[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[AuraTwilight]

We really know little about Yasu.
We can't confirm if Prime Yasu was really suicidal or if her being suicidal was merely a meta motive for piece Yasu/Shannon to kill herself.
... and we don't know if she planned to hook up with one of the cousins.

I'd rather not disregard literally everything EP7 told us about the character, but that's just me. I don't like having my time wasted.

The problem is that with the little material we've on Yasu and Ikuko we'll never know for sure. This is one of the answers I was hoping to get from 'Our confession', in short something more on Prime!Yasu.

We got plenty of material on Yasu, but you're just deciding that what she confessed isn't reliable so we only have "little" material.

But even if what she said isn't true, she said it for a reason.

Well, I believe Featherine and Hanyuu are different people... though Ryukishi had fun in making them similar on purpose... but this might be because I believe that the meta is created by the mind of one character...

It's strongly insinuated that Hanyuu is a piece of Featherine's, complete with comments that the Piece had it's memory damaged via breaking the memory aid device (the chip in her horns).

Even with your interpretation of Meta, Toya (or whoever) could have read Hanyuu, and created his Featherine character based on it with the backround that she is Hanyuu's true self.

But I honestly don't think that "The Meta-World is just one person's mind" is really supportable because it requires conjuring a lot of narrative details with absolutely no purpose.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

It doesn't mean Battler remember 'wrong' just that Battler judged differently Kinzo so, when he had to move him as a piece, Kinzo became a gentle and fun grandad.

I prefer to think at it as his own perception of how people were more than just an illusion. And likely his opinion over Kinzo is biased as he was a grandchild who rarely visited him.
It's possible that, when he was around, Kinzo acted in a way Battler deemed happy and funny. As I said he has an optimistic perception of people.
Then Battler would go out playing and Kinzo would go back yelling at the siblings and being moody.
Compare his vision to the one in the book of 'Little Lord Fauntleroy'. The grandchild is sure his grandad is a very kind soul even if said grandad is a well known jerk who's even keeping him parted from his mother.

This does sound like something Battler might do. I can believe it.

It's even possible she merely planned a murder game and in the end people ended up getting killed for real. Really, I wouldn't be surprised if the bomb also exploded regardless of her plans.

I also believe this theory. I doubt she actually had intentions of carrying out the murders, since I can't find any motive. A murder mystery game on Prime seems to be the most likely thing right now.

So I'm not the only one to have noticed the irony of all this?
Poor Yasu, it's even possible that, hadn't Battler noticed she and George were a bit too close, he would have tried getting close to her again.
Instead he greatly respect George and so.. he gives up. -_-
Another sign of Yasu's terrible bad luck.

Yep. I do like it when an author is not afraid to put lots of tragedies in their stories, but I have to admit, Yasu seems to have been born under one heck of a star.

...Mind you, I'm not saying that any of the following is the truth. I have since changed my opinions quite a lot, actually. But when I first finished EP8, this is what I believed.

Spoiler:

What if the drowning scene is literal and only Battler survived? In that case, what is the one thing that Tohya could never remember? October 6th, which would probably have been one of the most traumatic days in all of Battler's life because he thinks he didn't manage to save Yasu and survived alone. So let's say that the emotional pain causes him to not want to remember her, and he subconsciously rejects those memories even as he begins to recover some of his other memories. She had finally managed to reach him at the end of the conference, but he was too late because she had already lost all hope and couldn't believe in the promise anymore, and now that she's dead, even that is lost and the one person she wanted to remember her no longer could.

In the face of that, the fact that Ikuko is practically living the kind of life Yasu had dreamed of, feels like a mockery of her.

But it gets even more tragic if you believe that Ikuko is Yasu and that she also somehow managed to survive drowning. Because the whole time, for decades, she's right there by his side and the one person he can't remember is her. When she attempted to try and jog his memories, this ends with him having a "fit" and barely surviving, and he still can't remember. And then, decades later, she ends up being the one to tell Ange about the one bit he can't remember, and she has a perfectly straight face.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I'd rather not disregard literally everything EP7 told us about the character, but that's just me. I don't like having my time wasted.
We got plenty of material on Yasu, but you're just deciding that what she confessed isn't reliable so we only have "little" material.

