[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Cao Ni Ma]

How old was Battler when Ikuko found him? Was it right after the accident or did some time pass?

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

I did actually, my reasoning is in Maria's thread if I remember correctly.

Another thing I found interesting was that Beatrice purposely holds back in ep 2. She says the first red statement right there in the episode but doesn't say the second one all the way till ep4. She could have shot down Battler and basically force him to surrender right there if she wanted to but if Battler was clever enough it would have resulted in him deducing the 2 possible scenarios.

Now with EP7 Will's denaument points that the most likely option was that it was never locked , which in my scenario incriminates Rosa. Now my problem lies with the mentioning of the "Golden Truth" in that particular scene when as far as I remember this wasnt used on the other ones. What made this particular case worthy of it and not the others?

So I just reviewed EP2. No one ever mentions anything about the chapel being locked in front of Battler, or even who was the first to discover the scene. In other words, Battler actually witnessed very little regarding the EP2 first twilight; all we really know is the red truth given to us, of which the only incrimination of Rosa is that she obtained the key from Maria's bag.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

How old was Battler when Ikuko found him? Was it right after the accident or did some time pass?

As far as I can tell it was right after the incident. If it wasn't... we'd have a hard time figuring out how he could have survived alone without being noticed or what other crazy individual took him home.

At any rate he claimed to be 18 years old and that's why he was called Tohya.

[Renall]

It has to have been fairly soon after the incident, though I'm not clear on exactly how soon. I mean she didn't fish him out of the water or anything.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

So I just reviewed EP2. No one ever mentions anything about the chapel being locked in front of Battler, or even who was the first to discover the scene. In other words, Battler actually witnessed very little regarding the EP2 first twilight; all we really know is the red truth given to us, of which the only incrimination of Rosa is that she obtained the key from Maria's bag.

She locks (maybe not?) the doors afterwards and walks back to the mansion, something Battler says triggers Rosa to say that the door was locked and it would have been impossible for the crimes to have been committed since the key was in Maria's possession all the time.

The problem is that Rosa apparently lies here, as the door was probably never locked to begin with. If she did lie the issue becomes "Why would she lie" the simplest and most probable answer is that she's in cahoots with whoever is killing everyone.

My problems with this is that Will uses a line like "the golden truth locks the lock of illusions" or something like that to describe this scene. My current hypothesis on the golden truth is that , using magic, you convert a painful truth into a more pleasant one. So who is Rosa covering for? "Beatrice", Herself or someone else?

[Renall]

Can the chapel door even be locked? It's depicted as such in a couple unobserved scenes, but I forget whether it's actually ever confirmed that it can be. At the very least, it appears to remain unlocked by default unless someone actively locks it.

Is it locked when Battler finds the keys there in ep4? Or does he never try?

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Renall

Can the chapel door even be locked? It's depicted as such in a couple unobserved scenes, but I forget whether it's actually ever confirmed that it can be. At the very least, it appears to remain unlocked by default unless someone actively locks it.

Is it locked when Battler finds the keys there in ep4? Or does he never try?

He tried:

I thought this might be someone telling me to open the door, but after trying all of the keys, I found that none of them fit

What he found in front of the door was probably a "master key" which of course doesn't have any key to open the chapel's door.

That still doesn't mean that in EP2 the door wasn't open to begin with or before Beatrice gave the letter to Maria.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Welp apparently Im wrong about this, I need to re-read ep4 sometime!

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

What he found in front of the door was probably a "master key" which of course doesn't have any key to open the chapel's door.

That still doesn't mean that in EP2 the door wasn't open to begin with or before Beatrice gave the letter to Maria.

Well, yes, but the presence of a master key there means the person who left it there could have locked the chapel. If Beatrice was expecting Battler to hurry back, she probably didn't want him messing around inside the chapel looking for Maria.

Or it could start locked, and was manually unlocked in ep2 on the 4th before it was ever given to Maria. Either way, it seems like a pretty obvious place to use as a hideout.

