[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Kylon99]

About George, we've already been hinted about his statements basically pushing Shannon/Yasu over the edge.

Remember the interview from this year where Ryukishi mentions the careless talk about how George wanted many, many children and Shannon/Yasu took that very badly? (Since she can't actually have the children and she's not the type to want to discuss her problem it seems... d'oh.)

The possible hiding of the letter seems to be another clue that may have pushed Shannon over another edge, although there have been no confirmations from Ryukishi or in-game as of yet.

Are there other instances, now that we know what we know, where George says or does things that the Yasu behind Shannon would take very badly? On purpose or by accident. Especially in events leading up to Rokkenima (and that as a result affect all games/R-Prime.)


Maybe that long opening in EP2 about their date needs to be looked at again... once again, I thought it was the most boring part as I was trying to get to the meaty (murder!) stuff in EP2, but then again, maybe he stuck it there, in the opening, for a good reason. 8)

[AuraTwilight]

George does, repeatedly, say that magic had nothing to do with their love in EP2.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Someone apparently set off the Kaboom on Rokkenjima Prime, unless it was a hilarious accident. If Yasu did it, she's the culprit but a highly unsatisfactory one that kind of kills the work dead in the thematic waters. But it's also possible she's not the culprit of R-Prime, and she has many reasons not to be but claim otherwise.

I just want to point out that Yasu setting off the bomb does not necessarily entail her being the culprit. If it really was her plan in the end to take the blame, or better cast it on Beatrice, her best bet would have been to erase any evidence pointing to a possible different culprit. Let's assume anyone of the people she loved was connected to the crime, there would be plenty of evidence pointing to their guilt, setting off the bomb is the perfect solution if everybody is already dead.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Well that would be a little too convenient though wouldnt it? "I'll just leave these volatile explosives here just in case people go insane and murder everyone just so I can wipe all possible evidence of their actions." It just doesnt sound right, unless it was a contingency plan to something that she would have set up if she knew that there was a possibility of that actually happening. It would work then and it would fit with the theme of characters seeing themselves as murderers do to actions that led to the death of others even if they weren't directly involved in them.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I'm not fully convinced Kyrie forced Battler to do anything. There's a world of difference between "Maybe you should write to everyone" and "Do it or you're grounded".

Also Asshole George is funnier.

I agree with you on the Kirye part.
According to what we read in Ep 7 I doubt Kirye forced Battler to write to his cousins. She likely told him: 'you should write them' and he did because hey, they're his cousins and he loved them.
I don't really think she needed to threaten him.

However I doubt George has a chance to hide Battler's letter for Shannon. Kirye handed him an envelope with all the letters. Shannon watched him open it, hand the letters to the other and she received the empty envelope who contained the letters.
Unless George is as skilled as her in magic tricks to hid a letter while Shannon (and likely Jessica and the others) were looking at him would be hard. His only option would have been if there wasn't a letter for him. In this case he could have said his name was on Shannon's letter and read it adapting it so as to make it look like a letter to himself. But then why there wasn't a letter for George?

My best theories are:
- either Battler was told to write to the cousins and wrote just to them (and Ange) and didn't think Kirye would hand his letter to Shannon or thought Shannon had left without waiting for him (he seemed surprised to see her again and, after all, if a normal girl wanted to leave, she would have left with or without him, expecially considering the servants don't stay as long as Shannon on Rokkenjima).
- Kirye removed it from the envelope or before placing the letters into an envelope because she figured that, if Battler was writing to a servant, said servant might mean something for him and she wanted to ruin Asumu's son's love story as a small revenge toward Asumu.

In the first there's no malicious intent, just the belief Shannon wouldn't get the letter anyway.
In the second there's malicious intent, all right, but Kirye has been holding a grudge toward his mother for a long time so I think it's possible for her to do it.

As for George I prefer to picture him as seriously afraid there would be a letter for Shannon, wondering if he could get rid of it and relieved there was none. We don't get teh exact content of his letter so I think he purposely put empashis on how Battler was having fun so as to drive the message home he wouldn't come back.

I think George is more manipulative than malicious... though in a ordinary sort of way. Nothing over the top.

