When They Cry - Higurashi and Umineko

Fireworks.

Yeah. Meakashi is enjoyed to the fullest when you have to skip a meal or two.

On my side, I'm beginning Bern's game, yay! A mystery to solve without mind screws, magic or fake narration for a change, so I'll take my time for this one.

Just for a small precision ; when Lamda says that "this is what happens when Shannon dies" (Kanon disapearing), does she mean, in general? Looking back on it, it's true that in the first game, Battler witnessed Kanon agonizing, but not his final breath ; in the second game, there is no corpse ; and in the fourth game, Battler didn't see his corpse either. I don't remember about the third game but he does have a high disapearance rate since the beginning… my driving teacher is always telling me that I lack observation, I guess he's right. TT___TT

But I'm starting to see some twilights much more clearly now. I think.

edited 19th Oct '12 2:09:44 PM by Lyendith

No you see, actually, when Shannon dies, Kanon has the sudden and inexplicable urge to dive into the ocean and swim as far away as he can. Surprisingly he makes the trip, and goes on to start his own rock band.

But yeah. Bern's mystery is fun as hell.

He then discovers a special affinity for "metal", eventually taking his band in the direction of taking one liners from famous action stars and making metal songs based on them, one day being known as "Austrian Death Machine."

This rock band?

edited 20th Oct '12 12:40:10 PM by Lyendith

If anything I would say it's this one. [1]

This… must happen XD

So, I successfully solved Bern's mystery… which wasn't as hard as I had imagined. I got stumped for a while, but since I wasn't fooled by Bern's suspiciously roundabout red, I almost didn't need the hints. Only to confirm my own thoughts. It was fun though, I'm pretty sure we could make an actual game out of this thing.

Still about Episode 8, I'm a bit lost about one thing… in Episode 7, Beatrice was established as Deader than Dead, with Battler holding a funeral and all… so how come she is back as if nothing happened? Yeah I know, everyone can revive in the Golden Land and stuff, but they made quite a big deal of it last Episode. Is it that the funeral was held only for the Beatrice of Ep 1-5 while the one of Ep 6 continued to live?

edited 21st Oct '12 1:57:23 AM by Lyendith

It's a bit confusing, because that gets into metaworld mechanics and the like.

Basically, The Beatrice you see in EP 8 are pieces, created by Battler. They may have their own agency and free will, but they're still essentially his creations. The original Beato from Ep1-5, who tormented Battler and put him through all of that for her own reasons, is dead and gone.

Kind of. I mean, it's a bit murky at this point, so don't take any of this as the red truth. I'm filling in some holes here with speculation and my own interpretation.

I don't know if I agree with that interpretation. Battler wouldn't be happy with that.

Why else hold the funeral though? Not to mention the Beato we see in EP 8 Is all part of the story Battler's trying to tell Ange. Personality wise she's a little bit different than the Beato from EP 1-5 too. (Of course pretty much everyone is OOC in EP 8 so who knows.

Edit: Hmm, an interesting theory on the nature of Yasu's gender. [1]

edited 22nd Oct '12 2:17:32 PM by Oroboro

Well, logically that Beato is the "chick Beato" that was left by Beato III and evolved into an almost perfect copy of her at the end of Episode 6. That kind of breaks the moral of letting the new Beato be herself and not a replacement for the old one, but that's the only explanation…

Interesting theory about Yasu… I didn't consider it from that angle. It's pretty convoluted, but what isn't in Umineko… about the Fukuin servants being all girls, this is not a certain fact though. At least, nothing was specified about Fukuin House being an all-girl institute, even though we only saw females (and Kanon) among the "on" servants.

—-

Choose, Ange, Choose. Do you want to be killed by the asphalt right now or by your bodyguard a few days later? The choice is yours. Now if you permit, I have to cry alone.

edit: Oh… she didn't stay dead for long after all. And if she doesn't want to go to Rokkenjima anymore, she won't fall in Kasumi's trap. She's still a sheep travelling with a wolf though.

And just after the Tear Jerker, a big punch in the face with "Hachijō Tōya"'s real identity. Didn't see that one coming.

edited 22nd Oct '12 7:20:46 AM by Lyendith

On a random note, I can't remember where I found this - it's either from the EP 8 Manga, from one of the side stories, or just a doujin or something, but either way some interesting stuff about Bern. [1]◊ [2]◊ [3]◊ [4]◊ [5]◊ [6]◊ [7]◊

Edit: Sounds like you've finished then. Ready to break it all down?

edited 22nd Oct '12 2:47:31 PM by Oroboro

No I'm not finished yet. I'm just at the beginning of the climax when Bern and Lambda have begun, err, "expressing their mutual love". I only saw the introduction of amnesiac Battler (well I suppose it's him), I don't know where it will lead yet.

