2014-04-22, 06:06 | Link #34361 | |||||
Senior Member
|
Quote:
She could have cut the chain the moment she murdered Eva and Hideyoshi (in that particular narrative) and nobody would be any wiser. Quote:
Bern's game and rethoric is equally guilty of "making it easy" since she paints all the relatives as horrible people who Ange doesn't have to feel guilty about judging. It's both kinda, sorta escapism. Quote:
Well, I meant it less on a structural level of the crime but more on a structural level of the fictionalization and mediafication of the crime. For a closer resemblance to Rokkenjima you could take a very famous German case, that of the Hinterkaifeck murders, but I prefered the Zodiac as an example because of the vicinity of crime and mediafication of the events. Hinterkaifeckt actually has quite the resemblence to Rokkenjima, with rumors of incest, a terrible patriarch, a child said to be the result of incest, the case still being unsolved, legends of ghosts haunting the property etc. But, since in 1920s Germany the amount of genre-media was already shrinking due to the financial crisis and later on got completely pulled from the market due to the political climate, it took until the 70s before there was actual media on the case (not only newspaper rumors and folktales). Quote:
Quote:
This reminds me, Lana Winters from AHS: Asylum is pretty much how I imagined Ikuko to be. |
|||||
2014-04-22, 07:55 | Link #34362 | ||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
|
Quote:
Also in Ep 7 he basically started the bickering claiming he wanted a bigger share then the others and his title as head acknowledged despite having kept hidden Kinzo's death and not having really helped solving the epitaph. And when his siblings refused he blackmailed them saying he was the only one who could convert the gold so either they were to bow to him or wouldn't get nothing. This is pure greed at his worst because even with much, much less than an equal share to the one of his siblings he could have fixed his problems. With an equal share he still would have saved a lot. But no, he has to impose on them. I'm not discussing the fact that people can be multifaced but the difference is that Battler is presented as a fundamentally good person who even cry by seeing George lose his parents. Krauss is more like Rosa. She's very sorry she beat her daughter and neglect her but... can't stop. And Krauss is very sorry he's a jerk to his siblings but... can't stop. Quote:
In Ep 3 Jessica is blinded by mistake because she jumped on Eva thinking she was the culprit. In Ep 4 Jessica and George kill each other by mistake while thinking to fight the culprit. While Ep 6 seems to paint them as killers, it can be a metaphor to say that they would fight to protect those they love. So if something happened while the adults were in the gold room (for example the servants faking being dead) or after Kyrie and Rudolf left it (for example they tell the cousins an incident took place and they don't believe them) the cousins could have gotten into an argument among themselves or with them and this might have lead to an increasing in the dead count. Of course it can also be that Rudolf and Kyrie get out and shoot everyone as Ep 7 hinted. I'm not sure we'll even know what had happened because the only one who might know (but also might not) is Battler/Tohya but he claims he doesn't remember things well... and anyway if things went like in the TEaparty he saw nothing. For him everyone was free to go around and shoot people. Quote:
Battler insisted into presenting over and over all the people there as nice ones and defending them all. He doesn't search a culprit, he search a way to absolve the 18. Ep 8 is, I guess, his way. In Ep 8 everyone is the nice person Battler saw him or her to be. Sure they have some flaws (Rudolf still switched the baby, Eva and Krauss still argue, Natsuhi still killed the servant, Rosa is still not a good mother) but in Ep 8 they all want to overcome the flaws they probably acknowleged in their heart but never fought actively. Kinzo makes peace with his kids, Eva resolves her conflict with Krauss, Rudolf tells the truth and Kyrie forgives him, Rosa gets along with her daughter. Battler don't view them as bad people but as good people with various flaws who needed a chance to set things right and fix things among them so he basically removes all the pressure they could have from lack of money and hiding a corpse and place them together in a nice setting. In a way it's a picture filled with love and trust in his relatives and it could be that things weren't so bad before everyone ended up needing money. Maybe that's how he remembers them when he visited them at 12 or younger. It's not that they don't have negative emotions ever, it's that they admit they HAD them but now they want to overcome them because there's no reason to have them. Ange simply couldn't picture them wanting to make peace but for Battler, who decided after 6 years to try and make peace with his father and that Ange remembers playing with Rudolf and getting along with Kyrie, it should have been easier to think if given the chance they would realize their mistakes and make up. The real obvious lie is that actually they were under a lot of stress generated by money problems, Kinzo's actions, Krauss' fraud and likely didn't feel like making up at all. They were in the middle of a desperate argument and so they ended up behaving at their worst. Battler removes the argument and so they behave at their best. His game is not a complete absurdity... it's more like a possibility lost, like Natsuhi accepting to raise Lion and becoming a good mother for him. Differently from Bern we can picture many settings in which she would have accepted to do so, starting from Kinzo acting nicely to her already having a child... or simply missing the chance to toss Lion off a cliff and slowly growing fond of him. They aren't absurd possibilities... they're just possibilities that won't take place because in the past things went different. Quote:
