2013-05-20, 04:50 | Link #32341 | ||
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Learning about her identity also means at least for Krauss/Natsuhi, Eva/Hideyoshi and Rosa that their child is in close range of Yasu and would likely trust her enough to become an easy target. In that sense, Rudolph and Kyrie are a little bit of a wild card in her game. I have thought about Renall's proposition of cornering Yasu and taking her out, but that depends to much on the ability to trust that nobody else will make use of the situation/works with Yasu and will betray you in return. Quote:
What I do not understand in this discussion is, why they cannot be loving people and consumed by the need for money at the same time. It's as if being one would directly contradict the other. |
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2013-05-20, 08:22 | Link #32342 | |
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It's also stupid to the point of absurdity. Put in two minutes of thought and it falls apart: "Yes, my need for money is so great that I have basically no reservations about assisting a mentally ill person who threatened me with a bomb that I now know exists in killing my entire family, all on the promise that this teenage girl can totally get me hundreds of millions of yen that isn't based in illegal gold or vague promises and that I won't be immediately arrested for suddenly having that money after all of my siblings are horribly murdered. I am sure she will keep her word to help my particular part of the family after the fact because oh wait what is her endgame anyway? What is it she wants? Whatever it is, she'd kill everyone else to get it, so why not me as well? Why am I useful to her? Why should she give me anything? How will she stop me from ratting her out to the police afterward?" You'd have to be an idiot, a lunatic, or a monster to even believe this is a sincere offer. You would have to be completely unable to look to Yasu's motive and realize she has absolutely no incentive to actually help you. Kyrie would never fall for this, and I find it difficult to believe the other adults would suddenly come down with a terminal case of the stupids over it. People previously shown to be smarter than this don't buy a line like that no matter what gets thrown at them, unless they're pretending to agree temporarily in order to turn the tables. At that point, the only reason Yasu would succeed would be blind luck, because she's not more clever than the people she thinks she's manipulating. And if she failed, you still run across the issue of figuring out why things would turn into some kind of mass death thereafter. Certainly there may be reasons, and they make more sense than hers would, but that doesn't necessarily make them plausible either. It's not a sane motive. It's the motive of a villain in a murder mystery story and nothing more. And that's fine... for the murder mystery stories. An accomplice is an accomplice within her tales and the justification is permitted to be flimsier than it would really be. That's especially true when you're judging other people, whose depths you cannot easily know, and thus in fiction portray them as having more simplistic desires. But in the existence of a theoretical Prime there is absolutely no chance that this could be anyone's real motive. Not Yasu's, not the adults', not nobody's not nohow.
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2013-05-20, 13:52 | Link #32343 |
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I totally believe that standards of japanese society act a significant role in umineko.
However, as probably stated before somewhere, umineko is very western game in a way. Even the names and, to certain degree, clothing are trying to be "western". Personally I believe while considering the dealings with culprit and possibly yasu the pattern of behavior shouldn't be considered from the society viewpoint and what is generally accepted because almost anything that happens in the umineko, at least concerning the murders, is not accepted by society. Now here's my two cents: With yasu I agree with renalls general thoughtline. Even though he seems to think things FAR too logically (like neglecting the effect of panic and threatening) he has the right idea: people in umineko are smart. We have lots of evidence about this. If we want to explain the gameboards with yasu-culprit, that basically means she and her entire plan is batshit crazy. Now, like I probably stated somewhere before, threatening people straightforwardly with a gun is a plan I can see working, but supposing yasu either scared people with da bomb or people generally thought they were just playing around (both shown in our confessions) that is very difficult thing to grasp. I don't see anyone playing along with the culprit. One of the most unlogical thing I can see with yasuculprit (even though we can say "gameboards don't necessarily make sense as they are games") is the fact that seemingly sharp people go along with a completely retarded plan for a long period of time: the timeperiod is crucial. It is hard to believe people wouldn't dare to make somekind of plan against yasu, even though she has the bomb, just because teenager is saying she probably has a bomb with no evidence. But on the other hand, I can see the murders happening if they were actually done impulsively. If we start thinking "realistically" the most unrealistic thing in the entire game is probably the concept of murder creating detective story and people acting along it. In this way threatening people as time passes becomes more and more difficult as the time not spent supervising accomplices becomes more short. In this way the problem becomes if any person on the island is willing to play along with totally impossible plan about ritualistic murders with clearly insane individual with no change of trust or succeeding in getting money that might or might not exist while risking everyone on the family and probably persons of love. To certain degree I can say, even if it sounds impossible, it might not be impossible. Only thing it really needs is a perfect trust between the culprit and accomplices (trust of not detonating the bomb and the promise of certain wealth), as we know the cast includes people capable of killing. However, once again, trusting an instable teenager with lots of guns and clearly delusional mind is something that should not be considered out of blue with characters that certainly posses the certain level of intelligence. If we talk about prime, sure, I can see someone killing others for gold, as we can skip all the unnecessary forcing of murders to become a pure detective story. |
2013-05-20, 14:24 | Link #32344 |
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Regarding Episode 4, I mentioned that it is quite possible for Gohda and Kumasawa to be acting on the belief that everything is just a game and no murders have actually happened. It might even be possible to set things up so that Krauss, Kyrie, Nanjo, and Jessica believe everything's a game.
