[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[AuraTwilight]

Originally Posted by jjblue1

... which isn't the same as saying he has a fictional disease.

But he DOES; we just don't know what that disease fully entails, and he speculates a worst case scenario for recovering his memories. Why is this so difficult for you?

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

The point is that if ryuukishi didn't just forgot about that door then the adults either ignored the second door completely, which is lame, or they noticed it but that was simply not told to the readers for no reason, which is even lamer.

So assuming that this was slip up from Ryuukishi's part who forgot the door's existence is the least grave among the scenarios that I can speculate really. The other options are even worse in my opinion.

I don't understand why you're so hellbent on RK07 fucking up.

Since the statement explaining why the two courtyard doors doesn't apply to the boiler room, it's natural to assume that that door has a lock on it. Since it's got a lock on it there's no more need to talk about it being locked in episode 3 than there is about any random window in any of the 6 closed rooms; it is simply implied.

Basically, it all hinges on the misunderstanding from episode 1's description of the courtyard doors. How much that misunderstanding is RK07's fault, how much the translation's fault, and how much the reader's fault, is open to discussion.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I'm just helping you frame your argument that Touya's condition is implausible to the point that it destroys your suspension of disbelief. Because "it's fictional" is barely even a start.

As I've already said I don't like when in a story is inserted a target made fictional disease, unless the story is a fantasy/fantascience.

In Umineko we're supposed to believe Toya lives in the "real" world therefore he's supposed to get a real disease (or better a real psychological problem).
If Ryukishi inserts a fantasy element here, not only I can't reason out why wouldn't Battler contact Ange if he were to be alive but he does something I specifically dislike.

In addition he proves Toya's fear won't become real as, by the end, Toya remembers his past but he's still Toya, not Battler.

Causing him to panic over something that wouldn't happen to the point he even had a fit that caused him to end up on a wheelchair isn't a minor thing. Try to think how much should you panic to get such result and all for something that won't happen, especially when someone should have informed you it won't happen.

To me it feels way too forced.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

But he DOES; we just don't know what that disease fully entails, and he speculates a worst case scenario for recovering his memories. Why is this so difficult for you?

Because to me:
- it's really hard to believe the doctor didn't informe him about how he could possibly recover his memories and what this will cause
- it's really hard to believe didn't ask if he could possibly recover his memories and what this will cause
- it's really hard to believe Toya didn't ask if he could possibly recover his memories and what this will cause
- it's really hard to believe once he started recovering them and likely started to panic neither him nor Ikuko went to see a doctor and asked him what would happen if Toya were to recover his memories
- it's not possible his worst case scenario would happen and in fact IT DIDN'T HAPPEN
- ... there's more but I'll stop here.

For the first points to be barely believable you need a negligent and/or incompetent doctor AND Ikuko not caring about Toya AND Toya passively waiting for the worst to happen AND then panicking when he thinks the worst is happening.
For the last one there's nothing you can do and it turns Toya's panic without a reason.

My suspension of disbelief is destroyed, I'm sorry. Yours can still be standing but mine is gone no matter how much we argue over it.
To me it's like asking me to believe Yasu could do real magic. I won't believe it. I guess I've no love for Toya's psychological disease.

[AuraTwilight]

In Umineko we're supposed to believe Toya lives in the "real" world therefore he's supposed to get a real disease (or better a real psychological problem).
If Ryukishi inserts a fantasy element here, not only I can't reason out why wouldn't Battler contact Ange if he were to be alive but he does something I specifically dislike.

It's a dissociative disorder, which are so misunderstood that psychologists still aren't sure if they actually exist in real life or not; Everything Toya experiences is 100% plausible, it's just "fictional" in that we don't have any case studies of it ever happening before. It's not a fantasy element like precognition or something.

In addition he proves Toya's fear won't become real as, by the end, Toya remembers his past but he's still Toya, not Battler.

Well, he doesn't remember everything Battler knows, only a part. Regardless, the conceit was never "Toya will lose his identity if he remembers Battler" but "Toya is afraid that he will lose his identity if he remembers Battler." It doesn't matter whether Toya is correct or not; he can't see the future and tell that he's going to be alright.