(Funny enough I like the idea it's possible he and Battler had a big fight over Shannon in Rokkenjima Prime... though I've no proofs, it's just an idea based on a possible interpretation of the magic scenes...)

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

A very good analysis Jiblue, but let me expand this point:



There were people that not only never did anything wrong to her, but who actually helped and supported her.

Kumasawa's only fault is that she kept silent on many bad things other people around her did. However she was in such a position of low power that it was probably the best decision she could make. Talking could have probably only led to her being fired and more covering up from Kinzo/Genji/Nanjo preventing her from staying close to Yasu and help her. Kumasawa has always been Yasu's ally and she supported her morally providing her ways to overcome her inadequacies and introducing her to fun hobbies. There are people who'd gladly trade their parents for Kumasawa, even a part-time Kumasawa.

Jessica for what we know has always been her friend. Despite her position as the future head of the family she never acted with any kind of "caste" mentality (unlike Eva, Krauss and Natsuhi). We have seen that Jessica befriended at least another fukuin servant, so she really never treated Shannon or anyone else with arrogance or superiority. Jessica might be a bit self-centered and superficial but that's hardly a sin considering she's just a high school girl.
If Jessica wasn't that open to her, Yasu's life would have been a lot worse, considering all other servants didn't like her. I think she should have been grateful for that.

Maria also never did anything wrong to her. Albeit it's probably not correct to call that a friendship due to the imbalance in their relationship, Maria's faithfulness to her is a rare gift.

So in the end it's very hard to find sympathy for Yasu when her life wasn't that bad. She sure had some very bad experiences, she sure had the misfortune of being victim of a few not so decent human beings (primarily Kinzo), but she also had a couple of very good people that supported her.

Tragically Yasu seems to ignore all the good things and only focus on the bad ones, and ironically she gets more traumatized by something minor like Battler's sin rather than way worse crimes that were inflicted upon her and her mother by Kinzo, Genji and Natsuhi.
Ironically the more things get better to her the worse she becomes.

People start to love her, she gets angst because she doesn't know how to make up her mind and tell them the truth.
Her trials and tribulations as a servant ends, she can finally live a life of wealth and power? she gets even more insane because she doesn't know how to deal with it.

Truly she was better off as a lowly servant hated by everyone.

Exactly. We can't feel that sympathetic if we look at things from this point of view.

Of course there are authors capable to pull it out right and make you feel sympathetic giving to the character in question a very in deep analysis.

Character A acted nice with character B and yet character B doesn't care if character A dies?
The author will give you the whole background story in which character B misjudged chara A, either due to external influence or because he heard character A saying something he misunderstood, or because character B personal story brought him to the (wrong) assumption character A's niceness was fake.

If this is pulled out well you might feel sympathy for character B who killed character A firmly believing character A was about to backstab him when actually chara A was just nice (see Keiichi who believes his friends want to kill him, sure, Higurashi brings it to an extreme in which he goes paranoid but well, at first you believe his story and feel sorry for him).

However Umineko doesn't bother to give Shannon the chance to tell: hey but I thought Jessica wanted to kill me, ruin my life, whatever else.
Jessica is just nice to her, no ill wills attacked and she should know it.
Shannon isn't even given a background in which everyone betrayed her so she can't trust Jessica's niceness.
If the shock of finding out the truth about herself could have lead her to think it for a while, by 1986 the shock should have either worn off or lead her to insanity... but she's not shown as a paranoid person who expect betrayal and mistreating at any corner.

Ironically, I think that, despite being the person whose heart we were supposed to understand, Shannon/Yasu's psychological portray is one of the weakest or the weakest among the Umineko characters as well as being uncommon enough so as not to allow the reader to use his own experiences to 'read it'.

This makes rather hard if not impossible to forgive/understand her as 'culprit' in the murder games... and can be accepted only if they were just this, games and not the truth that happened on R Prime.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

There is a significant difference between "There is no whydunnit" and "The whydunnit utilizes meta-logic."

