[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Keriaku

To me, at this point we can't appeal to absolute moral principles for truth and reveal it, because that seems to also be allowing possible lies and biases to be forced in as the truth. Should Eva's One Truth really be taken as absolute simply because it's the best thing we have? If we can't actually have the absolute truth, why is a possibly biased, one-sided truth allowed to stand above the rest?

But you have a problem when you just give up on seeking the Truth from a simple shortage of information. I mean, how many "truths" do we need to convict someone of murder? We can never know for sure if the person is truly guilty, but I'd rather take my slim chance of false conviction than leave all the murderers to roam free for the slim chance that they are actually innocent.

Our understanding is always lacking in some way, so we have no choice but to take what information we have and make the best judgement we can based on its reliability.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Hey the BBC did a good job with this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/lying/

Lets go over it and see how it applies to umineko or whatever.

[AuraTwilight]

Are you seriously going to try telling me that you have never told a lie in your life? You show me a human that does not lie, and I will show you a human that leads an absolutely miserable life, being continually abused and taken advantage of by others because they refused to do something very simple and easy that could have prevented a great deal of that suffering.

Prove it. Perhaps this hypothetical person who never lied feels very good because they have nothing to be ashamed of.

In any case, inconvenience isn't a good defense against a moral good. Your entire argument is "we shouldn't release the truth because it's uncomfortable."

[Silverkun]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Prove it. Perhaps this hypothetical person who never lied feels very good because they have nothing to be ashamed of.

In any case, inconvenience isn't a good defense against a moral good. Your entire argument is "we shouldn't release the truth because it's uncomfortable."

Well, that's not really what I was saying at all.

If you wanted to over-simplify it, you could summarize my argument like this:

"Forcing your sense of self-righteousness on others without even understanding that this is what you're doing, is pretty terrible, especially considering that you would hate it if someone else did the same to you. After all, you probably don't like how I seem to be doing that to you. I see what you're doing the same way."

[jjblue1]

WOW the discussion about truth and how it should be revealed or not has become quite big... I hope you don't mind if I give you my two cents also.

I think the problem between Umineko and truth is that we aren't given complete informations about the TRUTH and why people are hiding it.

So we base our judgement according to what we assume is the truth, what we assume is the reason behind which people are hiding it and what we assume would be worse for people, if knowing the truth or not.

There are various books and movies that deal with this.

The point in those books is that the reader is given a full solution of what had happened and the relative explanation about why character A decided not to reveal the truth... or decided to reveal it regardless of possible consequences.

With a full scenery in front of himself the reader can judge if character A's decision was right, wrong, understandable, pitiful, selfish, paternalistic or what else.

Here we're told to guess what had happened and why and to accept that character A & B are keeping it hidden because 'it's better this way' or 'everyone else who wants to know is a jerk'.

With a such incomplete scenery it's not really fair to express an absolute judgement.

We worry about poor Mrs Gohda, who don't know who killed her son... but what if actually Gohda was a culprit? We can't say it would be better for her to know it anyway because we know nothing about her. It could be the news would break her heart and kill her... it could be she'll get over her son's death better.

We feel a bit of sympathy for Eva because she's taking the blame on herself but what if Eva was the real culprit and George and Hideyoshi were killed because, in an attempt to shot her, they got on the fire line? In this case she isn't keeping silent to protect Ange but herself.

It's not really predictable to tell if Ange's life would have been better had she known the truth, assuming the truth was her parents were involved in the murder. We know not knowing apparently did her nothing good (if Ep 4 can be trusted). Knowing might have been better or worse.
Not knowing the future Eva might have decided to withold the truth from her hoping things would be better.

Also, Ange is still a minor in Umineko so it's Eva and Battler's duty to decide what's better for her. What I blame on them is that apparently they didn't gave her the chance to learn the truth once she were to turn of major age (it's however possible that they were planning to tell her the truth once she were to turn 21... and simply didn't have the chance).

