#down-the-rabbit-well

[tigytigeru]

It's certainly interesting considering the different perspectives fans of Umineko would have depending on whenether they were along for the ride, or started after it ended. Though I can't really say if I agree with that betrayed mindset. It was a little frustrating yeah, but to me, all the clues were there. And there was really nothing in 1-4 that indicated the answer would be handed on a silver platter. If anything Higurashi betrays the genre after building up the mystery part so much in 1-6.

Well like I said, I feel like the betrayed feeling is something that people who started Umineko after it had already ended won’t really understand. You have to realize the perspective of people who were reading the series while it was still coming out, literally waiting 6 months between releases. I only got into Umineko during the time before EP5′s Japanese release, but even for me that meant two years just to get through Chiru. When you’re waiting excitedly for that long to read the next installment of the story, and it hits and the spoilers come out of the floodgates only to be told ‘yeah the ending doesn’t actually give any answers’…well, if you weren’t there at the time, I don’t think you could understand. Especially since now, years after it’s happened, you have tons of people who have come together to try and make sense of the EP8 ending, and now we have the EP8 manga to boot.

I don’t think EP8 is even a fraction as polarizing now as it was when it first came out - I mean, again, I’m not just talking about my own personal feelings, here. People were quitting Umineko in droves when they found out how EP8 ended, people started shitting on Ryukishi like crazy, and everyone either felt betrayed or was laughing at the people who took the story seriously enough to feel betrayed in the first place. It was a pretty universal sentiment at the time…it’s just one of those ‘you had to be there’ sorts of things that I’m not sure anyone who didn’t experience could really understand, even if I try to explain it. 

As far as Higurashi goes, though - I can’t agree. Higurashi was never presented explicitly as a mystery series. It was certainly mysterious, but it was presented as a horror and supernatural-themed story right from the start. It challenged critical thinking, but it never outright said ‘this is a mystery, try to solve this’ to its readers. There also wasn’t really anything to be betrayed because Higurashi pretty concretely answered all the questions it presented. When I say ‘betrayed’ I don’t mean ‘because the answers weren’t satisfying’, I mean ‘because there literally were not answers’. Because, remember, the EP8 VN leaves the details on a LOT of things in the catbox that were only later given concrete details by the manga. The betrayal part is the fact that we were told to solve a mystery, and at the end, we weren’t given the sheet to check our answers against despite the story often reinforcing the very fact that people like to know that a mystery is, in fact, solvable (see EP5 ???? tea party scene with Virgilia and Dlanor specifically).

Higurashi didn’t betray anything, though. Not only because it never presented itself as an explicit mystery, but because it did answer all of its questions (aside from maybe some minor things). Matsuribayashi-hen’s puzzle segment of putting together all the kakera alone answers almost every lingering mystery from the series since Onikakushi-hen, going all the way back to the initial conflict over the dam and covering every incident until the present time. If Higurashi were a proper mystery, that would be the ‘answer sheet’ - like saying, before this point, get your theories together, because this is your last chance. And then the kakera puzzle goes through all the questions you may have had and answers them. And at that point you can say ‘oh hey, I guessed that right!!’ or ‘aw man I was totally off’. But the answers are given. To everything. Whether you were satisfied by ‘lol brain parasites’ is another matter entirely - that’s not what I mean by betrayal. It’s the fact that, prior to the release of the manga, Umineko’s ending decided not to even give us those answers at all.

Again, you have to put into perspective just how much discussion took place over even just the two years that I was into Umineko - let alone the four years for those who got into it from the time of EP1. Go to AnimeSuki sometime and check out the old archived Umineko forum, and look at the sheer number of pages each individual Episode’s discussion thread has…and that’s not even counting the general spoiler for all EPs discussion thread, all the anime discussions, manga discussions, or all the discussions that happened on other places like 4chan (unfortunately most records of those were lost when Foolz died, RIP original Pony Theory thread). People spent countless hours of their lives putting together theories to try and solve the individual Episodes and their mysteries, and at the very least, in the end, were expecting some closure more than just the cryptic solutions given by Will in EP7. People wanted that answer sheet so they could check to see if their theories were correct, or oh so wrong.