Causing him to panic over something that wouldn't happen to the point he even had a fit that caused him to end up on a wheelchair isn't a minor thing. Try to think how much should you panic to get such result and all for something that won't happen, especially when someone should have informed you it won't happen.

How could anyone have informed him that it wouldn't happen? People losing their identities suddenly does happen in real life with fugue states; how can a psychologist be certain that he doesn't have one?

- it's really hard to believe the doctor didn't informe him about how he could possibly recover his memories and what this will cause
- it's really hard to believe didn't ask if he could possibly recover his memories and what this will cause
- it's really hard to believe Toya didn't ask if he could possibly recover his memories and what this will cause
- it's really hard to believe once he started recovering them and likely started to panic neither him nor Ikuko went to see a doctor and asked him what would happen if Toya were to recover his memories
- it's not possible his worst case scenario would happen and in fact IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

- A doctor can only speculate; psychiatry is a field full of unknowns.

- It doesn't matter if he asked or not. Unless a psychiatrist actually experiences it, he can't tell him what his disease is. It's not like a physical virus where you can just look at a virus in their blood or check for symptoms; in psychiatry you just have to assume a patient is being honest and compare it against other syndromes for a match. Unless he recovers his memories, a doctor can't tell him one way or another, but can only say "You probably won't lose your identity."

- It IS infact possible his worst case scenario could happen. The fact that it didn't happen doesn't mean anything. If you run into a burning building, will you die? Possibly, possibly not, but the RISK is enough for you not to go in there, right? You're not a firefighter.

Basically, you're bitching about unrealism, but you're doing so by having unrealistic expectations of how psychiatry works. You're kind of a hypocrite, here.

Now if you want to bitch about unrealistic psychology, Yasu would be a much better horse to beat.

For the first points to be barely believable you need a negligent and/or incompetent doctor AND Ikuko not caring about Toya AND Toya passively waiting for the worst to happen AND then panicking when he thinks the worst is happening.

Doctors are not wizards.

For the last one there's nothing you can do and it turns Toya's panic without a reason.

Toya is not a psychic.

My suspension of disbelief is destroyed, I'm sorry. Yours can still be standing but mine is gone no matter how much we argue over it.

Since your model of reality doesn't match the 'real world' you're trying to compare it to, it's entirely your own fault, not Ryukishi's.

To me it's like asking me to believe Yasu could do real magic.

It's not at all comparable. Magic defies the laws of the universe. Toya's amnesia doesn't. A better analogy would be asking you to believe that Kinzo was a hyperactive cheerful, spoiling grandpa who throws Halloween parties. It's implausible, but it's not impossible.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Basically, you're bitching about unrealism, but you're doing so by having unrealistic expectations of how psychiatry works. You're kind of a hypocrite, here.

You know, I wish you wouldn't accuse me of things, like bitching or being an hypocrite.

I'm expressing my opinion. Your is different? Fine.
I'm not agreeing with you.

Let's agree to disagree and be done with it because again, speaking with you, I'm forced to close the discussion because it's heading less and less toward mature discussion and more on you insulting me again because I don't agree with you.

I guess for two not native speakers is really that hard to comunicate.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

Battler meta or otherwise wouldnt have ignored the door either so he's in it as well. Battler didn't switch sides in ep5, he did it in ep3. Actually he did it in ep2 when he surrendered, everything else has been a ploy.

Let's not forget that "Tohya" in EP6 claimed to have worked out the truth just from the message bottles.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Let's not forget that "Tohya" in EP6 claimed to have worked out the truth just from the message bottles.

You know, I've been wondering more and more about whether the meta-world is actually part of the written fictions. Do we have any really good reasons to suppose it isn't?

[Used Can]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

You know, I've been wondering more and more about whether the meta-world is actually part of the written fictions. Do we have any really good reasons to suppose it isn't?

Well, in EP6 Ange tells Featherine not to kill her as gruesomely as she did before (in obvious reference to EP4). We know the 1998 events in EP6 are quite likely part of a fictional story as well. So, if Ange telling Featherine that much is part of the text in the fictions then I think it is fair to assume the Meta is part of them as well.

