[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by GuestSpeaker

As for the Ryu interview comment re: the breasts, that might have been more offhand than anything else, not everything he says can be a deeply thought out clue.

Except he says it's a clue in the interview. in the same sentence he talks about Battler he says that Shannon was in a state of mind that if she were going to get caught she'd let it happen.

It would have meant the end of the incident. Or even if Battler had actually squeezed Shannon’s breasts, he might have noticed that they are fake. Shannon was in a state of mind that said „if it comes to light, let it“

the whole paragraph is pretty interesting actually.

K Then I think it is also a clue that nothing happened between them, while they were staying at the same place in Okinawa.

R It is a clue. To just blurt it out spontaneously was more than Shannon was ready for. „I will reveal it sometime“. Because she was so scared of herself, she couldn’t confess. If it had been because of one action that George took, she wouldn’t have had any choice, that was the balance of passivity she upheld. While she did not hide it actively, she also wouldn’t talk about it openly. Because of that thinking, going on that trip to Okinawa was an experience to her like being a carp on a high slope, „He prepared separate rooms for us *twitch*?“ *laugh*. That knightly George came all the way to Okinawa only to dare and prepare separate rooms? Shannon must have been like „What?!“. But there are many scenes like that which show how Shannon left the decision to fate. For example at the first twilight in EP1, when George was told by Hideyoshi „You should not look at this corpse!“. If he had gone in, not minding that there would be no face, he would have seen that there was no corpse. It would have meant the end of the incident. Or even if Battler had actually squeezed Shannon’s breasts, he might have noticed that they are fake. Shannon was in a state of mind that said „if it comes to light, let it“.

K Will called that walking on a tightrope.

http://seizonsha.wordpress.com/2011/...al-discussion/

[Thunder Book]

I often hear that Yasu wrote Episodes 1-2, Tohya did 3-6, and Episode 8 was in Ange's mind for the most part.

What's the general consensus on Episode 7's existence?

Also, are there any ideas about who the writer of Forgery no.XXX is? It really sticks out to me that Black Battler calls out Tohya randomly toward the end of that little story.

[GabrieliosP]

Probably Ikuko since she knows who Tohya really is. Or since it was a meta scene, B.Battler maybe was aware of who Tohya was. There's also the possibility that it was a random author since "Hachijo Tohya" is very famous as a forgery writer.

Episode 7... I seriously have not idea.

[Kealym]

I dunno if there's a general consensus on Requiem. Very generally speaking, it doesn't even depict a gameboard, and probably doesn't reflect any written piece of work/forgery or whatever.

As far as Prime is concerned, there probably is no such thing as 'Requiem', and it's a purely Meta episode from Ryukishi to his readers with a bunch of information to fill in gaps. Also "lolKyrie for lolgold" is apparently a popular theory in Prime.

[Thunder Book]

But doesn't Requiem have to exist in some form for Ange to "imagine" Will and Lion in Twilight?

[Kealym]

It DOES exist ... in the Meta narrative. Lion is the concept of "maybe Yasu's life didn't have to suck so hard" and Will is both (a.) a reader who cares about things like that and (b.) a meta-being rules lawyer like Dlanor.

Ange is diving in and out of the Meta world willy-nilly anyways, so those two don't need to have been written into a story in order to be part of her considerations, I'd say. Also, Ange wasn't even present for most of Requiem, so who knows how much of that information actually got to her.

[AuraTwilight]

I'd like to say that the Meta-World is a plane of existence that actually exists, effected by and effective on the reality of Rokkenjima Prime.


The story's way cooler that way, and easier to reconcile morally.

[Drifloon]

There's also the possibility that it was a random author since "Hachijo Tohya" is very famous as a forgery writer.

Uh, no. Nobody except Ange knows that Hachijo Tohya is the same person as Itouikukuro, as far as we're told.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Thunder Book

But doesn't Requiem have to exist in some form for Ange to "imagine" Will and Lion in Twilight?

Originally Posted by Kealym

Also, Ange wasn't even present for most of Requiem, so who knows how much of that information actually got to her.

I always imagined that it happens - similar to what was insinuated by Ronove's line about when he last met Battler in Forgery No.XXX - largely outside of a usual matter of time and space. The events are basically happening in the order you read them, but because nobody would read them in a given order they could happen in any possible combination. Like Ronove said, Bernastel's game is widely considered to be the last one...basically saying it all went pretty silent after the Kyrie and Rudolph culprit theory.
This also helps me with my theory that the meta-events are not included in the forgeries we find in Prime. If they actually were there would be no confusion about which game happened in which order because the meta-plane clearly structures them on a linear temporal line.