And they weren’t given that. Despite Umineko repeatedly going over mystery tropes and reinforcing to the reader that it was, in fact, solvable as long as they had their Critical Thinking Hats on…it never delivered on the chance to let us see how right or wrong we were. That was the core of people’s dissatisfaction with the ending, and Ryukishi’s smug attitude in that infamous interview just rubbed salt in those wounds by him basically going full Featherine and insulting his readers, basically telling us that if we couldn’t see the truth already we didn’t deserve the chance to check the answer sheet, mocking us for not liking his brilliant twists, and just all sorts of rude-ass shit. Have you read Answer to the Golden Witch? Check it out sometime and try to think from the perspective of people who were already feeling dissatisfied by the lack of answers in EP8…and then feeling that the mighty King Ryukishi was sitting high on his throne looking down on them and mocking the pathetic peasants who couldn’t grasp The Heart without someone holding their hands. Suffice to say, a lot of people lost respect for Ryukishi after that - hence, that feeling of betrayal.

But I do feel that Ryukishi has at least somewhat redeemed himself for that old attitude. The fact that he chose to release the EP8 manga the way he did at all shows me that he maybe realized how people like me felt about having the answers shut away in the catbox…which, while thematically appropriate, was not at all satisfying for the loyal Umineko fans who had devoted so much time to trying to solve the mystery. I’m sure there were a lot of mindless goats who just wanted the answers served on a silver platter - but we were not them. We worked out asses off trying to tackle the mystery from so many angles over the course of years. And I think he finally realized, once the dust had settled, how that inconclusive ending must have made us feel. 

I read a thing here on Tumblr that was a snippet from a different interview or post or something by Ryukishi at the time when he decided to release the EP8 manga…anyone happen to have a link to that? I’ll edit this post if I find it. But basically it shows just how hard it was for him to make that ultimate decision, between keeping the thematic ending of shutting the truth up in the catbox, or releasing that truth to the people who grasped so hard for it for so long. And I appreciate the fact that he ultimately did decide to reward us for our efforts by giving the answers in the form of the EP8 manga. Reading what a difficult decision it was for him eased a lot of my old hatred…I’m still not terribly fond of the man, but I don’t hate Ryukishi anymore. As much. I just tend to have trouble getting over grudges. But I do respect and appreciate him for releasing the EP8 manga, because it shows at least some part of him doesn’t think all of his fans are stupid goats who want to be spoonfed. That was the part that hurt people like me the most, you know - we really did work hard at trying to actually solve the mystery. We did not want to be spoonfed the answers. We wanted to do the same thing Featherine wanted Bern to make EP7 for - to check our answers and know whether or not the solutions we found were true.

So yeah…maybe that helps explain a bit better what I mean when I say that so many people felt betrayed by the way Umineko ended. But I do think that it’s probably hard to understand if you weren’t there at the time. The current Umineko fandom is very different from the one back then, simply because the environment is so different now. We even have blogs like Ramblings of the Golden Witch that go through all the evidence in the existing material and analyze lingering questions.

But again, that’s only possible because the answers exist now. We actually have a complete set of all the novels + all the manga + the extra content of the EP8 manga in front of us that we can sit down and compare and dissect. That’s a luxury that didn’t exist in ‘my time’. We had the visual novel, the PC original without even voice acting, and we had a disjointed collection of partially-finished manga (the EP7 manga would have just scarcely begun at the time EP8 was released in Japan when this shitstorm broke out)…and we had our theories, and our discussions, which colored a lot of perceptions and further clouded the line between canon and unconfirmed. There was a lot more speculation than answers back then, which I feel has reversed now - there’s still a lot about Umineko that’s vague or inside the catbox, and that’s why we can still enjoy discussing it even all these years later. But there are also a lot of concrete answers provided by the EP7 and EP8 manga that did not exist back then. And more than the fact that they didn’t exist, Ryukishi was insistent about the fact that they wouldn’t exist, and shame on us for wanting them to, because obviously we weren’t worthy of them.

People who got into Umineko after 2011, and especially after the EP8 manga existed…they got to experience a very different Umineko than I did. One where there were answers and spoilers and people willing to sit down and analyze these things and try to make more sense of them. A world where, even if you’re the type who avoids spoilers and doesn’t want to confirm anything until you’ve read it for yourself, you could then go online and look it up or ask someone to help clarify the solution for you if you felt confused. A world where we could say concretely things like ‘Yasu’s reason for committing the crime was more than just being lonely because Battler didn’t come back, as seen in Confession of the Golden Witch’. And you can say, oh, I see, that makes sense, because you have actual factual evidence clarifying the mystery and making the foreshadowing more obvious in hindsight.

