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Old 2010-03-27, 17:10   Link #7181
ameskitty
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ijriims View Post
For the trap told in the new EXTRA TIPS, which has been adopted back even though the readers had dismissed earlier as trap after reading EP6?

Ryu07 (Featherine) is disappointed by people falling into such an obvious trap.
Wow, I can't believe I didn't catch that on first read...but it works out almost perfectly if you lay it out like this:
Bern = smart readers sick of traps and trolls
Lambda= The Muse of Trolling
Featherine = Ryu
Shkanon = one of the very first and most obvious traps
The rest of the traps = ...the rest of the traps
Place where they're having the tea party = the answer
Walking = trying to find the answer

...orrrr it could just be fluff XD.

I'm sort of with the party that trolling has to have a meaning, though, so I'm still trying to figure out other what kind of conflict Shannon and Kanon could have. I've got something rough based on the inheritance, but it relies on far too many shaky factors to really share :/.
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Old 2010-03-27, 17:13   Link #7182
Tyabann
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Originally Posted by Kylon99 View Post
I don't think it's plausible he's the Battler we know. He could be the *other* Battler we don't know but without a proper back history, I don't see what that changes.
If he's the Other Battler, then he's also an (admittedly illegitimate) heir to the family fortune (and the gold)... which gives him a motive to kill Ange.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kylon99 View Post
But then I remembered reading the wiki page on Dark Tower about how Stephen King is a character in his own novel and the characters realize they needed to save him in order to keep their own universe alive.
And that is one of the worst developments/plot devices in the history of writing. This is probably what bothers me the MOST about Featherine.


Oh, and also, I'm pretty sure it's that Featherine is just another one of Ange's delusions, not the other way around. Magic doesn't exist, so the real one has to be Hachijou. I should think this pretty obvious.
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Old 2010-03-27, 17:35   Link #7183
Kylon99
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Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon View Post
If he's the Other Battler, then he's also an (admittedly illegitimate) heir to the family fortune (and the gold)... which gives him a motive to kill Ange.
Oh, good point. However, we still haven't seen any indication of this, although it's not like we have to. I'm not sure Amakusa's story has to conform to Knox rules.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon View Post
And that is one of the worst developments/plot devices in the history of writing. This is probably what bothers me the MOST about Featherine.


Oh, and also, I'm pretty sure it's that Featherine is just another one of Ange's delusions, not the other way around. Magic doesn't exist, so the real one has to be Hachijou. I should think this pretty obvious.
I kinda suspect Hachijou of being a hack writer as well; especially since she's really writing a self-insertion fanfic. I'm kinda wondering if she really did write EP3 and 4 as well.

I'm also with the premise that magic doesn't exist; or rather that magic is 'lying.' In that case though it's not just Featherine, but the entire meta world should be a 'lie' so to speak, right? I've been working with that premise since Bernkastel and Lambdadelta first appeared, but if you go by that, then what can they and the other meta-world characters represent? Lambdadelta, Bernkastel and Beatrice's powers feel like they're kind of a structure to the story.... Meta-Battler and Beatrice seem to me to be a wish by someone to give those two a happy end, against the tragic end of 'everyone dying.' And Featherine feels to me like Hachijou's desire to wreck that and find the truth at all costs.
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Old 2010-03-27, 17:42   Link #7184
Judoh
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Originally Posted by Kylon99 View Post
Lambdadelta, Bernkastel and Beatrice's powers feel like they're kind of a structure to the story.... Meta-Battler and Beatrice seem to me to be a wish by someone to give those two a happy end, against the tragic end of 'everyone dying.' And Featherine feels to me like Hachijou's desire to wreck that and find the truth at all costs.
Beatrice/Battler: Producer/Director

Bern: Editor

Lamda: Publishing company

Hachijou: Writer/plot concept

MARIA: character Design

Edit: If you've read comic books you'll know that the editor can really screw over the plot by messing with the dialogue it can really screw up a story. The publishing company can censor what the producers and directors can and can't put into the story. And the producers/directors can affect what the editor writes. Sometimes editors can be jackasses and take over a story as if they were the writer and totally mess it up, especially if the publishing company agrees with their angle.

