2011-09-03, 13:04 | Link #24121 |
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Join Date: Oct 2010
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To me it all comes down to time invested/ reward for it. As it stands umineko , specially the core arcs, are too long and could have been executed better if they where condensed more. There are things that are far easier to sink your teeth in that provide a more immediate and satisfying experience than Umineko.
I dont think my opinion would change much even if RK07 releases an addendum that explains absolutely everything in its universe. The story in itself would have to be compressed and its pace tighten for me to recommend it to most of my friends, we just dont have the time to read these kinda works anymore. |
2011-09-03, 13:22 | Link #24122 | |
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Join Date: Dec 2010
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I'd question if the mystery genre even has a definition like that anymore though. Back in the Golden Age? I would agree with you. But right now? I would say Umineko fits just fine, it's just not very good. I am being more relaxed on the rules than I used to be before, but eh. My way of seeing it is that the genre is no longer bound by as many rules. I prefer novels that are bound by rules, but I don't quite agree that the mystery genre is still bound by rules. I mean, let's play an exercise. What rules can you confidently say still apply to the mystery genre as it stands today? Don't get me wrong, I still think Umineko's mystery is...not exactly to my liking to put it mildly. I'd go on and on in an eternal rant about what I dislike about it if you let me. But I think it didn't break any rules. To the eternal comparison, let me put it this way: --Segways don't break any rules. They are a perfectly legal mean of transportation. --They are still fucking ridiculous. --But they could have been...not ridiculous. I think. Actually they couldn't, but Umineko could. And that's worth lamenting. That's how I feel about it. |
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2011-09-03, 14:17 | Link #24123 | |
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Due to the name switching I don't pretend it to fit with the mystery rules that much because I tell myself 'hey, it's another thing' but, back in the past, books with the same premises would go in the mystery genre, which I guess is the reason about why for me mysteries must follow old rules... New books here often aren't called mystery anymore... ^_^;; Ah, the charm of not being a English speaker and ending up messing completely my message... -_- But yes, you're right, if I think at the new books we have and remind myself that in English they can still be considered mysteries you're right in seeing Umineko might still fit... shame on me... Forget everything I said about mystery while I go hide myself.... Sometimes I so hate the fact that English isn't my original language... Last edited by jjblue1; 2011-09-03 at 14:29. |
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2011-09-03, 15:14 | Link #24124 |
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"Law & Order" didn't present itself as a puzzle plot mystery. The viewer isn't challenged to try to solve the mystery before the cops do. So it doesn't matter whether they follow the rules.
"Murder She Wrote" did bill itself as a puzzle plot mystery, so it has to play be some sort of rules. If it doesn't, it's just a guessing game. It has to be consistent. Suppose a character is shown wearing one shirt in one scene shortly before the murder, and a different shirt in the next scene, shortly after the murder. It could have the explanations of "Character had to change the shirt for some reason (such as, because it got bloody during the crime)" or "Show is careless about continuity." If a series is otherwise good about continuity, then the changing shirt is a valid clue. If it's otherwise sloppy about continuity, then the changing shirt isn't a valid clue. Trying to claim it as one is a case of "Continuity isn't important, except when it is."