Setup: Yasu walks into the dining hall, where the adults are arguing. S/he shows the signet ring and announces "I am Ushiromiya Yasu, true heir to Ushiromiya Kinzo. I have solved the epitaph." (Perhaps Yasu presents some gold bars, or explains the epitaph.) "I am suspending the epitaph as a means of choosing the successor. None of you deserve it. Instead, I will give your respective children one last chance. If any of them pass my test, I will give all to them. But they must believe at all times that the test is real. If any of you reveal to them that this is fake before the test is over, I will instantly revoke my offer. Gohda, Kumasawa, go to the guest house. Tell the children that there has been an attack on the dining hall." Yasu then stares at Krauss. He nods and says "Do as Yasu says." Yasu gives an excuse to separate the "survivors" of the initial attack. ("I want to keep you apart so that you stay in character.") They call the guesthouse and give the story. Maybe the six first twilight victims are killed at that point; maybe they are left alive, in case somebody does pass Yasu's test. For Jessica's test, she goes to her room, where Yasu meets her. They talk; eventually Yasu informs Jessica that she failed her test. If she agrees to stay in character and deliver a message to Battler and Maria, one of them might pass; if she reveals that this is a game to them, the offer will be revoked. (Both Battler and Maria will take their tests outside.) Jessica then agrees to deliver a message to Battler. (Did Jessica reveal that she knew George was killed outside?) I can believe in an accomplice who goes along with Yasu, believing that nobody is in any true danger. (as seen above) I can believe in an accomplice who is actively evil. (Genji is the only one who really matches this; I can believe him following Yasu's orders as Kinzo's successor.) I can believe in an accomplice who goes along because of a threat that can not be directly countered. (Natsuhi in Ep. 5 goes along because of a threat against Krauss.) I can't believe in an accomplice who goes along because of a threat which can be directly countered. "I have a gun that is pointed right at you. Do as I say or I'll shoot." or "There's a bomb on this island and I'm holding the remote right now." can't be directly countered. "I have a gun in the next room and..." can be countered by running away, or by attacking first. "There's a bomb on this island, and the trigger is elsewhere." can be countered by attacking and trying to force things out of Yasu. So I can't believe in "Our Confessions", as I understand it. I think that Krauss would be more likely to go Jack Bauer on Yasu.
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2013-05-20, 14:47 | Link #32345 | |||
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I believe you are pretty close to what ryu meant as "people believing to play a game". In that way you make lots of logical points. But I must disagree with few points:
First of all, the deciding of the next head by solving the epitah. Even if we have heavy implications that kinzo originally thought the headship to be decided this way, I have very hard time believing that any of the relatives would actually accept yasu as the new head. I know this was also heavily implicated to be possible in ep 2, but now we still must remember that yasu ultimately is very crazy and her crossdressing tricks don't necessarily make other ushiromiyas trust her very much. I don't know even if it is legal to actually decide about inheritance by some riddle. Also, if crossdressing teenager girl/boy suddenly appears in front of highly intellect individuals and tells that she is now the new head, how do you think the sisters would actually react? Would they accept her, or would they find some legal trick to have the gold out of her hands? They have no way of knowing that she is actually even related, maybe the word of genji, that also was seen very untrustable as a servant of kinzo from the pov of other relatives. However you are right that the general layout of ep 4 was probably supposed to resemble this and I can see this happening, if we forget about overanalyzing things. I can agree with other claims about accomplices, except these: Quote:
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However if combined the effect could be different. I don't know what I would do if conformed with a vague bomb threat, probably be very worried and panic, but thinking non-emotionally and logically, threat that has no evidence of existence is not very threatening |
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2013-05-20, 14:49 | Link #32346 | |
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What about the fact that none of the adults could hope to hide this from their children, who they live? Like, say Kyrie shot everyone up but she, Rudolf, and Battler survived. Was Battler in on it? What are they going to tell Ange? Killing people for the gold only works if you're an idiot who doesn't know the fundamental basics of economics and judicial procedure. Gold can't be an incentive unless everyone on the island is retarded.
