[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

... unless something big we weren't told about happened, that is. But I don't really think that would be possible.

Actually there should be, I think, at least stuff we haven't been told about. for one reason or the other.
Yes, there is a deliberate disconnect between the Yasu who exists up to 1984 and the one we experience in several disconnected parts in 1986. There is still the question of how exactly these events do connect to each other...when exactly did she decide to blow up the shrine? We are told it was before going to Okinawa in EP2, but then again it seems to be after when going by the EP8 manga narrative...but if that is the case then she likely actually already wrote the stories, so Beatrice in EP8 is right as well when she implicitly denies them being plans for a mass murder.
We also only have Yasu saying she will have the execution of her plan happening during the family conference...but what is her actual plan. I think we should actually try and consider what events all took place between 1984, when Yasu vowed to stay on the island as a servant and wait for Battler, and early 1986 when she snapped.

Btw. again the manga but this time it's EP7. We always wonder what Genji's deal is...but at least EP7 seems to paint him in a very obviously...almost creepily caring way towards Kinzo:
[/URL]
"May you rest...in peace now..." "I believe firmly...that you have now atoned for all your sins."
If this picture is approved by Ryukishi (which he always tells us he does since Higurashi), then this kinda shows what kind of guy Genji is.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

Actually there should be, I think, at least stuff we haven't been told about. for one reason or the other.
Yes, there is a deliberate disconnect between the Yasu who exists up to 1984 and the one we experience in several disconnected parts in 1986. There is still the question of how exactly these events do connect to each other...when exactly did she decide to blow up the shrine? We are told it was before going to Okinawa in EP2, but then again it seems to be after when going by the EP8 manga narrative...but if that is the case then she likely actually already wrote the stories, so Beatrice in EP8 is right as well when she implicitly denies them being plans for a mass murder.
We also only have Yasu saying she will have the execution of her plan happening during the family conference...but what is her actual plan. I think we should actually try and consider what events all took place between 1984, when Yasu vowed to stay on the island as a servant and wait for Battler, and early 1986 when she snapped.

Btw. again the manga but this time it's EP7. We always wonder what Genji's deal is...but at least EP7 seems to paint him in a very obviously...almost creepily caring way towards Kinzo:
[/URL]
"May you rest...in peace now..." "I believe firmly...that you have now atoned for all your sins."
If this picture is approved by Ryukishi (which he always tells us he does since Higurashi), then this kinda shows what kind of guy Genji is.

Well, that's nothing new as it's in the VN too.

After checking Kinzo's pulse, Nanjo shook his head and stood back up.
"......It was a peaceful death. ......I don't think he had any regrets at all."
"It may be......that the Master died long before now. ......It was only his magic and tenacity that kept him here so long. ......And, ......he finally had a chance to apologize to Beatrice-sama for everything, ......and finished everything he had to do..."
"......Please, ......rest in peace. ......I believe that you have redeemed yourself."
"............Father........."

So far Ep 7 manga has been "disappointing" as it hadn't really added anything new apart for the depiction of 'the culprit' (the person Will met before Clair's tale starts and whose shape doesn't belong to Clair, Yasu or Shannon) and Yasu.

Everything else is just the same as in the manga there's not even the scene that was added in Ep 5 in which Battler and Yasu held each other pinkie making a promise.

Back to Genji... honestly I've hard time believing Kinzo redeemend himself merely because he apologized and handed all his money to Yasu... but maybe Genji wanted to believe Kinzo would be in peace now.

[GoldenLand]

We didn't get to see a huge amount about Genji even with the backstory info in the manga, but at least we do know what his motivations were: love, loyalty and gratitude towards Kinzo.

Genji must have been desperate to see Kinzo redeemed, at minimum only so that Kinzo would stop being tormented by guilt/madness/regret. I'm sure he had no bad intentions towards Beatrice 2 or Yasu who were caught up in the schemes, but Genji's views must be pretty skewed for him to think that the situation was okay in any way. Maybe he's just got such tunnel vision in regard to Kinzo that he doesn't think things through in regard to other people. Kinzo needs Lion back, but things will go wrong and harm both Kinzo and Lion if Genji goes about the situation in a way which allows a repeat of the past. Being a servant and living as furniture in order to devotedly serve Kinzo isn't a bad thing in Genji's view, probably, and he probably also thought that the possibility of Kinzo and Yasu obtaining a parent-child relationship was the best thing for Yasu too. That is, if he even really thought about it much further than just trying to find the best case scenario for Kinzo.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by GoldenLand

We didn't get to see a huge amount about Genji even with the backstory info in the manga, but at least we do know what his motivations were: love, loyalty and gratitude towards Kinzo.

