[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Sherringford

To me, it was more of a confusing moment than anything else. Well yes, I don't mind if a few characters need to die in order for the story to work. And if killing off a few characters gives me a good plot, hey hit me. I want that.

I didn't read it as "you like seeing people in pain" so much as "you don't care about people in pain." He framed that in a very inflammatory way with Bern and the ripping out people's guts and all...which was where I think his point fell flat.

I mean I see what he's saying, but I don't think it's a problem. No, I don't particularly feel bad about knowing that a character is suffering so the plot can move along. That would be silly. No, I don't really respect the characters enough to stop enjoying the story so they can be happy.

I think we need to draw a distinction between us as readers and the in-universe readers. For us, these people really are fictional, so it's not a moral problem for us to want there to be a murder in the course of the story. But for the in-universe readers, specifically the Witch Hunters, what they have is an actual incident in which real people died. Because they also had these two mystery-like message bottles that appeared, they began to treat the incident as if it was a fun puzzle to solve, so that the lives of the victims stopped meaning anything to them.

I got the impression from the mystery game in EP8 that Tohya doesn't really have an issue with people coming up with puzzles inspired by the incident. The thing he doesn't like is when those people, having filled their puzzle with all kinds of malicious elements for their own entertainment, try to claim that their puzzle is actually what happened on the island. It's basically a difference in how the memories of the real people are treated.

I guess what I'm saying is, Tohya's forgeries are things meant to be published in the world of Rokkenjima Prime. To the extent that they contain a message for someone, the intended direct target of that message is not necessarily us.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Sherringford

I didn't read it as "you like seeing people in pain" so much as "you don't care about people in pain." He framed that in a very inflammatory way with Bern and the ripping out people's guts and all...which was where I think his point fell flat.

I mean I see what he's saying, but I don't think it's a problem. No, I don't particularly feel bad about knowing that a character is suffering so the plot can move along. That would be silly. No, I don't really respect the characters enough to stop enjoying the story so they can be happy.

I wonder if the point Ryukishi was trying to make was that in the Umineko world the Rokkenjima incident wasn't fictional but real and people were enjoying 'tearing out its guts' regardless of the pain they caused to other.

The thing still falls flat because in the end we're more prone to compare the goats to mystery readers, not to people gossipping about real life murder cases.

Sure, we theoretically know in the Umineko world the murder was real and the people in there was talking of a real murder case but somehow we end up relating the whole situation more to a 'reading a book' than to a 'dealing with a real crime' and therefore we can't feel guilty if we wished the characters die and if we didn't cry when they die of a grumesome death.

Battler's complains about Beatrice killing his family over and over seems silly as soon as you catch it's a game and she's merely proposing him a fiction and not murdering someone.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

I think we need to draw a distinction between us as readers and the in-universe readers. For us, these people really are fictional, so it's not a moral problem for us to want there to be a murder in the course of the story. But for the in-universe readers, specifically the Witch Hunters, what they have is an actual incident in which real people died. Because they also had these two mystery-like message bottles that appeared, they began to treat the incident as if it was a fun puzzle to solve, so that the lives of the victims stopped meaning anything to them.

I got the impression from the mystery game in EP8 that Tohya doesn't really have an issue with people coming up with puzzles inspired by the incident. The thing he doesn't like is when those people, having filled their puzzle with all kinds of malicious elements for their own entertainment, try to claim that their puzzle is actually what happened on the island. It's basically a difference in how the memories of the real people are treated.

I guess what I'm saying is, Tohya's forgeries are things meant to be published in the world of Rokkenjima Prime. To the extent that they contain a message for someone, the intended direct target of that message is not necessarily us.

Oh definitely. The only problem I have with this is we see, like... one person who fits this category as an actual character, then a handful of nameless people, then some goats. Nearly everyone we see who is involved has a rightful emotional investment in the fictions (and Battler is genuinely angry about it when he believes Beatrice doesn't).

So it's kind of like wagging your finger at a problem you created and didn't really flesh out. Who are we supposed to be thinking is the problem here? And is Touya really helping by publishing?

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Ehm... probably the book was poorly translated. The Name of the Rose is not such a difficult book to read in Italian... the only exception being that in my edition no one bothered to translate the Latin text... although you can get most of the meaning (Latin and Italian are similar) it's really pretty annoying and I found it a mere exercise in showing off he knew Latin...

