I have never turned on a work of fiction more completely.

[carp]

I mean, I knew interminable witch ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was just going to be part of things. It really started to wear on me, but there was enough hinting there were intriguing stuff to figure out and twists to come. I slowly started to suspect that what I cared about (interesting mysteries) and what the authors cared about (interminable witch ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) didn't match up.

But still, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. The first real sign of trouble was when they brought in Erika. Erika rules, of course. But she was explicitly portrayed as villainous because she wanted mystery authors to clearly reveal what actually happens in their mysteries, and yikes, that is a troubling thing for mystery writers to think is villainous.

Chapter 7 was innnnfuriating. They set up a big reveal, and then instead of revealing anything, they were like, "You wanted more interminable witch ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, right?" and I was like, "No, actually, it'd be way more moving if you just dropped that and told it straight," and they were like, "Well awesome, here's your new witch character!"

But then chapter 8. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Now the writers are so hostile to people who want satisfying endings where things tie together and make sense, they portray them as evil goat monsters. Now we're spending the entire time in a metaphor that collapsed under its own weight hours ago. For a kabillion years it's "Ange shouldn't read the book" because something about not living for revenge, then she just does read the book, and then all of a sudden it's like "we shouldn't let the people at the conference read the book" because... it's good to entertain ourselves with mysteries in a cat box without caring about the truth? Or something? Except not, because those theories hurt Ange? Who... wait, did she jump off a building or not? Am I a gross goat monster for wanting to know the answer to that question?


Also, what the ♥♥♥♥ is the message, here? "It's good to remain emotionally codependent with your dead family members?" Because yeah, that actually totally seems like the message. Also "incestuous rapists aren't actually all that bad," but that seemed a little more peripheral.

[Ellixer]

The message, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that facts and truth are separate. Absolute truth does not exist, or if it does it has little value. You cannot hide from the truth forever, but the power to interpret that truth and find values in it is yours. And also that people are not black and white, and their cruelty can often be traced back to the cruelty inflicted upon them. This is made clearer in the manga, which I believe improve upon the visual novel version.

I'm not sure how you came to believe that the author did not care about the mysteries though. Episode 5 spelt out that mystery is love, that people are mysteries, and having their mystery solved is among the greatest wishes a person has. Mystery is not just "who did the bad thing". It's "who am I", "why am I", "how am I". Battler being able to answer these questions are portrayed as an expression of great devotion and love. You can argue that this is too mushy or whatever, but the mystery is one of the most important thing to the narrative, and the fantastical elements are portrayed as coping mechanism of people who feel trapped and desperate by reality. It can be important. It can provide a respite. But the story spells out that magic cannot solve your problems, not if you cannot do it with your own two hands.

The reason why Erika is villainous is stated outright by the woman herselves. She's an intellectual rapist. She cares about mystery as a mean of humiliating and dominating others. She does not give a toss about understanding what happened or the people involved, being quick to jump onto Natsuhi culprit theory, the theory that anyone who's been paying attention to the character from Episode 1 would find extremely questionable and her read of Natsuhi's motive is shallow and just plain wrong. In Episode 6, she cares less about figuring out what happened than she cares about "getting back" at Battler. She is a deconstruction of the mystery protagonist, an antithesis of the story portraying a detective as someone who ought to be empathetic, because without love the truth cannot be seen, or to put it in less romantic terms, if you do not understand the characters, their struggles, their wants, you cannot find the answer. Erika is amazingly smart and determined, and she lost. She came so close to the truth, being able to reach the understanding that two truths can exist simultaneously and at times you need to see both, and reaching the theory that one name can hold multiple people (missing the theory that one person can hold multiple names), but she lost because she pinned her theory on the mind-bogglingly ludicrous theory that George = Kanon, when anyone who's been paying attention to Episode 6 would be able to arrive at a much, much more coherent answer.

Though if there's any doubt about the story's love of mystery stories despite this I'd have thought Willard would have resolved it. Episode 7 is the most classical mystery Umineko has. It involves interviews with relevant characters to arrive at a Who, How and Why of a Mystery, and ends with Willard solving every Twilight of Episode 1 to 4, albeit presented cryptically. If it's too cryptic that you require a direct answer, the manga helpfully provides.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8MoXDVjs1Y

The author himself said that he did not believe, at the time, that the reader who tried to figure out the mystery and the reader who did not both deserve to arrive at the answer at the end of the story. If you open up a word document and type up clues and evidence and attempt to form a theory of Who, How and Why, that answer is yours. If you are hoping the story would tell you the answer even though you did not put in any work, you get no answer. That's the goats, who often demand answers without putting in any work, presented as people who claim to love mystyries but do nothing to solve the mysteries they are presented. That's the critique here. Willard and Dlanor treat all the ones who come with theories and answers as worthy opponents, even when their answers are wrong, because unlike the other goats, they have attempted to solve the mysteries and are worthy of rebuttal. That said, they are still callous and insensitive to the relatives of the victims. The critique isn't that the goats want to know what happened. Dlanor and Willard both say that Beatrice would be delighted that the yare trying to figure out the answer, as that is the entire reason she wrote the message bottles in the first place, so that if nothing else someone, somewhere, would be able to solve the mysteries and understand her heart. The critique is treating the mystery like a sport and disregard the hurting relatives of the victims. Seeing people as objects is what's wrong with the goats, putting them in line with Erika.

You can argue whether this is a valid point. I actually take the position that it's partially detrimental to Episode 8 that the author refused to reveal the answer, and Willard's scene can be preachy and on the nose in my opinion (the manga shortened it). It's just plain wrong that there isn't a mystery answer however, because it's there, you just don't see it if you don't work for it. The manga version of Episode 8 goes out of its way to thoroughly answer any Who, How and Why question that Episode 7 hasn't already answered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dQXL79Fzv4&list=PLE35i0Rari6t346YDDahb-YawVSopvxaC&index=1

I'm with you with the Ange plot though. That's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and at a certain point you just got to roll with it. I take the position that Ange's version in episode 4 and 6 are an alternate universe to Episode 8.

[Battler Ushiromiya]

You misunderstood Erika entirely. That isn't her character. Her character is someone who doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about the truth, she just wants to "solve" it, ignoring their humanity and basically just seeing them as pieces on a board. You're also ignoring the whole point of Umineko in the process and being nothing more than an intellectual rapist like Erika. Ryukishi wants you to figure out the mysteries yourself, he's not gonna give you the solutions, he wants you to actually give a ♥♥♥♥ about the story and figure it all out yourself. And no, goats don't represent normal readers, they represent people like you, who don't give a ♥♥♥♥. Kindly ♥♥♥♥ off if you refuse to understand the themes of the story

[carp]

Originally posted by Ellixer:

The message, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that facts and truth are separate. Absolute truth does not exist, or if it does it has little value.

This is EXTREEEEMELY muddled, by the end of the story, just because so many layers have been piled on top of one another. In Maria alone, "magic" is portrayed as both a pathetic self-delusion protecting her from accepting her mom sucks AND as a way for her to keep hope for the future alive despite her mom sucking AND as the reason to believe her mom doesn't suck after all. Ange is supposed to not open the book because that would be "living for revenge," but then the contents of the book actually are what would make her STOP living for revenge, because they show Eva's innocent! So then it becomes about not letting the conventioneers read the book, which... what the living hell does that have to do with Ange's whole journey?

Besides, Kinzo raped his daughter. Kyrie was a psychopath. These are facts. Are we supposed to think it's good for Ange to remember them as the doting grandpa and loving mother? If so, why? How's that supposed to help her more than accepting the facts would?

I'm not sure how you came to believe that the author did not care about the mysteries though. Episode 5 spelt out that mystery is love, that people are mysteries, and having their mystery solved is among the greatest wishes a person has. Mystery is not just "who did the bad thing". It's "who am I", "why am I", "how am I".

Yeah, this is just nonsense, though? I have no idea who these strawmen are who think motives aren't important in mysteries.

The game had a promise (the writer created a universe) that there's a truth the player can figure out; obviously this relates both to whodunnit AND whydunnit. Then, when the multiple games happen, the promise gets expanded: "You can figure out the individual who and why dunnits for each game, but ALSO there's the bigger mystery underlying everything."

And they absolutely cannot make good on this promise, because the best they can do for a whodunnit is "Shannon and Kanon are the same person," (which *actually doesn't remotely relate to who ends up doing it*), and the best they can do for a whydunnit is "a twelve year-old had a crush on another twelve year-old."

And I never said the author didn't care about mysteries. I said the author cared LESS about mysteries than about interminable witch ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. And that's definitely true, because the author clearly cares about interminable witch ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ more than anyone has ever cared about anything.

The reason why Erika is villainous is stated outright by the woman herselves. She's an intellectual rapist. She cares about mystery as a mean of humiliating and dominating others. She does not give a toss about understanding what happened or the people involved, being quick to jump onto Natsuhi culprit theory, the theory that anyone who's been paying attention to the character from Episode 1 would find extremely questionable and her read of Natsuhi's motive is shallow and just plain wrong.

Welllll and here's one of many places where the whole "absolute truth does not exist" thing bites the author in the ass. Because why SHOULD we pay attention to the way Natsuhi's character has been portrayed? If everything is just made-up ♥♥♥♥ in cat boxes, and you can't trust anything that ever happens that isn't a red truth, sure, Natsuhi's psycho, why not? Why are we supposed to be concerned with consistency across the different games HERE but not care about it in a million other places?

(the lack of clarity about what the reader's supposed to believe is concrete and what's made-up ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is by far the story's biggest problem. Natsuhi could be a twelve foot tall tentacle monster, for all we know, because we know we can't trust anything we see.
It's... ambitious to want to tell a good mystery while simultaneously trying to argue "truth isn't important." But you're probably gonna end up stepping on your own feet when you try to do it, which is exactly what happened. Speaking of which...)

She came so close to the truth, being able to reach the understanding that two truths can exist simultaneously and at times you need to see both, and reaching the theory that one name can hold multiple people (missing the theory that one person can hold multiple names), but she lost because she pinned her theory on the mind-bogglingly ludicrous theory that George = Kanon, when anyone who's been paying attention to Episode 6 would be able to arrive at a much, much more coherent answer.

Sooooo... why couldn't George be Kanon? Anyone who's been paying attention since game 6 HAS ALSO SEEN KANON AND SHANNON IN THE SAME ROOM AT THE SAME TIME. A LOT. We've also seen magic witch towers and rabbit guns.

