Anyone else thinks the question arcs were better? (rant)

[Joaco]

After a long, long time I finally finished the 8 books. Does anyone else feel like the answer arcs were much worse than the question arcs? Reading when they cry 4 made me quite mad, so I'm writing this rant here to get it out of my system. Long text ahead!

Book 5 was the first episode that left me with a sour taste in my mouth. The middle of the book was fine, but the extremes were pretty bad. It was annoying how the beginning invalidated Battler's development and Ange's sacrifice at the end of book 4. Battler went from being completely determined to finish Beatrice off once and for all to lovingly taking care of her for some reason. And the cliffhanger from the previous ending was merely handwaved away.

However, the scene that really bothered me was the final trial, for 2 reasons. First of all it was at this point when the writer started getting a bit too enthusiastic when describing fight scenes. Making arguments look like battles is cool when videogames like danganronpa do it, because the visuals don't detract from the argument. But here, every line the author spent describing how cool Erika's scithe looked was a line that delayed the lines I was actually interested in, which were the arguments, without adding anything interesting. Swinging the camera and sprites around with some sound effects isn't really exciting.

But what really annoyed me was how bad the prosecution was. Erika was hyped up to be some sort of great detective, but it was impressive how she managed to finish her prosecution without making a single deduction. She even broke Knox's commandments many times. And the logic she used to pressure Natsuhi into confessing having an affair was extremely forced, even for umineko's standards (being able to check an entire forest in a couple hours and using "ScIeNcE" to check where a body had been was ridiculous). In any case, my problems with book 5 weren't too big compared to the other books.

Book 6 wasn't as bad as the previous one, but it was when Umineko got seriously bad. One minor complaint I have is that the author kept trying to make me care about Beatrice's "death" when at that point it was more than obvious that he didn't have the guts to kill anyone off for real.

However, the worst thing by far was how he started to reveal that he had no intentions of giving any answers to the mysteries. He even called the readers "swines" through his self-insert character. I admit I am insecure about my intelligence, and after finishing this book I spent some days feeling bad about myself for not being smart enough to deserve the answers. I've read many mystery stories and this is the only one that made me feel that way. Refusing to reveal the answers was horrible, but it wouldn't have been as bad if the author hadn't given us false hopes in the first episodes or if he hadn't been a prick about it.

Book 7 was absolutely infuriating (although it had the best songs, golden nocturne was excellent). I absolutely despised the battle between Claire and Willard. This was the only time I was truly mad. After spending so much time talking about the importance of the "who", the "how" and especially the "why" of any mystery and setting up the most anticipated scene in the entire series (the final battle between the witch and the human), the author managed to do everything wrong.

To me, it seemed like he wanted to be an elitist so badly that he went out of his way to make the scene less exciting just to avoid giving any real answers. If I understood correctly, which might not be the case since the author explained things really badly, the killer reveal contradicted previous information, her sob story had absolutely nothing to do with killing an entire family and blowing up their house and the "how" wasn't explained at all, which was unforgivable after all the importance it was given during the question arcs. If I got the extremely cryptic hints right, half of the crimes can be explained by "uuh actually that didn't happen". I coudln't have come up with a more dissapointing answer if I tried.

The worst part was how the author expected me to feel pity for the killer and her awful motive and how he didn't even explain the motives of all the other killers/accomplices from the previous books, even after all those sermons about the importance of the heart. Some may say the motives can be guessed, but I don't like the idea of fans doing the author's job, and I also don't want to speculate when there are no answers in the book. The execution matters, especially for something emotional like the motive.

And then there was book 8. I didn't really have a problem with it, but after the battle scene from book 7 my investment was as dead as Claire. I finished it without caring too much just for the sake of completion.


Even after all of this I can't really say I completely hate Umineko. The OST was amazing and the premise and question arcs were really exciting. I just wish the plot had been good too. Thanks for reading this. Let me know if you also felt the same about any of these things.

