[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru - Ep. 7 Requiem of the golden witch

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Renall

That's kind of ridiculous. There's no way to know that everyone would behave in that manner. That, and it's not entirely clear if things went down that road by design or chance anyway.

"There's a chance I'll make everyone murder each other" isn't really mastermind territory.

That's a bit beside the point if we find it ridiculous or not.

1. Beato said, as ridiculous as it is, that she planned for every possible variations including the case where everyone solves the epitaph before the first twilight.
2. Kyrie reasons that everyone would've reached the same conclusion she did and one of them would've done it if she hadn't. Uppon hearing this, tho she's in denial, Eva knows she's right deep inside.

So you are suggesting that it's okay for Kyrie to be able to guess it, but it's ridiculous if Beato guessed the same thing as her? Come on.

[Renall]

Yeah, it's equally ridiculous in both cases.

[AuraTwilight]

Which is probably why that exchange never happened.

[UsagiTenpura]

Well even if it didn't happen it's ... "as much happening" as basically any scene we've been shown ever since arc 1.

It's like saying "yeah but this lie is MORE a lie then this other lie", nonsense.

However Will's wedges not working against it screams to me that it's not a game, after all there is no such things as Dine rules or Red Text being valid in the human world.

As things are now I believe the arc 7 tea party to be a mix of what really happened and what Eva assumes happened. In other words, this is what "Eva didn't tell Ange". That doesn't mean Eva understood everything well.

[AuraTwilight]

Well, for one thing, the Dine Rules and such wouldn't be able to be used anyway; even if it's a complete fabrication, there's two culprits.

Ontop of that, of COURSE some things can be more false than other things. Truth and lies are a spectrum, not a dichonomy. I can....make up someone's words, make up the person who said those words, paraphrase someone incorrectly to give the wrong impression, attribute the wrong true statements to the wrong speaker...

[UsagiTenpura]

However, seeing as it was said in red that it is the truth (agreed the sentence was cut in half and I'm the person most eager to claim red doesn't mean much), I'm not saying it's the 100% truth, but still to arbitrarily discard it because you think it's unbelievable doesn't make it any less valid.

And there's no two culprits if it was part of Yasu's plan to have someone act that way.

Also the rules of Dine is not about working or not, the point is they were said in red (well at least Will began to say them in red). It's not about Dine working or not, it's about Red working or not.

[AuraTwilight]

Well, regardless, it's because the red was cut that I don't trust it's validity. We've been shown it's possible to say untrue things in Red so long as the sentence isn't completed.

[Digdri]

Oh man I have the worst kind of bad luck... for once a found some post over on the spoiler/discussions thread and felt the urge to provide some extensive thought about this... and when I finished the thread was closed for escalating drama
Klashikari, you meanie, timing couldn't have been worse j/k
But as this stuff technically addressed ideas about EP7 it should fit here as well and better then letting that go to waste... if I assume wrong let me know. Also as this is just a copy of my pre-existing wall-of-text from before don't know if quotations get messed up.

-------


As their was so much talk (over there) about Takanos interest in becoming a god and the existance ouf Shintoism subtext in Umineko I thought that a good time to address some ideas that were on my mind for a long time anyway. If that was already discussed before sorry, but I'm simply not able to keep up with the pace of this threads. (oh the irony )

As noted before Takanos ideas of godhood seem completely symbolic as a way to gain some kind of assumed "power" / importance and satisfaction in life. I'm really surprised that she may have referenced the idea of a biblical god as that doesn't really fit in that well. But on the other side she also wrote about alien invasions in her notes and is clearly shown to be inflicted with the same symptoms like everybody else perhaps her individual reasonings don't have to be sane ones.

There is a analysis subpage on TVTropes for Higurashi (no link for the sake of everybodys time ) which explains her motivation quite well: its just the idea of Herostratic fame taken to the logical extreme. In more simple words: She wanted that nobody forgets what she did no matter how evil it may be or more precisely she wanted her grandfathers work to get acknowledged by showing its relevance to the world.
Ironically ultimately a futile way to this goal as even the anime showed how everything got covered up by the organisation and Takano would most likely have "outlived her usefulness" regardless of success.