The joke here is that I actually didn't read 95% of the book because I was lazy, so I wouldn't take my criticisms of Eco or his translators too seriously.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

Oh definitely. The only problem I have with this is we see, like... one person who fits this category as an actual character, then a handful of nameless people, then some goats. Nearly everyone we see who is involved has a rightful emotional investment in the fictions (and Battler is genuinely angry about it when he believes Beatrice doesn't).

So it's kind of like wagging your finger at a problem you created and didn't really flesh out. Who are we supposed to be thinking is the problem here? And is Touya really helping by publishing?

I agree with this completely.

Originally Posted by Renall

The joke here is that I actually didn't read 95% of the book because I was lazy, so I wouldn't take my criticisms of Eco or his translators too seriously.

Ops... I completely misunderstood you, sorry... *hides in embarrassment*

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Ryukishi, removing the easy game, basically say that he doesn't care about the one who felt the need for it.
Problem is he does it after they bought 8 games.
Sorry, I perceive this as either failing to drive his message home (this is a game in which the solution wouldn't be given) or tricking the ones who bought his game or failing to figure out that there could be readers who needed/wanted the easy level.

Does he have any obligation to care about any of his readers?
He is in the dilemma of either wanting to make money or making a point...and he admits himself that he started wavering and went for the first when writing Umineko and really regrets that (especially after the complaints following EP2).

And who actually failed is still open to discussion, because he did say that this was not a game where a solution would be guaranteed. He even went as far to say that he wouldn't give a clear solution like he did with Higurashi as early as the first four core games.

According to many interviews he wanted to remove the solution because he didn't want it to be printed in the net or in books.
It's a personal wish, which is likely either tied to 'I want you to read my story and form a judjement on it, not rely on the solution another gave you' or 'if you know the solution you've no need to read the story ergo it'll sell less ergo I'll have a damage'.

I think you misunderstood his point.
Major criticism for Higurashi came after the ending because people said that it was a copy-paste solution with no real connection to the plot, which basically voids what came before of all meaning. You can basically just paste the solution anywhere and "see how stupid the whole concept is" without the necessity of getting in contact with the major plot at all.
He wanted to try and create a story in which the solution cannot be copy-pasted because there is no model solution in the story. It's not about the danger of spoilers or the danger of losing sales (not as a central point at least), it's about wanting to create something that needs that plot-contact, that close reading.

To go back to the Umineko theme the idea that Umineko would be better without a solution is subjective, therefore you can find lot of people who don't agree with it.

And I think that is perfectly fine. The idea that a writer has the obligation to create something likable and appealing is so infested by capitalistic consumer culture that it beats a whole lot of process of creating something new.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Renall

So it's kind of like wagging your finger at a problem you created and didn't really flesh out. Who are we supposed to be thinking is the problem here? And is Touya really helping by publishing?

It's a good point. What justifies writing and releasing these forgeries? I suppose that it's because they were delivering the truth in such a way that only those who deserve it will get it, but with how it fuels the goats is it really a good thing on balance?

Originally Posted by haguruma

He wanted to try and create a story in which the solution cannot be copy-pasted because there is no model solution in the story. It's not about the danger of spoilers or the danger of losing sales (not as a central point at least), it's about wanting to create something that needs that plot-contact, that close reading.

I think this is precisely right.

[AuraTwilight]

That I misappropriated your statements in the first place is your assumption. In this case I was framing how I saw your argument, not trying to turn your argument into something it wasn't (how could I even do that? Your unabridged statements are written right there for anyone to see).

It's been done before on this forum (not necessarily by you) with deliberate malicious intent. It's kind of a button. Sorry, I must've gotten ahead of myself.

And I do not really want an apology. Just respect.

I do respect you. If I didn't, I wouldn't attempt to have a civil conversation with you.

You could basically write practically the same analysis for Kinzo's situation. Or you could just as easily call Yasu not cognitively sane. The only significant difference that I see between Yasu's and Kinzo's delusions are that one set is "harmless" and the other is "harmful".

Again, we don't have any evidence that Kinzo is in control of his own thought processes like Yasu is. She is like a child playing pretend, rearraging things as she deems fit. She's cognitively fine, since she can distinguish between reality and fantasy. However, her emotional problems make her retreat from the real world.

Kinzo, on the other hand, seems to have had a total moment of insanity.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

Does he have any obligation to care about any of his readers?

Aren't the readers paying for his work? Or is he giving it for free?