My problem with Umineko is that although it is possible that hiding the truth was better than revealing it... well Umineko didn't bother persuading me of such thing.

I don't believe Gohda was one of the culprits so I think his mom deserved to know her son didn't kill anyone.
I'm not 100% sure Eva is completely innocent so her hiding the truth isn't just a noble sacrifice to me but also something she does for her own advantage.
Although I understand that Battler and Eva might have decided Ange wasn't ready to face the truth when she was 6, by Ep 8 she's definitely an adult. The excuse 'Ange didn't ask' doesn't really work because Toya (or ikuko) said Toya has no memory of those two days so maybe Ange wanted to know and by now she was old enough to make her own decisions but, apparently, couldn't (it's unsaid if she had found out the truth by other means).

Now, it could be that the TRUTH and the reactions people would have to it would still be awfull.
It could be but Umineko doesn't assure us about this. It implied Battler and Eva were protecting Ange in not telling her the truth (though it turns out they did a poor job) but completely forget about the other people.

When I read Umineko my feeling is:
Eva and Battler hid the truth for their own gain, be it to protect their family's reputation, Ange or themselves, without caring at all about the consequences this could have on others. They never trusted Ange to be capable to deal with the truth.

All in all the message I get is pretty bad and morally discutible and I don't like it.

It's like with Yasu. I'm supposed to feel sympathy for the Yasu culprit in Ep 1-5 but I'm not given explanation enough to feel sympathy for her. I'm not given an explanation for which I can say 'yes, I understand why she wanted to murder everyone'.

The result is that Umineko seems to be morally wrong so I really hope future material will help improving this vision.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

If I have a reasonable expectation that releasing some information will result in someone being hurt, and I release it anyway according to some ideal of Truth without due consideration of that possibility, then what I have done is an attack on that person. Perhaps I didn't do it with malicious intent, and perhaps that person might not be hurt in the end, but I did entirely abdicate responsibility for the potential harm I might cause so that I could feel good about myself. That strikes me as an act of gross negligence.

Except in this case you don't really have that "reasonable expectation" as you seem to claim. You have a vague feeling that someone's feelings might be hurt, and an impressive degree of tunnel vision to believe that this person is the only person who matters or has a right to matter.

When you try harder to avoid potentially causing harm than any other act, the real negligence is that you will generally find yourself paralyzed by indecision which prevents you from behaving the way you ought to, and which stifles your growth and that of others. "Compassion" is a funny way of justifying ignorance.

Originally Posted by Silverkun

"Forcing your sense of self-righteousness on others without even understanding that this is what you're doing, is pretty terrible, especially considering that you would hate it if someone else did the same to you. After all, you probably don't like how I seem to be doing that to you. I see what you're doing the same way."

Ignoring your nihilism for a moment (I believe good does exist independent of human beings), I don't really have any problem with you doing the same to me, really. Even if I did, that doesn't suddenly mean I'd be wrong or my position invalid; it simply means I'd be failing to fully live up to an ideal. Failing sometimes doesn't mean there's no point in trying, which seems to more or less be your objection.

There's also a significant difference between locking the door to your house and burying something stolen from somebody else's house in a box out in the woods somewhere.

[Silverkun]

I admit that I went too far when I said that stuff, so I won't say anymore about that, but at any rate, that was just my perspective as a human who has no proof that morality exists apart from humans. I do have other perspectives on the matter, and I'm not saying that your perspectives are necessarily wrong by any means. After all, even though I painted a picture of a nihilistic world where the system of Law is just a bunch of arrogance, I do understand that this system has brought about a lot of good in addition to all the many things that annoy me.

---

Does anyone remember when Ange was talking about this with Okonogi? Jjblue1 made me remember that Ryukishi already gave us his answer, and we had it as of EP4.

Ange wants to believe Eva is the culprit. The only reasons she has to believe that Eva isn't the culprit are ones that require her to sympathize with Eva. There's nothing objective for her to look at and say "oh, Eva definitely is not the culprit, and I have conclusive proof." Instead, since Eva continued to make Ange's life more and more miserable up until her death, Ange only has reasons to believe that Eva is a hateful bitch and probably is the culprit. She definitely isn't going to sympathize with her. I don't blame her for not doing so. I wouldn't do it either.