I wonder in which trope the relationship between these two fits in… is this a mutual Mad Love? A very extreme version of Slap-Slap-Kiss or Kiss-Kiss-Slap? I've never quite seen something like that before… this kind of oddly endearing insanity…

edited 22nd Oct '12 3:29:45 PM by Lyendith

That... looks like a doujin to me. I don't get it though. Who's that girl beside the Bern in the flashback? A closing door? Is the girl there Furude Rika? Whaat?

It's presumably Rika and Hanyuu.

So, I think I've finished everything now… for a while I wondered why the series ended abruptly with Ange shooting Amakusa and Kawabata, before realizing that there was another ending. >___< And that one brought me to TEARS. Yes, literally. Because Battler and Beatrice, and because Akiko Shikata. Just by the existence of that woman, this level of awesomeness is possible for Umineko.

Now, I'm still lost with Ange's constant dying and reviving and going back and forth in time, but I suppose they are actually Anges of different Fragments all linked by the "witch" Ange on a higher plane. Or something. I apply the same reasoning to that whole "Single Truth" deal. Knowing how Fragments work, there is probably no such thing as a Single Truth ; the "Truth" Ange learned is just one of a single Fragment. There are worlds where Beatrice doesn't exist after all, so I don't think those where she does all end up in exactly the same way.

But that's what intrigues me in this ending: apparently the Battler who escapes with Beato knows all of the truth and remembers the repeating games… so why was the island still blown up? They apparently could create a timeline where everyone comes back alive (Beato just had to not send her letter), so why didn't they do it?

Yes, the series ended, the Mind Screw did not.

edited 24th Oct '12 12:16:32 PM by Lyendith

Congratulations! You win! About a million words later, how do you feel!?... Hell of a ride, isn't it?

There's a lot that still can be said, but I'll refrain from dumping it all out there at once. But, to your current point, I think you may be misinterpreting the role of the metaworld somewhat. There was never any hope of Battler returning home happy and with everyone alive. Beato may have led him to believe that early on, but she wanted him playing her game for her own reasons. In 1998, Rokkenjima has a big hole in it, and everyone but Battler (And possibly Beato according to some of the more out there theories, but I'll get into that some other time) is dead. The people from the future can speculate as much as they want on what happened those two days - they have two message bottles with conflicting accounts, novels written by Battler, and their own imaginations to fill what happened in the catbox, but the end result is fixed, and will never be changed.

Err, well, I win, that's a big word… I didn't manage to guess much in the end >__< I vaguely anticipated a few secondary points at the most. But yeah, I won't forget that ride anytime soon.

Yes, I somewhat understood after Episode 6 that there would be no "everyone comes back safe and happy" ending (because of Battler's behaving as if he didn't care about that anymore). What bugs me is that even if Beato allowed Battler to escape the explosion, that Battler should be totally clueless about why some girl had decided to blow up the island and take him alone in a safe place, and be in a Heroic BSoD knowing that his entire family is dead. And yet, he knows why she did that, remembers their games and totally forgives her. He isn't upset at all and even tries to die with her. So put simply, that means "winning the game" only allowed him to see the future after Midnight of October 6th on that particular timeline?

I thought that, like in Higurashi each new Episode was a new Fragment that gave birth to a different future (with Ange's future resulting from Episode 3), but apparently that wasn't it… and yet Episode 5, 6 and 7 clearly belong to different timelines (where Erika lands on the island or where Beatrice doesn't exist), so we're back to square one…

edited 24th Oct '12 1:10:08 PM by Lyendith

There's a few ways you can look at the final boat scene. One is that it's the aftermath of something we didn't see, like maybe one where Battler remembered his promise, or maybe something like the Ep7 tea party happened, Beato survived getting shot by Kyrie (I thinkwhen Eva wakes up she fails to note her body.), Battler met up with her, and they ran off together.

But more likely Is that the final scene is simply fantasy. A touching one, but still fantasy. I believe Ikkuko describes as a "final rose cast out to sea" or something like that. Note that it's the only time in the entire series Battler is on a boat and isn't flipping out.