[Ellixer]

I much prefer Episode 5 to 8 because I was way more interested in what it was doing than the first half myself, but you're not alone in hating how it went at least. These days it seems Chiru became the more popular installment, but back in the days I think a lot of people hated the direction of Umineko by the end. Umineko is much less popular with Japanese audience as I understand it, and a big reason was not revealing the answer explicitly, though I think even at he time the general consensus of what the answer is is pretty spot on to the answer they actually revealed in the manga, so it seems like the clues are all in the text that people came to the right conclusion independent of an answer sheet. I am sympathetic to people wanting a reveal, and personally I do think a full reveal would be better for emotional impact and character development (which the manga proves), but I more admire them sticking to their gun and going with what is more thematically appropriate for the game.

I'm not going to like, argue the points or anything, but I much prefer Chiru myself because it's where Umineko really wants to say something, and all the themes come together exceptionally well for me.

[DeRockProject (jongyon7192p)]

Originally posted by Joaco:

when at that point it was more than obvious that he didn't have the guts to kill anyone off for real.

Oh boy... wait til OP finds out...

[Joaco]

So you really thought there was a chance of Beatrice not going back to normal ever? I think you missed the point of that sentence.

But in any case, every time someone dies dramatically in Umineko they come back to life in the same book, by the beginnig of the next book or in rare cases, 2 books later. Even if they are technically dead, it doesn't change much from my perspective. The last thing we see is a shot of everyone being "alive".

[Ellixer]

Yeah, like, "alive". Like being sent to the afterlife is "alive". Literally everyone except Ange is dead. If anything, I've seen even people who didn't care for the Answer Arcs thought the ending was too much of a downer. Beatrice committed suicide and Battler is practically dead. Everyone else is literally dead. Ange caught cancer at the end. None of the "villains" got off with worse than bruised ego. The point is legacy, beliefs and empathy keep it from being a downer ending, which a lot of people are not down with, and there are people who feel what happens there is just Ange's "delusion". It's about as happy an ending as you want to make it, but "alive" is kind of stretching it.

[DeRockProject (jongyon7192p)]

They aren't just dead, they died pathetically like insects, and they died as the worst most ugliest versions of themselves, over money and hate. This is undeniable from Eva's diary. And Ange is never getting them back. It's the author of Higurashi. He has more than "guts" to kill all his characters, he kills them over and over again

[Joaco]

It's odd how the discussion revolves around one of my smallest complaints. I just disagree. It's a fact that I could see Beatrice's resurrection at the end of episode 6 coming from a mile away which made the sad scenes at the beginning less impactful (though I still enjoyed her resurrection), and that isn't the only example.

To me, the characters are as dead as (ace attorney spoilers ahead) Mia Fey. She's completely dead in universe, but it doesn't really matter since she comes back from the dead in every chapter. In practice, she isn't dead to me. I also don't think a writer can kill a character off more than once. If they do, they're not really killing them the first times. The point of death is being irreversible. Which is why I also don't think anyone (with sprites) really dies in higurashi either.

And just to play devil's advocate, I was only talking about the VN, where we don't even get to know how the Ushiromiya's died. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's nothing that directly proves (in the books) that the scene from EP7 is actually canon.

[Ellixer]

I mean in Higurashi they really did not die in the end, whereas in Umineko they really did. It's like seeing someone's ghost and calling it, see? Alive. In Higurashi, there is literally no ambiguity. They went back in time and averted everyone's death and now they are alive and are interacting with people again and can live to adulthood. In Umineko, they really did die and are in the afterlife. It's not like the adults can leave the island and get back to running their own businesses again. The world moved on and treat them as dead, literally the opposite as Higurashi. I'm not going to get hung up on this point but I think it's a stretch to say their statuses are the same as the cast of Higurashi. You can say it cheapens their deaths and give them happy endings anyway if you take a fantasy perspective of their afterlife being literal rather than symbolic, and that's fine, but "alive" is quite a stretch.

