[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Keriaku]

Originally Posted by Judoh

I don't think anyone has a problem viewing it as a chess game, but that people want a winning resolution. It being an accident, while you can guess it, feels like a compromise, not like a fierce game between a reader and writer. If it happens it doesn't actually feel like Ryukishi07 won or the readers won. It's just there. And I'd argue if you play a game without knowing what's going on you were never really playing to start with.

Us english speakers never had a good chance at solving the epitaph anyways.

Well I was mostly talking from the perspective of the characters in the story.

For us as readers, our challenge was to figure out who Beatrice was, and why she was setting this up. Overlayed with that there`s the `mysteries`of the gameboards, where I`m sure we can deduce who kills who and such, but these are individual `games` that we can put our minds to. I`d say we can look at it each and come up with a different culprit each time. I think the problem people have is because they`re trying to turn the whole story into one big mystery, when it`s just not. The only overarching mystery is who and why (Beatrice), and as Ryuukishi said, the mystery side of the story ended with EP6/EP7.

That said there`s still many ways to have climax and resolution to the series, it never really needed to be readers vs. Ryuukishi.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Keriaku

I think the problem people have is because they`re trying to turn the whole story into one big mystery, when it`s just not. The only overarching mystery is who and why (Beatrice), and as Ryuukishi said, the mystery side of the story ended with EP6/EP7.

I think you're putting words in people's mouths. I don't expect it to be one big mystery. I do however expect to have a satisfying closure. Declaring it's over doesn't mean it was enough for people to feel closure. (and the Why's are questionable) That's forced.

Originally Posted by Keriaku

That said there`s still many ways to have climax and resolution to the series, it never really needed to be readers vs. Ryuukishi.

He described it constantly as a game between him and the readers in his interviews. If it never was that he shouldn't have ever described it as being that.

[Keriaku]

Originally Posted by Judoh

I think you're putting words in people's mouths. I don't expect it to be one big mystery. I do however expect to have a satisfying closure. Declaring it's over doesn't mean it was enough for people to feel closure. (and the Why's are questionable) That's forced.

I thnk I`m just not expressing myself clearly then, not meaning to put words in peoples mouths. It is a fact people are saying they are upset that there is no `big`culprit. I`m just saying based on there not being an overarching mystery encompassing the whole series, there`s no need for an overarching culprit.

Originally Posted by Judoh

He described it constantly as a game between him and the readers in his interviews. If it never was that he shouldn't have ever described it as being that.

Well I think that there are definitely ways to intepret it as a back and forth. Him being the reader knows the answers to every aspect of the series, and us as readers are trying to figure everything out. And I mean everything. As the author, Ryuukishi has everything in his mind that he is presenting. The interactions between the characters, what led up to the events on the island, the motivations behind everything, the structure of the reality he`s presenting, the emotions the characters are feeling. And us as readers are absorbing it all and trying to make coherent sense of it. The way he gives extra hints based on how much we can figure out, or makes things harder from Episode to Episode (Such as revealing Kinzo dead in EP4, putting stuff from answer arcs in EP3 etc.). This kind of back and forth in no way needs to mold itself to somekind of mystery or rules to still be a game.

[Renall]

Actually the challenge was not "who is Beatrice" prior to the end of ep4 where that question was explicitly put to the reader. And Ryukishi wrote quite a bit about his objectives, mystery and fantasy, and what he was up to before that point. The notion that Beatrice's identity was important beyond merely "unmasking the culprit" also effectively did not exist until the end of ep3 or into ep4.

Besides which, the identity of Beatrice does not in and of itself actually answer anything about what may or may not have happened.

[Keriaku]

Originally Posted by Renall

Actually the challenge was not "who is Beatrice" prior to the end of ep4 where that question was explicitly put to the reader. And Ryukishi wrote quite a bit about his objectives, mystery and fantasy, and what he was up to before that point. The notion that Beatrice's identity was important beyond merely "unmasking the culprit" also effectively did not exist until the end of ep3 or into ep4.

Besides which, the identity of Beatrice does not in and of itself actually answer anything about what may or may not have happened.

Well to be fair, the `mystery`as people are now talking about didn`t fully exist until EP3/EP4. I may be wrong, but I thought people considered EP1 to EP4 the actual `mystery`. And as you say, his objective was a collecion of things. From my perspective, his objectives in no way implies a need for an overarching culprit. I think he was going for a more dynamic challenge, back and forth between reader and author, rather than a mystery where you propose a situation and challenge the readers to figure out the culprit before the detective.

Just as Beatrice and Battler have the chance to duel face to face, that is what I see us having against Ryuukishi. They are both very different situations than an author who releases a book and a reader who challenges the detective on a personal basis.

The only point I`m really trying to make is that I don`t understand why people are upset at the possible lack of an overarching culprit. I really don`t think they should be.

[Renall]

His challenge is couched in an implicit paradigm and set of rules. If he's challenging us to play Chess and then plays Connect Four, he wasn't being honest.

