[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[TheForsaken]

Originally Posted by WitchofCicadas

Thank you very much for the info. :3
This does raise a few more questions, though.
Under what circumstances does Battler hit Bern? Did she say/do anything particularly nasty beforehand (nastier than usual anyway)? And how exactly does she strike back, simply by yelling or does she slap him back?
Also, why exactly does Featherine maul down Lambda?

If I don't remember wrong, Battler hit Bern after 34 was killed.
34 was on Battler's side, she wanted to see the "Happy End" that everyone was talking about despite the fact that it was already denied in Red. So 34 and Bern had a battle between great witches. Then Featherine came and killed 34.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by witchfan

In any case, when talking about the ironic combination of suspicious character and hard evidence, are you talking also about cases related to murder? I was actually talking only about these cases in my post (it would be hard to find a large enough sample of mystery novels that deal with jaywalking, to form an opinion about it!). I would think that, when dealing with serious offences, the standard of proof is placed a lot higher. So it follows that while a sympathetic character is more likely to be acquitted, there is still more focus on motive than character.

There are two important things to keep in mind.

• In a trial, there's really only one person being focused on. In a mystery, you're asking "whodunnit?" In a trial it's "did he dunnit?" The answer is yes or no; if it's no... well, you keep going.
• Most of the time, the person is guilty. You have to get used to that. Most of the people in a mystery story are innocent, with noteworthy exceptions, and most "early culprits" are exonerated.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Well, to be fair, George going "I'm totally willing to kill my whole family for Sayo" doesn't help.

Yeah, but it doesn't prove anything either. You put George on trial with the evidence in Umineko and you might get him convicted, but if his attorney's any good he's walking.

Of course, if you properly proportioned mystery novels to actual criminal case outcomes, roughly 99% of the mystery canon would be Poirot negotiating a plea agreement.

[Qaenyin]

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

Then why did Yasu allow herself to fall in love with both George and Jessica? I still don't think the love between Yasu and Jessica is legitimate. Maybe it was, but that begs the question "Yasu is bisexual?"

Fine, let's say that Yasu is bisexual and is in love with three people at the same time.

It's sketchy, but entirely plausible, for her to just not have DID. She HAD feelings for battler, which left her emotionally wounded and she hasn't gotten over and has a big complex about due to how it ended. She HAS feelings for George. Perfectly legitimate.

The real problem here is, as you said, Kanon's existence at all. As a matter of fact, I could see Kanon's "romance" with Jessica as being total theatrics, and Jessica leading herself on, with Yasu stuck in a sympathetic place where she feels bad for Jessica and sympathizes and as a result can't bring herself to tell Jessica that Kanon is really her/Shannon.

That makes total sense.

What doesn't make sense is why does Kanon exist? If she has DID, sure, no one should notice and her two personalities could operate seperately with Genji covering for her, but Kanon's existence as a personality makes little sense. She was always isolated from people, sure, ok. So she creates Shannon to be a "friend" in her head, essentially Shannon is her imaginary friend, and she deludes herself into believing she's really Shannon at some point, that's a stretch but I suppose plausible, but Kanon? Nothing happened to create Kanon. If she was lonely there'd be no reason for her to isolate her Yasu persona from her Shannon persona the way she ostensibly did. Psychologically DID branches from trauma causing someone to create another self, usually as a scapegoat or way to do something they can't otherwise do subconsciously? Alright, ok, but Kanon doesn't do anything of the sort. Kanon "falls in love" with Jessica AFTER he starts to exist, and prior to that he has no attachment to the world.

He just seems totally pointless and as a result there's no reason for him to exist.

I bought it when it was just Shannon and Kanon and one of them was playing out the role of Beatrice, but 3 personalities rather than 2 personalities and one being Beato on the sly is stretching it too far imo.

[Used Can]

Seriously, guys, let's look at the bright side, at least George died.

Originally Posted by Will Wright

Basically, Ryuukishi asks us to find out who Beatrice is. In order to find out who she is, we need to find out why she would commit those crimes. In other words, we need to use the why to find out the who.

I contend this point. Did we really need to fully understand the motive to know who Beatrice was? Going by ShKanon, we never really need any motive there. All we needed was to be careful on our observations on their appearances, and on other hints like Kanon's ever disappearing corpse.

