[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[AuraTwilight]

Just to go back to something Renall brought up a couple pages ago, I assume that THIS was the "problem" in EP 5's narrative - basically, that Shkanon was treated as two living, breathing, physically separate people, and Erika was just lounging around both of them with her perfect Detective's-Authority-Perspective, easy peasy.

The hilarious thing is that the number of scenes narrated from Erika's perspective are laughably few in number. There's really only one scene where she's in the same room as both of them and SHOULD call attention to it, and apparently Kanon was behind Gohda.

Assuming Shkanon is, of course, a major part of Beato's heart, and assuming further that EP5 was written as ... ... a sort of exercise ... like, End was written under the premise of "Well maybe Shannon and Kanon are truly two physically seperate people", sort of like Banquet was written under the premise of "maybe Eva became the culprit", it explains why it's called a game "without love", because the "love" required to realize the truth of Shkanon is completely dismissed.

In that sense, it would've made Dawn a bit unfair for Erika, because it implies a drastic change in the "rules" of the game that she would'nt have noticed because she gave up the objectivity of her perspective, there (though Battler had expected her to keep it ... probably). That last point I have a hard time completely reasoning out because I like the "Battler is an evil-genius troll" regarding EP6, but it depends on who you think, between him and Erika, was more predictive steps ahead of the other.

Possible. There's certainly precedent wherein Beatrice is reduced from a human force of agency to a delusion in Natsuhi's mind.

[Kealym]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

The hilarious thing is that the number of scenes narrated from Erika's perspective are laughably few in number. There's really only one scene where she's in the same room as both of them and SHOULD call attention to it, and apparently Kanon was behind Gohda.

This is what gets me, though. I know Umineko already pulls it's fair share of twisted logic, linguistic shenanigans, and all around "lolwut", but it rings odd to me that the answer is just "Erika didn't narrate things, so she didn't notice that Kanon was always conveniently behind someone taller".

I mean, I know Erika is supposed to be a genius, but can have a limited thinking process as the plot needs her to (i.e, she went through all that hassle about the knock without first checking that there was a knock to be hassled over). However, Erika is aware of the "18 humans" count. She's aware of both Shannon and Kanon. And she makes a HUGE deal about her infallible perspective, and almost as huge a deal about accounting for every human's location whenever possible. If the common Shkanon theory holds true in EP5, I find it incomprehensible that she wouldn't have mentioned that someone was missing.

Or, assuming she noticed it, but we weren't TOLD she noticed it (because she doesn't narrate very much, herself), why didn't she say something? She clearly wasn't holding Kanon / Shannon's absence as some kind of theory trump card, or she would've used it. It also wasn't until the final, final duel regarding the Logic Error in the Guest Room that she asked for a specific count of bodies.

I DON'T KNOW MAN.

[AuraTwilight]

She Just Doesn't Care. Whether Shkanon is True Or Not, she has Natsuhi by the balls and the concept (which she never thought of, apparently) doesn't hurt her theory in any real way. Her mind was elsewhere.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Kealym

This is what gets me, though. I know Umineko already pulls it's fair share of twisted logic, linguistic shenanigans, and all around "lolwut", but it rings odd to me that the answer is just "Erika didn't narrate things, so she didn't notice that Kanon was always conveniently behind someone taller".

I mean, I know Erika is supposed to be a genius, but can have a limited thinking process as the plot needs her to (i.e, she went through all that hassle about the knock without first checking that there was a knock to be hassled over). However, Erika is aware of the "18 humans" count. She's aware of both Shannon and Kanon. And she makes a HUGE deal about her infallible perspective, and almost as huge a deal about accounting for every human's location whenever possible. If the common Shkanon theory holds true in EP5, I find it incomprehensible that she wouldn't have mentioned that someone was missing.

Well, if Kanon and Shannon are separate in EP5 (and that does sound like a reasonable idea to me), it does provide an explanation for the person counts given in EP6. Before Erika said that she was the 18th human, she said that she was going back to the time of her introduction, or something to that effect, didn't she?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Possible. There's certainly precedent wherein Beatrice is reduced from a human force of agency to a delusion in Natsuhi's mind.

And yet things continue to happen. So if we effectively remove "Beatrice," the story... keeps happening? Why is that? Narrative necessity? Was Hideyoshi literally grappling with a nonexistent culprit because the author of End had created a scenario in which that person didn't exist?

There's a lot to ep5 I'm still wondering about.

