Regarding the often big discussion on how well or not Ryukishi wrote, I reread Baudrillard's
Simulacra and Simulation today, where in his first chapter he talks a lot about the quality of the real, reality and hyperreal in (post)modern society...and it really made me question whether Ryukishi had read it, considering that some aspects can almost be directly copy-pasted into an Umineko scenario.
I'm planning to do my first video-critique on this topic, but I wanted to quote one part here, which really jumped out to me the most:
Quote:
Organize a fake holdup. Verify that your weapons are harmless, and take the most trustworthy hostage, so that no human life will be in danger (or one lapses into the criminal). Demand a ransom, and make it so that the operation creates as much commotion as possible - in short, remain close to the "truth," in order to test the reaction of the apparatus to a perfect simulacrum. You won't be able to do it: the network of artificial signs will become inextricably mixed up with real elements (a policeman will really fire on sight; a client of the bank will faint and die of a heart attack; one will actually pay you the phony ransom), in short, you will immediately find yourself once again, without wishing it, in the real, one of whose functions is precisely to devour any attempt at simulation, to reduce everything to the real - that is, to the established order itself, well before institutions and justice come into play.
This is certainly why order always opts for the real. When in doubt, it always prefers this hypothesis (as in the army one prefers to take the simulator for a real madman). But this becomes more and more difficult, because if it is practically impossible to isolate the process of simulation, through the force of inertia of the real that surrounds us, the opposite is also true (and this reversibility itself is part of the apparatus of simulation and the impotence of power): namely, it is now impossible to isolate the process of the real, or to prove the real.
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It is something that in terms of Umineko can be seen as a plot-internal process on the island, as well as one concerning the forgeries, but also concerning us (the reader). It is impossible to discern the real of the events that happened on Rokkenjima, from the murder case that is presented to us through fiction and to the characters on the island through presentation. Yasu's plan was forced to fail because in the light of the option between threatening real and harmless fiction, people will choose to believe in the threatening real and attempt to protect themselves from it.