If he's a fanfic writer, sharing his work for free in the net, no, he has no obligations as he's giving without receiving anything.

If he wants money, yes, he has. I work to get the money, I want to use it to buy things I'll like, not things the writer likes and I don't.

We can deal with it saying he has a wide public and can't write something everyone will like or that he failed in writing something his readers will like not with 'hey but he's not supposed to write something his readers will like'.

If you get paid to do something then it's a job and a job, to be well done, has to satisfy the person that pay you.

Said this I still think Umineko is worth being read and so isn't a complete waste of time and money.

Originally Posted by haguruma

He is in the dilemma of either wanting to make money or making a point...and he admits himself that he started wavering and went for the first when writing Umineko and really regrets that (especially after the complaints following EP2).

If he found himself in the dilemma of chosing between the two it means he wasn't good enough to handle both.
Which is human.
However since you say he chose the first (making money) he should have aimed even more into making something his readers would have liked... unless he planned to deceive them making them believe they would have liked him when he knew the work he was writing didn't aim at that.

Originally Posted by haguruma

And who actually failed is still open to discussion, because he did say that this was not a game where a solution would be guaranteed. He even went as far to say that he wouldn't give a clear solution like he did with Higurashi as early as the first four core games.

It's possible in Japan the comunication was perfectly clear and it merely didn't reach me because well, I'm not in Japan, I can't read Japanese, who introduced me to Umineko couldn't either and therefore was misinformed as well and so on.

The chain of information was broken by a mere language problem.

If that's the problem it's nobody's fault and he's not to blame.

Playing his game/watching the anime series might have given me the idea he was promising something but if in the BIG RED warning in Japanese only he advertised he was going to give his readers something completely different well, nor he or I could have helped the miscomunication.

Now it would be interesting to know the opinion of Japanese fans.

Originally Posted by haguruma

I think you misunderstood his point.
Major criticism for Higurashi came after the ending because people said that it was a copy-paste solution with no real connection to the plot, which basically voids what came before of all meaning. You can basically just paste the solution anywhere and "see how stupid the whole concept is" without the necessity of getting in contact with the major plot at all.

He wanted to try and create a story in which the solution cannot be copy-pasted because there is no model solution in the story. It's not about the danger of spoilers or the danger of losing sales (not as a central point at least), it's about wanting to create something that needs that plot-contact, that close reading.

And why did he do it? In order to allow people who hadn't read it to be unable to read the solution anywhere, forcing them to either read the whole Umineko or to ignore it.

In the second case no harm done. In the first it works as a promotion of his work and becomes a commercial reason.

Now, in my best theory I like to think he did it because he wanted THIS, what we're doing now, the discussion about his work.

As long as you don't know the truth about Umineko you keep on making theories.

I think for a writer seeing readers fighting to try to understand his work and discussing it together must be very satisfying.

If I were at his place I would be lurking in all the Japanese Umineko forum to see how close or how far people are in their deductions and I think many are having fun in discussing Umineko like this.

I know I have fun in making theories.

However, as I've already said, it's the idea that there's the possibility that there never will be an answer that annoys me. I need closure, I need to check my answer and see if they match with his.

The idea I will never be able to do so, irritate me to no end and, although I think he has a answer and didn't just randomly made a game without knowing the answer, sometimes I end up thinking he's not revealing his answer because it's simply 'no good enough' and he realized it which isn't definitely a happy thought.

Originally Posted by haguruma

And I think that is perfectly fine. The idea that a writer has the obligation to create something likable and appealing is so infested by capitalistic consumer culture that it beats a whole lot of process of creating something new.

You know, I come from a country who has a past that's so filled with artists who produced so much wonderful art we don't even have an idea where to store all of it and most of it sadly go wasted in storerooms because there's simply not enough space to show it all to the public.

All those artists who created such amazing beautiful things had to please people with their job or they wouldn't get paid and would die of starvation and yet they managed to create new stuffs while pleasing whoever was paying them for their work.

As far as I'm involved if an artist is good he can create new stuffs while at the same time making something that will be likeable and appealing.

One doesn't NECESSARY exclude the other though following merely one goal instead than two might be easier.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

It's a good point. What justifies writing and releasing these forgeries? I suppose that it's because they were delivering the truth in such a way that only those who deserve it will get it, but with how it fuels the goats is it really a good thing on balance?

... either they're pretty different from what we had read or I'm not sure what you mean with the truth.