Regarding the idea that LD may be this god: I don't think that works because IMO Takano simple never accomplished anything like this no matter which kakera.
LD is more like her strong motivation given as means to reach this goal given a more complex form like her TIPS letter suggests.

Which brings me to that talk about Shintoism and the relevance of gods to Umineko.... and I think that just not fitting here.

Spoiler for theory:

Umineko was explicitly constructed to represent a shift towards a story put in context of western culture and he for the most part succeeded in reflecting this in his setting. From names to setting to historical and literary points of reference to religions subtext almost everything is inspired by western culture. (The origin of the witch legend as diverse ghost stories maybe the biggest departure from this line of thoughts). So why now Shintoism when most of the story refers to or resembles Christian concepts.

But I think the idea of witches similar to gods is still quite relevant to the interpretation of the subtext even without clarify what "kami" can and can't imply etc..

Actually R07 is really clever for vealing all his subtext with rather unrecognizable terminology so that those references don't became that much appeared at first. Non of the characters in the cast are guided by strong ideas of religion in a strict sense but many of their world views still address them all the time. Even without the explicit reference to the bible and Dante we have themes of faith and believers, sins & redemption and search for answers in complex ideologies all the time.

My point? Well even without the Shinto stuff from Higurashi or the idea of dying to become a god or whatever their is enough polytheistic stuff in the western world to relate this to. As the story even directly refers to stuff from ancient times (Virgil and Augustus at least by name) why not look for stuff like e.g. the Norse / Roman / Greek mythology? Those gods and goddesses all can be read as abstract ideas better relateable to as personifications. If you substitute the idea of Uminekos rather diverse term of "magic" by "stuff only those gods can do" you may even take Virgilias talk about rain rituals in EP3 as in sign for this approach.

It was this Tanabata TIPS story when it dawn to me there may be more to this interpretation. This story is so formulaic in structure it almost seems like it was meant to resemble a fable or similar texts of metaphoric intentions. We get to learn 3 times how the witch are not powerful and honored by humans because of any supernatural powers but because they are able to inspire changes in humans. Thats not that far away from the way those pantheons of ancient times worked:

A god of war is presented in epic battles to make heroism or tragedy of war relateable to.
A goddess of love has tales of messing with human hearts and minds to show the blessing and curse people saw in their ideals of love.
Let's give a god of thunder a hammer because thunder may remind you of a hollow sound of some biiiiig hammer.
etc. etc.


Same difference with the witches if you just read closely.... They even have the obligation to write this compendium you make their powers understood by humans (incl. a vealed reference to the bible for something similar).

So Lambda maybe is just the power of ambition on human put into form.
Bern.... well there it gets a bit difficult as she really is a strange mess of merciless "reasoning is king" ideology and some twisted message of human and the power of fate/probability crossing paths.

And to make the trio complete: Beato is.... well love would the first word that comes to mind but I think that "the human imagination" is a much much more fitting concept for her. Almost every aspect about her (which didn't directly result from the islands legend or the real Beatrice) fit for this.
From those endless power of repetition to her reliance on faith, the witches darkness & toxin ideas, the much greater potential of children for magics, the multiple situations where magic is related to dreams (or paranoia / insanity or other instable states of mind), her and Lias ever repeating magical incantation about remembering something...

You could even take this literally as Beato as the goddess/witch of imagination if you take all this theories about this strange Yasu/Shannon/Kanon whatever persona stuff as the right theory because in this case her whole existence would be the result of an over imaginative AND most likely really messed up mind.

Originally Posted by chronotrig

I've never really understood the argument that continuing a few elements is the same as rehashing. I think it's pretty obvious by now that Umineko is completely different from Higurashi in structure, characters, how the story is told, and how the answers are given. It's part of the When They Cry series, so it makes sense for a few things to carry through. In fact, if things to hold true to both series but we haven't recognized them yet, I think that means Ryuukishi's an even better writer for keeping the obvious from us for so long.