Last edited by Judoh; 2010-03-27 at 18:23.
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Old 2010-03-27, 17:56   Link #7185
Tyabann
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Originally Posted by Kylon99 View Post
Oh, good point. However, we still haven't seen any indication of this, although it's not like we have to. I'm not sure Amakusa's story has to conform to Knox rules.
Actually, come to think of it, he's the legitimate heir, since Rudolf was married to Asumu originally... I'm an idiot.

This means, of course that he has more right to the fortune than Ange does. And no, I don't think everything in the story has to conform to Knox rules, just what happens inside the games.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kylon99 View Post
I'm also with the premise that magic doesn't exist; or rather that magic is 'lying.' In that case though it's not just Featherine, but the entire meta world should be a 'lie' so to speak, right? I've been working with that premise since Bernkastel and Lambdadelta first appeared, but if you go by that, then what can they and the other meta-world characters represent? Lambdadelta, Bernkastel and Beatrice's powers feel like they're kind of a structure to the story.... Meta-Battler and Beatrice seem to me to be a wish by someone to give those two a happy end, against the tragic end of 'everyone dying.' And Featherine feels to me like Hachijou's desire to wreck that and find the truth at all costs.
Well... the Meta-World doesn't exist, but it does 'exist', if you get my meaning. It has to be real on some level or much of what we've seen is really, really pointless. But yeah, the Meta-Characters do represent concepts... we've known that since witches embodying Miracles and Certainty started showing up, heh.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:13   Link #7186
Raiza Sunozaki
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Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon View Post
Well... the Meta-World doesn't exist, but it does 'exist', if you get my meaning. It has to be real on some level or much of what we've seen is really, really pointless. But yeah, the Meta-Characters do represent concepts... we've known that since witches embodying Miracles and Certainty started showing up, heh.
Whether or not the meta-world exists has no effect on the murders, so I've never bothered to deny it; in fact, I accept it. As Ryuukishi said, Umineko is not a conventional mystery. Currently, I see this as meaning it's a mystery within a fantasy story. The mystery of Rokkenjima itself is an amazing puzzle, but currently you must have at least a meta-world standing to solve it. And if Umineko is a fantasy story, than the meta-world can exist.
I'm not saying the solution to the mystery requires a fantasy explanation, the explanation will only use clues provided in the episodes and human logic. It's just currently impossible to solve Umineko without access to the meta-world.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:28   Link #7187
Tyabann
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Originally Posted by Raiza Sunozaki View Post
Whether or not the meta-world exists has no effect on the murders, so I've never bothered to deny it; in fact, I accept it. As Ryuukishi said, Umineko is not a conventional mystery. Currently, I see this as meaning it's a mystery within a fantasy story. The mystery of Rokkenjima itself is an amazing puzzle, but currently you must have at least a meta-world standing to solve it. And if Umineko is a fantasy story, than the meta-world can exist.
I'm not saying the solution to the mystery requires a fantasy explanation, the explanation will only use clues provided in the episodes and human logic. It's just currently impossible to solve Umineko without access to the meta-world.
Yes, for Meta-Battler. For Ange and the other characters in 1998, however, Hachijou's novels exist, and for us, the readers, we have, well, the story itself.

You don't NEED to be in the Meta-World to solve Umineko. You and I certainly aren't.

I think people are reading too much into Ryukishi's "this isn't a conventional mystery" declaration... I think he's just talking about the fake scenes and the meta-narrative rather than the existence of magic. One thing chronotrig is definitely correct about is the idea of magic being a pleasant false alternative to the real events, since that's the way it's been presented in the story for quite some time now.

Spoiler for examples of magic = happy lies:


See what I mean? Magic is a lie. It isn't real. It doesn't exist. It's the happy ending.

