[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I've been thinking about Kanon's personality and his general oddballness to Yasu's personality couple, and I've noticed a pretty consistent trend.

While Shannon only resists Beatrice by being firm and refusing to entertain her, she still condones her actions over all. It is always Kanon that ACTIVELY TRIES to spoil Beatrice's plans and act as a stereotypical "protector alter" for Shannon (a roll he pretty much fills even if he's only a persona or an actual separate physical person).

Regardless of the nature of Kanon's existence, he is pretty much this, and it applies even if Beatrice isn't a murderer.

Shannon's and Beatrice's goals are antithetical even if neither of them are killers. This is just a fact. Beatrice wants Battler, and Shannon has made herself want George. Kanon, then, can be seem as a sword and shield for Shannon, wanting to stop Beatrice's concept so that Shannon can be free to pursue her dreams, or that alternatively she drops the George thing and goes for Battler again. Either way.

Why bother with dressing up as a man and doing this double life? Because Yasu feels a need to establish Kanon's existence as an entity so he can actually influence things; he has the alternative purposes, perhaps, of being an established male identity she can use incase she needs to act as the head, or something. It doesn't really matter.

This is the reason why Kanon is resistant to Jessica's advances; he exists to make sure the Yasu entity invests all of it's love in one single person and then quietly vanish. Jessica just makes his job harder, and in the end makes him decide to effectively rebel and take love for himself. If Battler had shown up a year later or earlier, this would've never been a problem, and all the love could've just gone to Shannon.

There, Shkanon justified.

I think Kanon is against both Shannon and Beatrice actually. Even in episode 2. Sure he wants Shannon to be happy, but he wants Shannon to be happy the way he thinks she should be happy. he doesn't accept her version of happiness. He doesn't support her relationship with George at all either.

I'd say he's neutral. Not neutral as in he wants to make peace with everyone. More of Shinmegami Tensei neutral where he wants to fight against everyone, punch them in the face, and force them all to get along in the end.

[Tyabann]

Hey guys, I haven't been in this subforum since August.

What'd I miss?

[Pikumin]

Kanon is the entity into which all of Yasu's emo and angst is channeled.

[AuraTwilight]

Originally Posted by Judoh

I think Kanon is against both Shannon and Beatrice actually. Even in episode 2. Sure he wants Shannon to be happy, but he wants Shannon to be happy the way he thinks she should be happy. he doesn't accept her version of happiness. He doesn't support her relationship with George at all either.

I'd say he's neutral. Not neutral as in he wants to make peace with everyone. More of Shinmegami Tensei neutral where he wants to fight against everyone, punch them in the face, and force them all to get along in the end.

That works too. Point is, he is the zero on her roulette. Yasu spins roulettes to create miracles, but there must be risk. Kanon is a self-made "enemy."

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

That works too. Point is, he is the zero on her roulette. Yasu spins roulettes to create miracles, but there must be risk. Kanon is a self-made "enemy."

Put in sound novel terms. Since Kanon is the zero on the Roullette that means he's the good end. If the Roulette hits Zero you get the gold. While all the rest of them would be numbers to bet on.

[AuraTwilight]

I wouldn't say he's the "good end", exactly. Maybe from a mystery perspective wherein he tries to stop the murders, but he's a bit too on the self-destructive side to be a good end for Yasu's self.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I wouldn't say he's the "good end", exactly. Maybe from a mystery perspective wherein he tries to stop the murders, but he's a bit too on the self-destructive side to be a good end for Yasu's self.

Self Destructive? He's the only rational voice inside Yasu's head.

[ameskitty]

I've been spacing off a bit recently in class, somehow came back to Umineko, and came up with a distinct reason for why Kyrie and Rudolf as the culprits bothers me. Aren't they the two people that Shannon would have the most reason to dislike? The people she'd be most likely to leave open as "alternate" culprits were she trying to mask the identity of the real culprit in her game?

Now I'm not going to try and pick which parts of EP7 were "covering up" the real culprit and which were true either way (frankly, I don't care enough and I don't have time to read it again), but I think it might be worth considering that Bern found or chose only one of at least two truths in the game. The idea of multiple "truths" has been a pretty strong theme in the series, after all, and the eighth game is set to have choices.

That and I really don't like the idea of all that foreshadowing for George just being a can of red herrings :P. There are a lot of instances of characters who previously seemed "bad" showing a sympathetic side in the past few episodes, and I don't like ignoring the single opposite trend.

Finally, I also briefly considered some sort of non-Shkanon way of thinking where Shannon and Kanon are actually fraternal twins, but I wasn't exactly sure where to go with it so...there you go.

[AuraTwilight]

Self Destructive? He's the only rational voice inside Yasu's head.

Aside from the self-depreciating "I'm furniture, I don't deserve anything" thing?

