[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[GreyZone]

I remember something from Ryukishi's interview about giving answers in the EP7 manga... but i think that is only about the gamboards and not about prime...

can someone confirm this?

[Toku]

Originally Posted by SonozakiUshiromiya

@Toku
Regardless of the importance of truth vs. preservation of dignity public revealblahblahblah, my biggest problem is that Ange, Toya, and Ikuko have SOME idea of what the truth is and their position is pretty much 'fuck everyone else'. What about the cop who just wanted to know who was guilty for the sake of truth? Gohda's mom? Jessica's friends from school? Natsuhi's birth relatives? These may or may not be people whose existence Ange, Toya, or Ikuko know about, but they're victims too. In fact, take Ep 4 into account. Ange/Toya KNOWS that there are others hurting because they don't know what happened(Kawabata the boat captian, Kumasawa's family, Nanjo Jr. especially), but they must forgot them or something. They're not the main players in this story, so why care? Disregarding everything else, that's the one thing I cannot agree on R07 with on any level.

I understand, but I can't speak for the characters themselves. Why they hid it, and whether or not they really cared, is something that we don't know for sure. That's why we shouldn't automatically think that they simply didn't care. Because it's possible that they did. It's possible that they had a reason. Of course, you're free to believe whatever you want, but...

Originally Posted by Misuzu

But the game didn't show anyone being made happier by the truth not being revealed. Everyone was absolutely miserable.

But we weren't shown "what would have happened if the Truth was revealed to everyone." Because we weren't shown this, we can't automatically conclude that "what happened because the Truth wasn't revealed to everyone" is automatically worse. It's possible that it was actually better.

And in the end, Ange found peace after she learned the truth.

She found peace by denying the Truth. Even after she found it, she denied it because it was too painful.

I think a story could've been written in which characters were happier with the truth being hidden. I just don't think Umineko was that sort of story at all, and it's kind of fascinating (and frustrating) that that seems to be the big message of the game.

Is everyone going to be happier if the Truth is hidden? No.
In the same way, is everyone going to be happier if the Truth is made public? Of course not.

You can't please everyone. And, there's even the possibility that certain people will be miserable whether it is revealed or not.

One person's happiness will mean another's unhappiness. That's how the world works. Who are the ones that are happy to have the Truth hidden? We don't even know that much, so we can't conclude that the ones hiding the Truth are doing it for selfish reasons.

Will you be happier if you learn the Truth? Not necessarily. And knowing is a one-way street, so you might later wish you didn't learn it. Because if you hadn't learned it, you might like Umineko better. It was never guaranteed that you would like the Truth.

After all, the fact that we have all of these possibilities to work with, means that you can even choose to believe that Yasuda never committed a single murder. What would you do if R07 told you that, in fact, she had been responsible for a third of the corpses, and then set off the bomb to cover everything up, and lived peacefully with Tohya for the rest of her days? You probably wouldn't like that. But, it's possible that it's the Truth.

Whether you treat this cat box we're in right now as a privilege or a curse, is up to you.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Toku

Is everyone going to be happier if the Truth is hidden? No.
In the same way, is everyone going to be happier if the Truth is made public? Of course not.

You can't please everyone. And, there's even the possibility that certain people will be miserable whether it is revealed or not.

Yes, but the people who suppress the truth have no moral right to make that decision for everyone else in the world. The morally correct thing to do is reveal the truth and accept the consequence that some people will not be happy to know it, and that others will choose not to expose themselves to the truth even though they could. Deciding for other people whether they would be happier knowing or not knowing is evil.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by Renall

Yes, but the people who suppress the truth have no moral right to make that decision for everyone else in the world. The morally correct thing to do is reveal the truth and accept the consequence that some people will not be happy to know it, and that others will choose not to expose themselves to the truth even though they could. Deciding for other people whether they would be happier knowing or not knowing is evil.

What if all of the culprits are dead. All survivors are completely innocent. Therefore, whether you reveal the Truth or not, you are not sheltering any criminals.? This much is implied.

Additionally, most of the people out there are completely unrelated to the crime. What if regardless of whether you reveal the Truth or not, it will not affect them in a negative manner? If the first is true, then this second theory logically follows.

