2014-04-15, 09:34 | Link #34321 |
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My question would be whether this interpretation is merely emergent as an interpretation of the actual story or whether it was actually intended at any point. I think it's an entirely valid reading, but I honestly wonder whether it's the one we were supposed to have.
I mean it's fine to say that ep8 Battler is by his actions something of a villain or anti-hero, and I'd agree that he comes across as such, but is that really how we're meant to look at him? The fact that we do doesn't necessarily mean that we were supposed to. Milton may not have intended for Satan to come across as heroic in Paradise Lost, he's just read as an anti-hero by some interpretations because he's a remarkably charismatic character with a seemingly valid argument. He might still be an asshole, and he might have always been intended to be an asshole. The anti-hero interpretation might be a more interesting interpretation, but it may or may not be one the author meant. I mean yadda yadda Death of the Author, we can interpret the message any way we like, but I am still curious as to the moral stance of the author because I feel it's important to judging the character of the work. So I am at least mildly curious if this was Ryukishi's intent all along because man, VN ep8 bungled it badly if so.
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2014-04-15, 10:01 | Link #34322 | |
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Just to show, the scene I mentioned above from the manga: Spoiler for ep8 manga chapter 21:
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2014-04-15, 19:26 | Link #34324 | ||||
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I've mulled over the spoilers but... I think I need to read the manga. While some things are definitely good... there are some developments I find... questionable to say the least so I'm waiting to see them in contest.
Also, really, the more Ep 8 manga version is released the more I think Ep 8 VN was incomplete and poorly handed. Quote:
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Let's start with 'magic as copying mechanism'. Magic as copying mechanism is like giving a painkiller drug to tone down the pain. At a certain point you've to stop using it or you'll get addicted and you'll need more and more until it won't work anymore. In addition to this, like a painkiller drug it doesn't heal the problem, it just stops the pain temporally. If Yasu had, like Shannon in Ep 2, merely contended herself with ‘using magic’ to find the courage to start something and then decided to drop magic and continue with her own power it wouldn’t have been so bad. She’s not Shannon of Ep 2 though, she’s completely dependant on magic she doesn’t believe she can make her relationship work without constantly using it. ‘Magic as an embellishment of the process’ isn’t harmful if the parties involved know the truth and don’t lose sight of it. Kinzo and Bice seem to play on the idea she’s a witch and it’s just a game. The problem exists when one of the two parties involved starts deluding herself it’s not an embellishment. Maria believes Sakutarou is real and she’s crushed when he ‘dies’. Ange starts to believe the 7 sisters are real as well and is crushed when they reveal herself for useless. They lost sight of a truth they knew, that Sakutarou is a toy and the 7 sisters a fantasy. Harm can come also when one of the parties involved doesn’t know it’s an embellishment. Berune gets seriously scared when she believes Beatrice has played a prank on her. The servant who got injured might have ended up injured merely because she thought she saw something, got scared and fell. ‘Magic as a downright lie’ has the potential to become seriously harmful. Actually in real life there could be cases in which this doesn’t happen as the lie doesn’t get discovered and the lied part lives in blissful ignorance of the harmful truth but in Umineko we see lies end up always poisoning the existence of the people who’re feed them. Starting from Kinzo’s wife (Kinzo lied to her claiming he went for walks when he was meeting his daughter) and going through Kuwadorian Beatrice, Natsuhi, Asumu, Kyrie, Yasu, Battler, Erika, Maria, Tohya and reaching Ange (who was told by Eva she didn’t know what had happened) they all suffer harm from it. None of the lies told to them lead them to a ‘happy ending’. ‘Magic as faith/hope’ can work only as long as you don’t become dependant on it. Ange goes on with her life but keeps on hoping on Battler’s return and he’ll sort of come back. Yasu instead will depend so much on Battler’s return that she won’t be able to make anything, sustaining that hope will become too heavy and she will doom herself. It isn’t necessarily a delusion as Erika seems to believe, it’s just something on which you must not bet all you have or you might end up on losing everything. Not all the