[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[AuraTwilight]

Well, they still Kakera with a future and everything, so i'd consider them real.

Are they, honestly? Time was stopped in the kakera of EP6 and it was never restarted. The kakera of EP5 was concluded, and it was mentioned how the police will never show up because time would never progress to that point.

And most damning of all, the witch playing the role of Gamemaster controls the thoughts, actions, and destiny of the people in that kakera, to the degree that if Battler in EP5 gives an idea, it's because Bern told him to say it. It's not at all comparable to Higurashi because in Umineko everything that happens is dictated entirely by the wills of two people.

[FirstTwilight]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Are they, honestly? Time was stopped in the kakera of EP6 and it was never restarted. The kakera of EP5 was concluded, and it was mentioned how the police will never show up because time would never progress to that point.

And most damning of all, the witch playing the role of Gamemaster controls the thoughts, actions, and destiny of the people in that kakera, to the degree that if Battler in EP5 gives an idea, it's because Bern told him to say it. It's not at all comparable to Higurashi because in Umineko everything that happens is dictated entirely by the wills of two people.

So what's your idea of ep 1-4 gameboards? Are they just fictions?

I really don't like it, because it kinda nullifies so many emotions and things...

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

So what's your idea of ep 1-4 gameboards? Are they just fictions?

I really don't like it, because it kinda nullifies so many emotions and things...

What do you mean?
Umineko is a fiction to us anyway already.
Every anime/novels/VN/movie/etc are fictions.
Does it nullify all about them?

Higurashi might not be a fiction within it's own story, but it remains a fiction nontheless.
In Umineko even if author theory was somehow wrong, Umineko in itself would remain a fiction for us.

So what's the difference uh?


I am very much hoping that this is obvious.

[Revelation]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

So what's the difference uh?

It breaks away at the suspension of disbelief ever so slightly. For me, it's much harder to invest in the emotions and characters on the game board when the fiction itself continues to build a multitude of thick walls to distance me away from the original impact.

Oh well, Umineko wouldn't make much sense to me any other way.

[Leafsnail]

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

So what's your idea of ep 1-4 gameboards? Are they just fictions?

I really don't like it, because it kinda nullifies so many emotions and things...

Yeah, I'm afraid to say the entirety of Umineko no Naku Koro ni is fictional. You could've saved yourself the grief if you just read the disclaimer at the start, though.

...Really, I don't see how it changes anything. This bunch of people really did go to this island, and they almost certainly were murdered there, before afterwards being caught in a strange sortof limbo. Sure, you'd be reading reflections of the truth, but the event you were reading about happened.

[FirstTwilight]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

Yeah, I'm afraid to say the entirety of Umineko no Naku Koro ni is fictional. You could've saved yourself the grief if you just read the disclaimer at the start, though.

...Really, I don't see how it changes anything. This bunch of people really did go to this island, and they almost certainly were murdered there, before afterwards being caught in a strange sortof limbo. Sure, you'd be reading reflections of the truth, but the event you were reading about happened.

Because
1) 90% of the series would be filler.

2) The characters are fictional, but they are "real" in their universe. Don't pretend you don't feel sad/anger/hate for fictional characters and for what they go trough. If everything is fiction in fiction, then these characters struggles and sufferings didn't even matter in their universe.

Take Beato's death in ep V.
It was sad and everyone bawww'ed, then it turns out it never happened in the game universe, it becomes completely pointless and nullifies whatever emotional connection i had with the character or the events.

[Leafsnail]

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

Because
1) 90% of the series would be filler.

On the same logic, 90% of every mystery novel is filler. Why don't they just tell us exactly what happened at the start? It'd save a lot of time.

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

2) The characters are fictional, but they are "real" in their universe. Don't pretend you don't feel sad/anger/hate for fictional characters and for what they go trough. If everything is fiction in fiction, then these characters struggles and sufferings didn't even matter in their universe.

I do, and I don't see why a double fictional character is any different. Especially when what the double fictional character goes through is representative of what the single fictional character went through.

[FirstTwilight]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

On the same logic, 90% of every mystery novel is filler. Why don't they just tell us exactly what happened at the start? It'd save a lot of time.

But 90% of a mystery novel happened in the novel itself.
Ep1-7 never happened. That's the point. I'm not only talking about the mystery, i'm talking about everything.

I do, and I don't see why a double fictional character is any different. Especially when what the double fictional character goes through is representative of what the single fictional character went through.

What are you even talking about?
I'm talking about character development, the characters sufferings and their struggles. These thing never happened in the game universe itself. Why would i even care? All that happened was Battler sitting on a chair and writing fanfiction about his family.

Battler struggle to find the truth? Never happened!
Lion being Clair last salvation? Never happened!
Meta-Beatrice suffering? Never happened!
Ange getting Burgered for her brother? Never happened!
I could go on for hours.

[Leafsnail]

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

But 90% of a mystery novel happened in the novel itself.
Ep1-7 never happened. That's the point. I'm not only talking about the mystery, i'm talking about everything.

