2011-08-29, 10:51 | Link #23981 | |||
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It's more or less like saying 'We know Santa Claus doesn't exist but let's not shatter the illusion it exists in front of children because it's much more beautiful to let them believe Christmas night is a magic night than telling them the truth'. In this case you can read the trick or magic ending of Umineko as: let's be honests if you're going to be realistic Ange is going to have a harsh life as well as mental problems that might border on paranoia but if you're a hopeful dreamer, hey, you can think Ange became a writer and a good person and Battler survived the explosion exactly as she wanted and they will have their tearful reunion. However this feels wrong somehow. Truth doesn't have to be necessarily bad, though illusion might look better. Santa Claus might be something special but it's also nice to think that your relatives went and bought presents for you. Quote:
Basically causing the family to argue for the gold she willingly might have caused the premise for a crime to be committed which is generally what a detective should try to avoid. Also, although is true that a detective has the detective authority usually is presented in such a way it seemed believable. Ep 5 seemed a parody of the detective gender that ended with having the detective, not only making a mistake but hiding evidence (Erika knew about the red truth 'Kinzo is dead') to accuse further the culprit. This is not merely a case of forgetting the heart or not paying attention to the illusions or whatever, it turns Erika into a third rate detective that might work for scandal magazines only. |
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2011-08-29, 11:30 | Link #23982 | |
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For Ange, for Maria, having immaginary friends wasn't THE BEST way to live per se, it was merely that, since they believed they had no other options in such environment, they embellished their reality. The best way for them would have been to go along with their relatives and have real friends but they don't believe this is possible. People might say Ange didn't try hard enough (it's debatable, Ange might have tried but then, after 12 years, she might have been forced to surrender) but Maria tried quite hard to get along with her mother. Going back to the ending the message might be: when you are presented with a reality that's sad, unhappy or not of your taste you WANT to change it into a happy one, you might even go as far as to embellish it, to cover it with lies... or turn it over believing in magic. Let's pretend for a moment Umineko original ending should have been Trick. It's a sad, horrible ending that explain nothing and gives no positive vibes. All Ange has learnt is 'not to believe in others if you don't want them to kill you, actually kill you first'. It's a sad message but if you consider how Battler wanted to believe in his family and the servants when one of them was the obvious culprit, it fits. If Battler had been more suspicious he might have guessed who was the culprit and stopped/killed him maybe saving his own life and the one of other family members. However it's 'nice' how Battler wants to believe in his loved ones and protect them especially because as the story progress we grow affectionate to them. We would dislike if Erika had been right and the culprit was really Natsuhi and had killed for such reason. However people might kill for the motive Erika gave. It doesn't look real in that situation but it's not unrealistic in general. It's just a bad reality. Presented with all those bad reality we reject them. Come on, those can't be the truth. And so we decide that the magic ending must be the truth merely because it's 'BETTER'. Ange somehow got rid of her bitterness, she found a way to get rid of the Sumadera, she restarted her life, she became a successful writer, she remained rich, she met again her brother... isn't that nicer? A miracle. In the end of Umineko it's not Ange who makes the choice about which door to open. It's us. While Ange, after seeing magic might be doubtful if magic exist or not, we know it doesn't. Yet, after being presented with the trick ending we assume that the true one is the magic one and Ryukishi wanted us to chose that one but ultimately the choice was ours. He didn't want to give Umineko a happy ending. Lambda and Bern said there wasn't a happy ending. We want it so we decide to delude ourself with the magic ending, like Maria, Ange and Beato did with their immaginary world. He let us this possibility. Though I admit I would have apprecciate more the trick ending if there wasn't Erika in it. It made it as unbelievable as the good ending... unless it's supposed to mean Ange also got mad and started to see things... talk about BAD ENDING... |
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2011-08-29, 12:25 | Link #23983 | |
Dea ex Kakera
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Sea of Fragments
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In all of Umineko, nobody ever hallucinated anything, not even once. I think that in the end, the reader is just being given a choice of whether they think something good or bad happened/is going to happen to Ange. It's about whether it's better to continue hoping for a happy truth in the face of overwhelming evidence, or to give up and fall into despair.
