[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by Dlanor .A. Nox

It's easy to to think that they lie I'm just wondering why he is lying for her. Same with Jessica and Kyrie in Ep 4.

The promise of money, and the threat of a bullet to the face, respectively.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Kylon99

What I'm trying to get at is this is a plan that precedes all Rokkenjima games and there is probably the same plan in Rokkenjima Prime. For example, the Epitaph Game is something that nearly occurs in every episode, even though EP4 is a rather messed up version of that. The point is to remember in the background that this happens and to dig up clues from that.

Granted, I don't think his plan to reveal the info has that much of an effect. In EP1, the two are dead so even if he did tell Kyrie, he never told Battler and they're dead anyways so... But for example in EP6. I don't think the fact that Meta-Battler chose Kyrie to rescue him was an accident. I think it was some sort of attempt to reflect the gameboard at that point. However, this idea may be very important in EP3, for example.

Anyways, it's an idea to keep in mind while rereading and analyzing Kyrie's behavior.

Wel, my idea is that since in the games he never manages to tell the truth in time he didn't manage to tell it in Rokkenjima Prime as well.

However, I've no proofs this is what has happened. Rokkenjima Prime is still closed in the catbox.

I think Battler in his own way trusted Kirye and liked her.
Although she replaced Asumu he never seems angry with her about it, he admires her wisdom and comments something along the line of how she was a good person when he finds her dead. He seems to trust her judgement and, in fact, in Ep 6 he wanted her aid.

Which is another reason why I think it would be very shocking for him to discover she hated him for being Asumu's son.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

But this was never a theme for most of the characters in the story. The characters most concerned with their legacy were Eva and, to a much lesser extent (as far as we know), George. Krauss didn't seem to care that he was the heir apparent to the headship. Jessica didn't want it. Battler didn't seem to care that much when he got it in ep5. The other siblings never really talked about it. Kinzo thought his legacy was worthless and might as well disappear.

Certainly, most of the adults were concerned about their children, but it didn't seem to have much of anything to do with this supposed drive to carry on their blood and legacy. Hell, if we go by the Lion thing, Kinzo would've been perfectly content to have his child through Beatrice's lineage seen by the world as Krauss and Natsuhi's, which means he didn't really care about the public legacy as long as his private emotional connections existed.

Basically, these proclamations - at least his "dudes are like this" as opposed to his "chicks are like that" - have very little relevance to the actual story, and are somewhat factually inconsistent anyway, as Kinzo's behavior is more "womanlike" per his description and Beatrice's is equal parts feminine and masculine (she wants an emotional connection, but she also cares about the legacy of the witch). If he was trying to make a thematic point about that dual nature... well, you and I have read the same book. Did he? I never saw that.

It's fine to discuss the themes of your work. It just gets confusing when the themes you talk about weren't actually in your work, or were flatly contradicted or made more complex by your work than you yourself seem to be stating.

I think that quote would have worked better if he had said Battler is like this and Beatrice is like that instead than males are like this and women are like that.
Also there's not a hint Battler had ever been thinking about having a legacy.

Sure, he's interested into female breasts but apparently before coming to Rokkenjima he wasn't searching a partner and just preferred to hang on with friends. Sure, he could have been lying (he said to Eva something on the line he has no girlfriend but would like it if there was a girl thinking at him) but I would like more evidence about him wanting a legacy.

Also Umineko's females don't look so satisfied with bonds of souls either.
Rosa is definitely unhappy at her condition, Kirye still can't accept the idea Rudolf married Asumu even if it's evidently he always remained tied to her, Eva has a bond of souls with her husband but she's also concerned with her legacy, Natsuhi also cares a lot about it... though it could be because she also deems it as her duty as for Jessica, she is fighting to have a life with Kanon, not just a bond of souls.

The male side isn't as developed as the female one however Rosa's husband dumped her and her daughter, Kinzo cares only of the legacy he had with the woman with whom he believed to have a bond of souls, Hideyoshi cares both about the bond and legacy, Rudolf seems fond of his kids but it looks like he had the three of them more by accident (or planning of Asumu & Kirye) than wish to have them, Krauss seems to care for Jessica and wishing to form a bond with Natsuhi (though he's not really good at both), as for George, he's wishing to have a legacy, true, but Ryukishi himself said that if Shannon were to explain him the situation she might have gotten an answer that would have surprised her.

So hum... the characters' priorities in Umineko aren't so black or white as Ryukishi's statement seems to make them look...