I'm not disregarding everything EP 7 said but EP 7 didn't really told us everything in a straight manner. It's all filtred through fantasy. Also Clair's tale cut out the part in which Yasu was told she suffered an injury. We heard about it in a fragment shown by Bern. Plus, Clair's tale showed Yasu as apparently fond of Kumasawa and possibly of Genji while it seems 'Our confession' turns this around.

So most of the material we've about Yasu is filtered.
If you decide to believe in it as it is, well, that's good for you, you've a lot of material to work with.
I'm more wary in taking it as it is so I've only little material I deem reliable enough.

Also so far I've only read summaries of 'Our confession'. I can't express a definite judgement on something I didn't read in full (though I'm really, really grateful for the summaries).

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

But even if what she said isn't true, she said it for a reason.

Undoubtely.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

It's strongly insinuated that Hanyuu is a piece of Featherine's, complete with comments that the Piece had it's memory damaged via breaking the memory aid device (the chip in her horns).

Honestly it's the first time I've heard of this theory.
I've heard many times of Bern being Featherine's piece but Hanyuu never came up.
Either I missed the post mentioning it or it wasn't discussed during the time I joined animesuki...

Originally Posted by Toku

Yep. I do like it when an author is not afraid to put lots of tragedies in their stories, but I have to admit, Yasu seems to have been born under one heck of a star.

Yes, she seems to be the personification of Murphy's law... -_-
Poor Yasu...

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Toku

What if the drowning scene is literal and only Battler survived? In that case, what is the one thing that Tohya could never remember? October 6th, which would probably have been one of the most traumatic days in all of Battler's life because he thinks he didn't manage to save Yasu and survived alone. So let's say that the emotional pain causes him to not want to remember her, and he subconsciously rejects those memories even as he begins to recover some of his other memories. She had finally managed to reach him at the end of the conference, but he was too late because she had already lost all hope and couldn't believe in the promise anymore, and now that she's dead, even that is lost and the one person she wanted to remember her no longer could.

In the face of that, the fact that Ikuko is practically living the kind of life Yasu had dreamed of, feels like a mockery of her.

But it gets even more tragic if you believe that Ikuko is Yasu and that she also somehow managed to survive drowning. Because the whole time, for decades, she's right there by his side and the one person he can't remember is her. When she attempted to try and jog his memories, this ends with him having a "fit" and barely surviving, and he still can't remember. And then, decades later, she ends up being the one to tell Ange about the one bit he can't remember, and she has a perfectly straight face.

I still have to decide an interpretation about the drowning that satisfy me.
The drowning is odd for many reasons:
- Battler acts like nothing was wrong and he hadn't just lost his family
- also Toya said he was thinking to reach Kuwadorian when he went through a tunnel but evidently took a wrong turn and ended up where the sea was. Battler seems perfectly okay with the fact he has reached the sea as if he had been expecting it
- Battler isn't scared to go on a boat. I like to think the many, many times we were told Battler fears boats had a purpose and weren't just comic relief.
- It's not so easy to drown. Once you start suffering of lack of air you instinctively try to save yourself. The gold might have work in the beginning to help Yasu sink but again, due to lack of air she should have let it go and tried to save herself. Even if by some miracle Yasu were to manage to overcome her instinct she would have lost consciousness and let go of the gold. Then her body would have started returning toward the surface like Battler's did (there's a reason why people tied their body to a big stone when they tried drowing themselves). Instead Yasu stay calm and conscious and keep on sinking.
Note that also is never mentioned that Battler heard her jumping in the water. And of course, in the end Battler sunk with her, though we know he should have survived and become Toya.
So part of the drowing tale doesn't sound true to me... though it can be that they fell in the water in a slightly different setting and that Yasu drowned.

So far however I prefer to consider the drowing tale as a narration of how the Beatrice persona died. She couldn't leave Rokkenjima and so she sunk there. Battler lost his memory so he also sunk with her.
I still can't decide if the death of the Beatrice persona matches the death of Yasu, though I know some think so.

Though yes, if Yasu managed to survive she must have thought fate had a really twisted sense of irony when she's involved.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Toku

I really just don't think she could have written those stories that fast, if she did in fact write them afterwards.

She doesn't even need to write them fast if the "discovery" of the one message bottle picked up by the authorities in the few days after the incident is itself a ruse. After all, it was not made public until after the other message bottle was "found" by some fisherman years later.