However, just because she looked like the culprit, and no attempt had been made by Ryukishi (as of that moment) to make it look like she wasn't the culprit, we're left to sympathize with Ange and hate Eva. And then when we were given a reason why she might in fact be some kind of tragic hero in the EP7 Tea Party, suddenly many people wanted to sympathize with her.

"Without love, it cannot be seen."

This "love" isn't the romantic kind. It's merely the willingness to see things from a different perspective even when we have no reason to believe that the new perspective will show us the truth. In fact, we may only have reasons to doubt that this new perspective will show us any hint at the truth. But that doesn't mean that our current perspective will lead us to the truth either.

"The truth can only be found by looking at it from as many perspectives as possible." <--- Is what Ryukishi has been saying the whole time. While he hasn't led us to the answer straightforwardly yet, that doesn't mean he never will. And that doesn't mean it's impossible to reason out with the material we currently have access to.

Recall the end of EP5. There was this huge metaphor with Beato being compared to the author of a Mystery-genre novel, and Battler being compared to the reader. It's just like that now, except Ryukishi is the author and we're the readers, and it's literal instead of merely a metaphor.

The author doesn't want to write a mystery if he doesn't know the reader will think about it. The reader doesn't want to read a mystery if they don't know that they can solve it. However, the author wants us to know that we can solve it if we try. So our efforts aren't in vain. I'd even say that Virgilia's red truth probably applies here as well:
Beato wanted you to solve it, so she made this game...the riddles of this tale...solvable.

But remember EP2: the answer to a major part of the mystery was hidden in the part where Shannon was talking about the promise Battler made to her. It was there all along, but it was difficult to see that this was the answer, so most didn't suspect it until they read Chiru, and were told explicitly by Bernkastel that it was the answer. Of course, I didn't suspect it either.

That's essentially where we are now. EP1-8 has been released, and Tsubasa too, but Hane and that booklet haven't been (not to mention that only part of Tsubasa is translated). And it's possible that he'll give us more stuff even after all of that. And, while he still may not give us more than a major hint at the answers we're looking for in the end, I doubt he'd just leave us hanging completely. A major hint is way better than nothing, and it would surely help us reach the answer.

He said one more thing too. "If you read a mystery without speculating about the answer amongst yourselves, that's not nearly as fun." That's why I came here. Speculating about it is pretty fun. I like these discussions, and I've learned some interesting stuff from you guys. I encountered Judoh's and LyricalAura's theories on the Gold Truth at a point in time where I didn't have a clue as to what it was, and was surprised to learn that Ryukishi's already given us a lot of what we needed to reason that out.

And I'll admit it. For the first 4 novels, I was trying to read this as a Fantasy-genre story. It actually worked, for the most part, and it was a pretty interesting tale, but it kept me from reaching many answers I could have potentially reasoned out.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

Except in this case you don't really have that "reasonable expectation" as you seem to claim. You have a vague feeling that someone's feelings might be hurt, and an impressive degree of tunnel vision to believe that this person is the only person who matters or has a right to matter.

What I said was, quote, "without due consideration." Naturally there are lots of cases where releasing information would be the best course of action. The thing I take exception to is this idea that somehow, rather than weighing the balance between the value of releasing information and the probability and scale of harm that could come from it, we should always say "release the information and damn the consequences" without even thinking about it first. If I came up with an idea for grey goo nanotech, I certainly wouldn't give it out to anyone even if there was a really low chance of it being misused, because the negative consequence of misuse would be the end of the world.

In Tohya's case, yes, there are other relatives of victims who might benefit from learning the truth. However, none of those people are, to Tohya's knowledge, on the verge of killing themselves. Ange is the immediate concern, the one whose life hangs on how she deals with the truth, and on top of that she's his sister, so it's not like his choice to focus on her is some kind of moral black hole.