People who got into Umineko before 2011 didn’t have that. All we could say was ‘so, uh, she killed everyone because she took a kid’s promise too seriously? That’s it? We’re supposed to accept that as a motive? What is this shit?’ because the VN did a terrible job of exploring the other conflicts that pushed Yasu to her breaking point. That’s just one example, of course. But for basically everything you now have concrete evidence to back up, from the identities of Yasu’s accomplices in each arc to the solutions of individual closed rooms? We had nothing but speculation, speculation, and more speculation. And that speculation varied wildly. You think Rosatrice is as bad as it gets? Don’t make me laugh. I’ve seen some shit theories in my day. But because everything was shrouded in mysterious catbox mystery, even the shittiest theories couldn’t be denied. I’m talking literal goat-tier shit with a flimsier basis than small bombs that completely disregarded The Heart, not just of Yasu, but multiple characters. But people clung to these theories because ‘b-but there’s nothing saying it’s not true, devil’s proof, devil’s proof!!’. They were great times and I wouldn’t trade them for the world, but damn was the 2009-2011 Umineko fandom a shitshow.

TL;DR I don’t expect you to understand that feeling of betrayal because I think it’s fundamentally based on the circumstances of the time. Reading through all of Umineko in one go and being able to check your answers afterward is just too wholly different from the experience of reading an Episode at a time, with 6 months of waiting before the next, and then in the end being told ‘yeah you’re not gonna get a real answer lol sorry’.

I’d be curious to hear the perspectives of other people who were there at the time as well, assuming any are still in the current fanbase. I do know that every October when someone makes the annual Seac/a/ts thread you get a lot of people who pop in to say things like ‘do people still like this shit? I dropped it because DID Meido’ or to talk about how much Chiru sucks compared to the old EPs, and other things like that. And it often feels like the only people who stuck around did so because they want to deito Lucifer or fuck Erika, and I think there’s still a regular circlejerk general on /jp/ with all of like 5 people who still talk about Umineko. On the Tumblr side of things I get the impression that a lot of the more active blogs are people who got into the fandom later, and have a very different perspective than me (which I actually find refreshing and fun) who probably also don’t understand why I’m often so bitter about Ryukishi and how I still have yet to read EP8 for myself.

I’m like the grizzled old adventurer walking through a town full of fresh-faced younguns as I mutter ‘I hate Umineko, fuck Ryukishi’ under my breath. And they’re like ‘why does that person keep going into the dungeon if they hate it so much…?’ and I’m like ‘you wouldn’t understand, you’ll never understand the things I’ve seen’ while I venture into the darkness. But also we can sit down at the local tavern and swap stories of our own experiences and realize how different they are, and how they’re still fun to talk about, and every time I feel like I know the dungeon like the back of my hand someone comes along with a fresh perspective and I see it in a different way.

I think the analogy got away from me, but yeah, something like that. Somehow, after all these years, I’m still finding new things to discuss about Umineko with people from a different perspective, and I think that’s part of what makes it fun, even if they don’t always understand where my mindset is coming from :P

[tigytigeru]

Analyzed the fuck out of all meta/magic scenes and whatnot in the prior Episodes (especially EP2) and if i were a person who experienced Umineko as it released, I can see how that would be a little too much of a task to ask your readers to undergo. You can't exactly ask people to spend 10-20 hours of their lives analyzing a novel just to figure out what it really means. Its much easier to do that when its done. (cont)

“You can’t exactly ask people to spend 10-20 hours of their lives analyzing a novel just to figure out what it really means.”

*sweats nervously*

Well, I honestly don’t agree with this, and hope this isn’t what it seems like I’ve been trying to imply when I talk about how upset the sentiment about Ryukishi and EP8 was at the time. In fact, it’s the opposite - people did spend countless hours of their lives trying to analyze the novel. Like, I’ve mentioned this before, but I was only on the Umineko Train for 2 years before it ended because I got in between EP4 and 5. If you think of the people who got into Umineko from the start (mostly people who already loved Higurashi), that’s four years of their lives. And when I say years…I do mean years. Because speaking from experience, I literally did devote multiple hours, every day, over those two years, to doing Umineko stuff. It could be dumb shit like all the Umineko Hell videos I made, or it could be all the times I sat down and wrote up huge pages of notes about various theories, or all the time I spent on the AnimeSuki forums and in more threads on /a/ and /jp/ than I could possibly count. Far, far beyond 10-20 hours, I think most Umineko fans would tell you that all the time spent analyzing the story is where the fun came from to begin with.