Also, using some kind of deceptive trick to make it look like they were written pre-incident, such as getting some critical person to lie, is right up Beatrice's alley.

Originally Posted by jjblue1

~~~~~~~

It's not that coincidence is impossible, it's just stupid. Stupid in a "small bombs" kind of way. Forget about those silly small bombs; although they are technically a possible answer, the better answer is clearly that the chapel was never locked in the first place (i.e. the stories weren't even written pre-incident in the first place).

And let me add the issue of motive. To write beforehand basically supposes that Yasu's the culprit, because the only way her messages-in-bottles are meaningful is if the island actually blows up and generates a cat box, and apparently the only way that could happen is if she did it herself or allowed it to happen. And if not, then we have another ridiculous coincidence when Yasu predicts that the island would meet its end at 24:00 Oct. 5, 1986. And if she wrote pre-incident she's not even writing to cover for someone, because she doesn't even know there will be a crime yet (unless she does know that someone is up to something and for some inexplicable reason does nothing to stop them).

Pre-incident writing just doesn't make sense.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

It's not about what RK07 wanted; as an omnipotent author he can make up whatever specific setting he wants in his fictions, but that doesn't mean that they will correlate to his world (real life). For Yasu it should be the same. She can write however she wants, but for what she writes to coincidentally correlate to things that happen in the future of her world is too convenient for her.

You're saying that Prime!Yasu wrote several different versions of a murder mystery that all included a typhoon "just because" and then there happened to actually be a typhoon closed circle that matched the same timing and duration in Prime. And this is nothing to say about accurately predicting Ange's absence or accurately predicting the significance of 24:00 Oct. 5, both of which make explaining everything even more complicated.

Yasu is a character created by Ryuukishi.
100% of Umineko follows his convenience.
Ange's future is beyond a shadow of a doubt by now entirely a fiction.
Saying "someone wrote story X" is easy for the one real writter, Ryuukishi. Same as saying a thousand years.

And yes, this is the world of stories, coincidences just happens that way.
Beside, you guys are overall, I'd say, a bit too narrow minded when it comes to mystery stories: I've just finished reading one where the culprit created a "closed room" using a time machine, yet it was 100% fairplay and solvable from the reader's pov. I don't have troubles with things not making 100% sense, if they did there wouldn't even be concepts such as "main character". You're going to say it's a crappy mystery, perhaps, or something like that? That might be. However it's from Anthony Boucher, mentioned in OC by Beatrice, and thus I'd say quite a huge influence on Umineko.

So, from my understanding, Ange's very existence suits Ryuukishi's needs: If she didn't exist basically no one would really care about everyone dying on the island, and thus there couldn't be an "after" character who has a relation to the mystery that is ultimately very close to our's. If you forget "Ange's role to Ryuukishi", I don't think you can understand her, and thus indirectly Umineko at all.

Author theory, I've said it over and over again, is there to make us reason Umineko, all of it, as a story. However I think it was probably Ryuukishi's greatest failure, as it seems the majority of fans ended up using it as a means to lose their suspension of disbelief toward the arcs and move it one level ahead to a wholly theorical Rokkenjima Prime (I'd like to remind you that the story itself never mentioned the term once).

Edit: At least from my pov, it seems many fans would accept pretty much anything as long as it doesn't break the laws of physics, no matter how absurd it gets. Even if it breaks all common sense, it's okay as long as it doesn't break the laws of physics. Such a scenario is the implication that "an outsider" wrote about how "real people died" and does whatever she wants with it. I'm not entirely clear if there's really strict laws against this or not, but I don't think there's any equivalent in our world. Basically what you'd need is for Rokkenjima to really have existed and really have blown away in 1986 (to the real us) and yet to have Ryuukishi write Umineko based on it. That'd be terrible wouldn't it? Now imagine if secretly Ryuukishi was living with the sole survivor from it, who conveniently happened to have amnesia and identity loss. That'd be so ridiculously incredible to me. It's not "impossible" as it doesn't break the laws of physics, but it would remain very hard to swallow, and also make Ryuukishi a pretty terrible person.

The funniest thing is that Battler has been repeating over that he cannot prove magic/witches doesn't exist, simply that they weren't used to commit murders in these two days. It really leaves open very large the door that in a "prime" world, magic is real.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

It's not that coincidence is impossible, it's just stupid. Stupid in a "small bombs" kind of way. Forget about those silly small bombs; although they are technically a possible answer, the better answer is clearly that the chapel was never locked in the first place (i.e. the stories weren't even written pre-incident in the first place).

