[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Renall]

He tried to call for help on the internet, but nobody on the forums believed him.

"HELP I AM TRAPPED IN SOME HOUSE IN JAPAN THERE IS A CRAZY WOMAN HERE WHO DOES NOT LET ME LEAVE. I THINK I MAY BE SICK OR INJURED OR SOMETHING. I CAN'T REMEMBER WHO I AM BUT SHE KEEPS MAKING ME WRITE STORIES ABOUT SOME GUY WHO I KIND OF FEEL LIKE I KNOW. CALL THE POLICE, SOMEONE, PLEASE."

"Turn off caps lock, asshole."

"Fake."

"Cool story bro."

"Whoa how weird I'm keeping a guy prisoner in my house, I wonder what he's doing on my computer right now..."

"Yeah right, and I'm Ushiromiya Battler."

[Remon]

On the other hand, I have one question that I have been wondering, how much is Jessica aware of Yasu situation?

For the people on the island Yasu was known as Shannon (her servant alias). The ones that knew her real name were the Fukuin maids, and probably Genji and Kumasawa as well. So to Jessica Yasu has always been Shannon.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

You don't see the psychological harm of taking an emotionally, mentally, and physically disabled man and taking care of him yourself instead of taking him to the proper authorities and having him vicariously relive the situation that shattered him to pieces over and over?

Having him vicariously relive the situation over and over?

There is no implication that Ikuko meant any harm at all to Tohya. Sure, she showed him something about Rokkenjima on the computer once, but she obviously had no idea it would nearly kill him. Furthermore, until that point, Tohya showed interest in getting his memories back himself, so it's not as though she was forcing it on him.

Personally, if I were to be taken to the proper authorities, I would find it much more psychologically harmful, so I can't understand why not doing so is more harmful.

She ran him over with a car and didn't get him medical help, brah. What the hell would make her go "Doctor time" after that?

She didn't run over him. Even though he thought she did, there were no signs that anything like that happened. In particular, there was no damage on her car.

Indeed. So what's stopping that story from being the True one?

I don't suppose you've read Kinjo's Forgeries of the Golden Witch. I'd recommend them, they'll make my premise make more sense.

I haven't read Kinjo's stories, but that sounds quite interesting, so I'll try and read it soon.

Kinzo is dead before the start of the game. This applies to all games. This particular Red Truth even applies to games created after it was spoken, as demonstrated in EP5.

How loveless.

Also, Battler is the Territory Lord. He can change the premise if he fuckin' wants to, right?

Even the Territory Lord cannot take back or disregard a Red Truth that has already been spoken. At least, not while using the game board that this Red Truth applies to. And he is using that game board.

And how is this loveless? The whole point (in my opinion) of the Fantasy side of the story is that, while it is largely useless from a strictly Mystery perspective, it's a tale of love.

Well then if it's an even HAPPIER tale then my point stands even harder. He's willing to warp the premise for the sake of people he loves. And why shouldn't he? The Mystery Game is Over. Battler won.

It can't be happier than the happiest tale. :P But I guess.

But all of her personas have a purpose. What's Ikuko really serve? "Oh herpderp why not be four."

Because Beatrice will die if Yasuda leaves Rokkenjima. For multiple reasons. And that's exactly what happened, apparently. That leaves Yasuda with a broken identity.

Yea except she didn't do that. Read the text instead of making stuff up.

...? Well, I did read it... How was I mistaken? She did hire doctors to come take care of him, and she did let him borrow her name in order to create a new identity for him. More specifically, he can't borrow her name unless she allows it, so we can't really get around that.

He's an amnesiac hobo, he has nowhere else to go, but even then he should be allowed to make the choice, which we never see her verbally offer. Do you know what entrapment is?