I don't get this either. My term for this approach would be evolution of style. After all he took all this "rehashed" ideas and put them in bigger and more developed contexts. E.g.:

- Higurashi had kakeras but only some vage ideas of a connecting place for all of them but Umineko gives us a whole meta world almost as the primary level for narration and gives us some really impressive world building for all this abstract places. And he starts this interesting analogy for kakeras as alternative books for the same story

- Higurashi had some metaphors about games and game theory but Umineko build its entire plot around this analogies.

- Higurashi had Bernkastel as a "by-product" of Rikas (n)everchanging fate but Umineko takes this character (or some VERY similar ... before anyone starts complaining) and adds a lot of depth be integration "rivals" and old "friends" to play off against, hints of more background story and a lot more characterization as a whole.

Also the relevance of the loops for the story and mystery get much more transparent much earlier and many major themes are totally different some even subverting or mocking ideas of his first series.

So if thats only rehashing and has no creative or intellectual merit I really don't see any artistic work which doesn't invent the wheel anew has either.
So much for this random rantings about this.

Originally Posted by chronotrig

[...] We see how this happens. Since she has no friends, her imaginary world takes up more and more of her life. Then, the few friends she makes actually treat that imaginary world as if it was real. Then, she finds out how exciting it it to make people unwittingly believe in her imaginary world (key trick). [...]

I agree with this idea and it would most likely result in Yasu as the sole reason for the witch illusion as murder to work out so well. After all for one reason or another everyone accepted this fantasy ideas.

But the reason I'm refering to this is: I think thats not just Yasu starting to "mess" with everybody minds. I think there could be another influence to this.
EP4 is addressing so much about the relationship of Maria and Beato that I would suggest she also was a catalyst for this development. What I'm especially referring to is this stuff about the universe made of and bound to both of them and this strange event where Maria summons boy Sakutarou for the the first. Both of this scenes indicate that Maria is similarly important to Beato as the other way round.

Spoiler for longer theory about this:

Well the theory gets a bit shaky here because we never get to know when all of this happens and who started this but as Maria is only 9 we definitively know that Yasu is the most likely candidate for this unknown person talking to Maria as both other Beatrices are long dead (perhaps s(he) just borrowed those cloth from Jessica the same why Erika did ^^ to convince her).
There also is some chicken and egg problem as IIRC we never get to know how this relationship started and why but lets just assume that Maria had some fantasy stuff about witches going on even before meeting Beato.

Just some theoretical rundown of what may have happed before this important year and how those EP4 flashbacks could factor in.

Lets say Maria already was lonely and Rosa had no time for her when she was younger. So she watches alot of TV at home. C.C. Sakura may still not have existed (or Doremi to think more modern) but you get the idea what could have inspired her in some kids shows to like witches.

So she is on the family and meets Yasu/Beato whatever for some reason... perhaps because she told Shannon how she likes witches and Yasu is already doing the Beatrice pranks stuff. So (s)he thinks: "Hey she likes witches and we have a lot books about witchcraft here." and so she finds a way to communicate which her about something to forget her boredom and found a friend not so much unlike her. And Maria doesn't have anyone to relate to on this meetings anyways because of the age gap.

So another small assumption: Let's just put this idea about this fantasy funny animal friends from home in here (as in she already did this the whole time). Not really unreasonable to assume that she would tell Beato about this the same way she "taught" Ange about this later(?).

Thats where my interpretation of this Sakutarou scene comes into play. There was this surprising awestruck reaction of Beato to Maria story about her beloved toy. So lets just take this out of context.... Yasu had to be a teenager by then, quite intelligent AND very familiar with Maria problems (from own experience) so (s)he read between the lines the same way Ange did and most likely its would give him/her the same kind of miraculous revelation how Maria is so much better off this way and may start adapting this style of "magic" and start the real rumors about the witch roaming the mansion. Maria really seems to have this strong inspiring effect on those like-minded friends around her. Even Ange as a teenager is still doing this magic stuff despite questioning Marias ideals. Mammon essentially is just her version of Sakutou. You could even assume that Virgilia and Ronove were Yasus idea while drift in such realms of fantasy worlds (but thats conflicting with the 2nd Beato most like inventing those magical personas in Kuwadorian or meta world Beato just making them up in the first place for the sake of her gameboards).
Hell, Maria is even refereed to as Witch of Origins and praised for not just summoning but creating her pet lion personality (I guess in terms of not just repeating stuff from demology books like herself but really forming them themself).
You could even integrate this stuff with Virgilia here... so Kuwasawa may notice how Yasu finally found some friend in Maria and seems happy and so she may play along with that stuff about Sakutarou. IIRC EP4 just explains how she helped with her magic to create the human Sakutarou. So lets just say she drew some cute lion boy into Marias books or something similar.