And let me add the issue of motive. To write beforehand basically supposes that Yasu's the culprit, because the only way her messages-in-bottles are meaningful is if the island actually blows up and generates a cat box, and apparently the only way that could happen is if she did it herself or allowed it to happen. And if not, then we have another ridiculous coincidence when Yasu predicts that the island would meet its end at 24:00 Oct. 5, 1986. And if she wrote pre-incident she's not even writing to cover for someone, because she doesn't even know there will be a crime yet (unless she does know that someone is up to something and for some inexplicable reason does nothing to stop them).

Pre-incident writing just doesn't make sense.

First. It can be that Yasu wrote it merely because:
a) writing mysteries can be fun
b) it can also work as stress relief

Those two reasons would have her writing, and probably writing a lot, without really planning to harm someone.



Second.
Although I don't like the idea Yasu might have actually killed someone is possible she thought of doing so then came to her senses and gave up.
It's also possible she thought of not killing the others but was still planning to kill herself and not the others.
And it's also possible she was planning to leave the island anyway and wanted someone to solve her game even if Battler failed to solve it.

In short, if Battler wasn't capable to solve her game she was hoping a Will would find the message in the bottle and solve it.

Also the messages doesn't really cover up for someone.
They might have if they had presented possible description of what had happened. As the two messages found showed two different tales which doesn't even include Eva's survival it's clear they aren't reliable.

The Shannon/Kanon culprit theory is never mentioned so either the messages weren't solvable/were solvable but no one managed to solve them, they didn't place the blame on Shannon/Kanon or the Shannon/Kanon culprit theory wasn't deemed interesting/realistic enough.
Now maybe the messages could have implied the culprit was Beatrice and some people can find cool the idea that a witch did it but... how much believable is it?

Honestly, all the messages could prove is that:
- they weren't written by Eva or Maria (I guess they never checked for everyone's writing or they would have found out the writer was Shannon)
- someone might have been planning a crime that also aimed to have Eva among the victims.

This doesn't really assure people that character X is innocent.

However I know you're secure the messages had to be written after the incident so I doubt you'll consider anything I can say. We've discussed this already. So let's just agree to disagree.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Yasu is a character created by Ryuukishi.
100% of Umineko follows his convenience.

Well yes I figured you'd say so. I tend to believe that there's an Umineko Prime (although I respect your view that there isn't) and I trust that RK07 actually constructed Prime to be "realistic", even if the fictions are not.

I don't really understand how you can be arguing that there is no Prime yet also arguing that the stories were written pre-incident.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

She doesn't even need to write them fast if the "discovery" of the one message bottle picked up by the authorities in the few days after the incident is itself a ruse. After all, it was not made public until after the other message bottle was "found" by some fisherman years later.

Also, using some kind of deceptive trick to make it look like they were written pre-incident, such as getting some critical person to lie, is right up Beatrice's alley.

Hm? I thought I remembered reading that the second bottle was found about 8 days after the incident. Though I could be totally wrong.

But you're right: That kind of trick is right up her alley. And at any rate, I rather like that theory.

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Beside, you guys are overall, I'd say, a bit too narrow minded when it comes to mystery stories: I've just finished reading one where the culprit created a "closed room" using a time machine, yet it was 100% fairplay and solvable from the reader's pov. I don't have troubles with things not making 100% sense, if they did there wouldn't even be concepts such as "main character". You're going to say it's a crappy mystery, perhaps, or something like that? That might be. However it's from Anthony Boucher, mentioned in OC by Beatrice, and thus I'd say quite a huge influence on Umineko.

That sounds quite interesting. What's the title of that book?

But I do think that sort of thing is perfectly valid.

Even so, while I think that you're right about author theory, I don't believe it needs to be taken quite that far. Understanding the stories Yasu and the Hachijos wrote, and why they wrote them, and just what kind of people they are, seems to be enough. I don't really feel the need to start looking at it from Ryukishi's point of view, except when it comes to finding cues that he might have put in the story to help us reason out the correct answers to the above mysteries.