But that raises another interesting point. Remember, I've said before that I think all of the Ange-related narrative in EP8 is Tohya's fiction, including the existence of Eva's diary. In the real 1998, which is in the past, Ange did in fact attempt suicide and then disappear. So if Tohya's purpose is to atone for his guilt by creating a scenario to save Ange-of-the-past from dying, why should he as the author feel compelled to concern himself with side characters who have no relation to that purpose and don't even appear in the narrative? He keeps continuity between meta levels for Ange, so he's not particularly trying to maintain verisimilitude.

[Sherringford]

Just had a random thought, in regards to the Ange/Featherine/Hachijo/whatevernameweareusingforthosepeoplenow, doesn't that kind of remind people of JT LeRoy? It's probably just a coincidence, but it's kind of funny how the two kind of parallel each other. Not sure if someone brought that up before, I just accidentally stumbled upon an article that referenced LeRoy and remembered how the whole story went down.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I don't want my values decided for me, anyway.

Which is what Battler was trying to do with Ange. He was imposing his personal value of truth (worthless) on Ange who considered it more important than her own life.

Ange is the immediate concern, the one whose life hangs on how she deals with the truth, and on top of that she's his sister, so it's not like his choice to focus on her is some kind of moral black hole.

Saving someone's life is one of those cases where lying or witholding the truth is the right choice.
However we're dealing here with a situation where there was no logical inevitable correlation between "Ange learns the truth" = "Ange dies", and the facts are telling us that Ange learned the truth and she didn't die.

Even if there was the risk of her dying, Battler should have trusted her she wouldn't and he would have won the bet. Instead he treated her like a 6 years old child and admittedly so.

There is also to consider the fact that it was the very situation of not knowing the truth for 12 years that brought Ange to that point. It's not like she chose to die because of the truth, she chose to die because she thought there was no other choice to learn the truth.

If Battler just told her: "I want you to watch my game, if you do that, I promise I'll let you know the truth if you still want to learn it".

That would have avoided a lot of problems. Instead he chose the path of "Forget the truth! The truth is worthless! You shouldn't learn the truth!" Ange's reaction was unavoidable and quite predicatable.


Naturally it's quite probable that that Battler was just a figment of Ange's imagination and therefore was just representing an internal struggle inside of Ange's mind, but I'm just pretending the fantasy we have seen is real and judging the situation as it is.

[AuraTwilight]

However we're dealing here with a situation where there was no logical inevitable correlation between "Ange learns the truth" = "Ange dies", and the facts are telling us that Ange learned the truth and she didn't die.

Don't forget the reason her life was at risk in the first place was because the truth was misheld from her. There's a very big difference between "The Ange told straight up" and "The Ange dicked around by people deciding things for her for over a decade."

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Don't forget...

I didn't forget

There is also to consider the fact that it was the very situation of not knowing the truth for 12 years that brought Ange to that point.

[PsychoShion]

Guys watch the anime "Le Portrait De Petite COSSETTE" it pretty much sums up Battler, beatice and the heart of umineko i think.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Which is what Battler was trying to do with Ange. He was imposing his personal value of truth (worthless) on Ange who considered it more important than her own life.

We might not have read this the same way at all, but as far as I remember all Ange wanted was to learn the truth and then basically commit suicide.
If that's what my little sister wanted, that'd basically guarantee I'd do everything to prevent her from knowing the truth + smack some sense into her emo teenage self.
The way you worded it helps too, as it makes Ange sounds seriously nuts.

Ange's situation, overall, seems like it would've been slightly more understandable to me (as in she'd be right) if instead of Ange she was Satoko and wondering about her parents' death and her brother vanishing on her while everyone around her would hide it even tho she'd grown up to be 18.

As far as I'm concerned Ange's situation is not of "learning the truth" but "she doesn't yet have a truth that satisfies her" and in arc 4 it seems to me like one of the point of it was Ange sorta realizing she'll never actually find such a truth. The Ange that I saw was a extremely sad girl who was looking for the "right excuse" to finish herself off while at the same time hoping she could find a miraculous "magic wand" solution to all of her life's problems. I have some compassion for her, but it's under that light.