Even how this "split" between Shannon / Kanon / Beato is eerily similar to Maria much less serious devide between cute Maria / cackling Maria / Sakutarou. Both have this conflict in moral or desire and additionally one kind of "external" friend to deal with all this problems. So to those claiming that this 3-person-split-idea is absurd... well... here R07 already did it completely plausible before.

Even the 2 person universe and its importance makes sense this way. After all would be their alliance.... their bond. Beato tought Maria the "facts" she knew about magic from all of Kinzos books and became her teacher and Maria gave her the inspiration what application this has for their lifes - how Beato or Virgilia would put it - "to use magic to make the world a nice place".
It always stood out to me that the core of Beatos philosophy for magic which most of the time seemed so violent and cruel was something idealistic like some childs dream but if that was Marias influence on her that would make sense.

And when Maria wanted to leave Beato in her Golden Land at the end of EP4 because Sakutarou was still more important to her then the alliance she may just have lost some faith in all of this.


Perhaps thats what R07 was up to when he was preaching to no end how you have to see things "with love".
This idea may not be perfectly fitting for everything (but also not too far fetched) but I really like how its fitting without building everything on a base of "Deus Angst Machina" the way Bern likes it best for her drama.

The most obvious flaw in this it how it brakes the whole reason to murder people and react with emo frustration to everything but perhaps thats just part of all the other personalities and this Beato persona really is some more or less happy person while Shannon and Kanon have the big drama going on.
... and all the innocent daydreaming obviously cannot resolve the whole love duel conflict for them. Beato even addresses something alike when she provokes and mocks Shannon in EP2 that everything can be peaceful forever but will never change the status quo about her love problems.

/Theory over

[AuraTwilight]

I don't get this either. My term for this approach would be evolution of style. After all he took all this "rehashed" ideas and put them in bigger and more developed contexts. E.g.:

- Higurashi had kakeras but only some vage ideas of a connecting place for all of them but Umineko gives us a whole meta world almost as the primary level for narration and gives us some really impressive world building for all this abstract places. And he starts this interesting analogy for kakeras as alternative books for the same story

- Higurashi had some metaphors about games and game theory but Umineko build its entire plot around this analogies.

- Higurashi had Bernkastel as a "by-product" of Rikas (n)everchanging fate but Umineko takes this character (or some VERY similar ... before anyone starts complaining) and adds a lot of depth be integration "rivals" and old "friends" to play off against, hints of more background story and a lot more characterization as a whole.

Also the relevance of the loops for the story and mystery get much more transparent much earlier and many major themes are totally different some even subverting or mocking ideas of his first series.

So if thats only rehashing and has no creative or intellectual merit I really don't see any artistic work which doesn't invent the wheel anew has either.
So much for this random rantings about this.

Thank you, I couldn't of said it better myself. In my opinion, calling this sort of "rehashing" "lame" is the same as admitting "I've never studied literature."

You could even assume that Virgilia and Ronove were Yasus idea while drift in such realms of fantasy worlds (but thats conflicting with the 2nd Beato most like inventing those magical personas in Kuwadorian or meta world Beato just making them up in the first place for the sake of her gameboards).

I think we can take for granted that Yasu created those personas, seeing as how Beatrice 2 didn't believe she was a witch, and meta-Beato basically IS Yasu.

The most obvious flaw in this it how it brakes the whole reason to murder people and react with emo frustration to everything but perhaps thats just part of all the other personalities and this Beato persona really is some more or less happy person while Shannon and Kanon have the big drama going on.

