[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Kylon99]

Originally Posted by Sherringford

I wonder if in the darkest corners of his mind, Ryuukishi ever planned on making Gohda important. Because really I liked Gohda.

Sorry, I had to dig this out from a few pages back.

I kept imagining Gouda would come out at the end, shoot "The Culprit" and admit that he was a member of the Cabinet Intelligence service (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naicho) ... nearly the same way that Mr. Green did at the end of Clue. That would've been my only request for Ryukishi, despite it changing his character completely around...

(From Wikipedia) "However, it is often criticized as being rather ineffectual, spending most of its energy translating foreign publications rather than gathering any substantial intelligence while being accused of spying on Japanese nationals on domestic soil."

... then again....

[jjblue1]

Itouikukuro Reigonamu is writing fictional tales about what happened in the Rokkenjima incident. Ange's tale would be placed AFTER the Rokkenjima Incident so, unless in the book Ange's tale were to be relevant for the plot despite happening AFTER the main topic, I don't think he would have gone through the trouble to insert it.

However Toya, by this point, is likely recovering his memory (it's implied he stareted recovering before writing 'Banquet') so if he hears that Ange 'vanished', he would probably wish to know more. If Ange were to vanish media would begin to nosy even more through her life and talk about it on tv and newspapers so Toya/Battler would have all the time to picture it in his mind. Media might have said that Ange was used to carry along a book/diary that she would read when she believed to be alone and that Kinzo's grandaughter acted like a witch, trying to summon her cousin, Maria, of whom likely the media had already talked like of a child who believed to be a witch since that's the reputation Maria had in her class.

Now, it doesn't matter if the book Ange carried around was Maria's diary or not and if she really did want to summon Maria or she was calling the virgin Mary or merely remembering out loud the happy times she had with her cousins.

This is likely enough for Toya's mind to create, along with meta and magic scenes also a more or less realistic version of how Ange's life was and what she had been doing until that point while he worries for her, adding, to this version, what he knew of his sister first hand, in short that she played with Maria and that the two had an arguments about a stuffed lion called Sakutaro which ended with Maria expelling Ange from Marriage Sorciere, saying she wasn't a witch apprendice anymore.
If he also owned one of Maria's diaries (let's assume Maria filled more than one) this might also have helped him to built up his own version of Ange's life.

People saying they might have met/spot Ange (because they had noticed a girl about her age with red hair) and denuncing the thing to the police might have given him the idea Ange was traveling because she wanted to discover the truth on Rokkenjima. Media might have supported the theory of Ange going to Rokkenjima because it's interesting. Acutally Ange might have gone to Rokkenjima for real.
However the fact he died there killed by the Sumadera, or that she killed Amakusa and escaped or that she wasn't either killed nor had to kill someone but became a writer are likely his speculations about what could have happened to her.

Although the fact that Ange vanished might not have relevance for Itouikukuro Reigonamu's tale, it likely had a relevance for Toya/Battler, in fact Ange become part of his 'inner world' and a driving force that insists that he'll defeat the witch (in short that he remembered his past and returned back to Ange who might have disappeared because she needed him and he wasn't there to protect her).

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Like what?

If an infinite number of worlds exist, there are an infinite number of worlds in which the Rokkenjima Incident never happened. This completely invalidates the thematic issues of survivorship raised for Ange, Eva, and Touya/Battler. It entirely contradicts the strongly-implied notion of an author layer. It muddies up all the issues of scenes that do or do not really happen.

Can you get around these issues? Sure, I think you can come up with explanations. I don't think they're good explanations, and I definitely wouldn't say they're better explanations than the ones that relate to author theories.

[AuraTwilight]

Infinite worlds do not necessarily mean infinite possibilities. Even Bernkastel insists that there are things with a 0% probability, and there could be worlds that have the exact same content as each other.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Renall

If an infinite number of worlds exist, there are an infinite number of worlds in which the Rokkenjima Incident never happened. This completely invalidates the thematic issues of survivorship raised for Ange, Eva, and Touya/Battler. It entirely contradicts the strongly-implied notion of an author layer. It muddies up all the issues of scenes that do or do not really happen.

