[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Renall]

It's also possible it just always was white and only appeared red for the stories, although then you run into the question of "Why was it like that in the stories, then?" I'd say it's to distinguish his appearance from Kyrie and Ange, but um... Ange's hair is red too. And we never see what Asumu's hair looked like really. And the stories themselves contain no such descriptions of hair colors.

So what's up with that?

[Drifloon]

Tohya is a lot older than Battler, hence his hair has gone white. I thought that was pretty obvious, I don't see anything odd about it.

[Patchwork Chimera]

Originally Posted by Renall

It's also possible it just always was white and only appeared red for the stories, although then you run into the question of "Why was it like that in the stories, then?" I'd say it's to distinguish his appearance from Kyrie and Ange, but um... Ange's hair is red too. And we never see what Asumu's hair looked like really. And the stories themselves contain no such descriptions of hair colors.

So what's up with that?

Symbolism, perhaps? I posted before that the children's hair resembled their parents (except Maria, but his father is unknown). So, to mark relations, we have code-hair. Then Battler's red hair sthealtly points towards a blood realtion with Ange. White haired Kyrie --> Sumaderas, Kinzo is probably stress related same as Tohya...

Maybe Battler's red hair was to not make that early the question about his real mother (If Kyrie was a redhead and Battler too, someone would raise the point sooner than the ep where it's layed).

And because, you know, hot-blooded protagonists gotta have red hair. White hair is best for the cool/cold type... or the mentally unstable ones.

But maybe I'm overthinking it.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Renall

I'm just kinda sad older-Tohya doesn't use Kinzo's sprite as a base instead of Battler's. Now that would be interesting.

I expected that too. That would have been better :/

Originally Posted by Renall

"Why was it like that in the stories, then?" I'd say it's to distinguish his appearance from Kyrie and Ange, but um... Ange's hair is red too. And we never see what Asumu's hair looked like really. And the stories themselves contain no such descriptions of hair colors.

So what's up with that?

That's what I think it probably is too. It's just an anime/visual novel thing. Everyone's hair is actually black. (or losing it's color from old age). The different colors are used to give them a different appearance from other characters. It's just a staple.

There are different reasons. Sometimes it's because it's a fantasy setting, or when they're depicting a character as being foreign they might deliberately give them a strange hair color.

In an anime I saw once one of the main characters was looking for the protagonist and he asked "have you seen this kid? he has black hair" But the protagonist's hair was visually blue. It didn't make sense until I figured this out.

[Captain Bluebeard]

Bern's blue hair is a natural blue as declared by herself in EP5.

Seriously now, many cartoons do that, putting purple or blue in place of black, but I've never seen it in any anime. There, wierd colors are the norm in most cases. But the Ange-Battler hair is a bit bothersome, where do they get it from? It has to be someone on Rudolf's side.

Or maybe it hints towards Kyrie's secret affair with a red-haired dude which got her pregnant simultaneously with Asumu and thus little Battler was born, and then likewise, we got Ange. After Asumu's death she ditched him and married Rudolf, beacuse Rudolf is the rich one, but never found the courage to tell him about it. What do you think, everyone?

[Patchwork Chimera]

The problem with seagulls is that this game is unbelievably anal with some word-by-word/circumstantial/trollish interpretation. Is madness! Everything must have some meaning! Erika's chopsticks, for example. The hell is that supposed to mean? Maybe she was a non-japanese girl. Maybe she's some reference to some obscure literary work. Or maybe... she just likes chopsticks? No! Has to be something trickier!

So you see, we're paranoic here. That's what playing with witches causes to a bunch of normal guys.

Its just natural that we have intense debates about important details... and intense debates about silly things. Visual cues included. That visual thing would not be as silly if Umineko's art wasn't crappy as f*ck.
---
I stay in my ground: Rudolf's incredible affairs will always be part of the enigmas in Umineko. Because, like that mess about Battler's birth, we can make a case of just about ANYONE being a bastard child of this fool. Cuz, you know, condoms weren't that popular in the eighties. XD

EDIT: I wonder why Bern had the sudden impulse of revealing that her hair is natural blue. Maybe she tought that her hair is more important that anything we might wish to know. Besides, I can safely bet a finger in Bern's hair is BLACK. Really. Try me.