Genji must have been desperate to see Kinzo redeemed, at minimum only so that Kinzo would stop being tormented by guilt/madness/regret. I'm sure he had no bad intentions towards Beatrice 2 or Yasu who were caught up in the schemes, but Genji's views must be pretty skewed for him to think that the situation was okay in any way. Maybe he's just got such tunnel vision in regard to Kinzo that he doesn't think things through in regard to other people. Kinzo needs Lion back, but things will go wrong and harm both Kinzo and Lion if Genji goes about the situation in a way which allows a repeat of the past. Being a servant and living as furniture in order to devotedly serve Kinzo isn't a bad thing in Genji's view, probably, and he probably also thought that the possibility of Kinzo and Yasu obtaining a parent-child relationship was the best thing for Yasu too. That is, if he even really thought about it much further than just trying to find the best case scenario for Kinzo.

Probably Genji's problem is he prioritized Kinzo to everyone else.
Effectively Kinzo was his friend and saved his life (and tried to save the life of his family) and Genji seems to feel VERY indebted to him, indebted enough he would devote his life to him and to whom he would deem his heir... but likely always prioritizing Kinzo.

I wonder... we see in EP 8 he was always there trying to remind Kinzo to keep his manners... maybe he did what he did to stop Kinzo from making the same mistake more than for Yasu's benefit, because he didn't found all right for Kinzo to repeat the same mistake so he stopped him the same way he reminded him to keep a certain behaviour.

In short is not so much because what Kinzo is doing is bad... but because it's bad for Kinzo to do it... if it can make sense... I'm not sure how to explain it better in English but I fear more than being disgusted by what Kinzo did and afraid for Yasu, Genji didn't approve and wanted to 'educate' Kinzo not to do it again... preserving/healing him from what likely looked like madness to him.

It didn't work though and 19 years later Kinzo is still madly fixated with Beatrice and can't truly let her go. I guess it was hell for him so maybe Genji thinks that Kinzo's suffering for wanting something so desperately he simply couldn't stop and being denied it, was punishment enough. Probably he excused Kinzo's action as love-madness and too bad if they hurt Kuwadorian Beatrice and Yasu.

In Genji's books Kinzo probably couldn't help it and Genji's attempt at parting him from "Beatrice" didn't actually detoxify him from the drug that was his love-obsession for Beatrice.

Will also is very... understanding toward Kinzo. Maybe he just figured out Kinzo was mad and there was no way to help it apart from putting him in a psychiatric institute... and again too bad in who got involved with it.

(Also there's the chance Genji had fallen madly in love for his master to whom he devoted his whole life as well and that's why he was so forgiving... He seems pretty happy to see that Battler looks like Kinzo and, as Ronoue, he tried hitting on Battler... though he gave up in respect to Beatrice...)

[GoldenLand]

I was just reading the latest update of that Stupid Goats Seacats Reread blog, and one thing they mentioned there struck me as something perhaps worth discussing here.

http://goatsreadingseacats.tumblr.co...rld-of-witches

"So it sort of comes back to something yumetabibito and I have felt from the beginning - a sense that if you can’t really get on board with one of Umineko’s central premises - that the world is shit - what it subsequently explores about coping with that shit world probably isn’t going to resonate with you as well."

Is that really a central premise of Umineko, though? We are shown a number of people in a variety of bad circumstances and the character flaws and coping mechanisms that have sprung up in response to that. A lot of the problems are to do with the toxic atmosphere contributed to by various members of the Ushiromiya family. To a degree, Umineko's also dealt with the lack of support that some people suffer in society (Ange with her school, Rosa as a single parent, and so on).

We're shown a flawed world, but I wouldn't say that Umineko-world is consistently, constantly awful. For example, Jessica and George in particular don't seem to be that badly off in life (except for, well, ending up dead in the explosion or before, but that's not a normal event in Umineko-world either). Gohda's dealt with some unfairness due to the way his previous job went, and he does take things unfairly out on Shannon and Kanon, but his life wasn't horribly bad either.

[Renall]

Even if one were to agree with the premise - and perhaps one shouldn't, although I do think the intent was to posit an obviously-flawed world - one could disagree with the conclusions drawn from it and be critical of the mechanisms the characters in that world employ to "cope" with it. In particular, the notion that "coping" is all that one can do (a conclusion I would question anyway, although the story doesn't do a lot with its counter-examples). Believing the world sucks is one thing; believing people inherently suck is another; believing the world and the people in it can't get better is still another. I'd argue that Umineko probably agrees with the first, might agree with the second but provides evidence to suggest it doesn't, and maybe-but-possibly-not agrees with the third.