Also, considering what Ange might have witnessed through a forgery, we have to sort out our terminology. A FORGERY's content, at least for me, equals the GAME's events the gameboard, as the "preparing of the pieces and strategies, etc." is largely likened to how an author collects data and structures his plot. What Bern made Will do was basically shut him in a room where every possible information that she could retrieve from within the catbox that is the Rokkenjima incident exists simultaneously and let him prepare a neat set of information and explanations for her to toy with. So it is not unlikely to assume that the actual story "Requiem of the Golden Witch" was simply the play that Bern conducted for Ange.

Even further I'd say that the term FORGERY in itself is rather misleading, as Ryûkishi doesn't seem to limit this to one actual kind of narrative structure. There does not appear to be a series of novels called The Rokkenjima Murder Case (okay, there is Ikuko/Tôya's series) in what is supposed to be a Rokkenjima Prime, but rather everything that is said, written and discussed over Rokkenjima is basically a "forgery".
This is both underlined by the scene-shift to a young Ange at the end of EP7, through which it is implied that she had to endure those "forgeries" about Kyrie/Ruolph culprit since she was pretty young, and by the added lines in Hane's Forgery No.XXX where basically Beato and Black-Battler title themselves the incarnation of forgeries about themselves and Black-Battler admitting that it doesn't matter where the forgery originated as long as it empowers him.

This leads to what AT said:

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I'd like to say that the Meta-World is a plane of existence that actually exists, effected by and effective on the reality of Rokkenjima Prime.

Yeah, I'd also say it does exist on a certain plane. It would be a pretty dull move to basically pluck out about 60% of your narrative.

I know this is a highly sensitive topic here, but it's made pretty clear throughout EP8 and Forgery No.XXX that the reality construct at least within Umineko is following what has been said throughout the narrative plenty of times "an unobserved event stays in eternal process" and the meta-world exists in exactly that unobserved area.
This is actually what we have been told throughout all the series: Due to magic being explained away by science and reason, the possibility of witches and demons to take form in our dimension has been taken away. This does not actually say that magic exists and that therefore the question if the crime has been committed by a human culprit is useless, it rather says something about the reality-construct of Umineko as said above.
Truth is created by a decision upon a past event. Everything can be explained with reason or with magic, but as long as only a grain of doubt remains it stays in process and can't commit to either form. That is what the meta-beings fight for, for power over existence itself...because only that which is deemed truthful can exist in the catbox which is Rokkenjima in 1986. Or in this case, the more accepted theories are the more powerful ones.

There is no problem with both existing at the same time unless you follow the theory of a fixed reality that we can have a grasp of. Of course there is this reality of Rokkenjima Prime, but we are basically told from EP6's dilemma of Erika onward, that we humans can never have access to this reality by ways of the red (objective) truth, we can merely construct a blue (theoretical) truth or a golden truth (based on belief).

Originally Posted by Thunder Book

Also, are there any ideas about who the writer of Forgery no.XXX is? It really sticks out to me that Black Battler calls out Tohya randomly toward the end of that little story.

Following what I said above, I'd agree with AT on the point that this Black Battler is "real" in his own meta-world and they possess knowledge of who created them and who lends them power.
As already said, he says it doesn't matter who wrote this forgery because it fulfills it's purpose of empowering him. That is why he chose to abandon it if he had found out that it is not a story that gives the character of Battler the freedom to be interpreted as the culprit.

[Thunder Book]

Interesting thoughts and clarifications. Thanks for sharing everyone. I've got to admit I've never really thought about the Meta World coexisting with Prime before, or at least not since early Chiru.

I always interpreted it as an either/or sort of thing, as in "Either the Meta World exists as presented" or "They're fictions/delusions people have made". The idea that the Meta World exists, but is shaped and effected by Prime and the people there is certainly interesting.

[Asuka0NK]

Ok how I always see the meta-world and stuff is that their are two completely different worlds. The meta-world and the human world. Then the magic world but that doesn't have to do with Umineko. Anyway The meta-world is a world with beings above humans who toy with their lives for fun. The meta-world governs everything and so far the only two ressidents of the meta-world that are actually real are Lambda and Bern. Bern comes from the magic world or the world where the meta and human co-exist. This is the world that Higurashi takes place in. Lambda is most likely from the human world but I'm just guessing. Also Bern's age is becasuse Higurashi is long over and everyone from it is dead but then Umineko is another kakera that still exists in the past when compared to the other one. So Umineko doesn't take place 3 years later it takes place 1000 years later. So pretty much the meta-world is the afterlife.