The problem was the lack of payoff, and the fact that it felt like our efforts were invalidated. I went into more detail on those issues in this post (the stuff under the Read More that was in response to yasuda-yoshiya), though, if you’re interested, because I’d rather just link that than writing another 10-page essay repeating the same sentiments :P But the TL;DR of it is that the problem wasn’t that making the readers analyze it was ‘asking too much’ - that analysis is what drove most people to the series in the first place. It was the fact that we felt like we came away with nothing to show for the countless hours we did spend analyzing it. 

I think ‘waiting to do that when it’s done’ is the very thing Ryukishi didn’t want fans to do, because that means you’re not actually thinking for yourself and trying to reach an answer - you’re just a goat who wants the truth handed to you on a silver platter. And people like that, who aren’t actually reasoning and trying to understand the story on their own, don’t deserve the truth because they didn’t put in any effort to searching for it. I don’t disagree with Ryukishi on that at all. My problem lies with how dismissive he was to all fans who were upset with the lack of answers, as though all fans were waiting until they could see the answers without even trying to find it. It’s the fact that fans like me, who indeed I feel were the majority (at least in the western fanbase), who actually did struggle our asses off searching for the truth. We definitely weren’t saying ‘thinking is a pain just tell us the answers’, at all. All we wanted from the end was the ability to check the answers we reached after struggling for so long, to have some form of validation that said ‘you got it right’ or ‘you got it way wrong’, so we didn’t feel like everything was a waste of time.

I also think it’s a bit problematic to say that Ryukishi is somehow hindered by being Japanese, and that’s a dangerous line of thinking. I’m sure you didn’t mean anything negative by it, but realistically that’s like saying ‘Japanese authors are not nearly as good as western ones, Ryukishi’s talent is wasted because he wasn’t born in the west’. And well, I don’t think I have to explain why that starts to sound a bit…wrong. 

Ryukishi is Japanese. First and foremost, he’s writing for fellow Japanese. His stories were always aimed at his own culture, and I remember how surprised he was to find out about Witch-Hunt and that Umineko was so hugely popular in the west to begin with. He’s not trying to look down on his peers and say ‘I’m better than you, and because you’re all Japanese, you’d never understand the COMPLEX topics in my stories’. In fact, I’d say it’s very much the opposite - Ryukishi would not be writing these stories at all if he wasn’t writing them for his fellow Japanese. 

If you’ve read the Higurashi VN, you’ll know that the Kai arcs all had a personal afterword written by Ryukishi to the readers (the question arcs had Otsukaresama-kai, which was what Umineko’s EP1 tea party is supposed to remind you of). At the end of…I wanna say it was Minagoroshi-hen? He left a note about the importance of talking to people about your problems, and how this was something he wished could become a more widespread concept in Japan. Because it took so much effort just to get Satoko into child protective services because of Japan’s general ‘mind your business’ attitude, and because of Satoko’s own belief that her brother would come back if she shouldered all of this herself…it showed just how prevalent that sort of idea is in Japanese culture. Rika, too, is a huge example of that, and one of the main messages of the story (and Minagoroshi-hen specifically) was how Rika could have gotten so much further if she had actually talked to her friends about what troubled her sooner. Rena, too, in Tsumihoroboshi-hen. A big theme of Higurashi was trust and friendship, and talking to people instead of bottling up your problems. And it was also to be the one to talk to a friend, and help them, if you felt they needed it, rather than doing the standard Japanese thing of ‘it’s not my business’. Ryukishi was writing about these themes to try and send a message to his own people, to his own culture, and to maybe, if just a little, influence the thinking of his readers to help foster a new generation to break through some of these cultural taboos.