Get around what? These aren't even issues...

• Kakera Theory does not mean infinite worlds in the first place. And even if it did, what AT said.
  
• Kakera Theory in no way invalidates survivorship. In the context of their Kakera, they suffer and struggle just the same. Thematically, this was brought up in Higurashi Rei.
  
• Kakera Theory works with Author Theory because thematically the stories are presented as Kakera themselves created and shown to us by Featherine.
  
• As for the "muddy" scenes, the reason that multiple metaphysical interpretations are valid in the first place is because Ryuukishi07 has deliberately presented us a "muddy" narrative.

[Rusty Frozbite]

Sorry to backtrack a bit, but has anybody found a personnal answer to this bit of red from the end of Episode 6 ?

Originally Posted by Battler and Beato

[......Sorry, but...] Even if you do join us-
There are 17 people.

Because no matter how many times I turn it around, I can't find a way to explain this with Shkannontrice, which I believe is true, apart from stretching the definition of "people" (and even if we accept that "people" is defined by one's persona, that still wouldn't work, due to Beatrice counting for "one persona").

Thanks

EDIT : Well, unless Beatrice is a witch, henceforth does not count as a person, duh.

[AuraTwilight]

Let's count how many people there are, assuming we count Erika:

Krauss, Natsuhi, Jessica, Eva, Hideyoshi, George, Rudolf, Kyrie, Battler, Rosa, Maria, Genji, Kumasawa, Nanjo, Gohda, Yasu, Erika.

17 people.

[Rusty Frozbite]

Er...I don't know why I didn't count Erika, as I thought she was really dead all along or something
Well, that way it fits.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Infinite worlds do not necessarily mean infinite possibilities. Even Bernkastel insists that there are things with a 0% probability, and there could be worlds that have the exact same content as each other.

It's absurd to believe that there is a 0% probability of the Rokkenjima Incident not occurring. Come on. That's obviously a strike against than a strike for. The thematic reason why events could not grossly deviate in Higurashi was because of a particular limitation in a mechanism of the story, which created a given setting. In Umineko, the setting is the mechanism itself. Stories about the Rokkenjima Incident are only stories about the Rokkenjima Incident because if they weren't, they literally wouldn't be relevant. There is no other mechanism that creates the 0% chance of the incident not happening.

Besides, the entire thematic element of the infinite repeating stories in Umineko derives not from an actual recursion of events, but from infinite speculation arising out of uncertainty about a certain event. If a certain event occurred, it means a consistent pre-event world and a consistent post-event world. These sorts of things are strongly antithetical to an alternate-reality interpretation. You could argue the meta-world is separate and distinct and that it obeys different rules (i.e. a story in R-Prime is a fragment in the meta-world), but there really isn't anything gained from it other than shrugging and saying "Well, I guess that could be." And taken to its extreme it actually weakens what little emotional gravitas Ryukishi managed to squeeze out of ep8.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Get around what? These aren't even issues...

Yeah, well, they kinda are. As I said, you can provide answers, just not good answers.

Kakera Theory in no way invalidates survivorship. In the context of their Kakera, they suffer and struggle just the same. Thematically, this was brought up in Higurashi Rei.

Higurashi is not Umineko. You know this. That theme was never essential to Umineko, except that Battler finds the eternal suffering intensely distasteful. His attitude toward it is quite different. His objectives are also very different from Rika's. An R-Prime Author Theory angle makes thematic sense of his meta-world objectives. A fragmentary theory really doesn't do this adequately.

Kakera Theory works with Author Theory because thematically the stories are presented as Kakera themselves created and shown to us by Featherine.

They can be presented as whatever she likes, but the obvious limitations on what can and cannot be shown and the way changes are presented thematically clearly point to a particular mode of origin.