Requiem I think was written by Yasu but was never put in a message bottle. I think it was Yasu's own thoughts and the like. This was pretty much what she was thinking about when she was dying. Hey what if I didn't fall off that cliff. What if Battler didn't come back. What if someone came and helped me. So i just think it is a bunch of Yasu's what if's put together in a huge cluster.

Also I thought Twilight was written by Ikuko?

Forgery No. XXX may have just been written by a random forger.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I'd like to say that the Meta-World is a plane of existence that actually exists, effected by and effective on the reality of Rokkenjima Prime.


The story's way cooler that way, and easier to reconcile morally.

Yeah, I agree with this sentiment. It's like, how, when Beato dies at the end of Alliance, it's something like both the death of a person and the death of the abstraction she represents, i.e "the death of her fantasy narrative", and her catatonic state lines up with how End was presented to us.

Originally Posted by Asuka0NK

The meta-world governs everything and so far the only two ressidents of the meta-world that are actually real are Lambda and Bern. Bern comes from the magic world or the world where the meta and human co-exist. This is the world that Higurashi takes place in. Lambda is most likely from the human world but I'm just guessing. Also Bern's age is becasuse Higurashi is long over and everyone from it is dead but then Umineko is another kakera that still exists in the past when compared to the other one. So Umineko doesn't take place 3 years later it takes place 1000 years later. So pretty much the meta-world is the afterlife.

I'd argue some of these. Keeping in mind that Higurashi and Umineko are related but not ... very directly so, I'd argue:
1. Bern's age comes from her repeating Higurashi. For regular humans, only 3 years have passed.
2. Everyone in the Meta-World is real! Bern and Lambda are just the only Voyagers we meet. Let's not forget that we ourselves are Observer Witches, apparently.
3. I dunno about the afterlife angle - I guess dead people would certainly be more at home than live people, but Ange and Hachijou seem able to Meta it up on a moments notice.

Originally Posted by Asuka0NK

Also I thought Twilight was written by Ikuko?

Hm, well, it was said that Tohya would plot a forgery, and Ikuko would do most of the actual writing. I'm almost sure, though, that Twilight would've come right from Tohya, though, with the "tale that's happiest for Beato" and "see Ange, everyone was really cool" angle.

[Wanderer]

When trying to understand Prime I tend to see the meta-world as a metaphorical representation of it, but I can also appreciate the concept of Prime being controlled by the beings of the meta-world. I think it's relative to which you choose as your foundational world, and in that sense both interpretations are valid. Personally, I switch between perspectives, but tend to focus more on Prime as the foundation for the meta-world rather than the other way around.

As for Requiem... I think it was pretty obviously written by Touya but not released. From the first scenes of Requiem:

BATTLER: "......This is... the unique tale I made for you."
This tale will be shut up with you in your coffin, for all eternity
So, no one will be able to read it except for you, there in your coffin.
[...]
"......Between just me and her, ...just the two of us, this is the one and only certain truth."

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Thunder Book

Interesting thoughts and clarifications. Thanks for sharing everyone. I've got to admit I've never really thought about the Meta World coexisting with Prime before, or at least not since early Chiru.

I always interpreted it as an either/or sort of thing, as in "Either the Meta World exists as presented" or "They're fictions/delusions people have made". The idea that the Meta World exists, but is shaped and effected by Prime and the people there is certainly interesting.

Tch. Look at these fools. Believing Prime exists. Perhaps the Meta-World is the reality of things.

There never was a Rokkenjima. Can you find it on a map? Who are the Ushiromiyas, where is the evidence they ever existed? Can you attain it? Hah! You claim it is locked away in a box, filed on dusty police shelves in a universe you cannot see, cannot touch, cannot research.

There is a simple enough reason: It does not exist. It is not there. No one exists in it to provide you with that information. The information is a null value unto itself, unable to provide anything approaching useful data. The only "information" is information you generate to satisfy your own belief in a nonexistent truth.

This world of ideas, this world of speculation and arbitrary assignment of truth, is the only world that exists.

