[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Ange is the last remaining cornerstone of Battler's identity. What if meeting her causes all the "Battler-ness" to rush back and erase his Toya identity?

That's why he's afraid of meeting her.

Unless his Toya identity is "false", something his brain create to bury his Battler's identity, his Toya identity can't disappear, at best it can get some characteristic of the Battler's identity.

The life he built and the way his character developed after the experiences he made as Toya can't be erased just because he remembers his past. At best, the Battler identity can be added to the Toya one, resulting in him having also Battler's memories. If his persona is solid though, this can't influence him that much (for example he won't drop his job as co-writer because as a teen he dreamt... I don't know, to be a basketball star. At best he'll play basket when he'll have free time... okay, at best he would have played backet when he had free time hadn't he ended on a wheelchair in the meantime... -_-).


The only thing that could truly affect him would be a trauma Battler underwent, still, the reason why you can get amnesia due to trauma, is to provide your brain time to cope with it.

It won't be pleasant but it's supposed to be better than dealing with the trauma just after you received it.

In short, even Battler's trauma would feel dimmed.

The only case in which the Toya identity could completely vanish would be if "Toya" were a personality his mind unconsciously adopted in attempt to suppress the Battler one.

He couldn't deal with being Battler so he removed Battler from his mind and created Toya (some people would try adopt the identity of another person, be that real or fictional... there was a mistery in which a girl took the name of her favorite writer and the past of said writer main character firmly believing they were her name and her past).
However, since in this case Toya wouldn't be real yes, Battler could replace him once toya were to recover his memories.

This however doesn't seem Toya's case.
He doesn't seem to remember his past nor adopt a fictional one for himself.
Toya is just the result of what happened to Battler in those years after the Rokkenjima incident.
He can't be erased, at best he can be influenced.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Unless his Toya identity is "false", something his brain create to bury his Battler's identity, his Toya identity can't disappear, at best it can get some characteristic of the Battler's identity.

Tohya's afraid of something that he thinks might happen. Whether it would or could actually happen is basically irrelevant since he's not thinking about it rationally.

[AuraTwilight]

Lyrical beat me to it. The actual reality of what would happen doesn't matter. Toya is afraid of the POSSIBILITY of it happening. It's not like it's a stretch to believe; something similiar happens with Fugue states, where after remembering your past life, the life you've made in the interim is erased in exchange. Toya might be under the impression that he has this condition.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Tohya's afraid of something that he thinks might happen. Whether it would or could actually happen is basically irrelevant since he's not thinking about it rationally.

Well, if he grew paranoyd about it due to unknown reasons, fine.
However Toya should have known/been informed his memory could come back by the doctor who took care of him so it didn't came to him as completely unexpected. Generally a doctor would also give you a speech about how getting your memories back would be.

I would find more logic if he were scared by Battler's emotions regarding what he underwent in Rokkenjima... those can be overwelming and ends up affecting Toya's personality as well, but, unless he's lying, apparently he remembers little about those two days.

My best guess is that when he recovered Battler's memories he also recovered the memories of the Rokkenjima incident. However the feelings tied to it were too overwhelming for him to deal with them. They would end up affecting his whole life and scarring him permanently. This generated a trauma that generated denial. He buried the memories of those two days again (this time by psychological means) and rejected what he couldn't bury.

In this case it makes sense he doesn't want to deal with Battler because dealing with him wouldn't turn him into Battler but would force him to deal with something unpleasant and traumatic.

"I'm no Battler so I don't have to deal with my family members killing each other," might be a convenient way to deal with the mess and bury those memories.

In short he was sort of speacking figuratively when he said he was afraid Battler would overwrite Toya.

Battler can't overwrite Toya but what happened to him can affect Toya changing his perception of the world.
Think for example to someone in his condition and that were to remember that, before losing his memory, he was victim of gang rape... his perception about dealing with other people and sex might change. He might experience unpleasant flashback that could lead him to depression and even suicide.

He wouldn't become the person he was before but this traumatic fact would haunt him and make him feel as if what had happened to him before was distorting his actual life, erasing it.