The bigger flaw is that it's made increasingly obvious that Beatrice didn't kill anyone.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Digdri

Spoiler for theory:

Umineko was explicitly constructed to represent a shift towards a story put in context of western culture and he for the most part succeeded in reflecting this in his setting. From names to setting to historical and literary points of reference to religions subtext almost everything is inspired by western culture. (The origin of the witch legend as diverse ghost stories maybe the biggest departure from this line of thoughts). So why now Shintoism when most of the story refers to or resembles Christian concepts.

But I think the idea of witches similar to gods is still quite relevant to the interpretation of the subtext even without clarify what "kami" can and can't imply etc..

Actually R07 is really clever for vealing all his subtext with rather unrecognizable terminology so that those references don't became that much appeared at first. Non of the characters in the cast are guided by strong ideas of religion in a strict sense but many of their world views still address them all the time. Even without the explicit reference to the bible and Dante we have themes of faith and believers, sins & redemption and search for answers in complex ideologies all the time.

My point? Well even without the Shinto stuff from Higurashi or the idea of dying to become a god or whatever their is enough polytheistic stuff in the western world to relate this to. As the story even directly refers to stuff from ancient times (Virgil and Augustus at least by name) why not look for stuff like e.g. the Norse / Roman / Greek mythology? Those gods and goddesses all can be read as abstract ideas better relateable to as personifications. If you substitute the idea of Uminekos rather diverse term of "magic" by "stuff only those gods can do" you may even take Virgilias talk about rain rituals in EP3 as in sign for this approach.

It was this Tanabata TIPS story when it dawn to me there may be more to this interpretation. This story is so formulaic in structure it almost seems like it was meant to resemble a fable or similar texts of metaphoric intentions. We get to learn 3 times how the witch are not powerful and honored by humans because of any supernatural powers but because they are able to inspire changes in humans. Thats not that far away from the way those pantheons of ancient times worked:

A god of war is presented in epic battles to make heroism or tragedy of war relateable to.
A goddess of love has tales of messing with human hearts and minds to show the blessing and curse people saw in their ideals of love.
Let's give a god of thunder a hammer because thunder may remind you of a hollow sound of some biiiiig hammer.
etc. etc.


Same difference with the witches if you just read closely.... They even have the obligation to write this compendium you make their powers understood by humans (incl. a vealed reference to the bible for something similar).

So Lambda maybe is just the power of ambition on human put into form.
Bern.... well there it gets a bit difficult as she really is a strange mess of merciless "reasoning is king" ideology and some twisted message of human and the power of fate/probability crossing paths.

And to make the trio complete: Beato is.... well love would the first word that comes to mind but I think that "the human imagination" is a much much more fitting concept for her. Almost every aspect about her (which didn't directly result from the islands legend or the real Beatrice) fit for this.
From those endless power of repetition to her reliance on faith, the witches darkness & toxin ideas, the much greater potential of children for magics, the multiple situations where magic is related to dreams (or paranoia / insanity or other instable states of mind), her and Lias ever repeating magical incantation about remembering something...

You could even take this literally as Beato as the goddess/witch of imagination if you take all this theories about this strange Yasu/Shannon/Kanon whatever persona stuff as the right theory because in this case her whole existence would be the result of an over imaginative AND most likely really messed up mind.

Well with Umineko I think this is pretty interesting because there are so many references that are a part of it. For example on of the things I think you missed is the references the Norse pantheon that get put in there. The magic battle in episode 3 and, dragon Kinzo, and Battler dying hung on a sword are examples. The only thing missing really the tree of life Yggdrasil.

As for Beato I think her and Maria take on different aspects of the imagination thing your talking about. Beato's gift is she can take a scenario, one given to her I presume, and spin it into something interesting thousands of times.

Maria's alleged gift is she can create something original from nothing. So if you think about it they're the perfect pair. Maria comes up with the scenario Beato spins it endlessly. ????. Then Profit.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Well, regardless, it's because the red was cut that I don't trust it's validity. We've been shown it's possible to say untrue things in Red so long as the sentence isn't completed.

