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Old 2010-12-02, 13:21   Link #19301
AuraTwilight
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Yea, Yasu is an incredibly lovable character. Which...just serves to make everything so much more incredibly tragic.
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Old 2010-12-02, 13:33   Link #19302
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Originally Posted by AuraTwilight View Post
Yea, Yasu is an incredibly lovable character. Which...just serves to make everything so much more incredibly tragic.
You brought up something very interesting. I wonder how Ange would react to your statement... Guess we'll see in the next Episode...
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Old 2010-12-02, 13:37   Link #19303
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I'm still hoping we'll get her servant name and a character design for her in EP8. To be honest, I've never really liked calling her Yasu, since she never really liked that name. I'd call her Lion, but then it'd be confusing as to whom I'm referring to.
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Old 2010-12-02, 14:14   Link #19304
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I'm still hoping we'll get her servant name and a character design for her in EP8. To be honest, I've never really liked calling her Yasu, since she never really liked that name. I'd call her Lion, but then it'd be confusing as to whom I'm referring to.
I have that same problem! I really hate having to call her Yasu, but calling her anything else becomes confusing. As for what she looks like, I usually picture Lion with Shannon's length of hair, but she's been drawn as Shannon, Lion, and Clair pretty interchangeably.

Another thing I forgot to mention. I was discussing this with a friend last night and she pointed out that Yasu's confrontation with the servants about calling her Yasu was similar to what happened with Battler. In both instances she was denied any form of catharsis and subconsciously told that she wasn't even worth considering as a fellow human being.
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Old 2010-12-02, 14:48   Link #19305
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I really don't like her as a character, which is odd because I quite like Lion, but there you go. Just about everything about her makes me roll my eyes (metaphorically speaking; I've long since gotten over physically doing that), and I find her story tedious. Yasu-as-Beatrice is slightly more interesting, but she completely destroys Beatrice's character and reminds me of what a shame it was that the best character in the series was killed off three episodes ago and never came back.

I'm just not able to accept this new character is "really her" (for whatever permutation of translation you want to ascribe Yasu-to-Beatrice in the first place), and I find that to be a major failing on ryukishi's part. I've couched this post entirely as my opinion because I'm sure other people have no problem with it, but meh. I'm really thinking more and more that he killed the dynamic in the name of literature, and I'm torn two ways about that.
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Old 2010-12-02, 14:59   Link #19306
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Well, to each his own, but I feel perfectly fine with believing that Yasu is Beatrice and that she's the person that Beatrice stems from. Especially when it comes to the solving the epitaph scene.

Also, Yasu and Lion are actually quite similar so I'm sort of at a loss to why someone would dislike one and like the other, but I guess their disparate situations can account for that.
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Old 2010-12-02, 15:01   Link #19307
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The background is entirely why, really. That and the Will [b]romance.
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Old 2010-12-02, 15:17   Link #19308
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Originally Posted by goldenlove27 View Post
You brought up something very interesting. I wonder how Ange would react to your statement... Guess we'll see in the next Episode...
If there's one thing Ange could do, it's forgive her. Ange's later character is literally built around seeing people as they really are and forgiving them, once she sees how pitiable they are.

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I really don't like her as a character, which is odd because I quite like Lion, but there you go. Just about everything about her makes me roll my eyes (metaphorically speaking; I've long since gotten over physically doing that), and I find her story tedious. Yasu-as-Beatrice is slightly more interesting, but she completely destroys Beatrice's character and reminds me of what a shame it was that the best character in the series was killed off three episodes ago and never came back.