I should also point out that no mechanism exists to actually create alternate realities in Umineko (save fiction itself, which isn't the same thing). The meta-world is the only place where this sort of thing is given any apparent weight. The closest you'd get is people talking about previous events from earlier episodes (Shannon and Kanon in ep4, Erika in ep6), and it's equally possible to explain that with a better and more comprehensive theory.

As for the "muddy" scenes, the reason that multiple metaphysical interpretations are valid in the first place is because Ryuukishi07 has deliberately presented us a "muddy" narrative.

That's really a poor rationalization. "The narrative isn't clear on the nature of things, therefore anything I come up with could be valid" may be technically true, but it isn't particularly reasonable. The mere fact that none of us can readily be proven wrong about an interpretation doesn't mean it's reasonable to believe the author actually intended that any one of our ideas is valid.

That aside, I'm pretty sure that he didn't intend to have an incomprehensible presentation of whether these stories are in fact fictions. I'd say he rather bludgeons us with that, especially in ep8. His intent may not be as explicit as we might like, but I would say it's pretty clear.

But this isn't really useful to you. So let me ask this instead: What specifically does a "Kakera Theory" do better than any other theory? For our purposes let's assume "kakera" is not just a meta-world flourish to describe a found fiction and is in fact a manifestation of an entire alternate world segment. Assuming this premise, what does the story logistically and thematically gain that other theories can't satisfy?

[AuraTwilight]

Originally Posted by Rusty Frozbite

Er...I don't know why I didn't count Erika, as I thought she was really dead all along or something
Well, that way it fits.

She was. The reason the red denies her existence is because she identifies herself as the 18th person in Red. But this is contradicted, meaning she can't possibly exist.

It's absurd to believe that there is a 0% probability of the Rokkenjima Incident not occurring.

You're right. That's not what I said, though. I said that infinite worlds does not mean infinite possibilities, and that 0% probabilities are still possible. I never said that the Rokkenjima Incident fell under this.

Besides, the entire thematic element of the infinite repeating stories in Umineko derives not from an actual recursion of events, but from infinite speculation arising out of uncertainty about a certain event. If a certain event occurred, it means a consistent pre-event world and a consistent post-event world. These sorts of things are strongly antithetical to an alternate-reality interpretation.

Not necessarily. Rokkenjima Prime has a consistent post and pre-event history, but the event itself is largely unknown. Whatever it was, it could be one of various possible worlds that may exist in alternate worlds no problem. The issue in this model wouldn't be "which of these is true" so much as "which of these happened in my timeline". See: Back to the Future.

You could argue the meta-world is separate and distinct and that it obeys different rules (i.e. a story in R-Prime is a fragment in the meta-world), but there really isn't anything gained from it other than shrugging and saying "Well, I guess that could be." And taken to its extreme it actually weakens what little emotional gravitas Ryukishi managed to squeeze out of ep8.

That's really, really, REALLY subjective. Especially if you take Keriaku's approach that the Meta-World is some weird New Age-y astral plane influenced by the thoughts of mortals and vice versa like some Collective Consciousness bullshit.

Higurashi is not Umineko. You know this. That theme was never essential to Umineko, except that Battler finds the eternal suffering intensely distasteful. His attitude toward it is quite different. His objectives are also very different from Rika's. An R-Prime Author Theory angle makes thematic sense of his meta-world objectives. A fragmentary theory really doesn't do this adequately.

Lots of TIPS and the like seem to want us to put the two series in the same multiverse, however, and a Fragment Theory works just fine, in my opinion. Meta-Battler wants the suffering of his family to end. Meta-Battler also expresses the belief that his family can go home if he beats Beatrice, meaning he doesn't really demonstrate understanding of many-worlds theory.