In the games the one who murders is Yasu... are you saying Yasu was also the culprit for Rokkenjima Prime? ... though I seem to remember your theory was different so I fear I'm misunderstanding you completely... -_-

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Again, we don't have any evidence that Kinzo is in control of his own thought processes like Yasu is. She is like a child playing pretend, rearraging things as she deems fit. She's cognitively fine, since she can distinguish between reality and fantasy. However, her emotional problems make her retreat from the real world.

Kinzo, on the other hand, seems to have had a total moment of insanity.

Ehm... although Yasu seems cognitively fine it's never a good idea to bet on someone being it.
A common joke is that the most dangerous are the quiet ones... because no one will note they're completely out of it until they'll give vent to their insanity.

So it's possible to assume Yasu is insane or that something caused her to snap.

Ep 7 implies she might have been raped, this might have been a deciding factor in making her snap... if she ever snapped and if she ever was raped (there are too many 'if' in Umineko).

... though my idea is that Yasu never put her fantasies into real action and never killed anyone in Rokkenjima Prime. EP 8 seems to imply Kinzo wasn't insane and in EP 7 Will said something (or was it Ryukishi in an interview? Damn it I can't remember...) that seemed to imply we assume Kinzo raped his daughter but that, although still incest, it might have been it was consensual so maybe in Rokkenjima Prime things went drastically different. Though with the little info we've on Rokkenjima Prime is possible to assume almost everything without being proved wrong....

Anyway, back to the previous topic, it's possible that Yasu and Kinzo are mad in the games and sane in Rokkenjima Prime.

So in the games Kinzo looks insane and Yasu merely hides it and in Rokkenjima Prime they're just the cheerful grandad we see in Ep 8 and a girl with too much fantasy.

[AuraTwilight]

Ehm... although Yasu seems cognitively fine it's never a good idea to bet on someone being it.
A common joke is that the most dangerous are the quiet ones... because no one will note they're completely out of it until they'll give vent to their insanity.

We see inside Yasu's head. We see her deliberately and consciously rearrange her fantasy, meaning she knows it's not true. She is fully in control of her delusions, just not her EMOTIONS.

Ep 7 implies she might have been raped, this might have been a deciding factor in making her snap... if she ever snapped and if she ever was raped (there are too many 'if' in Umineko).

It's a possibility, but I don't personally believe she was. There's no way in hell Genji and Kumasawa would just let it happen when the whole point of Yasu's life up till now was to make sure he wouldn't.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

Aren't the readers paying for his work? Or is he giving it for free?

That is something quite subjective, so of course you're not wrong when you say that by being paid they enter a certain contract. But I'd say that the only contract they sign is that they deliver something, it doesn't have to please a specific audience. How should one define such limits anyway?
Renall for example doesn't care for mystery fiction...is every mystery novel ever written a poor example of literature because it doesn't please people like him who dislike mystery novels in general? Or are authors of everyday life romances cheating me because they fail to write about things that interest me? And don't say that this is what genre-specifications are for, they are drawn so arbitrarily that you could basically apply at least 3 or 4 genre to each popular novel of recent times.

He basically wrote Umineko as an experiment and as such he chose a rather fitting medium, the Dôjin area. Dôjin projects are, as the name implies, made by and for people of the same interest. You could argue that 07th Expansion exists at a border between commercial item and fan culture, but that doesn't remove the original frame in which it was published.

If he found himself in the dilemma of chosing between the two it means he wasn't good enough to handle both.

I would say that handling both at the same time is impossible, you can reach a compromise between the two but that means loosing aspects of the other respectively. His curry shop example is quite fitting for that, either you appeal to the masses and try to keep the bar for accessibility as low as possible or you try being very specific and exclude everybody who does not fit your exact target audience...everything between those two is a compromise.
That does not mean that this compromise is necessarly bad, but in Uminekos case he basically started out by appealing to a very specific audience (Mystery Maniacs who grew up with magazines like FAUST and have a certain knowledge or at least interest in genre conventions, yet are flexible enough to accept a critical approach to that) and went soft because he didn't want to loose the audience he gained through the popularity surge of Higurashi. This was, for me, his biggest mistake...but at least he admits he did it.

It's possible in Japan the comunication was perfectly clear and it merely didn't reach me because well, I'm not in Japan, I can't read Japanese, who introduced me to Umineko couldn't either and therefore was misinformed as well and so on.