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

Kinzô is interested in possessing all of Beatrice and is especially concerned about binding her to a certain body. He goes as far to break other people only to get Beatrice in the flesh; their love alone (which they did share) is not enough for him. He is also concerned about who his heir is going to be in the sense that only somebody who understands him, who thinks like Kinzô himself, may become the next head. This can not only be seen as him wanting a proper heir but also wanting to pass himself down to the next generation.
So you could say he is a pretty masculine character in Ryûkishi's theory.

I think I'm missing something...
Wasn't the epitaph done to track down Yasu, in short the heir he had from Beatrice, the second and it was merely the siblings (and Erika) the ones who assumed he wrote it to chose his heir?

I agree that Kinzo wants to possess Beatrice and in his own way cares for the kids he get from Beatrice... but that's because he has a bond with Beatrice. He doesn't look that caring about the kids he had with his wife.

Sure, it could all be a lie as Ep 8 portrays a rather different Kinzo but too little is said about that Kinzo to reason it out...

Originally Posted by haguruma

Yet if we look deeper into her character and how it is constructed throughout all the stories, it becomes clear that the Eva who interacts with people beside Hideyoshi is an act. She is forcefully turning herself into a man in order not to be cut down by her older brother and father...this is something which is actually not herself and which is torturing her (we already caught a glimpse of that during EP1). So while she is supressing her female characteristics to succeed, the act of supression alone shows that she is a very female character.

I think the problem isn't she's suppressing her female side but that Kinzo isn't accepting her and what she's doing because it doesn't match his idea of female behaviour.

She feels superior to her brother and wants to show it, which is why she's competing with him. She's described as smarter than Krauss so it's possible she liked to study and, apparently she liked martial arts and wearing pants as well since she continued doing it even when she was married with Hideyoshi who accepts her for who she is and was planning to make George and not herself the heir.

It's possible however she's unconsciously trying to force herself to be more successfull.

Kinzo's wife clearly wasn't a role model for the siblings who saw Kinzo looking down at her and not loving her. The siblings don't seem to pity her when they remember how she would grow jealous when Kinzo were to disappear and how Kinzo didn't cried that much when she died.
So Eva likely tries to distance herself from her becoming a strong and independent woman.
However she doesn't look like she's regretting taking martial arts or studying, although she probably favours a less competitive and more love filled environment than the Ushiromiya house.

[Renall]

Natsuhi cared rather a lot about her legacy. Her inability to have children was a constant source of her stress and she grew up in a very dutiful and obligation-centric family (then married into a similar one).

Indeed, kind of the whole thrust of Battler's defense of her in ep5 is that she did share a bond with Krauss beyond her mere obligation to him as his wife, and her seemingly irrational hatred for the baby she was allegedly given (when she ought to have just been glad she had something to show for it) actually seems to show that conflict was quite strong in her when it came to her bond with Krauss vs. her desire to look like the perfect dutiful wife who produces an heir.

[AuraTwilight]

Basically the statement is bullshit no matter how you interpret it, which just backs up my position that Ryukishi isn't worth listening to about his own damn story.

[jjblue1]

I think it's more likely that one of the problems of Umineko is that Umineko is a multiparts work that took Ryukishi quite a long time to end and that he had to change his plans for it along the way.

I'll explain myself better.
When Ryukishi started Umineko he likely had a certain opinion about how the world goes and a general plotline for it. However, as time went by he changed part of the plotline (for example replaced Land with Banquet) and it's possible his vision of the world changed as well.

It's pretty normal when you're writing a long work, however the problem is he had to release parts of it to the public and listen to the readers comments and likely be influenced by them.

Now, if you write a long work and print it all when you've finished writing it if, by the end of it, you've changed your mind about few or many details, you can go back through the story, edit it and smooth it so that no one will notice that you changed things along the way.

With Umineko that's not possible. If by the time he wrote Ep 8 he decided all of sudden to develop a certain theme, he can't anymore edit the previous work to make it more fitting for that theme. The best he can do is to go through it and check it didn't clash horribly with the new theme he wants to introduce. I guess he did and, for some reasons, though it could work. He might have been too optimist in his judgement though (it's a mistake many do... -_-) but I think/hope he honestly believed that theme wouldn't clash with what he previously wrote.

So I think we've to take what he's saying in interviews warily not because he's deliberately lying but because his actual thoughts might not apply to his whole work. He might have thought what he said when he wrote the scene in which Beato doesn't follow Battler but maybe, for the other parts of Umineko, he had different plans.

And yes, it's not so great for us readers but, sadly, is very human.