I should also point out that no mechanism exists to actually create alternate realities in Umineko (save fiction itself, which isn't the same thing). The meta-world is the only place where this sort of thing is given any apparent weight. The closest you'd get is people talking about previous events from earlier episodes (Shannon and Kanon in ep4, Erika in ep6), and it's equally possible to explain that with a better and more comprehensive theory.

Pantheistic Solipsism.

But this isn't really useful to you. So let me ask this instead: What specifically does a "Kakera Theory" do better than any other theory? For our purposes let's assume "kakera" is not just a meta-world flourish to describe a found fiction and is in fact a manifestation of an entire alternate world segment. Assuming this premise, what does the story logistically and thematically gain that other theories can't satisfy?

If I had to take a whack at it, I would say it would validate the existences of the Meta-Characters and their interactions with each other as being some sort of 'real', instead of Battler just making out with himself in a BDSM daydream while he writes shitty fanfics about his family, and explains how the hell the meta and fantasy scenes exist if they're not in the forgeries.

Also, it allows for a happy ending for the dead and/or imaginary characters, instead of Toya apparently having a heart attack or some shit the day Ange is finally reunited with her brother ('bittersweet' my ass).

[Renall]

I don't really see anything productive arising from sniping back and forth about the lion's share of points here (I have to agree with you here that large parts of it are pretty much subjective), but there was one thing I wanted to touch on.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Not necessarily. Rokkenjima Prime has a consistent post and pre-event history, but the event itself is largely unknown. Whatever it was, it could be one of various possible worlds that may exist in alternate worlds no problem. The issue in this model wouldn't be "which of these is true" so much as "which of these happened in my timeline". See: Back to the Future.

The thing is, were this true, we would have to concede that every world which does not square with the reality of the output in R-Prime is impossible, or that the future of R-Prime is variable. The former is a problem because it doesn't make sense ("It's okay for Eva to die, but not okay for Kawabata's boat to break down so nobody can go to the island"), the latter is a problem because Ryukishi seems to want very much for us to believe that R-Prime isn't changing, just being more and more unveiled.

So I'm not sure where this doesn't leave the theory an unnecessary jumbled mess relative to other spins on it. Unless you meant something else, in which case I'm not clear on what you're trying to say.

[AuraTwilight]

It's hard to explain, I suppose. I guess I'm saying that kakera and author theory can be perfectly congruent if you want them to be, and that they don't damage or undermine each other in any significant way. The alternate worlds we get a look into in the forgeries may be real. Let's assume they are, and that they have their own pasts and futures outside of those forgeries. It's irrelevant because we get a look at them to understand a single universe by contrast and comparison, and try to understand the truth of one world by way of warped mirrors.

And of course, there's Pantheistic Solipsism, the thought exercise that posits that a world exists by the mere act of writing about it, which Umineko atleast teases with.

[Renall]

It's very important to establish, however, what we're supposed to be caring about. If we don't, it's hard to derive much satisfaction of things ending one way or the other for one particular iteration.

Higurashi had the same problem (and did, at least, try to address it in passing), but it also had the advantage of a viewpoint character for whom some tangible benefit could be attained (and thus, "the one we care about" becomes the one where she happens to end up).

[jjblue1]

The thing is, were this true, we would have to concede that every world which does not square with the reality of the output in R-Prime is impossible, or that the future of R-Prime is variable. The former is a problem because it doesn't make sense ("It's okay for Eva to die, but not okay for Kawabata's boat to break down so nobody can go to the island"), the latter is a problem because Ryukishi seems to want very much for us to believe that R-Prime isn't changing, just being more and more unveiled.

I guess the point is that the alternate worlds we see are forgeries that attempt to imitate the messages in the bottles.
The messages apparently respected the pre-event history so, if you want your forgery to match with them, you also have to do so as well as to structure it as if it was a message in the bottle written by 'Maria'.
However the messages didn't respect the post-event history as they had Eva killed therefore forgerers aren't forced to write forgeries that respect the post-event history.
Among forgerers however there can be ambitious ones who don't just want to be forgerers but detectives that solve the mystery of Rokkenjima Prime. This group must respect also the post-event history.
Last but not least the forgerers who couldn't care less about pre and post history and just wants to write Au, what if, as Battler does in Ep 8 inviting Ange to Rokkenjima.
Not respecting pre-event and post-event history they can't really present the exact solution to the mystery so they don't belong to the 'detective group' and, most likely, they can be recognized into the 'Maria group' either, though this might be up to debate.

