit and the revelation a lousy one.

But she does have some fleshing out, which it's odd that you basically ignored given your fixation on her as the culprit.

Originally Posted by musouka

Let me ask you this. Do you think it would have taken Kyrie twelve years to "work up" the resolve to kill Asumu if she knew for a fact she wouldn't be implicated in the murder? If it was just as simple as flipping a switch and all the evidence would be erased? If you really do know Kyrie as well as you're claiming, I think you already know the answer. From there, it's only a small step as to why Kyrie would be willing to murder in the circumstances on Rokkenjima and would be less inclined to do it under other circumstances, and it has absolutely nothing to do with her being a good person.

Yes, I do think it would have taken that long. The problem for Kyrie was not getting caught. It wasn't twelve years of lingering around Asumu waiting for an opportunity to push her in front of a bus when nobody was looking. It wasn't twelve years before she had an opportunity. It was twelve years of slow suffering trying to develop the will to move forward with such an act. This suggests a person with strong intellectual and emotional conflicts, who considers them carefully. Not the sort of person you're claiming she is at all.

And more critically, Kyrie doesn't know she can get away with it. If she believes the bomb story sight unseen she's an idiot, and even then she would put herself in "Beatrice's" position to try to figure out her angle in even telling her that such an explosive exists. If she's as emotionally detached as you suggest, your own position becomes untenable: Kyrie wouldn't have the empathy necessary to believe that Beatrice would be willing to tell the truth about her own desire to die. At the very least, Kyrie ought to doubt this stranger dressed as a witch who just said she was going to murder all of them had they not solved Kinzo's riddle. Jumping from there to "there's surely no consequences for my actions" doesn't add up. This person outright admitted to manipulating you, why wouldn't she be doing the same with her other claims?

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

According to the ep7 Tea Party, yeah they do both know how the bomb is set. Kyrie presumably set the bomb to go off in order to cover her crimes, but Eva could survive by simply turning it off after she wins the duel. Therefore a chance of Eva surviving clearly existed, and Kyrie should prepare for that contigency when she's talking.

They cannot possibly know the story of the bomb is true. The only way to possibly know it would function is if it actually blew, and that requires basically putting faith in it working and getting the hell out of there, which is itself extremely risky. They were told this by a person wearing a weird dress claiming she was going to murder mystery their asses. If either of them were certain that the thing would work, they were being incredibly stupid. Plus, did they know they could escape at that point? If they didn't, how'd they expect to get away? If they did, isn't it a bit suspicious that someone would mention this big bomb and then oh yeah, the very same tunnels can get you to a safe distance? That's sure a stroke of luck!

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

Sure - that's why we hear about the mind-blowing secret that Rudolf's been keeping from her for 18 years and the fact that she's capable of committing murder if she's pushed to the edge.

How about if she learnt that the 12 years of building up murderous feelings were inflicted upon her by the man she loves? The terrible rage she felt then would likely return, only far stronger.

Rage against whom, again? Rudolf wronged her. Rudolf caused her pain. What the hell did poor Gohda do to deserve to be stabbed to death? Why would she fly into a rage against people who had nothing to do with her pain, who didn't even know about it? She took twelve years to isolate the specific source of her pain and desire to extinguish it. Twelve years! Only Asumu! She didn't even seem to want to murder Battler! Why would she shift gears like that just because a situation got out of hand?

Plus, if she indeed did not fire the first shot, then Rudolf telling her beforehand (if he did) doesn't seem to influence her behavior until intervening circumstances kick in. If anything, Kyrie finding out the truth about Battler would incline her more to want to reconnect with him as mother and son, and killing everyone he knows and loves might not be the swiftest way to do that. There's time to try to figure out the situation once the other adults are "dead," most of which didn't happen on your watch and the rest of which you did in self-defense. Why would you start thinking like a guilty party at that point? If anyone should it's Eva for initiating the whole thing, even accidentally.

And we know Battler was apparently upset by things, at least insofar as the ep7 Tea Party tells us. He certainly was not down with assisting in a mass murder, but we (and possibly Eva) don't seem to know what he did do instead. That's a critical missing detail even if Eva's impressions are true, and it's suspicious to see the protagonist of the story reduced to a one-off who mysteriously disappears.

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

There's a difference between being able to emphasize with someone's feelings and having a moral code that compels you to not trample over them. Kyrie was raised to be the leader of a mafia group - do you think they would have taught her to respect the feelings of non-family members? She did leave them, but that aspect of her upbringing would surely remain.