boyfriends betray their girlfriends like Erika’s boyfriend seems to do but some surely did. Rudolf betrayed… everyone, really, Maria’s father used Rosa, Hideyoshi and Krauss were loyal to their wives. Not all the loves were a lie unworthy of faith but some were. As for truth, truth can be harmful. In order for it not to be people must be capable to withstand it. The key point in Umineko is that with good or bad reasons people refuse to help the ones facing the truth to help them withstand it. It becomes an aut aut. Either I won’t tell you the truth and I’ll leave you in harmful ignorance or I’ll tell you the truth in the most harmful way. No one thinks the truth is unpleasant but leaving this person in ignorance might do more harm than good so I’ll find a way to present the truth that’s not a lie but that won’t come as a crushing blow. If Yasu had slowly been prepared to the truth about herself and Kinzo instead than having the bomb dropped on her she might have managed to face it. If Ange had slowly be prepared to face the truth about Rokkenjima in the same way as her trip in Ep 4 seems to prepare her to face the truth about humans beings she might have managed to face the truth instead than jumping on self destruction like in Ep 7 & 8. The key problem in Umineko is that people aren’t simply willing to do an effort to help others cope with the truth. They’re either in the party that want to hide it or to reveal it but there’s no middle ground and both solutions come out as harmful. Honestly in Ep 8 I was hoping the whole Halloween party was Battler’s idea to gently prepare Ange to the truth, not to force her to accept to a lie. Helping her to remember that her family wasn’t formed by bad people might help her to accept that in a desperate moment they did the wrong thing… but it doesn’t have to become the illusion that they never did anything wrong. I understand Battler/Tohya’s fear of the truth as it almost erased Battler in Ep 4 and it put Tohya on a wheelchair but the problem is they didn’t learn from their experiences the right lesson which is if they had been helped to face the truth instead of having it tossed at them, they wouldn’t have reacted to it so badly. All they seem to have learnt from it is truth caused me harm so let’s hide it as there’s no way to cope with it without risking to die in the process. On the opposite side Ange seems to expect that truth will magically do her some good when it’s not knowing truth what’ll help her but her stance once she’ll know the truth. Deep down she’s expecting truth will be nice or at least acceptable and not as horrible as it is. While her claims are true all her quest for the truth seems to come down to give her two options: if the truth is good then it’ll improve her life, if the truth isn’t good it’ll give her the strength to kill herself. We don’t need to read the book of one single truth to figure out that if Battler and Eva wanted to hide the truth is because the truth isn’t good so Ange’s quest is basically aimed not at finding the truth and copying with it but at finding the truth and using it as an excuse to self destruction. In the VN this came out pretty badly, presenting her as a spoiled child, the manga at least gives full deep to her desperation. She can’t stand her present situation and she’s so deep into desperation that she can’t find a way out for good or for bad. Like Yasu she wants to escape to her fate but she’s doing it in the wrong way. Maybe the odd thing in Umineko is that it tends to focus more on how people do mistakes than on people doing the right things. No one does the right thing and the sense of wrongness is increased by the fact there isn’t actually something that could be done for the Rokkenjima tragedy as it had already happened and no one can unmake it. Ep 6, Lion, Ep 8, they’re all lies. People messed up and things can’t be fixed. No one will be resurrected. No one will manage to make it right again. No one will learn from his/her mistakes. And since it seems the manga implied Ange died as well… no one will make things right with Ange either. If Ange died the good ending is also an illusion. Ange won’t cope with the truth. Showing it to her like that was a mistake like hiding it from her. No one will take the third option, telling the truth in a way she could accept it. I'm curious to see where the manga will go, but if the truth is that Ange died then Bern and Lambda about how the story couldn't end with a good ending are tragically true as the only way to get a good ending would be a fantasy ending in which Ange didn't kill herself but coped with the truth. Or, in short, a lie. |
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2014-04-16, 09:26 | Link #34325 |
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The part of the goat self-censor in this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q6iqSk_pQM 12:34 is pretty audible about who the culprit is(I think).