It's an important distinction, because it changes the moral character of "magic" quite a bit. If the world and people can't get any better, then the story would effectively be saying there's nothing particularly immoral about escapism that lets you deal with it because what else can you do? On the other hand, if people can make the world better, then those who rely on magic are pitiable but ultimately refusing their duty of trying to do that, and by inaction contribute to the state of the world. On the other other hand, if people can't really do anything to change the world but can change themselves, magic as a mechanism for personal growth is acceptable so long as the end result is a mature and functional individual. So the question would be whether the story intends for us to criticize certain characters or not for their actions, as this would be a sign that the author takes a certain stance. Do we read Beatrice's musings on her message bottles in ep8 as a condemnation only of the reaction to those messages, or as Beatrice being self-critical of her lack of forethought and believing she could have done better? I'd tend to argue the latter, which makes me think Ryukishi does believe that the world could improve no matter how crappy it appears to be. In which case maybe it's not so crappy after all.

Of course, this wouldn't be the first time I disagreed with the interpretations of that blog; their factual conclusions usually seem correct, but they seem to be heavily invested in a particular lens for viewing the story that I ultimately disagree with. It's not like I've written extensively on that very thought before though.

[ndqanh_vn]

Originally Posted by GoldenLand

I was just reading the latest update of that Stupid Goats Seacats Reread blog, and one thing they mentioned there struck me as something perhaps worth discussing here.



Is that really a central premise of Umineko, though? We are shown a number of people in a variety of bad circumstances and the character flaws and coping mechanisms that have sprung up in response to that. A lot of the problems are to do with the toxic atmosphere contributed to by various members of the Ushiromiya family. To a degree, Umineko's also dealt with the lack of support that some people suffer in society (Ange with her school, Rosa as a single parent, and so on).

We're shown a flawed world, but I wouldn't say that Umineko-world is consistently, constantly awful. For example, Jessica and George in particular don't seem to be that badly off in life (except for, well, ending up dead in the explosion or before, but that's not a normal event in Umineko-world either). Gohda's dealt with some unfairness due to the way his previous job went, and he does take things unfairly out on Shannon and Kanon, but his life wasn't horribly bad either.

I think that it's because of their premise. That blog really showed interesting insight into the story with Shkanonyasutrice comfirmed, but the authors tend to make it into a pity party for Yasu, which I ultimately disagree. Their basic view is that Yasu's situation is bad and cannot be improved, and somehow (unintentionally?) they makes it into an excuse for what ever she did.

The problem is, I don't think the situation is that worse. And yes, everybody has their difficulties, they are trapped in their tragedy, but they're dealing with it. I don't think that their world is any shittier than real life - it's bad, but it could be improved.

Interestingly, that makes me remember Ange and Maria's experience in EP 4. Their situation is shit, of course, but it's their method of dealing with it is what makes the situation worse and worse. Just like Yasu, they "coped" with it by running away from reality, not by trying to improve the situation. "Magic" makes them happy for a short moment, but makes them more and more immature, and lose touch with reality. I think it's implied in that section that Ryukishi believed Ange and Maria's situation could get better, if they have chosen to deal with it in a better way.

It's very weird that Chiru comes and somehow I feel his view changed into the opposite somewhere in the middle of the way.

[Captain Bluebeard]

Originally Posted by GoldenLand

We're shown a flawed world, but I wouldn't say that Umineko-world is consistently, constantly awful. For example, Jessica and George in particular don't seem to be that badly off in life (except for, well, ending up dead in the explosion or before, but that's not a normal event in Umineko-world either). Gohda's dealt with some unfairness due to the way his previous job went, and he does take things unfairly out on Shannon and Kanon, but his life wasn't horribly bad either.

I personally never got the message 'the world sucks' from Umineko... Perhaps a healthy message to be derived from the entire Ange story of EP4 would be people's tendency to beat other people on their flaws to gain self-validation and the way society detters people from being who they actually are, or who they want to be. But I guess this is an abstract interpretation, and though adressed (sort of) this isn't the main point EP4 is trying to make.

What bothers me is the total exaggeration of bullying Ange receives, which is also apparent in Higanbana. Seriously, what does Ryukishi think of people? He seems to portray classmates (in all his works) as awful and completely insensitive human beings that gain pleasure from making other people suffer. Now, yeah, school violence does happen, and to degrees where it is terrible, but Ryukishi actually makes that the norm. It really makes me wonder what sort of school life he experienced, because that sort of characterization is sort of childish and does not match the mastery he has shown at fleshing out the siblings.