We only saw a few scenes between Ikuko and Tohya... It was only after Ange's BSOD, and in the ??? scene. Not only were these scenes not very long, but they were actually together for decades. Due to the sheer amount of time that we have no material for, and due to the fact that Ikuko doubtless felt horrible about the fact that he nearly died from regaining his memories, I believe that it's highly probable that this came up at least once. In fact, if Ikuko IS Yasuda, that means that it's perfectly in-character for her to feel guilty and offer something like that.

Love? Yea, but we could argue that if her love for him is pure, she'd want him to remember her ASAP. But since she's exploiting the memory-gaining process and apparently knows all the truth, it's exploitation.

It's already well-established that Yasuda has trouble saying what's on her mind, because if she had just mentioned the promise to Battler in 1986 and asked him if he had really forgotten about her or not, 99% of the plot would cease to exist.

I still think that if she had told him, it would have been even more harmful than when she showed him something about Rokkenjima on the internet.

Doubtful. He resisted meeting Ange because he built up a Toya personality over the years. Ange was rejected TWELVE YEARS after the incident. Yasu!Ikuko could've explained everything over a decade ago and Touya might not have ever had to fear losing himself.

If she's not evil, she is extremely negligent to the point that she is inadvertently dealing him extreme psychological harm without meaning to do so.

How would that even work? You want to tell someone with extensive brain damage, who experiences headaches every time anything from his past comes up (this is how it was from the very start), everything all at once? If it was me, I would only do that if I wanted to torture and/or kill him.

The theory is not elegant. Elegant literary interpretation requires as little fancruft and textless speculation as possible, and Ikuko!Yasu requires much, much assumptions and personal fanfiction.

It doesn't, really... Because there really are quite a large number of implications that Ikuko is Yasuda. Even though people have listed so many of them in this topic, why do people say that the only implication is the name? That's simply not true.

Furthermore, if Ikuko isn't Yasuda, isn't she still evil according to your theories? Because we still didn't see any scenes where she gave him the choice to leave either way, and she still kidnapped a random guy off the street (instead of taking him to the proper authorities) with apparently no motive other than the fact that she's a bit lonely, which by the way, makes no sense at all. Caring for a random hobo who's badly injured and has brain damage is not something you do just because you're lonely. How was she able to go to where he was lying on the side of the road anyway, if she really is under house arrest? The fact that she was able to go there and bring him back means that she probably could have just gone and gotten involved in some small community where humans cooperate in order to work towards some goal, thereby giving her plenty of opportunity to meet new friends and all the reason in the world to go and hang out with them. Even if she's shy, it should be fine as long as it's not a big group of people or a group with anyone particularly rude in it. I mean, we have no reason to believe that Ikuko is absolutely cripplingly shy, so it should be, right?

If she did so immediately instead of waiting over ten years, this wouldn't of been a problem. Touya wasn't immediately born the second Battler 'died', he was constructed by living his life with Ikuko.

Even so... Just from remembering small things, he would get a headache. It logically follows that her story would cause him much more pain.

But really, this whole thing is just another motif associated with Yasuda and Battler. "I could tell you, but let me hope that you'll remember on your own."

Regardless, she couldn't have possibly known that if she waited, something like that would happen. Therefore, it's not her fault either way.

Either way, Yasuda is responsible for causing the incident to happen, that much is inarguable.

But if you're going to have Ange and Battler meet, might as well have Ikuko be like "Also I'm Shannon" or something.

She didn't just wake up on Oct 4, 1986, and decide "ok, I'm going to kill everyone on the island even though I've got no motive, and yes this includes Maria and Kumasawa, who I have every reason not to kill."

What is she going to apologize for? And if it's just to offer emotional support to Ange, how is she to do that when she barely even knows Ange and isn't all that good at expressing herself in the first place? Even if she goes and kowtows in front of Ange and tells her everything, how is that going to help Ange? Even when Ange did learn the Truth, it caused her to have a huge BSOD, so it probably wasn't anything that a survivor who dearly misses their family would want to hear. Not only that, but anyone would be able to see that Eva is willing to take the Truth to her deathbed even though this causes her inordinate amounts of extra suffering, so wouldn't this be like a huge betrayal to Eva? There's also the fact that she couldn't have told Ange that she's Shannon without Ange realizing "oh, she was there so she knows the Truth" which complicates the whole matter of offering emotional support quite a bit.