For the crime to have a human culprit, it is not necessary that a "human world" actually exist outside the theater of Rokkenjima. Rokkenjima exists suspended in an endless and featureless ocean; there is nowhere to escape to and nothing that can be done to change the parameters of this existence. Humans exist upon it but they did not arrive there and they did not leave there. There is no "there" but where they already exist.

If you were born with motive to kill, what difference would it make than if you had developed that motive through experience? If a man were born believing he was once a man named Ushiromiya Battler, and apprehending and creating the supposedly "lost" memories of the same, in the absence of any further proof it is indistinguishable whether any such man has ever truly existed in the first place. Perhaps every instance of experience is nothing more than the memories which dress your piece on the witch's board. Or perhaps you merely deign to play at times, when in truth you exist above and within it simultaneously.

Who are the goats? Who are the witches? What identities make up the Grand Senate of creators and observers? In the absence of any other evidence, what else can you conclude? It is you. And possibly me. Or perhaps I am just a manifestation of existential self-doubt you formulated to keep your life from becoming boring. One way or another, it makes no difference.

(So gotta write this forgery... after the other two I'm working on...)

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Renall

Tch. Look at these fools. Believing Prime exists. Perhaps the Meta-World is the reality of things.

There never was a Rokkenjima. Can you find it on a map? Who are the Ushiromiyas, where is the evidence they ever existed? Can you attain it? Hah! You claim it is locked away in a box, filed on dusty police shelves in a universe you cannot see, cannot touch, cannot research.

There is a simple enough reason: It does not exist. It is not there. No one exists in it to provide you with that information. The information is a null value unto itself, unable to provide anything approaching useful data. The only "information" is information you generate to satisfy your own belief in a nonexistent truth.

This world of ideas, this world of speculation and arbitrary assignment of truth, is the only world that exists.

For the crime to have a human culprit, it is not necessary that a "human world" actually exist outside the theater of Rokkenjima. Rokkenjima exists suspended in an endless and featureless ocean; there is nowhere to escape to and nothing that can be done to change the parameters of this existence. Humans exist upon it but they did not arrive there and they did not leave there. There is no "there" but where they already exist.

If you were born with motive to kill, what difference would it make than if you had developed that motive through experience? If a man were born believing he was once a man named Ushiromiya Battler, and apprehending and creating the supposedly "lost" memories of the same, in the absence of any further proof it is indistinguishable whether any such man has ever truly existed in the first place. Perhaps every instance of experience is nothing more than the memories which dress your piece on the witch's board. Or perhaps you merely deign to play at times, when in truth you exist above and within it simultaneously.

Who are the goats? Who are the witches? What identities make up the Grand Senate of creators and observers? In the absence of any other evidence, what else can you conclude? It is you. And possibly me. Or perhaps I am just a manifestation of existential self-doubt you formulated to keep your life from becoming boring. One way or another, it makes no difference.

(So gotta write this forgery... after the other two I'm working on...)

That might not be very off from what R07 really wanted us to think about you know.
Magic is only as real as you accept it to be.
Prime is only as real as you accept it to be.
What difference is there between them?

It's like believing Yasu or Toyah or whoever else wrote any given arc. We all know it's R07 who did it. We still have debates based mostly on faith and belief vs disbelief about who wrote which given arc, even tho there isn't a clear conclusion about them.

[Asuka0NK]

Ok.......well I don't think that deeply into it. Hinimizawa isn't a real place but no one questioned it because it is just a made up place. I'm sure there is an island off the coast of Niijima but it isn't Rokkenjima. So I think you are just looking waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much into it.

Also Usagi I love your Plenair avatar.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Asuka0NK

Ok.......well I don't think that deeply into it. Hinimizawa isn't a real place but no one questioned it because it is just a made up place. I'm sure there is an island off the coast of Niijima but it isn't Rokkenjima. So I think you are just looking waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much into it.

I'm actually a materialist, I just have a certain fondness for contrarian solipsism.

[AuraTwilight]

Originally Posted by Thunder Book

Interesting thoughts and clarifications. Thanks for sharing everyone. I've got to admit I've never really thought about the Meta World coexisting with Prime before, or at least not since early Chiru.

I always interpreted it as an either/or sort of thing, as in "Either the Meta World exists as presented" or "They're fictions/delusions people have made". The idea that the Meta World exists, but is shaped and effected by Prime and the people there is certainly interesting.

I always really liked the idea of the Meta World being a Phenomenological interpretation of Empyrean reality and vice versa.