The validity of each world is judged by the ones who observe it so worlds that aren't written by the 'detective group' or the 'Maria group' might end up being 'not written' or 'not considered' in the Umineko universe where the attention is focused on the forgeries written by the 'Maria group' and the 'detective group'.
Ergo worlds who doesn't respect the pre-event history wouldn't 'exist' in the sea of kakera of the Umineko universe.

In our universe however they can exist with no problem.

[Renall]

But there's no apparent reason why those worlds shouldn't exist in a purely ordinary multiverse style theory. By saying the reason there is no "the boat broke, everybody went home, nobody died" universe is because it's not relevant or not respecting and matching with the premise, etc. etc. etc., is precisely the argument that "kakera" as used in Umineko are not representative of actual realities. There is no apparent reason why Bern can't go find any kind of reality she wants (and indeed with the Lion example it appears she has, although she seems to believe otherwise based on her later statements in ep7).

There is no story mechanism that would limit her selection and prevent her from finding, say, a fragmentary world in which the incident never happened because no one involved in it was ever born. Or a fragment that says "The Earth never formed, nothing happened at the time that would have been Oct. 5, 1986." There are of course reasons why she would not choose to present such a universe, but Lambda seems to state that there isn't even a choice involved, and that such fragments do not exist to be found. For that to be true, either it must not be possible for those realities to exist (patently absurd), or there must be some force actively excluding possible but irrelevant realities (there isn't).

When we are shown that sea of fragments, it seems apparent to everyone involved that it's not a matter of, say, finding a fragment where nothing bad happens and everyone goes home. We must accept either that no one cares to look for such a thing (unlikely, as Ange probably would even if Battler might not by the time he observes it), that such a thing exists but is arbitrarily and without explanation not possible to locate or observe, or that such a thing doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, the notion that any plausible reality could be represented ceases to make any sense, as plausible-but-not-actual outcomes are allowed according to Umineko (Eva dying, Battler dying, etc.).

If the fragments are metaphors and represent only a self-selective group of fictional stories restricted by a particular setting, this entire dilemma is wholly avoided. The reason there are no stories where nobody goes to the island or where nobody is born or where the earth doesn't exist in the sea of fragments is because the sea itself is a metaphor for the set of all stories within a setting wherein those people do exist and they do go to the island. A story where Battler is a superhero and misses the trip because he had to fight Godzilla is not valid and doesn't appear, but apparently a story where Kinzo makes everyone fight with jetpacks works. Mostly.

EDIT: Also not to get into a moral philosophy tangent (unless someone wants me to), but downplaying the primacy of R-Prime pretty much wrecks any moral takeaway the story can have. I can elaborate, but it's merely going to be my opinion, as I doubt Ryukishi put much thought into the consequences of that even if he really did intend it.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

There is no story mechanism that would limit her selection and prevent her from finding, say, a fragmentary world in which the incident never happened because no one involved in it was ever born. Or a fragment that says "The Earth never formed, nothing happened at the time that would have been Oct. 5, 1986." There are of course reasons why she would not choose to present such a universe, but Lambda seems to state that there isn't even a choice involved, and that such fragments do not exist to be found. For that to be true, either it must not be possible for those realities to exist (patently absurd), or there must be some force actively excluding possible but irrelevant realities (there isn't).