[AuraTwilight]

Bern's blue hair is a natural blue as declared by herself in EP5.

She's also not real. She can't be compared to the Ushiromiyas, who are 'real people with fictional stories written about them.'

[Kealym]

@Patchwork Chimera - welcome to Goat Land, and congrats on finishing the series!

In general, again, I mean, about these hair colors ... as others have said, the humans all have black hair, EVEN ERIKA, and they only have wild anime hair for visual aesthetics and lol-tropes.

Firstly, we consider that Beatrice's anglo-features (blue eyes, blonde hair) are SO plot relevant the narration almost never shuts up about it until Chiru, and we get nothin' on the family members. If they had those colors for real, they would at least have been MENTIONED, or NOTED, as unusual for a Japanese. I mean, we even get a discussion about the western style bathrooms, and Castiglioni joking about Japanese hair being dyed with soy sauce ... to an apparently white haired Kinzo..?! Come on, now.

Erika likely has plain old black hair, also - Bern's comment about their blue hair is almost certainly because she is aware that she's in a narrative (the one we ourselves are reading) and she has blue hair in it. I highly doubt that a mysterious 19th person who drifted to Rokkenjima, a super detective with bright blue ass hair, would only be noted for, physically, "being a bit shorter than Jessica."

Alsooo, I'm pretty sure that her chopsticks craze was just a very Mary Sue type-quirk to add charm and a window for some genuine comedy when she was first having dinner with the family. It was a chance for her to be a perfect charming pigtail wearing, short-skirt-having, more-desu housegest. Y'know, before the bitch started sawing off heads with kitchen knives.

[Asuka0NK]

Okay I'm just gonna say about hair colors that I think we need to just step back and realize that in Imagination Land everything is possible and the characters really have the hair colors we are shown because Umineko is an anime so I think trying to figure out the real hair color of fictional characters is dumb and we should just take it as is. Battler has red hair, Bern and Erika have blue hair.

[GoldenLand]

Originally Posted by Asuka0NK

Okay I'm just gonna say about hair colors that I think we need to just step back and realize that in Imagination Land everything is possible and the characters really have the hair colors we are shown because Umineko is an anime so I think trying to figure out the real hair color of fictional characters is dumb and we should just take it as is. Battler has red hair, Bern and Erika have blue hair.

I have to disagree. In Japanese manga and anime (and VN's!) it's not at all uncommon to have characters shown with unusual-coloured hair whom the audience is meant to understand actually have black hair. I've seen plenty of series where people have talked in canon itself about the "black hair" of characters who are depicted with blue or green or purple hair. There are series where they really do have strange hair colours, yes, but also ones where they don't really and it's just a stylistic thing we are meant to understand.

Umineko is extremely likely to be one of the latter type, given that nobody ever talks about or even mentions the strange hair colours the Ushiromiya family apparently have, even in the narration. It would throw up a whole load of oddities if they didn't actually have black hair. In particular, I think that Battler and Ange's hair colour would have been brought up. Things like Ange and Maria's blue eyes, too. And Jessica might have been creeped on by Kinzo for having blonde hair...Etcetera.

[RandomAvatarFan]

Well actually, the only characters we have that had their hair described was Beato's, Bern's, and Erika's.

[AuraTwilight]

We do know, however, that Jessica does not have blonde hair, because the blonde hair of Beatrice is specifically made distinct from every other character's, even when Jessica is in the room. No one even suggests anything like "Jessica dressed up like the witch, she has the hair for it."

[GuestSpeaker]

And yet it is implied that they are a couple.

They were originally married, but it was edited out when someone in the office complained (probably at the legitimacy of marrying a brain damaged amnesiac)

Kinzo is probably stress related

Kinzo was always shown with the same hair colour, maybe he never even went grey.

dyed with soy sauce

I believe it was squid ink, which is even better.

As for the hair, let's not forget artists are artists. Who would want to draw a series with 40 or so characters ALL WITH THE SAME HAIR COLOUR (or also grey or white). There are only so many shades of black. You may as well ask why every single character is white with pretty non-Asian eyes.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Captain Bluebeard

I don't really see what the use of the Yasu=Ikuko theory is.