[AuraTwilight]

Beatrice doesn't need to do anything because the Epitaph was solved, but Adult X who was told about the Murder Mystery game decides to hijack it for their own purposes anyway in all kakeras, and doesn't care if the Epitaph is solved or not because their motives are different from Yasu's.

[LyricalAura]

EP5's meta-structure is really curious too. I think maybe the base mystery was something crappy that Tohya/Ikuko found on the internet, and it only contained super-detective Erika and her one-sided accusation of Natsuhi without anything from Natsuhi's POV. Then when Lambda "replayed" it for Battler, she augmented it with the "man from 19 years ago" scenes so Battler could establish his counter-theory. Erika's arguments never actually addressed those scenes at all, if I remember correctly.

[AuraTwilight]

Of course she didn't address them. That would mean accepting the mere possibility that Natsuhi is anything but guilty, and it's pretty clear that all three witches are conspiring to be assholes to her.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Of course she didn't address them. That would mean accepting the mere possibility that Natsuhi is anything but guilty, and it's pretty clear that all three witches are conspiring to be assholes to her.

When I said "didn't address them", I meant "didn't acknowledge that they had appeared in the narrative, even to say they were bullshit."

[AuraTwilight]

Because they're completely irrelevant to her. They're not even worth dismissing. All they offer is a motivation for Natsuhi, if she's innocent, for the actions she did. And she's 1) Not innocent, clearly, and 2) Motive is irrelevant.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Renall

Was Hideyoshi literally grappling with a nonexistent culprit because the author of End had created a scenario in which that person didn't exist?

There's a lot to ep5 I'm still wondering about.

I think that's what Hideyoshi did in the end. There was like the whole family in a huge conspiracy against Natsuhi, first they all pretended the cousins died while obviously they did not, then they set up the second murder in the room where Natsuhi was in. Hideyoshi played his part like he was a professional actor or maybe it's simply Natsuhi who's gullible.
Then everyone pretended that Hideyoshi was really dead.

As for the one who actually killed the victims after they went in hiding. I suppose it was "the man from 19 years before" or in other words Yasu. The fact that "Beatrice" died only means that the Beatrice persona died.

Shannon and Kanon being there was Ryuukishi's way to fuck up with those readers who already believed in the shkanon theory. I think he was really butthurt by the fact his "secret weapon" was discovered so early.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I think that's what Hideyoshi did in the end. There was like the whole family in a huge conspiracy against Natsuhi, first they all pretended the cousins died while obviously they did not, then they set up the second murder in the room where Natsuhi was in. Hideyoshi played his part like he was a professional actor or maybe it's simply Natsuhi who's gullible.
Then everyone pretended that Hideyoshi was really dead.

You know, that is actually the first really good explanation for the Make-belive Murder Case that I read so far...and it would actually make some sense (until EP6 but that's a different story alltogether)...

The siblings and their spouses conspired against Krauss and Natsuhi in order to bring the truth about Kinzô to light and extort money. But I never actually went for the idea that the original intention to work as a acomplice could be part of that tactic. I'm not saying you implied that, I'm just taking the idea one step further.
That would explain why Natsuhi was never actually working with Yasu but just being tossed around. And it would explain why anybody would go along with a stupid plan like "I will pretend to kill your siblings, please play along".

Well it would explain why Eva desperately tried to make Natsuhi confess that Kinzô is dead...because if Natsuhi survived she and Jessica would still be in charge of the inheritance as long as Kinzô is not declared dead.

Okay, that would make the siblings pretty huge dicks...but we're used to that.

[FirstTwilight]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

As for the one who actually killed the victims after they went in hiding. I suppose it was "the man from 19 years before" or in other words Yasu. The fact that "Beatrice" died only means that the Beatrice persona died.

I don't think this makes much sense, the adults found the gold, so Yasu would stop killing. And we know Yasu really don't hate Natsuhi.

When they were declared dead in red? I think it makes more sense if they were "killed" by the bomb later.

[Renall]

The thing is, if Shannon and Kanon were separate people within the ep5 narrative, it's entirely possible that Yasu/"Beatrice" wouldn't exist at all. There's no way to clearly tell that from what's going on, but if an author were to do that, unaware of the true servant's existence, would that not be the result? Why would you write a story featuring a culprit you don't know or don't believe exists?

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by FirstTwilight

I don't think this makes much sense, the adults found the gold, so Yasu would stop killing. And we know Yasu really don't hate Natsuhi.