Last edited by jjblue1; 2014-04-22 at 08:49. |
||||
2014-04-22, 08:44 | Link #34363 | |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
|
Quote:
A serial killer who doesn't announce themselves builds up momentum more slowly, particularly if there isn't some mystique to the case. Zodiac very much intentionally wanted that mystique to build quickly, hence the letters. The phenomenon probably took off in particular because he both taunted police and didn't get caught right away (or ever, really). Compare this with Ted Bundy, who was trying not to get caught and whose mystique probably never would have peaked if he hadn't been revealed to be a charming and handsome man who didn't seem the type to commit dozens of murders. A more recent example of a quick buildup of public interest would be the D.C. Sniper case. The mystique of the killings there came from the audacity of them, that someone was shooting at people with a high-powered rifle in broad daylight. It began to die down once they identified and caught the shooters because they hadn't done much to either fan the flames while still doing the killings (as Zodiac did) and didn't turn out to be someone surprising or unexpected (as Bundy was). Rokkenjima has seemingly-unintentional parallels with the Zodiac case in the sense of the phenomenon and meta-fiction surrounding it, so I think it's an apt comparison on that level. An unsolved mystery with a bunch of unexpected elements (in this case, literal "message in a bottle confessions" that don't confess to anything) would probably trigger the public's imaginations quickly and it would be a constantly-revisited case for years and years thereafter. They'd almost certainly make movies about it, at least at some point. By 2000 or so I doubt anyone would even consider it to be rude to speculate on it and I'm honestly not even that surprised that it blew up in the late 80s either. The only unrealistic thing the story suggests about the Rokkenjima enthusiasts is that they'd ever stop.
__________________
|
|
2014-04-22, 09:17 | Link #34364 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
|
Guys, let's enjoy the last spoiler of Ep 8 Confession of the golden witch Part 3.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I'll kill to get my hands on the last chapters of Ep 8! |
2014-04-22, 10:31 | Link #34366 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
|
Quote:
In this case we won't need Tohya/Battler to tell us the truth and if Ikuko found the bottle prior to finding him it might explain why she decided he wasn't dangerous but that also needed to be kept hidden. Sorta. I still think Ange deserved to have what remained of her brother back but maybe in Yasu's tale she wrote Eva thought him to be the culprit/an accomplice to the culprits and if he were to show up she would have had him arrested or killed? |
|
2014-04-22, 11:42 | Link #34367 | |
"Senior" "Member"
Join Date: Jan 2012
|
Quote:
__________________
|
|
2014-04-22, 11:59 | Link #34368 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
|
Quote:
If Ikuko isn't Yasu it's also needed to explain how she could know everything. The way she found it though might have been different from the way it was depicted according to the spoilers. But I think we need to see the scene prior to judging it. I found odd how the paper on which the confession was written was red instead than white but red paper exists or it could have been white paper that got dirtied in blood so... so far we can't really say... |
|
2014-04-22, 12:30 | Link #34369 | |
Senior Member
|
Quote:
What I do consider somehow is that the "bottle message written on blood red paper" might actually be a representation of Battler himself who told her everything. Though...rethinking it, the text you found said that this bottle as well was tossed before the actual incident But yes, we need to see the scene to actually judge it One more week and I can!!!! |
|
2014-04-22, 12:31 | Link #34370 |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
|
"Red paper" is clearly a literary device, meaning that essentially all contents of the document are of the same weight as red truth. Which honestly more than anything would kind of suggest a fantasy of a sort. However the only thing "a message bottle containing the confession found by the side of the road" could really be a stand-in for would be Battler's memories and receiving the confession in some manner through that. And that would obviously say a few things about Battler's memories, as to have been derived from him he'd have to have learned them somehow.