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2011-09-03, 15:52 | Link #24125 | ||
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I think it's more about how much you think about the development of the mystery genre in itself. Those rules that many are trying to stick to around here are rules that were made in a time where mystery was a booming genre in the western world and they used the power they had to force their own oppinion on the genre...while often not following it themselves (just read a story by Knox or Dine...most of them are hilariously over the top, but I love them because of that). The problem is that in the West (except for some few British, French and Italian writers) the classical detective novel had basically died out after hard boiled fiction hit the market and people like Chandler convinced people that the restricted and stuck-up style of the Golden Age school was, simply put, rubbish. Of course the big names remained for a while...but it's not like that classical style ever became en vogue again. Thereore most people only have these authors and stories to compare to when looking at Umineko. In Japan on the other hand many authors grew tired of the hard boiled stories and the quite similar shakai-ha...so they started writing influenced by the classics but updating them and moving on from there. And this happened during the early 1980's and became a popular movement in the late 80's known as shinhonkaku (The New Othodox School). Nobody in the West is actually to blame if they just take the most classic stories and rules (even though among them are many revolutionary works as well which have been almost forgotten), but you can't blame it on Umineko either, because it is influenced by a whole other style of fiction. @Sherringford: I'm actually growing pretty fond of your oppinion. In the beginning I thought you were quite stuck up in how you only saw the Golden Age and nothing beyond that as a mark that Umineko had to reach...but now I'm actually starting to understand your point. It's nice to know that you're starting to read some Japanese novels as well. I don't quite remember if you were able to read Japanese or not...but if you want some advice what you could read in the direction of "influenced by Golden Age" just say so. Quote:
I'm not trying to be mean, but I actually don't understand what that has to do with Umineko? Are you trying to say that because it presented itself as a mystery puzzler it was bound by rules it didn't stick to? If yes I'd like to know what. |
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2011-09-03, 16:05 | Link #24126 | ||
Goat
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Gnawing away at Rokkenjima
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I wonder why RK07 did this. Quote:
There's a big qualitative difference between the cheese question and the Umineko question. With the cheese question you are searching for the answer with the fewest possible cuts, so you know that 1 cut is better than 3 cuts. And once you arrive at the 1-cut answer, you're done; you've completely solved the cheese question. With Umineko, we are left with a ton of different possibilities, but no criteria for which is better than the other. But, it's definitely true that Red Truth is so open to interpretation it can be pretty much useless. |
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2011-09-03, 17:01 | Link #24127 | ||
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Join Date: Dec 2010
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Thanks for the offer, I appreciate it. I've been learning Japanese for about a year now, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to read a full novel. Hopefully I'll get there soon though! Quote:
It's completely natural to perceive the genre differently depending on where you live. For example, while the hardboiled movement killed the Golden Age in America, a respected Argentine writer defended the genre so well that it became well accepted as a form of expression. Argentina used detective stories and genre conventions to get around censorship, often exposing very important social commentary without sacrificing the plot. The detective story is in fact so respected in Argentina that even authors who only write "literature" have written a detective novel or two, and show no shame for it. It's one of the countries that respects the detective novel the most, to be honest. Meanwhile, Brazil has a more curious history, having settled on parody and cozy mysteries that can best be described as "irreverent." They still have a solid plot, but don't take themselves seriously. So yeah, don't worry about it. Language and cultural differences are, in my opinion, two of the things that make discussing Umineko worth it even long after its end. |
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2011-09-03, 19:13 | Link #24128 | ||
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Join Date: Aug 2011
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More often than not new mysteries that don't follow the old rules are usually called with the English world 'thriller' (regardless of the fact English people might consider it as such) or with other names in case of the presence of certain elements, so we automatically place them in a different, yet similar genre. Funny enough theoretically you could call the 'thrillers' with the old name but... well, let's say my mom would do it but youger people wouldn't. We almost deem it a different genre. Even editors are starting to use it less and less unless the book is a classic mystery. So Umineko can fit perfectly in what we would call 'thriller'... which in English would still be called mystery. So here as a 'thriller' Umineko can work, I guess, while it would fail as a 'mystery'. I guess I'd still insist for a solution but I guess that's just me. Some 'thrillers' I read didn't really gave you decent solutions. ... hum... makes sense? ... I guess we have a complicate narrative genre naming system... Quote:
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2011-09-03, 19:57 | Link #24129 | ||||
