When They Cry - Higurashi and Umineko

Umineko breaks the letter of nearly ever rule. But not the spirit. And Knox specifically said you can break them if you know what you're doing. Not to mention... All Dlanor does is state the rules in red. She never says /they apply to this mystery/ in red.

I ship it.

Genji breaks rule 5.

I thought there was no rule 5 in Umineko? —'.`—

It's a tongue in cheek retort. But yeah, all Battler would have had to do is say in the blue truth that the island "Does not conform to Knox's rules." A red truth saying that it does would lead to a "Oh yeah well what about Genji" which could potentially result in a logic error.

Huh... why would Genji break rule 5 again? °°

Knox's 5th is about the guilt of sterotypical minorities. Emphasis on sterotypical. I don't think Genji qualifies under that definition.

@Our new blood. The reason people like Bernkastel is the concept of Love to Hate, i.e. "Heel Hate". Think Deconstruction of Troll. I personally think Bernkastel is a great villain. Lambdadelta is amusing and I'd say probably goes under Blue-and-Orange Morality.

So, am I the only one who thinks that Ange actually stepped off the building and somehow survived in the initial chronology? Certain pieces of information don't really make sense if we assume that everything following that is just a fantasy sequence.

You're kind of right but there's really no realistic way she could have survived that… my assumption is that either she didn't jump all the way down (like, she entered through the window of the last floor or something), or she just… used the stairs. =[

Yeah, from what I've read in Ep8, I think she really was on the verge of suicide, but in the end decided not to do it. That whole "Ange Ushiromiya died in 1998" red truth thing in the manga was about her becoming a new person, similarly to what happened to Battler.

Actually, it is possible to survive. She probably hit stuff on the way, like, say, sunblinds, and I believe it was stated she landed on a car, which is softer than the asphalt. It is a very unlikely happening, but it is possible. I doubt she knew she would survive, so I believe it was a genuine suicide attempt.

The building could have also had a suicide net.

I know a guy who, while drunk, fell off a balcony on the fifth floor, and survived. Either you shouldn't drink, or drinking makes you sturdier. I've not quite determined which is true.

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Well, the real thing is, she was up and walking the next day.

In fact, this whole thing is why I have difficulty seeing Bernkastel as 100% villain. I mean, yes, she's the primary antagonist, and she's just so eeeeeeeeeeeevil, but on the other hand, it seems like there's some things that just don't make sense unless you assert that, uhhh, yeah-magic DOES exist at least as it pertains to the sea of fragments, and Bern gave Ange foreknowledge of things she otherwise couldn't have had knowledge of.

I still get a kick out of Ange saying <Good>

And maybe in 5483948394739 other fragments, she splattered on the pavement.

Sure. But here's the thing: there are those who feel that Umineko ultimately has a "pure non-fantasy" narrative. But the reason the "final fragment" exists is only due to pre-existing information.

I mean, it's kind of ironic that Ange ends up pitching the Beato doll in the trick ending.

Come to think of it, that's the only part of the story that really ends up "confirming" the existence of magic as anything other than, uhhh, what magic is in the series.

It occurs to me that virtually everything else can be explained by narrative slight of hand; that is, at no point should we assume that the Ange in two different scenes is Ange from the same fragment.

Eventually you get to the point of "Okay, so, is there even a coherent story being told here?" If all fragments exist simultaneously, then what investment does anyone have in what's going on on screen, since everything else isn't going on. I mean, Bern was like "Awp, no fragments where people return lulz" but there's almost certainly an infinite number of fragments where the "accident" never happened in the first place, and those just aren't part of the narrative being built here.

tl;dr version, fragments make stories meaningless!!!

edited 29th Jun '15 11:04:31 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

Stories only need to be interesting to be meaningful.

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Personally, at some point in a meta narrative, you just can't ignore any layer or dismiss certain parts to form a purely non-fantasy or purely non-mystery narrative. They all form part of the whole, in the end. All those fragments we see contribute in their own way to the story.

It's not really that hard to see the story as a completely realistic story where all magic is simply metaphoric for the characters' inner conflicts and/or imaginations. And I'd argue it does not make the fantasy scene any less important, since the point of the story is the characters' inner conflicts.

I mean, I guess you could take the meta-world at face value, but for me it would make making sense of the story way harder, not easier.

edited 29th Jun '15 1:45:04 PM by Cozzer

Again, the ironic part for me is that, the most magical stuff in the series is basically Ange having certain information she wouldn't otherwise have (or a Beato doll). This actually correlates to Higurashi a lot. If you take it as "well, there's a kerbillion universes and Rika only manages to survive in the one" then that makes sense-until you realize that the reason Rika survived was because of information gleaned from those other universe...

... and writing that, I understand the meta explanation for Bernkastel. In a "real world" sense, the only way that Rika's universe would work without a witch who exists beyond the fragments is if on some kind of quantum level, a lot of really really random stuff happens. Rika is somehow delusional in just the right way (and the bullet that she stopped via time stop... uhh, I don't know but I'm sure there's some symbolism there too). When we read Higurashi, we saw a single coherent narrative of multiple universes (well, once Rika became the protag). But in the context of "there are infinite universes," it was just a bunch of totally random stuff that just so happened to have a universe that looked identical to one where a person had the knowledge of someone who has been world hopping.

