[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Dormin

-You think people bad because no truth

I do not know what this means. I think people who intentionally conspire to hide the truth are morally wrong to do so for any reason, but some reasons are more comprehensible and forgivable than others.

Doing it merely because one believes another is not capable of understanding it is pretty much evil though.

-You still accept it was a part of scriptwriting and Ryu's message to us

What is "it?" I certainly accept that Ryukishi had a particular intent. All authors do.

-You think opinions bad

Opinions are not useful to an argument in and of themselves. An opinion is basically the endpoint to an argument and is useless related by itself. There need to be factual and ethical foundations in a person's background that explain how they understand things and thus makes sense of why they would hold a particular opinion and what they rely upon to form it. It's predictive and should be consistent, or at least consistently examined to understand inconsistencies and work to correct them. Otherwise two parties can never locate common ground and there is no point to actually arguing.

I believe that people who hold only opinions without a necessary rational backing to them have less valuable opinions. Their opinions are not equivalent to my own. Merely expressing a vague thought is not the same as possessing a coherent philosophy and never has been. These things most certainly are subject to qualitative comparison, and it is frustrating to have to deal with people incapable of understanding that.

-Your argument being "it doesn't match with my morality"

You have no idea what an argument about the moral or ethical implications of basically anything is if this is your thought process.

First, one establishes one's ethical framework. Next, one consumes a work. Thereafter, one attempts to determine what the work is saying, whether it does so effectively, whether it is coherent, and so forth. Finally, one judges it on the basis of one's existing moral framework, taking into account points made by the work and seeing if they challenge how one thinks about ethics. It is possible to believe a work makes an excellent attempt at making its point while disagreeing with its premises or conclusions. Certain individuals in this very thread disagree with me on that point, but because I have some understanding of their intellectual foundation I at least understand why they believe so.

My argument is not merely that the work (or at least ep8) fails the final step, but that it fails both that step and the one before it, but conceding that it may not actually fail the final step and that this may simply be an artifact of failure on the actual execution of the work as a work. And yes, standards do exist for these sorts of things within which opinions may operate; that does not mean there is no standard and all thoughts are opinions. Some opinions are wrong or poorly thought out.

[Dormin]

I don't think it is necessary to go over my thought process as I believed it was already very clear, but seemingly not, and auratwilight jumping the bandwagon, here I go again:

We can argue whether people treating ange in ep 8 is justified, but ultimately it boils up to what one sees as justified means of treatment: probably strongest argument backing up my view I have, the fact entire episode (including every lesson and actions of personnel, that I have already covered previously) are clearly meant to give a message of a loving family that considers the best of ange. This is the message ryu meant to give. This can be seen as "shit writing" if you will, but I dare to disagree when it is perfectly in line with the story. The fact that you are digging a different interpretation of the story is clearly digging somewhere that digging is not supposed to happen.

Now, as many people seem to have arrived to conclusion that it is morally wrong not to treat ange the way she is treated: in the end this results in opinion claiming that "the characters are wrong" or "the story is broken", but to understand this situation is to be understood this in no way is the intended message. If you can read this kind of message from the situation it means you disagree with the actions of the characters described in the story, that basically means you have different moral viewpoint and would have treated ange and her existence otherwise.

So in the end, the entire argument about treatment of ange is about "what arguing person believes to be morally correct treatment". This is very much subjective opinion. If I agree with the opinions presented in the game, that doesn't mean the morality inside the game is wrong, even if it includes aspects that could have been done better, because morality as a concept cannot be presented as "right" or "wrong", because naturally, morality doesn't even exist.

The disagreement with the game is a showcase of ones own moralistic standpoint, and in no way, in any line with the story the game is trying to show. Disagreeing with the story is okay. Arguing over theories is extremely fun. But saying that the story is wrong because lessons of subjective view of morality is not a way to go.

We can also argue close to endlessly whether ryu knew what he was doing as a scriptwriter, but that once again is a matter of subjectivity, while our only basis of arguing is the story presented to us and our own take on morality.