Edit: If you want to assume that the metaworld is real, one way to look at is Beatrice gets power from Lambdadelta, the voyager witch and an actual fragment-hopper. What she then does is put Battler into a game of her creation, a facsimile of the real Rokkenjima. She's the gamemaster, she makes the rules, but like Battler in Ep6/8, she also writes the story, the main narrative, designs the murders, even the seemingly casual bits of dialogue contain significant hints to the idea and themes she's trying to get Battler to understand. The term Gamemaster is accurate - it's like one really intense session of Dungeons And Dragons. (Incidentally, there's an amazing fan-VN titled Witches and Woodlands where Beatrice D Ms actual Dn D for everyone. It's hilarious and great.[1] ) Which is why they butt heads so much early on. To Beatrice, they are literally just pieces on her gameboard, but to Battler it's still his friends and family.

Oh, almost forgot, more required reading. [2] Summary of the "Our Confessions" booklet released last year. It's not fully translated yet to my knowledge, but the gist of it is all there. Basically details Beato's behind the scenes process of setting up the games.

More edit: Wow. Stumbled across this image. A delightful chart of Umineko's layered world complexities. [3]◊ Massive spoilers for anyone not done with the story, obviously.

edited 24th Oct '12 8:27:09 PM by Oroboro

Oh, that chart helps a bit! About the other link though, am I wrong if I suppose it reveals all the culprits and tricks of the first novel? If so, I prefer not to read it yet…

Going back to Episode 6, I'm starting to have doubts on how to interpret the final red truth… When Battler and Beato say that there are 17 people including Erika, the logical (and seemingly confirmed in Episode 8) interpretation was that Beatrice, Shannon and Kanon were counted as 1 person. The problem is Erika does say in red "I am the 18th human on Rokkenjima" without choking. Apparently, some interpret that as meaning that Erika was Dead All Along (because the words "human" and "person" supposedly designate two different things). But that doesn't make sense either… the Detective cannot be a zombie.

Well, that may be a moot point in the end…

edited 25th Oct '12 3:12:14 AM by Lyendith

Our Confessions deals with a hypothetical scenario, not any of the novels in particular. Though I guess once you've read it it's pretty easy to apply that info to all the episodes, so I suppose it can wait.

One rather simple thing to notice is that When the number people on the island is finally down to 16, it's the same number of pieces in Chess. =P But yeah, that final red truth is a bit confusing. I've read dozens of debates on but, but can't seem to remember the specifics atm.

Got it.

Damn, I can't get Ricordande Il Pasato out of my head... writing a song so beautiful and so depressing at the same time should be illegal... TT___TT

Well, I'll try to sum up Episode 7 and Yasu's path as I understood it, to sort out my thoughts.

Kinzo meets Beatrice Castiglioni. They fall in love. Kinzo unleashes a massacre to keep the Gold and Bice to himself (or is at least the cause of the massacre). They flee, Bice hides and Kinzo lives a double life. They have a child, but Bice dies. Kinzo has the not-so-brilliant idea to call their daughter Beatrice, and procceeds to build two mansions on Rokkenjima. He hides Beatrice there. She grows up to look like her mother. He loses it and rapes her. Lion is born. Soon after, Rosa finds Kuwadorian and Beatrice dies. Kinzo takes Lion and asks Natsuhi to raise him/her. She loses it and pushes the servant and the baby off the cliff.

Until there, no problem.

Then, Genji finds the dead servant and realizes the baby is still alive. He takes it to Nanjo who confirms, and refrains from telling anything to Kinzo considering the... "accident" with his previous daughter. He places the baby in Fukuin House, where she is renamed Something Yasuda (the first name is unclear, but probably Sayo). She has great but unspecified sequela from her accident and doesn't grow up very well.

Now we get to the difficult part (I'll use female pronouns for convenience).

1976: "Yasu" is 9 years old but Genji falsified her birthdate, so she is officially 6 years old. At that improbable age, she is employed as a servant for the Ushiromiya family with the code name "Shannon" and given an individual room. Disrespected by the other, much older servants, she supports herself by creating an image of the ideal servant she aims to be. After a few years, to find an excuse at her clumsiness and habit of losing things, she imagines a meeting with the image she has of the witch Beatrice; that's the "birth" of Gaap. After that, Yasu talks to Kumasawa about it, and learns about mystry novels and the demons of Akujikishima.

That's when it becomes a mess.