"After all, ***********, **********!!" Possessing faint Japanese knowledge, I'm sure I heard "Ushiromiya Eva ------- ja nai!!" " ---------- da yo!!"(Really inaudible because of that sound) Non verbatim, and adding context from before and after scenes, I think it means "After all, Ushiromiya Eva is not the culprit!!" I don't understand what is said next, but basing on Ange's reactions about not accepting it, insisting that Eva is the culprit and that Kyrie, Rudolph and Battler are the victims; the culprits are Battler's family. I'm not sure about Battler but I have ridiculous freebie blue truth with respect to Ougon Musou Kyoku: "Black Battler's 2nd palette looking like Tohya Hachijo makes it look like Battler is part of the culprit theory." |
2014-04-16, 11:42 | Link #34326 |
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The problem is less who, but why and to what extent, and that's something Eva presumably didn't know. Battler's involvement, for example, is portrayed in two distinctly different ways: In the ep7 Tea Party he seems very much against any criminal activity, but in Bern's ep8 purple game he's outright helping his parents commit murder.
I think there are a few common elements that seem to indicate something is up:
So I wonder if either Battler was the one who solved the epitaph (and informed all the adults) or if Battler participated in faking his death as part of Yasu's "murders" and this spurred the adults to solve it and then tensions ran high because they didn't know the deaths weren't real. Kyrie snapping and going on a killing spree would make an awful lot more sense if Rudolf had just told her that Battler was her son and Battler was apparently just murdered, for example. In ep6, when Rudolf believes Battler is dead, he has a breakdown about it too. If the adults had some reason to suspect the other adults then anybody's children turning up "dead" would put them on edge. Although then we run up against the problem of "Beatrice's" confession to them in the gold room. Given that she's playing up the witch role you'd think she'd mention something about how everyone who "died" was "revived" if that was part of the script. But maybe she didn't get that far before the shooting started. The missing point of view in all of these events is Battler's. The VN didn't touch on his direct recollection of events very clearly (unless, as has been suggested, ep4 was sort of his perspective on events), and the manga may or may not. It's especially important in the instance where Battler saw something really important that Eva didn't see, or knew about something Eva didn't know (like a murder game). It's obvious why Ange might suspect he was involved since popular theories at the time often included him as a culprit in theories about his family, but he's really the only person who would know for sure as Eva seemingly didn't.
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2014-04-16, 11:51 | Link #34327 | |
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So, um, just for clarity's sake...what exactly is that page that haguruma just translated (and thanks a lot for that, by the way)? It seems to be a summary of what was revealed in the latest EP8 manga chapters, but is it actually written by Ryukishi or is it just a fan's impressions?
In particular I really want to know about this part: Quote:
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2014-04-16, 13:05 | Link #34328 | ||
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We know that Ryukishi said, George would have accepted Sayo even if she had told him the truth, way back in his interview with Keiya in Answer of the Golden Witch . The nightmare with George saying to her face that she disgusts him, was featured on a blog that puts some selected pages or panels online when chapters are released. The whole aspect of the cursed lineage is a little hazier, since so far the only excerpts we have show that this is what Yasu was thinking about herself after she learned of being the child of a rapist and conceived in incest...so she basically blames her genes for her desire towards her cousin-nephews/niece. I do wonder what you have to say about these parts though...I'm still collecting my thoughts Btw. concerning what Renall said earlier about Bern's rather strange role of not being exactly wrong while still being an antagonist... The opening pages of chapter 20 are quite interesting regarding that, especially if you DO read Bern as the same Bernkastel from Higurashi: Spoiler for EP8 manga chapter 20:
If we do read this in a more positive light for Bern, then we could say that she experienced "not knowing" as a prison (in Higurashi) in which she was forced to live and die in pain again and again, while "knowing" released her from that prison. For her there is just misery in "not knowing", so that explains her desire to rip the guts out of a story, to know everything there is to know. Or...well....she could just be an ass that is accidentally right And since I didn't really notice the posts before... EDIT: Quote:
Spoiler for EP8 chapter 20:
Having Battler as an accomplicee basically defeats Yasu's goal and modus operandi...so, while it's not impossible, it just is very unlikely to happen... What it does tell is though is, that the adults, or at least Kyrie and Rudolph, might have had a very clear reason to take Battler with them to the island and leave Ange at home... Last edited by haguruma; 2014-04-16 at 13:20. |
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2014-04-16, 13:16 | Link #34329 | ||
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EDIT: As an example, Battler could come in on a game or something if he actually did solve Yasu's intended riddle. Or if he remembered. Or any number of other reasons. He just couldn't be bribed to become an accomplice ahead of time, because he normally cannot be bribed and Yasu normally wouldn't intend to make him an accomplice. He could become one through all sorts of ways of his own volition though.