[AuraTwilight]

Is this from an interview or an interpretation of "without love it can't be seen"?
In the case of the latter I see it more like this:
If you have no love for the author, you'll doubt anything he throws at you and dismiss the parts you don't like as red herrings, traps, tricks or whatever.
If you have no love for the characters you ignore their personalities, relationships and such to make theories that please you the most.
Distrusting the author (like the popular saying Red is all lies) and ignoring character traits and such only eliminates all evidence and locks you in a game of your own.

That's not what he was saying at all, though. Please, stop putting words in my mouth. I'm specifically referring to his comments that to understand the culprit you need to understand a girl in love. MEANING THAT IT'S BASICALLY EITHER YASU OR JESSICA.

Well in that case we reached a dead end, because what I used as implications before you called utter conjecture.

Yea, conjuring information out of nowhere instead of from the text is conjecture.

What is wrong with fictionally externalising an emotional conflict in form of different characters? The interpersonal struggle can be seen as an externalisation of the several ideas of a possible solution that Yasu has. Were it something like "unshakable resolve" the problem would not be present from the very beginning.
Yes, at the point of EP2 Shannon absolutely wanted to be with George, Kanon absolutely wanted to protect Jessica and Beatrice absolutely wanted them apart, but that just combines to Yasu not being sure into which direction s/he should go.

....you're not getting it. That's NOT WHAT I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH. I don't know how I can explain this to you any better.

It really depends on how you interpret the idea of a fully functional personality. He repeated again and again, especially in EP6, that Shannon, Kanon and even Beatrice do not possess a complete soul and that the decision through the trial and duel of love are necessary to restore them back to one complete human being.

Hollywood MPD portrays personalities as being fragments of a person instead of a complete whole unto themselves. Therefor a person with three personalities would be like a soul divided into three parts.

Yes, Yasu created those characters to keep her company, but that doesn't make them personalities in a medical sense either. Would you say a child has MPD when she has an invisible friend? Or that a person living alone and talking to him/herself has MPD? It's just something you do because you're lonely.
And Yasu gave those individual feelings she had to the individual characters in her narrative...but I just don't see why that immediatly implies those characters being full fledged personalities.

You're right. But she acts as these personalities and dresses up in real life. Now is she just roleplaying, or giving her imaginary friends control of her body? This is the important distinction.

Or maybe I'm the real life Yasu for being able to understand many of those actions...
It's really not that difficult to create different personas for different actions and each of those getting different goals along the way...even without them doing anything you don't want.

Get your head out of your ass and stop being a condescending jerk. It's not that I don't understand Yasu's actions, what I'm confronting is Ryukishi's interpretation of her psychological nature. We have two major theories here: Is she a mentally and emotionally unstable escapist, or someone with a legitimate mental fracture?

And this is where I lose you? Where does it change the themes?
The theme is that through love you are able to conquer even the most horrible reality, but at the same time hiding away reality can hurt people just as much. Another theme is that any notion of truth is subjective, because truth only exists in the very moment something happens and is distorted immediatly afterwards by emotions, memories, intentions and so on.
What exactly changes about Yasu's characterization if it is all just an inner conflict? Because I don't see it as a conflict of personalities...

Really? You don't see the difference between one person being unable to make up her mind, and three people fighting for control of a body?

To use analogy, you don't see the difference between a man struggling with an inner urge to do evil, and someone possessed by a supernatural demon?

「犯人はヤス」, yes. But between 犯人 and 人殺し there is a huge difference I think, at least within Ryûkishi's works.

Umineko isn't Higurashi; in Umineko he atleast ATTEMPTS to fit the actual Mystery genre. He even said in an earlier interview that he wouldn't resort to that sort of definitions trick.

Originally Posted by Renall

I don't think your boyfriend would approve of that.

I'm Yasu, remember? I can have as many boyfriends as I want plus a girlfriend.

Originally Posted by Renall

Well... why not? They have a pretty close working relationship and he was kind of a lech in his previous incarnation.

Unless she's actually Beatrice or Maria or something, then that would be a pretty good reason why not. Or his Stake of Purgatory can't gouge anymore, if you follow me.

Or ASUMU or Maria. I don't think Battler really minds boning Beatrice.

[Bluemail]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Or ASUMU or Maria. I don't think Battler really minds boning Beatrice.