I have a hard time interpreting the scene where Gaap possesses her and hides Asune's key. That may be all invented, but if it's in Clair's tale, there must be a reason... I would theorise that Yasu played a prank on Asune for revenge and liked the sensation of being "the one who bullies" for once... after that, she retreats in her mental world and lets her body and boring life to "the servant Shannon", creating her own "perfect world" all alone, with her imaginary friend Gaap. She creates Virgilia and Ronove based on her mother figure Kumasawa, and Genji who was probably devoted to her in some way (she is Kinzo's daughter after all).

Then we get to 1980.

The 10/13yo Shannon falls in love with 12yo Battler while 17yo George is still a jealous prick. Battler pulls out his Casanova's Gratuitous English and she takes it a bit too seriously. Too bad, just after that, Battler's mom passes away and he's not coming back. 3 years pass without any sign of him, and by her conversations in her dreams with "Beatrice", she finally accepts this idea, burrying her love for Battler deep inside her heart, but without managing to forget it completely - that's when Beatrice "takes the love on herself". To comfort herself, she creates an imaginary brother named Kanon. Just before that (or just after? I forgot), she has met with Maria, who showed an interest in magic, and from that point on her personality of Beatrice suddenly takes over each time they meet. That's 1983.

1984, a lot of stuff happens.

Kinzo, certain that his child is alive somewhere in the mansion, decides to display the portrait and the epitaph, betting on the miracle that she solves it. After several months, yasu manages to do it and meets Kinzo, who apologizes to her before dying. But when she learns how she was born and saved, she loses it - that's when her "furniture" complex starts. Soon after though, she falls in love with George for some obscure reason. And let's note that at that time she is officially 14yo while George is 21. Around the same time, the "Kanon" part of her falls for Jessica. Both cannot be possible at the same time, the situation is not maintainable.

That's where I'm not sure what to deduce...

So the "Beatrice" part decided to become an arbiter and to ruin one of the two relationships, or even both of them, and strated planning her "ceremony" where she would defy the family to solve the epitaph and hope that Jessica or George would solve it. Except the year where she did it, 1986, was the worst possible: not only did Battler suddenly come back, reawakening her old feelings and making her heart a complete mess, the situation of the family was very tense with everyone suspecting Kinzo's death and the four siblings being in difficult financial situations. Shannon appeared before Maria as her Beatrice persona, the letter arrived, the family members challenged the epitaph, Eva solved it first and claimed the gold, but someone didn't accept it and started a bloodbath (the first to come in mind would be Kyrie or Rosa, but also maybe Krauss - considering Ange's reaction though, Kyrie is the most plausible). After surviving, Eva decided to blow up the island so that no-one, and above all not Ange, would find out the truth. Made a temporary witch by Lambdadelta, Yasu decided to save Battler, but not before setting up a "game" to make him understand why she made up this challenge, so that at least one person understands her...

OR SOMETHING >___< Well, at least, I understand the duel in Episode 6 better now. A bit.

edited 26th Oct '12 8:42:42 AM by Lyendith

Good stuff. I'm working atm, so I'll give a more thorough and in-depth response when I get home. I think I have a few more charts I can use...

Edit: Okay, here we go. First off, Yasu charts! [1]◊ [2]◊

Anyway, most of what you said was pretty spot on. To clarify a few points... The bit with Gaap's "possession" is a bit confusing, and it's been awhile so I don't remember it to clearly, but I'm pretty sure that it ties into the nature of magic, like with Maria, the candy, and the teacup. It would've been impossible to get the key off the ring so fast, but pretty easy to just switch it out for a similar key ring or something like that.

I see you caught on right away about the part where Geroge is creeping on what he believes to be a 12 yo. I'm honestly not sure if that's what Ryukushi intended or he just forgot to count ages during flashbacks, but I'm going to say yes, George is a creeper. Truthfully, I think the relationship between those two is pretty messed up. Shannon is pretty passive, and George takes advantages of that to project his own white knighting ideas of love and happiness on her, and is more in love with the idea of himself as the hero saving the lonely maid than in actually getting to know and understand her as a person. Shannon goes along with it because she wants to feel loved, even if it's not what she really wants.

