When They Cry - Higurashi and Umineko

It's a bit sad to see that Ryukushi's going all-out in revealing everything, but I can't really blame him for it. It's alright for him to want to give everything a sense of finality.

He's revealed Lion's gender? And Zepar's and Furfur's genders?

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Yeah, I still don't really know what to think of it personally… maybe he wants to make Umineko more "accessible" or make Episode 8 more significant or conclusive? "Give a sense of finality" seems to be the right term, yes…

Nope. He revealed everything except the gender things. From what I read here and there, that part remains in the realm of implications even in "Confession". I think R7 had said once that he prefered to avoid being too explicit since it's a sensitive issue and all…

Now maybe it's just me but I have the impression he is going to change the ending a little, or at least some aspects of it… he doesn't seem to be in the same state of mind today than 4 years ago regarding Episode 8.

edited 22nd May '14 1:42:41 PM by Lyendith

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As someone who is somewhat spoiled by the Internet, yet still kinda safe because Umineko spoilers, even explicit ones, make no freaking sense I know about the existence of certain alternate interpretations and I'm curious...

... is the KnownNoMore video still "compatible" with the manga? Or does R07 completely squish such theories once and for all?

I'm just curious because I've seen some epic (and incomprehensible to non-fans, so I was safe) theory flaming on forums, so I want to know if it still applies after the manga.

edited 25th May '14 3:04:14 PM by Muzozavr

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You mean that nigh-incomprehensible 8-hour video? I haven't actually seen it all from beginning to end, but I'm pretty sure it's incompatible with the manga, all things considered.

All the recent manga info has crushed any possibility of Rosatrice being the canon answer quite hard. *

edited 25th May '14 4:48:48 PM by Oroboro

Which is a shame since I've never liked Shkannon and here's why. Note: lots of Deconstruction and Urobutcher style cynicism ahead.

1. Since there was no truth in the boards, what was the point of the boards in the first place? Prime violated Knox's 8th due to the boards lacking sufficient clues to solve the truth. That which Higurashi did brilliantly is what Umineko fails miserably at.

2. The general aesop of "Lies good truth bad" that Shkannon seems to be promoting. Very patronizing to Ange. I don't see what's so wrong with Featherine exposing the truth that Ange's parents were evil people, especially given that exposing the truth is the main point of the genre.

3. Then there's the cold truth that Shkannon is a cruel liar toying with three different people's hearts ultimately planning on betraying them all.

Where are those? The only thing I've found are in Japanese.

edited 28th May '14 2:05:01 PM by magnum12

Have you read the translations for the manga stuff? Especially the confession chapters. Because pretty much all of those points are addressed.

Umineko is first and foremost an emotional story; the purpose isn't only to find the "culprit", but also and above all else why the murders ended up happening. That's what Episode 1 to 7 are for. There are here to make us find the "mastermind" hiding behind the mask of Beatrice, but also show that everyone on the island that day had a direct or indirect responsibility in making the situation worsen and eventually blow up (figuratively and literally). In that sense, yes, all the hints to the truth were there. The fact that Kyrie ended up murdering everyone in prime is almost a trivial point, the bloody icing on a poisonous cake. And it's not like her cold-blooded sociopath nature hadn't been foreshadowed several times before.

It's telling that the Confession chapters confirm pretty much everything Yumetabibito and Akatokuro had explained about Sayo in their reread. R7 only added them to make things clear once and for all, but you could decypher everything even without them.

Other than that, someone was kind enough to translate the full chapter 25 (CotGW were side chapters apparently). http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php?p=5129761&postcount=34473

I'll try to provide a translation of what we've got of Confession myself, though I guess it can be found somewhere. However, saying that Shkanon's aesop is that "lies are good, truth is bad" is an extreme oversimplification if you ask me… it's much more nuanced than that…

Now whether revealing the truth in Eva's diary is a good or a bad thing… it's up to everyone's interpretation I guess? In the end, learning the truth in E8 kind of allowed Ange to stop being obsessed with it and finally move forward so, yeah…

edited 29th May '14 7:25:14 AM by Lyendith

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Just read that link. Rather insightfull. Gonna post my thoughts on it.

1. Regarding the whole nuances on truth thing, was the aesop this whole time more about the "howdunnit" of disclosure? i.e. "Gentle Disclosure" vs "Ruthless Disclosure" and the likely differing results between the two (bringing about closure rather than bitterness)?

2. That bit about the world of the dead. Point of it possibly being about putting the past behind you. Kinda like that song from Frozen.