To speak of a perfectly clear communication is an overstatement. That is another problem of Ryûkishis way of publishing his story. There will be many people who never bothered to read his interviews, who didn't care to gather the extra information he released (either on events or on the internet), who never read the original but only the adaptions. His manner of providing info is basically very flawed because it's very limited in accessibility. Would he provide all this information in a database on the official page it would be a different matter...but he didn't.
Does that make what he said ineffective? I wouldn't say so. But it's a problem that shows in the diversity of how Umineko is perceived in Japan. If you look at his target audience, the mystery maniacs, their main point of criticsm is that it didn't appeal to them how weak the mystery aspect basically was.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

We see inside Yasu's head. We see her deliberately and consciously rearrange her fantasy, meaning she knows it's not true. She is fully in control of her delusions, just not her EMOTIONS.

You mean when she rearranged her fantasies so as to move her pain on Beatrice and created Kanon? Yes, I'll say that back then she seemed in control of her fantasies. We however don't know how in control she is in 1986.
It's possible she could have been remained in control, there's lot of normal people with fantasies and there's people who in the long run lost control of it.

But I guess the major difference in us is that you look confident in your opinion while I, despite sharing the same idea, can't rule out the opposite idea yet.

I'm always very wary of discharging ideas... call it a personal fault in dealing with works like Umineko...

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

It's a possibility, but I don't personally believe she was. There's no way in hell Genji and Kumasawa would just let it happen when the whole point of Yasu's life up till now was to make sure he wouldn't.

I've been toying with the idea that Kinzo made a move on Yasu (maybe he didn't really intend to force her, maybe he merely said/did something that was misinterpreted or inappropriate), Yasu got scared, Genji, afraid he would try to do to Yasu what he did to his mother, tried to stop him, the whole situation was too much for him and he died.

Ep 7 has a flashback in which is implied he said something about his feelings being inappropriate. It's possible Kinzo merely voiced them and that was all he did.
To Yasu however it could have been traumatic to find out her father viewed her in that way, that he did the same with her mother and seeing him die short after.

Hearing out how Natsuhi tossed her from a cliff and how she has physical problems might have made worse the whole thing.

However it's all really confuse.

In Ep 7 we see that first Kinzo is a nice grandfather and the meeting going perfectly well then in the Teaparty we see those flashbacks. One was confirmed to be true but we've no idea if the one with Kinzo saying unappropriate things to Yasu is true as well.

That might be also the flashback is lying or that I'm misinterpreting things due to what Bern said.

The sentence is:

... F, Father...? I, I do love and respect you, Father... B,but... your feelings are something I, ummm...

which is up to interpretation. It might be the interpretation that Kinzo's feelings are of romantic nature toward her is the first that came to my mind merely because Bern implied it in her talk with Lion.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

... either they're pretty different from what we had read or I'm not sure what you mean with the truth.

In the games the one who murders is Yasu... are you saying Yasu was also the culprit for Rokkenjima Prime? ... though I seem to remember your theory was different so I fear I'm misunderstanding you completely... -_-

You mean because Yasu is the villain in the forgeries? No, I don't think it was Yasu. What I mean by "those who deserve to know it" is that only certain worthy people will understand the deeper truth after reading the forgeries, of which a part of is that Yasu did not do it.

By the way, the "truth" I'm referring to here is the "truth" that I think RK07 wants us to get out of it, which isn't something like the chronological facts or whodunit or anything like that, but something more along the lines that the unfortunate incident resulted not from an individual, but the group of people that were assembled on the island, none of which were wholly evil or undeserving of sympathy.

Heck, it's ironically possible that Yasu didn't even know the "cold, hard" version of the truth when she wrote the first two forgeries. It's actually a fairly large assumption on our part to think that she did.

As for what did happen in "cold, hard" truth terms, I think Kyrie played a major part in the killings, but other than that I'm not confident of any details. It's even possible that Kyrie is completely innocent but also a killer, like in AT's "<George is culprit and kills a bunch of people <Kyrie kills George in self or familial defense <Eva kills Kyrie for killing her son" scenario.

[AuraTwilight]

... F, Father...? I, I do love and respect you, Father... B,but... your feelings are something I, ummm...

I'm pretty positive this was Kuwadorian Beatrice, given the scenery. I don't see how this implies that Kinzo tried to rape Yasu.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

You mean because Yasu is the villain in the forgeries? No, I don't think it was Yasu. What I mean by "those who deserve to know it" is that only certain worthy people will understand the deeper truth after reading the forgeries, of which a part of is that Yasu did not do it.