And since in Umineko people can talk to their own authors and vice versa, well...herp a derp. Kanon and Shannon especially comment about the existence of other Games, and resign themselves to the course of events as inevitable circumstance they can't do anything about save for playing their parts.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Exactly. Fictional culprit-Yasu is fully aware that she's only killing fictional people; to her it's not even murder. So even within the context of the fictions it still comes down to: Why is she writing about killing her friends and even that guy Gohda?. And that's the "heart" of the murderer that Will was seeking.

Okay. Then let's put it this way. Let's say you are a person inside the Umineko universe, which means that is your reality. In this reality you know that there is a mysterious writer who wrote mystery fictions about a certain family being murdered in mysterious ways predating a real unfortunate incident where almost every member of that very family actually died.
You also know that these mysteries spawned a lot of fiscussions in the internet and so on, and you know that there is another writer x that goes with the name of Itoikukuroreigonamu (or whatever) who wrote other mystery stories on the same line. Those stories also became popular and spawned several discussions etc etc.
Attracted by that phenomenon you also read all those stories and ty to reason about them and try to solve them from a mystery approach.

You don't know this but those stories are supposed to be solvable, else they can't be called games. They are also written with the mystery rules in mind.

What you actually eventually find out, however, is that the solution of all those mysteries is that the culprit acts with metalogic, he knows he's just a character in a story and acts with a meta-purpose in mind.

How would you judge these stories then?

I'd think they are nothing but a bad joke, and I'd feel I wasted my time. You cannot detatch the howdunit from the whydunit. If the whydunit is "magical" then the whole story is "magical", it's fantasy.

Yes they are fictions, and I read them while being fully aware that they are fictions, but that's no excuse. If there are rules that the howdunit cannot include magical stuff, there should be the same rules for the whydunit. Ignoring this is a blatant violation of the relationship of trust between author and reader.

Yes, nothing prevents a writer from doing that, but that makes him a bad writer, and his stories, poor stories.

[UsagiTenpura]

Umineko certainly can be considered a poor Mystery. That's why I'm certain that's not the way we should approach it.

If you stop judging it as a mystery and what a mystery should be, you can appreciate it (or dislike it) for what it is.
From what we could gather from long ago, Ryuukishi wanted with Umineko to make a story about stories. About mystery stories. What's so odd then that the why dunnit ends up being the "why would you want to write a mystery story"?

I guess it all turns into the opinion of wether or not Umineko should've been a typical mystery vs it being the meta-fiction it is. You can dislike the concept of meta-fiction. You can alternatively dislike Ryuukishi's meta-fiction. But saying Ryuukishi should've done a typical mystery when almost from the start he said it wasn't the case doesn't really get anywhere.

Tho I think it's worth thinking about the Hachijous' comment on how "previous mysteries were only puzzle and not really great, but that last work is a masterpiece because it is a great story before being a great mystery".
Obviously if you see the story as nothing but the mystery conclusion you can reach from it, you certainly won't like Umineko any more.
If you take however everything we've seen in Umineko including stuff like magical battles and all the meta stuff as part of the story, I'm fairly certain you can find Umineko a great story, as long as you don't think from the start that "it's bad because it's not mystery".

Personally my greatest deception in that logic is that after arc 5's finale, I think Ryuukishi didn't succeed very well in creating hmm... shounen like climax scenes like the end of arc 6. They sorta felt dragging on.

[Cao Ni Ma]

I dont see how inserting ourselves into the umineko universe would help that tough experiment. Do we have the same amount of information that we do right now in our fiction selves? If we do then yeah, we'll reach the same conclusion that our real selves reached.

1)The first 2 episodes where written by a girl with emotional issues, they where never intended to be read by the public and where made for the purpose of venting frustration.

2)The rest of the chapters where done as an exercise to get an amnesiac guy to try to remember his past. Any semblance of it being solvable is purely coincidental because the guys mind is a jumbled mess. This also wasn't meant to go public but was convinced to do so anyways.

Now we always can say "The author is full of shit and just retconned this to cover his ass", which is really valid. I guess we'll have to wait just a bit more to find out.

e- What Im saying is that the human element behind writing these isn't to satisfy us, the consumers. The reasons to write these stories from Yasu's and Tohya's stand point is to cope with their feelings.