Yasu=random ----> the conflict between Battler and Beatrice is like Touya engaging in mental masturbation.

Yasu=Ikuko ----> the conflict between Battler and Beatrice is like Touya and Ikuko engaging in mental sex.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

picks amnesiacs from the streets - where's the relation?

She doesn't just pick them off the street. She adopts them and hides them from the outside world. Who does this besides someone who wants their own personal amnesiac?

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

There are a lot of things that do not match between what we know about Ikuko and what we know about Yasu, and you need to call them lies to make your theory work. But between Tohya and Battler, their stories are completely compatible.

I agree that Battler's and Touya's stories are compatible, but there are so few facts we know about Touya in the first place other than: He had amnesia, he likes mystery novels, and he remembered the number 18.

As far as theorizing that someone is lying...? Testimony ain't worth shit in Umineko. Let's just focus on the facts we know, which about Ikuko really aren't that much: She goes by the name Ikuko, she's comfortably rich, she has a weird personality, she's a hermit, she writes mysteries, and she adopted and hid an amnesiac from the street.

The only major facts we have about her that go against her being Yasu have to do with the timing logistics involved in a hypothetical transition from Shannon to Ikuko. But if Touya=random, timing isn't even an issue.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

What makes it better than a "Ikuko wanted Ange to believe that her brother is still alive"?

Aside from the obvious fact that Yasu gives a lot more shit about Battler than she does about Ange?

How about it actually uses Touya's narrative as something instead of just making it pure whateverthefuck?

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

If she found an amnesiac to mold as she pleases, wouldn't it have been a lot easier and more effective to tell him that he was Battler right off the bat? The flashbacks imply that several years passed since he actually started to remember, and that's the whole problem I think.
If he never had the time to create a new identity for himself, he wouldn't have felt like his mind was splitting in two.

That's true. It would probably be better to imagine she didn't intend to "make him Battler" from the beginning, rather that he simply reminded her of him. It wasn't until later that she decided that he was Battler.

Originally Posted by Asuka0NK

Okay I'm just gonna say about hair colors that I think we need to just step back and realize that in Imagination Land everything is possible and the characters really have the hair colors we are shown because Umineko is an anime so I think trying to figure out the real hair color of fictional characters is dumb and we should just take it as is. Battler has red hair, Bern and Erika have blue hair.

It's entirely stylistic. Watch any live action show or movie converted from manga or anime and the characters will all have black hair. Canon foreigners, like Beatrice, may be an exception.

[Wanderer]

Here's a topic of discussion, which is related to my theory above but is also very interesting in its own right: Why is it that we learn so little about Battler outside of Rokkenjima? He's the protagonist, but he never mentions his school life or his friends that he had for the last 6 years anywhere, be it in the bottle stories, the Hachijou forgeries, or even in the meta-world. He only mentions the bare facts about his recently passed grandfather who took care of him from age 12-18. The only off-the-island stuff we ever learn about involves Jessica-Kanon, Shannon-George, Maria-Rosa, or young Yasu. Or Ange, of course, but I think that's a different animal.

So Battler is the main character (with quite a lot of inner monologue I might add), but we don't know anything about his life experiences off the island. Why is that?

[Captain Bluebeard]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Yasu=random ----> the conflict between Battler and Beatrice is like Touya engaging in mental masturbation.

Yasu=Ikuko ----> the conflict between Battler and Beatrice is like Touya and Ikuko engaging in mental sex.

That only depends on how you choose to interpret the Meta stuff, it's not necessary for it to be all that literal, that point wasn't even given that much attention during the actual story.

Originally Posted by Patchwork Chimera

That visual thing would not be as silly if Umineko's art wasn't crappy as f*ck.

No it isn't.

EDIT: I wonder why Bern had the sudden impulse of revealing that her hair is natural blue. Maybe she tought that her hair is more important that anything we might wish to know. Besides, I can safely bet a finger in Bern's hair is BLACK. Really. Try me.

No it isn't. and Blue hair's more important than anything else.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

She's also not real. She can't be compared to the Ushiromiyas, who are 'real people with fictional stories written about them.'