Not that he's doing this, but he could if that's all you're holding him to.

[Keriaku]

Originally Posted by Renall

His challenge is couched in an implicit paradigm and set of rules. If he's challenging us to play Chess and then plays Connect Four, he wasn't being honest.

Not that he's doing this, but he could if that's all you're holding him to.

I can understand the concern, but he even warned us about this kind of metaphorical trickery right from the very beginning. From the prologue text before EP1 was released where he said that this was the "worst kind of unsolvable mystery", right through EP1 and EP2 where we are told we need to figure out the rules ourselves and we have no idea what kind of game we`re playing.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by Keriaku

I can understand the concern, but he even warned us about this kind of metaphorical trickery right from the very beginning. From the prologue text before EP1 was released where he said that this was the "worst kind of unsolvable mystery", right through EP1 and EP2 where we are told we need to figure out the rules ourselves and we have no idea what kind of game we`re playing.

The line was drawn by episode 1 I think, during the tea party its clear what the options are. Believe in the witch and try to solve the epitaph - Fantasy or Dont believe in the witch and try to find the culprit - Mystery. Of course Battler doesn't really fight with the mystery genre tools till EP5 where he supposidly finds the truth. He uses anti-fantasy for the most part in the previous episodes.

EP2s intro gave us a fair bit of foreshadowing about what it was, if this is a game it must have rules, for the game to be fair they must be followed. It even tells us about Knox and Dine so at the very least you should look them up. The game also appears to follow other un-written rules about the genre and knowing some of them makes your life a little easier. For this reason I found Rosa to be a far more competent detective than Battler.

[Keriaku]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

The line was drawn by episode 1 I think, during the tea party its clear what the options are. Believe in the witch and try to solve the epitaph - Fantasy or Dont believe in the witch and try to find the culprit - Mystery. Of course Battler doesn't really fight with the mystery genre tools till EP5 where he supposidly finds the truth. He uses anti-fantasy for the most part in the previous episodes.

EP2s intro gave us a fair bit of foreshadowing about what it was, if this is a game it must have rules, for the game to be fair they must be followed. It even tells us about Knox and Dine so at the very least you should look them up. The game also appears to follow other un-written rules about the genre and knowing some of them makes your life a little easier. For this reason I found Rosa to be a far more competent detective than Battler.

And again, we are free to find culprits, we are free to try and solve the epitaph. None of that implies that there is an overarching culprit, or that the series/setting as a whole is a mystery. Even the red and blue that I`m assuming you take to imply rules are mostly on a game to game basis, and the more general ones are used to clarify things (Such as Kinzo being dead across all games). It was never shown that the whole meta setting had such rules, and thus the whole setting does not need to be a mystery or have a culprit.

[Judoh]

If by "overarching culprit" you mean a character that can be the murderer in all episodes. Then that's just not possible.

[witchfan]

Originally Posted by Renall

Well, I'm sure there were some Higurashi fans who were unpleasantly surprised by how that turned out, and they'd been following it for a while themselves.

I think I read somewhere in an interview that Ryukishi himself was unsatisfied with that ending.

[Renall]

That might not mean he meant "it was a bad ending." That could just mean "I wanted it to turn out that way, but it didn't come across quite the way I intended." It might not mean he was disappointed with the ending so much as his own efforts to write it.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Renall

His challenge is couched in an implicit paradigm and set of rules. If he's challenging us to play Chess and then plays Connect Four, he wasn't being honest.

Not that he's doing this, but he could if that's all you're holding him to.

I disagree with that. In the beginning we were only aware of he games themselves without actually any chance to understand the existence of a Rokkenjima Prime.

The kind of rules you are talking about are something that existed in that particular setting. And they are still valid and apply to that.

Now you can't really say that the rules that were made apparent for subplot A must be valid for plot B. Why so? The author never implied such a thing.

[luckyssol]

I think one of the key problems is that Rokkenjima Prime (if such a thing exists) is undefined.

Doubting the story as a whole gets us nowhere. However, I think that most people subscribe to “1998 world” elements representing our real world and “game board” / “meta world” elements being in-story stories. There is no guarantee that this interpretation is the correct one but there are enough clues to support it.

If one moves forward with this interpretation what sources of information do we have?

• Message bottles
• Eva
• Other survivor(s) (if there are any)
• Forgeries
• Undiscovered evidence (e.g. Kuwadorian secrets)

Look at the challenge (which happens to be a copy and paste from Higurashi) again:



Find the culprit or find out the truth? Are they synonymous?

[Renall]

A theory repeatedly advanced in-story is that the contents of the sealed-off days prior to the incident are unknown, and in the case of what Eva and Kyrie discuss in ep7, unknowable. However, I think we're obviously meant to reject that (in spite of every possible variation being thrown at us) and conclude that the truth is, in fact, somehow knowable. The message bottles ask us to find it, Hachijou seems to insinuate you can know it even if you weren't there, and Battler's attitude suggests (or at least implies) it is possible not just to know the truth, but to convey it to others and thus reveal it.