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I tend to think Lambda did EP 5 target made for him because, in it, he could use himself as culprit. I guess Battler wouldn't want to accuse an innocent and I fear the culprits might really be Rudolf and Kirye in the end, which also Battler might not want to accuse. He knew he wasn't the culprit for the previous games and he might have the feeling he's not in this one either since, although he used himself as culprit, when he talks with Dlanor he says he used a crazy argument. I guess when you talk about Battler you've to consider the psychological impact this game is having on him. He's not like us. We can accuse everyone without feeling guilty or emotionally involved (or okay, we can feel sorry because we liked that chara) but to him it's not the same. Try picturing yourself deciding who among your family members can be a murder... or who you would accuse to be a murder to save another from that accusation. It's not easy (also it's the only excuse I can make for him since he's supposed to be an expert of the mystery genre so he should recognize all the tricks). Quote:
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Of course if I could have checked the answer afterward and see it was 1 I would have said 'oh, okay, I was worrying for no reason'. We're making our criteria according to what we deem plausible. Think at the people who shot down the ShKanon merely because it didn't seem plausible and then discovered it was true. Plus there's the problem we can come up with something Ryukishi hadn't thought. Think also at the Battler family culprit theory and the George family culprit theory. Let's assume for a moment Ryukishi didn't realize Erika's theory could still work. He assumed he made a game with one single solution then 'Erika' shows up and gave an alternative solution that might still work. Which one you chose? You might go for 'Hey, it's unbelievable that Battler would be so cruel since he was presented like a good boy. It's possible however that George had to deal with a bully and ended up killing him with one of his kicks then his parents covered up the incident' or you might go for 'who cares about characterization in previous episodes? Battler evidently faked being a good boy. He broke Yasu's heart, that's proof he's evil.' (let's of course forget that Bern completely overlook problems as characterizations in her game) So, unless you make sure there's NO WAY someone came up with an alternative solution, to check if your idea is right or wrong a solution is always needed. |
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2011-09-03, 20:37 | Link #24130 | ||
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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So "giallo" became synonimous of a mystery with strong horror elements. Ironically that's exactly the mix that can be seen in Ryuukishi's works. Quote:
A thriller that does that is simply a bad thriller. It simply means that a thriller might lack a few hints to reach a definitive solution, but the discovery of the culprit can't be a total asspull either. So I guess you could say that Umineko would fit on that situation... except there are two problems: the first is that in a canon thriller the discovery of the culprit is mandatory and that usually coincides with the climax where the main character confronts the villain directly, often risking his life in the process (this is what clearly distinguish a mystery from a thriller I think). the second is that reasoning in a thriller is absolutely not mandatory. Those works are usually made in a way that they can be enjoyed even by those that simply read without seriously trying to reason out who's the culprit.
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2011-09-03, 21:23 | Link #24131 | ||
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As of now however people tend to use the name giallo less and less. Part of the problem might be that Gialli were considered a lower form of narrative so saying you're reading a Giallo might look as if you're reading a third rated book. Also now Gialli are printed also as normal books with hard covers that aren't yellow anymore. So although the Giallo Mondadori still exists it's not the only source for mystery books. Quote:
The main point of thriller is that it should have the 'thrill' which usually ends up being caused by a confrontation between the hero/detective and the bad guy. I read thrillers with reasoning and thrillers without it. Profondo Rosso, that had birth as a giallo horror now is more often than not defined as a horror thriller. Detective stories that once were called gialli now are more often than not called polizieschi. When the book is rather good they even remove the world thriller or giallo and call it simply a romanzo. Let's face it the word 'giallo' will end up disapearing. However when you talk of Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle or any other classic mystery everyone calls them gialli. Even Maigret is a giallo... while I've head often Montalbano being called a poliziesco. To make short a long story my error was that since mystery=giallo I used the world 'mystery' to mean classic style mysteries because that's what actually is the most common meaning of giallo. I discounted nearly all the new mysteries because they are rarely labelled as giallo (unless you're speaking with my mom... for her there's no thriller mystery genre they're still all gialli)... Umineko is a mix of horror & thriller with included possible deduction game. Sure it's not so thrilling like other books because it has a slow pace and actually Battler isn't in danger... but if you look at it from the perspective of the pieces is more than thrilling. Also Battler faces Beatrice, Eva Beatrice and Erika and in Ep 7 there's the showdown between Eva and Kirye so it fits the thriller genre... at least according to me. There's to say though that although I like thrillers I favour the classical mystery genre. |
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2011-09-03, 21:54 | Link #24132 |
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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Well I went to the wiki to see how those definitions are linked and I found this:
Crime Fiction is the english umbrella term for any subgenre of "murder mystery" story. "Murder mystery" redirects there. This page is linked to "giallo" in the italian wiki, meaning that according to the wiki "giallo" is still the direct translation of "crime fiction" or "murder mystery". Detective fiction and Thriller are considered subgenres. So I don't agree that the term "giallo" is being subplanted by "Thriller" or "detective fiction". it's simply that pure old school "murder mystery" books are no longer written or if they are they don't receive a good reception, so everything you see recently are either "thriller" or "detective fiction".