Yeah, I was obviously joking beacuse someone made a comment about blue=black. After all, a discussion that goes so deep into their hair colours of all things is hard to take seriously. Who the hell cares? Mion and Shion have green hair, but I didn't see anyone making points about that when Higurashi was around. Seriously, people are reading way too much into Umineko.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

So Battler is the main character (with quite a lot of inner monologue I might add), but we don't know anything about his life experiences off the island. Why is that?

That's exactly what I'm talking about, don't you think it's a little too much to think about all the trivial details that much? Maybe it was just....because? Much more important stuff were going on in the island than Battler's everyday life. I really don't think it was of any importance, since his experiences that were important to the storyline were adequately discussed, I don't think anybody would care.

[GuestSpeaker]

That's true. It would probably be better to imagine she didn't intend to "make him Battler" from the beginning, rather that he simply reminded her of him. It wasn't until later that she decided that he was Battler.

Now that I like, only for its creepy relation to "Kinzo probably did not think of her as a reincarnation initially"

As for the school stuff...

We did hear about Battler's everyday life, at least related to school. We know he was a guy with lots of female admirers, goofed off in class and didn't really try for tests, he was a good athlete and even when he was a child used to play superheros. We know he visited his dad rarely and had a cool relationship with Kyrie.

[Patchwork Chimera]

Originally Posted by Captain Bluebeard

1) No it isn't.

2) No it isn't. and Blue hair's more important than anything else.

3) Yeah, I was obviously joking beacuse someone made a comment about blue=black. After all, a discussion that goes so deep into their hair colours of all things is hard to take seriously. Who the hell cares? Mion and Shion have green hair, but I didn't see anyone making points about that when Higurashi was around. Seriously, people are reading way too much into Umineko.

1) Okay, so maybe your standards for Ryuukishi are a little bit low after Higurashi (you cant's say that Higurashi's art wasn't terrifying...), but the only orginal art in Umineko are the sprites of the characters... yeah. He just made a body base and changed some eyes, mouths and clothes. Just for lazyness I substract points.
Hm... Maybe if he made the portraits I will retire my statement and apologize. Those are really cool.

2) Blue hair migh be important to Bernkastel. But Bern is Ikuko's old black cat. Checkmate *Trollface*

3) We're trying to find some profound reason that Ryuukishi might have to make those outstanding hair colors. Pfft. Yeah, pretty foolish.
Mion's green hair would be important if nobody mentioned Shion's real family name and we'd have to guess. Or if Ryu gave her a misleading last name name/story about her mother. You know, Mion's mom has also green hair.

Okay, really. I'll stop with this. I'm starting to sound serious about this matter *shudders*

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Here's a topic of discussion, which is related to my theory above but is also very interesting in its own right: Why is it that we learn so little about Battler outside of Rokkenjima? He's the protagonist, but he never mentions his school life or his friends that he had for the last 6 years anywhere, be it in the bottle stories, the Hachijou forgeries, or even in the meta-world. He only mentions the bare facts about his recently passed grandfather who took care of him from age 12-18. The only off-the-island stuff we ever learn about involves Jessica-Kanon, Shannon-George, Maria-Rosa, or young Yasu. Or Ange, of course, but I think that's a different animal.

So Battler is the main character (with quite a lot of inner monologue I might add), but we don't know anything about his life experiences off the island. Why is that?

Maybe because, in the great scheme of things, the REAL Battler was unknown even to the authors in all the levels of narration. Even to himself! It was an ideal to Yasu, the old personality of an amnesiac to Ikuko, and a lost personality to Tohya. Aside of some important clues about the murder case, nobody really knew Battler. And Ange last saw him 12 years ago

[Captain Bluebeard]

Originally Posted by Patchwork Chimera

1) Okay, so maybe your standards for Ryuukishi are a little bit low after Higurashi (you cant's say that Higurashi's art wasn't terrifying...), but the only orginal art in Umineko are the sprites of the characters... yeah. He just made a body base and changed some eyes, mouths and clothes. Just for lazyness I substract points.
Hm... Maybe if he made the portraits I will retire my statement and apologize. Those are really cool.