There's nothing that directly proves it but it at least heavily suggests that Bern's version is at least mostly accurate. Upon reading it, Ange says she had seen it before (implying basically what Bern already showed her, which she already declared in red to be what happened even if she later takes it back to string Ange along) and tries to kill herself while in denial of what really happened. We then get a scene of "goats" casting the blame on Ange's relatives. That's about as much proof as you usually get with this story. I'm sorry but if you want something explicitly said, there's a fundamental disagreement with a core theme of Umineko that I can't really "refute", so there's not really much more to say here. I think it makes the work more interesting to stick to its gun with its theme of finding your own truth rather than waiting to be told it, and the process of reasoning and engaging in the puzzle set before you is an act of love (as represented by Battler and Willard, and the latter even says it's not that he disrespects people who arrived at incorrect answer, he disrespects people who don't even try, and on this point I'll agree that this is pretty on-the-nose and a little mean toward a portion of the audience, but that's also just my view) rather than proving your intellectual superiority (as represented by Erika), and you feel like it's being elitist or pretentious. There's no amount of counterpoint that I can provide to really change your mind on this I don't think. The story set forth its theme, and that didn't speak to you in the same way it resonated with the people who appreciated it. I don't think there's more to it than that.

As for Beatrice coming back, yeah for all intent and purpose she did. At least from the audience's perspective it usually doesn't make a huge difference that she is a clone of the former one and the last one really did die in Episode 5. I honestly don't think there's much to say here. It's not as if it's a problem for me. This idea of "living on" because someone managed to understand you comes into play again in the end too, so I thought it was thematically consistent, and like how Bern and Lambda declared there would not be a happy ending, the idea is that objective facts are not the start and end, and the characters are able to construct a truth that is more valuable to them while not really contradicting established facts.

[Joaco]

Oh, I don't think the Ushiromiya's fate is the same as Hinamizawa's fate. I meant to say that no one is really killed off in Higurashi. I know the Ushiromiya's died in-universe. It's just that I didn't get to feel their abscence, and I found it hard to care about their deaths as individuals since EP8 made it look like they only cared about Ange.

And I also believe in Bern's truth, tbh. My only problem is that it contradicts the final boat scene, but it's still the only explanation. I just brought it up because the person above had presented it as a straight fact when it isn't unless you accept the manga, which I didn't know about when I wrote the OP. I'm not really mad at the lack of any real truth since the author did a good job at making me not care. At that point I had accepted that he had no intention of revealing anything. What made me mad was the lack of truth in the games.

And I don't really hate the theme either. I just hate how the author gave me false hopes about it at the end of book 3 and many other times throughout the story. I felt particularly betrayed since I remembered his author notes from Minagoroshi, which had an opposite message I agreed with. I also hated how avoiding revealing the truth detracted from scenes like the Willard vs Claire fight, and especially how the author was an elitist prick about it ("if you don't treat umineko like a job and read everything again before proceeding, you are a swine"/"if you still don't understand that Shannon is the killer, you're an idiot"/etc). That was much worse than the goat scene in book 8, which didn't really bother me because making this kind of theories about real people like the goats did would be messed up.

[Ellixer]

A lot of things in the visual novel even before the manga were more generally accepted concensus that turns out to be on the money when the manga comes out. Otherwise, not a lot is "straight fact". Although I find it hard to believe you can construct an alternate convincing theory of what happened other than that, so I feel like people just take it as red.

I'm not sure how the final boat scene contradicts it though. Even without the manga's version to bridge the two versions of event, Battler is absent from Bern's truth, and the fact that he "dies" there is perfectly explanable with the tool already given to the reader at that point several times.

"if you don't treat umineko like a job and read everything again before proceeding, you are a swine"

Maybe. That's probably not too far off, hoenstly. "Job"? Eh, if it's boring. You wouldn't really call "finishing a game" a job, and I personally didn't think going over the story to have a crack at the mystery that tedious either, but like I said, I liked what it was doing, it grabbed my investment like nothing else had, and it'd be pretty big ask if I wasn't on board already. But the point being that, yeah, the story does dunk on readers who fail to make an honest effort to have a crack at it. Leaving aside whether that's a chore or not, you're not wrong about that. I just don't see it as a problem at all.