[Renall]

Bullying certainly can be vicious. It can reach levels that seem downright monstrous to the person experiencing it. Usually it's more a few individual bullying agents and a bunch of people who do nothing to stop it more than a coordinated mass effort to cause emotional trauma, but the idea is there. You're right that to some extent exaggeration for dramatic effect can fall flat, but bear in mind that bullying in particular always looks like less of a big deal to adults than it appears to be to the involved parties because kids are stupid and think everything is the biggest deal in the world. That's why a lot of bullying education encourages adults to get more involved, even if they don't think it looks that serious.

What gets me is why anyone in Ange's particular situation (I can't speak for Higanbana) would care so much. I mean Ange's family would've died like 8-12 years before she was at St. Lucia with those girls. They're in school together, so presumably they're about the same age, meaning they were six or so when that stuff happened. Would this Rokkenjima stuff even still be on TV after a decade of inconclusive results? That's like Little Renall getting bullied in the Clinton years because my parents voted for Reagan. Do these girls have a reason to decide to want to bully Ange, or did it just randomly come up? I mean, if Eva ran their family out of business or something I could see them being bitter and transferring that to Ange and waiting to take it out on her, but that would add a lot of complexity to characters that are pretty much nameless and faceless antagonists.

Maybe that segment would've been better had Ange been dealing with a singular, named, portraited bully with a better-developed backstory and a reason to be confused and upset and willing to hurt Ange out of that. Plus it'd give Ange someone else besides Kasumi and Eva to feel sorry for and forgive, and add more emphasis to the Stakes' "We can't kill them if you aren't willing to do it yourself" scene, which otherwise loses some of its emotional weight when the people Ange is wanting dead aren't actual "people" we've seen as anything more than disembodied speakers.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

BYou're right that to some extent exaggeration for dramatic effect can fall flat, but bear in mind that bullying in particular always looks like less of a big deal to adults than it appears to be to the involved parties because kids are stupid and think everything is the biggest deal in the world。

Though now you make it sound as if bullying was something that stops when you grow up, which it clearly isn't. I actually wonder if Umineko should have made some of the connections even more obvious than they already were, namely that Ange and Maria weren't the only victims of bullying.
Yes, Maria and Ange were the most obvious cases of classical bullying that most people imagine when hearing the word, but if you look at it, so many people (if not almost all the characters) were being bullied (in the sense of being verbally, physically, psychologically or structurally abused). And I think what it reall highlights, and I don't know if that isn't apparent to people without bullying/abuse experience, is that it is rarely about a specific aspect or circumstance of the victim and how it relates to the offender.

Let's talk Ange and her assailants:

What gets me is why anyone in Ange's particular situation (I can't speak for Higanbana) would care so much.

I don't think they really cared. It was a convenient way for them to relieve their stress, because Ange's family is considered to have done something morally wrong, which made it possible to cast blame on her by implying she is inherently "just as bad".
What were they blaming her for? For pulling down the class-average, for not involving herself, for being different. This had nothing to do with her parents or the Rokkenjima incident, it was a flimsy excuse to be able to antagonize her.

It's the same thing that happens between Eva and Natsuhi. Eva is just using the fact that Natsuhi lives the life she is trying to escape to vent her frustration for not being able to fully do so. It is never actually about Natsuhi.

Maybe that segment would've been better had Ange been dealing with a singular, named, portraited bully with a better-developed backstory and a reason to be confused and upset and willing to hurt Ange out of that.

I find it actually a lot more poignant in this case, that her bullies do not have individual personalities, because we see the event partially through Ange's eyes. In a way we are able to consider both sides, Ange is being a victim because she never consciously tried to anger these people, but in a vicious circle she is actually giving them material to attack her on things she actually did "wrong" by trying to escape her everyday life.

I actually found the bullying in Umineko to hit very close to home, because I myself experienced it both as a person being attacked and a person standing at the sidelines...I would even say that I was part of some structural bullying in college, which I realized way too late.

For me, what Umineko shows is not that the world is shitty and beyond hope, but that most people are unable to gaze past their own limited horizon, living for themselves and rarely considering the effect their actions have on others. Those can be little things like a childhood friend involuntarily hurting your feelings, bigger things like forcing your worldview on others, or even blaming and hurting people for things they are not actually responsible but easy to blame for.
Umineko is about the fact that it takes a little amount of work to believe in something, but the really hard work is to face the truth and still go on.

[battle22]

When you are a loner anti-social and do not speak to people, eventually they will notice it. And some people think that being mean to anti-socials will win them points. It probably didn't begin with Rokkenjima incident. She was picked on because Ange didn't care about them. I know what it's like to be in her shoes. The "bullying" comes because we don't interact with people. Not everyone does it obviously, but stuff has happened to me and as a little kid, it gave me terrible thoughts and I think it has scarred me for the rest of my life, since it affected my view on people in general.