When they were declared dead in red? I think it makes more sense if they were "killed" by the bomb later.

The death of the victims in the cousin's room was confirmed in red by Virgilia befere Erika declared that she found the culprit. So it's not possible that it was the bomb.

Also remember that in Ep5 there isn't the usual challenge letter from Beatrice, so there is no promise that the serial murder would stop if someone finds the gold.

There's also the fact that in EP3 the one who killed Nanjo is most probably Yasu again, and maybe s/he killed everyone else.

The thing is, if Shannon and Kanon were separate people within the ep5 narrative

I don't think that's possible. It was stated in red that the number of people in the island excluding Erika is the same as usual.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I don't think that's possible. It was stated in red that the number of people in the island excluding Erika is the same as usual.

It's stated in red for Lambda's game. Lambda's game does not have to be the same as the narrative of End of the Golden Witch, or whatever variant thereof was dug up by Tohya and Ikuko (if they didn't write it themselves for whatever particular reason they chose).

For example, they could've found a story on the internet as suggested where Shannon and Kanon are different people and Erika exists. Then they rewrote it with the knowledge they had, but didn't change the story fundamentally. Then Lambda ran a game of it on top of all of that in the meta-world, where she asserted that the usual rules and person counts applied.

i.e. Shannon and Kanon are supposed to appear at the same time in the parlor scene because in the original narrative they do, but Lambda carefully arranges it so Erika can't actually see Kanon and then has an unreliable perspective narrate the scene instead. This allows her to state the person count is the same as always.

Basically, the idea that End is a revision or rewriting of a crappy forgery (whether written by Tohya initially or not) actually makes a great deal of sense, especially if the particular revisions Tohya made are similar to the ones Lambda would've made to "fix" the story. Remember, there is that part where Bern accuses Lambda of adding in the Man From 19 Years Ago. If Lambda were making up the whole thing to begin with, she wouldn't really be "adding" anything, would she? Granted you can say Bern just means she added that plot point to her episode that was never previously used, but the idea still has a certain cute appeal.

[Jan-Poo]

Lambda's game does not have to be the same as the narrative of End of the Golden Witch

I don't follow you... Lambda's game is "End of the golden witch". I think it was shown very clearly that the games in fiction have the exact same name as the game in our real world.

And what about Tohya and Ikuko? If the story in their world is the same as Lamba's then there's no problem, if it's different, then who cares? We know nothing about that.

[Renall]

Umineko ep5 "End of the Golden Witch"
is not the same as
Hachijou Tohya's End of the Golden Witch
is not the same as
Lambdadelta's meta-world rendition of Hachijou Tohya's End of the Golden Witch

To what extent these narratives are not the same, however, we have no earthly idea. But the fact that they could be different can potentially explain certain elements of the stories. For example, we can explain away certain issues with the meta-world in ep1-4 if we assume the original texts didn't contain a meta-world narrative. That's only possible if the VN we read, the R-Prime documents, and the actual in-narrative storyline are not all exactly the same text.

Consequently, whether or not it's true, it is possible to imagine the following sequence of events:

• Someone writes a story in which Kanon and Shannon are different people because this person has no notion of the idea that Yasu exists. His/her story therefore goes start to finish never accounting for Yasu existing.
• Someone else who has knowledge of Yasu's existence reads the story and discovers an incongruity based on something they realized about the message bottle stories.
• This person rewrites the story in a fashion which, while not fundamentally altering the sequence of events of the original author, "re-inserts" Yasu into the narrative behind the scenes (which is where she always is to begin with).
• In the meta-narrative, a witch chooses to run a game based upon this edited version of the story. Because the story has changed several times from what it originally was, something about the narrative feels "off" even though the witch can assert that all the elements are as they usually would be.

A similar but unrelated notion would be the idea that Kinzo can be alive in 1986 as portrayed in the Lion narrative or Battler's story. I could, say, write a story in which Kinzo is definitely alive and calls Battler on the telephone to talk to him. Then later a person coming by who realizes Kinzo is supposed to be dead rewrites my story slightly; now Battler gets a call from someone claiming to be Kinzo, but it sounds wrong somehow (like a faked voice, recording, whatever). The narrative has been altered, but the sequence of events has not.

Of course stories like the Lion world or Battler's final story basically tell continuity to go screw itself, and that's also fine. Nothing says you can't write a story where everyone is Yasu other than Battler. It's just that if you want to adapt any given story to the knowledge you believe is relevant to, say, the message bottle writer's original narrative assumptions, you might have to alter something.