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2011-08-29, 12:53 | Link #23984 | |||
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K That was really interesting right now. From the beginning of the depiction of magical events within the story, there were many scenes were golden butterflies appeared in front of the people. Latching on to Rosa’s back, Genji throwing a knife at one, I always thought that this was to show when something illusionary is depicted, but what would you say? R It’s almost that meaning. To just come out and say it, there are no golden butterflies. When somebody starts seeing them, he is starting to go insane. Since Ryukishi in the interview says that seeing golden butterflies isn't equal to lying about seeing golden butterflies but it's equal to going insane and therefore having hallucinations, people hallucinated in Umineko. Ange might have ended up having an hallucination of Erika instead than of golden butterflies... Quote:
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2011-08-29, 13:03 | Link #23985 | |
Dea ex Kakera
Join Date: Jun 2006
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The alternative is to think that a bunch of people randomly started going crazy at incredibly convenient times, isn't it?
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2011-08-29, 13:12 | Link #23986 | |
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However, if you consider the situation they're in, it's pretty normal to go insane. Personally if at the end of Ep 1 the cousins really started to hallucinate and see butterflies I would understand it. They've just found the corpses of 3 servants and, on top of it, Natsuhi had just been killed by, apparently, no one. It's enough to make you insane. |
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2011-08-29, 13:20 | Link #23987 | ||
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Also on that note, I think he was inspired by Greene Murder Case by Van Dine at several points. The family/mansion setting is very similar, and... Spoiler:
I also think maybe he didn't overestimate us so much as underestimated the difference between individuals. He must have thought his mindset was the same as ours. Which...was a bit of a problem. Slightly unrelated, but I remember reading a Stephen King interview some time ago where he admitted wanting to write a detective murder mystery that played with the conventions of the genre. I would very much like to see that. Quote:
Rather, the series was only treated like a mystery in episode 7 with Will, who was an actually good conductor. If he had appeared in the series a bit earlier, he could have been very useful in making the series better. I hope you understand that not all mystery novels are simple logic puzzles. In He Who Whispers for example, you can't simply account for everything using cold logic. You must understand all characters, then you may apply the solution. Deductive reasoning is not all there is to solving a mystery. Overall, here's my take on the issue: Ryuukishi created a good plot on his mind. He thought it was a good one, and perhaps it was. Only we never actually saw the mystery the way he wanted us to see, because the mystery lacked an appropriate conductor. So instead what we got was a solution that we arrived at fairly easily, but that didn't quite feel rewarding because we arrived at it in a rather crude manner. Shkanon was, like someone mentioned earlier, a segway. It's functional but really dude really? And more importantly, like a segway, it doesn't really solve anything. It works, you can fit it in the story, but...it's just sort of there. And it looks really silly. Neither the story nor the streets need a segway. Aside from that, you can argue whether the story is or isn't solvable but I wont' even get near that point. I'll just say that the main story is unsatisfying. Umineko had a lot of potential, which is probably why it bugs me so much. A Carr like story that challenges you to solve its impossible crimes and refuses to give an explanation sounds absolutely fun. But...a Carr like story that wants you to solve its impossible crimes, but then offers so many copies of famous stories that you are left not unsure of how the crime was possible, but rather which book he copied, is a bit too disappointing. Overall, Ryuukishi miscalculated a few things. I think Umineko would have worked much better if he tried to launch a few standalone mystery novels first to gain experience and test fanbase reactions so he wouldn't change plans later because of his fanbase. |
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2011-08-29, 13:46 | Link #23988 | ||||||
Goat
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Gnawing away at Rokkenjima
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I guess I should have elaborated. Quote:
Anyway, this answer isn't even close to Erika's. Quote:
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The red truth that Kinzo is dead wasn't used as a part of Erika's deductive argument that Natsuhi was the killer (in fact it was a liability). As a detective her biggest failure wasn't that, but the fact that she never inspected corpses (at least in episode 5). I can agree with this, although I must say that it advertised itself as one. Erika "I have no interest in corpses" Furudo. |
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2011-08-29, 14:23 | Link #23989 | |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
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And then murdered the guy who actually did it. Then wrote a book about it where he blamed a magical guy. Damn, Stephen King basically is the culprit of Umineko.