So, has the Asumu theory been disproven in EP8? They say she's Hachijo Ikuko, but was there something suggesting it couldn't be a fake name? They probably don't act like that at all in EP8, but I couldn't know as I haven't read to the end yet. I'm not really serious about this, but perhaps Asumu is behind all this and WANTS the blame on Kyrie, while publishing bestsellers about her late family's fate. She could be considered a girl in love too. :P

[Renall]

Pretty much anything substantive about her can be filled in with a long string of question marks, so who really knows?

[AuraTwilight]

Same can be said about Ikuko, too. Both of them are pretty much big ol' blanks, except one of them has a face. A face that DOESN'T AGE.

[Jan-Poo]

That's just Ryuukishi being lazy. It's not like Battler's face "aged" in any way, just the hair color changed and Ikuko probably died hers like most women of that age do.

Natsuhi is another notable example of a face that didn't age a bit in 19 years. She supposedly had about 30 years when she rejected Lion and in 1986 she is about 50 and still looks the same.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Really? You don't see the difference between one person being unable to make up her mind, and three people fighting for control of a body?

To use analogy, you don't see the difference between a man struggling with an inner urge to do evil, and someone possessed by a supernatural demon?

Let me turn that sideways a little. If a man writes a story about being possessed by a supernatural demon, does that mean he's actually possessed by a supernatural demon, or that he's struggling with an inner urge to do evil?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Let me turn that sideways a little. If a man writes a story about being possessed by a supernatural demon, does that mean he's actually possessed by supernatural demon, or that he's struggling with an inner urge to do evil?

You'd have to ask the demon.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

That's not what he was saying at all, though. Please, stop putting words in my mouth. I'm specifically referring to his comments that to understand the culprit you need to understand a girl in love. MEANING THAT IT'S BASICALLY EITHER YASU OR JESSICA.

And I think he's really leaving it out in the open what the actual truth of Rokkenjima is. He even comments on how even a Battler culprit theory can still not be ruled out 100%.
Of course the culprit of at least 3 if not all 4 of the first Episodes is probably Yasu, because EP1 and 2 is how she imagined it could go and 3 and 4 is how Tôya assumed it went based on his memory and the message bottles.

Yea, conjuring information out of nowhere instead of from the text is conjecture.

Okay, you call it conjuring, I call it interpretation of metaphors. Yes, the text doesn't spell it out, but it does not mean that it cannot be found within the text.

Hollywood MPD portrays personalities as being fragments of a person instead of a complete whole unto themselves. Therefor a person with three personalities would be like a soul divided into three parts.

Here I'm still with you and agree with you. There is...or at least was a very common trope in fiction to handle MPD like that, even though I stumbled upon it less and less. But...

You're right. But she acts as these personalities and dresses up in real life. Now is she just roleplaying, or giving her imaginary friends control of her body? This is the important distinction.

This is where I just don't agree with you. We have no reason to believe that she was actually dressing up to play roles in real life, that is outside of any of the stories, at any point. We can assume that she went around the mansion covered with a white bedsheet to pretend to be a ghost, maybe there even was a Beatrice costume...but there is no evidence that she ever actively switched between her Kanon and Shannon roles in real life.
The only point that ever adresses something like that is, that there was an ungendered "boy" accompanying Jessica at the school festival. But that doesn't actually prove that Yasu was Kanon the whole time.

I think what we might be disagreeing on is in how far there is even any part of actual reality portrayed in the narratives within the narrative and which parts are actually purely metaphorical.
The problem is that this is something we cannot actually solves, because the text doesn't give actual preference to either interpretation.

We have two major theories here: Is she a mentally and emotionally unstable escapist, or someone with a legitimate mental fracture?

For me it's pretty clear it's the former, because we have no actual reason to believe that she was that mentally fractured that she would be recognized as a potent danger to herself and her environment. I understand your anger that Ryûkishi does not make it perfectly clear which one it is (if I understand you right at this point), but it works within the narrative, even though it is not perfectly in line with reality.

Which brings me to a short question I have.
Why should a mystery be realistic? I think it doesn't have to be at all...it only has to be logical within the boundaries of it's own narrative structure. I have often read during the course of Umineko's run, that people complain about the story not being realistic...but I want to ask, does it have to be?!
I don't think this is a question of right or wrong...I'm just curious.