3. Regarding sins, I'm gonna disagree on this one as I define sin more on malice and bad intent rather than foolishness or being short sighted. The cousins aren't really sinful by that definition.

4. I'm starting to suspect that there was a very specific motive for R7 revealing the truth now via the manga. I think he might of realized that the whole Shkannon thing plus the ambiguous ending may have pissed a bunch of people off, starting a fracture within the fanbase. Perhaps the revelations in the manga were designed to bring about a reconciliation within the fanbase.

"No, this wasn't an elaborate troll." "Yes, this was indeed the truth." "No, there was no Awful Truth in it at all."

Still bugged by the lack of physical/concrete evidence (for example, the letters in Persona4 being the smoking gun for the culprit's identity) that places Kyrie as the true culprit "on the boards". (I define Knox's 8th based on evidence since mental traits aren't enough to validly convict someone of a crime.) Takano as the mastermind was handeled better, with significantly better concrete, non circumstancial evidence (the fake corpse in Watanagashi-hen, the stuff with the bike/car ride in Tatagoroshi-hen, the usage of D34 to troll Shion and Rena and thus set them on their path to destruction.

Yeah, I agree with you there. Although, more than just "are you sure Ryukishi couldn't have solved the mystery and provided an emotionally resonant ending to the story at the same time," I think the canon/manga ending is not only unsatisfying as a mystery but also kind of emotionally hollow. I mean, I could understand "lies good truth bad" as a theme for a story. It could be pretty interesting. But the "emotional ending" where actually Battler made an accidental marriage promise to the secret heir to the Ushiromiya family who was also... Ech. It's a bloody just so story. How are we supposed to get personalized meaning out of a hackneyed collection of glued-together tropes?

Then there's a whole bunch of other loose ends. How does the meta world relate to the real world? Ange should be important, I can tell, but she's utterly irrelevant to the Yasu story, which is supposed to be the core emotional truth of Umineko. (She doesn't remember Yasu, and she never saw Battler and Yasu in the same room. She wasn't even alive when Battler supposedly made his fatal promise.) Why does she get so much screen time if she's not really that important in the end? We get to see a flash of the real Kinzo – and he's not the cackling mad caricature his children imagine him to be – so why does his characterization need to get rolled back to the way it was for Yasutrice to work?

I've got some theorycrafting ideas regarding how to go about doing all that (solve the mystery, tie the meta to the real world, make the lies actually meaningful, give Kinzo a chance to not be cackling mad, and most of all put Ange and Battler's story front and center) and I always meant to one day emit them all in their long-winded glory, but of course I'd probably have to ignore the manga now and aagh.

(And, yeah, I definitely agree with you that Higurashi is just flat-out better at this stuff.)

... now, as to the actual reason for this post, would anyone here be interested (by any chance) in playing an actual Umineko-style detective game, if one were to someday exist? No particular reason I'm asking, it's just that I'm tinkering with a few projects that might eventually, um...

edited 9th Jun '14 6:48:27 PM by Exetera

Everything has a story.

Higurashi is just flat out better period.

Umineko has a far better cast, and a more interesting plot. Execution isn't as good, though. Executions, on the other hand...

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It had a better cast? Isn't one of the common complaints about Umineko that the cast is largely impossible to sympathize with? It had some characters better than most or all of Higurashi (Bernkastel, Lambdadelta) but overall the cast wasn't that great because it got bogged down by jerks and wastes of time.

As for more interesting plot, I don't think I could easily say one was better than the other until Umineko's turns into crap around chapter 6 or so, so I'm just going to say I had more fun guessing what was going on in Higurashi. That said, the Umineko Tea Parties were so much better than the Higurashi equivalent that it's not very fair to compare them.

Oh, I guess I should throw another bone to Umineko: I'm just not really that big a fan of murder mysteries to begin with.

edited 9th Jun '14 8:05:27 PM by Arha

I find it easier to sympathise with a jerk if there's a reason for it, than a bland character. Other than Mion, Rika, and maybe Miyo, I didn't really care about any of them.

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But the main reason the cast are jerks in Umineko (so far as you can tell early on) is that they're greedy assholes. And some of them just stay assholes, like the guy who was acting in character when he killed his mother as an intimidation tactic. And then there are all the characters that aren't even unlikable, such as the servants. That leaves you with almost the entire human cast being unsympathetic or completely boring. Some of them get better eventually, but some of them don't.

I really don't see how you can say the cast as a whole is filled with useless wastes of space.

Gotta agree with Another Duck, Umineko's execution could have been better, but the plot was more engaging than Higurashi's. Higurashi's more episodic, the same scenario repeated again and again (with some exceptions, like some manga-only arcs), whereas Umineko took that and made its own spin on it with the meta-world.