After a while, these kids would get used to bullying Ange, and it would become a regular thing to do. Trust me, I have seen this too. Not with me, but with fellow classmate. And eventually these girls would discover about her family. And that "should" explain why she was such an "anti-social". Everyone from Rokkenjima was looked upon, their dirty deals were shown to the public. And we know what the public does best, judging. These girls would do the same. It actually gives them a proper reason to "bully", since she is from a family who got into illegal stuff, embezzlement, explosives under the mansion, etc.

It's hard and I don't expect people who didn't experience this to understand what I'm saying. Extreme cases exist, I've seen it.

For me, what Umineko shows is not that the world is shitty and beyond hope, but that most people are unable to gaze past their own limited horizon, living for themselves and rarely considering the effect their actions have on others. Those can be little things like a childhood friend involuntarily hurting your feelings, bigger things like forcing your worldview on others, or even blaming and hurting people for things they are not actually responsible but easy to blame for.
Umineko is about the fact that it takes a little amount of work to believe in something, but the really hard work is to face the truth and still go on.

Yeah, I agree with ya.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I find it actually a lot more poignant in this case, that her bullies do not have individual personalities, because we see the event partially through Ange's eyes. In a way we are able to consider both sides, Ange is being a victim because she never consciously tried to anger these people, but in a vicious circle she is actually giving them material to attack her on things she actually did "wrong" by trying to escape her everyday life.

I think it's a missed opportunity. In general, so is the entire "cycle of abuse" theme that comes up in places and is sort of not actually explored properly. It's clearly intended with the Rosa/Maria dynamic, as Rosa is essentially perpetuating the violence and abuse that was done against her despite an apparently sincere love for her daughter. The problem with that comes from two angles: First, we only sorta hear about Rosa's abuse and never actually get specifics to know what would've twisted her that much; second, there's no resolution, because everybody dies. Perhaps that's why the theme didn't come up as much, but it's still very much relevant to Ange.

The problem with Ange is that the story doesn't adequately explain what it means to her to break the cycle of abuse, to change her perspective and learn to forgive the people who abused her and the people who abused them and so on. She clearly does it at the end of ep4, with the forgiving Eva and Kasumi stuff and all that, but then she dies and by ep8 the focus of her character arc has shifted from breaking out of the prison of cyclical abuse to a completely different motivation and theme, and we practically never see the abuse angle again (except in the Rosa/Maria scene added in the ep8 manga). And honestly, I thought the Ange of ep4 was a lot more interesting than the Ange of ep8, because the Ange of ep4 is confronting problems that both actually exist in her reality and which she can actually solve with the information she already has available to her. It's like she suddenly becomes less mature and less reasonable the more her character strays from her original portrayal.

Of course I think part of the reason for this theme decay probably has to do with the later characterization of Yasu (which I'm fairly confident wasn't entirely finished before ep7). Yasu doesn't actually have the same life situation as Maria or Ange or Rosa or the other people in the family who suffer from cyclical abuse from trusted relationships. In part because she's an orphan, in part because the authority figures in her life tacitly support her. She has a very different problem from Maria, which is perfectly fine because it makes the two of them an interesting contrast in problems and coping strategies (Yasu has freedom in her grasp but is cripplied by anxiety, Maria is a helpless child but tries to employ optimistic escapism). But it shifts the focus of what's problematic to something else, because Yasu's generational issue isn't that her mom was mean to her because people were mean to her mom, or even specifically that she was bullied (Yasu was bullied, but it's got a different feel to it).

There's certainly a unifying factor one could find there between Yasu and Ange with the disconnect from a parent figure that they never truly understood (Kinzo and Eva respectively). Particularly since both of them are in situations where a lot of power has been dropped into their lap and they have no idea what to do with it but dangerous external forces are already at work. There's enormous potential in that as it allows for ep4 Ange and ep8 Ange to mirror one another through the personage of either Maria or Beatrice; in ep4 we see Ange learning to forgive her abusers and resolve not to become an abuser herself, and in ep8 we'd see Ange coming to understand how much like Beatrice she is and synthesize the strengths of those two role models to move on with her life in a positive manner. We didn't quite get that, and I think the lack of focus did damage to Ange's character even though it had the potential to be spectacular for her.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

First, we only sorta hear about Rosa's abuse and never actually get specifics to know what would've twisted her that much;

That is actually not correct, we get some information in EP3, 6 and 8, and very specific information in EP4 what happened to Rosa in terms of abuse.

