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Old 2012-02-14, 10:50   Link #401
Renall
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Originally Posted by Prototype909 View Post
Example - How do we even know for sure that Kyrie is Battler's real mother, other than info we learn in BATTLER's seemingly bullshit game in Episode 8? Isn't accepting that information the same as accepting anything else that was presented in that game? Furthermore, why does Battler's true mother even matter at this point other than to close up a plot point that seemingly wasn't even relevant to begin with?

To take that further, how can we say we even know ANYTHING about any character other than what we're presented through the forgeries or Yasu's story? Other than some shit people wrote about these people how much can we actually say we know about them in reality? If everything we see is part of some internal dialogue (Within Ange or Tohya) or part of a forger's story then even the scenes with Rosa being a bitch to Maria are suspect. I mean if an actual record of social services getting on Rosa's ass for being a dick to her daughter exists we aren't made aware of it as far as I recall. Continuing from there where the fuck did Ange even get Maria's diary from, why was this never even mentioned?
Essentially, we can't, but we presume that what we're told is in some manner close to approaching a picture of reality simply because otherwise the entire exercise is pointless. On the other hand, the Battler Culprit Theory essentially requires that the reader reject everything they're told about Battler's behavior, so why not everybody else? And the same is true of basically anyone else as a culprit.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Prototype909
Speaking of the narrative, is the meta-world "metaphor" for some inner struggle going on within Tohya and Ange, or "meta" as in a plane of existence where fantasy and shit really does exist and doesn't need justification in real world terms? There are a ton of scenes that would make almost absolutely no sense unless the meta-perspective was given. If this is all a part of the narratives of the forgeries in the "Prime" timeline, then how come we never hear anyone say something like "Who is this Bernkastel bitch who appears in almost every forgeries narrative, why did this story just end with half the cast alive when everyone is supposed to die, what the fuck are the tea parties supposed to mean?".
We don't know what's in the actual stories and that debate has gone on for ages in the Spoilers & Speculation thread. I think the general consensus is it's probably the mystery scenes + magic scenes but not the meta scenes, and that any scenes that don't make sense without their meta-context are instances in which the Meta-World is departing from the original text. But we have nothing that can actually back it up.
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Originally Posted by reiimuuchan View Post
Yep pretty much.
Something about this idea that chiru needs to be completely rewritten because you personally didn't enjoy it kind of feels... a little rude? Especially towards the people that did like it exactly the way it was?
Sorry if I'm coming across as being really unreasonable or impolite, I'm just stating my opinion on the matter. Of course, people can do what they want, but still...
No I understand completely. That's why I say "It's what I'd do, but not something I'm actually going to do." Because saying "I would have done it differently" is expressing an opinion. Actually trying to do it differently is just weird.
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Old 2012-02-14, 13:14   Link #402
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but hey apparently knowing the truth is running on a system of nepotism in the world of Umineko so if you aren't in the Ushiromiya family gtfo
I want to sig this.
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Old 2012-02-14, 15:31   Link #403
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Originally Posted by Prototype909 View Post
Episode 1-4, Battler is Mr. Truth, Mr. Humans did it, Mr. Get me the fuck off this island...and all of a sudden he figures out the truth and decides "Ok, only I deserve to know this shit"
To me MetaBattler merely figured out the truth of the gameboard. He wasn't aware of our existence so he wasn't hiding something to us, just to Bern and Erika because... let's face it, they acted in a quite horrible way.

We know the truth of the gameboard, or at least, part of it as Will's words are pretty cryptic in some cases and overlook some parts.

I doubt MetaBattler is aware of Prime's truth because, unless the culprit is Yasuda, the games from which he got his understanding, aren't about the real truth but about pushing him to remember his promise to Yasuda and understand her heart.

The one who might have known the truth was PrimeBattler... though we can't be sure he even knew it. For all we know he might have been unaware of the murders being committed and merely solved the epitaph and followed the tunnel believing he would reach Kuwadorian when the explosion took place. He ended up mildly injured and in confusional state in a different tunnel from the one that takes on Kuwadorian and left the island.

Toya says he doesn't remember what had happened in those 2 days. Either he's lying or whatever PrimeBattler knew that had some relevance went lost.