Right but... she did leave them. You can't assume things about how she thinks and feels from her upbringing without taking all those circumstances into account. You're dangerously close to making the effective argument that "she was raised by bad people and involved with bad people, ergo she was a bad person." That's the argument the other teenagers used to provoke Ange: "Your parents must've done it because they were shady and bad." The truth would pretty much have to be deeper than that to not be missing the point entirely. Otherwise those kids were more or less right; Kyrie was just rotten, in addition to being a sociopath and a moron. Certainly not the sort to deliberately lie to Eva and play on her emotions on the off chance Eva ends up surviving and taking care of her daughter.

Plus like, you know, what happened to Battler? I get that Ange's being emotional in her rejection of the story so she's not thinking too clearly at this point in the tale, but that will have to be relevant to her later. What became of him? She's cared about that aspect of the story since she first appeared in it. If the ep7 scenario is Eva's truth, it's got a Battler-shaped hole in it.

[Leafsnail]

I guess ep8 meta-Battler could just be Ange trying to deny the revelation that her parents were the real culprits (much like Renall is trying to deny the revelation that Umineko is not as deep or clever as we thought it was).

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Well, the problem is that Battler's personality is the one from the forgeries, in short the one that Yasu knew when he was a child. He might have changed and Black Battler might be more accurate than we know on Prime... even if totally wrong and pointless in the forgeries that are supposed to lead us to understand Yasu's heart, not Battler's.

A Battler culprit game would surely be viewed as worse than heartless by Ronove... but is Prime really caring about this sort of things?
In reality it was even possible that the Sumadera or a mad serial killer had managed to find their way on the island and attempted to murder everyone.
We're handling Prime as if it was a solvable mistery but truth to be told I'm not sure we were supposed to solve it beyond figuring that Ange's family surely is responsible for something and Eva is covering up for them.

Isn't this just reverting back to Battler's viewpoint during the episode 1 tea party? Unknown Assasssin X killed everyone using Mysterious Device Y for Unexplained Reason Z. Sure, it would be a possibility if this were a real case, but this is a mystery story. We are meant to be able to solve it, particularly after the answers have been given.

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Well, we don't know if Kyrie knew about it. It's a truth well known in the future...

We don't know, but I think we're meant to work out that she does know considering she flips the hell out and murders everyone.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Prove it. We really only know for a fact that letters were sent to Rudolf, Kumasawa, and Nanjo, and two out of three of those were definitely accomplices.

Actually it's much worse. We don't even know if it was sent to them or if that info was just for the forgeries because, if Ange jumped off that building, she never went around asking and she never was able to tell anyone she received a letter as such.

Honestly I always wanted the manga to address to this.
From where this info came?
Not from Prime as the people involved aren't talking. Battler though must have had some knowledge of the bank accounts as hints on it are in Ep 3. But he's not present when Yasu explains things so...
Did Kyrie actually never shot Yasu and she informed him about it? Did Eva felt the need to inform him about it?

Any ideas?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

I guess ep8 meta-Battler could just be Ange trying to deny the revelation that her parents were the real culprits (much like Renall is trying to deny the revelation that Umineko is not as deep or clever as we thought it was).

Well... there's a lot to question about this whole affair. We know there were more things in the slideshow in the VN that were supportive of this notion that were removed before ep8 was published, so we know Ryukishi had this idea from the start but for some reason intentionally made it more ambiguous. Then the manga comes along which goes into much greater detail than the VN about a lot of people's emotional states and motivations, particularly Beatrice and Ange. And then it brings the whole ep7 thing back to the forefront in confirmation.

So the manga is either being so much more clever than the VN that it inexplicably warps back around to being trite and insipid, or the readdition of this point is being done to set something else up to come that will make more sense of it than the VN would have because the VN apparently didn't address it or didn't have time and so left it ambiguous what Ange even saw. But since the impetus for the explanation was cut, there was no subsequent explanation in the VN. That doesn't mean the manga will have that, just that I'd assume it will because so far everything they've added has greatly enhanced the story. Showing "yup Kyrie dunnit" doesn't enhance the story as that was sort of already on the table. Showing "yup Kyrie dunnit, by the way here's the part you DIDN'T realize about why or how she dunnit" would enhance the story as it would take something that was left dangling and actually focus it into its appropriate context.