We learn that her mother was excesively strict on her, that her father basically ignored her. We also hear that toys and precious belongings were taken from her, broken or hidden on a constant basis.
We are also told that she faces a lot of bullying from her peers for not living up to the expectations of being a mother, that she is basically being considered a failure wherever she goes. She is not receiving any help but instead constant blame by other parents, teachers, co-workers, or lovers. She was also financially used and emotionally abused by Maria's father.

I think we have a pretty clear picture of what twisted her that much...especially considering that she basically lost any right to be an individual by getting pregnant after just becoming an adult.

I also found another poignant line being pointed out on the seacats blog (though I distance myself from a lot of there readings past EP2):

But Maria quickly resumes her laughter - going back to distracting herself with “having fun” with Rosa and playing with the Endless Magic. Having so seperated herself from humanity and her human connection with her mother - reducing her mother to a “piece” in her mind - Maria says that it’s a strange emotion, but she feels like she could actually start to forgive Rosa like this… and Beatrice tells her this is the “enlightened state” of witches who control life and death.

It is kind of telling concerning the light Ryukishi casts on the writing of "Yasu". They were a way to vent her anger, to become "enlightened" and beyond petty hatred...but in a way it also poisoned her, driving her into a state where she seemed almost dependant on constantly killing people in her mind.

I do wonder if in that way it can be read in a certain way that Battler slapped Beato out of this behaviour several times during EP3 and 4...

[jjblue1]

While knowing the bullies might have been interesting honestly I think there are enough characters in Umineko. With Yasu they managed to tone down the number by claiming the coworkers who bullied her by calling her stupid (and the first bunch likely pranked her too) were the models for the stakes but with Ange this wouldn't have worked. Also... to Ange at this point they aren't individualities but a huge, faceless group of people againt her.

We don't know WHEN they started bullying her or WHY but bullying usually starts because you end up looking like an easy target and won't stop no matter what you do or don't. Usually it'll start small and will escalate.

By the time we get introduced to Ange it has escalates to the point she can't bear it anymore and she likely had tried other stuffs to cope or stop it but they didn't work. It's also obvious she hadn't received any outside help.

So she tried escapism as last resource. Using escapism isn't usually your first choice. It might seem easy but it's actually not so much. It requires actively ignoring what's hurting you to focus on something more nice. At first is hard, then it becomes like a drug because that's the only moment in which you can have something nice... even if it'll solve nothing.
Of course people can overcome it. Escapism isn't really that wonderful. You know you're just lying to yourself. If the situation improves a person can drop it. That's not Ange's case though but it's Eva's.
Eva too made up an immaginary friend who pushed her to fight harder and hey, for Eva it apparently worked as she managed to become much more successful than Krauss. But when her fantasy couldn't help her to reach her true goal (being acknowledged by Kinzo) and instead she found love in Hideyoshi, she managed to drop it.
Ange will drop escapism not out of improvement in her condition but out of worsening of it.
As her problems escalate escapism not only doesn't solve them but can't help her to cope with them anymore.

There's surely who has worse but for Ange that's all she can take. Pain tollerance is different from a being to another. It's not really fair to tell her it really wasn't that bad when she basically became suicidal.

If we start this line of thoughts actually none of the Umineko characters is having it 'that bad' because there's always someone who's having it worse.

On a sidenote I think Umineko wanted to show how some people can also suffer bullying and still manage to stay rational. Battler is openly bullied by Beatrice and although he's tempted to believe in the witch, and he had many moments in which he simply crumble (Ep 2 & 4) or simply he's almost tricked into accepting a fantasy (Ep 1 & 3) or tries to fight it but he's at complete loss about how (Ep 5) he always manages to stand up and overcome his difficulties.

In real life it's implied he might have suffered bullying but that somehow he managed to overcome it by joking over it, not taking an offence, trying to think the best of people, to understand others, improving himself and... well, crying, getting angry, fighting and generally venting his own emotions when the situation required it.

There's to say though that compared to Yasu, Maria or Ange is made very clear that Battler was raised well and with love by Asumu and that his grandparents continued to support him.

Battler is the boy that when sees Rosa hitting Maria will try to stop her trice while Jessica just watches and George even rationalize it as okay and dissuades Battler from acting any further.

Ergo Battler is probably stronger where it counts compared to Yasu, Maria and Ange.

There's to say though we still don't know for how long he could have managed to hold on if Beatrice hadn't helped him to solve her game but had merely continued to torture him. Battler says he's very good in tests of endurance but we know everyone has a limit. If he had reached his would he have believed in the witch?