But we were supposed to ignore all that, and the only given explanation is "it wasn't a red truth." Well, George and Kanon being the same wasn't denied in a red truth, either, so why the hell not? All the "love" (which, again, is a CRUSH A TWELVE YEAR-OLD HAD ON ANOTHER TWELVE-YEAR OLD, so everyone should really stop being so overwrought about it), which is supposed to be the point, is just white text, too. Why are we supposed to think that's concrete enough that Erika's blind for missing it? The author's like "do ignore XYZ, but don't ignore ABC, even though there's no way to tell the difference between those."

This relates to what I think is the real misunderstanding the author has about mysteries. Mysteries (or at least the whodunnit element) are almost entirely portrayed as logic puzzles, where the answer is found by stripping away everything explicitly stated as untrue. This is 100% how the interactive mystery in chapter 8 was, and it's how Erika worked (in between her many face and heel turns).

But this isn't really how good mysteries work. Good mysteries are about CLUES. They're about remembering something that seemed unimportant in chapter 1 and applying it to a new context. "Two nights ago, the narration mentioned that anyone who stands near the fireplace smells like cedar smoke. Jane says that during the murder, she was standing near the fireplace, but when she found us just after, the narration noted she smelled like flowers. So she must have been lying." "Billy mentioned that the study's table leg was wobbly, but he shouldn't have known that if he really didn't go in there before Thursday night!" "Oh wait, Jenny actually WOULD have a motive to kill Ben, because when she read his will, she would have misunderstood that part and thought she was gonna get all his money."

So this whole orientation, that if you care about whodunnits, then you think you can just coldly list everything out in a notebook and figure out the answer, is kind of baffling and idiosyncratic. It's an assumption that mysteries are way more boring than they actually are.

The author himself said that he did not believe, at the time, that the reader who tried to figure out the mystery and the reader who did not both deserve to arrive at the answer at the end of the story. If you open up a word document and type up clues and evidence and attempt to form a theory of Who, How and Why, that answer is yours. If you are hoping the story would tell you the answer even though you did not put in any work, you get no answer.

This is bad writing. The reward of figuring out a mystery isn't you know the answer to the mystery. It's the rush of "I was right!" and getting to see all the clues you noticed spelling out the answer. If you didn't think while reading, then you still know the answer... it just doesn't give you that good feeling.

So, it's just a huge missed opportunity. when they were setting up that big reveal, my partner and I were all hyped, ready to see Shannon and we'd cheer and go "yeaahhh we were right!!" Instead it's just... another witch, and we're denied that fun moment.

I refuse to believe the author (and, maybe even moreso, his fans) didn't just get way way way too enamored with interminable witch ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and it completely wrecked the story. Consider the scenes with Virgilia and green-haired Beatrice. It's all cloaked in metaphor and witch nonsense and magical realism.

But. What if, for the first time, someone flicks the lights on and we see reality: a miserable, abused, crippled kid and the closest thing they have to a mother. Kumasawa, who knows who this kid's dad is and is furious about things, but who lacks the courage to act on it except with small moments of kindness.

Now all the witch ♥♥♥♥ is EARNED, because we see, really SEE, the harsh reality it's been covering up. Far from being too mushy, it felt like the author was afraid to really actually get into the real emotions.

You can argue whether this is a valid point. I actually take the position that it's partially detrimental to Episode 8 that the author refused to reveal the answer, and Willard's scene can be preachy and on the nose in my opinion (the manga shortened it). It's just plain wrong that there isn't a mystery answer however, because it's there, you just don't see it if you don't work for it.

No no, there of course is an answer (well... such as it is. Shannon and Kanon being the same person doesn't actually end up having much to do with anything, really). But besides the lack of satisfaction, there's another problem: a very difficult one to get around. The more you make the audience work for it, the more likely it is that THEIR answers are going to be better than what YOU come up with. Especially if it's dragged out a long time, and you have hours of buildup to your climax.

And, yeah, that's tough. The authors totally knew about this. (The explanation for why Kyrie was the big bad that my partner and I had been devising since game 2 was sure more interesting than the ultimate answer: "Kyrie was cartoonishly evil.") And so I absolutely believe part of this whole "truths aren't important!" thing is to distract away from their answer in case it's lame (and it was).

But come on. Part of this is also we were really actually supposed to be more invested in Battler and his witch waifu than in what the mystery of the weekend was.

[carp]

Originally posted by Battler Ushiromiya:

You misunderstood Erika entirely. That isn't her character. Her character is someone who doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about the truth, she just wants to "solve" it, ignoring their humanity and basically just seeing them as pieces on a board. You're also ignoring the whole point of Umineko in the process and being nothing more than an intellectual rapist like Erika. Ryukishi wants you to figure out the mysteries yourself, he's not gonna give you the solutions, he wants you to actually give a ♥♥♥♥ about the story and figure it all out yourself. And no, goats don't represent normal readers, they represent people like you, who don't give a ♥♥♥♥. Kindly ♥♥♥♥ off if you refuse to understand the themes of the story

"You misunderstand Erika! She wasn't created to just portray people who want to be shown clear answers as villains!!"

"You just want answers to be clearly shown to you, just like that villain, Erika!!"


(also, if we're supposed to dislike Erika for being an intellectual rapist, then shouldn't the writers really come down way harder on Kinzo, who is a LITERAL rapist?)

[Ellixer]

There seems to be a need here to treat everyone as either someone to condemn or forgive unconditionally. If you hold this notion, it's obvious that you wouldn't click with the writting, as it rejects it with every episode.

I think you hold these absolutes tightly enough in your mind that Umineko just would never work for you, because it rejects absolutes. If you think Mysteries are logic puzzles and the author is misunderstanding the genre, then the story would have no value for you, because logic puzzles are a part of it but it is a very minor part next to the heart. The very last choice in the game is being able to recognize the fact that a very simple "magic trick" that wouldn't work on anyone but a six years old and still be able to proclaim that it's surely magic with the certainty of someone who understood the intent and heart of it. Proclaiming that logically this is not magic it's just a trick leads to the bad ending. I think you and the game has wildly different mindsets that cannot be reconciled.

In any case, it's telling that you see Maria's fantasy as pathetic, because the story simply falls apart if you come at it with judgement rather than sympathy. The story does not say that Maria is right to hold these false beliefs, but it does say that at the very least Maria does not pass on to other people the abuse she receives. In Episode 4 this is one of the things that impresses Ange about Maria, despite everything. Every other abuser in Umineko is a victim of abuse themselves, save for Maria, who absorbs pain and processes them in the confine of her own mind rather than push them onto others to ease her own suffering. It's not necessarily good, but it's a gray issue that rejects the absolutist thinking of "well should we praise this or condemn it" that is inherently incompatible with the themes of Umineko.

And I'm not 100% sure if the story agrees but I think Battler is wrong. He gives Ange less credits than she deserves. He thinks Ange needs hope to live and she can only have that hope if the truth is hidden from her. This makes the problem worse, leading to her nearly killing herself. Battler's solution is "don't find the truth". I believe the message is "don't look for it as your only source of closure/salvation". Erika thinks he's full of ♥♥♥♥. Beatrice thinks he's full of ♥♥♥♥ (in the manga). Ange thinks he's well-intentioned if nothing else. But at the end of the day, he's wrong. Ange is strong enough to see the truth and pick herself up again, being able to cope with trauma and tragedy arguably better than any other character.

Kinzo is a rapist and probably a serial murderer. Kyrie is also an insane mass killer (though there's some room for interpretation still, regarding her daughter if nothing else). If you follow the mindset of "this good or this bad", then of course Episode 8 would fall apart for you. The story's not asking you to consider them good people in the end. Even the manga makes no attempt to justify their behaviours, with the characters themselves outright saying "yeah we have no excuse". They're also dead. The message here is that Ange needs to understand who they are as people and family, rather than the worst things they did. It's incredibly reductive to say she thinks rapists and murderers can be justified. She considers them, in the end, family, people who are capable of great evils who were nevertheless dear to her heart. You can reject this message. That's alright. That's not an unreasonable position to take that evil deeds ought to not be forgotten, especially when they are of that scale, and good feelings about these people ought to be reconsidered in light of new facts about them. I might even agree with that position. It doesn't hurt the story any, though, because it is consistent and clear, and in my opinion makes it case well.

In my opinion the "anything can be possible" is Battler's biggest problem in the early episdoes and precisely why he failed to solve anything at the time despite being a pretty sharp guy. That's the thinking of someone who wants to beat a problem rather than understand a mystery. "This is possible. I didn't see it. Anything could have happened. A witch isn't necessary." No, a witch isn't necessary. If you weave between the red truths enough, you can even make Natsuhi the culprit. You can make anyone the culprit, if you work at it and twist the red truths. But it does not make character sense. It does not make narrative sense. Only with "beating the game and dominating my oponent" as your objective can you arrive at that conclusion. If your goal is to understand the truth you would realize that in all four episodes Natsuhi is a short-tempered, honourable and somewhat foolish person who couldn't scheme such a large scale mass murder if her life depended on it. Is this stated in red truth? No. Is this technically impossible? No. But if you take the mindset of "this mystery is designed to be solvable and all the clues and evidence I need to find the answer are present somewhere" then you almost certainly would not arrive at that conclusion. It's not about what "could" happen. It's about what, from your understanding of the characters and their motives and their hearts, you think the answer could be.

George can, if you look at nothing but red truths or whatever, probably be Kanon. If you care one bit about character motivations and struggles and themes then you would be able to notice that this makes no sense. I'm not even talking about the fantasy scenes. That's the easy route that you wouldn't need a genius to arrive at (Shannon and Kanon are never seen together by Battler except in Episode 5 where he is an accomplice. Shannon and Kanon are the only ones who are aware there is a loop going on. Shannon and Kanon are people who Beatrice seems fixated on "breaking". Etc etc). Shannon and Kanon struggle with their respective identity. They both feel trapped on Rokkenjima. They both love different people neither feel they can really be with that person. They both consider themselves less than human, another hint that they are two halves of the same person. George? What character reasoning can you produce that George = Kanon? That's the logic of someone who grasps onto theories as a crutch to "defeat" the puzzle, not someone who's seeking to understand what drives people, their wants, their needs.