Also, the Kyrie/Rudolf thing is stupid. We were never given any legitimate reason to suspect them up to this point, and there's only been...two instances where both of them lived past the first Twilight. That, and them being the culprit requires them to go way out of character. Suddenly they're both morons who can barely aim and are super greedy and bloodthirsty for some reason, hate their kids, and decide they're gonna do shit like beating nine year old girls to death with their fists and shit.

I'm sorry, but that's retarded, and it's much too convenient that this was brought up by the most biased character in the series.

[Shiro Kaisen]

Couple things I wanna bring up here during my adventures in Ep. 7 land.

Ange is shown to have been sick during the 1985/4/whatever conference with the VIP Room haunting. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Additionally, Yasu can't be the bomber. Everyone dies in Lion-land. Therefore, even if Lion exists, the bomb goes off.

The bomber is the Sumadera family. Ange is intentionally kept sick so she can inherit the Ushiromiya family headship when everyone else dies. The explosion would be blamed on the fact that it's an old military base. Those Sumadera clues had to amount for something. They don't spend SO MUCH TIME on it for nothing. The Sumaderas have Amakusa kill Ange because they worry she'll find out the truth about Rokken Island and what happened.


Thoughts? Yasu's been talked to death; I'd like to hear some thoughts on something else.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

That works too. Point is, he is the zero on her roulette. Yasu spins roulettes to create miracles, but there must be risk. Kanon is a self-made "enemy."

Except none of this is explicable until you create the framework to explain it, which you can pretty much only do prior to ep7 by making things up or guesswork.

I mean, maybe you can "reason" it out, if you're willing to accept the most silly prospect each step of the way. Oh, Kanon's sole purpose is to protect Shannon. Oh, Shannon and Kanon are the same for some reason. Oh, clearly they're both a single psychologically damaged person with an overactive imagination! But then why does he actually exist? Oh because of a single psychologically damaged person with an overactive imagination! Who is two people! Whose purpose is to protect herself from herself! The circular logic is just painful.

Also it's pretty much "I'm crazy! And I have to be crazy and self-destructive while acting completely against my own interests, whatever those are! I basically am nothing more than an appendage to justify my own role in the story!" Give me back the real Beatrice.

[AuraTwilight]

Look, anyone who's killing people to be accepted as a witch is fucking crazy; there's no winning move for you, here.

[Renall]

Well, isn't that a bit presumptuous? If we just justify everything as "Oh, they're crazy," we're basically telling Will to go sit on it and spin because all his speeches about motive are pointless in the face of crazy.

[UsagiTenpura]

Maybe that's not how it went.

Imagine if you will, that Yasu is really a guy!!!
And got tired of crossdressing and that's why Kanon was created.

And yeah being crazy excusing everything is the lamest excuse ever, to accept that as the reason is basically giving up in trying to figure out the reason.

[Renall]

That and we don't even know if Beatrice or her counterpart even is a killer at all. I won't grant that she's crazy (as I hope she isn't), but even if she were, she might not be responsible.

[Shiro Kaisen]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Look, anyone who's killing people to be accepted as a witch is fucking crazy; there's no winning move for you, here.

When did you get the impression that Yasu was actually committing murder?

[UsagiTenpura]

Well I don't know about that. I mean, yeah "Beatrice" not being the killer is still possible but I wouldn't be certain of it.

Taken in a far more narrow context it seems outright impossible for anyone else to be the culprit in arc 1, unless you start to use really ridiculous twists on logic. Although I guess one could say that "Genji" is a furniture name and thus a "role" name and the real person behind it is the killer but that doesn't make "Genji the role" a murderer.

And that would remain a ridiculous twist on logic, but it's not further twisted then the whole Shkanontrice logic to begin with.

[Renall]

The killer in a given game need not be the "actual" killer, especially if a certain someone has a martyr complex.

Also, the assumption there is also a bit presumptuous isn't it? There's more than one candidate...

[UsagiTenpura]

Yeah it is an assumption, but I don't see any theories that even begin to make sense to point someone else as culprit. If anything someone who "died in a group" has to have faked their death in a way that was impossible to distinguish from another who died as part of the same group (unless I'm really missing something) or you have to decide that for instance every murder after twilight 1 was faked allowing anyone else to be the culprit or other such lines of thoughts, which I try to avoid.

Do you mean a mastermind or you mean a person who decides what happens with a writer level of authority? Cause if it's the later then the culprit is Ryukishi but I didn't have to read a million + words story to know that.

[Renall]

Depends. Is the writer even in his or her own stories? Is the mastermind actually successful? Is the purpose of the individual component mysteries to finger the "true culprit?" The ep7 tea party would certainly seem to suggest the opposite, if we were willing to buy into that. You'd have some serious issues making Kyrie or Rudolf into much in ep1-4.