Higurashi would not work as a story if it wasn’t written by a Japanese man, to the Japanese people, as a story about Japanese characters…because these concepts are so important to understanding a lot of the major themes. Let’s say, instead, that Ryukishi had moved to the US and started writing Higurashi here. We don’t have a doujin industry, but let’s say he just published it as a fanfiction online, and it got a bit of a popular following. What do you think the reception would have been about the inherent themes of Minagoroshi-hen? Because I can absolutely envision a western comment section for it. “Why didn’t they just bust into her house and see that her uncle was lying?!” “If I were Keiichi and the others I’d have gone and kicked his ass” “Why would Rika rather keep quiet about Satoko than try to help her? I thought they were best friends?” And so on and so forth. I think a lot of people wouldn’t get why Minagoroshi-hen was such a long, dragged out process…because the western mindset for this sort of thing is so different. We can’t imagine that child protective services would be so passive!! The meaning of their struggle in that arc would just be totally lost - Hell, for all I know, that’s exactly what happened for western readers not super familiar with Japanese culture reading Higurashi for the first time (I say reading because if I recall, like most things, the anime sorta streamlined the whole thing for the sake of time and it didn’t seem like nearly as long of a process as it does in the VN and manga). I bet there were a lot of western fans who genuinely didn’t understand a lot of Higurashi’s themes, and this is no fault of their own. This is because Higurashi was written specifically with a Japanese audience in mind, an audience that wouldn’t need to have this attitude explained to them because it’s an inherent part of their culture.

I won’t pretend to be an expert on Japanese culture myself, of course, but I absolutely don’t think Ryukishi’s stories would work if they were actually written for a western market. Of course they both have a strong western fanbase, but I’d wager that only a small fraction of that fanbase is made up of people who weren’t already anime/manga fans. IE, people who already know a bit about Japanese culture because they’re already exposed to a lot of Japanese media. And while I think Umineko has a bit more western appeal in its themes than Higurashi (which is a very Japanese story in more ways than one), it was still clearly written for a Japanese audience, with a Japanese mindset. Again I go back to the fact that a big part of the issues in Umineko is that the family members never liked to talk about their personal problems. If they had come together and tried to talk and help each other, the tragedy could absolutely have been prevented. Yasu would have been able to come to terms with herself and not be pushed to the brink feeling like her life was hopeless. Battler and Rudolf could have made up much sooner, rather than waiting for 6 whole years. Rosa and Maria could have healed their mother-daughter relationship and try to come to terms with their own psychoses. The list goes on. So much of Umineko could have been prevented if the characters didn’t bottle up their personal problems…which, yeah, is something westerners can relate to and appreciate, but I think would be received much more strongly by a Japanese audience.

Ryukishi is Japanese. He writes for the Japanese. The fact that westerners latch onto that quality of his stories so much is certainly interesting, but to insinuate that somehow his own culture and the very mindset that drives him to write these stories is somehow hindering him…I can’t agree with that at all. I think it’s awesome that his stories are identifiable enough to reach a much wider audience than he could have ever expected…but to think that somehow his work would be better off if he wasn’t Japanese, or writing stories to appeal to his own culture? I think that’s a very mistaken viewpoint, myself.

[tigytigeru]

That almost every theme and metaphor in the series comes back to Sayo's existence. I remember after my first read, I felt that the Ushiromiya's were a little shafted in Chiru, but then I soon realized that while they kinda were, the more you learn about Sayo, the more you realize she's kind of like a culmination of every aspect of the Ushiromiya family's tragedy. And returning back to Sayo's motivation, I feel like while it was profound, the impact could only be felt if you went back and (cont)

(I feel like I might have missed an ask here, but this one is showing up as the first of three…going to just answer this one on its own because I felt like it deserved its own topic)

I would disagree with you about the Ushiromiyas. In fact, I’d say that the only characters of the original 18 who didn’t feel sufficiently developed by the end of the series are Hideyoshi and Nanjo. And yes, that includes Chiru - starting with EP5, let’s think of the characters who got a lot of significant development in Chiru (mind you I can’t include EP8 having not read it myself, so this is just EP5-7).

I know this one’s gonna get long too so let’s save some scrollbars.