[SonozakiUshiromiya]

I believe I get what you're trying to convey, albiet I personally go out of my way to understand different viewpoints to a fault, so what I said is pointless? Eh.
You may be misunderstanding the (very)important differences between intent and execution and I reckon critique, but this whole shebang is full of semi-broad topics in the context of this discussion so adding more wouldn't help. Anyway, your conflating of the issues brought forth are not helping discussion in the least.
-Loving someone, no matter the intensity, does not give you centain knowledge of what is best for how that person should conduct themselves throughout their lives. It certainly doesn't inform you how to pilot their thoughts, feelings, and actions the way you want.
-It helps you decide what you think is best for them from your own feelings. You would have a better idea of what the person in question would need if you tried to learn of their actual thoughts and feelings, by taking note of their dialouge and actions through general or specific happenstance, or just asking them directly.

As we're spinning in what I feel is a drain, maybe a small idea of mine might garner fresh discussion.

Spoiler for I always drop this train of thought to go back to it later...:

People like to assume if Rudolf/Kyrie involvement, then Kyrie was at the head of things, or at least the spark of no return. I been thinking, why not Rudolf be the one to send things downhill, with Kyrie trying to mop up the mess he made(through inconsiderate means)?

[LyricalAura]

I feel like, by treating Twilight as a work that was intended to impart a lesson to the real Ange, we might be approaching it the wrong way. By the time Twilight was written, the real Ange seems to have already been missing for a long time and presumed dead, so maybe the work isn't actually addressed to her, or at least not primarily to her?

I think there are two or three other purposes Tohya could have written it for.

1) A cathartic exercise to convince himself to let the past go, with Twilight!Ange as a stand-in for himself.

2) A persuasive piece to get the Witch Hunters to stop speculating irresponsibly about the incident. In this case, Twilight!Ange probably reflects the Witch Hunters' caricature of the real Ange.

3) An attempt to explain to himself how Ange, who was by that point 99% certain to be dead, could possibly still be alive, and why she had disappeared in that case. In other words, an attempt to construct a gold truth so that he could hold onto hope. Twilight!Ange would then be "the kind of Ange necessary for that scenario", rather than an accurate reflection of the real one.

Personally, I like option 3 because it fits the theme of looking for an unlikely but happy possible world and also lines up with Featherine's promise to create a good ending for Ange in EP6. What does everyone else think?

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

First, one establishes one's ethical framework. Next, one consumes a work. Thereafter, one attempts to determine what the work is saying, whether it does so effectively, whether it is coherent, and so forth. Finally, one judges it on the basis of one's existing moral framework, taking into account points made by the work and seeing if they challenge how one thinks about ethics.

I think the problem that Dormin and to a certain extent I myself have with your point of view is that it appears very rigid. It is a good thing to have a firm believe in one's moral standards and a concept of right and wrong which works in the context of the society you are living in, but you appear to be of the opinion that only your moral standard is fully thought through. Valuing the system of one's own culture higher than that of others is a problem often brought up when discussing differences in ethical frameworks.

This is a problem also often brought up when reading literary works from another cultural context, either separated by time or space. Take for example Theodor Fontanes "Irrungen, Wirrungen" (lit: Errors, Confusions), which was taking a moral stance on love between members of different social classes. The final moral was, everyone should forget about the foolish notion of love and rather learn to live content in the realm of one's social standard. From a 20th century post-post-war perspective this appears to be a horrible message, but from a 1888 perspective this was a valid point that agreed with the ethical framework of society at large.

I'm not saying that all Japanese are what you would call a "paternalistic asshole" or that they are all "insane people who would let their family die", I'd rather say that key aspects, like filial piety, the value of individualism vs. the greater good, denying truth in favor of upholding a stable standard, are inserted differently in the larger ethical framework.
You say you are among the few people here who has thought this through and that people who don't commit to one singular idea of ethics are inherently to indecisive to lead this discussion, but I for example simply take a stance of skepticism on your altruistic stance.

And yes, standards do exist for these sorts of things within which opinions may operate; that does not mean there is no standard and all thoughts are opinions. Some opinions are wrong or poorly thought out.

Yes, but even the standard is created, unless of course you believe in a god-given standard of right and wrong, which would position us at dangerously different ends of the spectrum. I see myself as doubting the existence of a pre-existing moral standard, which humans have to adhere to, I merely believe that a system in which all people have equal opportunity to become satisfied is the most beneficial and has developed due to historical influences.