Really? You don't see the difference between one person being unable to make up her mind, and three people fighting for control of a body?

To use analogy, you don't see the difference between a man struggling with an inner urge to do evil, and someone possessed by a supernatural demon?

In the end, if you approach it from a literary point of view, no, there is not really any difference. Of course if it happened in real life you would have to argue where those other "people" are coming from. Wasn't the urge to do forbidden things explained as "the devil's whisper" in former times? And aren't good and evil intentions often narratively externalised as an angel and a devil on someone's shoulders?

Of course, if any of the stories within Umineko had been realistic, objective portrayals of the events on Rokkenjima, than there would be a huge difference. But because you can argue that it is just a matter of metaphors, there is just not that much of a difference.
But again, this is something we possibly just can't agree on because it seems our grasp of Umineko on a narrative level seems to be too different.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Let me turn that sideways a little. If a man writes a story about being possessed by a supernatural demon, does that mean he's actually possessed by a supernatural demon, or that he's struggling with an inner urge to do evil?

So basically you are suggesting that the true "yasu" didn't have any personality disorder and just "imagined" to have one and that's s/he wrote the situation.

The problem is that then we have no possible way to understand what the true situation of yasu's mind was with certainty because all we got about that person is a bunch of fantasies. Doing reverse engineering is a bit hard and could lead to many different equally probable possibilities.

In addition there's the evidence that AT often points to and that's how Ryuukishi explained the situation in his interview. I don't think he was talking about a mere fantasy there but the real explanation behind Yasu's behaviour.

[AuraTwilight]

That's just Ryuukishi being lazy. It's not like Battler's face "aged" in any way, just the hair color changed and Ikuko probably died hers like most women of that age do.

Er, no, I'm referring to the text implying that Ikuko seems to be ageless.

Let me turn that sideways a little. If a man writes a story about being possessed by a supernatural demon, does that mean he's actually possessed by a supernatural demon, or that he's struggling with an inner urge to do evil?

Is the guy writing this purporting this story as truth? What about if we go meta and the author of the story about the guy writing a story about himself being possessed issues Word of God that he's possessed?

And I think he's really leaving it out in the open what the actual truth of Rokkenjima is. He even comments on how even a Battler culprit theory can still not be ruled out 100%.
Of course the culprit of at least 3 if not all 4 of the first Episodes is probably Yasu, because EP1 and 2 is how she imagined it could go and 3 and 4 is how Tôya assumed it went based on his memory and the message bottles.

You're mixing things up again.

Okay, you call it conjuring, I call it interpretation of metaphors. Yes, the text doesn't spell it out, but it does not mean that it cannot be found within the text.

You made some VERY SPECIFIC STATEMENTS AND INTERPRETATIONS that aren't implied, not simply making general interpretations as a whole.

This is where I just don't agree with you. We have no reason to believe that she was actually dressing up to play roles in real life, that is outside of any of the stories, at any point. We can assume that she went around the mansion covered with a white bedsheet to pretend to be a ghost, maybe there even was a Beatrice costume...but there is no evidence that she ever actively switched between her Kanon and Shannon roles in real life.
The only point that ever adresses something like that is, that there was an ungendered "boy" accompanying Jessica at the school festival. But that doesn't actually prove that Yasu was Kanon the whole time.

If Kanon and Shannon weren't actual characters she acted out, then pretty much everything about Yasu's character is invalidated, because it means that her romances with George and Jessica probably never happened either.

At the very least, it invalidates all of the Games as tools to discerning the truth.

I think what we might be disagreeing on is in how far there is even any part of actual reality portrayed in the narratives within the narrative and which parts are actually purely metaphorical.
The problem is that this is something we cannot actually solves, because the text doesn't give actual preference to either interpretation.

When Ryukishi was making the statements I was addressing, he was speaking in the context of 'reality'. Pandering to the distinction of reality and fantasy isn't going to help you.

For me it's pretty clear it's the former, because we have no actual reason to believe that she was that mentally fractured that she would be recognized as a potent danger to herself and her environment. I understand your anger that Ryûkishi does not make it perfectly clear which one it is (if I understand you right at this point), but it works within the narrative, even though it is not perfectly in line with reality.