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2011-09-03, 23:05 | Link #24133 | |
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Sea of Fragments
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Regarding modern Japanese mystery conventions, it was interesting to learn that there was an actual anti-mystery subgenre that Ryuukishi was somewhat mimicking. I think he name-dropped "Which of Them Killed Her?" and "An Offering to Nothingness" as examples in his last interview. Unfortunately neither of them are available in English, so it's hard to find information about them.
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"Battler scanned the ground outside the window carefully, but couldn't find any footprints." "There are no footprints on the ground outside the window." What's the difference between these two statements, fundamentally? They're both clues from the author (me, in this case). They convey the same information. And yet, only when people are looking at the red statement can they say things like "What's the definition of 'outside'? What about the possibility of the culprit leaving on a pogo stick?" That's an exaggerated example, but how come arguments about interpretation and ambiguity don't come up when we're talking about regular detective narration?
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2011-09-03, 23:29 | Link #24134 | |
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People would call Agatha Christie's books simply Gialli (they're gialli deduttivi) same for Erle Stanley Gardner's ones (gialli giudiziari), Simenon's ones (gialli polizieschi) but would use thriller to define Faletti's books, or John Grisham's ones (okay they're legal thrillers) or Dan Brown's ones or Jean-Christophe Grangé's ones and so on. In short, for the old school you use just 'giallo' even if it's the umbrella term, for the new school you use the subgenre word 'thriller'. My grandmother played pallacorda, now people play tennis. You can call the web, 'rete', the links 'collegamenti', the mail 'lettera', the convention 'raduno', the team 'gruppo' and so on. It's correct Italian. It still exists on dictionaries and encyclopedia. But those words are not used or rarely used in talked Italian. A writer made a list of all the English words that are replacing the Italian ones and how sometimes they aren't even the exact translation of the Italian ones. It was long. And that's what's happening with gialli and thrillers. Thriller is replacing the usage of the world giallo for nearly any new crime book. Purists will insist giallo is the right, Italian word but unless they'll do something to publicize this name again it'll be of no use. ... and I'm sad about this because I'm not so fond of this English words abuse... but that's just me... |
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2011-09-03, 23:44 | Link #24135 |
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Join Date: Apr 2011
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Hm, I'm sorry to interrupt the discussion, but so far, do my interpretations of the canon in the meta-world seem like it clears away some inconsistency(if it happens to be true)? The discussion seemed to stop at my quote, and I want to make sure I don't satisfy myself with an answer I made that has holes that I'm not seeing...
And aura ''There are no footprints on the ground outside the window.'' What about the mud? Although I think this is a little too extreme, just a joke really. Last edited by cronnoponno; 2011-09-04 at 00:00. |
2011-09-04, 01:09 | Link #24136 | ||||
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
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I am not a native English speaker either. I am from Texas.