The only thing remaining is the survivors and relatives who do not know the Truth but have the desire to learn. Unfortunately, this last problem is a delicate matter that everyone has different views on, and I'm not going to try and tell you what to believe.

I can at least provide a few facts on the matter though:
1. The Truth is too painful for Ange to bear. If this was Eva's motivation for hiding it from her, then she is justified in that belief.
2. Nanjo and Kumasawa are implied to be accomplices.
3. Because of #2, it's easy to imagine that testimony from a witness would make the media hound Nanjo's son much more than he already was being hounded. And we know that this is what he was most concerned with, rather than learning the Truth.
4. Kumasawa's son would also be suffering similarly if it came to light that his mother was an accomplice to a major crime.
5. There would also be the pain from learning that their parents are accomplices, when they were both sure that their parents were innocent, if in fact they were accomplices.

Also, we know of no other survivors who do not know the Truth. Obviously, any hypothetical "person X" arguments should not come into the discussion, because they may not even exist, and we have no proof either way.

Again, you may believe whatever you wish. I'm only providing theories and data to take into consideration, and asking what your standpoint is on the matter after having considered these things.

[SonozakiUshiromiya]

@Toku
Natsuhi has a family besides the Ushiromiya, that is, the family she was born into. Jessica had friends when she attented the school in Nijima(One of them is named Saku in the TIPS 'Jessica and the Killer Electric Fan'). And your points don't address Captian Kawabata.I'm not even asking for a public reveal, although that's the most effective way of getting the information to all those affected. Send those people a letter as Beatrice and tell them what you know. This probably won't reach everyone it should, but it's a start. Again, there ARE people who they KNOW exist and are affected by the tragedy.

Originally Posted by Toku

Again, you may believe whatever you wish. I'm only providing theories and data to take into consideration, and asking what your standpoint is on the matter after having considered these things.

All the power to you. I'm making my point as well.

[AuraTwilight]

What if all of the culprits are dead. All survivors are completely innocent. Therefore, whether you reveal the Truth or not, you are not sheltering any criminals.? This much is implied.

Except people are still speculating that those innocent survivors are culprits, and using the catbox's ambiguity to speculate degrading things about people like Maria.

Additionally, most of the people out there are completely unrelated to the crime. What if regardless of whether you reveal the Truth or not, it will not affect them in a negative manner? If the first is true, then this second theory logically follows.

Nanjo's son thinks his father was a criminal. If Nanjo is innocent, he deserves to know that. And Gohda's mother deserves to know why her son was murdered.

1. The Truth is too painful for Ange to bear. If this was Eva's motivation for hiding it from her, then she is justified in that belief.

No she's not. Eva should have respected Ange's decision, because the Truth will set you free. Ange could have learned to cope with it, and she wouldn't of had to bear with people's harmful speculations. She wouldn't have to doubt family members that are innocent, for example.

Also, we know of no other survivors who do not know the Truth. Obviously, any hypothetical "person X" arguments should not come into the discussion, because they may not even exist, and we have no proof either way.

That's bullshit. What about the Boat Captain? He spent his whole life thinking that if he showed up earlier, he could've saved them. If he learned, for instance, that everyone died on the 4th, then nothing he could've done would've saved them. He wouldn't have to beat himself up for over a decade.

What about Jessica's best friends? What about Natsuhi's family? What about Asumu's relatives, who thought Battler was her son? What about Gohda's relatives? What about Nanjo's granddaughter, or Kumasawa's other kids? What about Hideyoshi's relatives?

Why does Ange get to decide all of these people's futures without their consent?

[Ayu-ayu]

I've been meaning to ask, given how...pertinent...R07's clarifications in his interviews have been to the discussion of his work, has anyone compiled them into a central location? Might it be a good idea to make a thread suggestion to track or repost his interview translations?

I keep finding I've missed some juicy bit of confirmation or hinting from R07 here and there, such as more or less confirming the hypothesis I've personally kept that episode 7 was demonstrating that Van Dine is not applicable to Beato's gameboard.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by SonozakiUshiromiya

@Toku
Natsuhi has a family besides the Ushiromiya, that is, the family she was born into. Jessica had friends when she attented the school in Nijima(One of them is named Saku in the TIPS 'Jessica and the Killer Electric Fan'). And your points don't address Captian Kawabata.I'm not even asking for a public reveal, although that's the most effective way of getting the information to all those affected. Send those people a letter as Beatrice and tell them what you know. This probably won't reach everyone it should, but it's a start. Again, there ARE people who they KNOW exist and are affected by the tragedy.