The interesting part is that MetaBattler interacted with Ange, who's someone who lives out of the gameboard.
It's pretty clear that in Ange's world the Rokkenjima incident took place and that there's no way to undo it however the truth of that incident, although closed in the catbox, might be something he doesn't know, a mere possibility.
He can't tell Ange the truth about the catbox in her world, but he can tell her about another truth. All her relatives loved her. This truth might help her to face the truth/truths/possible truths of her catbox once and if she'll open it.

So Ange's choice is merely about how to deal with the rest of her life once she learn the/a truth (the truth's in Eva's diary might be the truth according to her point of view, but not the full/correct truth... same as Bern saying Battler will never come back is true because Battler's personality got destroyed and yet false because Battler's body is still alive).

As for the trick ending and the magic ending I see them as face the world with pessimism or optimism options.

In the trick ending she decided the truth was the worst option possible and acted accordingly. In the magic ending she went for the completely opposite way.

Technically the servants' relatives too got to make choices as they were provided with a truth (their relatives received a huge amount of money... which was surely suspicious) and decided to hid the thing to the police and go on with their lives... likely thinking that no, their relatives did nothing bad and got the money for other reasons. As we don't know the truth it can be either denial from their part or the truth.



But yes, the sad thing in Umineko is that the truth about Prime is never clearly provided. If Ryukishi wanted to drawn a distinction between being fair to search the truth on the gameboard for our curiosity because it's just a game while it's unfair to search the truth on Prime for our curiosity (we can't bring justice on Prime as we can't affect it... for us it's as good as a gameboard) just because Prime is supposed to be 'real'...

Well, the message wasn't portrayed well.
As the incident took place and it's implied it wasn't an incident, we've been pushed to search a solution for it too. Being left completely empty handed seems wrong and casts a dark shadow on the characters we're supposed to love.


We wonder if in the end Meata-Battler, Toya, Ange, Eva knew the full truth and hid it for their own egoistic purposes.
To rephrase Umineko:
Quote:
Whether it is alive or dead, your cat box eternally desecrates the cat.
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Originally Posted by Prototype909 View Post
To take that further, how can we say we even know ANYTHING about any character other than what we're presented through the forgeries or Yasu's story?
Yes, that's the problem the subjective narrative creates...

Though maybe the idea was that the characters, apart from a certain behaviour, have no a real 'core'. They're pieces so as long as you give them a feeling of being in character, you can move them as you please.

So you might decide that Rosa actually didn't abuse of Maria, that was merely an exaggeration and she was a loving mother who sometimes slapped her daughter and that for important reasons had sometimes to leave her alone... or you can decide that Rosa beating Maria actually was abuse and that she abandoned her alone more than once for selfish reasons like sleeping with assorted boyfriends.

As long as you respect the Rosa sometimes phisicaly punish Maria and leaves her alone you can twist the concept to make it fit whatever you want... which is something people writing fanfics sometimes do...

Sadly however it gets annoying when reading something that's not fanfic as generally readers would like the canon characters to have a clear characterization.

It doesn't really help that Umineko likes to leave way too many things too vague without a real need for it.


So, all in all I think the concept behind Umineko is really interesting and that Umineko has a lot of potential... but that on the whole it should have been handled/explained better...

I wonder if Ryukishi was influenced by CLAMP... because many of the complains I can do to Umineko can apply to their last two works as well...
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Old 2012-02-14, 17:16   Link #404
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Actually, your argument about the justice of R-Prime can easily be twisted the other way. You say:

"We can't affect justice to the world of Rokkenjima-Prime because Rokkenjima-Prime is just an inaccessible fictional construct, not a world we can interact with in any meaningful or moral way."

But I could argue exactly the opposite:

"We can affect justice to the world of Rokkenjima-Prime because the only justice that exists for R-Prime as a fictional construct is the absolution or condemnation that we, the readers, give to the individuals involved."

Because there is no "true" R-Prime world in which justice may be done, the only moral action is the next best thing. You might look at it as akin to the resolution of Murder on the Orient Express.
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To believe otherwise is to believe the culprit gets away with the crime even if they're exposed, since they'll never actually pay for it once the last page has been turned.
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Old 2012-02-14, 18:28   Link #405
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Originally Posted by Renall View Post
Actually, your argument about the justice of R-Prime can easily be twisted the other way. You say:

"We can't affect justice to the world of Rokkenjima-Prime because Rokkenjima-Prime is just an inaccessible fictional construct, not a world we can interact with in any meaningful or moral way."