Umineko is both a deconstruction and a reconstruction of the Mystery genre. Deconstruction in all the things I talked about, that when put into context, treating life and death game as an intellectual puzzle for you to solve and feel superior is kind of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing to do if you care about the people involved at all. It is also deconstruction of the idea that mysteries are pure logic and puzzles in the first place, because that's the height of fantasy that can only exist in fictions. Detectives in the real world have no such luxuries. There is no guarantee that you have all the evidence, or you ever will. Maybe everyone who gave incriminating evidence lied to you. Maybe the person you caught is covering for someone else. Maybe, despite all the efforts you put into, this really was a perfect crime and the culprit made no mistake and there really is no way to find the answer short of divine intervention. The real world makes no guarantee, so, asks Umineko, why should you assume this is solvable? Why do you assume this time divine intervention is on your side and you will magically have all the clues you need.

Well divine intervention was on Battler's side, because mystery is not reality. Mysteries are written to be solved, and without love it cannot be seen, because if you cannot trust that the author has made it solvable, you cannot solve it. Umineko is not solved by logic alone. I mean it probably can be. The red is often made to trick you anyway. But the point is it's solved by understanding what drives the character and being able to spot who has the means and motives to commit this act, and the latter cannot be given through red truth or facts. It's understanding.

As a side note though I do agree that love is a bit much in regard to Shannon and Battler. That was a teenage crush, lasting for a few days or weeks before they part. I think it's less a soulmates thing (which I think is kind of silly anyway I felt the same about Higurashi at certain points) and more Battler representing hopes for a different life for her. Without love it cannot be seen, however, refers to love as empathy, understanding and trust, rather than love being exclusively romantic feelings.

I mean I can accept your view about the "I was right" moment being a satisfying moment in a mystery. The author said the same, although I think he said this about Higurashi, even though that one does reveal the answer funnily enough. It, however, would have not worked the same way with Umineko, which takes a more post-modern approach. Or, to put it in a less pretentious way, Umineko rejects absolute truth and hammers home the fact that "you have to work for your answer" so much in prior Episodes that it would be somewhat hypocritical to just lay out "well here's the absolute truth".

Though if you care about that "I was right" moment, maybe go see the manga chapters that reveal the official solutions to the mystery. Mind you there are still people who consider it a fakeout and that the author and the manga are only tricking you and that the actual culprit is insert-alternate-theory-here. I guess in a way the story was right about giving the solution would do little to change the minds of people whose minds were made up.

I don't know what you mean though. Shannon and Kanon were the culprits. Kyrie is an opportunist who, after Shannon already gave up, killed everyone for the gold. In the grand scheme of things, she takes a more minor role than, say, Natsuhi or Eva or Rosa. There's an entire Episode, Episode 7, that explains, albeit in a rather abstract way, that Shannon (and Kanon) is the answer to Who, How and Why. Episode 1 to 5 are committed by Shannon. All the message bottles have Shannon as the culprit. The fact that in the main universe Kyrie takes the opportunity to get the gold is not as relevant to the mystery.

Also yeah if there's one character I blame the most for everything that went wrong it would be Kinzo. You will have no argument from me there. It has no bearing on anything for me though because to me the story never intended to justify anything he did. If anything it gave Erika more credits in the end when Battler acknowledged her as a worthy opponent and someone who's pursuing truth in her own (probably rather cruel) ways.

[carp]

Originally posted by Ellixer:

I think you hold these absolutes tightly enough in your mind that Umineko just would never work for you, because it rejects absolutes. If you think Mysteries are logic puzzles and the author is misunderstanding the genre, then the story would have no value for you, because logic puzzles are a part of it but it is a very minor part next to the heart. The very last choice in the game is being able to recognize the fact that a very simple "magic trick" that wouldn't work on anyone but a six years old and still be able to proclaim that it's surely magic with the certainty of someone who understood the intent and heart of it. Proclaiming that logically this is not magic it's just a trick leads to the bad ending. I think you and the game has wildly different mindsets that cannot be reconciled.

I... worry you didn't read what I wrote super carefully (I wouldn't blame you; it was long and rambling). I'm saying the AUTHOR thinks mysteries (whodunnits) are just heartless, cold logic puzzles, but that is a very incorrect, idiosyncratic assumption. He swoops in like "No! There's also the HEART!!" and like... duh? Who on earth do you think reads mysteries and doesn't believe that?
(I realized the answer to this question after writing my last post: Otaku, which is the world this dude comes from and who he ever thought his entire audience was going to be. But it totally doesn't generalize to the majority of people and it leads to assumptions that just don't work.)

Also, this is only semi-facetious: you put Dlanor, Erika, and Bernkastel on the "trick" side, and then put Beatrice, Gaap, the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ demon twins, the stake sisters etc etc etc on the "magic" side then I sure as hell know which I'm choosing. Don't load up annoying pointless ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on your "good ending."

In any case, it's telling that you see Maria's fantasy as pathetic, because the story simply falls apart if you come at it with judgement rather than sympathy. The story does not say that Maria is right to hold these false beliefs, but it does say that at the very least Maria does not pass on to other people the abuse she receives.

Well, again, I said the game piled the metaphors so high, they collapsed. Maria's fantasies absolutely ARE portrayed as pathetic; Ange spends most of chapter 4 seeing them that way. They just are also portrayed as good for a couple of different incompatible reasons, too.

Anyway, I liked that aspect of episode 4, how the Big Bad of the story was revealed to be the cycle of abuse.

But while it's important to acknowledge nuance both in real life and in narratives, it's also very obvious when an author tries to keep from being pinned down by cloaking themselves in ambiguity and vagueness and thematic incoherence.

In other words, you can't say "oh, I dunno, hey, it's shaaaades of greeyyyyyy I guess" while simultaneously saying "One character escaped the cycle of abuse and here's how she did it." If you put that in your story, then *you are endorsing it* (or you better very clearly explain why you're not). It's not shades-of-grey ambiguity, no matter how much you stamp your foot and insist it is.

Narratives have themes, and you can't sidestep that by trying to hide in vagueness and claim anyone trying to pin you down is succumbing to black-and-white thinking.

Kinzo is a rapist and probably a serial murderer. Kyrie is also an insane mass killer (though there's some room for interpretation still, regarding her daughter if nothing else). If you follow the mindset of "this good or this bad", then of course Episode 8 would fall apart for you. The story's not asking you to consider them good people in the end. Even the manga makes no attempt to justify their behaviours, with the characters themselves outright saying "yeah we have no excuse". They're also dead. The message here is that Ange needs to understand who they are as people and family, rather than the worst things they did.

...whhhhy?

Like. Why? Why would Kinzo mean ♥♥♥♥ to Ange? The game barely explains why BATTLER means ♥♥♥♥ to Ange. So why portray remembering him as "a doting grandfather" as good? It's like literally shown to be part of what she needs to remain sane and not commit suicide.

Again, narratives have themes. I respect Umineko for being ambitious enough to try to wrangle very complicated themes, even if it fails. I absolutely do NOT respect them trying to gloss over their mistakes and their unsavory implications with "Oh you're just not appreciating the nuance."

Among many other themes, this story absolutely endorses "It's good to ignore when your family member is a rapist." If the author means that as part of the tapestry, then they gotta own it, and I'd be interested in seeing them *really* explore it.

If they didn't mean it (and frankly they were WAY in over their heads by the time chapter 8 rolled around so I wouldn't be surprised if it was just an accident) then they shoulda done some more rewrites.



(Like, rewrite goggles on, chapter 8 should be about three people: Ange, Kyrie, and Eva. Those are the two people Ange needs to process her emotions about. It doesn't make sense anyone else would matter to her (except Maria, but she processed her emotions about her in chapter 4).

It says a whole lot that spiky haired anime hero boy is more central to Ange's feelings here than either of her freakin' MOTHERS. Their need to keep him central is a huge issue. And, of course, if Kyrie was central, they'd have to reveal clearly that she actually did it, and we can't have that because something something goats devouring the golden world something something)

If you weave between the red truths enough, you can even make Natsuhi the culprit. You can make anyone the culprit, if you work at it and twist the red truths. But it does not make character sense. George can, if you look at nothing but red truths or whatever, probably be Kanon. If you care one bit about character motivations and struggles and themes then you would be able to notice that this makes no sense. I'm not even talking about the fantasy scenes.

Well but this is the whole problem. The game never makes clear what's a fantasy scene and what isn't. A character-defining scene where you see how badly Natsuhi wants to be accepted by Kinzo might be just a "fantasy scene" like something with rabbit guns. Who knows? Everything's just a possibility in a cat box.

I liked Natsuhi. I was motivated to take her character motivations seriously. But the game completely undercut that by telling me I couldn't trust anything I was seeing. Why should I believe she really cares about Kinzo's approval, if I SHOULDN'T believe Kanon and Shannon were really in a room talking to one another? How can I possibly get emotionally committed to any character if anything I'm seeing might not have happened and might not matter?

This is the biggest problem with the game, especially given that the interminable witch ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fantasy scenes were... well... interminable. There's so much MORE nonsense than actual narrative.

Umineko is both a deconstruction and a reconstruction of the Mystery genre. Deconstruction in all the things I talked about, that when put into context, treating life and death game as an intellectual puzzle for you to solve and feel superior is kind of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing to do if you care about the people involved at all. It is also deconstruction of the idea that mysteries are pure logic and puzzles in the first place, because that's the height of fantasy that can only exist in fictions. Detectives in the real world have no such luxuries.

I actually just realized something. Because you're right: these are themes in the game. And they're completely incoherent and contradictory.

Because IN REAL LIFE, not caring about the people involved is cruel. They're real people, deserving of dignity, with feelings. Simultaneously, IN FICTION, mysteries are 100% solvable. There is never a point the twain meet!

This is why Erika's "intellectual rapist" thing is nonsense. If this was real life, then she wouldn't be able to Be A Detective like she is. And if this is a fictional story, then a reader wouldn't be a bad person for not respecting these characters' dignity, because they're fictional.

Erika can be criticized for being an intellectual rapist because she happens to be a fictional character within the story herself. But this isn't a metaphor for anything. It relates to nothing that could actually exist.

I mean I can accept your view about the "I was right" moment being a satisfying moment in a mystery. The author said the same, although I think he said this about Higurashi, even though that one does reveal the answer funnily enough. It, however, would have not worked the same way with Umineko, which takes a more post-modern approach. Or, to put it in a less pretentious way, Umineko rejects absolute truth and hammers home the fact that "you have to work for your answer" so much in prior Episodes that it would be somewhat hypocritical to just lay out "well here's the absolute truth".

OK, well, see, but here's problem number one: THERE IS AN ABSOLUTE TRUTH. KYRIE AND RUDOLF DID IT. KANON AND SHANNON ARE THE SAME PERSON. The game is just really coy about actually just telling us this.