There's some stuff I'd have have difficulty trying to explain, though. Like Tōya knowing about Rosa metting Beatrice II in 1967, the pasts of the rest of his family, amongst other things. Though, it's quite possible Battler could have learnt them during his days in Rokkenjima. Furthermore, his love story with Beatrice is largely unbelievable if things prior to the conference went as in the fictions (i.e. Battler leaving the family for 6 years; having no contact at all with Yasu; Yasu developing relationships with George and Jessica) and then would be the events that took place in the conference (i.e. his family going boom), all of this happening in the span of 3 days.

[rogerpepitone]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I don't understand why you're so hellbent on RK07 fucking up.

Since the statement explaining why the two courtyard doors doesn't apply to the boiler room, it's natural to assume that that door has a lock on it. Since it's got a lock on it there's no more need to talk about it being locked in episode 3 than there is about any random window in any of the 6 closed rooms; it is simply implied.

Basically, it all hinges on the misunderstanding from episode 1's description of the courtyard doors. How much that misunderstanding is RK07's fault, how much the translation's fault, and how much the reader's fault, is open to discussion.

As far as "implied" goes, enough things have been stated flat out and revealed to be false that I'm not going to trust something which is merely implied.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I don't understand why you're so hellbent on RK07 fucking up.

Since the statement explaining why the two courtyard doors doesn't apply to the boiler room, it's natural to assume that that door has a lock on it. Since it's got a lock on it there's no more need to talk about it being locked in episode 3 than there is about any random window in any of the 6 closed rooms; it is simply implied.

Basically, it all hinges on the misunderstanding from episode 1's description of the courtyard doors. How much that misunderstanding is RK07's fault, how much the translation's fault, and how much the reader's fault, is open to discussion.

I don't understand why you're so hellbent on Ryuukishi not fucking up when there's proof he fucked up at least in one occasion.

There is no evidece that the statement in question only refers to the other two doors. There is a reason why witch hunt translated it with an ambiguous "the doors" rather than "those doors". There is absolutely no evidence that the subject of this statement is the same as the previous. There is no mention whatsoever of that door having a lock. There is no mention watsover of that door being locked.
Assuming stuff in Umineko is not a good idea, especially considering the trick used in the first twilight of EP2. If ryuukishi expected us to assume stuff in EP3 but not in EP2, well that's really rich.

As for the windows, it was specifically mentioned they were closed. My problem here is that the second door in the boiler room was never mentioned at all.

And I'll take a step back and explain why it is very unlikely that the two doors of the boiler room can be locked with the same key. It's very simple: one is an inside door and we can assume it's built the same as the other doors in the corridoor for aesthetic purposes. The other is an outside door which must be designed to be impervious to rain. I can't really imagine that the two doors are the same, it's ridiculous. So the chance that they have the same kind of lock and that they can be opened by the same key is very unlikely. That's not someting you'd normally expect.


BTW I noticed this while rereading that part. How do you explain this?

Only the victims are inside the rooms, and no other people exist inside the rooms

So let me get this straight. I suppose this refers to a time before people entered the closed rooms or it makes no sense. So let's take the parlor.
If the one inside it was "Shannon", then Shannon existed, her body was still fucntioning... she wasn't dead. Therefore she wasn't a victim!
If the one inside was "Yasu" or "Beatrice" or whatever... she still wasn't a victim!

So not only the definition of "dead" was used arbitrarily but the definition of "victim" as well.

[haguruma]

Just because I can't really find it in your posts right now, concerning the discussion on the boiler room. Why exactly is the unlockable door a problem or hint towards Ryûkishi fucking up? I want to contribute something to that but first I'd like to know the full background of the discussion XD

[Cao Ni Ma]

You know that door in the boiler room that Battler noticed in episode 1? The one he thought the culprit used to escape after stabbing Kanon? Now imagine the 1st twilight in EP3 with that door still being there. The adults mention that each door was locked but never once mention that door in the boiler room, it being locked or barricaded.