You're applying real world mechanisms to a fictional universe that has effectively established them otherwise. What you do is like saying "It's impossible for magic X to work like this because of physical law Y" in any fantasy narrative.
Within Umineko it has been established that the multiple universes are pretty much similar to each other and only branch into minor differences...which is something that is necessary in almost every dimension and time travelling story. Of course there'd have to be an alternative where the world, Rokkenjima, humanity or the Ushiromiyas never existed in the first place...but in what way would it help to build this story?
Okay, so Bern would have had to say "There is a 0,0001% chance of this happening in the infinite number of worlds that actually include Rokkenjima in the first place. But of course there are worlds where Rokkenjima did not even exist in the first place.". Yes, but basically it could have just as well happened in Higurashi that they ended up in blank space when switching worlds...why didn't they? Because it doesn't serve the narrative.

Basically we can dismantle the whole story regarding realism and established "real world logic". But I think it doesn't benefit our understanding of the story, because what we have to do is use the established logic of Ryûkishis universe, no matter how absurd it might sound to anybody. If Bern says that she searched through all worlds and there is almost no chance of the Rokkenjima incident not occuring in any way, then this the truth of the Rokkenjima universe unless it is established otherwise.
Regarding the "the boat broke down" you could easily imagine that the radio broke down as well and nobody came to rescue them. Then the typhoon came and killed them all...end of story.

[Renall]

Except Umineko is not a time travel story. And if only worlds which contain the premise of the Rokkenjima Incident exist, there has to be a reason for it. "A wizard did it" is not sufficient, even for fantasy.

And I should point out Ryukishi does go to some pretty decent lengths to actually define how he considers magic to work in his own setting. So apparently he does consider these sorts of things worthy of an explanation.

[Jan-Poo]

Renall is not trying to apply "real world logic" to this case, there is no real world logic that you can apply here. Renall is trying to figure out if it is possible to apply any kind of logic at all.

"It is so because so the writer decided" isn't logic.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Renall is not trying to apply "real world logic" to this case, there is no real world logic that you can apply here. Renall is trying to figure out if it is possible to apply any kind of logic at all.

God, for all the times we argue about quibbles, you sometimes know how to summarize exactly what I'm thinking in a sentence or two. Thank you.

[jjblue1]

But there's no apparent reason why those worlds shouldn't exist in a purely ordinary multiverse style theory.

Let's try to put it this way. In an ordinary multiverse style theory EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE, even that Kinzo died during the war and so his children and the Ushiromiya family never moved on Rokkenjima.

However the premise Uminkeo does is that Bern is searching not among the FULL universe of Kakera but in the Kakera that regards what had happened to Rokkenjima in those two days because those are the Kakera that regard Beato's cat box.

She can, of course, watch the other Kakera if she decides so, and in fact, in order to find a Kakera in which Lion existed, she had to go and fish among the Kakera that regarded the years previous the Rokkenjima incident, however, as she said, in order to do so, she had to put Beato's cat box in a larger cat box.

In short she changed the premise of her research. Before she fished for Kakera in what we can call the 'Sea of the Rokkenjima incident' now, in order to fish up the Kakera with Lion, she fished in the 'sea of a world where Lion existed but the Rokkenjima incident happened anyway'.

Bern is willingly limitating her choices to try to open Beato's cat box. If she go fishing in the 'Sea where the Rokkenjima incident didn't take place' she will deal with fragments which didn't produce Beato's cat box therefore won't be able to open it simply because it doesn't exist.

Differently from Higurashi, where the purpose was to avoid the tragedy and therefore find the conditions for which it could be avoided and reach a 'happy fragment' Umineko seems to imply we should accept the tragedy and the only options we have are how we react to it.

There's more I could say but I would end up using my personal beliefs about some of Umineko's mysteries and the discussion would get more complicate...

... so in short, yes, Bern could have found a happy world if she had changed the premise for her research. However since the premise for her research is for the Rokkenjima incident to happen and create a cat box the characters are bound to reach a BAD ENDING because that's the premise for her research.

Bern being Bern however doesn't put it in a nice way so we're all bound to think the BAD ENDING is fated to happen when it's merely chosen.