As for characters, I'd say both casts are really good, but their execution is really what matters. Like, Teppei and Rina are some pretty bland characters in Higurashi because there's nothing really redeemable in them, they're just there to pose some opposition and so you'll hate them. On the other hand, the rest of the cast is pretty varied and rounded, explored in great detail. The main cast and how it serves to explore the theme of friendship is excellent.

Umineko's cast was overfocused at times, which didn't mesh well with its large numbers. For instance, Ange's storyline really could have used some cutting down. On the other hand, it's a pretty good cast all-around, and the way they interact with one another is great when combined with the meta elements of the story. The way the story switches around their roles is fantastic.

And yeah, I'd definitely agree that if you like murder mysteries you'd probably like Umineko more. IIRC, Arha, you basically didn't struggle at all with the mystery and figured out the truth early on Episode 6.

Anything else...? Oh yeah, 07th Expansion's musicians got a hell of a lot better in Umineko, as if they weren't good enough in Higurashi. That's another plus Umineko has.

That sounds difficult. How would you go about with it?

I'm not sure that it's really a problem that Higurashi has antagonists that are, um, antagonists. Meanwhile, Higurashi tends to have more varied action and (if you're not solving the puzzles) generally more interesting things going on. While Umineko does have meta-world shenanigans to break things up a bit, down on the game board there's only so many ways you can watch the Ushiromiyas kill each other off before it starts to blur together. The Higurashi characters, by contrast, never seem to run out of wacky, different-seeming things to do even if they are still following a pattern.

Well, the big thing that makes it possible is multiplayer. It wouldn't be very fun to build an AI for it, although I think if you were able to put the detective at least partially on rails in the first phase it might be plausible to have a prebuilt campaign. And, of course, there are some simplifications. To explain:

First, the game is set on a literal game board, probably a 2D top-down map. There are characters (probably just represented as pawns or otherwise neutral figures, because I can't do art very well) as well as objects to interact with (containers, doors, duct tape, keys, murder weapons, tiny food bombs, dramatically important letters, and so on). I envision it as a two-player game, where one player is the witch and the other player is the detective.

It's a two-phase game. In the first phase, the detective controls one character ('his' character), and the witch controls all the other characters. The detective has a very limited perspective; he can only see what his pawn would see. The witch, meanwhile, is extremely powerful; in fact, she can even go back in time and change things, provided that this doesn't change what the detective has already seen. She can also use Red Truth at any time (explained more later).

In the second phase (Blue Truth phase), the detective is the powerful one: while he still can't see what the witch did, he now controls all the characters. His goal in this phase is to create a scenario for the crime that satisfies all of the witch's Red Truth and also does not contradict what his own pawn saw during the game. If he manages it, he wins. If he doesn't manage, well, this is the sort of game that might last for multiple sessions, but presumably there is some sort of time limit after which he loses. The witch can go back in time to see what really happened, but is no longer free to change it; she can still, however, create Red Truth.

Incidentally, Red Truth is also going to have to be simplified, because accepting arbitrary English-grammar Red Truth is not very plausible. I plan to have it work in a sort of mad-libs way, where you get prebuilt statements (e.g., [people] were [not?] in the [room] [between time and time?]) and fill them in with details from a dropdown menu.

... It's a bit ambitious. I know I can make it work, if I spend the time on it, but I'm not that good at finishing projects I've started. I hope I manage it, assuming I am actually able to find people to play with.

edited 9th Jun '14 9:25:26 PM by Exetera

Everything has a story.

That's not what I mean at all. There are many other antagonists besides Teppei and Rina, but they're interesting or fun to watch. They're not flat characters that are entirely villainous. For instance, Ooishi can switch between helpful ally and antagonist depending on the arc, and similarly for the Sonozakis. Both of these are fleshed out and given lots of reasons for their behaviors, they're ultimately well-rounded and fully realized characters.

But Teppei and Rina are terrible and suck the joy out of any scene they're in. There's no greater angle to them, and they have no excuses for being terrible human beings. That's all there is to them.

As either people or characters, they're pretty awful.

It's funny you should say that because while you're right, they're basically responsible for the two best arcs in the story.

Edit: And I only kinda solved the mystery. Figuring out what's going on to make events happen like they do is fun, but figuring out the specifics behind how someone died and who killed them couldn't capture my interest. I don't think I even made a real attempt.

edited 9th Jun '14 10:33:58 PM by Arha

Teppei and Rina were thoroughly nasty (although it's not like there aren't people like that), but keep in mind that there's a damn good narrative purpose for doing that: it's supposed to feel cathartic when Keiichi or Rena or the Sonozaki hitmen provide them with just desserts. Even when you've played the game before and you know it's going to end badly, it's still kind of nice to see those two get theirs.