LOL, it's interesting how many of us read the seacats blog but distance themselves from their reading for different reasons. In a way what charms me is how Umineko can be viewed in such different ways by so many people. Not so many series accomplish this.

... though I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing.

About Battler slapping Beato...
Well, it'll be interesting to read Umineko from a 'Battler's point of view'. We think we're doing it as he's the narrator but actually we aren't even told if he wrote to Shannon or not or what was that kept him so busy in those 6 years or why his mother died and why Rudolf though Asumu actually wasn't so kind and so on.
In truth Battler's story is barely brushed and we aren't really asked to understand his heart, just Yasu's.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by haguruma

That is actually not correct, we get some information in EP3, 6 and 8, and very specific information in EP4 what happened to Rosa in terms of abuse.

What's the part that made her violent? Like psychotically violent and aggressive? She's not just venting frustation here, she's having episodes of massive anger that causes her to do things she claims she doesn't want to do after the fact. We know she didn't have it well. Neither did a lot of people in the story, and most of them don't explode in outbursts that are apparently so noticeable that social workers ended up getting involved. Natsuhi gets extremely angry too (and hasn't exactly been without abandonment and self-image issues herself), but she doesn't get violent. She doesn't strike Jessica or Eva.

You're giving her backstory way too much credit on this. I simply do not agree that you can trace a line from the neglect and abandonment she suffered and conclude that she's the sort of person who would fly of the handle and beat her child to that extent. She practically goes into a fugue; even Maria can notice this, hence the "two Mamas." It kind of skirts dangerously close to "she's a violent abuser because she just is, or because the plot demands it." We know why she's stressed, we know why she might snap when she's being annoyed by her child, but the scale and extent of the abuse just seems so out of sorts. If it were something like "Rosa has had moments where she's hit Maria and immediately realized her mistake, and Maria spins this wildly out of proportion in the retelling" it might be easier to swallow, but I'm not sure we're meant to question the reliability of the sources on that. Although admittedly it's possible to argue given the two characters who establish the severity of it.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

What's the part that made her violent? Like psychotically violent and aggressive? She's not just venting frustation here, she's having episodes of massive anger that causes her to do things she claims she doesn't want to do after the fact. We know she didn't have it well. Neither did a lot of people in the story, and most of them don't explode in outbursts that are apparently so noticeable that social workers ended up getting involved. Natsuhi gets extremely angry too (and hasn't exactly been without abandonment and self-image issues herself), but she doesn't get violent. She doesn't strike Jessica or Eva.

You're giving her backstory way too much credit on this. I simply do not agree that you can trace a line from the neglect and abandonment she suffered and conclude that she's the sort of person who would fly of the handle and beat her child to that extent. She practically goes into a fugue; even Maria can notice this, hence the "two Mamas." It kind of skirts dangerously close to "she's a violent abuser because she just is, or because the plot demands it." We know why she's stressed, we know why she might snap when she's being annoyed by her child, but the scale and extent of the abuse just seems so out of sorts. If it were something like "Rosa has had moments where she's hit Maria and immediately realized her mistake, and Maria spins this wildly out of proportion in the retelling" it might be easier to swallow, but I'm not sure we're meant to question the reliability of the sources on that. Although admittedly it's possible to argue given the two characters who establish the severity of it.

Well, I personally was scared by the way Kinzo beat up Krauss. He entered in the room all of sudden and in anger slapped his son who was by then an adult hard enough to send him on the floor. If that's what Rosa saw during her youth (and possibly suffered) she might end up mimiching that behaviour.

Rosa's problem seems to be she can't control her anger issues (same as Kinzo's) when she's with Maria. She doesn't beat anyone else but Maria (Eva instead will beat Natsuhi in Ep 5, while knowing Natsuhi did nothing wrong) and when she does it, it seems clear that she loses control of her own actions.

She's like a child throwing a temper tantrum.

I'm not quite an expert in people who just... loose it in blind rage, but I know that once they calm down they can rationalize what they've done and realize it's wrong.

As for the severity of the beating it always left me confuse. Maria is never described as having a bruised face. In Ep 2 Rosa beats her more than once then, when she joins the relatives and Battler sees Maria for the first time no one mentions Maria having bruises on her face.

So... I don't know. She surely beat her and she surely wasn't soft but I can't tell how bad it was. I still think it was more than what was considered an acceptable spanking though.

[GoldenLand]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

As for the severity of the beating it always left me confuse. Maria is never described as having a bruised face. In Ep 2 Rosa beats her more than once then, when she joins the relatives and Battler sees Maria for the first time no one mentions Maria having bruises on her face.