Or I could be wrong and the story's just stupid, but the manga's done such a good job before now with fixing ep8 that I'd be skeptical.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

Isn't this just reverting back to Battler's viewpoint during the episode 1 tea party? Unknown Assasssin X killed everyone using Mysterious Device Y for Unexplained Reason Z. Sure, it would be a possibility if this were a real case, but this is a mystery story. We are meant to be able to solve it, particularly after the answers have been given.

Uhm, no, we were mean to fully solve the forgeries and figure out Yasu's heart, not Prime. As Will said we can't prove anything of what happened in Prime, we can just make polite guesses.

Honestly I think if we learnt what was into Eva's diary it was because fans wanted to see the solution of Prime so much, not because we were supposed to solve it.

I think the idea is that Prime should have been handled as a real case, not like a mystery story, as Ryukishi wanted to make a point of how disprectful is to handle real murders like mystery stories... and that the idea sort of went scrapepd away in the manga because fans didn't feel the comparison applied as for us Prime is a story, be it a solvable mystery or not.

And in fact even this 'solution' is filled with blank holes... in a mystery you should be able to solve all the mysteries otherwise everything falls into the domain of the witch! ^_-

[Leafsnail]

Originally Posted by Renall

They cannot possibly know the story of the bomb is true. The only way to possibly know it would function is if it actually blew, and that requires basically putting faith in it working and getting the hell out of there, which is itself extremely risky. They were told this by a person wearing a weird dress claiming she was going to murder mystery their asses. If either of them were certain that the thing would work, they were being incredibly stupid. Plus, did they know they could escape at that point? If they didn't, how'd they expect to get away? If they did, isn't it a bit suspicious that someone would mention this big bomb and then oh yeah, the very same tunnels can get you to a safe distance? That's sure a stroke of luck!

There's the shrine. Also Kyrie is good at reading people - perhaps she was able to tell that Yasu was already defeated and had no strength left to lie with.

Originally Posted by Renall

Rage against whom, again? Rudolf wronged her. Rudolf caused her pain. What the hell did poor Gohda do to deserve to be stabbed to death? Why would she fly into a rage against people who had nothing to do with her pain, who didn't even know about it? She took twelve years to isolate the specific source of her pain and desire to extinguish it. Twelve years! Only Asumu! She didn't even seem to want to murder Battler! Why would she shift gears like that just because a situation got out of hand?

Because there's a fundamental difference between Asumu and Rudolf. Asumu is a woman Kyrie hated - she could direct the anger at her. But Rudolf is the man she deeply loves. She can't bring herself to kill him, so where does the 18 years of regret and anger go instead?

Gohda was probably shot because Kyrie saw him as the biggest threat remaining on the island.

Originally Posted by Renall

And we know Battler was apparently upset by things, at least insofar as the ep7 Tea Party tells us. He certainly was not down with assisting in a mass murder, but we (and possibly Eva) don't seem to know what he did do instead. That's a critical missing detail even if Eva's impressions are true, and it's suspicious to see the protagonist of the story reduced to a one-off who mysteriously disappears.

I don't think it's suspicious so much as a sign that episode 8 was very rushed and didn't wrap up a lot of things it should have done. That doesn't mean that what we are shown in the E7TP isn't true.

Originally Posted by Renall

Right but... she did leave them. You can't assume things about how she thinks and feels from her upbringing without taking all those circumstances into account. You're dangerously close to making the effective argument that "she was raised by bad people and involved with bad people, ergo she was a bad person." That's the argument the other teenagers used to provoke Ange: "Your parents must've done it because they were shady and bad." The truth would pretty much have to be deeper than that to not be missing the point entirely. Otherwise those kids were more or less right; Kyrie was just rotten, in addition to being a sociopath and a moron. Certainly not the sort to deliberately lie to Eva and play on her emotions on the off chance Eva ends up surviving and taking care of her daughter.

It doesn't really matter whether what the teenagers said was true - we've seen people being maliciously attacked with the truth several times in Umineko (eg episode 5). Kyrie's heart is a bit more complicated than that though - it took a horrible secret being revealed to flip her into that state and she did still love her family.

Originally Posted by Renall

Plus like, you know, what happened to Battler? I get that Ange's being emotional in her rejection of the story so she's not thinking too clearly at this point in the tale, but that will have to be relevant to her later. What became of him? She's cared about that aspect of the story since she first appeared in it. If the ep7 scenario is Eva's truth, it's got a Battler-shaped hole in it.