So let's deny he was that person and, more important, let's deny that traumatic fact even happened to him so he won't have to deal with it.

It's more or less what Toya was doing, however he described it differently... though he might not be able to describe it correctly.

It would also explain why he feels no feelings for Ange despite having recovered Battler's memories and remembering Battler loved her. He's denying them, forcing them to be owned by a "separate entity".

[Renall]

We don't know what kind of doctors Ikuko's letting see him. She doesn't strike me as the type to just take him to the hospital, and there's no telling what she might pay a private doctor to say or not say about his diagnosis. If Kinzo can find a doctor like that, don't be too shocked that she could.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

We don't know what kind of doctors Ikuko's letting see him. She doesn't strike me as the type to just take him to the hospital, and there's no telling what she might pay a private doctor to say or not say about his diagnosis. If Kinzo can find a doctor like that, don't be too shocked that she could.

So you're suggesting Ikuko asked the doctor to tell him a false diagnosis?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

So you're suggesting Ikuko asked the doctor to tell him a false diagnosis?

She might have just told him to go easy on explaining things that might be more difficult about it. I'm not saying she made anything up.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

She might have just told him to go easy on explaining things that might be more difficult about it. I'm not saying she made anything up.

I'm not expecting the doctor to go into technical details, just to tell him, one he's capable to understand things that he's suffering of memory loss but that sooner or later he might recover his memory.
The doctor could add more stuffs (like that his memory could be triggered by something that was familiar to him) but, by this point, is also up to Toya to make questions if he's worried/concerned about it.

He should have known he 'existed' as another person before waking up memory less and he should have known the memory of that life could come back to him.

If he's rejecting it because Battler's memory is taunted by a traumatic fact fine and this scared him, I can understand it but freaking out merely because the memory of his past returned no matter what's the content of it is a little different.

[Wanderer]

Regardless of logic, they just didn't feel like his memories. I'd say it's really more like a personality disorder than amnesia.

[Jan-Poo]

More like dissociation tending to depersonalization.

Personality disorders are a complete different kind of psychological disorders including schizoid, histrionic, borderline personality disorder and so on, and they are generally mild compared to other more famous disfunctions.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Renall

Actually, that's pretty much why it failed. It was incredibly obvious, it just relied on lies and nonsense to disguise it, many of the lies coming well after perceptive readers had picked up on a blatantly obvious conceit.

From a fully mystery POV I can see that's pretty much what it is.
From my understanding it's something like you're supposed to catch the goals of meta-Beatrice and not just catch the culprit.
The cheap tricks exists to make the game spin forever until Battler (or us) figure out Meta-Beatrice's "heart" rather then simply find the gameboard culprit.
You might not like the idea any more but you should understand at least why she did it.

Battler.

Unless you mean the stories. Even then, in a few episodes there are possible alternatives.

As far as using literary conceits as detective methods, well, didn't that wind up with Kyrie being incriminated? There was a complete absence of actual evidence for her, yet so many people were like "Yeah, I could see that."

Yes, in the stories.
Imo every girls on the island were made suspicious in an arc or another, with varying success on Ryuukishi's part. I don't think anything hints to a Kyrie=Beato theory tho. Sorta hard to feel like you'd actually figured out the truth if you reached a solution with a culprit but not to who is Beatrice.
I'd feel like I reached exactly the "wrong conclusion" Ryuukishi wanted me to reach.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

He should have known he 'existed' as another person before waking up memory less and he should have known the memory of that life could come back to him.

If he's rejecting it because Battler's memory is taunted by a traumatic fact fine and this scared him, I can understand it but freaking out merely because the memory of his past returned no matter what's the content of it is a little different.

The problem which many other people and me are trying to get across and you seem to be kind of avoiding is that Tôya does not see himself as Battler. Battler's memory is not something he experiences as his past, but as something like "visions" invading him. At no point does he feel like he is viewing his past and it does not matter wether those images are happy or terrifying.