Then, how do we go from ShKanon to ShKanontrice? EP3 and EP4. During EP3, Shannon tells us about Battler's promise to her and the English he used. Then, in EP4, when Beatrice calls Battler, the first thing she does is speak to him in English, and then she proceeds to say how she remembers Battler using English phrases back in the day. The only person we knew that remembered Battler's English lines was Shannon.

Just with this, you can definitely reason out who Beatrice is, even if you end up with a rather shaky theory. But hey, even the theory about Beato's lineage was very shaky as well - even more so than Beato's identity, and both of them turned out to be correct. No major need for motives here.

Of course, Beato's characterisation in the Meta helped as well, but that barely accounted for any motive, I think. Those who were past the "deny the witch" phase and who were observant enough, could probably notice Beato's odd behaviour throughout the episodes. Of course, we couldn't tell any major motive, but we could tell she wasn't evil as she was trying to portray herself and that she's really expecting something from Battler. Well, there were things like her Red about promises, which paired along with Battler's sin could lead us to part of her motive, but all the same, in this situation, the motive is not leading us to Beatrice's identity.

Personally, I think the motive in Umineko is purely there for thematic purposes. There are two major themes, in my opinion.

1. Magic: We've seen what magic is, and how some people use it to try to cope with their reality. In addition, we've also seen how this magic is very fragile, and how some people can try making an unnecessary use of the truth to destroy this magic.

2. Understanding: People may do evil things, sometimes even very despicable things, but this doesn't mean a person is entirely evil. Kinzo is a good example. I'm sure I don't need to point out all the things he did, but aside those thing, we learned how much of a lonely man he was, how he had given up on life, and how he clanged to that happiness to the point of madness.

The relationship between Rosa and Eva, I think, is the perfect relationship between magic and understanding in the story.

[WitchofCicadas]

Originally Posted by TheForsaken

If I don't remember wrong, Battler hit Bern after 34 was killed.
34 was on Battler's side, she wanted to see the "Happy End" that everyone was talking about despite the fact that it was already denied in Red. So 34 and Bern had a battle between great witches. Then Featherine came and killed 34.

Many thanks! :3 It feels good to finally see the pieces coming together.
So I guess everyone who speculated that Featherine was a monster had a point. I mean, she is Bern's mentor after all.

[immblueversion]

Hey, I just learned something trivial. Still, pretty big spoilers:

Spoiler for EP8: Magic Ending:

In the "Magic" ending of Umineko, Ange changes her name to Kotobuki/Hisashi Yukari to cut her ties to the Rokkenjima incident, live a quiet life away from the media, and move on (or something like that).

In Japanese, "Kotobuki/Hisashi Yukari" is 寿ゆかり.

When written as kanji, ゆかり is spelled 縁.

Ange's name in kanji is spelled 縁寿.

So 縁寿 becomes 寿縁.

Amazing.

Good thing the general public is apparently not as smart as this. Or maybe there are extra factors that help her case that I'm currently not aware of.

EDIT: 寿 can be read as either "Kotobuki" or "Hisashi," as well as a bunch of shorter ways that admittedly seem odd for a Japanese family name.

[Used Can]

It's not about the public not being smart, but about the Ushiromiya's using really weird names, and Ange making good use of that to hide her identity.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Will Wright

Spoiler for Crooked House:

Again, Crooked House. We are asked the question of "who is the killer?" but this is one case where we literally cannot solve the crime unless we understand that the criminal has...some Erika-like assumptions about the mystery genre.

I'd just like to say that the motive in Crooked House is the worst motive in the history of the genre. Yes, even worse than Umineko.

Although, if you interpret Beatrice in a certain way you can end up with a similar motive, but that's not the one the game gives us.

Originally Posted by Renall

Of course, if you properly proportioned mystery novels to actual criminal case outcomes, roughly 99% of the mystery canon would be Poirot negotiating a plea agreement.

I'd read it.

Originally Posted by immblueversion

Hey, I just learned something trivial. Still, pretty big spoilers:

Spoiler for EP8: Magic Ending:

In the "Magic" ending of Umineko, Ange changes her name to Hisashi Yukari to cut her ties to the Rokkenjima incident, live a quiet life away from the media, and move on (or something like that).

In Japanese, "Hisashi Yukari" is 寿ゆかり.