Because Eva didn't know about what happened to Battler. He tells us in episode 8 instead.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

Because Eva didn't know about what happened to Battler. He tells us in episode 8 instead.

My point is Ange ought to notice that Eva had no idea. Given her fixation on her onii-chan and her desperate hope to believe somebody came back, that seems like something that would anchor her in some form or fashion, or at least stand out.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

Because Eva didn't know about what happened to Battler. He tells us in episode 8 instead.

While it's true Eva might not know what happened to Battler... well, all in all it's still weird. Where's Battler? What happend to him?
He knew about the tunnel so who told him if not Eva?
Rudolf and Kyrie? When? Why he and Eva didn't cross path?
Yasu? So Kyrie failed to shoot at her too? And Battler didn't go back to search for survivors? To stop his parents? And didn't meet Eva?
And again how Yasu managed to not be spotted by Eva but to meet Battler?
And if it was Battler that went to her how did he manage to find her?

The hole is the same there's in the Teaparty and it's huge and just saying Eva doesn't know about him doesn't really cover things well.

[Leafsnail]

I don't know if Prime was meant to be completely solvable, but I think we were meant to be able to look at people's motivations and take an educated guess (a why-dunnit kindof thing). Alliance in particular seems to hold hints as to what happened there. I think the "we aren't meant to solve prime" thing mainly arose because we didn't want to accept the E7TP (which oddly mirrors Ange's denial in episode 8).

Originally Posted by Renall

Showing "yup Kyrie dunnit" doesn't enhance the story as that was sort of already on the table. Showing "yup Kyrie dunnit, by the way here's the part you DIDN'T realize about why or how she dunnit" would enhance the story as it would take something that was left dangling and actually focus it into its appropriate context.

Oh, I don't disagree with that at all. My point is just that the E7TP is an account of what Eva saw on R-Prime, not that it's the whole truth (or even that it's not deeply misleading due to Eva's lack of knowledge). I'm really hoping the manga will go into detail on Kyrie's motivations and what exactly happened while Eva was unconscious/ after Kyrie is killed. Maybe that could even happen during the Trick ending.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

I don't know if Prime was meant to be completely solvable, but I think we were meant to be able to look at people's motivations and take an educated guess (a why-dunnit kindof thing). Alliance in particular seems to hold hints as to what happened there. I think the "we aren't meant to solve prime" thing mainly arose because we didn't want to accept the E7TP (which oddly mirrors Ange's denial in episode 8).

I've never doubted Ange's family was responsible for murdering someone but the Teaparty was denied by Bern itself who implied it wasn't meant to be taken as the perfect truth... which is also why I'm disappointed if it is.

Because we were told its purpose was to prepare Ange for a horrible truth, so I was expecting something worse and then... it comes out the Teaparty served to prepare her to the Teaparty?
Which sort of reasoning is? Bern could have just told her the Teaparty was true and be done with it. Not tell her it wasn't, that it was preparation because the truth is worse and then, ops, no, sorry Ange, the truth was the teaparty, my bad.

It sort of feels pointless to me at least from a narrative point, as it tells the same thing twice.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Assuming those all belong to Yasu, she could've set up an arbitrarily high amount of boxes ahead of time and just sent out the keys to as many as she needed to. You don't offer people money and THEN set up the boxes.

The problem is that this part of the narrative positions us at a stalemate. Neither of us can prove what the proper insinuation was of Ange also remembering that such a letter came by her house. It could be a clear hint that Rudolph was bought, it could be (in the light of later revelations) be prove that Yasu sent money to everybody in order to make up for anything that might happen.

Originally Posted by Renall

It makes Bernkastel and crew intellectually justified without properly establishing that they aren't emotionally justified. We're supposed to cheer for Battler for a reason, after all.

And here I have to question, are we really supposed to undeniably cheer for Battler?!
Maybe my reading of stories in general is just so different from yours, but I find that idea of there being a necessity for a "good guy", a party we can cheer for, an inherently Anglo-American, white-bread literature notion.
Yes, Bernkastel is intellectually justified to do all this, so what? Doesn't the proceeding of the story make it clear that they are not emotionally justified by showing the impact their actions have on Ange? I am intellectually justified to go over to the next mall Santa and rip his beard down in front of a child suffering cancer, whose willingness to participate in chemo depends on meeting the real Santa, just to show him reality. Intellectually there are a lot of arguments to destroy the lie of Santa in this context.