My problem is that if we take it purely on the basis of what the narrative states, she's clearly a roleplayer. It's only Ryukishi's statements which very emphatically imply that he is misunderstanding Multiple Personality Disorder, and given how much it seems my aunt seems to have inspired him, I'm finding it very difficult to think that he feels otherwise.

Which brings me to a short question I have.
Why should a mystery be realistic? I think it doesn't have to be at all...it only has to be logical within the boundaries of it's own narrative structure. I have often read during the course of Umineko's run, that people complain about the story not being realistic...but I want to ask, does it have to be?!
I don't think this is a question of right or wrong...I'm just curious.

Fuck this attitude. If a mystery can't comply to the basic tenets of reality or believable psychology then it's fucking horseshit. You might as well say a witch did it because you're not presenting a puzzle based on logic and understanding of human ingenious like the mystery genre is all about.

But this is getting onto a completely different topic: Ryukishi wrote a shitty mystery regardless of the merits of his story.

In the end, if you approach it from a literary point of view, no, there is not really any difference.

You have just said there is no literary difference between two entirely different interpretations of a character that change their core personality and essence.

I'm fucking done with you, you don't know what you're talking about.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

If Kanon and Shannon weren't actual characters she acted out, then pretty much everything about Yasu's character is invalidated, because it means that her romances with George and Jessica probably never happened either.

Because of what reason?! Because somebody can't have feelings for several people at once?
You can accept people meeting their dead father, who then summons bunnygirls from hell who shoot golden laserbeams and fancy demons who can make you drop through holes...but you can't accept the portrayed relationship of Shannon/George and Kanon/Jessica as being metaphorical?

I know you are "fucking done with me"...damn take a chill pill...but on the one hand saying "Yeah, the stories are a metaphorical mystery with a witch standing in for the culprit" and on the other hand saying "everything else is solid truth" just doesn't seem helpful.

At the very least, it invalidates all of the Games as tools to discerning the truth.

Why does it?! There are several people who arrived at the truth that Ryûkishi prepared as it seems.

Fuck this attitude. If a mystery can't comply to the basic tenets of reality or believable psychology then it's fucking horseshit. You might as well say a witch did it because you're not presenting a puzzle based on logic and understanding of human ingenious like the mystery genre is all about.

"Like the mystery genre is all about"?! I know you probably won't care if I disagree, but since when is logic and realism the same thing?
If I would create a mystery which is set in a fantasy setting that has it's own set of rules...as long as I explain them and they follow a coherent logic, it remains a logic puzzle.
Aren't most mysteries based on absolutely unconvincing human behaviour? The scope of rational and realistic human behaviour is limited...so you have to extend that scope. The same is true for settings and other things.
Just like it was implied in Umineko, "there was no roof", "he hid the corpse in a picnic basket who was carried outside by an unknowing witness", "he closed the window after he was shot because he wanted to protect the culprit"...those might fail as explanations if you're aiming for realism, but as long as it's implied within the story it is logical within the narrative universe.
And thus, as Shkannontrice combining into one person was something that can be found hinted within the text, I would regard it as logical within the narrative frame of Umineko.

You have just said there is no literary difference between two entirely different interpretations of a character that change their core personality and essence.

No, I just said that in fiction one thing can be an explanation for the other. They can be equal within a fictional frame even though they might actually be two different things.
There are two spiritual entities fighting over dominance of one body, can be a metaphor for a character being indecisive about wether he should be good or evil. A character being indecisive can later turn out to be rooted in the fact that there are two entities living within that one body...but that is just yet again a metaphor for being indecisive. In the end it burns down to the same thing, a character is indecisive...one is the psychological, one is the parapsychological explanation. It does not have to change the interpretation or the personality of a character at all, does it?!

Is the guy writing this purporting this story as truth? What about if we go meta and the author of the story about the guy writing a story about himself being possessed issues Word of God that he's possessed?

Then he has given you his personal truth about what happened in his story, it's not like you can't draw your own conclusion. The author is not God. He might be the Lord (if he stay within the boundaries of Umineko's terms) of his personal narrative realm, but it's not like his interpretation of his own story is any more valid than the readers'. I'm not talking about the plot he gave us, I'm talking about an interpretation of a plot.