But I could argue exactly the opposite:

"We can affect justice to the world of Rokkenjima-Prime because the only justice that exists for R-Prime as a fictional construct is the absolution or condemnation that we, the readers, give to the individuals involved."
If the point of Umineko was to bring someone to face justice or to open a moral debate about what was done in Prime I would agree with you.
However I think the point Ryukishi wanted to make was different. It was all about solving Beato's game.

It looks like he could care less about Prime. Prime looks like one of the many mysteries of Umineko that he didn't feel like having us solving. Prime just happened as a plot point (same as Asumu's death or the gold being carried in Japan for unknown reasons or it being Italian or Japanese or Battler having sent a letter to Shannon or not) and to point out how cruel is the people that speculate over that mystery without proofs, just randomly tossing theories because it's fun. Among the goats after all there are never policemen or the people involved but, for example, Ange's classmates who unlikely honestly researched for the truth.

The problem in Umineko is that, as with many other mysteries Ryukishi seems to deem unimportant, actually he failed to give Prime that 'oh this is unimportant' feeling.

We read about Ange's pain and we long for the culprit to be punished and so we're lulled into the idea that hey THIS IS IMPORTANT and we should be allowed to either solve it or to have someone solving it.

Instead Umineko seems to care less about the solution of this mystery, focusing merely on Ange's reaction to a possible horrible truth she might have read in Eva's diary (or to the fact she believed once Eva was dead she would never find the truth, which can be viewed as a different type of horrible truth).

However, if this was Ryukishi's goal he failed in portraying it in such a way a reader would get it.
The mere fact we're discussing what he might possibly mean with his story means his story wasn't clear.
One can agree or disagree with the point a book make but if the point is so vague readers aren't sure what it is anymore, well, the writer is the one to blame.

Prime seemed something meaningful and worth having a solution. Seeing it handled as some sort of sub side character who all of sudden doesn't get mentioned anymore because who cares about him, he didn't even had a name, feels wrong.

So yes, I'm disappointed at how Prime was handled but, from my point of view, the idea in Umineko is that Prime is just something that happened, not something we're supposed to wonder about...

... which is bad because I can't help but wonder about it. :P
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Old 2012-02-15, 05:06   Link #406
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Originally Posted by Prototype909 View Post
I mean, apparently Ange is the only one who gets to make a decision here despite even the Boat Captain probably being more qualified and connected to the actual events of what went on, but hey apparently knowing the truth is running on a system of nepotism in the world of Umineko so if you aren't in the Ushiromiya family gtfo)
LOLYES.

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Originally Posted by Renall View Post
Essentially, we can't, but we presume that what we're told is in some manner close to approaching a picture of reality simply because otherwise the entire exercise is pointless. On the other hand, the Battler Culprit Theory essentially requires that the reader reject everything they're told about Battler's behavior, so why not everybody else? And the same is true of basically anyone else as a culprit.
This. Because of the nature of the thing, it's impossible to verify, but I'm almost certain Ryukishi generally portrayed the characters as the people they actually were in life. And while yes, those portrayals occasionally vary wildly, but hey, people are damn complicated.

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Originally Posted by jjblue1 View Post
I doubt MetaBattler is aware of Prime's truth because, unless the culprit is Yasuda, the games from which he got his understanding, aren't about the real truth but about pushing him to remember his promise to Yasuda and understand her heart.

The one who might have known the truth was PrimeBattler... though we can't be sure he even knew it. For all we know he might have been unaware of the murders being committed and merely solved the epitaph and followed the tunnel believing he would reach Kuwadorian when the explosion took place. He ended up mildly injured and in confusional state in a different tunnel from the one that takes on Kuwadorian and left the island.

Toya says he doesn't remember what had happened in those 2 days. Either he's lying or whatever PrimeBattler knew that had some relevance went lost.
Tohya has all of Battler's memories, including the 1986 conference. The only place it gets hazy for him is the actual escape, apparently. What's blowing my mind is that I just reread the scene, and he says (or Ange assumes? it was a little vague...) that he entered the tunnels with Eva, but just ... inexplicably split up with her. O_o

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Originally Posted by jjblue1 View Post
The interesting part is that MetaBattler interacted with Ange, who's someone who lives out of the gameboard.
I'm pretty sure the consensus is that THAT Ange was a fictional construct, of Tohya considering what the girl's life had been like. She exists as a combination of the facts that Ange certainly tried to contact him in 1998 (and he refused to meet her), and as far as the world at large knows, she dropped off the face of the earth (though she's not declared dead or anything, as Okonogi says she can come back to be involved in the company at any time) right afterwards. Or something like that - someone else can probably explain it better.