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2013-05-20, 15:07 | Link #32347 | |
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You are right. You make very rational arguments. However concerning the gold, we have lots of examples from kinzo how gold was not actually used as direct money but as a way to maintain the front of rich and powerful family. I don't think wisely used at least all gold should be transferred to money (also being probably impossible, as you stated). This way, and I don't believe it even can be denied, gold always has a certain charm. Even the word "gold" speaks of godly wealth and riches. The desire to obtain this, even if not logical, exists. And people on the island were desperate and struggling with money related problems. But as I stated, your points are very valid. That's why I stated that I believe any murders in prime were probably very impulsive. Maybe the point of the murders wasn't in reality even the gold, but hatred or accidents or whatever caused a cycle of death. I could see the gold as a possible catalyst in this reaction, even if not being very logical. |
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2013-05-20, 15:35 | Link #32348 | |
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This becomes exponentially less plausible the less prepared the premeditating party is. The only thing that works in Yasu's favor as a premeditation culprit is that she has the resources, time, and planning potential to actually do it. For anyone who isn't a regular resident of the island, the plan becomes vastly more complex. What do you do if you're going to stab Hideyoshi and he breaks free and runs screaming into the forest, impossible to find and kill before the end of the weekend if he hides out there? Hell, even if you intend to participate in some fakery or something, how are you going to pull off the killings while sticking to the script? What if you go to ambush somebody while they're sleeping/fake-dead and they walk right out of the bathroom, totally alert and awake? I mean, even fake dead people gotta pee sometime over the length of a day. It's not completely implausible, but it is harder and harder to explain with the information we actually have before us. If you posit that George brought an M16 assault rifle and a backpack full of ammunition, then sure he could've killed everybody with relatively little effort. But where in the world would we even see evidence that such a thing could've possibly happened? The best we got for an unexplained weapon was Kyrie's knife, which is mentioned a few times from ep6 on. But if Kyrie's plan was to kill over a dozen people with just one knife, she's basically banking on being Solid Snake as a murder plan. Plus anyone who does know about the bomb has even less of an excuse than Yasu to not just use that. Quietly strangle Yasu in the gold room, have a nice quiet family conference, and after you "go to bed" on the 5th haul ass for the tunnels and flip the switch. Goodnight and goodbye, inconvenient relatives! Impossible, as Rudolf is Jack Bauer.