Going in order of family rank because why not:

Kinzo: EP7 gives us a lot of insight into his character. Since he’s alive in Lion’s world, we know that the Kinzo we’re seeing is the real deal, and not a fabrication like previous Episodes. Aside from being a bit less mad as a result of Lion not dying, I’d say the Kinzo that Will meets with is otherwise exactly the same as the Kinzo from other worlds. Though the flashback he shows us is very tinted by rose-colored glasses, it also tells us quite a bit about his past. Maybe the story about how he met Bice is idealized quite a bit, but we still get a good lens into how his life was toyed with by the Ushiromiya elders, and how this could have driven him into the mindset of the Kinzo we know. In fact, isn’t it quite similar to Yasu? He was forced to live a life that he felt he had no control over, and so he turned to his hobby of the occult as a form of escapism, much like Yasu turns to her fantasies, or Maria turns to her own occult interests. This is an overarching theme among various characters in the series - the idea of ‘running away’ to an idealized fantasy as a means of escaping an unfortunate life. Finally, in the flashback scenes where we see Yasu solve the epitaph, we get to see how he deeply regrets what he did to Kuwadorian’s Beatrice, and how much he just wants to apologize one last time. He knows he’s being unreasonable when he asks Yasu to call him ‘Father’…but he begs her to do so, because now, at the end of his life, he just wants to feel that feeling that he rejected so much from Kuwadorian Beatrice (who we know was not allowed to call him Father) and feel like a parent. We know that what Kinzo did was inexcusable, and so does he, but in the end all he wants is to repent before he dies. Considering EP7 is our biggest look at a living Kinzo and not a representation of him as shown in the games where he’s long dead, I would say Chiru actually gives us the most significant information about the family head.

Krauss: EP5 shows us how much he truly loves his family. He tells Natsuhi that they’ll file for divorce once the whole business with Kinzo is over, and that he’ll make sure to secure a happy life for her and Jessica. He’s thinking of them before anyone else, basically saying ‘sorry I was such a shitty husband and forcing you guys to deal with my dumb financial decisions’. We also know from Natsuhi’s flashbacks that, when Krauss was away from Rokkenjima’s stifling environment and always trying to impress Kinzo, he was actually a really easygoing guy. EP7 also shows us how he does care about his siblings, with how he sticks up for Rudolf while Natsuhi berates him for his infidelity driving Battler away. That image EP3 cemented for a lot of people, of Krauss being a misogynistic ass and bully to his siblings, was unfortunately damning and I don’t think that’s fair. That was a young man trying to impress his very traditional father, and since Krauss is the heir apparent he’s always had that pressure hanging over his shoulder. When you take Krauss out of that environment where he’s trying so hard to be worthy of a father who never acknowledged him, he’s actually a really good husband and father, and he does love his younger siblings despite it all.

Eva: EP7 tea party. ‘nuff said. I also know EP8 deals with some of the inherent issues between her and Ange, so I imagine she gets some good development there, as well. We also have the whole fight with George in EP6 which, while not necessarily positive development (development does not have to be positive!!), shows a lot about her parenting style and the harsh way she brought up George, while believing that was for his best well-being.

Rudolf: EP7 tea party…er, ‘nuff said. But also, Chiru as a whole gives us a much better picture of Rudolf’s inner character than previous Episodes (where he was often shown through Battler’s perspective) had. We see in an EP7 flashback how much he regretted having cheated on his wife with Kyrie and getting her pregnant, and how he saw raising Ange as a form of repentance (I’d assume he actually meant repentance for what he did with switching Battler’s birth, IE, actually letting Kyrie raise her own child this time). Even during the whole tea party shenanigans (which mind you I haven’t hit yet in my reread so these memories are a bit more outdated) we get a feeling that he probably isn’t nearly as thrilled about what they’re doing as Kyrie is (not that this excuses him, at all), and how he still, if nothing else, wants to make sure Battler is spared - and that he sits them down and tells them the truth about them being parent and child. Like I said, character development does not have to be praiseworthy, but I think Chiru definitely gives us a lot of insight about Rudolf’s character.

Rosa: Rosa is a lot less developed in Chiru than she was in the question arcs, but that’s okay, because she was developed a whole lot in the question arcs. However, EP6 does show us a bit more insight into her situation with Maria’s father, which was one of those little mysteries that hadn’t really been addressed up to then. EP5 also shows the more wise side of Rosa when we see her discussing the epitaph with Battler and Erika, and her tendency to think that her opinions are stupid or meaningless even when she’s actually onto some big insights with the epitaph. This shows us more just how much her siblings beat into her head that she was stupid and inferior, so even when they’re not around, she tends to be the type of person who thinks that every word from their mouth is going to be stupid and that they’re bothering other people by even talking about it. A lot of my friends have these exact tendencies, always apologizing for saying things they think are dumb or being afraid to ask questions, etc, so I would say that even little scenes like this that give you more insight into the sort of character someone is are important. Rosa is also one of those characters with a very negative reputation, so I feel like a lot of people tend to overlook just how much emotional abuse Rosa herself has suffered through, and that she is in fact pitiable (not that it excuses her abuse of Maria at all, but it does EXPLAIN it quite a bit).