All the power to you. I'm making my point as well.

Obviously, since I don't know a thing about Natsuhi's family or Jessica's friends, there's no way for me to provide sufficient arguments for them. Though, I do imagine that Natsuhi's family would not be thrilled to learn that their daughter threw a baby off a cliff 19 years ago, and that if she had not done so, this incident would not have occurred. As well as the fact that she was covering up Kinzo's death for years. It gets even worse if Natsuhi is an accomplice, and her need to cover up Kinzo's death would provide a perfect way to threaten her into participating, not to mention that Our Confessions demonstrated that she can be made into an accomplice.

As for Kawabata, I can at least point out that while he did say that he was trying to find a personal sense of closure after the incident occurred and that this is why he decided to take Ange over to Rokkenjima, it's heavily implied that he was simply bribed and/or threatened to do so, which would bring his motives back to square one. In fact, if he is willing to ferry a survivor to their death, that forces us to question whether he was really looking for a sense of closure at all.

I have another theory that I would like people to take into consideration. I believe this is important because I don't think it has received much attention at all, if any.
The explosives on the island were put there by the Japanese Military. These were used to blow the island up. The act of leaving 900 tons of explosives in the hands of an insane old guy and then forgetting about it, especially when it could have very well been what allowed the culprit to kill everyone, would cause the government to receive a lot of negative attention. This provides perfect motivation for the government to attempt to keep the Truth hidden. With this as evidence, we can reason that they influenced the survivors in such a way that would cause them to shut their mouths whether they wanted to or not.

Eva was hoping to protect Ange from the Truth anyway. And the idea that nobody ever figured out that Tohya is Ushiromiya Battler when we know that she took him to at least one hospital, is kind of absurd, so we could easily say that the government found out his identity. It would be extremely easy to pressure Tohya, who has a number of rather serious health problems, and regardless of who Yasuda is, she would want to protect him, and would hope that he could stay there with her.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Toku

And so, Yasuda wrote mysteries, and hoped that Battler would solve them, and maybe from him, she might be able to obtain forgiveness. However, this doesn't make sense unless she's writing these mysteries after the incident. Otherwise, she wouldn't be feeling guilty for anything. This coincides with the fact that all of the Forgeries, even the first two, were found and/or written after the incident... And it implies that the first two were written after it as well. Not only that... It strongly implies Ikuko=Yasuda.

Well, the interview also says that:

While there was enough desperation to actually carry out the incident, there was also the wish for somebody to stop her.

This can mean that she planned the incident... but studied her plan in such a way Battler might have twarted it and stopped her.
If some of the tales were written pre incident they could be nothing more but her plans for the incident. She said she had more than one plan ready...
The apology can be for planning something like this in the first place.
When Beato and Battler escape she says she's guilty but Battler insists she's not guilty in that world.
I've always taken it as:
"Yasuda planned something bad but for some reasons her plan was twarted and she never directly killed someone, thought her actions caused other people to commit murder"

Originally Posted by Toku

Well, it does seem that she isn't the sole culprit, but I'm thinking she might still be a culprit now (mind you, this doesn't necessarily confirm beyond a shadow of doubt that she she did kill, but...). The question is how love led her to that point. And, if it's Battler specifically who she feels she must apologize to, why is that? I wonder, exactly what she did to him on that day. She didn't kill him, but...

Well, we know for sure that Yasuda bribed the adults so she started something that probably later she was unable to stop. Even through she didn't mean to she tossed a snowball and caused an avalanche. I'll say she had reasons to apologize.

Originally Posted by Toku

At the very least, this makes me think that she didn't plan on the accomplices actually dying. And, if in fact it is the accomplices that she sent the money to, and nobody else, then that means that Kyrie and/or Rudolf, and Kumasawa, and Nanjo are confirmed for accomplices (well, Kumasawa and Nanjo already pretty much were)... But, this is all just a bunch of assumptions since I have no proof that she only sent it to accomplices or that this even applies to Prime rather than just the game board. The money in Ange's future (which I believe is Prime), might have been sent for a different reason, and not necessarily to the accomplices...