Or maybe she just found a bottle coincidentally containing straight answers instead of a story and never told anyone because people wanted answers so let's Deus Ex Machina shoehorn them in Ikuko's story is already pretty heavy on coincidence, so what's a little more?
__________________
|
2014-04-22, 14:38 | Link #34371 | ||||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
In this case the sinking of the magic scene would be more like fainting due to her wounds. Battler tries to save her but can't. However he loses memory so he's sort with her. Quote:
I mean... it makes sense but I'm really finding hard to swallow how coincidentally an Italian submarine filled with gold and with a beautiful Italian woman ended up in Japan and not in Spain so really, I would apprecciate if the explanation of stuffs that don't make sense avoided coincidences that feel like miracles. |
||||||
2014-04-22, 15:54 | Link #34372 |
"Senior" "Member"
Join Date: Jan 2012
|
I am merely trying to evaluate, if this would kill the Ikuko=Yasu theory or not. But I guess to know it for sure we will have to see the scene(s) for ourselves somehow.
So on one hand we have the "bad implications" created by Yasu being Ikuko... on the other hand we have "endless nine coincidences"-RandomStranger. I am not sure if this can end well... but oh well this game will have no happy ending after all.
__________________
|
2014-04-22, 16:57 | Link #34373 | |||
Senior Member
|
Quote:
What I would agree with is that there should either be a letter, Battler at the shore, or Battler with a bottle on the shore...but both events as separate incidents seems too much of a coincidence, there I agree. Quote:
The manga is yet to develop on that whole story, which will either follow right after the Confession of the Golden Witch arc or at the end of the manga, I suppose. The VN also mentioned how Ikuko was an outcast, thrown out of her own family, so if she at least suspected who Battler was it might have become an incentive for her to hide him from the start. Quote:
The story of them fleeing to Japan isn't that hard to swallow, a WWII vessel would have also likely been able to make the distance via the sea-channels connecting Eurasia...the only thing demanding a little miracle was the situation in the Pacific, especially around Southern Japan at that time. And since the name of the witch is Beatrice and Kinzo was said to have made a pact with her during the war...it was actually pretty obvious that she must have been an Italian woman. |
|||
2014-04-22, 18:52 | Link #34374 | ||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
|
Quote:
In Confession you must not guess the culprit, you've Sayo's heart presented so that you can judge it. I admit it's not the first jump in Umineko... but as this is sort of important I would have apprecciated if it was foreshadowed better. Quote:
So yes, let's wait and see how things will go. Quote:
Italian sailors had a certain freedom and could come and go from the ships provided they didn't try to get to far and were free to move for the city. This would have allowed to hide the gold on the submarine till the end of the war as Spain couldn't take possession of it nor inspect the ship. Also since the sailors had a certain freedom they could try to move it ingot by ingot secretly. Spain was also close to Italy and so comfortable to reach and Spanish-Italian relations weren't bad despite Spain being neutral so the sailors didn't risk being mistreated. Going to Japan included a risky travel and since Japan was at war and about to lose it the risk that the gold would end in American hands anyway. Quote:
Kinzo's children and grandchildren all have English sounding names. After Virgilia shows up you can easily guess that the name might have been chosen as a reference to the Divina Commedia and can assume it's not necessary of an Italian person but of the child of a Divina Commedia reader like Kinzo or just a coincidence of which anime have plenty. (I won't go into how Beatrice is pronunced in the Japanese way and not in the Italian way because that's a standard in Japanese media) Honestly my main suspicious on Umineko involving Italians were due to the huge amount of Italian lyrics in the songs... though there are other series with Italian text in the lyrics and no relation with Italy. |
||||
2014-04-23, 10:43 | Link #34375 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
|
Umineko Spoilers!
