2010-11-27, 11:57 | Link #1721 | |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
|
Quote:
Obviously, we can't distrust everything shown about Kinzo, but Kinzo more than anyone has an inordinately complex array of portrayals. He rages, he weeps; he's sentimental, he's cold; he's restrained and cautious with Beatrice-2, he's a rapist; he cares nothing for family, he cares everything for family (and I don't just mean Lion here, his epitaph reaction in ep5 for instance and that ep8 screenshot); he's insane, he's not insane; he's serious, he's playful. It's all over the place. But okay, so what? We have a source bias, how is that any different from any other character? Well... think about who we're believing may be the author(s) of some of these works. Almost all of our primary candidates did not have any significant interaction with Kinzo. Likewise, most of our Ange's 1998 folks know nothing about Kinzo; Ange never talks to some old businessman who knew him directly. You can write a story about, say, Natsuhi that catches her essential nature even if it's got some degree of fictional bias, if you know her. However, if we're believing Yasu wrote the message bottles, and someone else who is generally not believed to be that much older than her the other episodes, they had roughly one decade to know Kinzo, a decade in which he has alternately been called reclusive or even completely insane (but also playful and kind to Kanon, so what's up with that?). Exactly how much of Kinzo did they get to know? Did Kinzo ever share his submarine story with anyone? Ep7 seems to suggest this is a secret the older people (Kinzo/Genji/Kumasawa/Nanjo) share. At the absolute best, Yasu could learn about Kinzo secondhand through sources I really do not think he/she could trust unconditionally, and Battler or Hachijou or whoever couldn't learn about Kinzo at all. In fact, it's likely their only "reliable" source about Kinzo's personality were the message bottles themselves. What I'm saying is, we have Umineko itself, and then we have the stories in Umineko, which are written about the people in the fictional world who "really" existed in that world. But the people we think wrote within the world knew some people much more closely than others (for instance, if Ange wrote a story she would know much more about Maria than someone who didn't have Maria's diary and didn't know her well). Kinzo, I would argue, is practically only possible to know through in-universe secondary sources. Sources which are potentially tainted by bias, which would transfer perhaps unknowingly to the works of the authors. I don't think Yasu would intentionally mischaracterize Kinzo, but he/she can't really know anything that happened before arriving on Rokkenjima was actually true short of being told it was by someone trusted. And the other author(s)? I don't know how they could know much about Kinzo at all. Given that, I think Kinzo's portrayal in a given circumstance is more telling of the author's objective and personality than of Kinzo's. Kinzo is, therefore, exactly the mystical boogeyman he's made out to be, a cipher character on whom imperfect or incomplete information is projected (whether intentionally or unintentionally). However, a consequence of that is that we have to be careful about any "facts" about Kinzo.
__________________
|
|
2010-11-27, 11:59 | Link #1722 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2003
|
Quote:
Quote:
__________________
|
||
2010-11-27, 12:06 | Link #1723 | ||
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
|
Quote:
Genji seems to suggest he went all quantum suicide in situations that did not necessarily place all of his family in danger (and if he's sincere about his gambler personality, that's fine). If his goal were to wipe out his family, he'd only do that at conferences. And even then, he couldn't control things like Battler not coming. Also we have a pretty serious conflict with Kinzo's attitude toward his legal family. We're told he hates them, but in his ep7 story he suggests he just... doesn't really care about them. Eva's ep3 flashback actually more supports his apathy. You can still justify it (he put the mansion there to put himself in danger, and just happens not to care who else is present), but it recolors it significantly. Quote:
__________________
|
||
2010-11-27, 12:15 | Link #1724 |
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
|
@Renall
There is a huge difference between interpreting and ignoring. Let's take for example "Kinzo being nice to Natsuhi". We know that such Kinzo is not the real Kinzo but rather the Kinzo that Natsuhi wishes for. But this is still not something you can simply pretend to be inexistent. Are there biases? Of course there are. But that doesn't give you any rational base to simply ignore facts. If you think something isn't the truth, then you need to provide a reason, why it isn't the truth, who is telling the lie and why? In Natsuhi's case we had several hints. The "who" was quite obvious since it was a Kinzo that only appeared in front of Natsuhi. The "why" was completely consistent with Natsuhi's personality, the reason to doubt that such a Kinzo was real was the apparent inconsistency with everything else we have seen from that man. Too make another example, I can tell that the tea party was a lie because there are actually several factors that seem to imply it, but for what concerns the vast majority of the regular EP7 there aren't as many. One thing not being good enough in your eyes isn't a sufficient reason to claim it's fake. If that's the way you reason you'll always end up with your own biases clouding your judgement.
__________________
|
2010-11-27, 12:19 | Link #1725 |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
|
You seem to be concluding things I never stated. I recommend rereading what I actually said about the bias problem. Kinzo's behavior is trustworthy, but not in pinning down a complete and accurate portrait of Ushiromiya Kinzo (Prime, if you want).
__________________
|
2010-11-27, 12:28 | Link #1726 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2003
|
Quote:
I did. You list disparate attributes of Kinzo like the existence of them cancels the others out. This is pretty obviously not the case. When we see Kinzo laughing and raging, we're getting a depiction of him at his most crazy, after his "real" family has (supposedly) died in various tragic circumstances. His insanity obviously came in stages, with Lion's death finally being the tipping point. I'm sure he also has more lucid moments. You put forth the idea that serious people cannot be playful with different people. You put forth the idea that someone can't be sane before he goes insane. That crying and raging are incompatible. That joy and wariness can't be directed at the same person. Which is why I say, I don't understand your point.