The truth would pretty much have to be deeper than that to not be missing the point entirely. Otherwise those kids were more or less right; Kyrie was just rotten, in addition to being a sociopath and a moron. Certainly not the sort to deliberately lie to Eva and play on her emotions on the off chance Eva ends up surviving and taking care of her daughter.

But, and here my reading is different again, isn't it a huge point of Umineko that people can be both? That they can be so inherently torn at the base that they are almost two different people? Like Rosa, she is a loving, child-like mother, who only yearns for love, and yet she is a cold, calculating bitch, who beats her daughter around when she feels stressed.
Why can't Kyrie be both? Why can't the kids be right and wrong at the same time? Maybe she wasn't a moron, but she could have been a rotten person, even be sociopatic (to a certain degree) and yet have been a loving mother and wife to some select people. Isn't that the point that Maria made at the end of EP2 already, that in her heart she knows that "the bad mama" and "the good mama" are one and the same person, but she separates them to cope?!

[GoldenLand]

Originally Posted by musouka

People are putting forth this idea like Kyrie was working herself up to murder when it's really the opposite. Kyrie was always willing to murder Asumu from the very beginning, she just wasn't most likely willing to throw her life away in order to do it. The situation on Rokkenjima provides the perfect cover. It's the age old question, "what would you do if you knew you couldn't be caught?"

I don't know...

Ep 6 quotes

"Right now, ......I would do anything to keep Rudolf-san by my side. And I will show no mercy against his enemies. ......If he wished it, I might not even hesitate at murder."

".........Because I finally gained that determination on the 18th year, ......that certain willpower......brought about a miracle for me. ......You know, miracles only appear for those who can make them come true themselves."
Asumu's death had not been a murder of any sort.

However, Kyrie had often cursed her and hoped for her death, ......and finally, on the 18th year, she had built up the determination to kill her with her own hands.
And then, ......she actually......got herself a knife to do the deed with.........

That was when the miracle had occurred......

"......Asumu oba-san passing away......was a miracle......"

"Not really. ......That wasn't even close to a miracle."

".........Huh?"

"After all, ......if she hadn't died, I would have killed her. ......In other words, she was fated to die no matter what. ......The miracle is that, even though she did die, 'I didn't have to get my hands dirty'. That's all."

Kyrie doesn't seem to be treating murder as a cavalier thing there, and though she hoped for Asumu to just die, she didn't have the determination to carry through until much later. I don't think she was willing to kill her until that later point, based on the dialogue there.

If Kyrie had killed Asumu, it would have been in a way that would have still kept Rudolf by her side - that is, one where she didn't get caught. Kyrie's focus in her dialogue there doesn't seem to be on a fear of getting caught, though. Kyrie ought to be a competent enough person that she could manage to pull of Asumu's murder and get away with it. I can't believe, based on what she said there, that the only thing holding her back was a fear of being caught and going to prison.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

And here I have to question, are we really supposed to undeniably cheer for Battler?!
Maybe my reading of stories in general is just so different from yours, but I find that idea of there being a necessity for a "good guy", a party we can cheer for, an inherently Anglo-American, white-bread literature notion.

What are you even talking about? Of course I'm not reading it that way: We're being specifically manipulated by the story to read it that way. The story is asking us to cheer for Battler; my entire point was to ask "wait, why is it asking us to do that if its conclusion is suchandsuch?" I'm indicating suspicion of the manipulation, which you appear to agree with (for different reasons), and you've somehow attempted and failed to turn this into yet another attempt to insinuate that I'm somehow unable to grasp the deep cultural meaning of something or other because of how white my thinking is or whatever. You've completely mischaracterized my argument.

The story sets up a conflict. Conflicts have sides. Those sides are characterized in particular ways. This is basic writing. I'm sure we both grasp that. The point here is that the story is appearing to say that one side, while technically factually correct, is missing something important... something that the other side has, and makes use of in the climax of the conflict. It's fairly clear it wants us to think that what the other side is doing is right, or at least that the point it's making is valid in spite of the other side being technically factually correct. You're questioning it (although quite honestly I'm not clear why, I can only say why it has issues for me), which is fine, but I'm asking whether we were intended to question it or if we were supposed to take it at face value.