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Originally Posted by jjblue1 View Post
The problem in Umineko is that, as with many other mysteries Ryukishi seems to deem unimportant, actually he failed to give Prime that 'oh this is unimportant' feeling.

We read about Ange's pain and we long for the culprit to be punished and so we're lulled into the idea that hey THIS IS IMPORTANT and we should be allowed to either solve it or to have someone solving it.
Grr, that's one of those things that frustrates me in EP8 - all the humans are portrayed with this really frank, cavalier disregard for their own deaths. Jessica's all "Yeah, I'm dead, but it's cool. I got my boyfran, in da Golden Lan.", and I'm just ... like ... really?
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Old 2012-02-15, 08:31   Link #407
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To me MetaBattler merely figured out the truth of the gameboard. He wasn't aware of our existence so he wasn't hiding something to us, just to Bern and Erika because... let's face it, they acted in a quite horrible way.
That's not really true Jjblue, there is more than enough evidence that shows that the whole world has its own meta representation in the meta world, the goats, the witch senate, the court of heaven and so on.
For the most part those are representing the public opinion of the real world in regards of the Rokkenjima incident. Therefore saying that Meta-Battler isn't aware of anyone else besides Bern and Erika looking for the truth of Beatrice's catbox is false.

The irony of it all is the fact that Battler hates them for toying with his family members, making up all sort of speculation, apparently oblivious to the fact that this happened because the "truth" was kept secret in the first place.
It's the very state of the "catbox" that caused this whole situation, if the catbox was opened only the truth would remain and people would lose interest in a few months.
I'm sure you can find examples of this from looking at the newspapers. Only the murder incidents were the truth isn't clear get dragged along for months. Those where everything is clear most of the times don't even get mentioned at all.

The other problem with Meta-Battler is his appaling hipocricy. He hates people for toying with his family making them repeat the tragedy over and over and then he does that himself. Moreover he compliments Bern for her (lame) mystery which is just a branch of the "Rudolf family culprit theory" sea of speculations.
He seems to me that Battler condemns or praises people for doing the very same thing depending on what is his view of that person. If Bern did that when Battler saw her as an enemy he'd be totally pissed (and he was indeed pissed at Lambda and Bern for scribbling on Beatrice's gameboard in EP5), but since she did that when he saw her as a friend, then it's great, bravo! Encore!
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Old 2012-02-15, 09:43   Link #408
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Grr, that's one of those things that frustrates me in EP8 - all the humans are portrayed with this really frank, cavalier disregard for their own deaths. Jessica's all "Yeah, I'm dead, but it's cool. I got my boyfran, in da Golden Lan.", and I'm just ... like ... really?
The lack of resentment would be understandable if the Prime incident was just an accident. The problem is it's not clear if we should take this as a hint to an accident and that everyone is cavalier about it because hey, accidents happen and what can you do about it, or as a sign that the Meta-Family has sampled the self-delusional Kool-Aid that Ange seems to be taking swigs from and simply doesn't care that they were murdered by one of their own.

Basically, we can't trust the "victims"' own perspective on their deaths because we're not actually looking at the victims, but the fictional construct "actors" who play at being the victims in the infinite stories and forgeries. It'd be akin to asking a man who plays Abraham Lincoln in a biographical play whether Lincoln would've been okay with his own assassination, and then believing whatever you were told. I'm quite sure men like Lincoln, Kennedy, Gandhi, and King didn't want to be murdered... though I can't say for sure... but if nothing else, I'm certainly not going to trust the opinions of anyone who says they would or wouldn't be okay with it. And your less famous murder victim more than likely didn't want to die either.

But resentment and dissatisfaction with the answer you've been force-fed seems to be against the law of the Golden Land... no wonder the witches hated ep1-4 Beatrice (only good Beatrice), she wanted people to question her.
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Old 2012-02-15, 11:42   Link #409
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Originally Posted by Jan-Poo View Post
Moreover he compliments Bern for her (lame) mystery which is just a branch of the "Rudolf family culprit theory" sea of speculations.
He seems to me that Battler condemns or praises people for doing the very same thing depending on what is his view of that person. If Bern did that when Battler saw her as an enemy he'd be totally pissed (and he was indeed pissed at Lambda and Bern for scribbling on Beatrice's gameboard in EP5), but since she did that when he saw her as a friend, then it's great, bravo! Encore!
Perceived intent is pretty important to how you interpret a work. You'd have a completely different impression of "A Modest Proposal" depending on whether you thought the author was being serious or not, right? If you frown on eating children but agree with Jonathan Swift, that doesn't make you a hypocrite.