And she can't just tell her "oh by the way, Battler lives in my house" without at least asking Tohya's permission, which we know that he wasn't going to be giving until after Ange changes her name and runs off.

I meant that WE are the Witch Hunters and are dragging Ikuko into the rumor mill.

We're just fans of this story, which was made in such a way that there's an enormous amount of things to speculate over, and so we want to speculate.

Denied. We know of one instance where Ikuko turned down medical help for him. Moreover, Battler, Beatrice, and everyone else can live happily in the Golden Land. Ange will meet them all there eventually.

One instance of denied medical help =/= evil. That just doesn't logically follow at all.

Beatrice died in October of 1986. Therefore, the Golden Land she created was completely destroyed. Your family, which was made to live in the Golden Land, was destroyed along with it. Your father, mother, and of course Battler...will never return to you again, and will never speak your name again.

That's the "Everything is Meta" theory Renall and I came with I was telling you about. It is the best theory.

Oh, is that what this is? That's interesting.

[Remon]

...when exactly did Ikuko turn down medical help for Tohya?

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Remon

...when exactly did Ikuko turn down medical help for Tohya?

When exactly Anne Wilkes from Misery turned down medical help for Paul Sheldon? She constantly cared for him!

But... normally when you find a person in need of medical care you call an ambulance so they can go to a hospital with proper medical equipment and where they will notify the authorities.

Hiring a doctor and bribing him to keep silent doesn't cut it. If Tohya suffered brain damage I think a C.A.T. would have been in order.

[AuraTwilight]

There is no implication that Ikuko meant any harm at all to Tohya.

That doesn't mean she didn't harm him.

She didn't run over him. Even though he thought she did, there were no signs that anything like that happened. In particular, there was no damage on her car.

That doesn't mean she didn't.

And Evil!Ikuko could've gotten her car fixed and told him any sort of lies. :P

I haven't read Kinjo's stories, but that sounds quite interesting, so I'll try and read it soon.

Kinzo is dead before the start of the game. This applies to all games. This particular Red Truth even applies to games created after it was spoken, as demonstrated in EP5.

EP7 has a living Kinzo, as determined by Will, a Detective. Moreover, that gameboard had Lion. Why is rewriting an entire history so that 'Beatrice' doesn't exist is acceptable, but not a girl overcoming a cold for the weekend?

Even the Territory Lord cannot take back or disregard a Red Truth that has already been spoken. At least, not while using the game board that this Red Truth applies to. And he is using that game board.

The Truth of the Future overwrites the Truth of the Past. Red Truths do not predict the future, therefore future gameboards can be constructed that contradict declarative statements. The Red Truth you reference only talks about the four Gameboards that existed at the time, it was not a prohibition against future Gameboards.

Because Beatrice will die if Yasuda leaves Rokkenjima. For multiple reasons. And that's exactly what happened, apparently. That leaves Yasuda with a broken identity.

So why not just be Yasuda? Or Shannon, or whatever? You're not answering why 'Ikuko' is necessary, and even if she's going to make up Ikuko Hachijou, why did she need to make up the backstory about her family?

It doesn't, really... Because there really are quite a large number of implications that Ikuko is Yasuda. Even though people have listed so many of them in this topic, why do people say that the only implication is the name? That's simply not true.

She has a name pun and she likes mystery novels and she's mysterious. That's about the long and short of it.

Everyone seems to ignore that Ikuko DOESN'T AGE, so I don't think Ikuko is even a human being, but lol whatever.

Furthermore, if Ikuko isn't Yasuda, isn't she still evil according to your theories?