I saw it pointed out somewhere before that if you added one more Kanji to Bern's unfinished sentence it would even say 'everything she showed is NOT true'. So maybe we can even argue that she meant to say something else entirely.

[Digdri]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I think we can take for granted that Yasu created those personas, seeing as how Beatrice 2 didn't believe she was a witch, and meta-Beato basically IS Yasu.

Well Beatrice2 may not have believe in her being a witch but still EP3 and EP6 still if a clear impression that she wanted to learn what this witchcraft stuff is about and to understand her purpose of her life ... and on top of this appreciation from Father.

Specially the stuff about Kumasawa helping Chick-Beato after "father" Battler shows all this frustration to her still very much fit this dynamic of Virgila and Ronove as her loyal and dependable servants and some kind of important "friends".

Oh boy this gets annoying to argue that Beatrice2 may have never had this ideas on her mind but Meta Beato could still have changed the scene to communicate her big metaphor about Beatrice2's life in Anti-Mystery fashion no matter if this is just content of some invented dairy manuscript from Yazu.
Thats so messed that like 1/4 of the important characters and problems in the story all share the same name and some defuse identity.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

The bigger flaw is that it's made increasingly obvious that Beatrice didn't kill anyone.

You could still argue that this all went south afterwards for all this new conflicts by the time the final conference approaches (or additional influences) but I realize that this is a rather weak argument which only again has to rely on this dreaded versions of a) "But he/she/it is crazy anyways, it doesn't have to make sense" or b) "Life gets complicated... let's kill everybody" melodrama

Still they has to be some importance to Maria for all his events to happen otherwise she would most likely thread her as a pawn like everybody else yet still Maria is show as very dear and relevant to her on different occasions.

Originally Posted by Judoh

Well with Umineko I think this is pretty interesting because there are so many references that are a part of it. For example on of the things I think you missed is the references the Norse pantheon that get put in there. The magic battle in episode 3 and, dragon Kinzo, and Battler dying hung on a sword are examples. The only thing missing really the tree of life Yggdrasil.

As for Beato I think her and Maria take on different aspects of the imagination thing your talking about. Beato's gift is she can take a scenario, one given to her I presume, and spin it into something interesting thousands of times.

Maria's alleged gift is she can create something original from nothing. So if you think about it they're the perfect pair. Maria comes up with the scenario Beato spins it endlessly. ????. Then Profit.

Oh yes... obviously forget that the story even makes direct references to Norse, Greek AND biblical concepts at the same time.
The impalement on the sword didn't catch my attention as a mythological reference. Mind giving me a hint?
And dragon Kinzo ... well that seem just a bit too random for me to refer to anything then fantasy stuff. Or did the SN make any more specific addition about this event I simple forgot?

I like this complimentary idea about Maria and Beato. Seems to fit really well with all this GM'ing the stories talk about.
Always thought about all this stuff comparable to P&P RPGs and how those are often broken down in the construction of the story (source books) and the actual adventure story itself unfolding.
When this talk about Bern not being the GM and this "fan theories episode" interpretation in EP7 surfaced I was heavily reminded of this.
Perhaps there really is a divide between some kind of master plan or ideology and the execution of the murder / illusion stuff between different people.
There is only the big problem that Maria is the most unlikely character to actually play any part in this so she be some kind of innocent inspiration for some scheme. More then that just wouldn't fit her behavior at all.

[AuraTwilight]

Well Beatrice2 may not have believe in her being a witch but still EP3 and EP6 still if a clear impression that she wanted to learn what this witchcraft stuff is about and to understand her purpose of her life ... and on top of this appreciation from Father.

Neither of those are really characterized to Beatrice 2, though. Elements of her are there, but those scenes gives us the characterization and view-point of Meta-Beatrice, who in EP3 is trying to feed Battler the story that all three Beatrices are the same immortal individual.

[Smeckledorf]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

The bigger flaw is that it's made increasingly obvious that Beatrice didn't kill anyone.

Probably not, but at the very least she made people look dead.

[Digdri]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Neither of those are really characterized to Beatrice 2, though. Elements of her are there, but those scenes gives us the characterization and view-point of Meta-Beatrice, who in EP3 is trying to feed Battler the story that all three Beatrices are the same immortal individual.