To take this back to Umineko, our view of what makes characters "evil" and thus counteract a supposed message conveyed in the beginning of the story seems inherently different.
I would even agree that characters act morally ambiguous in Twilight of the Golden Witch, but they are not judged as evil for reasons of different views of rights and responsibilities. I would argue that Meta-Battler's portrayal is morally ambiguous, but there is a clear highlight on his good intentions. I would even agree with you that there is a hint of egoistical motivation behind his action, shown by him refusing to let Ange read the book that he offered up to Beatrice, but I have to disagree with you on the point that there is something wrong with him not being painted the antagonist simply by him denying his sister a truth that he deems harmful to her.
I would go so far as to say that there are no morally correct characters found within Umineko, they are rather drawn intentionally ambiguous to a point of becoming completely separate narrative items within the story.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

3) An attempt to explain to himself how Ange, who was by that point 99% certain to be dead, could possibly still be alive, and why she had disappeared in that case. In other words, an attempt to construct a gold truth so that he could hold onto hope. Twilight!Ange would then be "the kind of Ange necessary for that scenario", rather than an accurate reflection of the real one.

Personally, I like option 3 because it fits the theme of looking for an unlikely but happy possible world and also lines up with Featherine's promise to create a good ending for Ange in EP6. What does everyone else think?

The problem there is he ends up really flogging himself for... what, exactly? He's not Battler. It's not his fault about whatever may have happened to Ange (presumably he didn't know enough about it until around or well after 1998). There wasn't really a whole lot he could do, and he doesn't have a specific obligation to a stranger who happens to be related to the person who used to own his body. Yet he's really, truly, seriously savaging himself emotionally here.

And why is it the Ange he constructs has to be so hostile? Why does the Battler he constructs have to be so patronizing? It's not merely "I want to create an Ange who could live and let go," but creating an Ange who is distressingly tormented and trying to walk her back from the edge. But why is that particular conception of Ange "necessary" to his gold truth of a desired miracle? Why not just assume an Ange who was more like the ep4 Ange? Had he already done that (that is, is that what Alliance's 1998 segment was)? What was it about that Ange that he didn't like? Why did he make a subsequent one so much more childish and vengeful?

It's certainly not a terrible idea, but it asks us to try to decipher for him the motive behind crafting the characters in such a fashion as he does. It seems odd that his goal involves basically putting Twilight-Ange through Hell to make a point to her that he's written her to be immensely stubborn about in the first place. What purpose does this serve to him? What is he getting out of this that he can't get elsewhere?

To some extent, I could see an alternative you hadn't proposed:

4) A self-dialectic attempt to figure out how he could explain himself to Ange if he ever met her. It's self-tormenting on every level because he is essentially a different person with incomplete memories who can't answer the questions he can imagine that Ange would have for him, and worries that his own personal failure to be able to do that would cause her far greater emotional turmoil than the comfort of discovering that he's alive. He tries, repeatedly, to dream up solutions to this problem ("tell her a gentle lie," "tell her exactly what she wants to hear," "tell her something so awful she just won't be able to doubt that I'm telling the truth"), but he realizes that he can't accept any of those solutions and believes the Ange of his mind can't accept them either. Taking your notion of this being Tohya and not Ange, he's the one making the Trick/Magic decision: Believe that Ange is irrevocably lost (and thus imagine her becoming a monster consumed by all the things he fears he's failed to answer for her) so that you can keep existing as a stranger to her, or just figure that somehow she was able to reconcile things better than you can imagine and hope that she's happy.

[Dormin]

Out of the 4 possible made explanation for episode 8, I find first two actually very plausible. Both could be seen as explanations ryu was trying to give. As I have probably made myself clear, I have absolutely no love towards renalls scenario, even though I can understand where he is going at and he at least has some interesting points.

But in the third interpretation the thing is that I thought, at least in the end of episode 8, that battler is painfully aware of himself and the others being dead. So more than writing ange back to life, it felt like entire episode is about writing everyone else to life: showing ange that there might exist a world of happiness. If we believe ange to be entirely "constructed" then she is at least to certain extent very angry kid. But does that mean the kiddy ange was entirely false, crafted by battler?