Here's a thing that I picked up by going to the oh so frequent suicide prevention class in our unit. Keeping a diary helps with coping trough depression. Maria always kept one, Eva started keeping one after the event. We dont know if Yasu actually kept one, but we know she wrote these stories. However morbid they where, I can certainly see it as a way to cope.

[AuraTwilight]

Originally Posted by Cao_Ni_Ma

Well that would be a little too convenient though wouldnt it? "I'll just leave these volatile explosives here just in case people go insane and murder everyone just so I can wipe all possible evidence of their actions."

Dude, the explosives were already there from the WW2 days. Yasu doesn't need to set them up, she just has to escape being murdered and set them off to keep the culprit from escaping.

However I doubt George has a chance to hide Battler's letter for Shannon. Kirye handed him an envelope with all the letters. Shannon watched him open it, hand the letters to the other and she received the empty envelope who contained the letters.
Unless George is as skilled as her in magic tricks to hid a letter while Shannon (and likely Jessica and the others) were looking at him would be hard. His only option would have been if there wasn't a letter for him. In this case he could have said his name was on Shannon's letter and read it adapting it so as to make it look like a letter to himself. But then why there wasn't a letter for George?

George never got a letter. He took Shannon's and pretended it was his. Win.

In the second there's malicious intent, all right, but Kirye has been holding a grudge toward his mother for a long time so I think it's possible for her to do it.

But what the hell does Shannon have to do with Asumu? Kyrie might be a spiteful bitch but she directs it at the people responsible, not at everyone around her, or even at BATTLER, Asumu's flesh and blood.

Okay. Then let's put it this way. Let's say you are a person inside the Umineko universe, which means that is your reality. In this reality you know that there is a mysterious writer who wrote mystery fictions about a certain family being murdered in mysterious ways predating a real unfortunate incident where almost every member of that very family actually died.
You also know that these mysteries spawned a lot of fiscussions in the internet and so on, and you know that there is another writer x that goes with the name of Itoikukuroreigonamu (or whatever) who wrote other mystery stories on the same line. Those stories also became popular and spawned several discussions etc etc.
Attracted by that phenomenon you also read all those stories and ty to reason about them and try to solve them from a mystery approach.

You don't know this but those stories are supposed to be solvable, else they can't be called games. They are also written with the mystery rules in mind.

What you actually eventually find out, however, is that the solution of all those mysteries is that the culprit acts with metalogic, he knows he's just a character in a story and acts with a meta-purpose in mind.

How would you judge these stories then?

To be entirely fair, I don't think the Witch Hunters really think that far, since they're generally depicted as being uninterested in that. Though bear in mind that meta-logic may be Yasu's motivations with the characters, it requires knowing Yasu herself; a casual reader could come up with any motives of their own. Maybe the two are hardcore Beatrice worshippers and did it to convince people she exists. Maybe they wanted to be with their lovers and everything went wrong. Maybe someone figured out Shkanon and realized it was a love conflict but didn't realize much more beyond that.

Unfortunately, despite Yasu recognizing it's importance, she doesn't seem to consider the Whydunnit to be very important for her magic characters. They're plot devices.

I'd think they are nothing but a bad joke, and I'd feel I wasted my time. You cannot detatch the howdunit from the whydunit. If the whydunit is "magical" then the whole story is "magical", it's fantasy.

Meta is not Magic.

e- What Im saying is that the human element behind writing these isn't to satisfy us, the consumers. The reasons to write these stories from Yasu's and Tohya's stand point is to cope with their feelings.

Here's a thing that I picked up by going to the oh so frequent suicide prevention class in our unit. Keeping a diary helps with coping trough depression. Maria always kept one, Eva started keeping one after the event. We dont know if Yasu actually kept one, but we know she wrote these stories. However morbid they where, I can certainly see it as a way to cope.

I want to add on to this that since the beginning, Ryukishi and his characters have been saying things like "This is not a mystery," and "Love stories are greater puzzles than mysteries", and some such. For all my faults with him, I trust that his very original intention was to tell a non-Mystery with superficial Mystery trappings to get people interested.