Jessica: The love duel in EP6 and her whole relationship with Kanon is expanded on, even if much of it is just a rehash of the ideas from EP2. We also see her in sharp contrast to the gung-ho and determined George, and how she’s really hesitant about even participating in the love trial for a long time (note her fight scene with Kyrie). EP7 also gives us the ghost story about the time she got pranked in the VIP room, and tells us that her asthma is FAKE and something she does to get out of uncomfortable situations. We also find out a very interesting attitude that serves to explain (faintly) why she maybe didn’t notice Kanon = Shannon - when the truth behind something feels more uncomfortable and ominous to her than a lie or an excuse, she’ll take the excuse. The idea of the servants banding together JUST to prank her was way too over the top and unsettling, so she decided that believing in her own active imagination was a better alternative. Perhaps on some level she did notice that Kanon was just Shannon in different clothes…but the fact that she was developing feelings for her long-time meido made her uncomfortable, so she played along with the idea that Kanon was a boy.

George: His confession to Shannon in…was it EP6? About his past character and jealousy over her relationship with Battler, tells us a lot about George’s personality and how he’s ‘evolved’ since he met Shannon. His fight with Evatrice also expands on the kind of home life he suffered, which was harsh even if he did respect that his mother had his best interests at heart. In general I’d say we get a more realistic depiction of George in Chiru than we did in the question arcs, where more often than not he was portrayed as little more than the wise, level-headed, calm and dutiful older cousin. The love trial also reinforced the ideas shown in EP4 during his fight with Gaap, about how strong his determination to marry Shannon was, and how - despite some rather ugly emotions initially making him interested in her - he really does love her.

Battler: Pretty sure I do not have to write an essay to show how much character development Battler gets in Chiru XD

Maria: Like her mother, Maria takes more of a back seat role in Chiru compared to her development in the question arcs…however, there’s still a lot we can get out of her scenes. Her fight with Erika in EP6, and her story to Will about how she met Beatrice in EP7, both show just how strongly she believes in Beatrice and her magic, even if on some level she might realize that it’s a lie. EP7 gives us a lot of insight into why Maria developed the way she did, growing up being bullied at school for not having a father, and how raising the subject made her mother become aggressive. She falls into her occult hobby out of a desire to stand out and make an identity for herself…which Beatrice then fosters as the two of them become friends and create Mariage Sorciere. When you put this information together with the things we learned about Maria in the question arcs, her entire life clicks into place and you can really understand what kind of person she is, and why she’s another example of the overarching theme of escapism in Umineko.

Natsuhi: Um, all of EP5. Like, literally all of EP5? EP5 is the Natsuhi episode. Almost all of her development comes from EP5. Before Chiru, we actually didn’t know all that much about Natsuhi or her life - yeah, she’s The Lead Mom in EP1 and that does focus on her somewhat, but after EP1 she’s generally relegated to ‘that temperamental and bossy bitch who’s obsessed with Kinzo’s dignity and will yell at you if you insinuate that Kinzo was his mistress’. EP5 actually gives Natsuhi multiple layers of character, and I don’t think I need to really lay it all out here - if you’ve read EP5, you know just how much Chiru did to develop her character. As an aside, though, also that scene in EP7 where she chews out Rudolf for his infidelity, which shows that she’s not afraid to Tell It Like It Is when it’s something she feels strongly about, and how she really does sympathize with Battler in this situation.

Hideyoshi: Poor guy. RIP character development.