Btw. through a Japanese page where some theories are collected I stumbled upon a nice little tidbit that can't really be accident.
The question was, why is, when Beatrice shows her final riddle and reveals the candy do Ange, left hand and right hand written in purple? The idea implied by it is quite clever if you think about the definition of purple truth: Only if Beatrice is the culprit can she lie about what hands she used, so that means that you can accept it as magic. If she is not the culprit then this was the truth and it was merely a trick, so she is likely not the culprit.
I think this implies despite Battlers attempt to create a peaceful version, Beatrice has to be a murderer even in the magical story because the people never came home.

Oh yes and has anybody else mentioned the description of Eva-Beatrice in the TIPs section of EP8?

Spoiler for TIPs EP8:

Eva-Beatrice
The witch who had taken over Beatrices name, brought to life again through the "Witch Legend Serial Murder Case".

Denied by the many "Eva culprit theories" existing among the numerous theories in the catbox, yet can bring herself to life endlessly through the "Eva culprit theories" by being the culprit of the tragedy herself.

Maybe you could also call her the lid seperating the inside and outside of the catbox.
Of course, she knows what is inside of the catbox.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

That is something quite subjective, so of course you're not wrong when you say that by being paid they enter a certain contract. But I'd say that the only contract they sign is that they deliver something, it doesn't have to please a specific audience. How should one define such limits anyway?

You asked if they should care about the readers. My answer was yes.
Now you say the problem is the specific audience.

Now yes, unless he's a genius Ryukishi couldn't please anyone (and sometimes even a genius fail at this).
The point is he should have aimed to please someone that's not himself and that someone should have been the target at which he offered his work.

You said:

Originally Posted by haguruma

He basically wrote Umineko as an experiment and as such he chose a rather fitting medium, the Dôjin area. Dôjin projects are, as the name implies, made by and for people of the same interest.

Ergo, those people who would have bought the dojinshi that Umineko is became his chosen target.
When you sell something you end up presenting it. People who had bought Umineko at the conventions should have been aware of what Umineko was about as it was likely made clear it wasn't a cute love story, a work for kids or a medical drama.

It's the same as selling a strawberry cake. You write on it the ingredients but the customer can sample it only after buying it.
A customer read the ingredients and decides that, since he doesn't like strawberries, he won't buy it.
Another customer decides that he like strawberries and therefore he will buy it.
Your aim in selling the cake is to have people liking strawberry cakes to like your cake. Those are your target.

And if you've invented a completely different type of strawberry cake that doesn't taste like any other strawberry cakes you're expected to advertise this because if not people who likes normal strawberry cakes will buy your cake believing it's a normal one and your target will be 'people who like this new type of strawberry cake' and you'll be aware that in chosing this target you might lose people from the 'we like normal strawberry cakes' target.

But you will have a target in mind and, in your mind at least, it will be made by more than you and your close friends and you'll try to reach it and, if you're honest, give a fair warning to who might not be in it.
Who knows, they might decide to try it and like it anyway and if they didn't like it they were given fair warning so they can't complain.

That's what it means selling something to another person. To have that another person in mind.

Writing for yourself a work target made for yourself is beautiful... but if you decide to make money out of your writing job you should aim to please customers, not yourself. It's the basis of selling stuffs.

Originally Posted by haguruma

I would say that handling both at the same time is impossible, you can reach a compromise between the two but that means loosing aspects of the other respectively.

In everything you do you've to make compromises. The ability is in making a compromise that's sactisfatory for both parties.

Now, Umineko didn't go so bad it was a complete disappointment for all his readers... but let's assume since he used himself as a target and didn't care about his readers it did and the readers, so disappointed in him would refuse to buy his next works. End of his career as a visual novel writer. BAD ENDING.

Now, let's assume he used his readers as a sole target and wrote something he deemed horrible but that they loved. Umineko sold well but he was so disappointed he decided to stop writing. BAD ENDING.

Of course those two are extremes and in between there's a wide rage of possibilities that don't lead to a BAD ENDING among which there's he wrote something he liked and that the majority of his readers loved. They will be happy to buy more from him and he will be happy to write more. Sure, he wanted to write some other stuffs that he had to cut, but he can add them in his next work and sure some readers weren't satisfed but they were so few their voice went unheard. (MOSTLY) HAPPY ENDING.