Originally Posted by SonozakiUshiromiya

"I always drop this train of thought to go back to it later..."]People like to assume if Rudolf/Kyrie involvement, then Kyrie was at the head of things, or at least the spark of no return. I been thinking, why not Rudolf be the one to send things downhill, with Kyrie trying to mop up the mess he made(through inconsiderate means)?

This is actually kind of interesting take and worth considering. It basically boils up to what kind of person we think rudolf to be: I personally always thought he was more of an man attached to a penis. If I remember correctly, the only time we even see him to do any thinking is in ep 3, and that entire scene is basically borrowed from cowboy-films (that somehow makes the whole success of the plan somehow ridiculous).

But the thing is that he certainly has the same blood as his sisters. Even rosa, being the youngest, is shown as capable and smart person. I don't see how rudolf couldn't be the head of the things (even if it turns out he isn't the smartest head on the island) but I felt he was always standing in the shadow of kyrie and her superior brain capacity. Only real drive that rudolf had was highlighted sexual drive, and even in the ep 7 tea party, aside from being probably false, he was just tagging along like "yeah, well, okay".


And by the way auratwilight, I think the link in your signature leads to nowhere but empty page. I don't know if the problem is with my computer but thought you might want to check it out.

[SonozakiUshiromiya]

Rudolf's probably the most characterized of the husbands, albiet he's got little development. Really the main thing that makes me consider this is his (imo)core character trait: He is willing and able to commit unpleasant, even cruel acts towards others, especially his loved ones, to preserve or allow him some sense of comfort. Those acts can snowball in an even worse situation, and while he has his regrets, he doesn't personally face up to any consequences(with the possible exception of the baby switch, as he likely tried to confess to Kyrie and Battler). We see this with Rosa's childhood and the baby switch.
And when it comes to Kyrie, he doesn't come off as feeling inferior to her because of her intellect; in fact, that's a trait he treasures and uses for his own advantage. He also shuts her up during the conference, yet it is those times when it's exposed he's been leaving her in the dark to both their detriment.

Oh, and doing a bit of searching, I found the page AT's fanfic is on: http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?p=4568848

[Drifloon]

I'm just going to point out that Meta-Battler in EP8 doesn't necessarily have to represent any kind of outside force at all for Ange. I've always taken the view that EP8 is Ange's internal struggle, so it's really more that she's asking herself whether it's worth finding the truth or not. Honestly the idea that Meta-Battler is forcing Ange to agree with his own ideas of what's best for her is pretty silly, since right from the start he stressed that it was ultimately Ange's own decision.

Really, the only problem I have with EP8's characterization is that Ange's entire development from EP4 is discarded for no obvious reason. You can come up with meta reasons for it, sure, but the fact that it's never brought up in the game itself is pretty poor writing in my view.

[Dormin]

Originally Posted by SonozakiUshiromiya

Rudolf's probably the most characterized of the husbands, albiet he's got little development. Really the main thing that makes me consider this is his (imo)core character trait: He is willing and able to commit unpleasant, even cruel acts towards others, especially his loved ones, to preserve or allow him some sense of comfort. Those acts can snowball in an even worse situation, and while he has his regrets, he doesn't personally face up to any consequences(with the possible exception of the baby switch, as he likely tried to confess to Kyrie and Battler).

Funny thing I noticed that umineko is basically a story of strong female characters. The husbands, as stated, get very little character depth or development compared to females. While all the characters have clear personality, people like hideyoshi or gohda always felt bit flat in depth.

And on rudolf, I pretty much agree. Only thing is that describing him like this makes him really feel like a psychopath. Maybe he spent too much time with kyrie.

Really, the only problem I have with EP8's characterization is that Ange's entire development from EP4 is discarded for no obvious reason. You can come up with meta reasons for it, sure, but the fact that it's never brought up in the game itself is pretty poor writing in my view.