And I don't think Prime is actually that important. As has been said, it might not even exist. I only wanted to consider it for the sake of hopefully finding more answers to the mystery of Yasu.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Well yes I figured you'd say so. I tend to believe that there's an Umineko Prime (although I respect your view that there isn't) and I trust that RK07 actually constructed Prime to be "realistic", even if the fictions are not.

I don't really understand how you can be arguing that there is no Prime yet also arguing that the stories were written pre-incident.

Does the incident happened or nor in our world? Did it prevent Ryuukishi from writing about it? There is no Rokkenjima prime incident and yet all 8 arcs about it has been written.

However this is sorta a twisted question/answer. "Ange's world" is a story on it's own, however in this story, there are message bottles which contains at least elements of previous arcs. In that story, like in every other, nearly everyone on the island died. In Ange's world thus, were the stories written before or after all of it happened, and this is what I'm saying that they definitively were written before.

That's basically her story... The world where "it really happened".


Also it's imo way more stupid if the writer wrote them after while knowing that Eva survived, yet made the fictions claiming she was dead.
Actually this very state of things makes it so a storm could not have happened or Ange could've gone to Rokkenjima without changing the situation where we are in (seeing on one hand hints that it was written before, and one another hand hints that it was written after).


Beside, just to know, why the hell would anyone write a story about Rokkenjima after it happened? Message bottle 1-2's existence... why were they written, according to you?

Originally Posted by Toku

Even so, while I think that you're right about author theory, I don't believe it needs to be taken quite that far. Understanding the stories Yasu and the Hachijos wrote, and why they wrote them, and just what kind of people they are, seems to be enough. I don't really feel the need to start looking at it from Ryukishi's point of view, except when it comes to finding cues that he might have put in the story to help us reason out the correct answers to the above mysteries.

Well I can see it's really not for everyone to do so, but basically what you say works pretty well nonetheless: We never need to understand what happened in Ryuukishi's world, the world from which these fictions were written, and thus I don't see why we need to understand what happened in Yasu's "real world", the world from which the fictions are claimed to have been written.

Still I do think that Ryuukishi hoped for "one reader out of a million" to go as far as his own level.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Also it's imo way more stupid if the writer wrote them after while knowing that Eva survived, yet made the fictions claiming she was dead.
Actually this very state of things makes it so a storm could not have happened or Ange could've gone to Rokkenjima without changing the situation where we are in (seeing on one hand hints that it was written before, and one another hand hints that it was written after).


Beside, just to know, why the hell would anyone write a story about Rokkenjima after it happened? Message bottle 1-2's existence... why were they written, according to you?

True. Well, they're all just message bottles though. If we assume that they were written to obscure the truth and paint the witch Beatrice as the culprit, it could make sense. It doesn't need to prove that character X is innocent.

However, pre-incident writing really only makes sense if Yasu planned for everyone to die, and that's because:

It would be incredibly stupid if she tossed these stories out to sea and they all ended up surviving, being told of these stories, and being outraged, which would probably mean pretty serious consequences for her.

That's my response to jjblue1 as well.

[UsagiTenpura]

The problem is that no one even thought it was murder until the message bottles were found.
Originally the whole thing was accepted as an accident.
The truth was already way obscured : no one had any idea what happened.

Beside, when one writes a mystery fiction, they are making people attempting to solve it.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

The problem is that no one even thought it was murder until the message bottles were found.
Originally the whole thing was accepted as an accident.
The truth was already way obscured : no one had any idea what happened.

Beside, when one writes a mystery fiction, they are making people attempting to solve it.

Hm, was it really? I'm pretty sure most people were stuck on the "Eva as culprit" theory from the start. And then the message bottles turned up and made everything all the more mysterious.

And well, that's usually true, but this is Umineko.

What is expected from you is neither a search for the culprit nor detective work.

When will you believe in me?

That is all that matters.

If you want to do some detective work, go ahead.

If you believe that there is an answer, go and continue to search.

This is eternal torture that will not end until you can believe in witches.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

First. It can be that Yasu wrote it merely because:
a) writing mysteries can be fun
b) it can also work as stress relief

Those two reasons would have her writing, and probably writing a lot, without really planning to harm someone.