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2014-04-16, 13:53 | Link #34330 | |
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EP6 is more or less a giant troll against Erika without ANY other motivation besides the Duel of Love going on at the same time. The most confusing part is that Battler is basically in on the fake murders, but there is no reason for the fake murders in EP6...besides trolling Erika...because he basically already whitewashed all the characters into their version they also appear as in his EP8 In EP6 Battler plays along because there is nothing big to play along with. The only hint we could take from this is Erika's repetition of Rosa's EP2 motto, "You can only trust the corpses you killed yourself" Does that mean that maybe somebody re-killed somebody? If yes, why? And if not, we basically run into the "and they had a wonderful time until the island exploded" story again. The problem with Battler playing along is not the believability of him doing so (well, not that alone) but of finding a believable reason of why Yasu would tell him, because the adults not knowing that he is pretending implies that it is Yasu's plan. The reason for her to hold the fake murders is for her wanting Battler to solve them...him knowing about it and actually playing along kinda defeats that EDIT: And wouldn't him solving the fake murders make Yasu stop immediately, because it'd mean that Battler came through for her after all?? |
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2014-04-16, 14:07 | Link #34331 |
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As far as we know, Yasu did stop, or possibly she didn't get started, and if your summaries are accurate probably never intended to "actually" directly kill anyone by any standard means. If people were actually killed directly, ep7 and ep8 seem to be saying the parents were responsible, not Yasu.
Battler and Beatrice appear to be in collusion in ep6. We don't know why, because the game is handled almost entirely in the meta and is derailed. But we could say something similar for ep5 and yet the manga still tells us that there in fact was a Battler/Beatrice collusion. That seems oddly significant for Chiru's purposes, as Battler is essentially shown three times in a row to be in on the plan. In ep5 he's bribed into it, which is explicitly out of character. In ep6 we don't know why he's participating, but he seems to be doing so voluntarily. In ep8, he and Beatrice act like they're partners in crime (although admittedly that's Battler's happy world and that could just be the way he and Beato liked it, but still). A lot of Yasu's plans for Battler presuppose that he will arrive not already remembering and will have to be reminded. We don't actually know that Battler would've been in that state, as we seem to know very little about Battler-Prime at the moment. Who's to say Battler doesn't immediately suspect Yasu when the letter arrives at dinner and solves the epitaph by himself on the first night? He meets her, they decide to go forward with the fake murders anyway (for Reason X, let's say they decide they want the adults to solve it together so they'll get the gold and be happy because they're nice dummies). They rope some servants or maybe the other cousins into it. The adults explode because they're on edge about "murders" and, while they do solve the epitaph, it doesn't have the result Battler and Yasu expected. That's just a thought, but my point is Battler being completely out of the loop like he is in the first stories is a supposition on Yasu's part. Unfortunately, since we don't know anything about what Battler did, we can only sort of guess at it. We know that Battler must have:
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2014-04-16, 15:11 | Link #34332 | |
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And yes, Battler in EP1 and 2 is clearly designed by Yasu, but meta-Battler from the start is very likely the Battler within Tohya and from EP3 onwards Piece-Battler is also no longer drawn by Yasu. If we go through this: EPISODE 1 & 2: Piece-Battler (by Yasu): He's very much out of the loop about the whole story but tries to be heroic at more than one point. He clearly cares about the family, the cousins and the servants but is designed to be kind of a goofball and pretty gullible. EPISODE 3: Piece-Battler (by Ikuko??): He's still out of the loop, but the interesting thing is that he is not actively trying to do anything like he did in EP1 and 2. He's a little bit more scared by the whole situation but there is also clearly no witch illusion this time around (which draws an interesting parallel to EP5). He's also a lot readier to accuse people and act irrationally. This is also the only time that 07151129 plays an active part in the island plot and Battler is shown to draw no immediate connection to it. EPISODE 4: Piece-Battler (by Tohya??): His only real action comes at the end and he's shown