"We can't ever know real truth" and "ha ha there's a real truth and I'll hint it but won't actually tell you" are very much not the same thing. The author knows what happened. He wrote it. This is another place where the fact that this is a fictional story hamstrings the themes the author is trying to explore.

Though if you care about that "I was right" moment, maybe go see the manga chapters that reveal the official solutions to the mystery.

Yeeeaaaaaaahhhh it is not a case in favor of this game being well-written that people say "Oh, you need to just read this comic book first to really get everything out of it."

Again, "you gotta work for the answer" is a commentary on a tiny, weird little corner of mystery-readers. The enjoyment of mysteries is trying to figure them out so you can have the fun "yeah!" moment if you're right, and an "Oh, of course!" moment if you're wrong. That's why you read them.

I don't know what you mean though. Shannon and Kanon were the culprits. Kyrie is an opportunist who, after Shannon already gave up, killed everyone for the gold. In the grand scheme of things, she takes a more minor role than, say, Natsuhi or Eva or Rosa.

No? She kills (or gets Rudolph to kill) almost everybody. Shannon/Kanon could have literally not existed, and the weekend would have played out the same.

[Battler Ushiromiya]

I'm going to add on to what Ellixer said and say that Ep 8 is about showing that these characters are not their absolute worst attributes. Kinzo is a delusional insane old man who has done the most horrendous things, but Battler poses the question of if he was like that in his final years. We very rarely see the true Kinzo. Kinzo has done awful things, yes, but that doesn't mean he is always awful. Ange doesn't know anything about Kinzo other than what she's told by other people who don't know Kinzo. His actions are irredeemable and undeniable but his personality and his interaction with his family in his final years is very much up.for interpretation and that is what Battler is trying to convey. Kinzo as we see in Yasu's flashback regrets the actions he took in his life and desires atonement, and there is nothing suggesting that he didn't start being less of a horrible human being with his grandchildren. In Episode 4, Nanjo says that even Kinzo smiled when he saw the newborn faces of his grandchildren, which could point to this being true, Kinzo did try and become a better man. Kyrie is similar. We don't know how much of what she told Eva about her feelings towards Ange is true. Yes she is a sociopathic mass murderer, but many interpretations have been made that said that Kyrie said she didn't care about Ange so Eva would pity her and raise her because she knew she wasn't going to make it off the island. And that's what Battler was trying to lean into in 8, that Kyrie does truly care for Ange, she merely lied for Ange's sake after trying and failing to kill everyone. People are complex. You can't just reduce people to their worst qualities and assume what they're like based on their worst actions when you don't know them. Now I'm not gonna start trying to say that Kinzo and Kyrie were good people. I'm just saying that face value is not all there is.

[carp]

Originally posted by Battler Ushiromiya:

I'm going to add on to what Ellixer said and say that Ep 8 is about showing that these characters are not their absolute worst attributes. Kinzo is a delusional insane old man who has done the most horrendous things, but Battler poses the question of if he was like that in his final years. We very rarely see the true Kinzo. Kinzo has done awful things, yes, but that doesn't mean he is always awful.

...


And that's what Battler was trying to lean into in 8, that Kyrie does truly care for Ange, she merely lied for Ange's sake after trying and failing to kill everyone. People are complex. You can't just reduce people to their worst qualities and assume what they're like based on their worst actions when you don't know them. Now I'm not gonna start trying to say that Kinzo and Kyrie were good people. I'm just saying that face value is not all there is.

I got into this in the rambling post above, but there's several issues with this:

1. It makes Ange's extremely muddled story even more muddled. Ange didn't need to learn "Kinzo is complex and wasn't always a bad person." She needed to learn that *Eva* was complex and not always a bad person. Because Eva's the one she spent years with, and the one she had all the resentment for.

2. There is a VERY VERY FINE LINE between rapist/murderer/kidnapper apologia and "this rapist/murderer/kidnapper shouldn't just be reduced to his worst qualities." It's not an impossible needle for a writer to thread, but if you're gonna do it, you need to spend a lot of time specifically talking about it.

3. It's more of this huge, huge problem of the game trying to simultaneously say "you can't know truth for sure!" and "you should trust some of these character motivations we're showing you are true." If Kinzo was maybe actually super-nice, despite the fact that almost every time we see him he's a raging ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, then why am I, as a reader, supposed to accept anything we see about anyone? Like, I think we're supposed to just believe 100% that yes, George loved Shannon. But what makes the scenes establishing that different from the scenes establishing old Kinzo was a jerk?

4. It isn't even true. Ange isn't shown saying "I acknowledge my birth mother was a psychopath but I can still feel love for her because she had a good side, too." She's shown saying "Nuh uh, I don't care if you say with the red truth she was a murderer. I'm gonna keep believing she wasn't."
This magic metaphor went off the rails in like chapter 3, but a big problem is it's trying both to say "magic is what allows Maria to have hope even though Rosa is abusive" and also "magic is what shows us Rosa maybe wasn't abusive after all." There is a very huge difference between those, because one is learning the truth and coming to terms with it, and the other is living in denial.

[Ellixer]

It's super late here so I'm going not going to be 100% comprehensive. Push me if anything should be addressed but I have not.

Also I'll just say that since steam censors all the naughty words there are times I have no idea what you're talking about and just have to take a guess.

I mean, Erika didn't believe Mystery was anything but pure logic puzzles to be solved. If you think she's a strawman that doesn't represent any real person that's fair enough (though I'd say deconstructions tend not to condemn people but rather raises questions about trends and genre conventions). No idea what you mean by putting characters on one side and other characters on another though. Dlanor and Willard fight with Beatrice in the end. I don't think the story puts fantasy and mystery at odds in the end. From Episode 5 forward to me it's always held the position that these things can occupy the same space. Battler gained magic by understanding the truth and figuring out the mystery. He didn't become a sorcerer when he said "well actually I changed my mind no human did this it could only be a witch". Magic ending isn't a rejection of facts and logic. Trick ending however is a rejection of anything that's not facts and logic.

I stil l do not understand why you believe Maria's scenes are meant to portray her as pathetic. Between her and Ange, the latter's the one who acts like a kid throwing a tantrum half the times, while Maria despite her false beliefs and needs to paint over her tragic situation is portrayed to be incredibly mature at times. She correctly sums up Ange's problem as believing that "objective truth" is really just what she already believes, and she understands the sad fact that there's always a victim and by being one she's sparing another of the same fate. Like you can say that's a kind of messed up belief for a kid to have but I wouldn't say that's anywhere near pathetic. It shows a power to process trauma that heals better than most of the other characters, her mother being the biggest example of passing the abuses she received onto others. In the end, Ange is wrong. She talks a big game about not facts and logic but when push comes to shove (the classroom scene) she tries to use magic to get out of her problems. In the end, her character development is being able to grow beyond her narrow viewpoint and be able to accept that other people see things differently. It was stated right at the beginning of her journey.

I have no idea what you mean with the themes though. I'm guessing what you're saying is that story needs to be parables, carrying clear positions and advocating for something concrete. Unless you mean instead that Umineko contradicts itself, which I'm not sure how. "People are complicated, not black and white" and "this is one way one can meaningfully heal and process tragedies" are not two contradictory positions.

Maybe this is a cultural thing but is it really, really that much of a stretch to believe you care about someone because they are family? Maybe I can accept the thought that Ange shouldn't care at all about Kinzo they probably meet like once a year back when she was probably too young to remember anything. But Battler? Her fondest memories are of him. They spend a lot of time together as siblings. Even beyond the blood relation, Battler was just a huge presence in her life, and for some reason the story has to provide further reasons why Ange cares about her brother? Anyway Kinzo is there because family is important to Ange. Apparently that's not already obvious from the fact that the thought that her family is gone and she's alone in the world is enough to get her to kill herself.

I do agree that Eva and Kyrie should have a larger role in Episode 8 though.

The fantasy scenes are never pointless, or almost never, I don't remember every single one, granted, but a part of it is to sort out what is factual and what is true from a certain point of view. Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice scenes are not just wasting time and tricking the audience. They present inner conflicts. They present a character who is killing off part of themselves and their identity. Beatrice demeaning and insulting the two of them represent their self-loating, a crucial aspect to figuring out whydunnit. Fantasy scenes also say a lot based on who's present as hints toward who might be working with the culprit.

Anyway we know that any scene where Battler is present is factual, save for Episode 5. Audience is expected to work from there to sort out truth and illusion.

Do you know for sure? No, you don't. That's the mystery. And the "love" in this regard is the trust that what you are being shown is important and is meant to push you toward the truth. Once Battler understood that, he solved the mystery.

You can argue that Erika is a strawman and does not represent any real person. Alright. I mean it's a bit odd that I see so many people who believes she's the real hero for being strong and intelligent but alright let's accept that as a valid criticism anyway.

What does that have to do with the deconstruction being invalid? It is a deconstruction of genre conventions and archetypes. Deconstructions, good ones anyway, aren't as shallow as "thing good" or "thing bad". Erika represents the part of the mystery genre that is pure logic and no heart. The only way she is invalid is if these stories don't exist, which, well if you make that claim then I'm not sure where to go from there.

I'll accept the notion that "there is no absolute truth" and "there is a real human culprit with a clear who how why you just need to figure out" can be contradictory. But if the latter is true then what's the issue here? The complaint, as I understand it, is that the mystery is tossed aside or that there isn't an answer and it's just fantasy. Well there is an answer. You can kind of check whether you were right or not.

Anyway absolute truth is only possible because we are an audience viewing a story. No one who lives in this universe has this privilege. Ange has to choose to believe Eva is not lying, because without literal magic beings coming into it there's no way to confirm it either. You can find evidence for your truth but you'll always have to have faith in those evidence, in your senses, etc. That's why it's never absolute. The clues are always held together with faith.

Fair enough that the manga is not a valid defense of anything if we're talking about the visual novel. It's kind of not relevant. But it's there if anyone doubts there's an answer or want to check their theories

And that's a fair enough point from a certain point of view. I'd argue if Kyrie did not exist it'd play out the same, if we're going down that road. Maybe Eva would have picked up the slack. Maybe Rosa would. Part of the main point is that you cannot pin the entire thing on any one person, that abuse is cyclical and it's rarely the case that there's a single entity you can place all the blames on (it would be Kinzo, if anything).