...I'm slipping into Philosophy mode, so before I start becoming incoherent with my vocabulary, lemme bring up a comparison I used during Umineko's run to think of things.

There's a tabletop RPG called Mage: The Awakening. The basic premise is that there's the world we live in, and the "Supernal Realm", which is a multiverse made out of Truths, Concepts, and Absolutes. The two worlds were once one and are now separated, and Mages (who can use magic by looking at the Supernal) call our world the "Fallen" world, imagining that some original sin broke the worlds apart.

The truth of the matter is that the Supernal needs the "Phenomenological" world that we live in, because those Truths need to be expressed in process in order to exist.

It's an eternal feedback loop, and more than a little paradoxical. The Truths define the world, but the world allows those Truths to exist. Hypothetically, if you go up to the Supernal world and destroy the truth-symbol of, say....Christianity, then you'll go back to the lower world and find that Christianity never existed, and now the whole world is basically exactly the same except now most of the world is Roman. You watch Neon Genesis Evangelion and the plot is exactly the same, but the show is full of Roman Mythology symbolism now.

The two worlds need each other. Without the Supernal, the Phenomenal world becomes random chaos. 2 + 2 = bleepbloop bluh. Without the Phenomenal, the truth-symbols have no meaning. "Red" is a sound. "Germany" is a flavor. Letters don't exist.

At best, you have these pretty 'legends' that SOUND like things, but AREN'T things. Symbolism with no meaning, and it's just some random bullshit.

Apply this to Umineko. Take away the lower worlds, and the Meta-World has no context of any kind. Take away the Meta-World, and the Gameboards and Prime make NO sense, as Renall has pointed out countless times.

It's not that "The Meta-World is real and it controls the lower worlds with magic" or "Prime exists and everything else is the imaginings or writings of some amnesiac."

BOTH are true. In a literal sense. The canyon causes the river to take the shape it does, but there would be no canyon if the water hadn't eroded the rock. The Meta-World creates Prime/The Gameboards, and they create the Truth-symbols of the Meta-World.

There is Mystery, and there is Fantasy, but there is a third story. And it is only in finding that third story does the Truth emerge. Without love, it cannot be seen, and to love something in Ryukishi's terms is to accept its existence. You must acknowledge and love the Meta-World and Prime both, or the Truth cannot exist, nor can it be contained.

This reasoning is why, way back when EP8 came out, I entertained the idea that Battler and company tried to hide the truth from Ange. It wasn't because, morally, the truth is bad or anything. It's that if Ange, in the Meta-World, defines the Truth as "You're all dead", then they're Truth-Symbols, the meta-beings representing them, which can think and feel and act and BE, will cease to be.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

That might not be very off from what R07 really wanted us to think about you know.
Magic is only as real as you accept it to be.
Prime is only as real as you accept it to be.
What difference is there between them?

The difference between reality and illusion. There are only two ways to tell them apart:

One is by checking how consistent and logic they are. If they're not, then they're probably illusions.
One is by checking how many people see them or agree about their existence. If you're the only person that sees them, then they're probably illusions.

One might be gifted with the the power to see what no one else can see. But as long as he's the only one with that power, and as long as he can't demonstrate that what he sees is real, then his "reality" is no different from an illusion.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

The difference between reality and illusion. There are only two ways to tell them apart:

One is by checking how consistent and logic they are. If they're not, then they're probably illusions.
One is by checking how many people see them or agree about their existence. If you're the only person that sees them, then they're probably illusions.

One might be gifted with the the power to see what no one else can see. But as long as he's the only one with that power, and as long as he can't demonstrate that what he sees is real, then his "reality" is no different from an illusion.

Illusion and reality ?
Rokkenjima is fictional.
Magic is fictional.
In many fictions magic is real.
In Umineko Rokkenjima is real.
In reality they are only fiction.

No fictions are "more real" then others, wether they make sense or not.
Yes the more I think about it, the more this sounds likely. In Umineko the real "definition" of magic is "fiction".

Originally Posted by Asuka0NK

Ok.......well I don't think that deeply into it. Hinimizawa isn't a real place but no one questioned it because it is just a made up place. I'm sure there is an island off the coast of Niijima but it isn't Rokkenjima. So I think you are just looking waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much into it.

Shirakawa Go
Look into it, might be interesting if you didn't know about it.

Also Usagi I love your Plenair avatar.

Thank you ^^