Knowledge and personal involvement create burdens of responsibility a stranger does not have.

She didn't just wake up on Oct 4, 1986, and decide "ok, I'm going to kill everyone on the island even though I've got no motive, and yes this includes Maria and Kumasawa, who I have every reason not to kill."

But it IS her fault, since she created the whole situation. She says so herself.

We're just fans of this story, which was made in such a way that there's an enormous amount of things to speculate over, and so we want to speculate.

And you're evil so doing so, according to Ryukishi. :P

Beatrice died in October of 1986. Therefore, the Golden Land she created was completely destroyed. Your family, which was made to live in the Golden Land, was destroyed along with it. Your father, mother, and of course Battler...will never return to you again, and will never speak your name again.

Which is immediately denied by Ange's Gold Truth and the whole sequence with Battler returning to Beatrice and company in the very epilogue of the series.

Also Bernkastel is an asshole, so fuck what she has to say on the matter.

Oh, is that what this is? That's interesting.

Yea. I can PM you the details, or try and find Renall's original post on it, if you'd like.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

When exactly Anne Wilkes from Misery turned down medical help for Paul Sheldon? She constantly cared for him!

I seriously get Misery vibes any time Ikuko and Tohya are together. I've said this before, and it's probably nothing, but I do wonder how familiar Ryukishi was with Misery because it's almost deliberately similar. I don't know how popular Stephen King is in Japan, but it was a famous movie too. Kathy Bates won an Oscar for it, for crying out loud!

If it wasn't intentional, then boy howdy is it a creepy coincidence.

[Remon]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Hiring a doctor and bribing him to keep silent doesn't cut it. If Tohya suffered brain damage I think a C.A.T. would have been in order.

Yeah, so she gave him the treatment he needed, one way or the other. And he was also scheduled for an x-ray I believe. That can only be done in a hospital.
And the hiring and bribing of the doctor only makes sense if she's Yasu, otherwise it makes Ikuko look like a psycho.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Remon

And the hiring and bribing of the doctor only makes sense if she's Yasu, otherwise it makes Ikuko look like a psycho.

Well... what if she is?

She develops a rather marked interest in collecting Rokkenjima stuff. What's a better centerpiece for your collection than a brainwashed survivor?

[cronnoponno]

Well, the idea of a crazy Ikuko, sounds kinda cool actually.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Remon

Yeah, so she gave him the treatment he needed, one way or the other. And he was also scheduled for an x-ray I believe. That can only be done in a hospital.
And the hiring and bribing of the doctor only makes sense if she's Yasu, otherwise it makes Ikuko look like a psycho.

Let's analyze the text:

`"......The body is in a very frail condition.`@` Also, it is probable that there will be memory defects.`@` We won't know for sure until the CT scan, but brain damage is also a possibility."`\

`"It's lucky that damage is all we have to deal with.`@` Spend much longer in a spot like that, and things would likely have been much worse."`\

`"......True.`@` In any event, I recommend getting this checked at a large hospital."`@

`"Thank you, doctor.`@` ......Please keep this off the record.`@` It may not be much, but here's some money for your troubles."`\

`"I see no reason to speak of this needlessly, but...`@`...no, no, I couldn't possibly accept that much..."`@

`In the end, the doctor took the money and swore to keep quiet about the matter.`\

Did Featherinne actually brought Tohya to a large hospital? Was a CT scan ever done?

The doctor recommends it, but Featherinne never said: "yes I'll do that". What she did was bribing the doctor to keep quiet. Why would she ask him to keep quiet if she was going to bring Tohya to a hospital were you can't possibly keep it quiet?

Honestly, I don't think Ikuko brought Tohya to any hospital. If not much later when she made up a fake identity for him.

[AuraTwilight]

And if she's Yasu, and the above is true, then we lose any ability to see her as a sympathetic figure. There is no Yasuda!Ikuko/Toya!Battler happy ending. Making Ikuko into Yasu only makes Yasu a psychopath.