The operation now is to figure out how that is possible.

[Keriaku]

Well from my idea that there is no culprit, I think the `truth` is found once you understand what Yasu is setting up, and by sufficiently knowing the circumstances surrounding the Ushiromiya family, you can come to the conclusion that any of the adults could have snapped/decided/been forced to kill the others, in factions or otherwise. Who exactly kills who is erased by the bomb, but the fact is that it is equal whether it was Kyrie or Rudolf or Rosa or Natsuhi or Krauss or Eva or Hideyoshi etc.

From this, it makes sense that Bern would show the culprit as Kyrie to mess with Battler/Ange, but I believe she could have just as easily shown any of the above (give or take a few depending on the situation). So what Bern showed really was the truth, just it really truly is an example of the `multiple truths`idea. The idea that all of the above had equal possiblities of happening. This is contrasted by things that are very unlikely (such as Lion being there).

I also think this is corresponds to the idea of the roulette versus the dice from Higurashi. The dice has values that are always `better` (such as Keiichi showing up or not, whether or not Satoko gets taken back by her uncle etc.) while in the roulette every value is more or less equal, only given better or worse values by the observer (Kyrie being the culprit is worst for Ange/Battler, Eva being the culprit is worst for George etc.)

So the idea of winning in the roulette is trying to have the most gain with the least loses, rather than just trying to win.

[Kealym]

"And Then There Were No Ackroyds", indeed.

[Pikumin]

A little while back some "red guts scene" in EP7 was discussed(I can't remember whether it was this thread or the EP7 one), in which something is revealed to be physically wrong with Yasu; something which is the source of her furniture complex and the reason why she views herself as apparently unable to love. I have a theory for what this might be(I'm not sure if someone suggested it already), but having not yet played the EP7 patch, my knowledge of it is limited to what I have learned here. I don't know if it's plausible or impossible, so could someone please enlighten me on a couple of points?

• What age was Yasu when Kinzo found out she was his daughter/granddaughter, and what was his reaction to this?
• Why didn't Kinzo just name Yasu head of the family on the spot right there?(or did he, and was it Yasu's choice to withhold announcing it?)
• What kind of relationship did Yasu and Kinzo have following this revelation?
• How specific was the red guts scene, and who was involved?

[CrystalStarlight95]

@Pikumin

I wish I could answer those questions, problem is I'm wondering the exact same thing, too xD

I've only played the 50% patch, haven't even reached this "red guts scene" yet ._.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Pikumin

A little while back some "red guts scene" in EP7 was discussed(I can't remember whether it was this thread or the EP7 one), in which something is revealed to be physically wrong with Yasu; something which is the source of her furniture complex and the reason why she views herself as apparently unable to love. I have a theory for what this might be(I'm not sure if someone suggested it already), but having not yet played the EP7 patch, my knowledge of it is limited to what I have learned here. I don't know if it's plausible or impossible, so could someone please enlighten me on a couple of points?

• What age was Yasu when Kinzo found out she was his daughter/granddaughter, and what was his reaction to this?
• Why didn't Kinzo just name Yasu head of the family on the spot right there?(or did he, and was it Yasu's choice to withhold announcing it?)
• What kind of relationship did Yasu and Kinzo have following this revelation?
• How specific was the red guts scene, and who was involved?

1) It is impossible to tell with certainty. It is hinted that Kinzo suspected that Yasu was his daughter, but we only know when Kinzo made Genji understand that (1984) and not when Kinzo started suspecting it. We aren't even completely sure how grounded was that suspect. Was Kinzo completely certain, or was that only a fleeting hope? The point is Genji didn't confirm it and rather helped Yasu in solving the Epitaph in accordance with Kinzo's crazy plan.

2) Basically Kinzo created the epitaph as a way to prove Yasu was his daughter. In his madness he believed that if Yasu really was Beatrice's daughter then she would solve the epitaph. In his madness he was ready to recognize as "Beatrice" whoever would solve the epitaph first. Genji gave Yasu a little help, just to even the ground with the other sons of Kinzo who all knew already that he's been living in Taiwan when he was a child. Yasu then solved everything by herself. So everything went according to Kinzo's plan and at that point Kinzo was sure that Yasu was Lion even before asking a confirmation from Genji.
Of course at that very time Kinzo declared that Yasu was the new head, and of course he was insanely happy. This happened on November 29 1984.
However Kinzo died on the spot (no shit) and Yasu decided to never disclose what happened. The servants simply obeyed her orders.

3) The usual relationship the livings can have with the dead.

4) It wasn't very specific. You see the scene from Yasu's perspective. You see Nanjo and Genji somehow embarrased and Yasu going crazy accusing them to have saved her while she was better off dead, because she was unfitted to love, less than human, furniture.