It's a bait-and-switch and it's terrible for all sorts of other reasons, but I'm not going to call retcon on this particular aspect. He wanted people to understand the feelings of his characters, and that's fine. He doesn't seem to consider the murder mystery itself all that important, only using it as a plot device as a means to an end, which is why he seemed to be reluctant to answer them. Whether you think THAT'S fine is another issue entirely, but discounting the mystery merits of the fictions and forgeries is perfectly valid, imo.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

*snip*

The problem is how he sold Umineko. There's nothing wrong in selling strawberry icecream and there's nothing wrong in selling chocolate icecream. But if you sell chocolate icecream an it's actually strawberry icecream, yes there is a problem and a big one. And mind that it's a problem whether you like strawberry icecream or not (but even a bigger problem if you don't).

Let's even say that Umineko is a good story but a poor mystery, as you say, there's still the fact that Ryuukishi sold it as a "game" and him claiming that it was a game is all over the place in his interviews. Not only that, he also explained in great details what is a good game and what is not.

To continue the icecream comparison it's as if the ice cream artisan went on explaining how to properly make an ice cream and what should be avoided, only to do the total opposite when he lets you watch when he actually prepares it.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Meta is not Magic.

If even advanced technology can be considered the same as magic, so does meta.

Anyway I'm not really sure that the motive of the culprit of the games really is "meta" in Ryuukishi's mind. This is what you and Wanderer think but I'm really not so sure that this is what Ryuukishi would answer if asked.

[cronnoponno]

Quick, random question.

Does anyone know what the ''H'' stands for in Wills name?

[Auria]

Originally Posted by cronnoponno

Quick, random question.

Does anyone know what the ''H'' stands for in Wills name?

If we go by Van Dine's full real name it should be Huntington. However, if you meant it in a symbolic sense I have no idea...

[Jan-Poo]

Willard Huntington Wright

Or at least that's S.S. Van Dine true name. I don't think it was ever specified in the story what the character Will's second name is. It only says that he was nickname Wizard Hunter Wright giving his initials a new interpretation.

[cronnoponno]

Huh, wow that actually sounds pretty thoughtful.

[AuraTwilight]

If even advanced technology can be considered the same as magic, so does meta.

Oh shit Garfield just made a 4th wall joke. MAGIC.

Anyway I'm not really sure that the motive of the culprit of the games really is "meta" in Ryuukishi's mind. This is what you and Wanderer think but I'm really not so sure that this is what Ryuukishi would answer if asked.

My point is that it could be; Shannon and Kanon are portrayed as being meta-aware at multiple times in the story. A Meta-motive is possible, but so is a normal one. Perhaps both exist simultaneously.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

The problem is how he sold Umineko. There's nothing wrong in selling strawberry icecream and there's nothing wrong in selling chocolate icecream. But if you sell chocolate icecream an it's actually strawberry icecream, yes there is a problem and a big one. And mind that it's a problem whether you like strawberry icecream or not (but even a bigger problem if you don't).
[...]
To continue the icecream comparison it's as if the ice cream artisan went on explaining how to properly make an ice cream and what should be avoided, only to do the total opposite when he lets you watch when he actually prepares it.

Did he really do such a thing though?! Let's be honest, what he did was selling chocolate icecream, but accidently it was a flavour that not many people liked, maybe it missed sugar, for some the nuts he inserted were too much and others just expected the same flavour another place has on it's icecream but were annoyed when he didn't replicate it to the finest piece.

Okay, maybe his kind of writing really was TOO special, even I think that many elements don't mix that well. But I think saying that his advertising was wrong is missing the point I think.
Concerning the story as a mystery story. First and foremost, what is a mystery story? Many here seem to apply rules that fit during the Golden Age of Western Detective Fiction, something that is long in the past. Even the term mystery has changed and has gotten so many different nuances...saying it has to fit THE definition of mystery is missing the whole variety of the genre.
Had he said he was going to write 本格ミステリ or 社会派 or 叙述トリック・ミステリ, okay, but he didn't say. He merely said that it was a mystery story about the battle between an anti-mystery and anti-fantasy stance.
His story is a rather poor example of 本格ミステリ, but he never said he'd write one.