I actually liked Higurashi's art more than Umineko's, believe it or not. And well, I don't really know if you can call it lazy, because you don't know how hard it is to make those damn sprites if you haven't tried to (take it from a person who has), and he did have to shoot and edit the pictures of all the backgrounds, at least in Higurashi, I've read somewhere he took them himself. Well okay, Higurashi is a little lazy because of the shortage of facial expressions and secondary characters, but the sprites themselves look awesome.

Personally, I love Ryukishi's art, I even like it better than some more proffesional visual novels, and a lot more than the ugly PS3 art, but I think I'm the only person in the world who does.

And, nope, he doesn't do the portraits, I'm not really sure who does though...

2) Blue hair migh be important to Bernkastel. But Bern is Ikuko's old black cat. Checkmate *Trollface*

The ocean does not appear BLUE only to furniture without love. Therefore, if Bern's hair is black to you, that makes you even lower than furniture and I'm sorry to say you have no love at all.

I believe that is called a checkmate.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

We do know, however, that Jessica does not have blonde hair, because the blonde hair of Beatrice is specifically made distinct from every other character's, even when Jessica is in the room. No one even suggests anything like "Jessica dressed up like the witch, she has the hair for it."

And yet it's also apparently clearly a wig, as nobody remarks on any character other than the Beatrices having it normally, and I'd think it would stand out somewhat.

Yet more reason to question the Yasu = Baby thing. Not a single prominent western-looking feature in somebody who is genetically half-European? Nevermind looking like Kinzo. Seriously, if the whole incest baby thing is true Kinzo and Beatrice-II's kid would be really distinct in appearance. You wouldn't be able to miss that the child is an Ushiromiya and has Italian ancestry. How Kinzo would've thought Natsuhi would go along with that is beyond me, given that the child would grow up looking nothing like her or Krauss.

Originally Posted by Captain Bluebeard

Yeah, I was obviously joking beacuse someone made a comment about blue=black. After all, a discussion that goes so deep into their hair colours of all things is hard to take seriously. Who the hell cares? Mion and Shion have green hair, but I didn't see anyone making points about that when Higurashi was around. Seriously, people are reading way too much into Umineko.

The thing is, hair color is fair game; Beatrice's gets mentioned a lot and is a plot point. Then the game goes and portrays Jessica as also being blonde, except it never suggests she actually is in the text and no suspicion is ever thrown on Jessica for having blonde hair (because, presumably, she doesn't really). So what was the point of that? I think it was a cheap way to make people suspect her for no reason other than that she was drawn that way.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Here's a topic of discussion, which is related to my theory above but is also very interesting in its own right: Why is it that we learn so little about Battler outside of Rokkenjima? He's the protagonist, but he never mentions his school life or his friends that he had for the last 6 years anywhere, be it in the bottle stories, the Hachijou forgeries, or even in the meta-world. He only mentions the bare facts about his recently passed grandfather who took care of him from age 12-18. The only off-the-island stuff we ever learn about involves Jessica-Kanon, Shannon-George, Maria-Rosa, or young Yasu. Or Ange, of course, but I think that's a different animal.

So Battler is the main character (with quite a lot of inner monologue I might add), but we don't know anything about his life experiences off the island. Why is that?

I assumed it was because there was some bombshell revelation in there, with respect either to Battler himself or to Asumu.

But then... no? So I have no fucking idea.

Originally Posted by Captain Bluebeard

That's exactly what I'm talking about, don't you think it's a little too much to think about all the trivial details that much? Maybe it was just....because? Much more important stuff were going on in the island than Battler's everyday life. I really don't think it was of any importance, since his experiences that were important to the storyline were adequately discussed, I don't think anybody would care.

But it is relevant. We need to know more about Battler in order to understand what he may have actually done that weekend and what kind of person he became later. We need to know if the Battler that existed was the same as Yasu's stories portrayed him (remember, she's writing off, at best, having met him again for a day and a half, and at worst hasn't met him at all at the time the stories are written).

We need to know these things especially because Ryukishi himself floated the Battler Culprit idea but hasn't given us enough information to know if we should take it seriously. Given only the stories, it seems entirely absurd that such a thing would be possible, because Battler has no motive and no disposition to do it. So why even bring up the prospect in ep7/8 and an extra TIP? But we can't really take that line of thinking anywhere, because we just don't know what other details there were in his life.