With some works it's easy to spot the author's intent, but I don't think that was the case for Bern's game. It didn't have any overt message, and only presented itself as a fun logic puzzle with the Ushiromiya family standing in as actors. It doesn't seem to make any statement about a real person's personality or actions. I think it would be hard to see it as something disrespectful or evil unless you knew beforehand that Bern actually wanted to hurt Ange with it.
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Old 2012-02-15, 16:42   Link #410
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Originally Posted by Jan-Poo View Post
That's not really true Jjblue, there is more than enough evidence that shows that the whole world has its own meta representation in the meta world, the goats, the witch senate, the court of heaven and so on.
For the most part those are representing the public opinion of the real world in regards of the Rokkenjima incident. Therefore saying that Meta-Battler isn't aware of anyone else besides Bern and Erika looking for the truth of Beatrice's catbox is false.
I'm not sure how this make him aware of Prime's truth.

We know the goats and the witch senate are meta representation of the public opinion but can he know? And even if he were to know is he aware of what had happened on Prime in those days?
Battler even suspected he could be the culprit. If he were to know what had happened he would either know he is or isn't. That's not something he can ignore.

Unless you think what had happened on Prime was that Yasuda was the culprit, in which case Yasuda's games lead him to the truth about what had happened in Prime the truth he needed to figure out was the one behind Yasuda's message.

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The other problem with Meta-Battler is his appaling hipocricy. He hates people for toying with his family making them repeat the tragedy over and over and then he does that himself. Moreover he compliments Bern for her (lame) mystery which is just a branch of the "Rudolf family culprit theory" sea of speculations.
To me it seems merely that his perception of the game board shifted after EP 5.
While before he seemed to deem the pieces as real people afterward he saw the gameboard mostly as a game.

(Also the pics in EP 8 manga version seem to point out that EP 8 was something Ange made up in her mind or something like that so we could have a different meta Battler in the same way as pieceBeato in EP 5 is different by the other Beato... though I'm waiting for a translation of the manga.)

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I'm pretty sure the consensus is that THAT Ange was a fictional construct, of Tohya considering what the girl's life had been like. She exists as a combination of the facts that Ange certainly tried to contact him in 1998 (and he refused to meet her), and as far as the world at large knows, she dropped off the face of the earth (though she's not declared dead or anything, as Okonogi says she can come back to be involved in the company at any time) right afterwards. Or something like that - someone else can probably explain it better.
Yes, this is also one of my theories for what Ange is.

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Originally Posted by Kealym View Post
Grr, that's one of those things that frustrates me in EP8 - all the humans are portrayed with this really frank, cavalier disregard for their own deaths. Jessica's all "Yeah, I'm dead, but it's cool. I got my boyfran, in da Golden Lan.", and I'm just ... like ... really?
After seeing the beginning of EP 8 manga version I'm building up the pet theory that EP 8 was entirely created by Ange... and that the characters being so cool with their death merely reflected her idea.

She complained something along the line of how they got to be all together having fun in the golden land while she was cut out by all that.
As Ange had a time in which she was suicidal she might have really thought that the Ushiromiya were all cool with being dead.

Though I'm waiting for an EP 8 manga version translation before going further on this way.
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Old 2012-02-15, 19:12   Link #411
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I'm not sure how this make him aware of Prime's truth.
BATTLER "exists on a higher plane" from every other Meta-Character according to his EP6 TIPS, and the Territory Lord is a title only held by Beatrice before, who DID know all the truth. I don't see how he could be expected to demonstrate any special knowledge if he doesn't know the Truth of Prime.

Especially since he seems to understand it better than Lambda and Bern themselves, the former of which knew everything Beatrice did as her guardian.
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Old 2012-02-15, 22:05   Link #412
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Perceived intent is pretty important to how you interpret a work. You'd have a completely different impression of "A Modest Proposal" depending on whether you thought the author was being serious or not, right? If you frown on eating children but agree with Jonathan Swift, that doesn't make you a hypocrite.