If the door was there and was never locked then then the locked room is destroyed by anyone that doesnt have an alibi. No need for Shkanon. So its an issue of either how you interpret it, like you think that the door was there and locked despite no one telling you. Or you think its a hint to what happened like the keyhole in EP4, or you think RK07 forgot.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

BTW I noticed this while rereading that part. How do you explain this?

Only the victims are inside the rooms, and no other people exist inside the rooms

So let me get this straight. I suppose this refers to a time before people entered the closed rooms or it makes no sense. So let's take the parlor.
If the one inside it was "Shannon", then Shannon existed, her body was still fucntioning... she wasn't dead. Therefore she wasn't a victim!
If the one inside was "Yasu" or "Beatrice" or whatever... she still wasn't a victim!

So not only the definition of "dead" was used arbitrarily but the definition of "victim" as well.

Well, let's play devil's advocate here and see if we actually run into a contradiction.

Let's assume that, like "dead," "victim" has a particular meaning which may not conform to the established one. We will, however, assume the meaning must be consistent.

It's obvious right away that "victim" cannot mean "person killed by the culprit," because if we accept that Shannon was the culprit neither she nor Kanon would be "victims." This leads me to believe "victim" means either apparent victim (as in the notion of a fakery plot or merely the intended scenario if it were a fakery plot) or merely "the people that I was just talking about," which would mean the prior defined set of Shannon/Kanon/Gohda/Kumasawa/Genji/Kinzo.

In either case, it's lame but probably consistent. "Only the individuals who were intended to appear in the rooms from first impressions are in the rooms" and "Only the six individuals I was just talking about are in the rooms." Neither of these necessitates that "victim" = "deceased." Of course, you make the fair point that if Shannon is alive, by all rights Kanon, Beatrice, and possibly Yasu ought to also all be in the room with her, but according to Ryukishi's Magic Dumbass Software Role Rules, that can somehow be evaded. By that rule, Shannon is alone in her room until such time as she arbitrarily decides she is no longer Shannon and someone else is suddenly "alive."

Of course if we want to go full-on bullshit mode and just assume "victim" can apply to dead personas, then "Beatrice" can "kill" Shannon and Kanon (making them "victims") and exist in the same room without violating the red per the "the person himself" nonsense rule. Or "Shannon" is only "killed" after that red, yet is "dying" such that she can be ruled a victim.

Another question I have, unrelated to your semantic nitpicking but equally nitpicky, is the definition of "are inside." It's impossible for Shannon to be "inside" her room and for Kanon to be "inside" his room if they're the same person. One of the rooms would, by default, always be empty. Sure, it doesn't disclaim the possibility of a person moving, but by this definition "are inside" means "are or are not inside," as Kanon isn't inside the room where he was found. He's either in the room with Shannon or, if you want to go with personality death/role suppression, nowhere. Thus, either Kanon isn't a "victim," or he isn't "inside" the room he's supposed to be in. So Beatrice is at worst lying and at best telling an incredibly lame half-truth by suggesting the victims (as in, all of them) are in the rooms when one of them not only is not in any of the rooms, but isn't anywhere period.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

Another question I have, unrelated to your semantic nitpicking but equally nitpicky, is the definition of "are inside." It's impossible for Shannon to be "inside" her room and for Kanon to be "inside" his room if they're the same person. One of the rooms would, by default, always be empty. Sure, it doesn't disclaim the possibility of a person moving, but by this definition "are inside" means "are or are not inside," as Kanon isn't inside the room where he was found. He's either in the room with Shannon or, if you want to go with personality death/role suppression, nowhere. Thus, either Kanon isn't a "victim," or he isn't "inside" the room he's supposed to be in. So Beatrice is at worst lying and at best telling an incredibly lame half-truth by suggesting the victims (as in, all of them) are in the rooms when one of them not only is not in any of the rooms, but isn't anywhere period.

...Or the implied meaning is: "At the time each room was opened, only that room's victim was inside."

Also, the red doesn't confirm the victims' deaths at the time that the rooms were opened. This is important because the adults were able to get the impression that the victims could have been faking.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

...Or the implied meaning is: "At the time each room was opened, only that room's victim was inside."