My god, let the poor girl die with dignity like she wanted to. Let Ikuko's problems be Ikuko's.

[Jan-Poo]

Well I wouldn't say that Ikuko is a total psycho but she certainly isn't normal and what she did with Tohya was basically kidnapping a person for her own whim. It is undeniable that she bribed that doctor to keep silent and there is absolutely no way to explain that without supposing she was up to no good, or at any rate it wasn't anything legal. And no one would benefit from that except herself.

[Remon]

That only means that it's ambiguous. I doesn't say that she didn't send him either. But seeing how she rescued him from the road, and how she brought a doctor to look after him, and how she allowed him to live with her, it doesn't make sense if she didn't check him up. (it does if you follow the Misery line) Or if she didn't send him to the hospital, then she must have brought the equipment at her house.
So I guess it depends on whether you have love for Ikuko or not?

[Renall]

I don't even know her, and she's the avatar for a witch. Why should I trust Ikuko?

[Jan-Poo]

It makes sense if you follow the "misery" scenario, it doesn't if you don't.
Why would she not bring him to the hospital directly like any normal person would? Why would she bribe the doctor to keep quiet? And if she brought Tohya to the hospital, then it's just impossible they didn't notify the authorities. You need to show who you are to receive medical care in a hospital. And let's say the authorities were notified how could they not check if he was one of those 17 (or 16?) persons that went missing in a recent incident?

It doesn't add up. In my opinion... it really doesn't

P.S: A CT scanner is a huge machine, you can only find one in a hospital, and not even all of them.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

That doesn't mean she didn't harm him.

This is true regardless of whether Ikuko is Yasuda or not, so it's kind of irrelevant... But ok.

That doesn't mean she didn't.

And Evil!Ikuko could've gotten her car fixed and told him any sort of lies. :P

...Well... Yeah, she could have. However, it could have easily been an accident, since Yasuda isn't known to have a driver's license. :P

EP7 has a living Kinzo, as determined by Will, a Detective. Moreover, that gameboard had Lion. Why is rewriting an entire history so that 'Beatrice' doesn't exist is acceptable, but not a girl overcoming a cold for the weekend?

I had forgotten about that. Because I have no way of justifying something as weird as this, especially since Will, the Detective, saw him. Then again, Battler saw Kinzo before midnight in EP2. :P Will is obviously intoxicated.

...Kidding. Don't kill me. But seriously, I can't figure out a way to justify this, so I really don't know what to think.

[quote]The Truth of the Future overwrites the Truth of the Past. Red Truths do not predict the future, therefore future gameboards can be constructed that contradict declarative statements. The Red Truth you reference only talks about the four Gameboards that existed at the time, it was not a prohibition against future Gameboards.

It's still the same game board, which was created by Beatrice. If Red Truths can be discarded so easily, is there anything that's certain in the realm of the game board? Furthermore,

The red truth is absolute!! A perfect truth, which no one can overturn no matter how hard they try!!

This is the only instance where a Red Truth that affects "all games" needs to be overturned to account for something in a future game. Why would we go out of our way to destroy a constant premise just to justify this one instance? There has to be another way to justify this.

So why not just be Yasuda? Or Shannon, or whatever? You're not answering why 'Ikuko' is necessary, and even if she's going to make up Ikuko Hachijou, why did she need to make up the backstory about her family?

Why be Shannon or Kanon or Beatrice in the first place? Why not just be Yasuda? Or if Shannon is her "blessed name" as a servant, then why not just be Shannon? Why is Kanon necessary? That's the thing. This is Yasuda we're talking about.

She has a name pun and she likes mystery novels and she's mysterious. That's about the long and short of it.

There's also the fact that she's practically living the life that Yasuda wanted to live even though she's just a random character introduced in the last half of the very last episode, with little in the way of actual character development, even though she takes on a very important role in the plot.

And more, but meh.