[Used Can]

R07 has said the final work is exactly what he had envisioned since the beginning, though.
We also know everything that was supposed to be in Land ended up into the story one way or the other. For example, Erika is pretty much a character that was supposed to be in Land. The difference is that in Land it'd be a male called Virgilus or something like that.

[MainCharacter]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Ryukishi isn't worth listening to about his own damn story.

I honestly don't understand what you are so mad about, unless this is based on multiple interviews and incidents. I read the recent one posted in this thread that everybody seems to have gotten worked up over and I really don't see the problem.

The only really questionable thing he said in that imo was the whole "men live to leave behind decedents", but I think it's also important to take note that he said "It’s not my place to say, and I don’t want them to think of what I said before as a “final answer.”". I also don't think he was saying that was to be applied to every character in his story or anything.

Everything else in that snippet of interview was talking about Beatrice, meaning that specific part of Yasu that had the sole purpose of being loved by Battler.

I guess I don't really see the problem everyone seems to have here. If everyone is willing to be civil, I'd appreciate it if someone could explain it to me. Perhaps I got something different out of Umineko and the story of Yasu than everyone else, so I'm not seeing the big BETRAYAL here.

[AuraTwilight]

I honestly don't understand what you are so mad about, unless this is based on multiple interviews and incidents. I read the recent one posted in this thread that everybody seems to have gotten worked up over and I really don't see the problem.

My problem is he keeps consistently making statements that aren't congruent with the things he actually wrote down in Umineko. It's the same sort of crap that he uses to justify the "When Beato says certain people are dead in red she means they're actually faking" baloney, except even WORSE because if you want to know what he actually intended you have to seek out some obscure fucking forum thread.

He's not consistent with himself, his novel, or reality. He just says whatever the hell he wants seemingly without thinking about it. He's like the "Hanna" of "Hanna-Barbera", but he doesn't have a Barbera to tell him "Dude, stfu!"

[MainCharacter]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

My problem is he keeps consistently making statements that aren't congruent with the things he actually wrote down in Umineko. It's the same sort of crap that he uses to justify the "When Beato says certain people are dead in red she means they're actually faking" baloney, except even WORSE because if you want to know what he actually intended you have to seek out some obscure fucking forum thread.

He's not consistent with himself, his novel, or reality. He just says whatever the hell he wants seemingly without thinking about it. He's like the "Hanna" of "Hanna-Barbera", but he doesn't have a Barbera to tell him "Dude, stfu!"

I see. Well, I think Umineko stands perfectly well on it's own right so I don't think we really need him to clarify anything. I'll admit I haven't read every single interview or statement he has made on the series, but out of the things I have read I haven't seen anything that I personally think clashes with Umineko itself. I also don't know of any instance where Beatrice uses the red to state someone is dead but they really weren't or were faking it. Granted, I haven't read 1-4 in awhile, but all I can think of are the instances where she was referring to people as a concept rather than their physical bodies. But regardless, it was established in-game that clever wording and semantics are the whole point of Red Truth when used from the Witch's standpoint, so as long as there is some form of explanation that doesn't break established rules, I don't have a problem.

But I do think when an author starts retroactively retconning things and coming up with BS explanations to explain the new contradictions created by the retcons, that it's perfectly acceptable for a fan to decide "to hell with Word of God, the original work was fine on it's own". That's what I do with Kinoko Nasu. I love Fate/stay night, and Nasu himself, to death. But he really does need to stop talking sometimes. At least Ryukashi isn't releasing entire books and magazines of supplementary retcons and convoluted over-explanations for things that were simple on their own. :/

I still don't really see what everyone's problem is with the most recent snipped of interview in this thread, though. Unless all of the problems related to it are specifically because of past interviews.

[Wanderer]

Personally I thought some of his comments about gender were a bit out of left field, but whatever. An amateur-translated interview where he made some vague comments about how general gender-perspectives apply to a couple of his characters is not really conclusive of anything.

What gets me is the "years at sea" part. Lyrical, if you feel like it, posting that part in its original Japanese would be cool.

[AuraTwilight]

I also don't know of any instance where Beatrice uses the red to state someone is dead but they really weren't or were faking it.

One word: Yasu.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Personally I thought some of his comments about gender were a bit out of left field, but whatever. An amateur-translated interview where he made some vague comments about how general gender-perspectives apply to a couple of his characters is not really conclusive of anything.