If we trust Our Confession she wanted everyone to die, included the accomplices... through wanting someone to die and actually killing that person are pretty different things.

Originally Posted by Toku

...I know that you might not want to suspect anyone as a serial killer, but someone has to be a culprit, right?

I think people killed, yes. However I like to think they didn't do it like the Tea Party said. In short I don't like the idea of someone voting for a massacre but I can very easily accept that the set up Yasuda created might have caused the adults to react in a dangerous way.

Pretend she actually told to... let's say Krauss that she had turned on the bomb. Krauss grabs a gun and threaten to shot her if she doesn't tell him how to turn it off. Genji tries to protect Yasuda not believing she really turned on the bomb, they fight, there's a shot and George is hit accidentally. Eva joins the party sees George dead and Krauss with a gun, thinks the worst and kill him. And you can go on and on, merely working on people's paranoia.

Originally Posted by Toku

EP6 does seem to be "the story of BATTLER putting himself in Yasuda's shoes," huh. I get the feeling that, on the day of the incident, her goal probably was "to get him to remember the promise" mainly. Or, if not that, then "for George to find out the truth, and hopefully accept me as I am." At the very least, Erika is not a parallel for George, because we know that Yasuda did love George. In the end, he wasn't just a replacement for Battler.

Still she might have been afraid about George possibly mistreating her.
Though Erika might be a parallel for other things so I won't go on that way.

Originally Posted by Toku

Also, I think I see why it was so important for her that he remember the promise. Maybe for Yasuda, what she wants is for "the Battler of 1980" to come for her, and if he remembers the promise, then that means that he is the Battler she loves.

I guess she simply can't let go of him.

Originally Posted by Toku

On a related note, in EP4, I seem to remember that Battler found Maria's corpse in the Dining Hall, with no external wounds. How did she die? OD on sleeping pills or what? That's confusing.

It was implied she was poisoned. Battler found hints about it.

[Toku]

Originally Posted by Ayu-ayu

I've been meaning to ask, given how...pertinent...R07's clarifications in his interviews have been to the discussion of his work, has anyone compiled them into a central location? Might it be a good idea to make a thread suggestion to track or repost his interview translations?

I keep finding I've missed some juicy bit of confirmation or hinting from R07 here and there, such as more or less confirming the hypothesis I've personally kept that episode 7 was demonstrating that Van Dine is not applicable to Beato's gameboard.

http://seizonsha.wordpress.com/2011/...al-discussion/

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Except people are still speculating that those innocent survivors are culprits, and using the catbox's ambiguity to speculate degrading things about people like Maria.

Testimony from a witness wouldn't necessarily do much to stop that. An incident where roughly 16 people die at the same time (that doesn't involve something like natural disasters), especially one where the witness' testimony can't be confirmed in any way, shape, or form, because a huge amount of explosives from who knows where destroyed all of the evidence, is rather rare and would attract a large amount of attention and speculation regardless. It would be extremely easy for them to think the witness was lying and the obvious question that would follow is "why did they lie?" On the contrary, this would give them more speculation fuel.

Nanjo's son thinks his father was a criminal. If Nanjo is innocent, he deserves to know that. And Gohda's mother deserves to know why her son was murdered.

We don't know that Gohda's mother is even alive, since Gohda is not young by any means. Gohda's mother is never mentioned, not even once, and we have 0 data on her. It's impossible for me to say anything about her at all, so I'll leave it at that.

I had forgotten that Nanjo's son thinks his father was a criminal. I thought I remembered him resenting the fact that his father got caught up with such a weird rich family, but maybe I'm wrong. At any rate, I will leave the matter of Nanjo's son at that.

No she's not. Eva should have respected Ange's decision, because the Truth will set you free. Ange could have learned to cope with it, and she wouldn't of had to bear with people's harmful speculations. She wouldn't have to doubt family members that are innocent, for example.