How exactly do you derive "were inside at the time of opening" from "are inside [at the time I speak this line]?" I'm not saying you're wrong and that isn't what Ryukishi meant, but grammatically it doesn't work and it doesn't conform to the rules of the red as we understand them.

[Cao Ni Ma]

Also before she states this she goes "All six died instantly". So if you assume that the statement about "no one being inside except the victims" is around the time the doors where unlocked, then we can assume they died before or around that time as well.

So yeah its kinda dumb since at least one "person" would still be there. Even if Yasu killed off Shannon and Kanon at the same time and is just moving their corpses, she'd still be inside the room with them unless you can put the remaining persona into sleep mode just dodge a red.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Renall

How exactly do you derive "were inside at the time of opening" from "are inside [at the time I speak this line]?" I'm not saying you're wrong and that isn't what Ryukishi meant, but grammatically it doesn't work and it doesn't conform to the rules of the red as we understand them.

It seemed to make the most sense from context. I'll double-check the translation later, but in the meantime, here's another thing: Beatrice did not say that that each room had exactly one of the victims in it. That doesn't account for Beatrice herself, but it takes care of Kanon and Shannon not being in separate rooms at the same time.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

It seemed to make the most sense from context. I'll double-check the translation later, but in the meantime, here's another thing: Beatrice did not say that that each room had exactly one of the victims in it.

No, I agree, she didn't. But she did say the victims "are inside" the rooms. But based on the apparent construction of the sentence, the only thing that can possibly be true is "Kanon and Shannon are in the same room." The reasoning for this is that for Kanon to be "inside" any of the rooms, he must exist. Bodily, he can only exist where Shannon exists (or vice-versa). If he doesn't exist anywhere (i.e. he's "killed" or dormant or whatever BS you want to ascribe to RK07), he can't be "inside" any of the rooms, because he isn't anywhere at all.

So for this statement to be possible to make, Kanon and Shannon must exist simultaneously in the same room at the time this statement is made. If true, I suspect that this probably raises other significant problems with the whole personality juggling concept, but I'm not ready to explore them yet.

EDIT: And lest we get into the totally unfair concept of something like "Kanon's corpse is in this room but Kanon himself is not," remember the Logic Error. Erika was specifically referring to bodies and Kanon was specifically described in this context. We are told Kanon does not exist in this room. Ergo, when Kanon "dies," he ceases to exist, and the same must be true of Shannon or Beatrice as well. So if Kanon or Shannon is "dead," they don't exist in the place their body is located. That means either both of them are "alive" but "victims" in the same room, or the entire thing collapses.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Cao Ni Ma

You know that door in the boiler room that Battler noticed in episode 1? The one he thought the culprit used to escape after stabbing Kanon? Now imagine the 1st twilight in EP3 with that door still being there. The adults mention that each door was locked but never once mention that door in the boiler room, it being locked or barricaded.

If the door was there and was never locked then then the locked room is destroyed by anyone that doesnt have an alibi. No need for Shkanon. So its an issue of either how you interpret it, like you think that the door was there and locked despite no one telling you. Or you think its a hint to what happened like the keyhole in EP4, or you think RK07 forgot.

But wasn't that the whole trick of the chain locked room? I actually remembered it being talked about, but apparently my brain only filled that part in at the time I read EP3. It actually is a major red herring that the door was there, because it implies that Kinzô was the last to be killed (if he were alive) or at least the last corpse to be placed. I really have to reread that passage, but I always included that part in my reasoning towards this locked room.
The trick in my book was actually that Kinzô's corpse was probably the first to be placed, especially if you consider Ryûkishi's hint towards Will's line about "the end and the beginning overlapping" and looking at what is probably the most reasonable place to be entered last...the parlour on the 1st floor.
Wasn't it talked about in EP3 or 4 in some meta-battle that either Kinzô was killed last and so the culprit escaped through the open door or Kinzô was the culprit and placed a fake corpse in the final room?! Did I actually subcosciously make that up?!

And the trick is that it does leave room for a culprit beside Shkannon, like all of EP3 did until Nanjô was murdered...it actually had to be done in order to keep the two parties: Eva/Hideyoshi and Kyrie/Rudolph in the loop as suspects, because they were the most likely to be culprits in all of EP3.

