[goldendust]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Yup. Unless Shannon dryed her hair black so they had to hand her a wig when she went to meet Kinzo... LOL... which would be unnecessarily complicate (as well as unlikely since the chances for Shannon to have blond hair are pretty low).

It wouldn't surprise me if Shannon was given a wig by Genji. Although the other panels may indicate that Shannon may have considered getting a blond wig since Battler's ideal woman is a blond/busty model.

I fear he thought to have depicted Yasu's mindset through the VN, using the various dialogues of Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice.
However there are two problems for this:
A) the VN is a massive work in which those references (as well as many others) often get lost if you don't know the solution already. This have as a result that once you get at the end of Umineko, as you likely have lost many of them, you end up not understanding how Yasu's mindset was and being so unsatisfied you might not want to re-read such a massive work.
B) Yasu's mindset, or better her heart, was probably one of the most important points if not the most important of Umineko as a whole and one that should have been underlined the most so as to lead to a good understanding of it. The fact is obscured and presented in such a hidden way ends up hiding it, sort of like how Battler claimed that if Beato wanted to write a 'love you' letter she should have made it simpler. Despite having Battler say so Ryukishi insisted in his roundabout way in Ep 6, 7 & 8 which didn't really help and that's probably the reason why people is enjoying EP 8 manga version more as it's way more direct in answering to what we wanted/needed to know.

I admit after numerous rereads that the motive was more understandable but during the first read it was hard to understand let alone empathize with.

Furthermore I think many of us in mystery stories are too accustomed with motives that either the culprit was wronged by many of the victims or the culprit was a bastard. While Ryukishi does play with those expectations as shown that he had Beatrice play the "evil" witch in the fantasy scenes but Beatrice's actual mindset was conveyed in such roundabout way that it results in disappointment or confusion.

Originally Posted by battle22

I wonder if that is too early to say. In a glance, it does make the male theory stronger, but it could also be a female who lost the reproduction hormones and never got a period.

How would that even work from a cliff fall? I mean a female infant losing her ability to properly produce hormones by falling off a cliff. Speaking of hormones, on a reread I did wonder if Kanon's slim figure and inability to lift bags of manure was suppose to indicate a lack of testosterone compared to a healthy male young adult like Battler.

Not to mention that a lot of other indications point towards Yasu being male. Kinzo's treatment of Lion. Natsuhi's lack of surprise about the child's gender. Kanon's existence and why being furniture seems to hit him the hardest.


Besides it is one of things I always wondered about in Umineko. If Yasu never solved the epitaph, would Genji have come clean during the time Yasu goes through puberty? Or given how Genji told Yasu the hint, would Genji have kept helping Yasu until he figured everything out? Or would he have told a modified version of the story on his body got mutilated?