It's irrelevant to the mystery though. Kyrie did not kill anyone in Episode 1 to 6. She is an opportunist who is simply quicker than anyone else when this entire house of cards built on resentment and abuse comes crashing down.

Episode 8 isn't meant to override everything that came before. It's meant to show that this is also part of that person. Both these things are true. I'm getting real tired of arguing mechanics when that's really the last thing the story is about though so I'm just going to say that the story is Battler removing all the abuses everyone in the Ushiromiya received and showing that beneath there's more underneath their skin than just contempt and spite. The magic scenes don't tell you that all the bad things they did never happened. They told you that there's good there too. And you can personally choose to still condemn them or no, like that's a very valid position to take, but it never denies that they have done terrible things in their lives. The audience has 7 episodes to figure that out that these people are/can be terrible people.

I'm going to need you to cite your sources on Ange saying her mother didn't kill anyone.

[carp]

Originally posted by Ellixer:

I mean, Erika didn't believe Mystery was anything but pure logic puzzles to be solved. If you think she's a strawman that doesn't represent any real person that's fair enough (though I'd say deconstructions tend not to condemn people but rather raises questions about trends and genre conventions).

I'm saying mystery readers try to solve mysteries as they read them, and this includes puzzling out motives. That's the fun. If you don't think about things, you're cheating yourself out of an emotional reward. The game's "you only care about whodunnits, not the heart" is a baffling false binary that doesn't apply to the vast majority of mystery readers, and so it doesn't say anything revealing about the mystery genre.


The author assumes that there's this tension between logic-puzzle-mystery-solving and "caring about the heart." He presumes that if you want the game to clearly show who did it, then you must be lazy and want the answers handed to you instead of thinking about things.

And these assumptions are just... wrong. More than wrong, they're so far removed from how most people see mysteries, it's just bizarre. I guessed that this makes more sense if your community is uber-nerds who want to game-ify everything and get super annoyed at any ambiguity, but that's just speculation.

I have no idea what you mean with the themes though. I'm guessing what you're saying is that story needs to be parables, carrying clear positions and advocating for something concrete.

I'm saying that all narratives have themes. You have talked about Umineko's themes all throughout this thread, things like, "You shouldn't reduce people to the worst things about them" or "Absolute truth is unknowable." Right? So we're totally on the same page that the game is making lots of general statements about things (because that's how narratives work)?

Umineko, in particular, is NOT SUBTLE ABOUT ITS THEMES. The characters sit around discussing them for hours and hours and hours.

Well, the game very explicitly makes "remember Kinzo as a doting grandfather instead of the kidnapping rapist he was" a part of what leads Ange to a happy ending. That was a choice the writers made. They absolutely didn't have to do that.

So, what's that choice communicating? You speculate below it's saying something like "You should respect your family members even if they're terrible people." (let me know if you'd want to rephrase that)
And sure, I can agree that might be the theme. I can also say that's morally egregious, because it gets in the way of justice and perpetuates norms where people inter-family abuse can happen much more easily. And it's bad writing if the authors try to sidestep that by saying "shades of grey." Either own it and really explore it, or don't have it in there.


Now, let's think about Maria. We both agree her whole deal here with magic, mostly explored in chapter 4, is about the cycle of abuse, and how she (uniquely, in her family) is able to escape it.

So, first thing, this necessitates that ROSA ACTUALLY IS ABUSIVE. If she's not, then there's no cycle for Maria to escape.


Maria has this focus on magic, with her diary and her grimoire. And Ange looks at all that and explicitly spells out for the audience (again, Umineko is not subtle with its themes) that because of her belief in magic, Maria would have been able to break the cycle of abuse. Are we on the same page about this?

Okay... what is this saying? What's the message here? Maria's magic is very explicitly described as *THE way to break the cycle of abuse*. No other effective methods are presented. (and then later Ange has to outright choose "magic" to get a happy ending) So what is "magic" here?

To me, it sure looks like "magic" is "pretending your abusive mom isn't abusive and retreating into fantasy instead of dealing with what's actually going on around you." and from that, there's the general theme "Denying the truth of trauma is the way to effectively deal with trauma." And therefore: "When Ange chooses magic, she chooses to ignore or refuse to learn the unsavory truths about her family's death instead of accepting and coming to terms with them, and that is how she becomes happy."

I presume you disagree, so what do you think magic is representing, and what's your reasoning?

If your inclination here is to say "oh I don't know, there's not a real answer, nothing is cut-and-dried" that won't fly. They're clearly saying SOMETHING, or they were wasting our time with nonsense. (And unlike the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ interminable fight scenes, I give them the benefit of the doubt with this Maria stuff that it's not nonsense.)

Maybe I can accept the thought that Ange shouldn't care at all about Kinzo they probably meet like once a year back when she was probably too young to remember anything. But Battler? Her fondest memories are of him. They spend a lot of time together as siblings.

No they don't. They 100% don't. Battler is gone for almost all of her life. This is why he's SYMBOLICALLY meaningful for her, because the very few times they were in the same house, it felt really special. Their actual RELATIONSHIP was almost nil.

and this is fine! But there really isn't much to it. Ange and Eva (or Ange and Kyrie post reveal) should have BOTH symbolic AND relational significance to Ange.

It's just Battler is spiky haired anime hero boy, so he's always gotta be the center of everything. Eva's boring old middle aged lady.

The fantasy scenes are never pointless, or almost never...

Oh my god Gaap fights George for like a million hours GEORGE DOES CAPOEIRA are you serious

Do you

do you EVEN REMEMBER Kraus fighting the goat? Do you

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dude, "the fantasy scenes are never pointless" hollllyyyyy ♥♥♥♥ the DEMON TWINS AND THEIR COMEDY SHOW

Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice scenes are not just wasting time and tricking the audience. They present inner conflicts. They present a character who is killing off part of themselves and their identity.

This is not a tightrope that can be walked. If you want me, as a reader, to be emotionally moved by a character's situation, I first have to believe that I'm being presented a real character in a real situation (that is, that the facts of this scene will matter and still be true after the scene is over). And when you make it clear entire scenes are nonsense, you rob me of the ability to do that.

If the game established that the character psychology and motivation being presented are ALWAYS true, even if the events playing out might not actually be happening, that'd be one thing (but probably much harder to write than you'd think). But they absolutely do not stick to this rule: plenty of characters are shown acting counter to their "real motivations."

So seriously, just very basic question that's a good example of this: Why should I, as a reader, believe Natsuhi really cares about Kinzo's approval? Why shouldn't I assume that's a lie, like Kinzo the doting grandfather was? (in fact these two examples show two things that probably CAN'T both be true)

Like I said, I want to be into this! I wanted to be able to grasp the psychology of characters like Natsuhi. But the scenes telling us the truth (literal or psychological) and the scenes telling us nonsense are indistinguishable, and that is a hugely fatal flaw in the game.


Especially because the answer is "Because the author who wrote this fictional story meant for Natsuhi's thing to be real but for Kinzo's thing to not be real." But that's precisely AGAINST the other points the author is trying to make!!





I saw a movie last year called "I'm Thinking of Ending Things." Absolutely nothing we see in that movie literally happens, but it's still understandable and clear and moving, because it's all a reflection of a single person's desires. Every moment says something about the PERSON this is a psychological examination of.

And the same can't be said for Umineko, because of two things.

1. You said the Shannon/Kanon scenes (for example) weren't just to waste time and trick the audience. Sure... but they were LARGELY to waste time and trick the audience. Like... there's no way you could possibly try to argue that the writer of this game doesn't love his filler, or that the pre-reveal portrayals of Shannon/Kanon weren't a huge, deliberate part of making the mysteries harder. (In fact, if Shannon and Kanon didn't have fake conversations, everything is way too easy.) So the author gets stretched way, way too thin, because they're trying to do a mystery trick but also give it psychological and thematic weight, and that's just tough.

2. In Umineko, some things ARE real. We totally are supposed to believe some things we're shown literally happened, and that some characters really do feel the way they're shown to feel. So it's not a matter of figuring out the symbols... it's a matter of figuring out, with zero guidance, what even is a symbol and what's not.

You can argue that Erika is a strawman and does not represent any real person. Alright. I mean it's a bit odd that I see so many people who believes she's the real hero for being strong and intelligent but alright let's accept that as a valid criticism anyway.

What does that have to do with the deconstruction being invalid?

To be clear, I'm saying the "intellectual rapist" thing illustrates how the deconstruction is incoherent and self-contradictory.

Because the idea is, Erika's detective-like orientation is bad because it's CRUEL. We on the same page, here? You said as much in your last message.

And I'm saying this is nonsense, because if the story is real, you can't be a detective and 100% figure out the right answer... but if the story is fiction, there's nothing cruel about dismissing and disrespecting the characters, because they're not real people. So it's impossible to actually be saying ANYTHING coherent with that whole thing.

They're trying to take assumptions about reality (it's bad to ignore real people's feelings) and trying to use it to draw conclusions about fiction (you shouldn't "ignore the heart" in mysteries) and that doesn't make sense.



And they run into this same problem with chapter 8 and Ange! Because she's FICTIONAL. She doesn't live in a world where the truth is uncertain. This is not a real woman deciding she can't be sure if her mom was a psycho killer. This is a fictional woman deciding she can't be sure if her mom, who totally was a psycho killer, was a psycho killer.

The authors try to pretend that last part isn't true. They try to pretend "the truth is uncertain, because real life!" in a story where some things are certainly true. It doesn't work.

[Ellixer]

Magic, to me, is to understand the truth and present it or reframe it into something that gives it more meaning to you. Maria’s way of coping is imperfect. It’s not the only way that works. But it’s a way a child her age can make sense of the abuses inflicted upon her and reconcile that with the love she feels from her mother. She separates one person into two to make sense in her mind how someone can be both cruel to you and still remain dear to your heart.

Ange’s magic is different. She is a young adult. She does not really believe that witches exist, not the way Maria does. She can understand better that people are complicated. Her magic is being able to carry on living with the strength of her family.

And since we’re already at it, Shannon’s magic is closer to Maria’s brand, but wielded in a way that does less healing and more avoiding having to solve the issue. She feels severely inadequate about her body and identity, so she produces the identity of a boy to shove all her negative feelings onto. She is young and clumsy so she messes up, so she invented a witch who steals her things randomly and returns them later. She feels hurt by Battler seemingly forgetting about her, so she shoves all that love onto another identity. She also shares her magic with Maria to make the girl happier. That is also magic. But Shannon’s form of magic is more harmful even when she has a better grasp on reality. Unlike Maria, she is in a position to make a change for herself, and she hides behind magic instead of taking decisive actions that might change things for her.