Only problem I have with ange is that I never actually cared about her or her adventures. That doesn't mean she was badly written character (at least during the first arcs), as ryu spent heavy amounts of time writing about her as a character, but my problem is that every other character in the story is much more interesting. In ep 4 she felt like a poor deus ex machina, and in ep 3 she literally was a poor deus ex. I admit she had her moments, but rather than watching her traumatic childhood I'd had watched something that I find more interesting. She was okay in chiru as she had relatively small role until ep 8, but after she became once again one of the main characters I just hoped she'd return back to being a hamburger.

[Valkama]

I'd have to disagree. I think the males in Umineko are pretty well characterized. I'll admit they don't get the development that the females of the story get but you can still learn quite a lot about their characters based on their actions and other peoples thoughts on them. The Females are just usually in the spotlight which causes you to overlook the males.

[Witch of Uncertainty]

Hey guys, sorry for going completely off topic, but I'm not quite sure where to ask.
How popular is the Umineko visual novel in Japan? I gathered that the PS3 versions sold about 10-15k each, but anyone knows about the original Visual novel?

[jjblue1]

Honestly I'm not very prone in seeing Battler as a jerk for hiding the truth from Ange because:

- Battler handed Ange the key to open the book. She could have opened it. What he seemed to want was for Ange to listen to him first. Yes, it's implied he believes knowing the truth wouldn't do any good to Ange, that he wishes to persuade her not to pursue it but, ultimately, it doesn't look like he could force her forever to never reach it.

- Battler is actually MetaBattler and MetaBattler isn't a real person. As he doesn't exist but it's just the creation of someone else his knowledge might be tied to this. If it's Ange's creation and his actions are due to her belief that Tohya=Battler yet Tohya is avoiding her and denying her the truth, there's no way MetaBattler, as Ange's fantasy, can tell her something that she doesn't know.
If Battler is instead Tohya's creations we have two possibilities:
1) Tohya, as he said, didn't remember the truth. It's probably hidden in his Battler's side but he can't reach it. So he can represent a Battler that knows the truth but, unless it'll be off screen, his Battler will never be able to directly tell the truth to Ange.
2) Tohya remembered the truth and the thing shocked him so much he had a fit and nearly killed himself. The whole experience shocked him so much that he build up the belief that TRUTH IS HARMFUL because for him it was. Yes, for Ange it might not be, but he has right in front of himself an example of how harmful truth can be. Even though he might have learnt that for Ange it was harmful as well not knowing he might have believed it was the lesser of the evil.

Ultimately the message is that Battler's intentions are good. Till the end he believes Ange would be happier not knowing. If he took the wrong decision I think it's more that he's being an idiot unable to understand Ange than a jerk.

Also: we don't know which would have been Ange's reaction at knowing the truth and Umineko said more than once that Ange planned to discover the truth and then let herself die. Sure, she might do the mature thing and get over with it. She could also have done the mature thing and accept that she might never discover the truth and she should live dealing with it. Many people will never discover why their dear ones died, or if they're alive or dead and yet survive.

It really depends on Ange.

However, I think part of the blame relies on Umineko. Many characters act in a way that's not... the most common way to act and yet the whole structure of their thoughts so that one can say: "Well, yes, for that person there was no other way to act in that moment, he was unable to see the most rational path." and even when it's explained it really doesn't seem that much believable. Sure, different culture doesn't help but sometimes it seems really hard to think it was okay for them to pick up such dumb solutions.

[Drifloon]

Funny thing I noticed that umineko is basically a story of strong female characters. The husbands, as stated, get very little character depth or development compared to females. While all the characters have clear personality, people like hideyoshi or gohda always felt bit flat in depth.

Yeah, this has been pointed out before. It is sort of interesting that Ryukishi seems much more interested in the female PoVs than the male ones, to the point where I'd say Battler is probably the only really fleshed-out male PoV in the series (and even with him, we know pretty much nothing about the six years he was away from the family...but we can presume that's just because nothing of particular note happened with him in that time).

I've actually often wondered whether Ryukishi has some kind of gender identity issues, since he seems so interested in writing about the female state of mind and in several interviews he gives the impression that he's thought a lot about the differences between the traditional worldviews of men and women. Heck, he even said once that he would imagine that most people who'd be able to understand Umineko would be women, which is interesting because why would a man expect women to understand his work better than other men? Not to mention the whole Yasu thing would suggest he's at least somewhat interested in the subject of gender confusion. I dunno, could be just my imagination, but I have gotten this impression quite a few times. It's probably kind of rude to even speculate about this kind of stuff, but I can't help but wonder occasionally.