Really, I don't think it's a problem. I mean, it is okay to have characters like that if it's handled well, and I think it very much is in Higurashi.

edited 9th Jun '14 10:42:25 PM by Exetera

Everything has a story.

Well, what you both say is true enough. It was handled well in those arcs, and that's what matters. Catharsis is a powerful deciding factor for this kind of thing.

Whew, suddenly a lot of people posting.

You're comparing the wrong things here though. Umineko's Takano isn't Kyrie, it's Sayo, be it on the boards or on prime. Even if it backfired in prime, it's still Sayo's plan that made everything blow up; and of that there are plenty of hints on the boards (that's there purpose after all). Kyrie just happens to be the one who ended up killing everyone − hell, the first two victims weren't even her doing.

Regarding the characters I'll have to disagree with above posters: Umineko's cast really appears much more rich, nuanced, and relatable to me. They all have a likeable side and an ugly side, and the balance between these sides is handled more subtly than in Higurashi − one cause being that said ugly side tends to be inflated by the Hinamizawa Syndrome. Even the one character that is pure, undistilated evil (Bern) has her "cute" moments. One thing I like is also that everyone in the Ushiromiya family is somehow linked, directly or not, to the culprit and their motive. Even Ange has a connection to Beatrice through Maria. You could almost say the "main character" is the Ushiromiya family as a whole. Everyone added their grain of salt, more or less consciously, to the tragedy that was to come (and that includes these "likeable" servants in no small part!) All of this is exposed little by little, in every Episode, by the events on the gameboard, flash-backs, or "fantasy" scenes.

Takano on the other hand… didn't really have any connection to the main cast, outside of maybe Satoko, kind of. Nor did we have any hint whatsoever on what could motivate her, outside of being a Nightmare Fetishist. She was just… kind of suspicious. Not that the different character backgrounds aren't fascinating of course (although Takano's stay at the Orphanage of Fear seemed strangely irrelevant in the end), but Umineko does a better job at tying all these backgrounds together to me.

…

For those interested, here's the preview of Higurashi Bou◊ that was in RGD Last Season:

"A story of tragedy and comedy… and then, a curtain-call is heard… the new representation will be a tragedy again."

… I'd really appreciate that Ryūkishi finally move on from Higurashi though. I read someone talking about "dragging Higurashi's corpse around" on a forum and that's really how it feels. Let this story end already Ryūkishi, you've already told everything there was to tell!

… yeah I say that but I know I'll read it as soon as I can. Damn you R7!

On a totally unrelated note, in our team we were thinking on how to render the blue truth without using color. But I hesitate between an effect similar to the one used in the raws, or a lighter drop shadow effect… which one looks better to you? —'.`—

edited 10th Jun '14 3:03:11 AM by Lyendith

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I think the second effect is better, but at first glance it could be mistaken as regular text.

All this talk about mystery games and yet I haven't brought up mine yet.

The idea: An actual detective game for guests to play, with props like fake blood etc.

Sample murder scenario: A chain closed room scenario. Casualties include a decapication (this one is me "terminating" the "board me" to resume duties as "game master"), an eviseration with bludgeon wounds on the head, an impalement, someone tied down with tea in front of them, and someone lying dead from looks like a gun suicide with writing on the room such as "liar", "arrogent", "stubborn", "sad-sack", "heartless", etc.

Fantasy solution: The victims were killed by witches, with runic cypher writing their names on the doors to various rooms. The identities of said witches are Charolette (decapitation), Octavia (eviseration and the room has gears scattered around), Ophelia (impalement), Candelero (a tea party the victim could never leave), and Homulily (a "witch kiss" in the form of a spider lily mark induced a self-hate suicide).

Mystery solution: The Charolette, Octavia, and Ophelia rooms were actually done with a two-handed sword (the bludgeon wounds from the pommell). The Candelero room uses poison (the tea). The person in the Homulily room is the culprit. The smoking gun being that the "gun shot wound" is only on one side of their head, incicadting a fake death.

Here's the problem. What kind of special effects could I use to make a fake decapitation? I have the ideas for how to design the other parts from the mystery stand point (mainly involving latex, fake blood, and paper towels for fake intestines), its just the Charolette room that's giving me trouble.

edited 10th Jun '14 1:29:03 PM by magnum12