I'm just not able to accept this new character is "really her" (for whatever permutation of translation you want to ascribe Yasu-to-Beatrice in the first place), and I find that to be a major failing on ryukishi's part. I've couched this post entirely as my opinion because I'm sure other people have no problem with it, but meh. I'm really thinking more and more that he killed the dynamic in the name of literature, and I'm torn two ways about that.
We never really see Yasu-as-Beatrice once "Beatrice" is complete, though, honestly, I don't think preserving Beatrice as she was was ever possible in the first place. The dynamic with Battler pretty much relied on their being enemies, and they couldn't pull the EP3 Moetrice thing again without making Battler's ignorant and naive demeanor any more contrived. Ultimately, we were given a taste of the fantasy that she was, and we had to peel back to see what kind of person she really is. No other progression would be satisfying.
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Old 2010-12-02, 15:26   Link #19309
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Except that person never actually existed prior to this point. The dog follows the tail, and it turns out the tail was rather nice while the dog is rather shabby. It's an intense disappointment. The person behind Beatrice should live up to Beatrice. I don't think he/she does. I'm not really required to accept it because it's "the real person" since (1) it's arguable whether it exactly even is, and (2) one is actually more real to BATTLER than the other is to Battler. And I care more about the Battler I've actually seen than the Battler who "really" exists.

If the intent behind the progression were to actually be unsatisfying by design, it could do a great deal for the humanization of a larger than life character (as real people, by and large, are not as grand as their imagery suggests). But he stopped short of crossing that bridge with Kinzo, then burned it, so I have no delusions as to believe he doesn't intend for us to actually be satisfied with this.

Well, nuts to that, says I.
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Old 2010-12-02, 15:32   Link #19310
musouka
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The person behind Beatrice should live up to Beatrice. I don't think he/she does.
I'm not sure how she doesn't, in all honesty. Her tricks are cunning along the same lines as Beatrice, her frustration makes sense as a part of Beatrice (as well as the complexes Beatrice obviously possessed) and she's creative in a way that no one else in the series aside from Beatrice is.

Yasu possesses an interesting, intense imagination. Not even Maria is as inventive as she is--Maria relies on knowledge and structure as a basis for her daydreams, whereas Yasu creates whole cloth from bits and pieces of her day to day life. She's charming and intelligent, but also withdrawn and crippled by low self-esteem. Perfect for Beatrice.
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Old 2010-12-02, 15:42   Link #19311
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I don't really find her at all charming, but then I find people like her incredibly tedious and intolerable in real life too. Call me grumpy if you must, but the sadness and vulnerability are a played-out weakness I don't find befitting. Beatrice had a martyr's fearless nobility. Yasu has more a downtrodden victim's subversiveness. I can see the argument as to how these traits can mesh, but I reject it because it retroactively makes Beatrice a worse character in my estimation.

But like you said, different strokes.

I do agree that Yasu's imagination is more believable than Maria's, but Maria's is so ludicrously unbelievable that it's almost charming how screwy she is.
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Old 2010-12-02, 15:54   Link #19312
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@Renall:
Well, I think that's mostly the point. Beatrice is a fictional character created by Yasu to give meaning to her choices. As Yasu admits herself, the worst thing for her is running into a mirror, since it shows Yasu her pathetic reality.

Also, there's been a lot of talk about how brutal Bern has been to tear apart the illusion and expose the truth. That makes it seem as though the naked truth is less dramatic than the illusion.
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Old 2010-12-02, 16:03   Link #19313
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My only hope in that is that this is somewhat mischaracterizing as well (and given the source, it very well could be). Showing Yasu at her worst (though honestly if this is her worst, she couldn't possibly be the culprit) and all that. But it would take considerable rehabilitation to like her. That just isn't happening off ep7 alone.
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Old 2010-12-02, 16:11   Link #19314
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I guess that's all a matter of opinion. Personally, I'd feel sorry for Yasu if her life's the way we've been shown. She doesn't have things much better than Maria did. No parents, no friends for most of her childhood, spent most of her free time alone in her room, bullied by the only other kids she knew, and forced to act as a servant from such a young age. Plus, she seems to be naturally introverted, possibly even on Asperger level, so making friends would be hard for her, even ignoring the rest.

