[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

And I'd disagree with you about him painting "searching and finding the truth" as good. He constructed a cast of central characters who supported that believe and actually had his main characters stand in for that goal...but does that immediately make this the message he wanted to convey? Even though he painted the characters who hid the truth as the villains for a certain part of the story, does that actually limit the message to "the truth is good"?

Of course truth is good. Truth is one of the highest Goods. For the portion of Umineko where he hadn't changed his mind on that matter, he was quite right.

What would you say for example about Richard Mathesons novel I am Legend?

Spoiler for I am Legend ending:

Neville is the main character and, though a morally ambiguous character, his quest against the disease creating the vampires appears right. It is only at the end that we are able to fully understand that from their perspective he is the villain for murdering them and using Ruth as a test sample.

He's either right or wrong in some variation or degree. Changing your perspective on a situation doesn't change the morality of a situation, it just allows you to correctly assess what the moral imperative of the situation actually is. It's possible to do the wrong thing for benevolent reasons if one lacks sufficient information. Although this shouldn't be an excuse for inaction.

Or what would you for example say about Hercule Poirots final solution in the Orient Express?

Spoiler for Murder on the Orient Express solution:

Shouldn't both the fact that they decide on a wrong solution and the fact that we never learned who dealt the killing blow bother you?

Spoiler:

Poirot and the investigators were wrong and the situation was indeed wrong to permit as it happened. Although it should be noted that the entire point was to make it impossible to learn who did it, it doesn't really matter, because someone is not suddenly less guilty of a conspiracy to commit a murder because they confused the specifics of who actually technically committed it.

The moral of Orient Express is that "murder is okay if the law fails to produce a desirable result and the victim is a Bad Man." That's a shitty moral. Especially since most of the misfortune that provided motive for several of the conspirators was tangential to the victim's own actions in the first place.

There is clearly a distinction made between truth in the sense of reality and truth in the sense of what really occurred. I'm partly referencing Jaques Lacan here (though using him differently) so bear with me. Reality and Real is not necessarily the same. Reality is that which we agree on in a society by observing the things that are there and especially those that aren't and by that agreeing on our current state of existence, it is therefore flexible. The Real does not change, it merely exists and is impossible to grasp in it's entirety by any human being.
We can construct such a reality for Umineko in many different ways and especially because certain elements are inaccessible we can make it become Reality, but that does not necessarily make it Real. A philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, actually applied this to detective fiction and said that the Real of a murder tears a hole into the Reality of a society, that is why the detective has to put an explanation into words in order to restore stability. Taking this further though it shows that, it does not matter though if the explanation encompasses the whole part of the Real which is the murder, it only has to be convincing enough to restore order or in other words, it must be indisprovable.

How is any of this actually relevant though, other than an attempt to make yourself look intelligent? I have no doubt that you're well-read, but Umineko is not a work worthy of the degree of philosophical importance you seem to be trying to layer onto it. You could apply your arguments much more readily to more meaningful works... or to less meaningful ones, honestly. You can make up shit about anything if you try hard enough. It doesn't mean every work has something that profound to say.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

But, the thing is that the "answer" to any mystery novel is whatever the author made up. In that sense whether the reader gets it right or wrong isn't so much a measure of their deductive capabilities using the facts from the story, but their ability to understand how the author's mind works. And it's this particular concept that RK07 is pushing with Umineko's metafictional format. Understanding Beatrice (the "gamemaster") herself is the true cornerstone to understanding the answers to her puzzles (see Battler's "chessboard thinking" and his final epiphany about Beatrice at the end of EP5; also see Williard's approach to solving Beatrice's mysteries and how he presents his conclusions).

I would dispute this. We have no particular way of comprehending how Beatrice thinks as a means of actually accomplishing anything, just that she has certain definitions or factual gimmicks which she uses to justify her methodology, which is basically "yadda yadda fake death EVERYBODY LIED." And you can reach this conclusion factually without actually thinking very hard about what Beatrice actually wants. It wasn't ever actually necessary to understand her to understand her works on a technical, mystery level.

To understand her romantic aim is another matter entirely. It's also impossible for us to properly comprehend because we were not her intended audience and lack the personal knowledge that intended audience possesses.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Basically, Umineko isn't a Mystery, and never really was; it's metafiction about Mystery- specifically how the Mystery author interacts with the Mystery reader.

Except it isn't, because it never actually meditates on that theme for any significant amount of time. Or... well, much at all really. Ryukishi made a handful of trite observations about a genre, most of which were grossly inaccurate or not new in any way, and never bothered to ask what any of them mean. That aside, your observation doesn't really jive with the fact (well, "fact?") that Umineko isn't a mystery anyway. It doesn't honestly think very hard about the intersection of mystery and fantasy, or about mystery or fantasy individually, in any fashion that really merits any thought or discussion. The only meaning along those lines that you might find is meaning you could probably find anywhere.

The only "metafiction about ... how the Mystery author interacts with the Mystery reader" is the meta-metafiction surrounding Ryukishi toying with his own audience. At that point why even bother writing an actual work? Just pretend you wrote a book that nobody can read and drop hints about what its contents are in your public appearances. You'll fuel exactly as much useful speculation for half the work and be taken more seriously as an artist to boot.

Originally Posted by Aethos

Well obviously the golden land is the island. XD

"The Golden Land" is the name of the Dharma Initiative research facility located underneath Rokkenjima. If Kinzo doesn't reset the clock twice a day, who knows what will happen!?