"if you still don't understand that Shannon is the killer, you're an idiot"

I don't know what this refers to. Maybe Willard thought the mystery was simple. I'll admit I'm not a fan of how much of a flawless genius Willard is that he could sprout things like that, but the mystery is obviously intended to be difficult for literally anyone else, and at the end of the day what he respects is effort rather than arriving at the correct answer, and THAT I could get on board with. If anything, I even feel like the story makes people who haven't arrived at the "solution" yet to feel comfortable with that fact, that as long as they can construct their own version of what happened with empathy using the story presented to them, they are basically onboard with Umineko. I can see why someone would think the story is full of itself, but I don't see it as judgemental of someone's intellect at all, not when the final Episode hammered home repeatedly that an overemphasis on what is the "correct solution" is detrimental.

I am sympathetic to people who really aren't here for the mystery and would be put off by this point though. I have friends who love Umineko who were grateful for the manga because they care more about the characters and the drama than the murder mystery (and I do too, though I also thought having a crack at the mystery was a lot of fun), so I'm glad I can point those people to the manga these days at least.

[Joaco]

The contradiction between the final boat scene and the "truth" is that Beatrice is alive during the boat segment even though she was shot to death, even bleeding from her mouth. She didn't even seem injured and Battler said nothing about going to a hospital, as far as I remember. Though I only read those scenes once. I also can't picture Battler falling so deeply in love with the crazy girl who just tried to kill his entire family in only one or two days.

I'm all for rereadability, I just didn't like how it was mandatory rather than encouraged in Umineko. I already tried rereading the question arcs and taking notes of everything when I was reading Higurashi and it wasn't very enjoyable. But I understand it's a matter of opinions.

As for the second line, I was referencing the time Bernkastel said something very similar to "I gave the culprit a new appearance because I hate idiots" after Claire was introduced. I know she is supposed to be the villain, but this is coherent with the similar comments made by Ikuko, which makes it seem like Bern was also talking for the writer.

As for the mystery, I'm also one of those who prefer the plot and characters over the mystery, though I also find mysteries exciting. I was really happy when I figured out the trick to kill Nanjo in book 3 before it was revealed, but I was pretty disappointed when the culprit and motive were never revealed anyway. After I realised there would be no answers I lost the motivation to think, which was already wavering since book 6 which made me feel stupid for not getting the answers.

[Ellixer]

Oh yes that. I kind of agree. Even I find the manga explanation a little unconvincing (Kyrie either misses or uses one of the guns loaded with blanks, which I think CAN explain some other things shown elsewhere in Episode 7, but like I said, I still do find it a little hard to believe that she is so sloppy with the first "kill"). Though as for falling in love, Battler always had a crush on Shannon ever since he was a child and there are hints that his feelings kind of resurfaced after they meet again but now that she is dating George he steers clear. Also that time Beatrice hadn't killed anyone and just led him to safety. Even if you take the whole scene as literal I don't think it's quite THAT absurd. Battler is also consistently quick to anger but just as quick to forgive (his dad notwithstanding), to the point of being willing to burry the hatchet with Bern, Lambda and Erika, so it's also just consistent characterization in my opinion, given that Beatrice has a more understandable motive by far (it is ambiguous in the game how much she had told him, but given their conversation in the ending, she must have confessed at least some of it).

I personally don't think Higurashi was constructed like a puzzle like Umineko is, at least not to the same extent. I took notes while reading it too but I didn't get nearly as much mileage out of that compared to the enjoyment I got from Umineko.

Both Bernkastel and Ikuko are prideful people who are just massive jerks. Even if Ikuko may not be a villain, she is incredibly fickle and is mean and uncharitable toward anyone other than one person she cares for. She is kind of meant to be the author avatar, but also a much meaner persona than r07, to the point of parody honestly. I think while she does know the truth, the sentiment she expresses is meant to be understood through the lens that she's also not a terribly kind person who looks down on basically anyone else, and Battler and later Ange are more representative of the audience.