to be very much investigative and trying to find stuff out, very different from his EP1 and 2 self. The rest of the time he clearly listens to the parents advice, but he is also shown to be close with the cousins. This is also the only time Battler meets with the witch before the time runs out and he doesn't recognize her or draw any parallels. EPISODE 5: Piece-Battler (by ????): It's interesting because Piece-Battler here is played not by Battler but has his role assigned by Lambda. He is an accomplicee this time around and is at least controlled by the parents. He is said to know about Shkannon, but since the true culprits motive is different the whole game is off and him knowing about her doesn't mean much. Battler is a much darker and brooding character than he was in the first four games and seems pretty disgusted by what the parents are doing around and to him. There is also this very interesting seen at the very end of the gameboard-plot in Natsuhi's room, when Battler intervenes with his usual catch-phrase...which in this case could actually be read as him standing up against the parents and their plot to humiliate Natsuhi any further...which would play a very nice parallel to the battler in the Court of Illusion. EPISODE 6: Piece-Battler (by Tohya): In this one he clearly knows what is going on and this causes Battler to be almost a non-existence as a piece. He dies fairly early on, but I'd say it's also for the reason that this Battler is highly illogical. He is clearly working with Yasu's plan (which is kinda his plan in this version) but the Duel of Love is still going on, there is also a completely different reason for the epitaph-murders, basically making EVERYBODY in on it except Erika (at least it's implied that the father's and servants are in on it too)...but Erika is a non-existence. EPISODE 7: Piece-Battler (by Eva??): The only thing we get in this plotline is that Battler had feelings for Shannon once and actually did want to meet her again but things came up and he wasn't able to. So....yeah...Battler is a pretty confusing mess of a character. I really do hope the manga will shed at least a little bit more light on him, because right now he ends up as a pretty weird guy in my book. Especially with "him" (well Meta-Battler/Tohya) claiming in the EP8 manga, that it is all his responsibility for making "that person" create the catbox. And this: Spoiler for EP8 chapter20:
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2014-04-16, 15:27 | Link #34333 |
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I don't think we can trust Tohya's characterization of Battler any more than we can trust Yasu's characterization of Battler, because like her he knows only so much about Battler's personality, past, and actions. How much about "himself" has he recalled, and how much has he learned from external sources? We're outright told that he does not remember everything and he doesn't feel like he is Battler; Battler is a stranger, just a stranger he finds himself knowing things about in an unnerving way.
If Tohya were to deduce or recall that there was a promise, that Yasu was a person he knew, that there were things going on between his former self and her, then he might reach certain conclusions based upon future evidence. That is, "the explosion happened, so clearly I (that is, 'Battler') must have failed to remember my promise." That certainly might sound like a reasonable proposition, but it also might be an incorrect one. It would be the same thing as concluding "since the bomb went off, Yasu must've intended for it to go off and allowed it to do so." But ep7 shows us that Yasu can tell other people about it, so even if she'd intended to disarm it someone else could've armed it thereafter. Again, reasonable put potentially wrong, especially if Yasu was not in fact a murderer. Another issue you bring up is the "Why didn't he come home?" angle, which just adds more questions. We know he chose to leave the island, apparently by himself (or with Yasu, depending on your take on ep8). At the very least, he didn't do what Eva did and stay put until the police came. At some point after this he becomes Tohya (or the genesis of the consciousness that will eventually come to be known as such). Erika's position that he can't come home at that point in ep8 is based on the presumption that Battler can't because he, like everyone else, is dead. But he wasn't, at least not on October 6th. So what was his plan? Where was it he intended to go? And perhaps a meta-question being asked of Tohya through Erika is "if you know you're Battler, why didn't you contact Ange?" But that at least has an understandable answer (albeit one Meta-Battler can't provide), in that Tohya doesn't necessarily think of himself as Battler anyway and might be worried about the inadequacy of presenting himself to Ange when he's really just a stranger with broken fragmentary memories of the person she's hoping to see.
