[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I remember Stephen King saying that 10 pages a day is a lot, and he is one of the most prolific writers of our time.


You could still suppose that Beatrice left a few blanc spaces in advance that she could fill later. But that's hard to do without making it obvious. If it was made with a pc and a printer it would be a different story...

I wouldn't say that it is as hard to write more.
1) You have to imagine that what King is writing is rather high quality fiction (wether you like it or not) that has to fullfil a certain standard of his writing. Yasu'd probably be just writing for pleasure in the beginning. When I was writing more often (can't do it right now) and would just write to get some ideas down I would easily manage to get 20-30 pages during a day.
2) The story was said to be written in a diary style, crammed on each page. So it's probable that she was using a bullet point style, which makes it much easier to write, as you don't have to consider as much every time.
3) 20-30 pages are quite a lot if you try pushing them into a bottle, especially a wine bottle. I don't know if Ryûkishi tested this so maybe he got this one wrong (though he'd had to be quite stupid) but even if you insert them one after another, there is a certain limit to what you can actually fill in.
4) All the mysteries in the stories (locked room, character constellations, tricks) are probably even copied from famous novels in Umineko's world. I couldn't imagine that Christie's works exist but all the others not.
5) None of the characters are actually made up for the story, even if the fantasy characters were included they would have been created by Maria and Yasu already.

I'm also quite fond of the idea that most of the stories weren't conceived on the days before the incident but already floated in Yasu's mind because of the stories she had read...she just made them more fitting to the current situation.

[Jan-Poo]

20-30 pages in a single day? You probably didn't do much else I guess. Why would Shannon do that the day Battler returned to Rokkenjima? While organizing some kind of game and pretending to be a servant in the meantime? And then writing some more while people are killing each other.

I still think it's extremely improbable.

[Wanderer]

Here's a page I found that might help with the discussion regarding writing speed.

And here is a compilation of hurricane weather reports in the United States from 1984. Note how precise the precipitation radar images are.

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

Well if RK is to be believed, the numbers in names was used to misdirect. At least when it came to Shannon's and Kanon's real names, he mentions the reason why he chose them wasnt really the numbers. Who's to say he isnt doing it here as well?.

I know this post was from a while ago, but when and where did RK07 say this?

[Jan-Poo]

Note how precise the precipitation radar images are.

I think it would be more interesting to know how many days earlier they can predict a typhoon course.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Here's a page I found that might help with the discussion regarding writing speed.

And here is a compilation of hurricane weather reports in the United States from 1984. Note how precise the precipitation radar images are.



I know this post was from a while ago, but when and where did RK07 say this?

It was in that last interview with Keiya, he asked something like "Is there a connection to the name Sayo and Yoshiya aside from seeing numbers in them". He said there was and it was similar to the number theory but that he rather not reveal it.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Because she wouldn't of held the murder mystery game if he didn't come back, and if the game wasn't held, no one can use it as a coverup for their crimes.

*nods* Also the siblings wouldn't be so desperate for money, if it were to happen a year earlier, they wouldn't be so suspicious about Kinzo's death and therefore wouldn't feel like Krauss was tricking them.
I can't really predict what would have happened if Battler had returned a year later, I guess Yasu assumed that, since she wouldn't challenge them to solve the epitaph or to the mystery game they would manage to handle their financial problems with other means that didn't include murder and, by the next year, they still wouldn't have been in the mindset to kill anyone (though while I can believe she can guess what would have happened if Battler had happened a year sooner it would be harder to guess what would have happened if he had turned a year later).

[Jan-Poo]

K Let’s go on to the real names of Kanon and Shannon, was there any meaning in their names, Yoshiya and Sayo? Apart from being able to see numbers in them.

R It’s quite close to the number theory, but I would rather not reveal it.

If it's not about numbers then it should be about pronounce, other meanings, or similar.

Well everyone said from start that Yoshiya could be read as Yoshua, but what that's supposed to mean?

[Renall]

The issue with the writing is it doesn't seem very consistent overall, so we're left with no obvious guideline from Ryukishi:

• Ep1 says the story told of the events, so it must be at least a summary that an average person not associated with the story (a cop, a Witch Hunter) could read and grasp the narrative.
• Ep4 flat-out describes the amount of writing as "massive," as Jan-Poo notes. "Massive" is a strange word to use, and even if it's mistranslated, Ootsuki surely must've meant "a lot of writing," more than he would have expected from a message in a bottle (which, in traditional imagining, is usually like one page or so).
• Yet other sources (manga, anime, etc.) portray the bottle as fairly small and the number of pages as fairly limited. Even taking the novel's claim that it was crammed onto every page, you can only have so much there.
• There's physical limits. Jan-Poo discussed how time-consuming it is to write, and even if you have a great idea hand writing something takes more time than typing it. If parts were written at later dates or times, surely someone like Ootsuki would've noticed that and commented on it.
• This is silly too, but it's relevant: It's a message in a bottle. I've seen some large bottles, but the average bottle a person is going to have access to is going to be a medicine bottle or a wine bottle or a soda bottle. These cannot hold large amounts of anything, let alone paper. While much larger bottles do exist in the world, you'd pretty much have to track one (or more!) down quite deliberately to serve as your message-carrier if you had enough pages in there. And even then, you'd have to make sure the pages aren't so heavy that the buoyancy of the bottle is lost.