What gets me is the "years at sea" part. Lyrical, if you feel like it, posting that part in its original Japanese would be cool.

http://sai-zen-sen.jp/works/sessions...iew/01/01.html

There's all of it, you can read it and give us your opinion on the thing.

[LyricalAura]

Here is the whole paragraph in question:

Originally Posted by Ryuukishi

男は子孫を残す為に生きるので、女性の身体・肉体がないと困る。だけど女性にとっては肉体は魂の付属物でし かないんで、魂が結ばれれば、究極的には肉体が離れ離れになっても、お互いが結ばれたのだから良いではない か、と思っています。それはただ私が女性を神格化しすぎているのかもしれないけど、あの世界の価値観ではそ うなっている。戦人にそれが理解できたかできなかったかはわからない。その結果、戦人は海に飛 び込んだ。数年後、海から引き上げられたら彼は記憶を失って八城十八になった。彼の身体は戦人だったけど心は抜けていた、というあたりにいかにベアトリーチェが魂の結びつきを大事にした か、ということが物語られているのかもしれない。彼が自身のことを戦人と認めないことが、ベアトリーチェに 向けた手向けなのかもしれないですし……。そこは読者に考察して欲しいところなのですよ、私が言うところで はないし、私が言ったことがファイナルアンサーだとも思って欲しくない。

[Wanderer]

数年後、海から引き上げられたら彼は記憶を失って八城十八になった

My Japanese is not perfect, but the bolded ら makes the sentence look conditional to me, like "Many years later, if he was pulled from the sea then he had lost his memories and become Hachijou Touya." Maybe the ら means something else and I'm just not getting it, or maybe it's so nuanced that any meaning that comes from the ら won't be expressed in an English translation.

RK07's probably not saying that he was pulled from the sea years later, but that a few years after having been pulled from the sea he had lost his memories and became Touya. In any case, it seems that there were some years in between Battler's escape from Rokkenjima and Touya's meeting with Ikuko. It's a really strange blank period of time. What was Battler doing all that time? Was he Battler at the time, or Touya, or even someone else? Who "pulled" him from the sea. What did he eat for those years? Did someone take care of him?

Did he write those two message bottles?

Or is this all a misunderstanding, and RK07 really doesn't mean to say there were years of blank time between Battler's escape and Touya's meeting Ikuko. Japanese readers: Thoughts?

[MainCharacter]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

One word: Yasu.

Still not sure what you mean by this.

I don't remember any point in time when Beatrice was like "Yasu is dead!" and then Yasu wasn't dead. They obviously don't even mention Yasu until Episode 7. Unless you are talking less specifically about Shannon or Kanon, in which case that would be semantics and vague interpretation regarding what constitutes as a "person" and "dead", not "someone died but they were faking it". You can say "that part of me died" and interpret it as "Kanon died", because you weren't talking about a physical death or a real physical person, the other person just assumed you were. And it's mentioned in-game that this kind of vague wordplay is at work, so I don't see a problem with it.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Dead is dead, there are no semantics involved there. Semantics where used in EP5 to get by the "Corpses" and the red involved around them, that was actually used effectively.

The problem comes that the rules dont really apply to Yasu or any of the other personalities. Shannon and Kanon count as people but Beatrice doesn't. The whole issue of being dead and then bringing them back at will. Doing something in the real world for the sole purpose of dodging something in the meta world, etc.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by MainCharacter

Unless you are talking less specifically about Shannon or Kanon, in which case that would be semantics and vague interpretation regarding what constitutes as a "person" and "dead", not "someone died but they were faking it".

It's both actually. The solution Ryukishi revealed for episode 3's first twilight relies heavily on shannon/Kanon/shkanon fakery for the closed room loop to work.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Or is this all a misunderstanding, and RK07 really doesn't mean to say there were years of blank time between Battler's escape and Touya's meeting Ikuko. Japanese readers: Thoughts?

The たら bothers me as well, because it is a conditional or potential, so it doesn't seem to make much sense, unless he's indicating that we don't have to buy that scene to. But there are some spelling mistakes in the interview, so possibly this is one as well...
But what this sentence originally implies to me is not that he was only pulled out of the ocean after a few years but:
[数年後、] - [海から引き上げられた(ら)彼は] - [記憶を失って] - [八城十八になった]。
[Several years later] - [he who had been pulled out of the sea] - [having lost his memory] - [became Hachijô Tôya].

The sentence "Several years later, after loosing his memory, he was pulled out of the sea and became Hachijô Tôya" would be something like:
数年後、記憶を失った彼が海から引き上げられて八城十八になった。
At least that would be according to my understanding of the language.