Last edited by Tyabann; 2010-03-27 at 18:52.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:28   Link #7188
chronotrig
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@Renall:
Spoiler for size:
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Last edited by chronotrig; 2010-03-27 at 18:41.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:43   Link #7189
Judoh
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Originally Posted by chronotrig View Post
@Renall:
Spoiler for size:
Even if your sure how the colored texts work how can you be sure that that is used on the episode 2 gameboard? Before episode 5 we didn't even know that colored text could be used by the pieces, and we didn't even know about colored text until after the first twilight. So how does a theory about colored text explain how Beatrice can convince Battler that magic exists when the clues only existed recently? I can understand that you want to beleive that scene happened, but why do you need to use that theory to explain why he accepted it? Why can't your Beatrice just say "this is how I killed everyone I did this this and this?" Why does it have to be colored text?
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:44   Link #7190
J the Drafter
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I have some thoughts on Lambda and Ep. 5

I think that the strategy behind Lambda's game backfired when she was forced to use it against Bernkastel. Remember, the fifth game was originally intended to fight Battler instead. When Battler dropped out, Lambdadelta accepted Bernkastel as her new opponent. Lambdadelta's game was well suited to hammering Battler with the idea that Natsuhi was the culprit in order to force Battler to accept the witch. Once Bernkastel stepped into the human side in Battler's place, however, Lambda was forced to play an opponent who didn't care about the people on the island, while using a board that strongly suggested Natsuhi's guilt. Lambda spent the rest of the game trying to escape the mess she'd created.

1. She's responsible for Dlanor's respect for Battler; Lambda arranged that fight between Knox and the Battler piece, which showed Dlanor what kind of person Battler was.
2. Lambda created the story of the mysterious caller, which gave Battler an alternative culprit to attack and prevented the "Natsuhi culprit-theory" from being absolute. (Can you imagine the board if Lambda hadn't created those phone scenes? We wouldn't have any reason not to believe Natsuhi had committed the murders, and we wouldn't have any way of constructing an alternate theory if we did.)
3. She gave Battler the image of a living Kinzo, when there was no way he could see such as thing if his viewpoint was honest, so that he could know and prove he wasn't the detective.
4. Finally, the story Lambdadelta chooses to weave is one that portrays Natsuhi as a person dedicated to protecting the honor of the Ushiromiya family, and a woman who loves her husband. In other words, Natsuhi is shown as someone who would never commit the murders she stood accused of.

The remembrance that Lambda created the Dlanor-Piece!Battler fight, and therefore gave Dlanor reasons to respect Battler, was the first thing that set me on this theory, but the other three facts that I'm using as evidence ocurred to me later.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:46   Link #7191
Renall
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I'm just at an impasse, honestly. You claim you've demonstrated the parts you've shown and that you intend to demonstrate the rest at a later date. I personally am not satisfied with any of your answers and do not believe them to actually explain the things you say they have explained. We can keep up the "I explained it" "No you didn't" until the end of time, but I fail to see how it benefits anyone. I'll try to step off you, at least until you're finished. My objections are as they have been and will remain:
  • Shkanon has not been demonstrated to have any actual narrative necessity.
  • The characterization is completely inconsistent.
  • The portrayal of the culprit, if true, makes them out to either be a delusional lunatic or an evil sociopath, neither of which makes a very good killer in a single-culprit theory.
  • The possibility of other culprits and indeed the development of other characters are entirely ignored because they're inconvenient.
  • The culprit chosen may well not have killed anyone at all, and indeed such a possibility is very plausible.
That's about the size of it, I think. You need not address these now; if your theory develops answers to these problems, feel free to just integrate it in there as you go. No need for us to squabble a bunch until you're done.

I'd also ask that you not mischaracterize my objection. I'm not saying you need to conclusively demonstrate that your answer is right. But you need to answer the questions raised in the narrative to the satisfaction of those reading your theory. If your answer is right, that should be clear to people who have thought a good bit about it. Right now, it's not clear to me at all that you've even answered a single question.

And I still highly object to any sort of single-cuprit theory. Too many details about the game board and the methods of killing just get glossed over by people because it doesn't fit their theory. Ask yourself: Why are there a set of MOs that differ, as if the killer is using different weaponry? If there's just one killer, why do they vary the way they kill in different episodes or within the same episode? If I'm running around killing people with a gun I don't suddenly switch over to a baseball bat, then go back to my gun. Not without some reason I'd have to, anyway.