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2011-08-29, 14:49 | Link #23990 | |||
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Battler and Erika have more the role of the Watson instead than of the detective which makes kind of weird how later Battler solves the mystery, the epitaph, he is revealed to be the reader of tons of mystery books and so on. I think Umineko might have worked better if it was a height parts mystery instead than 8 alternate versions of a mystery but this might be just me. Quote:
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2011-08-29, 15:08 | Link #23991 | |
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Join Date: Jan 2011
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To give a practical example, the fight between Beatrice and Shannon in Natsuhi room in ep 2 is a great clue toward the truth, dismissing it to look for where the culprit hide the murderer weapon is the wrong way to do it. I don't think Umineko needed a good detective during the questions arc, honestly. |
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2011-08-29, 20:59 | Link #23992 | |
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Supernatural agencies must not be employed as a detective technique. Being told on a Meta-plane of existence that someone is dead without your knowledge is supernatural. Erika did suspect Kinzo was dead, but she couldn't prove it, and as Gaap tried to claim he was dead in red, Dlanor got pissed and said Battler had to prove it, and the only way he could was an asspull of golden text. |
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2011-08-29, 21:47 | Link #23993 | |||
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Also she used red truth to confirm Krauss' death when his status was just missing Quote:
The funny thing is that yes, Battler couldn't use the red truth to confirm Kinzo's death but he didn't actually had to prove it, he pulled out a golden truth and solved the matter. |
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2011-08-29, 21:56 | Link #23994 |
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Join Date: Apr 2011
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Perhaps Erika already knew what Bernkastel said in red on a personal level.
All of the victims were very much alive before I killed them! AKA, she was there so she could say it in red, and since she's the detective, if she really was challenged with proving it, maybe she could? |
2011-08-29, 22:24 | Link #23995 | ||
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2011-08-29, 22:27 | Link #23996 |
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She doesn't have to be the culprit, she obviously snooped in on personal things like Natsuhi's diary, knowing of Krauss's death to make sure not much can go wrong with framing her wouldn't be beyond her. The detectives duty(I suppose don't quote me) is not to beat the shit out of the culprit mid-crime and end the mystery, it's to .....beat the shit out of his alibi at the end of the story.
The only problem is if that's considered fooling the reader, since she didn't tell us, which I would consider it to be, so I guess she still breaks a rule by this. EDIT: Another action of people using red randomly because they had personal experience with it is Natsuhi, when saying she only ever told Shannon her favorite season. Red= Able to be used if Ryu feels like he wants his characters to make an honest testimony? Last edited by cronnoponno; 2011-08-29 at 22:59. |
2011-08-29, 22:38 | Link #23997 | |
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2011-08-30, 02:39 | Link #23998 | |
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Now that I think about Blue and Red especially in this connection...isn't her ability to use this red pointing towards a rather simple but gruesome truth? What we basically learned is that Red can only be used when something is known by the speaker to be unshakably true. This is how it would work if you think about it concerning what we learned in EP5. Natsuhi could speak Red because she knew that she did not tell aybody else...it's the god honest truth. This is why normally only Beato or other witches/demons with insight can use Red, because it needs knowledge of the situation (like Ronove/Genji could prove that Beatrice existed in Kuwadorian in 1968). And nobody except Beato says "Kinzô is dead" because they either refuse to share that kowledge or just don't have it. Therefore the Golden Truth was necessary...because it is what sparked the whole dilemma in the first place. Everybody decided to believe that Kinzô is dead without the need of any proof! There were people refusing to believe in Krauss' death so it could never become a Golden Truth...but somebody knew for a fact that he was dead. And this is the same person who beheaded 5 people in EP6 isn't it? I know it doesn't help with the actual culprit, but it does refer to EP1 and explains Evas strong detective behaviour even though by now we have to assume she was working with the culprit. It would be all a ruse to distract from the fact that she was actually murdering...which is of course best covered by finding a fittig scapegoat. |
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2011-08-30, 05:52 | Link #23999 |
Goat
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Gnawing away at Rokkenjima
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Erika didn't prove Krauss's death and, because of that court's bullshit rules, she didn't need to. It was already after Krauss was removed as a suspect based on Natsuhi's refusal to blame him (which is illogical bullshit, but hey, it's what they did) when Bern red-texted his death to fuck with Natsuhi. So, yeah, technically not used as a detective technique.
But there's also the possibility that Dlanor could just choose not to draw her sword and let Erika violate Knox. |
2011-08-30, 10:34 | Link #24000 | |
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Common sense to all observers, but can't be objectively proven for some reason (STRONGER than red truth, like the identity of Kinzo's corpse) Something all observers just agree to lie about (WEAKER than red truth) Furthermore, as a small point of order, part of the reason for Red Truth's existence is to provide those Word of God guarantees that the detective normally wouldnt be able to. Otherwise we'd have dozens of available master keys, cleverly hidden in the window sills and the like. Let us not forget that End's Court of Illusion sequence was essentially Erika proposing her solution against the length of the novel, but her only having read, say, the first half of the book, because she's an overconfident bitch. Last edited by Kealym; 2011-08-30 at 10:59. |
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