Quote:
Originally Posted by GuestSpeaker
Sure you could talk about Witch Maria or Jessie, but they were variations on the the theme and not whole different people.
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Except you can't just dismiss it like that. You actually pointed out the problem yourself when you described them as "variations on the theme." There is an
incredibly long-running theme in ep1-4 about having multiple identities. And the thing is, Shannon and Kanon get the
least of this, because they have a separate theme entirely of having
any identity at all. At the very least, it's impossible to set aside the notion that characters other than Shkanon could meet the whole personality standard when one of the major points of ep3 is that Eva has "another self" who becomes a witch. And as we see clearly in ep4, Eva and EVA-Beatrice are different beings, at least morally.
Because that theme exists, it's completely unfair and untrue to say "Shkanon is the only person for whom any identity issue is raised." It's raised all the time, and depending on how much you stretch it it's raised for a large majority of the cast. Does that make those situations equally plausible? Perhaps not. But it also doesn't make the intended solution any more fair, because it suggests personality death
could apply to anyone who has a separate personality to kill off, but it just doesn't for anyone who isn't Shkanon because
???.
Quote:
Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura
Even if you disagree with that statement you have to admit that no matter how much information we got about the "how dunnit" it never actually added anything that made any sense to the gameboard story. Rather it only ridiculously complexed it to a point where most of us has trouble accepting the outcome, especially as far as Shkanon is concerned. I believe that much like arc 8 tried to present us, it's possible to enjoy riddles (the litteral riddles of arc 8 with Ange) and the story as two things that have zero connection with each other and does not answer each other. It's in fact pretty much what we do whenever playing almost any sort of videogame with a given story. Which is interesting because Umineko is a videogame, that much is far more certain then it being a typical mystery.
Not to mention the several references to videogames Ryuukishi made about it or within it. Especially the one about arc 1 being like trying to fight an RPG's final boss at level 5 (or something like that).
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Except treating it that way is
exactly the opposite of what we were told to do in Episode 7. How are we supposed to either take the work seriously as a character drama
or approach it as an intellectual puzzler when the author himself is not consistent in his message as to how we ought to enjoy his work? He brings all this criticism on himself by being inconsistent. As Kealym said, he does stuff that exists solely to be a puzzle or plot twist and which has no discernible motive (or at least, we've never discerned one that makes it immediately necessary to take the action as opposed to "I have a lingering resentment," which contradicts the ep5 red about Beatrice's motives). Then he turns around and tells us that motive is the most important part.
Okay, so why is Beatrice so goddamn gung-ho about killing poor Gohda? Because he's a little bit arrogant and not always nice to other servants? Is that what we're supposed to take away from this? Or worse, if she has
nothing against Gohda at all, she's totally okay with murdering him
just to construct a puzzle? How can we treat her as a sympathetic figure when she has the motives of a complete sociopath? And if we're only supposed to ask how something was
possible, why is it important that we finger a specific culprit or even a single culprit for every event?