With some works it's easy to spot the author's intent, but I don't think that was the case for Bern's game. It didn't have any overt message, and only presented itself as a fun logic puzzle with the Ushiromiya family standing in as actors. It doesn't seem to make any statement about a real person's personality or actions. I think it would be hard to see it as something disrespectful or evil unless you knew beforehand that Bern actually wanted to hurt Ange with it.
Then Battler should have understood from his past experience with Beatrice that he can't outright draw someone's intent as "evil" without understanding that person. He doesn't know each "goat" directly nor anyone else who "played" with the catbox therefore he can't lump them all together.

His accusations towards those who "play" with the catbox can only be justified if the act itself of playing with the catbox was evil. In that case regardless of the person or the intent it would be evil.
But since apparently the act itself isn't evil in front of his eyes then he has no reason to prevent "anyone else" from playing with the catbox unless he knows that all of them have evil intents, and that's something he can't really do.


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Originally Posted by jjblue1 View Post
I'm not sure how this make him aware of Prime's truth.
What you quoted was an answer to this claim you've made

Quote:
He wasn't aware of our existence so he wasn't hiding something to us
Battler was aware that there was a general public he was hiding the truth from. That's the point of my previous post.

As for the matter of Battler knowing the truth or not, this is not relevant. What's relevant is that he knew it existed and he was trying to prevent everyone from reaching it.

When Ange went back to Battler none of them questioned the fact that Ange acquired the truth from reading the diary that Battler himself protected with many barriers. Therefore Battler knew that diary had the truth in it and he actively tried to keep it shut.


Before you say that maybe the diary just contained the truth of the games and not the truth of Rokkenjima Prime, consider this:

1) It is obvious that Battler was trying to protect Ange from that truth. The truth of Beatrice isn't something that Ange would really be troubled with.
2) That book was acknowledged as "Eva's diary", and Eva even tried to dissuade Ange from reading it claiming that it was just "garbage" she wrote. However Featherinne later confirms in red that it contains the truth and as I said before nobody questions that after Ange read it.
3) The sequence of images that is shown when Ange reads the diary is nothing like anything we have seen in any of Beatrice's games, if anything it seems to match EP7 tea party for the most part, which was supposed to tell the truth of Rokkenjima Prime and not being another game.
4) From her reaction it is very unlikely that she just learned that someone she barely knows killed all of her family.
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Old 2012-02-16, 17:31   Link #413
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- stuff
You know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the funny thing is you're more or less trying to support the theory that the goats, the senate and so on might not be all jerks but have legittimate reasons for their behaviour that Umineko merely didn't bother to state while I think Battler might not be a jerk but have legittimate reasons for his behaviour that Umineko merely didn't bother to make clear enough.



I guess we can discuss this over and over but I doubt we'll find an agreement so let's agree to disagree, okay?
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Old 2012-02-16, 20:55   Link #414
AuraTwilight
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That's not the slightest bit what Jan-Poo is saying.
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Old 2012-05-17, 14:30   Link #415
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Well now that Umineko's been over for a while and I had time to get away from it, I can look back at it and judge it more properly as it's whole...

Probably my final conclusion about it : Umineko does not contain what made me like Higurashi. It contained other nice things, but these things aren't what Ryuukishi excels at doing.
I am referring to Higurashi's slice of life gone wrong feeling. Both the fun slice of life were fun to watch as well as how it turned into horror. The mysteries and mindfucks weren't, at least to me, what Higurashi was all about.

I think Ryuukishi did an amazing job at making us enter in the "atmosphere" of Hinamizawa and making us directly care for the characters and the horror-like spin that most arcs ends up taking. In comparison I think in Umineko we were always watching the whole from sorta afar and we never really got into the atmosphere that much, and even so it was mostly the meta-atmosphere.

I usually don't complain that much about Umineko and I still think it was really nice, but in that light I can understand why so many higurashi fans didn't get into umineko. I also am saying this in hope that Ryuukishi's next work will have more emphasis on character, development, and general atmosphere and less emphasis on riddles and meta.
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Old 2012-05-17, 14:36   Link #416
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Oh man, I hope not. You have no idea how many times I nearly gave up on Higurashi during those awful 'club activities' and other pointless hours-long stretches of filler scenes.