Anyways, on Ange, well...I personally think she was a really fascinating character in EP4, but I think she definitely had too much time spent on her. Or rather, too much time spent just reiterating the same points; there were just way too many scenes of her learning summoning magic and playing with Sakutaro and the stakes, which were all pretty much the same thing and got really redundant after a while. Outside of that, I think her development in that episode is really good. EP8 Ange is a much weaker character to me, and I feel like EP8's obvious rushedness is probably a big part of that.

[Dormin]

Originally Posted by Witch of Uncertainty

Hey guys, sorry for going completely off topic, but I'm not quite sure where to ask.
How popular is the Umineko visual novel in Japan? I gathered that the PS3 versions sold about 10-15k each, but anyone knows about the original Visual novel?

Ehh that's interesting question. At least I know the anime sold shitly everywhere, but that shouldn't come as a surprise. I was actually very surprised that umineko got ps3fication, as I always thought higurashi was the mainstream when they cry and nobody even knew umineko. But I guess the fact it was remade should mean that at least SOMEONE bought the originals. Still surprised me project got greenlighted after the anime though.

Where I come from umineko is actually fairly known, as a vn, but that could be because the circles are relatively small

Honestly I'm not very prone in seeing Battler as a jerk for hiding the truth from Ange

Welcome to the club.

But now speaking of the character depth and fleshing-out, I felt that actually very small portion of characters got the treatment. The writing concentrated on people like eva, rosa and maria, maybe even kinzo and to some degree natsuhi and ange. I don't mind because the character writing in my opinion is very top quality, even in the characters that are left with relatively small attention. And for battler, he has indeed character development, but to me he always felt like the "main character" alongside with beatrice (characters that were very interesting but compared to others couldn't actually carry the torch). With the meta-characters like beatrice and other witches I still don't know if they and their quality of writing should be considered as "characters", as I prefer the interpretation that they are only metaphors and indicators of yasu and her worldview, thus not being even real characters that should feel very "human".

For example I thought chiesters were well executed as characters, because they really are not even characters, thus filling their role in the story with minimalistic appearances.

But going again any topics, and hopefully not discussed to death:

1) What the hell did ange see in the corner in episode 4?

2) Didn't ryu pretty much confirm the gender of lion as a man in one of the interviews or whatever saying something like "lion likes to cook despite that being normal to his gender"

[theacefrehley]

Originally Posted by Dormin

1) What the hell did ange see in the corner in episode 4?

If you mean at the shop of captain Kawabata, I remember they show it in the anime, and it's a stuffed toy of the same kind of Sakutaro (if not Sakutaro itself, who knows)

EDIT: There's also a TIP about Sakutaro, that points out that it's him

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

I've actually often wondered whether Ryukishi has some kind of gender identity issues, since he seems so interested in writing about the female state of mind and in several interviews he gives the impression that he's thought a lot about the differences between the traditional worldviews of men and women. Heck, he even said once that he would imagine that most people who'd be able to understand Umineko would be women, which is interesting because why would a man expect women to understand his work better than other men? Not to mention the whole Yasu thing would suggest he's at least somewhat interested in the subject of gender confusion. I dunno, could be just my imagination, but I have gotten this impression quite a few times. It's probably kind of rude to even speculate about this kind of stuff, but I can't help but wonder occasionally.

For me, I think it's interesting, but I also think he doesn't understand "the female mindset" (which is a bit insulting to begin with, but let's not get mired in that just yet) as well as he seems to either want to or thinks that he does.

Worse yet, he kind of... contradicts himself? He talked a lot in interviews about the differences in what men and women desire, what they value, and so forth. He says men are concerned about their legacy more... yet it's Natsuhi more than anyone who values family pride and children. It's Eva more than anyone who values status and power. It's Kyrie more than anyone who values intellect and control. The men (and Rosa) are actually portrayed as more impulsive and emotionally-driven. I mean, hell, the most powerful masculine forces in the entire novel (Kinzo and to some extent Battler) are weepy, emotionally-charged maniacs ruled by their passions and consumed by other people. By contrast, Ange is cynical and intellectual and largely interested in herself. If one imagines "traditional" gender assignments as a 19th Century psychologist would, the men and women in Umineko appear to generally have atypically reversed roles. Of course these roles fit, because the notion that women are always emotional is a crock of shit and the idea that men can control themselves is laughable, and women can be intellectually self-absorbed as much as men can be emotionally self-sacrificing, but I wonder if that's something Ryukishi actually believes or not.