When written as kanji, ゆかり is spelled 縁.

Ange's name in kanji is spelled 縁寿.

So 縁寿 becomes 寿縁.

Amazing.

Good thing the general public is apparently not as smart as this. Or maybe there are extra factors that help her case that I'm currently not aware of.

It's actually possible to do something similar with almost anything, though. Remember how we turned "Hachijou Tohya" into "07151129", and that in turn into "Ushiromiya Asumu"?

[musouka]

Originally Posted by Qaenyin

What doesn't make sense is why does Kanon exist? If she has DID, sure, no one should notice and her two personalities could operate seperately with Genji covering for her, but Kanon's existence as a personality makes little sense. She was always isolated from people, sure, ok. So she creates Shannon to be a "friend" in her head, essentially Shannon is her imaginary friend, and she deludes herself into believing she's really Shannon at some point, that's a stretch but I suppose plausible, but Kanon? Nothing happened to create Kanon. If she was lonely there'd be no reason for her to isolate her Yasu persona from her Shannon persona the way she ostensibly did. Psychologically DID branches from trauma causing someone to create another self, usually as a scapegoat or way to do something they can't otherwise do subconsciously? Alright, ok, but Kanon doesn't do anything of the sort. Kanon "falls in love" with Jessica AFTER he starts to exist, and prior to that he has no attachment to the world.

He just seems totally pointless and as a result there's no reason for him to exist.

See, and this is the part where I inwardly roll my eyes. Not at you, but at the people that continuously ignore the exact issue that you brought up.

What am I referring to? Will's mention of Yasu and Lion's ambiguous sex and his pointing out that Zepar and Furfur were a reflection about the truth of Beatrice. The fact that Yasu is raging at the end about having to live with the body she has. The fact that there is absolutely no reason for Kanon to exist on ANY level, narratively or anything else.

If not for one thing.

There is an issue with Yasu's gender.

And please, no BS about Kanon representing Yasu's lesbian impulses towards Jessica. Somehow girls manage to fall in love with other girls without creating an entire male persona in order to justify it to themselves. Love of Jessica wasn't even the reason Kanon was created. And even the reason we're given for creating him--it would have been just as easy to give Shannon a little sister--has to be because Yasu had the OPTION of creating him.

[Jan-Poo]

And I always acknowledged that.

But I trusted that a satisfying explanation existed, and that it would be revealed in the end.


How naive of me...

[musouka]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

And I always acknowledged that.

But I trusted that a satisfying explanation existed, and that it would be revealed in the end.

You really expected Ryukishi to lift up Yasu's skirt and show us exactly what was there? After the narrative both makes it clear that there is an issue on some level, it causes her no small amount of mental anguish, and Will tactfully steps back from it when Lion asks him to? Yes, that is naive.

The entire point of how it was handled is to let us know that there is something about Yasu's sex, whether it is some degree of intersex or something else, while still allowing Yasu her dignity. After introducing the subject matter like that, it would be very crass to go back and shove a camera up her dress just to provide the readers with an "explanation".

[Used Can]

Originally Posted by musouka

And even the reason we're given for creating him--it would have been just as easy to give Shannon a little sister--has to be because Yasu had the OPTION of creating him.

Hmm... that's a good point I kept on neglecting. How about a theory?

How about we see one of the final scenes as an allegory? By this scene I mean the "double suicide" one. In this scene we see Battler and Beato submerging to the bottom of the sea. But, how about we take it as Battler venturing into Beato's depths. After all, Beatrice herself said they were from different worlds and that he should return to the light, whilst she ought to return to the darkness. However, Battler decided to venture into the darkness. After that, Battler and Beatrice died... do you catch my drift?

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by musouka

You really expected Ryukishi to lift up Yasu's skirt and show us exactly what was there? After the narrative both makes it clear that there is an issue on some level, it causes her no small amount of mental anguish, and Will tactfully steps back from it when Lion asks him to? Yes, that is naive.

The entire point of how it was handled is to let us know that there is something about Yasu's sex, whether it is some degree of intersex or something else, while still allowing Yasu her dignity. After introducing the subject matter like that, it would be very crass to go back and shove a camera up her dress just to provide the readers with an "explanation".

You're being quite arrogant for someone who thought EP7 tea party was the truth.