I should note, that much of this is just conjecture and speculation. Umineko basically actively encourages you to form your own Head Canon, and I'm just sharing my own thoughts. (Which come just as much from reading other peoples opinions, theories, and everything on various fora for the last year)

Anyway, regarding Yasu, I don't think it's quite right to think of her as one body with different personalities fighting for control. "I am one, yet many", says Claire. Shannon, Kanon, Beatrice, they are all Yasu, and Yasu is all of them. They are each a different and integral part of her. We all put on different personas when interacting with our Boss compared to our family, and I think what Yasu does is just a more extreme version of that. Kanon exists as a way for her to channel all her anger, frustration, rage, sullenness, and everything negative. Beatrice is a power fantasy basically, the witch that stalks the halls at night, who's name drives fear and awe to some. And Shannon is the ideal, perfect servant, the image that she tries to show the rest of the world. The love duel is less of an actual battle between personalities, as just some really heavy metaphors for intense inner emotional conflict.

Diverging from that for a second, Because of the way Maria sees the world, it's not needed to actually dress up as Beatrice to fool her. If you just act possessed and say "I'm Beatrice!, and in her eyes it will be true. Ronove and Virgillia too, were likely Genji and Kumasawa playing along.

Anyway, my personal theory about what happened on Rokkenjima Prime is that Yasu challenged everyone with the epitaph, and using the servants and by bribing a few of the adults, she planned a fake murder mystery as well in the hopes that Battler can solve it and remember his promise. As per the epitaph, the dead would all magically resurrect, she'd give the gold to the family and relinquish the headship. But something went wrong, someone who wasn't in on the joke was a bit unstable, and well. You know how all the adults are. (An alternative addendum to all that is Battler tried to do the exact same thing, convincing the cousins to play a murder game of their own to see if Shannon remembered him at all. Even more things go wrong)

Anyway, here's a link for some other guys theory, and a ton of quotes from the narration and dialogue from EP 1-2 that shows just how thoroughly and intricately all the themes and ideas behind Yasu's inner struggle are woven into the narrative. [3] Bit of a long read though.

edited 26th Oct '12 6:21:49 PM by Oroboro

I've started rereading Episode 2 (with a scene of Sayaka Ohara imitating Miki Ito… good god…), which is fortunately very focused on the issue.

I agree that it doesn't look so much as a split personality as "different parts of the same person", and Kanon is always the one to badmouth Natsuhi and other servants while Shannon remains silent. As for Genji and Kumasawa, I hadn't really thought about it that way, but that makes some sense… And indeed, as Will says in EP 7, Maria considers different personalities as different people (like "her kind Mama" vs. "the black witch"), so fooling her isn't hard at all.

Where it gets hard is when we wonder what the "true form" of Yasu is. I mean his/her true appearance. No matter how screwed up they are, one person can only have one body. To pass as two different people in front of Jessica, he/she would need some pretty incredible disguising abilities. You can fake the boobs, the hair and even the voice (see Hato in Genshiken), but the face…? It may help that everyone in this series has blue eyes though >__<

And yes, I've always been uncomfortable regarding George. They say that gallantry is another form of sexism, and in his case that's really how it feels. There is even a passage in Episode 2 when he compares his playing with Shannon's emotions to the bullying he was victim of in the past. And he likes it. That's pretty sick in hindsight.

edited 27th Oct '12 7:46:15 AM by Lyendith

Regarding Yasu's appearance, little Yasu was finally shown in the EP 7 manga. [1]◊ [2]◊ [3]◊

Most of the fanart depicts her as a short haired blonde in a maid outfit. (Which I have a ton of pictures of, but won't be linking here... yet. >_>) Anyway, there' a few different ways to think about costume changing logistically. The people most needed to make it possible (Gengi, Kumasawa, Nanjo) are probably all in on it. Natushi/Krauss probably never actually look at the servants. Gohda's an idiot. On non family conference days, Shannon/Kanon probably work different shifts. (As in actually being on the island). Which leaves Jessica - she's either in on it, or just kind of stupid. Honestly I'm inclined to believe both.

It's also possible That the Shannon/Kanon split was just something that existed in the story and in the gameboards, as part of the mystery to solve, and not actually running around switching wigs and fake boobs in Rokkenjima Prime.

Lastly, It could be assumed that all the characters don't actually look as pictured. Anime Hair and all that. Did the real Battler have that ridiculous hair? Did the real Natsuhi dye her hair with multicolored tips? Why does everyone care about Beatrice being blonde, but nobody gives a shit about Jessica? When we finally see Tohya he looks a bit more normal, we never see adult Ange, and Ikkuko looks pretty normal too.

Again, theories and speculation, etc etc.