As to explaining the meta-scenes in ep2: They represent the culprit or culprits, the scene that occurred, and are twisted around to blame Beatrice and magic in order to conceal essential details, while retaining some key hints. Sometimes the simplest answer is the most sensible. Well, I guess the simplest answer is "they didn't happen at all and mean nothing," but not even I claim that.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:47   Link #7192
chronotrig
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Originally Posted by Judoh View Post
Even if your sure how the colored texts work how can you be sure that that is used on the episode 2 gameboard? Before episode 5 we didn't even know that colored text could be used by the pieces, and we didn't even know about colored text until after the first twilight. So how does a theory about colored text explain how Beatrice can convince Battler that magic exists? I can understand that you want to beleive that scene happened, but why do you need to use that theory to explain why he accepted it? Why can't your Beatrice just say "this is how I killed everyone I did this this and this?" Why does it have to be colored text?
I don't mean the colored text, I mean the concept of gold truth. Anything that all witnesses believe becomes the truth. At that time, in that room, only Battler, Sayo, and Genji were witnesses. When all three of them agree to the same truth, that becomes the truth in Beato's eyes. And it becomes the story in the meta-world.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:51   Link #7193
Tyabann
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Originally Posted by Renall View Post
Shkanon has not been demonstrated to have any actual narrative necessity.
This is still the biggest problem. It seems sort of "tacked-on", in a sense, as though it needed to be put somewhere in the theory.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:52   Link #7194
Judoh
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Originally Posted by chronotrig View Post
I don't mean the colored text, I mean the concept of gold truth. Anything that all witnesses believe becomes the truth. At that time, in that room, only Battler, Sayo, and Genji were witnesses. When all three of them agree to the same truth, that becomes the truth in Beato's eyes. And it becomes the story in the meta-world.
The gold is colored text I'm speaking generally. The gold solving something in a past episode doesn't make any sense. If your theory is true the only way to solve episode 2 is by knowing how the gold text works, but we're not allowed to solve episodes with clues that are not presented and the gold was presented only recently, and by a completely different author character. It should have no relevance to the solutions for episodes 1 through 4.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:54   Link #7195
Renall
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Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon View Post
This is still the biggest problem. It seems sort of "tacked-on", in a sense, as though it needed to be put somewhere in the theory.
In fairness, if he removed it the rest of his theory would not suffer for it. But that's part of the problem to me; if Shkanon is true, it has to mean something. It has to answer some previous detail. And no one has ever managed to show me something other than Kanon's missing corpse, and possibly ep6. If it's a fundamental thing, it should answer more than that. If it's a cheap trick used for just those two things, it's terrible writing.

I want to be convinced it's more than that, I honestly do. But nobody's managed.
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Old 2010-03-27, 18:58   Link #7196
chronotrig
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@Renall:
Okay, once I get to the EP3 section of the theory, it'll be a little easier to discuss. However, let me ask that people give me a pass on the details of the murders. This isn't because I don't have an answer for them, but because doing a play-by-play of all six games would take several days to write up. It's easy for you all to mention one or two quick things, but I have to try and cover literally hundreds of scenes that exist in this game.

However, I think you should stop and reconsider your position on magic scenes. If someone could provide a logical and direct explanation for the meta scenes in the game, wouldn't that make for a more satisfying answer than just "Ryuukishi adds random lie in scene X to confuse people, does this again for next murder" and so on? I think it would be a lot more impressive if Ryuukishi managed to work out a system that has all meta-scenes telling a nearly direct metaphor based on the truth. And the fact that the scenes do indeed seem to follow such a system probably isn't a coincidence.
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Old 2010-03-27, 19:03   Link #7197
Renall
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That may be the case; however, I reject the notion that every detail which appears in a magic scene always means the same thing. That is, that Beatrice is always "Beatrice" (or whomever Beatrice represents, which has never been proven to be "Beatrice"), that the stakes always mean one thing, that the Siestas always mean one thing (in fact the Sietsas provably cannot), that Gaap's nonexistence before ep4 means nobody did whatever she represents before that, etc.