-----

And to go back to the end of EP4 and how Jessica and Kyrie were discovered. I reread those parts in Japanese and I think it's highly likely that these are actually believable events...who knows maybe it was even how Battler remembers it...Eva still had mighty enough time to play dead and escape if Battler saw her (and that somebody plays dead is so heavily hinted throughout the series it has to be).

There are some interesting parts in Battler's thoughts I'd like to point:
なら、犯人は目の前にいたのだろうか?
・・・・・・・・・電話の向こうの朱志香の声には、そのような感じはなかった。
(Then, was the culprit in front of her eyes?
... ... There had been none such feeling from Jessica's voice at the other end of the line.)

・・・・・・・・・となれば、死を覚悟する外傷と、実際に頭部を損壊させた外傷は異なるもので2回あり、そ れらがいずれも同じ部位に対して行われた、・・・・・・と考えるべきだろうか。
つまり、朱志香は頭を強烈に殴られ、ものすごい大怪我した。
(... ... if that was true you'd have to imagine that there had been two different attacks. One to create a external wound that would make her resign to death and one external wound that would have actually crack open her skull, and both would have to have been occured to the same body area...
In other words, Jessica could have been hit with an intense strike and get a serious injury.)

確かに霧江さんの死体の周辺には、四ヶ所ほど、その攻撃によるものと思われる穴が開いている。
・・・・・・・・・・・・しかし、・・・・・・鍵穴から、・・・・・・・・黄金の糸が撃って・ ・・？
霧江さんの目線から、扉を見る。
よく、古いミステリー映画に出てくるような、向こうが覗けるというタイプの古い鍵穴だったなら、何かが突き 抜けてくるかもしれないというのはわかる。
しかし、この屋敷お扉は、いくら古めかしいとはいえ、鍵は一般家庭でお馴染みの、平均的なシリンダー一型だ 。
・・・・・・つまりその構造上、貫通はしていない。
(There really were holes in 4 places around Kyrie's corpse, as though they had been made in an attack.
...But...attacked by a golden thread...through the keyhole?
I looked to the door from Kyrie's point of view.
If it had been a keyhole of the old type, like it often appears in the old mystery films, one you can peek through, I could understand something coming through there.
But the doors in this mansion, though you can call them old-fashioned, the locks were simple cylinder-locks, like those you can find in any common household.
......In other words, through such a construction nothing would pass.)

There are some more parts, but I would like to give these to discussion first.
I think they really point towards something that has actually happened, but where does that lead us. I'll write more in my next post...sadly I have to run now.

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I don't understand why you're so hellbent on Ryuukishi not fucking up when there's proof he fucked up at least in one occasion...

I'll get to this later.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

BTW I noticed this while rereading that part. How do you explain this?

Only the victims are inside the rooms, and no other people exist inside the rooms

So let me get this straight. I suppose this refers to a time before people entered the closed rooms or it makes no sense. So let's take the parlor.
If the one inside it was "Shannon", then Shannon existed, her body was still fucntioning... she wasn't dead. Therefore she wasn't a victim!
If the one inside was "Yasu" or "Beatrice" or whatever... she still wasn't a victim!

So not only the definition of "dead" was used arbitrarily but the definition of "victim" as well.

The problem is that Witch Hunt decided to add the article "the", which implied that Beatrice was speaking about the 6 people she declared dead. Witch Hunt probably thought this is actually what she meant (after all, that was what this wordplay was meant to trick the reader into thinking). However, if you take the Japanese text literally, Beatrice wasn't being so specific.

Here's the original Japanese:
室内には犠牲者しかおらず、それ以外の人物は室内には存在しておりません。
Here's a more literal translation:
There are only victims inside the rooms; people other than that do not exist inside the rooms.

This does not preclude some victims existing outside the rooms (and even if it did, dead Kanon and Shannon do not exist at all), so there's no problem; Yasu just needs to be outside the room when the statement was made.

Of course the trick becomes a lot more obvious if the red is worded this unnaturally ambiguous way. In Japanese, the ambiguity is natural so it's not so obvious.