A Truth which was implied to have been enough to drive Ange to suicide cannot be said to set you free. Furthermore, she still would have had to deal with people's harmful speculations. Also, Rudolf and Kyrie could have been culprits, and it was implied that they may have had at least some hand in it.

That's bullshit. What about the Boat Captain? He spent his whole life thinking that if he showed up earlier, he could've saved them. If he learned, for instance, that everyone died on the 4th, then nothing he could've done would've saved them. He wouldn't have to beat himself up for over a decade.

What about Jessica's best friends? What about Natsuhi's family? What about Asumu's relatives, who thought Battler was her son? What about Gohda's relatives? What about Nanjo's granddaughter, or Kumasawa's other kids? What about Hideyoshi's relatives?

Why does Ange get to decide all of these people's futures without their consent?

Terribly sorry about forgetting Kawabata, Natsuhi's family, and Jessica's friends. But I've already said all I can say about them, in my previous post, so I won't go any further into that. I also can't say anything about Asumu's relatives, other than the fact that if Battler's backstory is any indication, they don't seem to be too fond of the Ushiromiyas in the first place. As for Hideyoshi's relatives, all I can say is that his backstory implies that he never really had anyone other than Eva to rely on, which causes me to doubt the existence of this family.

Ange is hiding the Truth? At the very least, she wouldn't have even learned the Truth for a full 12 years, after which almost all of the damage has already been done. I don't know of anything more to say on the matter of Ange, so I'll leave it at that.

[Ayu-ayu]

Originally Posted by Toku

http://seizonsha.wordpress.com/2011/...al-discussion/

Right, this was actually the first one I remember seeing posted, but since then I've seen other translated Keiya interviews from earlier in the series posted elsewhere, too, so this kind of illustrates my point, but I appreciate it, Toku. I'll have to see if I can find the other ones again... :/

[Toku]

Originally Posted by Ayu-ayu

Right, this was actually the first one I remember seeing posted, but since then I've seen other translated Keiya interviews from earlier in the series posted elsewhere, too, so this kind of illustrates my point, but I appreciate it, Toku. I'll have to see if I can find the other ones again... :/

My apologies, I thought you were referring to this interview since you mentioned something about EP7 demonstrating that Van Dine is not applicable, which is in the interview I linked.

If you happen to find more interviews, please share them, I'd love to read them myself. This is the only interview with Ryukishi that I've read.

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Well, the interview also says that:



This can mean that she planned the incident... but studied her plan in such a way Battler might have twarted it and stopped her.
If some of the tales were written pre incident they could be nothing more but her plans for the incident. She said she had more than one plan ready...
The apology can be for planning something like this in the first place.
When Beato and Battler escape she says she's guilty but Battler insists she's not guilty in that world.
I've always taken it as:
"Yasuda planned something bad but for some reasons her plan was twarted and she never directly killed someone, thought her actions caused other people to commit murder"

I know that whatever her plan was, it probably gave her plenty of reason to want to apologize, but I was wondering why it's Battler specifically that she seems to want forgiveness from.

I'd appreciate it if people stop saying that "her actions caused other people to commit murder" because, well, everyone has their own free will. Everyone is responsible for their own actions, that's the very concept of free will if I'm not mistaken. I'm not saying that she had no reason to feel guilty but, for example, if Rosa went nuts and shot several people because she became paranoid and wanted to protect Maria, I am not going to blame that on Yasuda. Rosa pulled that trigger herself, not Yasuda.

If we trust Our Confession she wanted everyone to die, included the accomplices... through wanting someone to die and actually killing that person are pretty different things.

The world of the game board and Prime are not necessarily the same. But you're right, it does seem to imply that.

I think people killed, yes. However I like to think they didn't do it like the Tea Party said. In short I don't like the idea of someone voting for a massacre but I can very easily accept that the set up Yasuda created might have caused the adults to react in a dangerous way.

Pretend she actually told to... let's say Krauss that she had turned on the bomb. Krauss grabs a gun and threaten to shot her if she doesn't tell him how to turn it off. Genji tries to protect Yasuda not believing she really turned on the bomb, they fight, there's a shot and George is hit accidentally. Eva joins the party sees George dead and Krauss with a gun, thinks the worst and kill him. And you can go on and on, merely working on people's paranoia.