Nobody seems to have any idea who he is...how should they as Eva never seems to have filed a missing person's case and the police regarded everybody except Eva dead. So the only thing they could tell him is that there could be a point in his life where he might remember things.
It's not like he was in a familiar environment that could remind him of his former life or make him grow accustomed to the idea of becoming Ushiromiya Battler again. Accepting that memory does not mean an addition to Hachijô Tôya, it is the end of Hachijô Tôya. There is no need for any Hachijô Tôya to exist once he accepts Ushiromiya Battler as his past and that is what he is affraid of. Of course he could try and continue to do so, but there wouldn't be any objective need because Tôya only exists because Battler stopped existing.

It's the same as the end of Kanon, Shannon or Beatrice, depending on who wins the trial of love. In the end, in the real world there can only be one result, Hachijô Tôya or Ushiromiya Battler.
Can his choice be considered selfish? Of course. But that is the whole theme of the story, isn't it?!

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

More like dissociation tending to depersonalization.

I would agree with that. Of course most of that is theory and very subjective so the mere existence of the state Tôya is in is highly speculative on Ryûkishi's side. But hell, we're living in a time where much worse things are pulled off on prime time TV, sometimes more flashy is actually helping the plot.

[Jan-Poo]

Ryuukishi isn't very knowledgeable about psychological disorders. There is a TIP about "multiple personality disorder" in Onikakushi and what he wrote there is hilarious to say the least. He also wrote that only people affected with maniac depression successfully kill themselves while major depression doesn't lead to actual suicide. I... know... what kind of source he read and made him reach that conclusion but he grossly misunderstood it and his statement the way he exposed it is absolutely false.

I suppose he got better from that time but I still not expect him to be very precise.

[AuraTwilight]

Oh yea, I remember that.

Excuse me, I need to go sharpen some knives so I don't contemplate death threats.

[Used Can]

Originally Posted by haguruma

Accepting that memory does not mean an addition to Hachijô Tôya, it is the end of Hachijô Tôya. There is no need for any Hachijô Tôya to exist once he accepts Ushiromiya Battler as his past and that is what he is affraid of. Of course he could try and continue to do so, but there wouldn't be any objective need because Tôya only exists because Battler stopped existing.

I don't think I agree to this. I'd can agree if he'd have lost his memories say... 6 months to 1-2 years, in which he's not likely to have gone through many experiences and thus developed too much of a new personality - and even then, after 1-2 years the person will quite likely take some time in coping with his past memories. However, in this case the person in question had lived 24 years as Hachijō Tōya. That's 6 years more than what he had lived as Ushiromiya Battler (and I'm even bloating Battler's age, because most people tend to have no memories of their 1st 2-3 years of life). So, it wouldn't be as if once he recovers his memories he'd go back to be Battler. It could be possible if Tōya's personality was similar to Battler's (and even then, you wouldn't be able to say he reverted back to be Battler, since he'd had already been that way), but from the little we've heard, it seems Tōya was a very different individual. So, basically, you'd simply have Tōya with his past memories - and, of course, him having to endure whatever memories he has from the events of the conference of 1986. But, ultimately, Tōya would prevail over Battler. In fact, I think this is the very reason why we got a red that said "Ushiromiya Battler is dead." I guess you could say Hachijō Tōya is the man who holds the memories of Ushiromiya Battler, but he and Battler are different people.

[Judoh]

Actually what the TIP says is "that neither people in the manic nor the depressions state commit suicide. They do it when one state changes to another"

That might not be true either I'm not sure. But what it says on my game is different.

That could be because I'm using an editorashi patch for the game though. The typos in mangagamer's translations were so bad fans went and made a bunch of files you can insert into the program files thing to fix the text lol.

[ErenselTheJester]

I have one question: Why is Battler trying so hard to keep his Toya identity?

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

The problem which many other people and me are trying to get across and you seem to be kind of avoiding is that Tôya does not see himself as Battler.

Uh? I'm not saying he should see himself as Battler, merely that he should be aware he wasn't Hachijo Toya through his whole life.

He had a past prior to becoming Hachijo Toya, he wasn't magically born as a person of 18.

I'm perfectly fine with the fact he might not feel a connection with Battler's memories.