I don't think it's as easy as a 1:1 cipher, especially given that Kumasawa/Virgilia and Genji/Ronove are so blatantly presented to the reader. I don't think he'd go so far as to say "It's all a puzzle, and if you switch in the right names, you get the answer!"
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Old 2010-03-27, 19:04   Link #7198
Kylon99
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Originally Posted by J the Drafter View Post
I think that the strategy behind Lambda's game backfired when she was forced to use it against Bernkastel. Remember, the fifth game was originally intended to fight Battler instead. When Battler dropped out, Lambdadelta accepted Bernkastel as her new opponent. Lambdadelta's game was well suited to hammering Battler with the idea that Natsuhi was the culprit in order to force Battler to accept the witch. Once Bernkastel stepped into the human side in Battler's place, however, Lambda was forced to play an opponent who didn't care about the people on the island, while using a board that strongly suggested Natsuhi's guilt. Lambda spent the rest of the game trying to escape the mess she'd created.
Lambdadelta is turning out to be our favorite tsundere it seems. Unless it's a complete Ryukishi troll.

In EP6, she even gives Battler some advice on how to deal with his sanity during the imprisonment. Maybe it's a ploy by Lambdadelta to gain ranking in the character polls, if they were still going...
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Old 2010-03-27, 19:06   Link #7199
Judoh
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@Chronotrig

I said this earlier, but the scenes I tend to stay conservative on are the ones towards the end of the games, because those are the scenes that have a lot of things that cannot happen. I have no problems with interpreting scenes pregame or midgame, it's endgame where we should be careful. All of these scenes happen just before or at 24:00 when we beleive the missing people usually die. It seems that these scenes constantly imply a degradation or "falling apart" of reality with impossibilities like Beatrice only being a beating heart, Battler seeing and talking to a living Kinzo by sight, being eaten by Goat people at a banquet, and a whole lot of other things.

I don't beleive all the fantasy scenes are false I'm just conservative about the endgame fantasy scenes because they are the hardest to find representations for it's easier just to not acknowledge them in particular. I've already asked you the question of what you think about Rosa in that fantasy scene with the goats and the butterflies since it can't be the same as your scene at the chapel. It's on one of the earlier pages so I guess you missed it.
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Old 2010-03-27, 19:13   Link #7200
Tyabann
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Originally Posted by chronotrig View Post
However, I think you should stop and reconsider your position on magic scenes. If someone could provide a logical and direct explanation for the meta scenes in the game, wouldn't that make for a more satisfying answer than just "Ryuukishi adds random lie in scene X to confuse people, does this again for next murder" and so on? I think it would be a lot more impressive if Ryuukishi managed to work out a system that has all meta-scenes telling a nearly direct metaphor based on the truth. And the fact that the scenes do indeed seem to follow such a system probably isn't a coincidence.
The magic scenes are the way they are because the Game Master is trying to convince the other player of a specific "truth", not necessarily because they serve any greater metaphor (thought there are very likely nuggets of the truth hidden in each scene, it's not fair otherwise).

For example, Ep1 and Ep2 feature the Witch Beatrice and her servants killing everyone, Ep3 with Eva-Beatrice and her servants, and Ep4 with Goldsmith and etc. This is because Beatrice was trying to see if Battler could see past her "truth" into the truth behind truths... she wanted him to accept that someone in his family was the mastermind, and forcing him to battle against her interpretation was slowly doing just that. (The aftermath of the kakera scene in Ep5's hidden tea party definitely supports this, as I think we can agree.)

Ep5, however, only has one confirmed magic scene, and that's the battle in Kinzo's study. This is because, at the time, Lambda and Bern are working together to destroy Beatrice, so the culprit has to be human... and the magic scene itself almost makes fun of Meta-Battler, which is probably why Lambda wrote it like that to begin with.

Ep6, on the other hand, has magic scenes tailored by Battler... and he doesn't want to make anyone look bad, which is why the murderers are vindicated; people die because of love.

Or are you saying that George and Jessica actually killed people in that game? Because we know they didn't; it was Erika/the person Erika represents.
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