Sure, but these reasons don't really help us understand why she would distribute them in message bottles.

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Second.
Although I don't like the idea Yasu might have actually killed someone is possible she thought of doing so then came to her senses and gave up.
It's also possible she thought of not killing the others but was still planning to kill herself and not the others.
And it's also possible she was planning to leave the island anyway and wanted someone to solve her game even if Battler failed to solve it.

In short, if Battler wasn't capable to solve her game she was hoping a Will would find the message in the bottle and solve it.

So just to clarify, you're basically saying that Yasu must have intended to kill people, or at least herself?

Originally Posted by Toku

Hm? I thought I remembered reading that the second bottle was found about 8 days after the incident. Though I could be totally wrong.

Yes, Ange exposits something like that. It's the story, at least as the public knows it.

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Also it's imo way more stupid if the writer wrote them after while knowing that Eva survived, yet made the fictions claiming she was dead.

Then Alliance is patently stupid. Although I will admit that Eva's fictional death is probably the best argument to make for the stories being written pre-incident

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Beside, just to know, why the hell would anyone write a story about Rokkenjima after it happened? Message bottle 1-2's existence... why were they written, according to you?

Probably to indirectly (as Beatrice) take responsibility for the tragedy that she thought she caused.

[UsagiTenpura]

See that's my problem: You accept she somehow miraculously planned on her message bottles being found (quite the prediction imo, considering the vital role you give to them being found) yet you are bothered with storm prediction/Ange's absence as something impossible to predict.

Alliance is not stupid if it wanted to make a point of exactly that. In the same arc that we're told almost right away that "Kinzo is already dead", we're then shown a story where he's the mastermind of the murders and a fantasy being himself. Eva ends up being an inverted Kinzo. We know one is dead, we know the other survived (in Ange's world), yet the story shown shows the dead one being alive and the surviving one being murdered.

Btw to dwelve a bit deeper, I think Ange's role (for us reader) was to get information that we couldn't have gotten otherwise such as the mysterious letters sent to everyone. An additional role seems to be... well Will claimed he got the "why dunnit" thanks to arc 4, so I figure Ange's life is meant to parallel Yasu's life and thus by understanding one we understand the other.

That's exactly the kind of things that are too convenient for Ryuukishi. Will, I think, understand that kind of allusion as well. It's not bad either, it becomes a part of the puzzle in itself.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Toku

True. Well, they're all just message bottles though. If we assume that they were written to obscure the truth and paint the witch Beatrice as the culprit, it could make sense. It doesn't need to prove that character X is innocent.

However, pre-incident writing really only makes sense if Yasu planned for everyone to die, and that's because:

It would be incredibly stupid if she tossed these stories out to sea and they all ended up surviving, being told of these stories, and being outraged, which would probably mean pretty serious consequences for her.

That's my response to jjblue1 as well.

Well, for start, even if someone were to find such message in the bottle and nobody died they would think it was a prank and ignore it.

The press wouldn't care, the police wouldn't care, the guy who found the message likely wouldn't bother warning the Ushiromiya about it so they would never know.

Second even if the Ushiromiya were to be informed about such message they would have to connect the message to Shannon to be outraged. Nobody did and there was a murder involved and police checking writings. I doubt someone would do if the incident hadn't happened.

Third the best they could do is to fire her. I'm not sure they can sue her because she wrote a tale about them and then she tossed it away. Yasu however can bribe them with money if she really want to stay.

This assuming Yasu didn't plan to kill anyone, not even herself.

If Yasu was planning to kill someone... well I think this would be a more serious matter that would call for more serious consequences than just a tale.

[AuraTwilight]

Originally Posted by Toku

I'm not disregarding everything EP 7 said but EP 7 didn't really told us everything in a straight manner. It's all filtred through fantasy. Also Clair's tale cut out the part in which Yasu was told she suffered an injury. We heard about it in a fragment shown by Bern. Plus, Clair's tale showed Yasu as apparently fond of Kumasawa and possibly of Genji while it seems 'Our confession' turns this around.

So most of the material we've about Yasu is filtered.
If you decide to believe in it as it is, well, that's good for you, you've a lot of material to work with.
I'm more wary in taking it as it is so I've only little material I deem reliable enough.

Also so far I've only read summaries of 'Our confession'. I can't express a definite judgement on something I didn't read in full (though I'm really, really grateful for the summaries).