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2014-04-16, 17:32 | Link #34334 |
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About Battler's involvement:
It can be that Battler was involved in something, just not Yasu's game. It might be he and the cousins planned a Halloween prank for Maria for example (in Ep 6 Battler agreed to play dead because Erika was a jerk to Maria and he wanted to teach her a lesson). It can also be that even if Yasu didn't want Battler to be involved, Rudolf and Kyrie decided to involve him anyway. They might have tattled out on him that Kinzo is dead (which is what Yasu tattled out on them) and asked his cooperation while at the same time keeping the thing secret from the others. In short they feared for troubles and wanted an extra help from a direction no one would expect. Rudolf is desperate after all so he and Kyrie might be planning desperate measures. About the re-killing: We don't really know at which point the game was when the epitaph was solved. We get the impression murders should start after midnight but if they're fake murders the servants could have been asked to play dead while Yasu was in the basement with the adults and when Rudolf and Kyrie left the place they found a bunch of "dead servants". Or the cousins playing dead to prank someone. Let's assume at this point they ended up saying something like "Wait, I just killed Eva and Hideyoshi but I didn't touch their son" in front of a supposedly dead George and you can have George resurrect quite hurriedly. It can also be that an argument took place between George and Battler because George admitted he stole Battler's ex-girlfriend and Battler didn't take it as smoothly as one would think. The two have a fight, Battler is hit and assumed dead, Rudolf and Kyrie don't take it well. Then while they're on a rampage Battler wakes up, maybe in a confusional state and find Kyrie about to die. She tells him of the passage and he escapes. About Prime being like Ep 4 or not The real problem is we don't know if Ep 4 is merely a story Tohya created and that Bern used as a model to cover the parts Eva's diary didn't touch to create Ep 7 Teaparty or the real deal. Ep 4 and Ep 7 have in common the idea of Kinzo's test but they go at it very differently. Ep 4 presents it rather dramatically, with the siblings believing people had already been killed and the others are prisoniers while in Ep 7 is merely an excuse to get the cousins out of the room... which isn't even really necessary. Kyrie and Rudolf might have waited till they fell asleep and then killed them. They couldn't leave the island so they weren't in a hurry. About Battler & Yasu An interesting point the VN implies subtly is that actually Battler liked Sayo but that he realized he came back too late and therefore couldn't claim rights on her. There's an interesting bit in Ep 5, in which he talks to Beatrice but that could apply to Yasu as well in which he claims if she had had faith in him and had waited for him he would have came back for her... so it can be he came back for her, and inf act he doesn't come back in Ep 7 in which there's no Shannon. However Ep 6 might also imply that Battler, who came back for Shannon, by finding a Shannon that wasn't the one he remembered, might not have reacted as smoothly as the other episodes implied he would act. Meta Battler is cold to Beato and wants his own Beato back and even tries to do something to get her to remember how she was before. Unless this is supposed to be a parallel to what Kinzo did, it can reveal something about what happened on Prime. About Battler and the Golden Land: Honestly I've been stuck by the parallel between the Golden Land and the world in which Battler lived those 6 years. Maybe it's coincidental but Battler seems to claim he was having lot of fun in those 6 years and was very busy but in the end never told us exactly what he was doing. There are subtle hints they mgith not have been so fun. However for 6 years he doesn't come back to Shannon nor, apparently, invites her to come to him. And he promised her he would be back, same way he promised Ange he would be back. It's also interesting how Erika raises a good point, there are people who change their life because they knew something. Battler agrees there are and he knows Ange's life is terrible and yet he's sure Ange won't change in the better by reading that book. What is making him so sure? Does he know Ange so well? Or his is only wishful thinking because Ange has already read the book and had killed herself and he's just wishing he could rewind and have her take another path? Or something else is stopping him from believing that by knowing the truth or that particular truth a person could cope with it and move toward a better life? Of course it can also be Tohya's guilt speaking. He didn't want to be Battler so he refused to meet Ange... but then he might have felt guilty for this. He could have 'gone back home' but refused. To him Battler is dead so Ange can't reach him. Really, it'll be nice if the manga were to tell us more about Battler's side as well. There are things about him that are quite unclear. About the games We've been worrying a lot in the past about how much Tohya remembers while writing the episodes but I wonder if this matters. With Ikuko having Yasu's confession as well as the media informations and the two messages which outlined Yasu's plan the books could be written even if Tohya doesn't remember a single detail of what had happened during those 2 days. The setting for the 4 episodes supposedly authored by Tohya is, after all, pretty different. For Battler's point of view Ep 3 have people dying with the adults taking care of the cousins and apparently unaware of what's going on, people is discovered dead, Kyrie did 'something odd' and Eva is suspected as culprit. Ep 4 have the cousins always unaware but the adults are either killed or prisoners. Kyrie is one of the last getting killed but Eva dies pretty soon. Ep 5 have the cousins minus Battler 'dying' but Battler believes he knows what's going on and the plot focus on making Natsuhi a scapegoat while keeping Erika in the dark of what's going on. Ep 6 have Battler aware of what's going on until Erika starts acting crazy. In short the last episodes presents Battler as much more aware of things than the earliest which would contrast with the Teaparty in which he doesn't know a thing. About the translations A huge THANK YOU to haguruma for always providing translations! 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2014-04-18, 16:00 | Link #34335 |
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Regarding the Goat Censor
Hey all! Long time lurker here, but kuroberus' post got me interested, so I rooted around in the umineko gamefiles for the audio of the goats. It turns out that along with the audio of all the goats speaking together, they have each track separately.