Either he did this accidentally as an artifact of the female characters having better development in general, or he doesn't understand his own thoughts on the issue, or he did it on purpose as an intentional subversion, but then for whatever reason played it straight with Yasu (maybe). The problem is, these surface-level observations are really about as far as we get, and his interview responses tend to be distressingly (but subtly) misogynistic. I've always found his interview personality a bit at odds with the actual text thematically. Is he trolling whenever he's interviewed? Does he just not understand his own writing? Is he ducking the question for personal reasons, or to avoid giving a controversial opinion?

I'm not actually sure what, if anything, he's trying to say about gender. Could it just be what happened to be on his mind at the time and not an intentional theme? Was he trying to make a point that he just never quite fully developed, either out of lack of ability or fear that it might alienate some readers? It wouldn't entirely surprise me if it's something to do with the author personally, but how could I know that?

[DaBackpack]

If I had to guess, his responses about the "female mindset" were primarily directed towards the Yasu story and had nothing to do with... every other female in the story. I don't think he thought that part of his interview very well. To be honest, I don't think the gender difference "theme" was even a part of his consideration when writing the characters. It's something he pulled out of his ass to try to justify and rationalize Yasu's actions.

As you say, the other females' actions don't really follow this at all, and I honestly don't think he was attempting anything clever like subversion either.

[Drifloon]

I'm not actually sure what, if anything, he's trying to say about gender. Could it just be what happened to be on his mind at the time and not an intentional theme?

Mm, yeah, thinking on this, I actually feel like this is a pretty good description of Ryukishi's writing style in general really. I think that he prioritises writing what he particularly wants to write at the time or whatever happens to come to him, rather than particularly trying to put across a consistent message. There's a lot of points in Umineko where I get the feeling that Ryukishi just felt like writing about a particular topic even though it doesn't really fit particularly well within the context of the story. That part in EP1 where the cousins are calmly discussing psychology not long after the brutal murder of six people comes to mind. Well, I kind of sympathise with this, because it's how I tend to write too, but objectively it's not exactly what would generally be considered good writing, and there are a lot of points where it's genuinely really jarring.

Still, as weird as it is, I do find it sort of refreshing in a way, and Ryukishi's writing is generally good at bringing up interesting points for me to reflect on which is honestly all I ask from a story in the end. Actually coming to a conclusion on the issues raised is kinda optional in my view; it's not like there are actual objective answers to most of the issues Umineko talks about (although maybe you'd disagree on that) and I think you're probably absolutely right that Ryukishi doesn't really know what his own opinion is on a lot of them, which is why he seems to fluctuate from one theme to another throughout the series, constantly questioning himself. I find this unique style kind of endearing and "genuine", I guess, but consistent it is certainly not. But still, I don't think it's necessarily bad if the goal of a story is to raise questions rather than to provide answers. It's kind of a shame that EP8 ended on the note that it did, though, because he genuinely does come across as pushing a particular viewpoint on the reader with the final decision (the trick ending is seriously just insulting, and not an adequate way to give the reader a choice at all), and I have to wonder if he regrets doing that in hindsight. I really do have a lot of problems with EP8 in general; despite a lot of the themes resonating with me in and of themselves, the episode is pretty poorly constructed by any standard. In some ways I think I'd have preferred the series to end at Breakdown of the Witch's Illusion, but there you go. I have high hopes that the manga will do it better, though.

[Renall]

I actually wonder how the manga will address the Trick/Magic thing. It's basically two distinct endings, and portrayed the way it is doesn't really make any sense in context in much the same way the riddle contest wouldn't have worked (thus leading them to change it).

Of course given the pace of things it's going to be a hell of a long time before the manga gets that far, I'd assume.