What I'm not so fine with is his idea that Battler's memories will overwrite his own personality, erasing it.

Originally Posted by haguruma

Accepting that memory does not mean an addition to Hachijô Tôya, it is the end of Hachijô Tôya. There is no need for any Hachijô Tôya to exist once he accepts Ushiromiya Battler as his past and that is what he is affraid of. Of course he could try and continue to do so, but there wouldn't be any objective need because Tôya only exists because Battler stopped existing.

How could Toya stop to exist and become Battler merely because he gains the memories of his life as Battler? Toya can't go back being a 18 high school student that was considering if moving back to live with his parents, erasing all his actual life, personality and memories.

Toya is a real persona, his personality is the result of the experiences he made in those years, of his personal grow. His life, his friendships are the result of his own choices and he would continue to be free to follow the way he has chosen.

Remembering who he was before becoming Toya, willingly or unwillingly, can't magically turn him into who he was. He is the one who would chose what to do with the new info he would gain.

Toya isn't a fake persona or a last minute created persona. If his memories came back in 1998 he would have lived for 12 years, 12 of his ADULT years as Toya.
While Battler, being a teenager was still building up a personality, Toya likely has a firm one snd anyway there's no way the Battler's personality can win because although we keep on calling it like that Battler's personality doesn't exist anymore, all he can recover are Battler's memories.

There's no another person inside him, there are memories of a past in which he might have had a different character.

If he wants to have a reason for being scared about regaining his memory it can be only because either he already had identity problems or a weak sense of self or can't cope with what he remembers and this would lead him to madness.

If Toya is mentally sane he can't possibly be erased. He won't wake up one day as Battler.

You seem to consider Toya as a temporal replacement for Battler. Toya is merely the result of the experiences he made. Once he awoke with no memories he began to evolve, to grow, into what he became.
His personality is real, based on real life experiences, not something he invented.
It'll keep on evolving, on changing the more he grows, but, unless he already had identity problems, he got another amnesia or undergoes a trauma, his personality won't be erased.

So, if you're to tell me Toya was mentally unstable or that recovering his memories caused him to become as such, I can accept he's afraid to lose his own identity. It would justify the fact he seems to overreact.

But if you tell me he looked perfectly sane and had no other problem with Battler's memories apart that he didn't want them the story doesn't make much sense.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Used Can

I don't think I agree to this. I'd can agree if he'd have lost his memories say... 6 months to 1-2 years, in which he's not likely to have gone through many experiences and thus developed too much of a new personality - and even then, after 1-2 years the person will quite likely take some time in coping with his past memories. However, in this case the person in question had lived 24 years as Hachijō Tōya. That's 6 years more than what he had lived as Ushiromiya Battler (and I'm even bloating Battler's age, because most people tend to have no memories of their 1st 2-3 years of life). So, it wouldn't be as if once he recovers his memories he'd go back to be Battler. It could be possible if Tōya's personality was similar to Battler's (and even then, you wouldn't be able to say he reverted back to be Battler, since he'd had already been that way), but from the little we've heard, it seems Tōya was a very different individual. So, basically, you'd simply have Tōya with his past memories - and, of course, him having to endure whatever memories he has from the events of the conference of 1986. But, ultimately, Tōya would prevail over Battler. In fact, I think this is the very reason why we got a red that said "Ushiromiya Battler is dead." I guess you could say Hachijō Tōya is the man who holds the memories of Ushiromiya Battler, but he and Battler are different people.

I agree completely. Toya simply can't be erased and replaced with Battler if he's mentally sane.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by ErenselTheJester

I have one question: Why is Battler trying so hard to keep his Toya identity?

Battler is a serial murderer and if his memories come back he might snap and kill Ikuko and hunt down Ange to finish the job

Really no idea, I could guess that after procrastinating for over 20 years he might have some reservations of it if he actually remembers some of it. It seems his life is kinda torturous though, running away from a reality that long. Haven't anyone in this series heard "Truth hurts - not the searching after; the running from"?

It feels like everyone is escaping from it, even the author!