Maybe it was a narrative convenience along the lines of the one where characters in the story don't get wet when they go out into the rain. I could imagine that Rosa is the type of person who would avoid hitting a child somewhere that bruises would be obvious (like Maria's face), because that would draw attention to her actions, but then, we do seem to be shown Rosa hitting Maria's face reasonably often despite that.

[Renall]

I dunno, do you think Rosa would be that angry and yet also thinking about the consequences and bruising and figuring out exactly where to hit Maria so as not to leave any marks? This is a woman who allegedly picked a fight with a social worker when she needed to demonstrate that her behavior was pretty much exactly the opposite of that. I just don't know that she'd have that much forethought if she was hulking out as she's portrayed to.

Of course, if anything, that just makes doubting the source more credible. The problem is that if we doubt the sources we don't have anything at all, which would be stupid. We're clearly meant to accept that Rosa has a problem with being physically abusive (in addition to being neglectful and verbally and emotionally abusive). If we assume something like "Maria blew the times she was slapped or spanked out of proportion and Yasu ran with it," then it belittles Maria's situation and suggests she's intentionally or unintentionally manipulative. And it still wouldn't do anything to excuse Rosa's behavior (she's still hitting her child), it'd just make it more plausible to believe people didn't notice it as much or do anything about it and more reasonable to believe it's a comprehensible reaction to her poor socialization.

But if Rosa actually starts screaming at Maria in train stations or beating her mercilessly in front of family members, I have trouble believing that isn't the result of either severe issues that the story didn't adequately provide a foundation for or serious mental illness. And the fact that basically nobody but Battler thinks this is crossing a line would make everyone else's behavior utterly reprehensible in reaction to it. If Maria's allegations are true it's no wonder Ange disagreed with her about her life not being that shitty because holy crap.

[jjblue1]

About Maria blowing things out of proportion or not:
Kids often tend to judge according to the emotional response something produced on them. Rosa beating Maria surely hurts Maria deeply so to her the pain is terrible but she can't quite put in words that it's a psychological pain and not a physical one so she might have claimed it hurts for hours or horribly, giving the idea she was beaten severely when actually there was not an horrible bruise, only an horribly scarred soul.

This kind of behaviour is really, really common in small kids but tends to disappear growing up. However Maria on some things is immature and she's also psychologically damaged. Yasu saw her rarely and has no clear knowledge of how a child work. If Maria had told her when she was... let's say 6, that Rosa had beaten her and that it had hurts for hours, than Yasu would have gotten the picture of a severe beating when it was more an emotional one.

There's to say though that Battler witnessed those beatings and, simply put, though Rosa was crossing the line and attempted to stop her more than once. So in the gameboards I'll say Rosa is depicted as violently abusive and the Ushiromiya just pretended not to see (or they were harshly beaten as well, or heard their parents were, so they thought it was normal).

Now the problem is: was PrimeRosa also abusive or the gameboard went over the top but the portrait wasn't accurate because Yasu simply didn't knew the dynamics of such things well? Like how cheeks should remain swollen if hitten too hard, how knees can get scrapped and even bend if a child fall on the ground due to a beating and so on.

There's to say if I'm not wrong Tohya's tales didn't depict Rosa as physically abusive in front of the family. It can be that in truth PrimeBattler never saw his aunt beat Maria and the same applies to the wellfare officer.
Rosa is rough with the officer but doesn't hit Maria in front of her apart from a slap on her shoulder who however doesn't cause Maria to fall or start crying. So we don't have reliable people that can claim that the beatings Maria received were more than a spanking... even if Rosa was violent with the wellfare office, who however had grabbed her and was scared by her rage so it's possible she was overly impressed.

Of course it's also possible Ryukishi simply didn't care about those details. And so we would have:
Rain which doesn't soak people
Slaps and falls which doesn't bruise
And same face people whose resemblance goes completely unnoticed.

Personally I find those as tricks way dirtier than any other implemented in Umineko because one can't know that the story is going to challenge normality.

[Renall]

The worst part about "rain doesn't get anybody wet" is it's actually an ideal justification for the narrative necessity of Shkanon from Yasu's perspective: If her culprit-character needs to move between buildings in the rain, then swapping out of wet clothes into a different set makes perfect sense and changing outfits to be a different person would also work if Shannon and Kanon are assigned to separate buildings. Nobody would assume she had been outside because she would appear to be dry and would be wearing dry clothing, and nobody would be perplexed as to why Kanon is at the mansion if he becomes Shannon, who is assigned there, first.

But since this detail gets ignored, that potentially useful trick isn't actually needed. Which is a shame, but perhaps it would've made things too easy? On the other hand, how often does the culprit actually need to go outside during a period where they're supposed to be inside? Still, it's something that could've been utilized.