I don't know if we'd ever get a straight answer that satisfies all of these problems.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

If it's not about numbers then it should be about pronounce, other meanings, or similar.

Well everyone said from start that Yoshiya could be read as Yoshua, but what that's supposed to mean?

Ive mentioned it before but I really like the whole Jesus thing.

Yoshiwa- Yoshoua- Another of Jesus Name
Sayo- Yaso - Archaic Jesus
Yasu- Iasu- Iesu- Current Jesus (Precedence for e=a, Enje is pronounced Ange)
Lion- Leeon- Leone- Lion of Judah- Another name for Jesus (His emblem is a Lion soooo)

I always found that that the scene with Maria describing her perceived symbolism with her name kinda strange. Why did she use Immanuel instead of the far more common Jesus? Immanuel is used only once in the new testament. RK07 did his research and used the least common name to mask other symbolism.


e- Also Shannon and Kanon are both religious in nature as well. Shannon meaning "Graced by God" and Kanon being a form of Canon "An official of the Church"

[Jan-Poo]

I think "massive" is relative to what you would expect a person to be able to write in one or two days, since Ootsuki uses that to justify his disbelief on that. Also I think that "bulky" is probably a more direct translation, but it leads to the same conclusion.

As for the bottle I think it's probably a wine bottle. I believe you could fit in as much as 60 pages inside one depending on how thick the paper is. That's an important variable. I have books that have about the same number of pages but one is more than twice as thick as the other.

[Renall]

If you start getting into specific materials requirements, the idea that these things would be dashed off in a hurry gets pretty questionable.

And notebook paper can be pretty thick relative to the stuff some books are printed on. To say nothing of some sort of diary/writing/calligraphy paper.

[Jan-Poo]

If you start getting into specific materials requirements, the idea that these things would be dashed off in a hurry gets pretty questionable.

Well, that's my point... In my opinion everything suggests there was a lot of preplanning.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Well, that's my point... In my opinion everything suggests there was a lot of preplanning.

Or post-planning!

[AuraTwilight]

Or side-planning!

[Jan-Poo]

Well Renall, asuming you are right Beatrice would have had at least two years to plan everything. Of course that would be "post-incident" but still pre-planning ^^;

Anyway I decided to try how many sheets of paper I could fit inside a bottle, for science!

I din't have a wine bottle so I used a 1 lt. plastic water bottle. the height is more or less the same and the aperture is more or less as wide.

I used normal A4 printer sheets.

One thing I could confirm is that an A4 sheets is a little shorter than a regular bottle, that means you can roll it vertically and that saves a lot of space.

I tried with 10 pages first. It was feasible but not really easy.

I tried with 20 pages next. It's practically impossible. I used as much strenght that I could but it simply couldn't fit. Maybe using some kind of instrument or tool you can squeeze them better, but that's definitely not something you can do with a human strenght alone.

I tried to remove pages until I managed to squeeze 14 pages inside. It was hella hard and I ruined the pages in the process.

That being said, you can probably write a lot on A4 sheet supposing you can write very small and on both sides. There are also probably slimmer pages than what I used, and Beatrice probably used a smaller format than A4.

Still I think that my first assumption was way too optimistic. I'd say 40 pages at max with the best conditions. 30 to be realistic.


P.S. While doing all that I couldn't help to think how funny it would have been if Beatrice wrote her stories first and then only later noticed that they wouldn't fit in a bottle.

[AuraTwilight]

Beatrice got her stories to fit in the bottles with magic! With her Endless Magic, Beatrice could fit endless pages rolled into a bottle if she wanted to! Uu!

[rogerpepitone]

Jan Poo: What if you insert the pages a few sheets at a time, and let them expand after inserting them. The diameter of the opening doesn't matter, but the diameter of the bottle as a whole does.

[Jan-Poo]

Then again if the pages are short you don't need to make them pass all at once and you can take advantage of the fact a bottle is a lot larger in the bottom. You can use duct tape to make them stay rolled up and so on.

It's technically feasible I think, but nothing suggests Beatrice used that method from any kind of image available.

EDIT: Ninjaed by roger. Yeah as you said you can definitely increase the number of pages you can insert if you don't do them in a single roll.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

• No one ever called Kawabata to come early. If the phones or radio actually were working, why didn't they? If they weren't working, what happened to them?