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2013-05-20, 15:56 | Link #32349 | ||||||
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Also, on the matter of the gold being worthless - that's not entirely true. Even if it was difficult, and they didn't exchange them at the proper rates, a single ingot would probably still net a bunch ton of money. The problem as I understood it in EP7 was that it would be improbable to do anything with THAT MUCH gold, especially since it's unmarked and questionably legal in the first place. If, say, Rosa though, took a single ingot, claiming it was a parting gift from Kinzo (who is well known to MAYBE have gold lying around), she can probably get something for it, right..? ...right? I'm not knowledgable in how that kinda stuff works, but that at least sounds very common-sense to me... Quote:
Regarding acknowledgement, well, is Yasu played her cards right, it certainly COULD work, if she was a Head moreso in name, like Young-Kinzo, or Ange after basically leaving all the actual work to Okonogi. Andliterally the only people to really care about gaining the headship are Kratsuhi and Eva. Rudolf and Rosa just want their share of things. Also, I would mention that Genji, while just a servant, has been mentioned several times as being more or less a third parent to the adults, and his word carries nearly as much weight as Kinzo's probably would. When Beatrice wants to convince Kratsuhi of the bomb's realness, she has the words come from Genji to give them a trustworthy weight. What I'm saying is, if Genji was suddenly like "Yeah, she's totally Kinzo's secret baby. Your dad was in a pretty bad way, guys." I doubt they'd write him off as just LYING. Quote:
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Ah, I guess what I'm getting at is that is the characters know everything WE know about the bomb, and status of the other accomplices, the solution seems simple - tackle rush the meido-chan. If, however, it's something vague, that might be activated at literally any time, and my only alternative is to try and make it two miles acorss an island of uncultivated forest during a typhoon, and BEFORE said bomb-holder suspects I've betrayed our agreement ... hell, and that's just if you want to make off, yourself, without mention of getting two others who, according to this agreement you'll have broken, are supposed to be in certain places at certain times ... I'unno. At least Krauss felt guilty about it. |
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2013-05-20, 16:12 | Link #32350 | |
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Problem is, where'd it come from? There's no legal way to sell it, so you'd need to go via an illicit source, meaning you have to know one and they'd have to be willing to basically melt it down for you. And you would get taken to the cleaners on value. Kyrie might know a guy, but I doubt the other adults do. Honestly, I just don't think Ryukishi understands this issue and earnestly believes that "finders keepers" is the whole of the law with respect to Kinzo owning the gold. For example, the very idea that he used the gold as collateral at least acknowledges the gold cannot be easily spent... however, no sane bank is going to give him a loan with that gold as collateral. Yes, it's ten tons of pure gold. That's lovely, it's worth billions. But the guy who has it doesn't actually own it, and in the event he defaults on your loan and you demand he pay you back, what do you do? If you file in court, you have to acknowledge that the gold exists, at which point the governments of Japan/the USA/Italy probably step in and say it's war spoils and needs to go to one of them. If you try to quietly collect on your loan... how? Are you gonna send guys to go break Kinzo's legs and haul the gold off with forklifts and speedboats? Shit, the island itself is far better collateral for a loan than the gold under it. Even the freaking torpedos have greater value and sale potential than the gold. Krauss had the right idea mortgaging the place, at least that's a loan that makes sense.
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2013-05-20, 16:30 | Link #32351 | |||
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Also Kyrie Snake totally makes sense. Quote:
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Also krauss and his turism was right all along. They should have just waited a little longer or then let him invest his money into moon tourism, the rising trend |
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2013-05-20, 17:36 | Link #32352 | |
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Jessica mentions George is dead, but AFAICT, she says nothing about where his body is. The one problem I had with my above explanation is that, if Jessica had mentioned George being in the garden, she'd never believe that the game would hold up after Battler went through the garden and failed to find a dead George. When Kinzo was making his deal, countries were probably still on the gold standard. It would have been comparatively easy to make the deals. As for selling the gold, remember, it's a big world. There are plenty of countries that don't have the heavy regulations where the Ushiromiyas could convert it.
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2013-05-20, 17:45 | Link #32353 |
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Yeah but the adults need the money relatively quickly, and again, the problem always remains that you need everyone on board for this sort of thing, so only absolute mutual cooperation and everybody getting their cut can make sure it works out right.
I imagine it's possible to convert enough of the gold in time (although maybe not; while there's a lot of places to move gold, there's not a lot of places to move a significant portion of the world's entire gold supply) to get everyone the money they need, but cash or a bank account are far more attractive. Actually, Kinzo probably had time and resources enough to convert the gold himself, and probably should have... but I guess Kinzo is sentimentally attached to it. EDIT: And actually a country being on the gold standard would make pushing the gold out much harder. 10t of gold bullion is enough to seriously destabilize gold-based economies if it's all dumped at once. EDIT EDIT: Well okay it's actually more like 0.5% of a year's production of gold, but that's still not a tiny number in actual monetary and market value.