That’s how I understand magic. It paints over facts with a different story, but not necessarily a contradictory one. It’s never outright false, but a version of the truth that makes more sense to the heart and can be wielded in ways that are harmful or helpful.

Umineko does hammer its themes home. Not going to argue that. I would even agree that some trimming might be in order, as it is of an unholy length.

The choice in question is that people are complicated. They are capable of both kindness and cruelties. The Ushiromiya reputation is dragged through the dirt after the incident, and it's not undeserved either. Kinzo is a bastard to more than just his family. Krauss really is an upper class twit. Rudolf engages in borderline or outright illegal business practices. Rosa's the second worst parent in the entire story after Kinzo. Eva is implied to engage in the same business practices as Kinzo. The message is to not let that be the end all be all of the people who are dear to your heart. Cruelties are often born of abuses. Their worst qualities don't define them anymore than their best. Both things can be true. Episode 2 Maria came to understand this, that there is no evil Rosa and no lovely Rosa. The abusive mother who beats her and the loving mother who spoils her are the same person. Kinzo is a rapist and probably a mass murderer who is also repentant who understands he committed a great evil upon his own daughter that he seeks to make amends with Shannon and fully understands why Genji hid his child from him out of fear that history would repeat itself. Eva is both an abuser toward Ange and someone who is willing to subject herself to condemnation in both her public and private lives to protect the feelings of her only remaining relative even if it earns her nothing but scorn. People can be both these things. To acknowledge one and not the other is to look at the truth with one eye closed.

That is the message, to my mind. You can disagree with Ange's decision to continue making her family a great source of strength. I know I certainly do not forgive Kinzo. But that's what it is. It's not about turning the other way. It's about looking at the full picture.

Battler visits Ange frequently after he leaves home, frequently enough that he remembers things like her little childish habits or the gifts he bought her even as Tohya. She was six years old when the Rokkenjima incident happens. That's six years of knowing your brother, about as long as the time she had with her parents.

But let's leave aside the length for a moment, because that's a reductive way to look at it. Shannon knows Battler for a few days and he was a hugely important figure to her too. So why the fixation? Because to Shannon, Battler was the first, and because he represents a hope of a life outside the island as someone other than the Ushiromiya servant. Kumasawa is the only person who was kind to her, though others were too now and then, but their relationships are inevitably that of a servant and her masters (save for Kumasawa who was something of a mother figure). Battler was someone she had a childhood crush on, yes, and childhood crushes almost never work out and almost nobody make a fuss of it years later. But Battler represents something more to her at the same time, a way to leave the island and start a new life, and that's why the loss hurt. There are multiple layers to this. I still think you can read it as excessive, but the unequal positions and the myriad of problems thrown at Shannon one after another made Battler both a crush and something of a lifeline, and it hurt when he disappears.

So, Ange then. Let's examine her situation. Her only relative abuses her (her intention does not mitigate this fact, and Eva is among my favourite characters in anything). Her schoolmates severely mistreat her. The media drags up scandals and conspiracies about her family. Compared to now, that six years with her parents and brother in her life must have been like heaven. Battler's not only a presence in her life, he along with her parents represent a better time before everything went to hell, and he looks out for her.

Like, I'm really not sure why this is difficult to accept. The story hammers home that he is extremely important to her, and you just go "nah that's not true it's nonsense that he's that important to her". It's doubly odd because you were more accepting that Maria is important to her, even though Maria is both a cousin (rather than a brother) and someone who spent less time with her (I'd believe they meet once a year, unlike Battler who lives near her and spends family time together even if they don't live in the same house).

The fantasy scene between George and Gaap is still an important character moment. It shows that George’s highest priority is Shannon, at the exclusion of everyone else. In this way, he is not too dissimilar to his mother. It also shows that he will fight tooth and nail to save everyone though, and just like Jessica he does not accept false choices being presented to him.

Krauss’s scene presents a more simple and earnest side to him. He steps up to defend others in a pinch, and his passion for boxing is a character beat that shows something important deep down that his position as the family head forces him to keep buried. This is corroborated by Kanon’s recollection of the man as someone who beneath it all wants to be buddy buddy with people and probably would have been much happier had he been born to a more average family.

That’s what I mean. The fantasy scenes always provide relevant information. Not all of them are internal battles like the Beatrice scenes with Shannon and Kanon that lay their characters out for all to see. Nevertheless, they are often clues and insights that would be missed if you just trimmed them all, and they can only seem that way if you come at it with the belief that the author is working with you rather than against you, something Battler came to accept in Episode 5.

Erika is not the reader. Erika is someone who lives in this world but acts like the people in this world are playthings in her conquest. You can say Erika is making false assumption about the readers who are nothing like her, but then would it not be easy to see her as a contemptible character (who can nevertheless be great fun due to how she's played)?

Let's say for the sake of argument that she does not represent the worst aspects of an archetype or is not a deconstruction of genre conventions, then she's just a pointlessly cruel character who does not make a point whatsoever. But that was not your criticism was it? It was how she was made villainous for wanting the author to clearly reveal the answers (I mean I dispute that this is what she wants in the first place but hey), so to you she does reflect an aspect of mystery reader, just not one you think should be deemed villainous (which is fair enough, wanting the answer revealed ought not to be villainous, I am actually of the opinion that the goat thing was too on the nose and a bit mean, though I don't think that's what Erika is).

And even if she wasn't a deconstruction of some sort, I'd still argue she'd act as an effective foil to Battler and Willard as the antithesis of the theme of without love the truth cannot be seen (which, granted, is not entirely true, as it is implied that after her defeat she reaches the conclusion the same way Battler did).

[Battler Ushiromiya]

"So seriously, just very basic question that's a good example of this: Why should I, as a reader, believe Natsuhi really cares about Kinzo's approval? Why shouldn't I assume that's a lie, like Kinzo the doting grandfather was? (in fact these two examples show two things that probably CAN'T both be true)"
First, why do you assume Kinzo the doting grandfather is a lie? There is nothing saying its a lie. His past actions doesn't mean that he couldn't have tried to be a better person later on. Why couldn't Kinzo the shut-in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ be the false one? We have the least scenes with the real Kinzo because he is already dead, and a majority of the scenes we do have of him are far in the past. It doesn't inform his current personality in the slightest. As for Natsuhi, we know this stuff is true simply because there is no reason to question it. Pieces cannot act out of character even in magic scenes, and Natsuhi's character from the scenes we know are factual (in front of Battler and prior to the final conference) lines up with other scenes we see that may not necessarily be true, namely the Kinzo scenes because those are fake. It's not hard to figure out what's real and what's fake. Shannon/Kanon together in the same room, usually fake. Magic characters with the exception if Beatrice showing up are usually fake. If a character is an accomplice, that casts doubt on their scenes. Outside of these scenarios, it is a fair assumption to say that the scenes are legit. There are next to no exceptions that I can think of. And even the magic scenes are all important, be it showing character traits as Elixxer says, or be they symbolic, like every murder scene, every ShKanonTrice dialogue scene, and even the mere existence of characters like EVA, Zepar, and Furfur (the latter of whom I do not appreciate or tolerate disrespect for).

[Ellixer]

To be honest I'm going to tap out of the conversation now. I don't want to say you're wrong to feel the way you feel (like I do not feel 100% comfortable about certain plot beats either and do feel that Battler's intention for Ange is well-intentioned but wrong and it's important to me that the manga adaptation altered the plot somewhat so it's clear that his way of approaching it is deeply flawed and that Beatrice can sympathize with Ange and at one point stood up to Battler to tell him that he's being ridiculous and not giving his own sister enough credits but that's enough of an off-topic rant I think), but I do think your mindset is, in a way, kind of incompatible with the themes of Umineko. We're already going in circle and I'm pretty sure that whoever ends up being "correct" (if there is even a correct way to consume fiction, really) or is able to gather more textual evidence to support their interpretation, it's not like that's going to convince anyone that actually Umineko is good or actually Umineko is bad. It's possibly my favourite piece of fiction ever so I'm inclined to defend it obviously but I'm not here to evangelize about things I like I keep up with the Umineko threads because I like sharing in this thing I love and if anyone has questions (which is not unlikely, Umineko being what it is) I'd like to do my part to answer them. But this debate is not going anywhere, partially because there are like five conversations happening at once and it's incredibly tiresome to juggle everything and trying to not miss things being added or removed, but mostly because it's just... it's not going anywhere anyone wants.

Hit me up if anyone wants to talk about something specific like interpretation of certain events or how the story approaches magic or discussion of characters, but otherwise I'm done here. Cheers.

[andrewfang2000]