To me, she's very much deserving of pity and compassion from the very start. As a character that needs to be saved, she fits the part perfectly. Just because she's hard to understand doesn't mean she isn't likable, in my book. Especially if she turns out to be the culprit only in the games, not in reality.
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Old 2010-12-02, 16:16   Link #19315
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Beatrice had a martyr's fearless nobility. Yasu has more a downtrodden victim's subversiveness.
I don't think so. Remember her confrontation with Gaap? I thought that was a very Beato-like moment on her part, even if it took place entirely in her own head. Yasu is genuine, so in that scene she was also genuinely brave and imperious to a witch that (to her) had given her much trouble. Likewise, if you read her TIP with Lambda. That very no-nonsense, grounded, but imaginative sense of imperiousness is very much a part of Beato and Yasu.
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Old 2010-12-02, 16:40   Link #19316
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I agree with Chronotrig and Musouka here. I'm a bit biased, since I see huge portions of myself in Yasu, but I can't really find her annoying in any way. At worst, you could say she's very emotionally retarded, which makes sense considering that three years of her life were stricken off the record.

I don't see why it's such a big deal that Beatrice's real self isn't so TROLOLOL MAJESTIC MAJOU DA. No one on the Board fit her personality in a satisfactory way, and since the very premise of the series is that the Beatrice we first met is a lie...
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Old 2010-12-02, 17:26   Link #19317
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I'm real sick of being asked to feel sorry for people. I get enough sob stories in my real life, in my job, with other people. I'm sick of "but look how sad this situation is!" Manufactured adversity is the lazy man's backstory. What's the conflict here? Situations forced upon characters by external apparatus that doesn't bear any accountability don't generate real pathos. Yasu lives hard because Yasu is written to live hard. It's as absurd as Lion being perfect because Lion was raised to be perfect, except in Lion's case it's very obviously being done as a literary conceit (Lion is the person who isn't).

Nothing is anyone's fault. It's a coward's moral conflict. Everybody's just in a sad situation because that's the path they were all set toward. That's a warped erosion of the dramatic establishment of tragedy. It's almost a reversal; strengths are personal, weaknesses are situational. Not that we need to drown in hubris (though Battler had plenty to chip away at early on, which is regrettably exhausted now), but it gets old quick. In a way, this whole farce could be seen as an interesting reversal on the mystery genre (which largely thrives on the bad events occurring as the specific agency of a singular "bad mind"), but it falters.

It's a fitting watermark that Beatrice giving up was about the point I think the series lost its way and its drive and drifted into loose intellectualism as a primary exercise. Don't get me wrong, I like intellectualism, but it has felt hollow and lazy and aimless ever since. And now you want me to feel sorry for a character I know nothing about by dumping backstory in my lap again? I've been asked to do just about nothing but. I gave at the office.

In the earlier antagonism we saw Beatrice taking the lead and educating Battler through adversity and struggle. I get the sense ryukishi meant for those roles to be reversed (ep6 the painfully obvious attempt at this), but he failed. Ep8 is basically Battler's last chance, and it's ryukishi's last chance as well. He's gone far afield in the name of saying his peace, and his story is staggering toward a finish line it could have already crossed. I feel like enormous amounts of time have been wasted. Certainly, with a pointed exception here in ep7, the pacing has been more off than it's been since the first episode. A slow introductory pace is acceptable for an introductory episode. It is unacceptable for the penultimate one.

The struggle has gotten forced to the point that the "heck yeah" moments just feel off no matter how elaborate. The Tea Party is really the only part of ep7 that lives up to the promise; the Will solution segment feels like all flash and no substance (which it shouldn't, since substance is basically all it is). I won't even go into the agonizing pomp of ep6 (but I guess I just did), or the descent into irrelevancies of ep5. I could accept it if I believed he was aiming low to convey to those who don't already get it something the rest have figured out, but he's done quite the opposite. His aim has never been loftier. He's tugged every heartstring and pulled every intellectual and theatrical stop. Does he have any left?

I'm disheartened. And disappointed. And I'm quite tired of being told to wait until the ending to have my fears confirmed or denied. Battler spent two years in limbo; that was interesting, because he had to learn and he had to fight. After that, the audience has spent a year and a half in one. We equip ourselves with the scars and knowledge of the main arcs and... do what with it, exactly?