The messages are as follows (excuse my poor Japanese) The first one is these two layered over each other: Datte, hoka ni ikinokotteru hito ni wa inai ja nai? After all, there aren't any other survivors, right? Datte, anta igai wa minna shinda! After all, everyone but you died! The second line seems to be both of these layered over each other: Ushiromiyaka de ikinokotteru wa anta dake da yo! You're the only surviving member of the ushiromiya family! Sore ga nani yori no shouko ni naru no yo This line is slightly above my level of japanese, someone could probably provide a much better translation than I can here Hope this helps! Edit: Forgot to mention this, but it seems like one line is spoken by eva and one by eva-beatrice. They're distorted in the final product, but the individual lines sound very much like the two. Last edited by Agiel; 2014-04-18 at 16:32. |
2014-04-18, 22:43 | Link #34336 |
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Random Opinion:
I've been wondering if Yasu didn't plan a fake murder game but also set the bomb, so she had an all or nothing plan in place. It would match the epitaph. Random Thought: Is Bern the cruelest possible stand-in for us? The author has implied through multiple characters that Ange learning the truth won't be super great for her, but we don't really care. As readers we want all secrets revealed (all guts ripped out) and all knowledge given to her, despite how cruel it might be, because we think it would be interesting. We are definitely the ones who are happy to read a story once but then tear it apart the second time. We kind of want her to fulfill her goal, but only insofar as they line up with ours. We would find it unbelievably boring if we didn't learn the truth, and don't think her emotions/wishes matter more than ours because she is a written person and therefore on a different level of existence to us. When witches get bored, they die. When readers get bored, they leave. |
2014-04-18, 23:37 | Link #34337 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Tennessee
Age: 36
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2014-04-19, 04:21 | Link #34338 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2010
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How much sense does it make to continue doubting Battler's character when it's been so ... consistent?At least as consistent as everybody else's, save Kinzo.
Furthermore, if you'd argue that Tohya's memories of Battler were fragmentary at the time of his writing forgeries, then he would barely be able to write anybody because Battler is the only person he even knows kinda sorta well. All 17 other humans are virtually strangers to him. Still pretty convinved that the relative accuracy of the characters portrayals is something we're just tupposed to assume. We arguably never get a verifiably objective representation of the human characters, but it does start to sound like rather wild speculation, very quickly, to doubt "the kind of person Battler / Jessica / Hideyoshi / whomever, was" Quote:
Well, I also sort of felt like the IRL readers, us, were kinda sorta meant to be the spectators at the wedding in EP6, and filling the theater seats during EP7's TP, but that was just my impression. |
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2014-04-19, 08:27 | Link #34339 |
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Join Date: May 2009
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Whether we doubt or accept Battler's characterization though, we still have no idea what it was that he actually did during the weekend, and not knowing that is a pretty large question mark.
I just think his ep4 portrayal of "sit around and wait for everybody to get killed, screw up what little contact he has with anyone, not know what's going on" is unsatisfying on a literary level, and we know that at some point he at least has to have discovered the means to escape explosive death. Did he find it? Was he shown it? If so, who showed him the way? These seem like important questions.
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