[Renall]

The thing is that's not a very good strategy for helping a person.

"She wants to learn the truth, then kill herself. Hmmm, what should I do? Should I convince her that life is worth living? Should I ask her if she would be willing to reconsider and make her choice only in light of the truth and my take on it? Should I try to figure out the underlying problem that I've never fully understood about her and see if I can change her mind that way?

...Nah. I'll troll her, tell her not to look for the truth, and keep hiding it. She can't kill herself until she learns the truth, so if she never finds out, she'll never ever die! I'm a fucking genius!"

[Jan-Poo]

I would have tried to smack on her some sense by telling her to face the truth and still live.
I would have never tried to belittle what was so important to her.

If Battler only tried to save her or talk on her some sense about her sucididal tendency nobody would have anything to say about that. But he didn't do just that.

What I, Renall and AT are accusing him is not the part where Battler tries to save Ange's life but the part where he witholds the truth from her and when he outright belittles the importance that the truth has for her.

Now if there was an inevitable correlation between saving her life and witholding the truth at least he could be justified albeit his methods would still be wrong. But even that wasn't true.

[LyricalAura]

There are this many people who would look at an emotionally fragile, depressed, suicidal girl and think "yes, clearly the best course of action is to show her something incredibly cruel that is her worst nightmare before I try to talk her down from the ledge"?

It's not like Battler was trolling her either. He gave her the key to the diary, said up front that the purpose of his game was to convey a message to her (to wit: the world doesn't suck, you don't need to kill yourself) rather than to show the truth, and told her she'd eventually have the choice whether to use the key or not after she heard him out. He confirmed, while not in front of Ange, that he intended to respect her decision on that matter. The fact that Ange misinterpreted his intentions as trolling is not his fault, and neither is the fact that Bernkastel sabotaged all of his work before he could finish.

[Renall]

He did a piss-poor job of things because he's always been a poor judge of Ange's character and motivations. Bern wasn't helping, but his attitude was flawed from the start and his execution was... questionable. There's "Hear me out and decide for yourself" and there's "You're just gonna have to trust me." The former is how you speak to an adult. The latter is how you speak to a child.

Because that is how Battler thinks of Ange. And, if the whole thing is some kind of internal metaphor for Ange's own decision-making process, how she thinks of herself, I guess, or something.

EDIT: Also it didn't really help that the character of his game was something an emotionally unstable person who has had things concealed and obfuscated from her for most of her life would easily construe as more lies and concealment. Subtlety is not exactly his strong point, it seems.

[LyricalAura]

Give Battler credit where it's due. He's met adult Ange all of one time and didn't even get to interact with her all that much before she sacrificed herself to save him. If we're generous, then he may have gotten to see her EP4 journey to Rokkenjima at some point, although he didn't see it during the game itself. And, the driving motivation of her character during all of that time, to Battler's knowledge, was that she was desperately lonely and wished even one of her family members would come home. Taking that into account, starting by telling her that "no matter what happened, the good memories of them are with you in your heart" isn't a bad first attempt at helping her.

In Tohya's case, he's never even met her once, so basically the entirety of fictional Ange's character is speculation based on anything he remembers of her childhood and whatever info he's gleaned from the press. The act of writing about her is not only an attempt to create a happy ending for her, but also an exploration of her personality and mindset. If you start letting a character respond freely to a situation, sometimes they behave differently from what you expected, and that deepens your understanding of them.

[Renall]

I'm not saying it's unexpected that he'd be unfamiliar with her (and Touya gets a total pass for basically being a complete stranger), just that he might've been laying it on a little thick there with what he was doing. I get the idea behind his game and his objective, but you get the sense that he was trying to really hammer the point home like he wasn't sure she was going to get it... or he was desperate to reach her to the point that it started to override other concerns.