__________________
|
|
2010-11-27, 12:37 | Link #1727 |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
|
Then you didn't read closely enough. He is depicted as contradictory things within the same direct time periods, and ascribed contradictory motives and traits as essential aspects of his backstory. If you read everything that refers to the time period of 1976-1986, you'll find that Kinzo is sane and insane at the same time, to varying degrees, yet people do not seem to react to this by saying "Father/Master is subject to wild mood swings in which he is sometimes completely unhinged and at other times perfectly normal, if gruff." The sources themselves make Kinzo not merely a complex character, but a schizoid one that is whatever happens to be convenient at the time.
If you can't accept that, imagine that the source bias is excessively magnifying a particular aspect of his personality at a particular time when it is more likely than not that his behavior was not that extreme. Obviously, that would shift the apprehension of Kinzo as a character every time it's done.
__________________
|
2010-11-27, 13:30 | Link #1728 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2003
|
Quote:
This isn't particularly shocking or confusing. There's no "sane and insane at the same time", just various degrees of insanity and lucidity--which is actually pretty normal for insane people.
__________________
|
|
2010-11-27, 14:40 | Link #1730 | |
Artist
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Yesterday!
|
Quote:
Also Kinzo never "became insane" at least if the bomb story is true, he always was. Edit : My point is that I don't think anyone really claims things are white and black on any aspect of the game, including Kinzo's truth, so that's not what I was trying to say. Last edited by UsagiTenpura; 2010-11-27 at 15:15. |
|
2010-11-27, 15:02 | Link #1732 |
Artist
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Yesterday!
|
Thinking about the small shrine island that was supposedly blowed up by Yasu. I am not really knowledgable about the military so I have to ask : couldn't that have been detected, especially as an underwater event? Also I guess I'm not entire sure how it got blowed up from Rokkenjima.
I am likely wrong as I know really next to nothing about military but I'd like I guess someone to tell me wrong if I am. |
2010-11-27, 15:37 | Link #1733 | |
Thought Being
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Canada
|
Quote:
__________________
|
|
2010-11-27, 17:12 | Link #1734 |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
|
There's a difference between "there's a chance he might be willing to come downstairs and not yell at everybody" and "there's a chance he might become sane again," which seems to be the difference in expectations between Kinzo's children and Genji. If Kinzo were that crazy, I can't see what his non-Krauss kids would be expecting out of him even if he did show up at the conference.
__________________
|
2010-11-27, 17:18 | Link #1735 |
18782+18782=37564
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: InterWebs
|
Someone's ignoring someone lol
Still, I get what UsaTen think about Kinzo after ep.7. We were led to believe the epic greatness of Kinzo because he's able to revive the Ushiromiya family by seemingly nothing, though in actuality he's only lucky to have met Beatrice Castglioni and that she had the accursed gold. But, I still think Kinzo is great in his own right because in the end he really did what he did using very little of Beatrice's gold. oh, and he's now depicted as highly lecherous old man because of his affair with Beatrice, the fact that Rosa's born at all (assuming Kinzo really didn't care for his legit wife), and the revelation (speculation much?) that Beatrice3 is both his daughter and grand-daughter. Way to go, Johnny. Also, I don't know about that total-isolation = death stage. I see this matter can be viewed as "since Kinzo had a history of total isolation, someone used this to mask his death." oh, and UsaTen, yes, it could've been detected if proper seismic instruments were in place.
__________________
|
2010-11-28, 04:04 | Link #1736 | |
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
|
Quote:
__________________
|
|
2010-11-28, 13:43 | Link #1737 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2008
|
Quote:
None of these things are new information, at all. Maybe, the only new information EP7 gave us about Kinzo was the bit about his past, what "receiving the gold from Beatrice" meant, and his relationship to Bice, Kuwadorian Beatrice and Yasu/Lion.
__________________
|
|
2010-11-28, 18:34 | Link #1738 | |
18782+18782=37564
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: InterWebs
|
Quote:
Come to think of it Umineko seemingly used this trope to almost every character.
__________________
|
|
2010-11-28, 19:11 | Link #1739 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2003
|
I found that EP7 made me like Kinzo in a way I wasn't expecting to and in a way that is, frankly, sort of distressing to me. A lot of what Kinzo did has been built up to mythological heights, so EP7 showing that everything about him is true, but in a very human way, was really a great choice on Ryukishi's part. Kinzo is a loathsome human being in some very important aspects, but he does have a core of humanity that makes it difficult to completely ignore the pain his choices caused him.
__________________
|
2010-11-28, 19:43 | Link #1740 | ||
Layton's Apprentice nš 2
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Somewhere over the...... Planet Earth
|
Quote:
Nevertheless, the power needed, in order to wipe the shrine from its existence, should have produced a sound similar to a thunderclap. Since this topic came around, I would like to ask what was Shannon reason ( if it really was her responsibility ) to destroy the shrine?? The magical viewpoint was already been explained but the anti-fantasy solution has not been proposed yet. Does anyone have a clue about this subject? Finally, I would like to inquire about the Golden Age theory that would eliminate all the difficulties created by the Shannon = Kanon. Quote:
__________________
|
||
|
|