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2013-05-21, 13:24 | Link #32354 |
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And one additional thing about gold,
I totally believe gold is plausible motive for murder. There are lots of people that would be willing to kill for gold, even for smaller amounts. People are funny in that way. The problem is that the characters in umineko unarguably posses the necessary level of intelligence to see the problems of illegal gold. In this way the entire "motive for killing because gold" becomes bit sketchy even though I strongly believe ryu meant it as possible motive for the killer. |
2013-05-21, 15:09 | Link #32356 | |
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I think fat stacks of cash and secret bank accounts would be a nicer inducement. If she had the foresight to set something like that up, why not just arrange for that with her accomplices? It's a lot easier to buy the adults accepting a role in some scheme if you have a briefcase stuffed with a hundred million Yen and a bank card promising hundreds of millions more. Granted a bank card by itself is not very convincing, but either cash upfront or some way to verify that the account does have cash in it would be a lot more convincing than a big stack of unconverted gold. If the plan is to murder anyway, the cash is more useful too (steal it from whoever you bought off with it after killing them, take it with you when you leave the island or just blow it all up if you're going that route).
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2013-05-21, 15:25 | Link #32357 |
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For the fictional narratives, I can see both Yasu and Battler letting logic take a back seat to the cool factor (I mean, cmon, it's HIDDEN NAZI GOLD; they might have well just stamped "MacGuffin" on the tops of the bars).
For Prime, I don't think Yasu's plan, whatever it was, made it to the stage of selecting and recruiting accomplices. |
2013-05-21, 18:43 | Link #32358 |
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Honestly I also think that Yasu's plan worked so well because it was a tale.
Natsuhi's obedience in Ep 5 seems already pretty forced and, at least, she has some excuses (she doesn't know who's threatening her, she's under pressure as she's faking Kinzo being alive and hiding the fact she caused a person's death, she's filled with guilt for what she did, she perceived many of the relatives as enemies, she's way too prideful, she might think no one would believe her story, she might really be thinking acting like that she could save Krauss). Actually, if I've to believe Yasu really tried to implement this plan in Prime I think it's more likely when she tried she never went far as the adults ganged up against her. However the temporally unnerving situation of being threatened, possibly by a gun, and maybe Yasu revealing stuffs that upset them (Kinzo's dead, Rudolf replaced Asumu's child with Battler, Rosa beats Maria, Eva understand nothing of George...), caused the adults to blow up and possibly one of them to die. This increased the stress level and possibly generated a 'Rokkenjima syndrome' in miniature in which everyone feared the other. Still, it's hard to believe they would go that crazy enough to kill so many people... unless only 2 people were killed in an argument, Hideyoshi and George and Eva decided to kill everyone else with the bomb in retaliation because she couldn't stand it. |
2013-05-21, 20:58 | Link #32359 |
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Well not everyone did have to be killed before the bomb went off. Any number from 0 - all of them could have been all alive until that point. Think for example, if Eva locked everyone in the VIP room while she went to go explore the tunnels, and left her husband in the guesthouse with the kids. Everyone dies, Eva is alive but feels guilty as heck.
I was also just reread Tanabata, and apart from Bern's needlessly cruel "if you smile at Eva, you mother will never come back" truth (I had previously thought she stated it in red but whatever), it also seemed to me like she was saying "If you are only ever sad and never become happy again, after a long time you'll kill yourself and be reunited with your family" |
2013-05-22, 00:02 | Link #32360 | |
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The gold is only the central element in this. You could also make a good argument that Kyrie would never actually kill Asumu because it would be stupid. She was obviously the only one to gain from it and she had left the Sumadera clan far enough behind that they would likely not back her if she is accused of a murder that only benefits her. Still the story drives it forward that this element of being beaten by Asumu drove her so out of her mind that she was clearly to a certain degree insane. She wasn't a drooling madwoman incapable of rational thinking, but this part about her was very much mad. The same for Natsuhi when impulsively shoving the servant through the railing or Rosa when she beats Maria. I think this is mostly about showing that an extreme situation creates extreme reactions. I would agree that the adults are often drawn to reasonable to just go for the gold alone. On the other hand we often forget that it was an element in the story that "they did not find any conclusive evidence that would have incriminated Eva (or anybody else for that matter". This could lead us to think that it was maybe even possible to expect that no evidence would be found, at least in the world of Umineko. Sure we can question whether that would actually be a reasonable thing to assume in our reality, but this is how it is established in the story and to a certain degree we have to work with this. Yet on the other hand there are plenty of cases in the real world that make you wonder why they remain unsolved and you could make an endless amount of theories about. Take the Keddie Murders |
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