The metaphor is so thinly veiled that it doesn't cover up much of anything, though. It certainly doesn't allow for the deep departures from the text you're making, such as Yasu sneaking off the island to prepare a Hachijou identity for when she's done with being Yasu.

I still have to decide an interpretation about the drowning that satisfy me.

You're not taking into account that Featherine describes the tale as "A golden rose she cast into the sea as a tribute."

Basically, it's a bittersweet, romantic ending she wrote for Battler and Beatrice as a send-off; a thanks for their tale. I don't think it has any "truth" value except to demonstrate the depth of their love for each other.

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Also it's imo way more stupid if the writer wrote them after while knowing that Eva survived, yet made the fictions claiming she was dead.
Actually this very state of things makes it so a storm could not have happened or Ange could've gone to Rokkenjima without changing the situation where we are in (seeing on one hand hints that it was written before, and one another hand hints that it was written after).


Beside, just to know, why the hell would anyone write a story about Rokkenjima after it happened? Message bottle 1-2's existence... why were they written, according to you?

"Please, discover the truth. That is my one and only wish. Maria Ushiromiya."

You seem to keep disregarding that it was not the writer's intentions for readers to accept the message bottles as "true."

See that's my problem: You accept she somehow miraculously planned on her message bottles being found (quite the prediction imo, considering the vital role you give to them being found) yet you are bothered with storm prediction/Ange's absence as something impossible to predict.

It's not that miraculous. "Hey, dude, there's a message bottle, and like ten million dollars or something. Reveal this on this date and tell them this fake story about how you found it. Cool, thanks."

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Sure, but these reasons don't really help us understand why she would distribute them in message bottles.

So just to clarify, you're basically saying that Yasu must have intended to kill people, or at least herself?

I think the answer is here:

K Will called that walking on a tightrope.

R And it really was just that. She had no intention to create the perfect crime from the very beginning. And that is how, even without turning the chessboard over, we return to the question „Why did the culprit send a letter announcing the incident?“. If somebody wanted to commit the perfect crime, it would have been better not to send an announcement and to murder everyone in their sleep. In the end it shows that the culprit had the internal longing to be discovered.

K No matter how you look at it, it seems like she was already accepting death. Both the letters before the incident and the message bottles seemed very much like a will.

R While there was enough desperation to actually carry out the incident, there was also the wish for somebody to stop her. Many criminals sending out announcements of their crimes might actually be screaming „Somebody, please stop me!“. Even though of course they can not be forgiven.

So according to this I think Yasu might have thought of doing something.
However I think she stopped or was stopped before doing it, making her innocent. Sadly things like the message bottles or the letters that reached the relatives of the servants were already sent and, due to something that went wrong, the island really exploded and people died.

In Ep 8 Battler said that Beato did nothing wrong in the world they were in. I think this means in the end Yasu definitely gave up on harming someone.

There's plently of people that, in a moment of desperation think to do something crazy then realize what they're doing is wrong and stop themselves. If that's what happened to Yasu I understand how Battler could forgive her so easily and at the same time how she could feel guilty for setting up something that lead to the Rokkenjima incident.

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Btw to dwelve a bit deeper, I think Ange's role (for us reader) was to get information that we couldn't have gotten otherwise such as the mysterious letters sent to everyone. An additional role seems to be... well Will claimed he got the "why dunnit" thanks to arc 4, so I figure Ange's life is meant to parallel Yasu's life and thus by understanding one we understand the other.

That's exactly the kind of things that are too convenient for Ryuukishi. Will, I think, understand that kind of allusion as well. It's not bad either, it becomes a part of the puzzle in itself.

This is interesting. For most of Ep 4 the two things Ange wanted were to discover the truth and die on Rokkenjima. If we draw a parallel with Yasu, Yasu wanted to be understood by Battler and... well die.
However in EP 4 Ange apparently reached some sort of resolution so she doesn't seem so sure about dying. She does anyway though (after believing she had killed with magic the ones that wanted to kill her) but later the games imply she might not have died on Rokkenjima...
I wonder if this can apply to Yasu as well.

[UsagiTenpura]

I'm really not sure of the specifics of the idea it was written after, and I know AT's being a devil's advocate considering I at least think you don't accept the existence of prime either.