This is an interesting theory, and it seems that most people believe it (I could be wrong on that). I myself don't plan on subscribing to any theory about Yasuda's plan until I know what her motive was, but you're right when you say that this is definitely a possibility.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by Renall

Here's the thing though: Ryukishi didn't write the message bottle stories. Well, I mean he did, but he was writing them as another person. This person has not seen Battler, specifically, out of the rest of the whole family, in 6 years. Everyone else, this person has seen more recently.

I'm not entirely concerned with that, though. Even though Ryukishi is writing the games as though a specific character was doing the writing, I'm just ... sorta of the opinion that Ryukishi portrayed the pieces as they generally were in their actual lives. Yup, even, generally speaking, Kinzo's crazy ass, Natsuhi-doting EP5 portrayal aside.

I'll admit that it's somewhat unsubstantiated (I'm also that "pieces can only do what is possible for them" is the same as saying "If you write Jessica too out of character, Saku and co. will call bullshit on you", or something to that effect).


On the subject of morality - I'm also in the camp that thinks the characters hiding the truth were being selfish or amoral. My ethics is rusty, so I can't state it well, but it just seems to contrary to common sense. "Oh, shit, a bunch of people just died, except for that one living witness. Should we look into it, maybe? Nah, they're already dead, fuck it." If only we could be so cavalier in every instance of mysterious death.

There's also this general sentiment of "You awful, awful people! Trying to solve a crime, how dare you?!" that runs through alot of EP8. It's only the fact that there's no definitive truth that even allows the goats to continue making cruel speculations about the personalities of dead people, in the first place, as if to say, as well, that you can ONLY want to know the truth if you're an insensitive asshole.

Which brings me to the next thing - ever since EP6, wheresome sort of Author Theory became pretty apparent, I was waiting for a really good explanation of why someone started writing a series of published novels about these dead people, anyways. The public didn't think very much about the incident at all until the first forgery was found, and Ryukishi seems to be saying that Yasu / Tohya wrote all of the prominent ones, and all we really get is some half hearted line from Beato about "Oh, I guess they took my joke a little too seriously, oops."

Don't get the impression that I didn't ENJOY EP8, because I did, and the series as a whole, too. It's just, whenever the matter of "What the hell happened on the real world?" came up, I couldn't help but think "Okay ... ... what in blazes is this man trying to communicate? Because it's sounding awful fucking shady."

[Renall]

Her joke which exhorted people to "find the truth," no less.

Oh, but that wasn't directed at them! I mean when a random message in a bottle tells people who find it to "find the truth," what kind of fool would assume that the public should look for the truth? Or that it's somehow not the root of all evil to look for the truth when someone asked you to?

I don't doubt that there are awful speculative types out there, but the truth can silence them. Hiding the truth is actually conceding defeat to the goats, while also harming everyone the truth might actually help. Is that really better on the off chance someone might be harmed by the truth? Nevermind that if there was a murder, there's (at least) one person's reputation that deserves to be harmed by it.

[Misuzu]

Originally Posted by Toku

But we weren't shown "what would have happened if the Truth was revealed to everyone." Because we weren't shown this, we can't automatically conclude that "what happened because the Truth wasn't revealed to everyone" is automatically worse. It's possible that it was actually better.

She found peace by denying the Truth. [COLOR="Red"]Even after she found it, she denied it because it was too painful.

While I think the evidence does point to the truth being something ugly and painful (Eva's behavior), I think Ange would have denied any truth that wasn't "Eva is the culprit" or "your family is still alive". Not knowing the truth consumed her to the point she was willing to die to know it, no matter what that truth was.

For the record, I do think it's morally wrong to hide the truth in a situation like this, but my issue here is that Ryukishi seems to saying that hiding the truth is the right thing, but is demonstrating the opposite in his game. All theorizing aside, we're shown a character who is suicidal and completely consumed by not knowing the truth. We're shown a character who has a hateful relationship with her only family member, is erroneously believed to be a murderer, and has no real friends. We're shown a man haunted by the idea that his father is a criminal. Even though I disagree with it, I think Ryukishi could have made a strong argument for hiding the truth, but he didn't. I'm really curious why that is.