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A good popcorn film doesn't need analysis (and rarely stands up to it). A good novel has a lot more trouble getting away with this, because of the level of intellectual investment. Regardless of whether one agrees with me as to that being true or not, it's just insulting to tell somebody not to try. That's not the business of the author. Quote:
I'm not telling you this to be insulting or anything, it just isn't semantically possible to make a sentence "fool-proof." It is, however, possible to do a better job defining meaning. One way to do this with a system like the red text is to establish rules (there was only one and it was semantically useless). The next step would be to not break those rules once established. Ryukishi did this, and thus fucked up. Yeah, I said fucked up. I don't even want to dignify his actions with my usual intellectualist snobbery. That boy done fucked up, as we say in Texas. His rules just needed to be sufficient for the purpose he used them, which means not breaking his own rules. He broke them. Consequently, his exercise was futile and misleading. Quote:
Suppose I'm an old associate of Kyrie's. I meet her in passing, never find out she's married, and later tell someone I met Sumadera Kyrie on the street this afternoon. Therefore, Sumadera Kyrie is alive. I have no reason to believe she isn't; the individual I identify as Sumadera Kyrie just walked past me this morning. Labels are given by others, not self-assigned. Kyrie's opinion as to whether an entity known as "Sumadera Kyrie" exists is only one part of the puzzle. For example, "Sumadera Kyrie" does not stop existing legally until such time as the government is aware of the marriage. This may not necessarily coincide with her own awareness of such a thing, and it certainly doesn't coincide with mine. I could get hit by a bus the day after the wedding and never hear about it. Suppose I am aware that Touya is in fact Ushiromiya Battler. I take a blood sample, run DNA analysis, and I am absolutely certain. I can conclude only that Ushiromiya Battler is alive. This is legally and factually true; as far as the law is concerned, Hachijou Touya is Ushiromiya Battler. Therefore, Sumadera Kyrie is alive and Ushiromiya Kyrie doesn't exist, and Sumadera Kyrie is dead and Ushiromiya Kyrie exists. Likewise, Ushiromiya Battler is dead and alive. Red is based on subjective available information and it is possible to state contradictory claims in red depending on the information assumed. Red is useless. Quote:
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2011-09-04, 07:02 | Link #24138 | |
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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That being said I don't really disagree with what you said.
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2011-09-04, 07:19 | Link #24139 | ||
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As you already said Mario Bava and Dario Argento are two of the most famous - though there are others like Martino's Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave (Your Vice is a locked room and only I have the key) which is influenced both by the classic giallo magazines and Poe's stories - and they had some impact on modern cinema. But Ayatsuji Yukito, who set the Shinhonkaku movement in the late 80's into motion with his Jukkakukan no satsujin (Murder in the Decagon Mansion) and Suishakan no satsujin (Murder in the Waterwheel Mansion), was also very impressed with (especially) Argento's cinematography during his mystery (e.g. Profondo Rosso) and phantasmatic phase (Suspiria, Inferno, Phenomena etc.). He based the style of his world not only on the horror manga he read as a kid, but also largely on Argento's movies (especially Suspiria and Profondo Rosso). The other thing he wanted to do was to update mystery fiction and at the same time go back to classic mystery settings. He even adressed that in his first novel: Spoiler for Quote from Murder in the Decagon Mansion:
So you see, even giallo made it a long way. And isn't that development fascinating? First giallo was mainly translations of the Golden Age classics and detective fiction pros (like Carr, Dine, Queen, Christie etc.), which inspired Italian authors and filmmakers to produce their own ideas. Then the films went around the world and inspired, among others, Japanese authors. Some of those authors crossed what they took from giallo movies with Golden Age classics...and so we went full circle on the one hand but still arrived at a completely new kind of mystery fiction. Btw: For those who can't read Japanese but French. Ayatsuji's first novel has actually been translated to French as Meurtres dans le decagone...but I spoke with the translators husband and sadly there are no further plans to translate the rest of the series as it sold very poorly. Quote:
Though for example Higashino Keigo is very famous in Japan and almost always makes the top 3 with his mystery novels, he hasn't been translated into any foreign language so far. どちらかが彼女を殺した (Which of Them Killed Her?) was very famous because it featured no actual conclusion to the mystery plot. Each of the (I believe) 3 suspects was equally likely to be the culprit and in the end the only thing helping you was a sealed portion of the book with additional hints you had to cut open to read...and even there he didn't name the culprit I think. And 虚無への供物 (An Offering to Nothingness) is alongside 黒死館殺人事件 and ドグラ・マグラ (Dogura Magura) one of the so called 日本探偵小説の三大奇書 (The three great strange novels of Japanese detective fiction). None of them features a clear plot but rather deconstructs mystery, detection and logic in itself. They clearly changed the term Anti-Mystery in Japan...though I'd argue that only Offering is a true Anti-Mystery, with it's double-structure, trick ending and others. Though Dogura Magura also had the amnesiac main character who didn't remember to write the novel in the novel and turned out to be someone different than he thought to be. |
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2011-09-04, 07:54 | Link #24140 | |
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In the second case I know you're telling me something true but I wonder if I'm interpretating it correctly. Are we talking about the same window? Is there something else that's no footprints but that can be a clue? And so on. |
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