So we at least know there must have been a storm, otherwise Kawabata would've come on Sunday as he usually tried to do. We also know it wasn't some apocalyptic storm, because Kawabata could have come if he really tried to, but decided to hold off (as he'd apparently done a few times before when it was stormy). Finally, we know he had no contact with anyone on the island from the time he left on the morning of the 4th to the time he showed up to the island on the morning of the 6th, at least none he'll admit to.

The main things of interest here are that nobody called (which is odd no matter what scenario you dream up), and perhaps more interesting to me, unless Kawabata is lying, nobody had any control over his actions.

Think about this from the perspective of Yasu-as-murderer with plans to detonate the bomb on the night of the 5th/6th. Assume Kawabata is telling the truth, and he could've come on the 5th if he really wanted to. What would've happened if he had? How could she have prevented it? Kawabata never mentions he couldn't come, just that he decided not to. His boat wasn't broken or anything like you'd think somebody would try to do if they absolutely didn't want him showing up.

Well, if the siblings never urged Kawabata to come get them they either:

• Didn't believe themselves in danger and were in no hurry to leave (the adults knew what was going on was merely a mystery game or no murder had taken place because they solved the epitaph first... or murders began to happen on such a fast pace and in a way that made impossible for others to realize someone was being killed [if people were all murdered in their sleep or out of earshot and eyesight no one would notice people being killed])
• Didn't want to ask for help because they were involved in something not legal (hiding Kinzo's death, murdering someone by incident, murdering someone by purpose, hiding the discovery of the gold)
• Believed they couldn't (if Genji had told them the line was broken it's possible they would trust him and not check it by themselves)
• Believed someone HAD called Kuwabata (the culprit could have said he phoned Kuwabata/the police asking for help and merely faking the phone call)
• Really couldn't do it (because someone or the typhoon had really cut the phone line)
• Being told not to by someone who represented the authority (if in the first twilight all the adults minus one were killed/believed to be killed the remaining adult would be the master and free to order servants and kids. Sure, telling them not to call would be suspicious and they could disobey the order but he could offer random reason A to persuade them to obey/to wait in calling the police... though I deem it would be rather hard for this to work)

I tried to check the times used in the games to discover if there was a recurring pattern either in the happening of the start of the murders or in the discovery of the gold but we've no such luck. Anyway, if you're curious...

About the murders:

In Ep 1 & 2 the first 6 corpses are found around 6:00 Am of Oct 5.
Ep 3 also keeps the first 6 corpses being discovered after 6 Am
Ep 4 instead said the first 6 murders took place between 22:00 PM and 22:40 Pm of Oct 4. The phone call warning the siblings about them should have taken place short after 22:40 PM. Since likely things went in a very different way from what we were shown I'm not sure the murders really took place around this time.
Ep 5 didn't really give us the time for the murders as Erika's assumptions that the 'victims' were discovered around 7:00AM and killed in a time that goes from 24:00 and 1:00 AM was proved to be wrong. Krauss should have been killed just after the phonecall so after 7:00 AM... but likely the others were killed later...
Ep 6 try to make it looks like murders took place short after 24:00. It's unknown when they really took place.
Ep 7 have the murders take place after midnight. Battler was seen last time likely after 12:30 AM (George and Jessica had their 'test' around midnight, Battler around half a hour after them)

About finding the gold:

In Ep 3 it happens at around 10 Am of Oct 5
In Ep 5 it happens after 10:00 PM and before 10:47PM of Oct 4
In Ep 7 it happens after dinner and after George has declared to Shannon but before midnight.

On 5 oct the boat was expected to come at 9:00AM of the day after.

About the explosion:

Ep 7 said the explosion is supposed to happen at midnight.

I could try and say that the gold was discovered before midnight and murders started after it but it'll probably be just a wild guessing.

Anyway if someone can work out something from those datas I'll be curious to know.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

There is another fact that implies the typhoon was real. Erika Furudo is a person that really existed and that was sailing in a pleasure boat on that day. She never returned and everyone assumed she died because it was simply crazy to sail on those conditions.

It was only several years later after the witch hunt phenomenon exploded that someone suggested she somehow drifted to Rokkenjima.

Given all that I think it is very improbable that the typhoon is a lie.

Probably the typhoon really took place, though it's possible the police didn't really bother to check the intensity of it.
The message bottles were discharged as false because they didn't include Eva's survival so I doubt the police really took time to check if they described the typhoon and the rain and wind intensity exactly.
Also it's possible the messages just says 'it started raining around (insert time)' and maybe 'during day 5 it was raining too' and that's all.

After all it's unlikely the typhoon was the main topic of the messages, at best it was just background information.