Reaching that happy ending depends solely on his ability.

Originally Posted by haguruma

His curry shop example is quite fitting for that, either you appeal to the masses and try to keep the bar for accessibility as low as possible or you try being very specific and exclude everybody who does not fit your exact target audience... everything between those two is a compromise.

... I don't remember his curry example... however when you enter in a restaurant you've a general idea of the quality level of the restaurant and of the food they're going to serve. This because the restaurant owner chose which target he wanted to have among his customers and organized things accordingly so, for example, people who like Hamburgers won't go in his only French cousine restaurant... and, in case his restaurant is an Italian one, people going in it will eat real Pizza... not the thing I saw served in an American school... >_< ... though if it's a cheap restaurant they will be aware food quality is cheap while if its a deluxe one they'll be expecting great food with a huge price.

But, as you can see, the restaurant owner will have a target in mind and will organize things so that the people who will enter in his restaurant will belong to said target.

Sure, people out of his target might end up entering in the restaurant because... let's say, they were hungry and it was the first restaurant they saw, but they still will have an idea of what to expect... and know they won't find sushi in a Spanish restaurant...

... and why tonight I can come up solely with examples regarding food? I'm not even hungry... -_-

Originally Posted by haguruma

That does not mean that this compromise is necessarly bad, but in Uminekos case he basically started out by appealing to a very specific audience (Mystery Maniacs who grew up with magazines like FAUST and have a certain knowledge or at least interest in genre conventions, yet are flexible enough to accept a critical approach to that) and went soft because he didn't want to loose the audience he gained through the popularity surge of Higurashi. This was, for me, his biggest mistake...but at least he admits he did it.

Then he had an audience in mind. Sorry but from your reply I got the impression you were saying he didn't have one and that he didn't care about appeasing the masses.

Yes, mixing up two types of audience is rather difficult, way more than reaching a compromise between myself and 1 type of audience.
If he decided to do so I guess he knew the risk and expected the complains.

Originally Posted by haguruma

To speak of a perfectly clear communication is an overstatement. That is another problem of Ryûkishis way of publishing his story. There will be many people who never bothered to read his interviews, who didn't care to gather the extra information he released (either on events or on the internet), who never read the original but only the adaptions. His manner of providing info is basically very flawed because it's very limited in accessibility. Would he provide all this information in a database on the official page it would be a different matter...but he didn't.
Does that make what he said ineffective? I wouldn't say so.

I don't know enough of Japanese culture and of the information he did to say if it was enough or not.
Let's go back to the restaurant example.
If a person can get it's... okay, make it an Italian one since I'm more familiar with them and more or less the quality of the food and how much expensive it is before entering then communication was well done.
However if one of those three points wasn't satisfied (actually there's more but let's keep things simple) then comunication wasn't enough.

Originally Posted by haguruma

But it's a problem that shows in the diversity of how Umineko is perceived in Japan. If you look at his target audience, the mystery maniacs, their main point of criticsm is that it didn't appeal to them how weak the mystery aspect basically was.

The mystery maniacs were his first audience, weren't they? What about the rest of his audience? the one he included as a second thought?

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I'm pretty positive this was Kuwadorian Beatrice, given the scenery. I don't see how this implies that Kinzo tried to rape Yasu.

At first I thought it was Kuwadorian Beatrice as well but she called Kinzo by name, not father. From here my assumption that's Yasu not Beatrice. Though, of course, it could be that Kuwadorian Beatrice in her past had called Kinzo father and stopped doing it when the two of them became lovers.

Funny enough since we don't know the contest in which the sentence was said it can also mean

... F, Father...? I, I do love and respect you, Father... B,but... your feelings (for my mother) are something I, ummm... (can't approve because she was also your daughter)

Or other variants of the theme.
If that's the case this would be a trick close to the one used for Bern's red in Ep 7.
The sentence is incomplete so it's true but once complete (or in the right contest) has a pretty different meaning from what I assumed when I first saw it.

[AuraTwilight]

At first I thought it was Kuwadorian Beatrice as well but she called Kinzo by name, not father. From here my assumption that's Yasu not Beatrice. Though, of course, it could be that Kuwadorian Beatrice in her past had called Kinzo father and stopped doing it when the two of them became lovers.

The two of them are outside under a gazebo. Trees and sunlight are clearly visible. Yasu never met Kinzo in such circumstances.