Part 1 Part 2 Of course I can't read them but from what I can see it seems Syao informed Genji of her plan and... that she's the author of Ep 3 & 4. So were Banquet and Alliance not forgeries but real messages posted in the net as forgeries but originally authored by Sayo? And it seems the chapter includes the first meeting between Sayo and Lambda that originally was in a tip. There are some solutions for the games, Sayo's inner conflict and how the messages were tossed in the sea on the 3rd of October as well as the bank account. ... and I fear Confession ends really on the 3rd of October so no additional info on the truth of Rokkenjima. On a personal note I prefer if Ep 3 & 4 were written by Sayo as they fit with the fact they're a challenge to Battler from Sayo/Beatrice, while if the author was Tohya it was a challenge to himself. However I'm still confused about why Tohya printed them under his name... sort of. Should we assume that since Ange's meeting with Hachijo was a fantasy all the info about Banquet and Alliance are false? |
2014-04-23, 11:05 | Link #34376 |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
|
Technically, we're never told in the VN which episodes are message bottle stories (except that Land was one of them and was lost). It's always been assumed that the two known message bottle stories were Legend and Turn but before the manga I don't know if there was confirmation of that. You're correct that there were claims regarding the authorship of Banquet/Alliance but in fairness the details around that were always pretty fuzzy.
The bigger problem would be a thematic one, or at least a plausibility gap. The text probably clarifies things though.
__________________
|
2014-04-23, 11:20 | Link #34377 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2011
|
Huh, so it's possible that Yasu wrote EP3 and EP4 afetr all? It's easy to miss, but actually, according to EP6, it was common for message bottle Forgers to claim that their works were authentic message bottles. Obviously that claim was generally assumed to be a lie, but it's entirely possible that "Hachijo Tohya" might have actually been telling the truth about it. That exact possibility is even explicitly brought up in the text, actually.
I had thought about that possibility before - it would make more sense of the meta-plot presenting Beatrice as the writer of all the first four episodes, at least - but at the same time I kind of liked a lot of the implications that could be drawn from Tohya being the author of those episodes. It seems like a shame to lose that, but we'll see what happens. |
2014-04-23, 11:21 | Link #34378 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
|
Quote:
Quote:
However there's to say the episodes we read are written from Battler's point of view when the narrator should be Maria so... are they remake? Even Featherine says she used to watch Beato's gameboard from Battler's eyes and now she wants to watch Dawn through Ange's eyes... meaning maybe Battler was the reader/narrator? |
||
2014-04-23, 11:24 | Link #34379 |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
|
If the text even remotely resembles the narration, Maria couldn't possibly have been the narrator of any of those episodes. Unless we're seeing a complete rewrite, I have to assume Battler was always intended as the protagonist/detective. And that would kinda make more sense anyway given Yasu's objectives and the fact that Maria would know more about what was going on.
That still doesn't explain why Yasu would sign her message bottles as Maria, but the mere fact that she did so doesn't suddenly mean Maria would've also been the narrator. The stories are clearly works of fiction anyway.
__________________
|
2014-04-23, 11:29 | Link #34380 | |||
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
|
Quote:
Quote:
There's to wonder something. This means the part about the Teaparty post the slaughtering in the golden room and that's based on Ep 4 is likely fictional... unless Kyrie was an accomplice, she was told about that plan and decided to use it for her own purposes? Quote:
|
|||
|
|