They did happen, in a way. They were written by one of the characters who knew what happened.

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

Battler struggle to find the truth? Never happened!

Uh... so that wasn't what he was doing when writing the stories?

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

Lion being Clair last salvation? Never happened!

Yasu fantasizing about a world where she hadn't gone down that path? Happened.

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

Meta-Beatrice suffering? Never happened!

Yasu suffering? Happened,

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

Ange getting Burgered for her brother? Never happened!

Ange being ripped apart by her brother's refusal to come back to her? Happened.

[FirstTwilight]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

They did happen, in a way. They were written by one of the characters who knew what happened.

No, they didn't. They are nothing but pieces of a paper inside a bottle..

Uh... so that wasn't what he was doing when writing the stories?

Sitting on a chair and making stuffs with Ikuko. HOLY SHIT BATTLER, MUST HAVE BEEN HARD.
But wait, that's not even Battler. It's Toya. And Toya and Ikuko already knew the truth.

Yasu fantasizing about a world where she hadn't gone down that path? Happened.

But that's it. A fantasy. Lion character never had any "feelings". Lion and Will struggle at the end of ep VII didn't have any significance. Lion didn't have any "debt" toward the other 2 000 000 Lions. Clair never meet Lion. Clair never was in meta. Clair never suffered. Clair never tried to hide the truth. Yasu didn't experience any of these things.

Shkanontrice drowned or something and died. The end.

Yasu suffering? Happened,

Sure, but Beato sufferings are completely different things. She was repeatedly dickslaped, tortured and denied by the man she loved, she was the tool for two powerful witches. and died without knowing she archived victory. Bern even pointed it in ep VII, about how much Yasu suffered as Beato.

Ange being ripped apart by her brother's refusal to come back to her? Happened.

Uh? Also, are you really comparing...? You are taking the emotional attachment of a scene and adding it to another scene.

[Jan-Poo]

What bothers me the most is the whole thing about Ange and her "don't give up to the witch Onii-chan!" which makes absolutely no sense since for the real Ange in Rokkenjima Prime the fictional battle of his fictional brother against fictional riddles has absolutely no impact on her life and on her chance to see her real brother again.

[Renall]

On a "real" level, nothing happened. There is no Rokkenjima. There was never a mansion there. The Ushiromiya family presented in the story never existed. They never lived. They never died. Ange is not alive today. We of course implicitly understand this because it's fiction. It's, as someone said, suspension of disbelief. It's "real" within the "reality" of the story: Rokkenjima-Prime, as we've styled it, this true-fiction universe we see shadows of on the wall of the cave.

So why is it suddenly less impactful what happens in these stories just because they didn't happen in R-Prime either? Was the impact of The Princess Bride destroyed in the movie by the addition of a framing story that casts the action in the film as being a story a grandfather is reading to his grandson? Why should it be? Why should we be more mad at a Beatrice who killed "real people" than at one who killed people in a story? Neither of those groups of people really exist anyway!

If you think this somehow changes things, why do you think that? Is the only layer of a fiction that matters the topmost one, the one closest to our layer of reality? What would you make of a book like House of Leaves, where every layer of fiction necessarily relates to the others? What about "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" where fictional reality becomes more real than reality? What do you make of a book actually based on a true story... that's a wholly fictional non-real representation of wholly real events! Enough to make your head spin.

Why would it be different?

[Frisko]

Higurashi established the existence of the multiverse, and the "???" in Alliance established that it was quite large. So even if all of the games are fanfiction written by Battler, they could very well depict events that are real in other universes.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Renall

On a "real" level, nothing happened.

What really happened is that a guy wrote a fiction. Then his readers found out it was a fiction. Shock, disbelief, anger and deception followed.

Originally Posted by Frisko

Higurashi established the existence of the multiverse, and the "???" in Alliance established that it was quite large. So even if all of the games are fanfiction written by Battler, they could very well depict events that are real in other universes.

I might be the only one but I've never really been certain that Higurashi did establish that. Yes, after 8 arcs of Higurashi I'm not any more convinced of the meta-world then I am of the Hinamizawa syndrome being what Takano believes it is.

[Keriaku]

Even if you were not convinced of it, UsagiTenpura, you must at least admit that there is enough inclinations in Higurashi and Umineko to make other people be convinced it is. We all have different understandings of it, but it's still there in the story.

I just reread all the TIPS for the meta characters in EP2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and it's really amazing how Umineko has built up this setting where all the characters have different powers and roles on this fantasy plane. For example, the descriptions about Genji, Shannon and Kanon as magical furniture, the different roles of the witches, or the abilities of people like Battler, Ange and Erika. Then when you factor in the influence the real world had in creating these concepts, while keeping in mind that the fantasy representations are distinct identities as well, it becomes really intense.