Funny story: I made this huge post basically trying to argue against everything and mid-way through writing it I accidentally deleted it. I'm not going to type everything out again because I don't feel like writing the whole thing again but I'll just summarize my main points (which unfortunately will not have much supporting evidence due to all of that getting erased). Basically: you're misunderstanding the whole idea of truth and mystery that the setting wants to deconstruct as well as missing several key themes. One of the major themes is that people are multifaceted: the idea of Kinzo being a doting grandparent and Kyrie being a loving mother as well as the idea that Kinzo was a rapist and Kyrie was murderer are not contradictory ideas which is the entire point. (I will elaborate later) Next: the idea that magic is denying the truth is wrong. Magic has a few definitions throughout the story but to Ange which is the definition that matters the most, magic is about accept hope and the impact that fiction can have on reality. By accepting magic she isn't saying that "I literally believe this is done by magic", she is saying that "I know literally this is a trick but I still acknowledge that it was able to give me joy and I can use that joy to impact others". Indeed the idea that fiction and reality can and should impact each other but at the same time confusing one for the other is bad (this ties into Maria's story, Kinzo's story and the goats but ask me if you want elaborations since that is one of the parts that was deleted). Also, you seem to be under the impression that the author believes that the logic puzzles and the motive searching are in conflict. This is baffling because a major theme of EP7 is that these ideas are not in conflict with each other. Willard is the character that represents this. He solves the logic puzzles while at the same time caring enough about the heart to understand Sayo and also make her send off gentle and keep the mystery for others to solve. Remember that one goat that Willard thought solved the mystery who he praised. That's the author praising anyone who was willing to solve the logic puzzles and through them understand the heart of the mystery. Erika is not wrong because she wants to solve the logic games, she's wrong because she views the logic games as merely a tool to inflate her own ego. She doesn't care about the themes of the work, how the metaphors of the fantasy scenes matter and frankly, she doesn't even give a crap about the mystery itself. When she accuses Natsuhi of being the culprit, she immediately stops all critical thought and just uses the theory as a way to bully Natushi and show off her own superiority. If she truly cared about the "truth" then she would be more scientific, namely she should be questioning her own hypothesis. This is shown perfectly by the fact that she knows for a fact that Kinzo is dead yet knowingly uses a theory that asserts he is alive which shows just how much she actually cares about the truth. This is why she is ultimately wrong: to her mystery and truth are just things to inflate her own ego and bully other people, not that she wants to solve the mystery. This is a similar attitude to the Goats of the future. They don't care about what actually happened on Rokkenjima, they just want to have their theories confirmed for their own ego. The mysteries (all of it including the who, why and howdunnits) instead of being themselves a meaningful expression of the author, only are meaningful in relation to the reader which is a position the narrative disagrees with. Another notes on Erika: I find it strange that you would say that Erika shouldn't be criticized as heavily as Kinzo when she literally straight up murdered 6 people. Also in the original post I went into how Umineko argues that "True Crime" is ethically problematic and how this ties into the earlier theme of "fiction and reality should impact each other but also remain distinct and confusing them leads to problems" and if you want expansion on that idea I can give it. Also the author doesn't assume this binary classification of mystery readers between those who care about the heart and those that don't. Battler, Willard and yes even Erika all show they care about the the howdunnit as well as the whydunnit (remember it was literally Erika who clued in Battler about the importance of the who, why and howdunnit). As a final point on Erika: you also seem to miss that Erika has several points which the narrative actually agrees with. The idea that "love can make you see things that aren't there" is actually a constant theme if you go back and reread (which I am doing) and is actually explored heavily in Maria, Kinzo and Yasu's stories and her criticisms of how Battler was far too indirect in his handling of Ange and his vagueness causing problems is meant to be legitimate. Next up: you seem to have this odd aversion to the idea of decoding metaphor. You claim that it's difficult to tell which scenes are symbolic are which ones are not but the narrative goes out of it's way to give you clues in the form of the red truth and the detective's authority and at other time explicitly warns against trusting the literal word of the narrator. Indeed, decoding the metaphorical meaning of the fantasy scenes such as Shannon's confrontation with Beatrice, the love duel, and Natsuhi's past are vital to understanding the whodunnit which you claim to care about. In other words, the metaphor is an essential component of the mystery itself which plays into the ideas of seeing the complete truth which I will address in a second. The idea that the author cares more for the fantasy and the metaphor is then absurd because the point is repeatedly made that decoding the metaphor is the key to solving the mystery, in other words to solve one is to solve the other. Also if I am allowed to insert my opinion, you reducing Sayo's story which includes ideas of gender dysphoria, the psychological stress of conforming to social norms, depression, nihilism, fatalism, the idea that we assign the worth of women to their ability to produce children, the idea that society actively works to suppress individual identity and the general theme of finding meaning in relationships with other people to "there was a boy she liked as a kid" is really callous of you. You also asked repeatedly about the themes of Umineko: I've already stated a lot of them but allow me to give more "truth is vitally important, however when looking for the truth we need to search for the whole truth and not let preconceived biases affect our perception" which I assert is the central theme. I actually disagree with the fans who believe that the them is the "the truth is unknowable". In reality, I believe it is that "the truth is complex and sometimes subjective and has many layers and as our information about the truth changes our perspectives on it change as well to give many perspectives that are all valid as they are based on the facts of the time". In other words, truth is knowable and in fact we are actively encouraged to seek more facts so that our own perspectives are more accurate, but also that our different perspectives are all based on factual information and thus valid until further factual information is presented. In other words, truth is absolutely good and we should seek it, but because of already existing perspectives we have on the truth based on incomplete data, we tend to be biased towards our already existing perspectives. Going back to Erika, if she truly cared about the truth she would gladly accept the new facts that Battler presented. She doesn't, she actively hates that her theory had to change because Erika doesn't give a damn about the truth or about mystery, all she cares is that her perspective is validated. This ties very well into the theme of fiction and reality. Our fictions are informed by our perspectives on the real world (thus reality influencing fiction) and through that we build a subjective truth which becomes a part of identity. Through that identity (which as George points out individualizes us) we then live our lives which then influences the real world (fiction influencing reality). However, as the narrative points out, when reality or the objective side to truth conflicts with the subjective side, we tend to retreat to one side which is dangerous as only seeing the objective truth leads us to be like Erika and Bernkastel who fails to see how the culprits subjective perspectives tied into the murder (and thus ironically fall for illusions themselves) but only seeing subjective truth leads us to be like Maria, Kinzo and Sayo, basically applying our coping methods to a reality where the facts go against it, which causes delusion or as Erika rightfully put it "you see things that aren't there". The solution as discovered by Ange is that we must be willing to have subjective fictions but at the same time those subjective fictions should not deny objective facts. Basically the subjective truths and the objective truths should not be in conflict, they should coexist and impact the other but remain distinct as confusing the two leads to tragedy. This view on the truth is also relates to the theme of love. Love in this sense is understanding the subjective truths of another person as well as what objective facts led them to that conclusion. It is important to note that understanding does not imply agreement, you can understand and thus love another individual without agreeing with their perspectives. However, understanding requires that again, we acknowledge both objective and subjective reality, not just the subjective. This is why Battler forgiving Beatrice is so powerful, he acknowledges that she has sinned and that she needs some form of retribution for her sins but also acknowledges that she suffered a lot and that he can understand why she sinned. In other words, Battler doesn't fully forgive or forget what she has done but still is willing to understand her and accept her after she has recieved retribution. The same is with Ange. She doesn't fully forgive or forget her family, she just accepts that they were people with a lot of issues, that they genuinely loved her, and that they were also monstrous criminals. None of these facts are contradictory but Ange and the reader acknowledge that while the good they did for Ange does not excuse the crimes, the crimes also don't negate that love they showed her. All of her family should be brought to justice but they are all already dead, brutally murdered (and from a fantasy perspective all of them were killed over and over again in increasingly brutal ways) and as such justice has been served. Instead, she remembers both their love and their crimes so that she can move forward and avoid the same mistakes. If I am allowed to insert my own opinion once again, I would argue that in reality, if you were to condemn Ange for trying to fondly remember her family despite them being murderers I would consider you to be the evil one since she is allowed to feel whatever she wants about her family as long as she doesn't deny the truth and the facts. Basically, the whole theme of Umineko revolves around this idea of truth as being complex and multifaceted and the idea that it also includes subjective thoughts and fictions. All the other themes are supplements to this core: the theme of magic relates to how we cope with horrible truths but also how that coping can transform from a new perspective on truth into outright lies. The theme of mystery relates to the importance of finding complete truths, the importance of finding both the objective scenario (the howdunnit) and the subjective scenario (the whydunnit) and how they can supplement each other (I can also go into how Umineko is an attempt to write a "whydunnit" central mystery. While I do acknowledge that you care about the whydunnit, surely you must acknowledge that most writers care about the howdunnit more, Umineko is an attempt to subvert that where both the how and whydunnit exist but the why is central instead of the how like most mysteries). The theme of fiction and reality shows how we communicate truth and our interpretation of the truth through fiction but also how that can easily transform into lies if we view fiction as the absolute truth rather than an incomplete view of it. Love is then understanding of fictions and the truth that it represents. To view Umineko as anti-truth or that "the truth is unknowable" I think is a disservice to it's actual message: the truth is very important and we should keep looking for new information and perspectives because those lead us closer to the one truth. The mystery of Rokkenjima is solvable but just like in reality there isn't an answer sheet that we can just rely on, because to see the truth is to acknowledge and accept multiple seemingly contradictory aspects of the characters involved. It cannot be explained as just a howdunnit or a whydunnit because both would be incomplete versions of what really happened. If we are just told the how, why and whodunnit, we would not be getting the complete picture and thus the complete truth which means that our perspective would be biased by the existing interpretation. This is what Umineko means when it says that there are three stories in it: the first story is the fantasy story: a story of a witch Beatrice massacring the Rokkenjima family and the family itself being generally loving an accepting, this is the metaphorical story. The second story is one where the cruel mastermind Sayo murders a family of murderers and rapists in twisted retribution, this is the who and howdunnit story. The final story is of a horribly abused and troubled girl who kills off a family with conflicting emotions ignorant to their own sins, who are all troubled themselves thanks to generations of the cycle of abuse, this is the whydunnit story. Which one is the correct story? the answer is all of them since none of the above are actually contradictory: you just have to view the first through the lens of metaphor and subjective truths, the second through the lens of facts and objective truths and the final as a synthesis of the two. To accept that all of the above stories can be true is "love" and as the saying goes "without love the truth cannot be seen".

As some final notes: I would like to say that the creator of this work formerly worked a social worker who delt with abuse cases. I feel the need to emphasize this because unless you yourself are an abuse victim or work in a similar field, I feel that it is rather uncouth to speak of how a victim should speak about their abusers and how the family of abusers and criminals should feel. I say this because the above words will be my interpretation of the writers work who I do feel is an authority on the subject due to the aforementioned history. As such, the interpretation above does not necessarily reflect my opinion because I feel as though I am unqualified to make an opinion on the matter as I myself do not have the experience or information. However, I still stand by the idea that the family of criminals and abusers should not be vilified because of the actions of their blood. In addition, I contented that they have the right to their own opinions on the person in question. While I may not have experience in this particular field, I find the general idea of vilifying people based on the actions of their family abhorrent.