Ryukishi's strongest point, IMO, is how he makes completely unpredictable stories, constantly bringing completely new elements and twists in out of nowhere. And for me, Umineko does that a lot better than Higurashi ever did. And even when Umineko was slow, the large variety of characters and situations made it much more interesting than Higurashi's slow parts, which all revolved around the same group of a few people doing the same kinds of things over and over again.
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Old 2012-05-17, 14:41   Link #417
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Well opinions are opinions, tho I'm surprised to hear specifically that one.
Most visual novels are pretty much what you seem to dislike. Guess a lot of Umineko fans have it as their sole VN tho.
Oh I agree Ryuukishi is good at making plot twists btw, but I don't think either is better then the other about that, except for one thing... (Battler switching side was an amazing twist, even tho it was predictable since arc 3)
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Old 2012-05-17, 18:00   Link #418
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OK... I try to give my way of thinking into this:

EP1-4 PieceBattler is a fictional construct of Yasu in her forgeries, that despicts Battler as he was 6 years before the incident, as Yasu had him in her memories. He is mentally 12 years old in a body of an 18 years old. You could say he is a "reversed Detective Conan". For some reason the fact that he often reads mysteries is completly disregarded in his reasoning about the closed rooms. What i never understood was why he "sucked at english", but had his favorite phrase in english (at least earlier).

EP5-6 PieceBattler is more shown like he in in reality, but the point of view we see from him is at least partly a lie.

EP1-5 MetaBattler seems to me to have been copied from EP1 PieceBattler. Regarding him the absence of his knowledge about mysteries is even more suspicious. In EP5 he wondered why he was so smart suddenly, but the truth is, that he was really like that.

EP5???TP SorcererBattler was suddenly more similar to the EP5 PieceBattler and looked like a new person to me, compared to EP1-4 MetaBattler. All of a sudden he was able to do reasoning in a way we didn't really see before. He always had a clear counter move available. Also where did he suddenly got to know about "golden truth"? No one told him that rule, but he somehow knew it. Until now there was never a situation where Battler has known more than we did, but now he threw this golden truth in our faces and even Lambda was surprised and Bern didn't know anything about it at all.
You could say our connection to Battler was severed from the moment he said "and then i knew...".

EP6 SorcererBattler seemed very cold and out of character, as if he was trying to copy Kinzo's behaviour. Well... until he suddenly became reversed-Conan-Battler again when Erika started to whine that she couldn't do anything. Now he was a total softy again. I honestly had the impression that he had more personality switching in EP6 than ShKanon in the whole series did.... This is one of the reasons i believe that genius Battler is true.

I have no idea what the funeral scene in the beginning of EP7 was.

But i am very sure that EP7???TP-EP8 Battler was a completly new Battler, that did not appear before at all. I think this one was just a construct of PrimeAnge's imagination. While from EP1-6 he was created by Tohya, Ikuko ( = / and ) PrimeYasu.


So because I am convinced that EP8 Battler is only Ange's imagination, everything that happened in Rokkenjima and Battler hiding it is not strange, because... well an imagination cannot go and tell the world anything. And we do know that Tohya once tried to contact Ange, but decided against it in the last second, because he was too afraid about his brain injury.
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Old 2012-05-17, 19:45   Link #419
Jan-Poo
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Drifloon View Post
bringing completely new elements and twists in out of nowhere.
In my book a plot twist that comes out of nowhere is a bad plot twist. A good plot twist is a twist that was all over the place since the beginning. Good examples of that are the "sixth sense" or "the others". Bad examples? Practically the entirity of the second season of Code Geas.


Higurashi was a lot better in my opinion even in that regard. There are blatant signs that everything was planned since the beginning, it didn't leave me with any doubt that Ryuukishi might have come up with a major plot change in the middle of the story. Even things that you can only get in the answer arcs like Frederica Bernkastel are mentioned on the very first game. As for Umineko, not really, I can say that only for the core regarding Beatrice but all the rest and especially the metaworld is pretty much up in the air. And we know that the character of Erika wasn't even planned up to after Banquet.
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Old 2012-05-17, 20:09   Link #420
GreyZone
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(Possible Higurashi spoilers ahead)

Compared to Umineko, in Higurashi magic is real. I admit that I only watched the Higurashi anime, but having a Deus ex Machina at the last arc was lame. Overall it is almost like a reversal of Umineko.


In Higurashi you were first made to believe that fantasy is not part of the story, but at the end you see a "shrine god" appearing in human form and people being able to know facts about "parallel universes".

In Umineko you were first made to believe, that fantasy exists, but at the end you see that no real magic existed in the real world and most content was only "fiction in fiction".


I may be biased because of the fact that i only played the VN of Umineko, but I guess I am one of the few that like Umineko more than Higurashi.
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