[FirstTwilight]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

What bothers me the most is the whole thing about Ange and her "don't give up to the witch Onii-chan!" which makes absolutely no sense since for the real Ange in Rokkenjima Prime the fictional battle of his fictional brother against fictional riddles has absolutely no impact on her life and on her chance to see her real brother again.

If we go with the "it was all fiction Toya wrote" theory then that Ange is fiction too. She's a fictional Ange from a fictional kakera helping a fictional Battler against a fictional Beatrice.

Though, that would imply Toya has mind-reading powers (since he knew practically everything about Ange's past) and he knew his sister was going to get killed on Rokkenjima, and did nothing.

[Jan-Poo]

Exactly, that's mere fiction, it didn't happen. And to answer Renall: it's a matter of suspension of disbelief.

Sure if I read a book that story inside the book isn't real, but the process of the suspension of disbelief makes me see it as real. Now let's say that the book you are reading has a fiction inside a fiction and it makes you try to understand what is real and what is not real inside the story itself the suspension of disbelief for what "is not real" just can't happen.
The story itself is built in a way to make you distrust anything, you even see at one time the main character stating "you can't trust anything that isn't red", you can't even reason if you believe everything you see and reasoning was enforced in any possible way. Even if in the end it tells you "Hey the truth is not that important" it comes a bit late, after 3 and a half years.

Quoting Judoh from another thread

I would love to see an anime adaptation of chiru just to laugh at it if it's really, really, bad. I just don't beleive they'll make one. Unless a remake of Chiru for the PS3 sells well (it probably won't).

At the very least if they make another adaption you won't see anymore critiques like: "Aaah they changed that particular X in scene Y it completely messes the mystery!"

[neutrino]

Originally Posted by Swigun

Nah, I know.
It's simply a question that returned among my friends XD

16 + dead kinzo + dead Erika.
If BeaBato 'welcome' Erika, it's 17.

Something like this?

Yes. Notice that in red , Beatrice says, There are no more than 18 people on this island but Before now, I have proclaimed that no more than 18 humans exist on this island.
It looks like in the original Japanese, "people (hito)" was used with the copula (da/desu), but "human (ningen)" uses the existence verb iru. Iru refers to self-animate things, so the humans referred to have to be living. In the duel, Erika tries a Hail Mary pass and tries to fix the number of people on Rokkenjima by using the Red Truth to establish herself as the 18th human. This would eliminate ShKannon and the Logic Error it produced. However, her sentence formulation used the copula, so she was the 18th human because Kinzo's corpse counted. BeaBato countered that even if she was welcomed (as a living person), the number of people would be 17, establishing ShKannon and winning the duel. Erika washed up on Rokkenjima in accordance with her statement about being the 18th human, but because she lost the duel, it was as a dead human. So there are 18 humans on Rokkenjima at this point in time, but only 16 people living there.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Keriaku

Even if you were not convinced of it, UsagiTenpura, you must at least admit that there is enough inclinations in Higurashi and Umineko to make other people be convinced it is. We all have different understandings of it, but it's still there in the story.

I fully understand how Higurashi can make you see things that way. I wholly disagree that the same thing is true about Umineko however. If you had no knowledge of Higurashi when facing Umineko, I really doubt you would even consider the meta-world to be true.

Suspension of disbelief whatever, you guys are thinking this beyond what it is. It's no different from a "dream within a dream" or a "virtual reality within a virtual reality" or that kind of thing, except it's a "story within a story".

From the beginning Umineko has been screaming at us that it is a story. No story can be realistic because it is a story. Story follows rules, allows you to see the insight of various characters, have convenient twists, doesn't have the murderer dying of accidents, etc. If this doesn't create suspension of disbelief but being just TOLD that it is does, then I suggest you really only watch mainsteam stuff that never leaves the borders of the genre they belong to.

Really, some series even had characters breaking down after they figured out they were only characters within stories, Umineko's doing nothing new there to shock anyone.

Edit : Shouldn't forget that "a story within a story" aspect of the serie is not really any different from fantasy scenes not being true while yet being fully charged with emotions, development, etc. Umineko should've made us ready for "that" forever ago by now. By arc 2 if anything.

Perhaps a different alternative to me is multiple routes in visual novels. Especially when it leads to a "true ending" a "normal ending" and a "bad ending". Does any ending nullify the others? Yet in most VNs at least there's no such concept of multiple worlds existing at the same time, even simply as fiction. When atop of good/bad/normal endings, you have multiple possible paths with each their good/bad/normal endings, then it becomes really really confusing, you cannot speak clearly about the fate of any characters within the story, only of their fate "according to scenario X". A better way thus to put it, is that whatever can happen in a theorical scenario remains something that "can" happen" (without having to). I believe that "logic" is what Ryuukishi built Higurashi's recurring world thing from, which evolved into the concept of meta-world by Umineko. Remember that the Kakera theory is based on different "possibilities". You don't have to roll the dice to be able to calculate every possible results that can happens from rolling them.

[Oblivion]

Sorry I don't mean to interrupt but what happens at the end of episode 8? Can someone summarise it?