Everyone seems to ignore that Ikuko DOESN'T AGE, so I don't think Ikuko is even a human being, but lol whatever.

Really? This is just Ange making a subjective observation. Not only that, but if I remember right, she's only comparing Ikuko to how old she (Ange) personally looks.

Knowledge and personal involvement create burdens of responsibility a stranger does not have.

That implies that you really don't care at all about the medical care and kidnapping issue, which you seemed quite concerned about. After all, you seem to be saying that Ikuko is only a terrible person if she's actually Yasuda.

But it IS her fault, since she created the whole situation. She says so herself.

According to the "Murder Mystery Game" theory, she couldn't have known that her actions would lead to this. Therefore, it's not her fault, even if she says it is.

And you're evil so doing so, according to Ryukishi. :P

Do people really take those scenes that personally? Just because the author writes something like this in a negative light doesn't mean he deliberately intends to insult all of his fans.

Which is immediately denied by Ange's Gold Truth and the whole sequence with Battler returning to Beatrice and company in the very epilogue of the series.

Also Bernkastel is an asshole, so fuck what she has to say on the matter.

A Red Truth cannot be overturned by anything, let alone a Gold Truth. A Gold Truth creates a new game board, to which previously stated Reds may or may not apply, and that's why this was possible. However, Bernkastel's Red still applies to the previous game board. And anyway the whole point of that scene seems to have been "in the real world, Red Truth doesn't exist, so I can believe whatever I want because I'm the Witch of Resurrection."

Regardless of who speaks a Red Truth, it doesn't change the fact that it is the Truth and can't be denied or taken back.

This particular Truth simply doesn't apply to the world of the EP8 ??? scene. Or alternatively, it does apply, but "Battler" technically died a long time ago. But regardless, this is kind of irrelevant, because you can't reach the Golden Land until you die, right?

Yea. I can PM you the details, or try and find Renall's original post on it, if you'd like.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

I don't even know her, and she's the avatar for a witch. Why should I trust Ikuko?

Because Our Confession strongly implied that Meta-Beatrice was another one of her avatars, and we know Meta-Beatrice's personality and heart intimately.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

And if she's Yasu, and the above is true, then we lose any ability to see her as a sympathetic figure. There is no Yasuda!Ikuko/Toya!Battler happy ending. Making Ikuko into Yasu only makes Yasu a psychopath.

My god, let the poor girl die with dignity like she wanted to. Let Ikuko's problems be Ikuko's.

So she's a psychopath because of the possibility that a CT scan wasn't done? Even if you can't bribe someone to keep a CT scan off the record (which actually should be possible, I doubt regulations were as strict back then), couldn't you just register new medical records for "Hachijo Tohya"? If someone makes a fuss about your new records, throw a bit of money at them to shut them up.

More importantly, nobody has come up with a good theory for exactly why Ikuko kidnapped Tohya, without assuming that she's Yasuda.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Well I wouldn't say that Ikuko is a total psycho but she certainly isn't normal and what she did with Tohya was basically kidnapping a person for her own whim. It is undeniable that she bribed that doctor to keep silent and there is absolutely no way to explain that without supposing she was up to no good, or at any rate it wasn't anything legal. And no one would benefit from that except herself.

Are you sure? "Ushiromiya Battler" is supposed to be dead right now. If Ikuko=Yasuda, then she knows his identity, which means that she could be keeping it secret because if his identity gets out, that would cause a whole mess of problems and utterly destroy his chances of a peaceful life.

I'm not saying that she didn't want him to stay with her in that house. Of course, regardless of whether Ikuko is Yasuda or a random stranger, I think it's clear that she did. But even so, does loneliness have to be her only motive for everything? If anything, Ikuko=RandomStranger makes her more psycho than Ikuko=Yasuda.

[Remon]

EP 8

Tohya "That's......the result of the damage to my brain. ......I've been to several hospitals, but it didn't do any good."

There you have it.