I'm sure the casual Umineko reader would say that we ought to be cheering for Battler and company to triumph, and I'm sure that's at least the surface intention of the narrative progression. If something is the matter with that, then either the work is accidentally leading some readers to see the conflict as more ambiguous than it was meant to be seen or the conflict actually is supposed to be ambiguous and it didn't make that quite clear. You appear to be arguing (at least, I think?) that the latter is the case, while I'm arguing that I think the former is happening.

Originally Posted by haguruma

Why can't Kyrie be both? Why can't the kids be right and wrong at the same time? Maybe she wasn't a moron, but she could have been a rotten person, even be sociopatic (to a certain degree) and yet have been a loving mother and wife to some select people. Isn't that the point that Maria made at the end of EP2 already, that in her heart she knows that "the bad mama" and "the good mama" are one and the same person, but she separates them to cope?!

She can be bad and love her kid. She can't be a one-dimensional sociopath who kills for no reason and keenly attuned to emotions to the point that she can hit on exactly what she needs to say to a person to make them sympathetic to her child, knowing that this person is also deeply loving of her own child. I'm saying if she killed a bunch of people, she probably had a better reason than "Heh gettin' money and definitely gonna get away with it" that and we just don't know what it is. Hopefully they'll go into it later, since they brought this up now.

Again, you're grossly mischaracterizing my argument for some reason and it needs to stop. If you don't understand it you can ask for clarification, I'm not saying it's immediately comprehensible or perfectly argued.

[GoldenLand]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

The bomb wouldn't do anything. You don't think Kyrie would figure out that MERELY SURVIVING would make her the top suspect in everything and that a GODDAMN BOMB will erase any doubt that it was an accident and she just INNOCENTLY happened to survive?

Isn't Kyrie supposed to be smart or something?

Eva had a rotten time due to the suspicion she was under, but I bet that if she had walked out of there along with Hideyoshi and George, she'd have been under even more suspicion.

Culprit-Kyrie would at least have wanted Rudolf to escape with her, and probably Battler too (either in the knowledge that he was her own son, or in the knowledge that Rudolf would be none too happy if she murdered the kid she thought was Rudolf and Asumu's child). So if her brilliant plan was for her+Rudolf+maybe Battler to be safe at Kuwadorian while everything went boom, she would have been setting them all up for a hellish time later. Ange would have had a hard time because of it, too. Kyrie's family's background wouldn't help, either. And if Battler wasn't a conspirator, there would be a definite possibility that he could blab whatever he knew and get them in trouble.

[Renall]

Eva also may have been actively helped by the whole Rudolf Family Culprit thing because she didn't have shady connections and Ange wasn't her daughter. As the manga shows, this led to speculation that Eva was covering for Kyrie/Rudolf/Battler for Ange's sake. These coincidences probably helped her escape a lot of scrutiny, alongside the fact that her own husband and son died.

If Kyrie walked out of there alone, it might have played out similarly but might not have because she wasn't as "clean" as Eva. If she walked out of there with her husband and his son, people would be crying foul to this day.

[Kealym]

*pops back in after seeing Eva's Diary*

1. C'mon, are people still arguing that Ryukishi specifically mischaracterized Battler for a narrative longer than War and Peace?


2. The criticism about Kyrolf being unable to confirm the validity of the money on the bank card, AND the jump from "let's kill the other adults" to "Let's kill EVERYBODY" is still a very valid criticism, unless the manga goes on to show quite a bit more. Assuming Yasu was killed in the gold room as we saw in EP7, it's so obviously suspicious to only survive with one's immediate family one wonders why Kyrolf didn't just corral the kids to Kuwadorian.

Like, they don't even have to take the servants, who they might suspect as working with Yasu, but George..? Jessica..??? MARIA??? I mean damn these people get riled up over their loved ones but they are hardly difficult to decieve.


**tensing up for the EP7 manga to actually get to the Tea Party**

[Leafsnail]

I'm sure some people would cry foul. But why would Kyrie care? Nobody can prove anything, and she can tell a fairly plausible story in which she is the victim. Heck, no-one would even be able eto come up with a plausible scenario in which Kyrie is guilty - did she take tonnes of explosives with her on the boat or what?

It kindof depends how much Kyrie knew, but if we assume she learnt about Yasu by connecting with her (and she may have done since she was an accomplice) then she has the perfect cover story. "It was that freaky servant who thought she was a witch and wrote a bunch of stories about murdering us all. We barely escaped from her murder-suicide ritual."

Actually I think Kyrie and Yasu having a connection resolves several problems. I think Kyrie could work out almost everything from information Yasu might give to a friend.