Originally Posted by Kealym

I'm not entirely concerned with that, though. Even though Ryukishi is writing the games as though a specific character was doing the writing, I'm just ... sorta of the opinion that Ryukishi portrayed the pieces as they generally were in their actual lives. Yup, even, generally speaking, Kinzo's crazy ass, Natsuhi-doting EP5 portrayal aside.

I think you're probably right. I would've preferred to see some discrepancy in how the characters were written based on who wrote them, since I think that adds a layer of interest to author theory. I agree that the characters are probably pretty close to what we saw, and the contradictions are because the people themselves are full of contradictions.

Originally Posted by Renall

Her joke which exhorted people to "find the truth," no less.

Oh, but that wasn't directed at them! I mean when a random message in a bottle tells people who find it to "find the truth," what kind of fool would assume that the public should look for the truth? Or that it's somehow not the root of all evil to look for the truth when someone asked you to?

I don't doubt that there are awful speculative types out there, but the truth can silence them. Hiding the truth is actually conceding defeat to the goats, while also harming everyone the truth might actually help. Is that really better on the off chance someone might be harmed by the truth? Nevermind that if there was a murder, there's (at least) one person's reputation that deserves to be harmed by it.

Stuff like this really makes me feel like Ryukishi changed his mind mid-game. I wonder what happened behind the scenes.

[GreyZone]

Originally Posted by Misuzu

While I think the evidence does point to the truth being something ugly and painful (Eva's behavior), I think Ange would have denied any truth that wasn't "Eva is the culprit" or "your family is still alive". Not knowing the truth consumed her to the point she was willing to die to know it, no matter what that truth was.

For the record, I do think it's morally wrong to hide the truth in a situation like this, but my issue here is that Ryukishi seems to saying that hiding the truth is the right thing, but is demonstrating the opposite in his game. All theorizing aside, we're shown a character who is suicidal and completely consumed by not knowing the truth. We're shown a character who has a hateful relationship with her only family member, is erroneously believed to be a murderer, and has no real friends. We're shown a man haunted by the idea that his father is a criminal. Even though I disagree with it, I think Ryukishi could have made a strong argument for hiding the truth, but he didn't. I'm really curious why that is.

No. Ange admits, that she wants to commit suicide when she knows the truth, even before having seen it. This was shown in EP8 when Ange fought Beato in the chapel to obtain the book of one truth.

In other words: Not knowing the truth, is the only thing, that keeps Ange alive. So as long as she is not mentally prepared for it, no one would like to tell her the truth.

And who knows... maybe if Ange stayed stubborn in EP8 and wouldn't give a damn about Tohya's brain damage problems, then maybe she could just ask him about the real truth in the café.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by GreyZone

No. Ange admits, that she wants to commit suicide when she knows the truth, even before having seen it. This was shown in EP8 when Ange fought Beato in the chapel to obtain the book of one truth.

In other words: Not knowing the truth, is the only thing, that keeps Ange alive. So as long as she is not mentally prepared for it, no one would like to tell her the truth.

What if seeing the truth changes her mind? Which, apparently, it does.

Just because people say they'll do one thing when x happens doesn't mean that's actually what they'll do when x happens, as the incidence of x may have altered their perspective on what they intend.

[Wanderer]

We don't even know what BATTLER was keeping from Ange. All we know is that he "knows the truth" which in the context of Umineko could mean a number of different things. I mean, does BATTLER himself even know what happened on Prime? Is it knowable? Is that it's not knowable the "truth"?

[GreyZone]

Maybe Battler doesn't really know what happened... after all everything that happened, only happened from his own perspective. On prime, i doubt that he overheard the conversation of the adults, maybe he didn't even witness any killings/deaths, or only some of them.

Maybe Battler found the tunnels early/solved the epitaph and got lost in the tunnels for the whole time so he didn't get to know anything...

Well what i want to say is, that maybe "The Truth" only means, what BATTLER wants Ange to believe in: "The truth is not important".

But... really that would be way too... well... cheesy.

[AuraTwilight]

I like to think that BATTLER is a construct of Ange's imagination, and he can't tell her anything she doesn't already know. But he doesn't want to admit that because then he'll smash the fuck out of him like she did to the Stakes in EP4.