Anyway what we were talking about was a shkanon explanation not Yasu's gender. Explaining how shkanon is possible does not necessarily involve such a revelation.

So what exactly are you talking about?

[musouka]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

You're being quite arrogant for someone who thought EP7 tea party was the truth.

Thought it was the truth? I still think it's the truth. Or close enough to the truth that it might as well be the same thing. I'll allow for some minor differences, but it's still the most logical conclusion when you consider Ange's reaction to being faced with Eva's diary in EP8.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Anyway what we were talking about was a shkanon explanation not Yasu's gender. Explaining how shkanon is possible does not necessarily involve such a revelation.

So what exactly are you talking about?

Yasu's gender, and how people deliberately ignore the ambiguity in favor of easier answers that they like better--I'm sorry, bisexual Beato doesn't explain why Zepfur has a penis or why it is necessary for one of them to have a penis--as I originally stated.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by musouka

Thought it was the truth? I still think it's the truth.

You're free to live inside your own delusions.

Originally Posted by musouka

Yasu's gender, and how people deliberately ignore the ambiguity in favor of easier answers that they like better--I'm sorry, bisexual Beato doesn't explain why Zepfur has a penis or why it is necessary for one of them to have a penis--as I originally stated.

Again why do you bring this up? I'm not talking about Yasu's gender here. She can be male, female, intersex, or whatever, it's irrelevant for the purpose of explaining shkanon.

And anyway you can think whatever you like for I care. I believe Yasu is simply female and you don't have the slightest argument to deny this.

[musouka]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Again why do you bring this up?

Why did you respond?

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

And anyway you can think whatever you like for I care. I believe Yasu is simply female and you don't have the slightest argument to deny this.

"You're free to live inside your own delusions."

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by musouka

"You're free to live inside your own delusions."

It's more like I have no other choice, since a reality wasn't set on this matter.

The only choice I have is to live inside my own delusion or in someone else's delusion, thanx but I'll choose mine.

However if I could choose I'd choose to live in the real world, too bad there's no damn way to know what's real for sure.

[Dormeur]

Originally Posted by immblueversion

Hey, I just learned something trivial. Still, pretty big spoilers:

Spoiler for EP8: Magic Ending:

In the "Magic" ending of Umineko, Ange changes her name to Hisashi Yukari to cut her ties to the Rokkenjima incident, live a quiet life away from the media, and move on (or something like that).

In Japanese, "Hisashi Yukari" is 寿ゆかり.

When written as kanji, ゆかり is spelled 縁.

Ange's name in kanji is spelled 縁寿.

So 縁寿 becomes 寿縁.

Amazing.

Good thing the general public is apparently not as smart as this. Or maybe there are extra factors that help her case that I'm currently not aware of.

Spoiler for EP8:

寿ゆかり came from 寿縁 is obvious.
However, for the Japanese, 寿ゆかり being read as "Hisahi Yukari" is odd.
"Kotobuki Yukari" is just fit. e.g. 寿美菜子 Kotobuki Minako, a voice actress

Of course, "Hisashi Yukari" "Toshi Yukari" "Kotohogi Yukari" are possible.
According to an Internet database of Japanese family names, "Kotobuki" "Toshi" "Jyu" "Shuu" "Su" "Toshinaga" "Hisashi" are registered for 寿.
But this doesn't necessarily mean that they are in the real.
Because there are no national stats about family names and their yomigana in Japan.
Another database shows that "Kotobuki" is the most, and that "Toshinaga" is the second (20/1600).
Anyway, Ryukishi07 only knows how we should read Ange's pen name.

By the way, 右代宮, 須磨寺, and 呂ノ上 are not in any databases I know.
A certain database showed me 小此木 has 16 ways to read.
But the most one in Japan is Okonogi. The name Okonogi in When They Cry series was taken from Mr. Okonogi, the chief editor of Charamel Febri, Ichijinsha.

Yes, just trivial...

[Kirroha]

No wonder Ange's name becomes "Yukari Hitoshi" when I dump it in google translate. XD

[The Bloodlust Kid]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

It's actually possible to do something similar with almost anything, though. Remember how we turned "Hachijou Tohya" into "07151129", and that in turn into "Ushiromiya Asumu"?

Can somebody link me to that theory again?