But, to me, that's a really meaningless distinction; if magic's "realistic" explanation is mind-bogglingly impossible chance, then it's functionally magic. Of course, that's pretty much how Kinzo looks at magic.

Shit, Umineko works on so many levels!

Most of the magic stuff just isn't actually technically real. Except the witches, apparently! Though I don't remember why I came to that conclusion.

But anyway didn't the ending establish that Ange doesn't know all this stuff? I thought I remembered her meeting Battler and showing that she doesn't really have any idea what was going on for any of the games or whatever.

The Beato doll exists!

As for why you probably think the witches exist, Ikuko looks super young even in 2020.

On a completely unrelated note, Umineko has changed my life. Mainly in that I've been waffling on whether or not the Masters program I'm in is really a good idea or not, and my basically ignoring everything for a week caused me to see the sheer non-helpfulness of my professor (because I asked for a bit of guidance and was met with "Herp de derp"), giving me the resolve to drop the program.

Incidentally, why is it that the Chiesta sisters are introduced in Tohya's works? How does Tohya know about Maria's bunny friends? He hasn't read Maria's diary, after all. I suppose one might as well just assume that the fantasy sequences aren't in the message bottles to begin with.

edited 29th Jun '15 7:49:31 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

<Good!>

...I don't know what to think anymore. But EP 8 is done with. Guess I'm done with When They Cry for a while. Or maybe a reread's in order. I don't know.

So as I understand it, EP 1 and EP 2 are merely differing records written by 'Maria'(Beatrice) and thrown into the sea. EP 3 is the representation of the 'Eva is the killer' theory. The parts in 1998 in EP 4 is more or less exactly what it looks like, with the magic parts as Ange's own interpretation. EP 7's Tea Party shows what actually, physically happened. EP 8 continues off EP 4 in what Ange decides to do.

In the end I still don't quite get what the battle between Battler and Beatrice was for, or what they actually are. Gonna guess they're like, things that happened inside 'Hachijo Toya''s head as he remembers about himself or something.

The whole Yasu schtick wasn't really elaborated on. Wouldn't have figured that Yasu = Shannon = Kanon = Beatrice tbh. And the 'final battle' really was kinda an asspull at the end, but the actual ending was pretty satisfactory. Thank god I chose 'Magic' first. 'Trick' kinda leaves a bad taste behind.

The meta in EP 8 really is off the rails. Especially with Auaurora vs. Lambda(who I now view in a new light). It's almost mindblowing how aware the work is of itself. The entire reason Umineko was so complicated was because people kept speculating and making up new theories about the island, like how we readers speculate what 'actually' happens. Battler showing Ange 'illusions' instead of what really happened to teach her something is the same as Ryukishi showing us mostly the magical side of things without really explaining them.

With it over, I can say it was a good ride but honestly I think I prefer Higurashi. The OST in Umineko was amazing but, as a 'sound novel' I do think Higurashi did better, using sound to set up the atmosphere. Or maybe horror just does that more naturally. I do like that Battler was pretty relevant in the last episode though, unlike Keiichi in Higurashi's last episode.

Lastly, this game really does good work on not making me hate characters. I don't really dislike Bern anymore after this episode. And Rosa too. And Eva more than redeemed. Although I'm still mostly neutral on Ange.

Oh my god this...this is brilliant. Or well, if Battler somehow doesn't find an excuse not to grope her yeah.

edited 30th Jun '15 6:02:02 AM by danna45

"And you must be Jonathan Joestar!" - Sue

If you're curious you can try to read the manga of Episode 8 too. While the events are more or less the same, the perspective and atmopshere are pretty different from the VN's − the scene where Ange wakes up in the Golden Land has been completely reworked for example. Erika's role is expanded quite a bit too, and it focuses more on Yasu overall.

(you can skip chapter 1 though, I don't know what WTDND did but the "translation" is nothing like the Japanese text in that one…)

PS: By the way, how did you perform in Bern's little game?

edited 30th Jun '15 6:45:23 AM by Lyendith

I highly suggest reading the manga for Ep8. I hear it has way more answers, and I love it very much.

Hurray for making it all the way through. It's a long read.

For additional reading, I'd suggest checking out Confession of the Golden Witch, an added mini-story to the episode 8 manga that really goes deep into Yasu's perspective and explains a lot more.

There's also the TIP, Our Confession, which is sort of a meta-breakdown of what goes into crafting the various mysteries in the games from the perspective of the gamemaster.

And as a bonus, look back on this scene from episode 2 with a bit more context and explanation. [1]

Edit: Also, Ryukushi07 actually addressed the boob groping thing in one of his interviews. Just a few inches away from ruining the whole plan, but Yasu wanted to be stopped anyway.

edited 30th Jun '15 6:42:37 AM by Oroboro

The analyses of Goatsreadingseacats for Episode 1-4 are a must-read really. It's pretty long to read though. X)