Concerning the game aspect, he never promised his game to be fair. He made his protagonists vow to fight fair, but our battle is not between us and Beatrice, but between us and him as an author. The game might have been pretty hard and we won't get a real solution in the end what the right path to victory is...but does a game promise that? In chess, wether you won or lost, most opponents won't go on and tell you what you should have done to win or lose so that you are perfectly sure you actually won.

People seem to be mixing the fairness of a game and the idea that a mystery has to deliver a solution (probably derived from incomplete genre-knowledge) into one bowl and think that one entails the other, which is not what the game in Umineko is about.

[cronnoponno]

Umineko is still one of my favorite stories to read, my only problem with it is how it felt like you basically had to have the perfect interpretation while reading it.


It felt like:

EP 1-4:
''Don't trust witches, see past the lies in the red truth, realize it's just as bad a weapon for them as it is you''

Me: ''KK -tries to think-


EP 5:
''Asshole, how can you honestly lack faith in our reds and answers, seriously grow some fucking balls and have a little faith in me, if you put in 100% of your effort and actually use your eyes and head you'll see that this tale has an answer''

Me: ''Hm, well okay, I guess trying to abuse reds and think of the most bullshit solution possible is entirely missing the point, I'll try to think a little more about it and believe there won't be a dead end''

EP 6:
''Dumbass, you were supposed to realize that the reds were going to be abused as much as possible, it's your fault for not trying to think, what are you so mad about? If you think this goes against the rules then you just lack love''

Me: ''Well I'm okay with that answer...but, what?'' EP 6 was awesome anyway.


Maybe I'm not mad because I wouldn't have tried to reason it out before the characters either way, that kinda ruins the fun for me(though I still like to think as I read). Maybe I just didn't see it right but it really felt like I was being thrown left and right about what I was reading.

I guess I just was not smart enough to read Umineko.


I personally think that Ryukishi could have totally made a complete Fantasy out of Umineko with his characters and neglected the entire mystery and would have made a damned good story, only problem I have with it is how retardedly moe it gets at times (for example, most scenes with Sakutaru), but that's totally ignorable, I have the CTRL button for that.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

~

I don't really agree with the "game" part because of what Bern explains in arc 1's Ura, but I still generally agree with what you say, in another perspective.
I think Ryuukishi's mistake was to raise too many different kinds of expectations at once.

Like cronoponno sorta mentioned, Ryuukishi also sorta mocked his readers into raising their own expectations and standards, it really didn't help.

I tend to think that people who didn't think about it too much but still loved the serie enough to make cosplays, artworks, etc of it probably had ultimately the best attitude toward the serie. Maybe it's not the one Ryuukishi wanted however.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

George never got a letter. He took Shannon's and pretended it was his. Win.

I'm not sure if you're joking or not but, in case you aren't, this sounds more like wishful thinking than a realistic probability.
Kirye said she told him to write to the cousins. George is a cousin and one that he respects. Why shouldn't he write to him? It would have been more logic not writing to Ange or Maria as they were too small to read.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

But what the hell does Shannon have to do with Asumu? Kyrie might be a spiteful bitch but she directs it at the people responsible, not at everyone around her, or even at BATTLER, Asumu's flesh and blood.

Shannon has nothing to do with Asumu. Battler on the other side is Asumu's son. Kirye said she continued to hold a grudge against Asumu even after her death and she's not too fond of Battler due to this. Even Ange thinks it should have been hard for her mom to get along with Battler so well as it looked from the outside.

We've a pretty clear example of how a person who hates another can decide to move her grudge on that person's child in EP 4 when Kirye's sister wanted to kill Ange because she couldn't kill Kirye.

Really, Kirye merely stealing Battler's letter so as to ruin Battler's love story isn't as bad as Kasumi wishing to kill Ange for getting revenge.

Kirye is smart, she could have realized if Battler was writing to a servant it was because he held a special attachment to her, she might have noticed George was interested in Shannon and merely removed the letter from the others so as to have Asumu's son try the pain of losing the person you love to another one.

Shannon is merely an innocent bystander who found herself involved. I don't think Kirye harboured ill feelings toward her.