[Joaco]

Eh, I'm still unconvinced about the love thing. Battler does forgive everyone too easily, but trying to date his dead cousin's fiancee as soon as he died was pretty messed up. I also feel like he got over the deaths of his family way too easily. But then again, he was even willing to help Shannon in book 5 and it was most likely not about money, so I guess he was never that nice to begin with.

You're probably right about higurashi.

I understand your latter point, but I find it hard to believe. It would have been one thing if it had been just Bernkastel, but when 3 different characters (including Wringht because of the goat speech) share the same opinion with no real opposition and the author agrees with them through his writing by never revealing the answers, it seems obvious that he thinks that way too.

[DeRockProject (jongyon7192p)]

"odd how the discussion revolves around one of my smallest complaints"

Except this is the core fundamental that leads to all your other complaints. the fact you don't get that is telling.

They don't "keep coming back." The equivalent is that I'll write stories of real life victims of mass murder over and over again, but I argue I keep "bringing them back."

The truth is that every depiction of the family is fictional. Sure it's all based on the original, but we never got to meet the original in flesh. All that's left is Ange's grieving memories.

"but trying to date his dead cousin's fiancee as soon as he died was"

I'm confused what you're referring to, but also this goes into stuff about topics of Plurals acceptance, so I'm just gonna leave it at that you should accept those different personalities are effectively different people in Beatrice's heart

Every mystery kind of just wants you to be spoon fed all the answers. It's great this tries to let the readers solve it, despite the spoiler-obsessed adhd modern day ruining that. And in the end, there is an objective answer. Trust that it's solvable was needed to solve it.

[Ellixer]

Battler and Shannon were never going to work out in the real world, and that's part of the intention and motivation. She's not just his dead cousin's fiance. She's his cousin and also his aunt. It's ambiguous whether he knows this at the end though. All he knows is that the romantic interest is mutual. The point being my read of it is that the scene in the visual novel is at least tinted through fantasy lens even if it does also at least somewhat reflects what really happened, and presents a more romanticized version of what happened.

Willard I believe more or less explicitly say that he looks down on the goats who give up on reasoning entirely rather than the ones who got it wrong. If anything, the ones who got it wrong are treated with respect by both Dlanor and Willard, unless I'm blurring the manga scene and the game scene (the former is changed to be less harsh, basically removing everything Willard says to the goat who gave up on thinking), who basically say whether they achieve the "right solution" are not, they are engaging with Beatrice's catbox (or Shannon's stories) in the spirit it was intended.

We are probably going in circles at this point though. Respect and disagree with your take, but you are not the only one who feels that way.

[Joaco]

Originally posted by DeRockProject (jongyon7192p):

Except this is the core fundamental that leads to all your other complaints. the fact you don't get that is telling.

It's pretty arrogant to think you understand the reason behind the complaints better than the person who actually wrote them. I'll repeat my one-sentence complaint: the scenes where the author tried to milk drama out of Beatrice being "dead" in book 6 didn't work on me because it was obvious she was going to come back by the end of the book.

Originally posted by DeRockProject (jongyon7192p):

I'm confused what you're referring to, but also this goes into stuff about topics of Plurals acceptance, so I'm just gonna leave it at that you should accept those different personalities are effectively different people in Beatrice's heart

Oh, after reading the tv tropes article I thought people had discarded the Shannon DID theory. In that case, it's still weird that Battler fell so deeply in love with a woman he had literally just met after she was about to kill his family.

Originally posted by Ellixer:

She's not just his dead cousin's fiance. She's his cousin and also his aunt.

I don't know what you're trying to say, but let me rephrase: "I also can't picture Battler falling so deeply in love with the crazy girl who just tried to kill his entire family who's also his aunt and cousin in only one or two days."

Originally posted by Ellixer:

We are probably going in circles at this point though. Respect and disagree with your take, but you are not the only one who feels that way.

I saw this as talking rather than arguing. It was nice talking to you.