The point we're talking about I don't think implies on anyone's side to accept the content of the message bottles as true (since, the moment there are two versions anyway it becomes impossible...) but the overall concern is relating to the catbox. "Like in the stories, a storm happened, like in the stories, Ange didn't come home", "unlike in the stories, Eva survived".

Tho miracles are miracles imo. It's also miraculous in many ways that "Yasu survived long enough to at least write the stories but was never found in any ways by the local authorities". Actually the same goes around Battler. You'd at least think that after everyone dies one thing the authorities would check up on are money transfer of anything belonging to any of the dead people.

If I take AT's example, it's way too convenient that the same people who "discovered" the message bottles happened to have 10 million dollars transferred to their bank account from another account, related to the Ushiromiya, and that authorities completely overlooked that, as well as the story in every ways.

It overall to me seems like just playing with the core problem and moving it away elsewhere.
"Probabilities are rigged" I guess I can see it'd be easier to accept something like human incompetence, even on a massive scale, then storm prediction and whatnot.

To me it's still pretty simple:
Every arc = stories.
Arc 3 ended with Eva still alive, and Ange from the future where Eva survived was introduced to us.
The future of the story that is arc 3.
Will has access to previous arcs in the form of stories.
Beatrice in arc 6 also had that access.
Battler in arc 5 before figuring out everything "went over everything again" seemingly hinting he also is also given access to previous arcs in at least a form where it's reviewable enough to look like a story.
What's so different about Ange having access to them?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

See that's my problem: You accept she somehow miraculously planned on her message bottles being found (quite the prediction imo, considering the vital role you give to them being found) yet you are bothered with storm prediction/Ange's absence as something impossible to predict.

You're creating an equivalence that doesn't really exist because of your preconceived point of argument. Which you have been doing for several pages now.

The two are nothing alike. Let us accept for a moment, for the sake of argument, that the bottles were written and released prior to the incident. The plausibility of them being found is irrelevant, as they actually were. Beatrice even accepts that they may not be. That they were is a narrative conceit to establish the story. We accept, for example, that a character survived a car crash that killed his family as a prologue to a story about that character coping with his grief. That it's unlikely that he would have survived the crash is not relevant.

By contrast, getting certain details right (or wrong) in the message bottle is highly relevant, as it speaks to the amount of information available to the writer at the time of the writing. Which, we've established for argument's sake, is before the incident. Thus the knowledge that the storm would be as severe as it was or that Ange would not be present (or that Battler would) is a question we have to ask, because there's something narratively unsatisfying about the answer being "lucky guess."

Yes, that means that "luck got the bottles to someone who would report them" and "luck allowed Yasu to correctly guess that Ange would be absent" are two different degrees of plausibility. There's not actually a contradiction here, however. Happenstance is more narratively acceptable when human agency is not involved. That's just how literature works.

Also, why do you care? If you don't believe there is a Prime, then there was no message bottle and no one was affected by it anyway. It's nothing more than an epilogue or a plot device for the Ange fictions. Nothing is actually written in them. I think you're running away from confronting the argument that there are hints of an unobserved and potentially unobservable, but still relevant unifying factor by dismissing it outright. In particular, your point of view cheapens everything Beatrice does because none of it actually has any "real world" meaning to her; it only has meaning to Ryukishi, the actual author.

[Used Can]

Well, there are many things that have been on the story that makes you wonder how Yasu got to know about that. Ange not being on the island is one, the storm is another, there's also Battler's return. In addition, it'd seem she was also knowledgeable on Battler's parentage, given that the thing Rudolph wanted to tell Battler was there on EP1 (though, that might have been completely unrelated).

Of the 3, I think the storm could be potentially dismissed as it never actually having happened, but that everyone stayed on the island those 2 days because they were bribed. So, the storm would be only a fictional event. As for Ange not being in the island, I think there could be several possible theories about it. One I particularly like would be that Yasu, Rudolph and Kyrie were conniving. Yasu probably had a hand of Battler's return by promising money to Rudolph and Kyrie. And, since they were involved in the whole murder play, they probably decided to leave Ange home, since she was too young and she wasn't... special like Maria.