And then Ryukishi alters it again presenting it to us. This is the problem of R-Prime, fundamentally, and part of what makes that world so interesting.

[Jan-Poo]

Why do you even assume that Lambda's game is a rendition of Hachijo's story? It makes no sense. The way I see it they are either unrelated or identical.

You also need to explain what do you mean with "Umineko ep5 end of the golden witch". The whole story we read? if it's so it doesn't matter since for what concern's Lambda's game it's the same thing. It's not like the "whole story" shows a "Lambda's game" that it's different from "Lambda's game" whatever you mean with "Lambda's game".

Anyway why do you suppose that Shannon and Kanon are considered two different persons in the forgery made by the Hachijo duo? And if you meant their forgery from the beginning why did you call it "ep5 narrative"? if you say "ep5 narrative" I assume you're talking about the story we read and that Ryuukishi wrote.

[Renall]

I don't think you're really getting this. Am I being unclear?

Ryukishi writes a story. This story is a VN in the Umineko series, and he calls it episode 5 "End of the Golden Witch." Okay, everything we actually read is contained here, obviously. And we all know what's in it because we've all read it. Any part of the story we can actually read about is in it.

Within this story, Lambda runs a game which contains a sub-narrative. Both of these narratives are contained within the VN we call ep5, yet there are parts of ep5 which are not contained in Lambda's narrative, such as Battler having tea with Dlanor. So we can say that, for example, the parlor scene where every character is present is in both Ryukishi's VN (because obviously it is, since we read it) and Lambda's story. But we can't say the tea scene is in Lambda's story. It isn't.

Now imagine the Fourth Twilight of ep5. You pause here, because there was no Fourth Twilight in ep5. You can read Ryukishi's work back to front up and down and you won't find one, because he didn't write one. And since Lambda's game is paused at a certain point, apparently, her story does not contain a Fourth Twilight either.

However, who's to say one doesn't exist? Ryukishi even said in an interview that if you understand how the games work, you'd understand how the rest of ep5 will play out. But there wasn't a "rest of" ep5, was there? It doesn't "play out" in the VN and it won't play out in Lambda's version because that game was paused.

So Ryukishi is clearly suggesting that the narrative he presented is not complete and that it could be completed if you understand how he would have written it. Not that he did write it, or even that he specifically has any idea himself how it would've been written. Just that, if you had all the tools in place and all the right ideas, you could imagine it.

Which brings us to the existence of Rokkenjima-Prime, the "reality" of the Umineko series but not our actual reality. This is a world we may have never, ever seen, not even in ep8. In this world, based on what we're told and what we assume, some guy named Hachijou Tohya wrote a story called End of the Golden Witch. Since we don't get to read his version of the story, we don't know what it actually looks like. However, my guess is that if it's a real story within the context of the R-Prime world, it probably doesn't stop after the Second Twilight. If so, it does have a Fourth Twilight in it. One that we have never read.

When Ryukishi wrote his VN, ep5 "End of the Golden Witch," he imagined the existence of this fictional End of the Golden Witch, then changed something (we don't know what) to create the final product. Of course, he may not have literally written an entire regular episode out in his head, then applied magic and/or meta scenes to it. He probably imagined it the way we read it, with the meta-narrative an essential part of it (especially since ep5 is mostly a meta-narrative episode to begin with). However, he believed that such a work was written in-universe, he just chose not to let us see it.

For a similar scenario, look at Battler's game in ep6. Battler's actions and behavior clearly suggest that he intends for the game to be more than just a First Twilight, yet we never ever see any more of the game than the First Twilight. Does that mean Battler never actually had any idea what the rest of his game was going to look like? Of course not, that'd be absurd. However, can we take from that that Ryukishi himself, who wrote ep6, knew what the rest of Battler's game was going to be like? No, because he may not have cared, since he was writing a story in which Erika doesn't allow the game to progress that far.

So in summation: There may be parts of the story that do not exist in the actual VN. Ryukishi may never have actually written these parts of the story, but he acknowledges that they "exist" in some form. It is possible, then, for the author not to know things his characters know. If R-Prime Ange read Hachijou Tohya's Dawn of the Golden Witch, she knows what the Ninth Twilight was like in that game (assuming it had one), even though Ryukishi himself never bothered to come up with one. Naturally, if she were to ever try to discuss it, Ryukishi would have to make up what she knows.