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Old 2011-07-24, 06:16   Link #23345
Wanderer
Goat
 
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Gnawing away at Rokkenjima
Just started and finished Umineko (up to where WH translates to at least) over this last couple of weeks, and thought I would join in on the discussion.

I'm going to start with complaints, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it; it means I care enough to complain about it, which means that I liked it a lot.

Not really happy with the whole ShKanon or Shannontrice thing, much less ShKanontrice. With regards to ShKanon, aside from the narrative always depicting them as different people, it seems too unlikely that this Yasu person could get away with multiple identities in a small, closed, social circle over the span of years. Maybe Genji and some other people like Nanjo and Kumasawa knew about it, allowed it, and facilitated it (perhaps even Jessica too), but it's hard to imagine Natsuhi or Krauss to be either unaware, or aware yet accepting, of such eccentric behavior. What really bugs me about it, is that it's not as though I missed all the signs that they were the same person, but I simply thought that such an idea made no sense. As for Shannontrice, there just wasn't enough established between Battler and Shannon in EP 1-5; Shannon was clearly all about George. Besides, I liked the bullying Beatrice best anyway.

So what is the general consensus on the death of Nanjo in EP 3 with all that crazy red that EVA-Beatrice spewed? Is the culprit:
1) EVA-Beatrice? But wasn't it red-texted that Battler was watching Eva so that it was impossible for her to commit Nanjo's murder? Did Eva change entities and become unwatched as EVA-Beatrice? It doesn't seem likely.
2) YASU-Beatrice? Isn't YASU-Beatrice supposed to be canceled once Eva solved the epitaph, not to mention that the epitaph murders were already completed anyway outside of the big kaboom at the end? Not to mention that this would mean EVA-Beatrice calling YASU-Beatrice a human in red text. It's a possible answer, but it depends on a certain interpretation of how red text works.
3)Shannon or Kanon "resurrected"? Resurrection (of the personalities of) Shannon and Kanon fits Beato's EP3 narrative pretty well, suggesting that the resurrection magic at the end of EP3 wasn't just noise; particularly in this case, Kanon's relationship to Jessica would be relevant. However, EVA-Beatrice red-texts shortly after Nanjo's death that Kanon and Shannon are dead; I suppose that could be explained by a very short-lived "resurrection" that lasted only to some point in the brief period between Nanjo's death and EVA-Beatrice's red-text declaration. Actually, now that I've organized my thoughts on this, I think this is the answer that makes the most sense. The biggest problem is that it's difficult to imagine a good motive for Shannon or Kanon killing Nanjo, and then there's the fact that any and all Yasus should know that the whole place was gonna blow in a few minutes anyway.

As for red text itself, it seems somewhat inconsistent. On the one-hand it can be used for subjective beliefs, such as calling someone incompetent, or declaring personalities as "dead". However, Battler was unable to state a false fact in red even when he didn't know that it was false (that Asuma was his mother). Yet something so flexible could lead to logic errors?
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