Secondly, we're shown three flash backs. One of them is of the original Beatrice, wherein it implies that Kinzo is the one who started the bloodbath for the gold, the second is the Kinzo Rape of A Beatrice, and the third is Yasu learning of her disability and calling herself furniture.

I highly doubt Ryukishi would neglect a neat successive portrayal of all three Beatrices in succession like that.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

You mean because Yasu is the villain in the forgeries? No, I don't think it was Yasu. What I mean by "those who deserve to know it" is that only certain worthy people will understand the deeper truth after reading the forgeries, of which a part of is that Yasu did not do it.

By the way, the "truth" I'm referring to here is the "truth" that I think RK07 wants us to get out of it, which isn't something like the chronological facts or whodunit or anything like that, but something more along the lines that the unfortunate incident resulted not from an individual, but the group of people that were assembled on the island, none of which were wholly evil or undeserving of sympathy.

Oh, okay, now I understand your point.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

Heck, it's ironically possible that Yasu didn't even know the "cold, hard" version of the truth when she wrote the first two forgeries. It's actually a fairly large assumption on our part to think that she did.

*nods* Theoretically even is possible the writer knew the truth only when they wrote forgery 5 & 6 and that the other forgeries were written prior to the tragedy or when Toya's memories weren't completely back and therefore he had no clear idea what had happened.

... actually I think someone said in EP 8 Toya said he still doesn't remember what happened that day... though he might have been lying to avoid telling Ange the truth... It sure worked better than telling her the Ushiromiya were having a happy halloween party the day of the tragedy as this time she believed him without discussion and without prodding.

Originally Posted by Wanderer

As for what did happen in "cold, hard" truth terms, I think Kyrie played a major part in the killings, but other than that I'm not confident of any details. It's even possible that Kyrie is completely innocent but also a killer, like in AT's "<George is culprit and kills a bunch of people <Kyrie kills George in self or familial defense <Eva kills Kyrie for killing her son" scenario.

*nods* I would have been innocent in seeing EP 7 tea party from Kirye's point of view.

In the version we have we see Eva shooting by mistake at Natsuhi, then Krauss being shot by mistake by her husband then Rosa says some pretty cruel things and then Kirye begins to shot at everyone.

The whole setting is pretty sympathetic toward Eva.

However if we had Kirye's point of view we might see something completely different. She might have not believed Eva and her husband shot Natsuhi and Krauss by mistake. Rosa might have also have believed Eva did the killing by purpose, be traumatized by it (she is carrying the trauma of second Beato's death after all) and say something completely different or in a completely different tone. Kirye might have thought Rosa was dangerous (maybe she was waving her gun and pointing it at everyone threatening them and accusing them) and she shot at her. Eva and Hideyoshi are scared and try to reach for their guns and Kirye shot them too.

Since apparently Beato survives to show Battler the exit to the cave it's possible Kirye didn't shot her but that the fact Beato was shot also was Eva's assumption. Or she might have shot her as a witness.

Meanwhile in the house the servants are organizing a halloween games in which they are playing death.
Incidentally George wanders around the chapel. Either he was assumed dangerous as Kirye and Rudolf though he was in a plan with Eva and Hideyoshi to kill everyone or, once explained his parents killed Natsuhi and Krauss and tried to kill Kirye and Rudolf and were killed didn't believe that explanation, attacked Kirye and Rudolf killed him.

Then Kirye goes to the main house to create themselves an aliby playing with the remaining cousins while Rudolf was supposed to clean up. Eva however joins him and kills him once he admits he killed George.

Kirye didn't kill anyone, she was covered in blood because she was playing dead in the Halloween game. Seeing Eva she thinks she's mad and hope to protect the others saying they're already death. Eva believes her, shot her and then reaches Kuwadorian where she waits for the explosion.

Battler in the meantime had left the house and incidentally saw Eva shooting at Rudolf. Tries to help him but Rudolf manages only to tell him he's Kirye's son and that he has to go search for help. Meanwhile Yasu (who either hadn't be shot or didn't die when shot), who had left, witness the shot down between Kirye and Eva and hear that everyone else is dead so reach Battler and the two escapes.

The poor servants and Jessica are still alive but everyone thought they were dead, nobody bothered to check about them and they end up being wiped out by the bomb after having been scared to death by the fact that they found some corpses and couldn't find Battler, Eva or Kinzo.

End of the story... which probably isn't true but hey, it was funny to think it up! ^_-