Yes I know it's still a bit of a stretch to assume that was the precise message the metaphor in EP3 was aiming for but arguing what Meta Beato wanted to represent in this scene also get quite shaky when we consider that EP5 confirmed that she was confusing as well as helping Battler at various point in EP1-4 to make her game what she intended it to do. Her tricks of double deception in EP3 and her great acting skills to pull it all off don't help either.

Didn't even EP7 comment about her metaphoric hints about Beatrice2 when Will talked to Kinzos about his daughter?

At least I read this part from EP3+6 as a set of hints complimenting each other rather well to tell this background story about Beatrice2 before addressing it straight forward in EP7.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Digdri

The impalement on the sword didn't catch my attention as a mythological reference. Mind giving me a hint?
And dragon Kinzo ... well that seem just a bit too random for me to refer to anything then fantasy stuff. Or did the SN make any more specific addition about this event I simple forgot?

Battler having more than one mother is significant in the Norse mythos. Though in there I think it's 7 or 12 mothers or something and not 2.

Also Odin was hung from the world tree with his own spear for 7 days and got better. Afterward he gained mystical knowledge in magic and runes.

Dragon Kinzo could be a reference to Fafnir because of all the cursed gold.

And almost all of Virgilia's attacks except for the tower of Babel is Norse.

[Kylon99]

By the way, about what you guys are saying about Beatrice and Maria, I'd like to make some observations here:

I was just thinking that if you look at all the imaginary characters that Yasu created:

Beatrice (Beatrice-1/2)
Ronove (Genji)
Virgilia (Kumasawa)
7 Stake Sisters ( 7 Servants)

You might also include Kinzo since he wasn't really alive in EP4 but sure had some... personality. It seems the pattern is that she can't really 'create' anyone. She has to pattern it off of someone else at first and change the personality.

Whereas if you look at Maria's characters, they're all made up from in-animate objects. (I believe the Siestas are Maria's since they match the bunny figures.)

So, if this holds true then it explains why Beatrice considers Maria the Witch of Origins and why Beatrice herself doesn't have this power. And on top of that, there are some characters which Beatrice should have created that must have been based on someone she knew. Namely:

Gaap (or Gaaptrice)
Shannon
Kanon



-- Although, I believe Beatrice ended up using Maria's characters but she gave credit to Maria for thinking them up.
-- In addition, I'm not just talking about the ability for someone to dream up a character at random, but the process involved in making GOOD characters, suitable for a story.

[Smeckledorf]

Originally Posted by Kylon99

And on top of that, there are some characters which Beatrice should have created that must have been based on someone she knew. Namely:

Gaap (or Gaaptrice)
Shannon
Kanon



-- Although, I believe Beatrice ended up using Maria's characters but she gave credit to Maria for thinking them up.
-- In addition, I'm not just talking about the ability for someone to dream up a character at random, but the process involved in making GOOD characters, suitable for a story.

Well, seeing as Shanon and Kanon are her, you could say that they were based off of Yasu.

[Kylon99]

Originally Posted by Smeckledorf

Well, seeing as Shanon and Kanon are her, you could say that they were based off of Yasu.

Well, that would be my first thought. But I remember someone on her saying that there could've been an original Shannon, especially as seen in the early years, who really was a good friend and perfect maid...

And so maybe there was a real Kanon somewhere else too?

Who have no real effect on the two days in question and so this line of reasoning is really just for speculation...

EDIT: Oh and of course, my favorite pet theory being that Gaap is Nanjo's granddaughter or something...

[AuraTwilight]

I always figured Gaap, Shannon, Kanon, and Claire were all based on herself, just in different ways.

[Used Can]

Shannon always seemed like Yasu's ideal (as a maid), rather than an aspect of herself. Gaap was created by Yasu to explain why things kept on disappearing. Clair (i.e. Yasu's original Beato) was created by the time Yasu no longer wanted to play with the witch (i.e. Gaap), but wanted to become the witch herself. Kanon... I have no idea why he was created, but I think it probably has something to do with Battler breaking his promise.