That's how I feel about all of this. I don't want to blame Yasu as a victim of circumstance, but man, I just cannot bring myself to like her. And I will not accept that she has been here from the very beginning if I just went looking for her. If this were a mystery, that would be a literary death knell. Of course, that isn't to say that Umineko is.
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Old 2010-12-02, 17:50   Link #19318
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It will be hilarious if that very first scene in EP5 isn't a flash back but a flash forward
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Old 2010-12-02, 18:01   Link #19319
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And I will not accept that she has been here from the very beginning if I just went looking for her.
That's your choice as a reader. If you didn't look for her in the first place, then you have nothing to blame but yourself.

Me? I saw Yasu in every enraged rant Beatrice indulged in. I saw her in the fear Beato expressed when Lambda threatened to reveal her true shabby form. I saw her every time Lambda made mention of how good of an actress Beato was. I saw her in the dark, alone with Battler, so sure that the light would expose her heart to him. I saw her in the hurt she felt when Battler refused to listen to her story, to engage with her on an equal level. I saw her in the quiet despair when she told herself that she wasn't reflected in Battler's gaze--the moment she dropped the impervious "warara" and defaulted back to the simple "watashi"--as he tried to kill her at the end of EP4.

People don't always live up to the image they present. That is not a failing of Umineko, that's just real life.
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Old 2010-12-02, 18:14   Link #19320
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That's your choice as a reader. If you didn't look for her in the first place, then you have nothing to blame but yourself.
That's a very backhanded way of telling me I'm interpreting the story wrong. That's very personally insulting, especially after I was honest with my interpretation of the ways I think the story is flawed. You're free to disagree with me, but it's incredibly arrogant to claim a monopoly on interpretation and tell me what I did or did not do in engaging the story. I looked for the intellect behind Beatrice. I knew only what was hinted; there was no actual fully-developed person to find. This impostor is not palatable to me. Some will say she is. That's fine. I don't have any capacity to believe it on a personal level, and I think the work has a serious problem if it's sending mixed messages to readers.
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Me? I saw Yasu in every enraged rant Beatrice indulged in. I saw her in the fear Beato expressed when Lambda threatened to reveal her true shabby form. I saw her every time Lambda made mention of how good of an actress Beato was. I saw her in the dark, alone with Battler, so sure that the light would expose her heart to him. I saw her in the hurt she felt when Battler refused to listen to her story, to engage with her on an equal level. I saw her in the quiet despair when she told herself that she wasn't reflected in Battler's gaze--the moment she dropped the impervious "warara" and defaulted back to the simple "watashi"--as he tried to kill her at the end of EP4.
But did you? She wasn't there. This character didn't exist. You only claim to see her now in what was there then, because before a thing was presented to you to accept as that existence behind the mask, all you had was the assumption that there was anything back there. Those vulnerabilities and conflicts and concerns are Beatrice's. She's the character who deserves your interest and admiration. Yasu is not Beatrice, even if ryukishi wants us to accept that Beatrice is Yasu. Now you're free to tell me "based on what I've read and what I think and my interpretation of the story, I am satisfied with this identity." I can't tell you that you aren't satisfied. But I'm not, and I don't think I'm wholly alone, and I think it's a problem if the two of us see the same character identity in two distinct lights. Unless we agree that ryukishi meant to create such divisiveness... and I don't personally think so.

Back then, nobody was thinking of this hidden person we've subsequently received as existing. They were scrutinizing Shannon. I am highly incredulous that these things were seen, rather than imagined in retrospect to have been seen once something acceptable was advanced to fill in. That's why I call it a new character.
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People don't always live up to the image they present. That is not a failing of Umineko, that's just real life.
Literature isn't real life. When literature aspires to portray the fundamental disappointment of real life, then we can investigate the idea that people are not always as they present themselves. However, I think ryukishi has retreated from a commitment to that concept. And I personally see that as a significant and possibly fatal flaw in the development of Chiru as a counterpart to WTC3.
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