[Lenyn4K]

Originally posted by andrewfang2000:

Funny story: I made this huge post basically trying to argue against everything and mid-way through writing it I accidentally deleted it. I'm not going to type everything out again because I don't feel like writing the whole thing again but I'll just summarize my main points (which unfortunately will not have much supporting evidence due to all of that getting erased). Basically: you're misunderstanding the whole idea of truth and mystery that the setting wants to deconstruct as well as missing several key themes. One of the major themes is that people are multifaceted: the idea of Kinzo being a doting grandparent and Kyrie being a loving mother as well as the idea that Kinzo was a rapist and Kyrie was murderer are not contradictory ideas which is the entire point. (I will elaborate later) Next: the idea that magic is denying the truth is wrong. Magic has a few definitions throughout the story but to Ange which is the definition that matters the most, magic is about accept hope and the impact that fiction can have on reality. By accepting magic she isn't saying that "I literally believe this is done by magic", she is saying that "I know literally this is a trick but I still acknowledge that it was able to give me joy and I can use that joy to impact others". Indeed the idea that fiction and reality can and should impact each other but at the same time confusing one for the other is bad (this ties into Maria's story, Kinzo's story and the goats but ask me if you want elaborations since that is one of the parts that was deleted). Also, you seem to be under the impression that the author believes that the logic puzzles and the motive searching are in conflict. This is baffling because a major theme of EP7 is that these ideas are not in conflict with each other. Willard is the character that represents this. He solves the logic puzzles while at the same time caring enough about the heart to understand Sayo and also make her send off gentle and keep the mystery for others to solve. Remember that one goat that Willard thought solved the mystery who he praised. That's the author praising anyone who was willing to solve the logic puzzles and through them understand the heart of the mystery. Erika is not wrong because she wants to solve the logic games, she's wrong because she views the logic games as merely a tool to inflate her own ego. She doesn't care about the themes of the work, how the metaphors of the fantasy scenes matter and frankly, she doesn't even give a crap about the mystery itself. When she accuses Natsuhi of being the culprit, she immediately stops all critical thought and just uses the theory as a way to bully Natushi and show off her own superiority. If she truly cared about the "truth" then she would be more scientific, namely she should be questioning her own hypothesis. This is shown perfectly by the fact that she knows for a fact that Kinzo is dead yet knowingly uses a theory that asserts he is alive which shows just how much she actually cares about the truth. This is why she is ultimately wrong: to her mystery and truth are just things to inflate her own ego and bully other people, not that she wants to solve the mystery. This is a similar attitude to the Goats of the future. They don't care about what actually happened on Rokkenjima, they just want to have their theories confirmed for their own ego. The mysteries (all of it including the who, why and howdunnits) instead of being themselves a meaningful expression of the author, only are meaningful in relation to the reader which is a position the narrative disagrees with. Another notes on Erika: I find it strange that you would say that Erika shouldn't be criticized as heavily as Kinzo when she literally straight up murdered 6 people. Also in the original post I went into how Umineko argues that "True Crime" is ethically problematic and how this ties into the earlier theme of "fiction and reality should impact each other but also remain distinct and confusing them leads to problems" and if you want expansion on that idea I can give it. Also the author doesn't assume this binary classification of mystery readers between those who care about the heart and those that don't. Battler, Willard and yes even Erika all show they care about the the howdunnit as well as the whydunnit (remember it was literally Erika who clued in Battler about the importance of the who, why and howdunnit). As a final point on Erika: you also seem to miss that Erika has several points which the narrative actually agrees with. The idea that "love can make you see things that aren't there" is actually a constant theme if you go back and reread (which I am doing) and is actually explored heavily in Maria, Kinzo and Yasu's stories and her criticisms of how Battler was far too indirect in his handling of Ange and his vagueness causing problems is meant to be legitimate. Next up: you seem to have this odd aversion to the idea of decoding metaphor. You claim that it's difficult to tell which scenes are symbolic are which ones are not but the narrative goes out of it's way to give you clues in the form of the red truth and the detective's authority and at other time explicitly warns against trusting the literal word of the narrator. Indeed, decoding the metaphorical meaning of the fantasy scenes such as Shannon's confrontation with Beatrice, the love duel, and Natsuhi's past are vital to understanding the whodunnit which you claim to care about. In other words, the metaphor is an essential component of the mystery itself which plays into the ideas of seeing the complete truth which I will address in a second. The idea that the author cares more for the fantasy and the metaphor is then absurd because the point is repeatedly made that decoding the metaphor is the key to solving the mystery, in other words to solve one is to solve the other. Also if I am allowed to insert my opinion, you reducing Sayo's story which includes ideas of gender dysphoria, the psychological stress of conforming to social norms, depression, nihilism, fatalism, the idea that we assign the worth of women to their ability to produce children, the idea that society actively works to suppress individual identity and the general theme of finding meaning in relationships with other people to "there was a boy she liked as a kid" is really callous of you. You also asked repeatedly about the themes of Umineko: I've already stated a lot of them but allow me to give more "truth is vitally important, however when looking for the truth we need to search for the whole truth and not let preconceived biases affect our perception" which I assert is the central theme. I actually disagree with the fans who believe that the them is the "the truth is unknowable". In reality, I believe it is that "the truth is complex and sometimes subjective and has many layers and as our information about the truth changes our perspectives on it change as well to give many perspectives that are all valid as they are based on the facts of the time". In other words, truth is knowable and in fact we are actively encouraged to seek more facts so that our own perspectives are more accurate, but also that our different perspectives are all based on factual information and thus valid until further factual information is presented. In other words, truth is absolutely good and we should seek it, but because of already existing perspectives we have on the truth based on incomplete data, we tend to be biased towards our already existing perspectives. Going back to Erika, if she truly cared about the truth she would gladly accept the new facts that Battler presented. She doesn't, she actively hates that her theory had to change because Erika doesn't give a damn about the truth or about mystery, all she cares is that her perspective is validated. This ties very well into the theme of fiction and reality. Our fictions are informed by our perspectives on the real world (thus reality influencing fiction) and through that we build a subjective truth which becomes a part of identity. Through that identity (which as George points out individualizes us) we then live our lives which then influences the real world (fiction influencing reality). However, as the narrative points out, when reality or the objective side to truth conflicts with the subjective side, we tend to retreat to one side which is dangerous as only seeing the objective truth leads us to be like Erika and Bernkastel who fails to see how the culprits subjective perspectives tied into the murder (and thus ironically fall for illusions themselves) but only seeing subjective truth leads us to be like Maria, Kinzo and Sayo, basically applying our coping methods to a reality where the facts go against it, which causes delusion or as Erika rightfully put it "you see things that aren't there". The solution as discovered by Ange is that we must be willing to have subjective fictions but at the same time those subjective fictions should not deny objective facts. Basically the subjective truths and the objective truths should not be in conflict, they should coexist and impact the other but remain distinct as confusing the two leads to tragedy. This view on the truth is also relates to the theme of love. Love in this sense is understanding the subjective truths of another person as well as what objective facts led them to that conclusion. It is important to note that understanding does not imply agreement, you can understand and thus love another individual without agreeing with their perspectives. However, understanding requires that again, we acknowledge both objective and subjective reality, not just the subjective. This is why Battler forgiving Beatrice is so powerful, he acknowledges that she has sinned and that she needs some form of retribution for her sins but also acknowledges that she suffered a lot and that he can understand why she sinned. In other words, Battler doesn't fully forgive or forget what she has done but still is willing to understand her and accept her after she has recieved retribution. The same is with Ange. She doesn't fully forgive or forget her family, she just accepts that they were people with a lot of issues, that they genuinely loved her, and that they were also monstrous criminals. None of these facts are contradictory but Ange and the reader acknowledge that while the good they did for Ange does not excuse the crimes, the crimes also don't negate that love they showed her. All of her family should be brought to justice but they are all already dead, brutally murdered (and from a fantasy perspective all of them were killed over and over again in increasingly brutal ways) and as such justice has been served. Instead, she remembers both their love and their crimes so that she can move forward and avoid the same mistakes. If I am allowed to insert my own opinion once again, I would argue that in reality, if you were to condemn Ange for trying to fondly remember her family despite them being murderers I would consider you to be the evil one since she is allowed to feel whatever she wants about her family as long as she doesn't deny the truth and the facts. Basically, the whole theme of Umineko revolves around this idea of truth as being complex and multifaceted and the idea that it also includes subjective thoughts and fictions. All the other themes are supplements to this core: the theme of magic relates to how we cope with horrible truths but also how that coping can transform from a new perspective on truth into outright lies. The theme of mystery relates to the importance of finding complete truths, the importance of finding both the objective scenario (the howdunnit) and the subjective scenario (the whydunnit) and how they can supplement each other (I can also go into how Umineko is an attempt to write a "whydunnit" central mystery. While I do acknowledge that you care about the whydunnit, surely you must acknowledge that most writers care about the howdunnit more, Umineko is an attempt to subvert that where both the how and whydunnit exist but the why is central instead of the how like most mysteries). The theme of fiction and reality shows how we communicate truth and our interpretation of the truth through fiction but also how that can easily transform into lies if we view fiction as the absolute truth rather than an incomplete view of it. Love is then understanding of fictions and the truth that it represents. To view Umineko as anti-truth or that "the truth is unknowable" I think is a disservice to it's actual message: the truth is very important and we should keep looking for new information and perspectives because those lead us closer to the one truth. The mystery of Rokkenjima is solvable but just like in reality there isn't an answer sheet that we can just rely on, because to see the truth is to acknowledge and accept multiple seemingly contradictory aspects of the characters involved. It cannot be explained as just a howdunnit or a whydunnit because both would be incomplete versions of what really happened. If we are just told the how, why and whodunnit, we would not be getting the complete picture and thus the complete truth which means that our perspective would be biased by the existing interpretation. This is what Umineko means when it says that there are three stories in it: the first story is the fantasy story: a story of a witch Beatrice massacring the Rokkenjima family and the family itself being generally loving an accepting, this is the metaphorical story. The second story is one where the cruel mastermind Sayo murders a family of murderers and rapists in twisted retribution, this is the who and howdunnit story. The final story is of a horribly abused and troubled girl who kills off a family with conflicting emotions ignorant to their own sins, who are all troubled themselves thanks to generations of the cycle of abuse, this is the whydunnit story. Which one is the correct story? the answer is all of them since none of the above are actually contradictory: you just have to view the first through the lens of metaphor and subjective truths, the second through the lens of facts and objective truths and the final as a synthesis of the two. To accept that all of the above stories can be true is "love" and as the saying goes "without love the truth cannot be seen".

As some final notes: I would like to say that the creator of this work formerly worked a social worker who delt with abuse cases. I feel the need to emphasize this because unless you yourself are an abuse victim or work in a similar field, I feel that it is rather uncouth to speak of how a victim should speak about their abusers and how the family of abusers and criminals should feel. I say this because the above words will be my interpretation of the writers work who I do feel is an authority on the subject due to the aforementioned history. As such, the interpretation above does not necessarily reflect my opinion because I feel as though I am unqualified to make an opinion on the matter as I myself do not have the experience or information. However, I still stand by the idea that the family of criminals and abusers should not be vilified because of the actions of their blood. In addition, I contented that they have the right to their own opinions on the person in question. While I may not have experience in this particular field, I find the general idea of vilifying people based on the actions of their family abhorrent.

I don't think thats a summary pal.

Anyways, y'all should get a room.