Kyrie: …Hahaha…haha…ha…haaaa……… (EP7 tea party aside, though, her fight with Jessica in EP6 also gives us a lot of insight into her character…and perhaps, uh, foreshadowing. EP5 too reinforces how cunning she is since wasn’t she the one who initially felt the 1985 conference was ‘off’ and suspected that Kinzo might be dead, convincing the other siblings of the whole plan to force the truth out of Krauss in ‘86? And probs EP8 also goes into more detail about her since I know that’s The Ange Episode and this is obviously a pretty huge issue for her)

(you said Ushiromiyas specifically but let’s just cover every character anyways)

Nanjo: RIP. Though, we do get to squeeze a little development out of him by way of it being confirmed that he was one of the three Secret Keepers who knew the truth about Yasu and Kuwadoriantrice. Other than that, though… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Genji: Genji’s always been a tough nut to crack, and I really do wish we got to know more about him. However, EP7 paints a very strong picture of what he’s really like underneath his undying loyalty as a servant and friend to Kinzo. He actually went against his master’s wishes and lied about the baby being dead because he didn’t want to see Kinzo repeat his mistakes on this child. Granted, the end result of his actions was…uh, not so great, but he had good intentions at heart. And he did watch over Yasu like a father figure for all those years…to the point of agreeing to help her in her ultimate murder-suicide plan. We get a lot of little scenes throughout EP7 that show us what kind of person Genji really was. I wish we got more, but at the same time, I’d find it hard to argue that anything in the question arcs developed Genji’s true character more than those EP7 tidbits did.

Kumasawa: Much like Nanjo and Genji, we can learn a lot just by way of knowing that she was one of the three who kept Kinzo and Yasu’s secrets. We also see what a loving and motherly figure she was to young Yasu, and how much she influenced her (for better or worse) - she helped her stop losing things, she developed her interest in mystery, she fostered her belief in Beatrice and fantasy…Kumasawa played a very large role in Yasu’s development. The scene with Will in Lion’s world also shows us how Kumasawa felt very strongly about what Kinzo did to Kuwadoriantrice, despite keeping his secret for all these years. Even the EP6 meta scenes with her and Chick Beato, IMO, give an image of how she must have been with Kuwadoriantrice - the scene where she speaks out against Battler throwing her cookies on the floor comes to mind, and I can see Kumasawa probably lashing out at Kinzo’s angry behavior (like if Kuwatrice called him ‘Father’), with Genji stepping in to try and stop her before the situation could escalate.

Gohda: Um, some of the stuff he says in the Yasu Theatre segments give some insight about him for people who hadn’t read Notes from a Certain Cook? Maybe? You got me. Gohda didn’t really need a lot of development from Chiru, IMO. I did find a lot of his moments in EP5 pretty funny, though, where he was constantly on the verge of accidentally spilling Kinzo’s secret, and it was suuuuuper clear that Natsuhi was not amused by his careless comments.

Shannon/Kanon: Bruh. C’mon.

But yeah, so ultimately Umineko is a story about Yasu and her struggle, but I absolutely can’t agree that the others weren’t developed even in Chiru, or even with your assessment that Yasu was basically the one major factor behind the whole tragedy. Because half the point of Umineko is that it was everyone’s fault that things wound up the way they did. All their various problems intersected at different points and made things more complicated, and not just for Yasu!! I think it’s really unfortunate to boil down Umineko to little more than a story about Yasu like that, because one of the things I like about it so much is the fact that every character gets strong, multi-faceted development (except Hideyoshi and Nanjo and maybe Magical Gohda Chef, RIP). It’s a story about all of them. And when we say, ‘without love it can’t be seen’, I also think it’s a mistake that a lot of people equate love specifically to romance because that was such a big part of Yasu’s struggle. But Umineko is also very much about other kinds of love, especially familial love. I’ve posted about this subject before, but if the Ushiromiyas could have all just gotten over their various issues with each other and loved each other like a goddamn happy family, the tragedy would not have happened. 

The whole family played a significant role in the story, and the tragedy, and while Yasu was like The Rika of Umineko (the ultimate central character and true protagonist), I don’t think it’s fair to ignore the importance of the ones around who influenced her so much. It’d be like saying once you find out Rika is the most important Higurashi, Keiichi and Mion and the others don’t matter anymore. Even though their friendship and bonds with Rika are the driving force behind her overcoming her insecurities and escaping her own tragedy. One thing Ryukishi does do really well is creating a diverse cast of characters and crafting a story around them where they all matter in some way, and aren’t just there to fill up space in the background.

…I was originally gonna answer all the asks at once but I think now I’ll probably do the other two as a separate post and leave this one specifically about the family.

[tigytigeru]

Commenting on your post about Lion's death in EP7, I doubt its Ryukishi's bullshit. Mostly because I doubt that a guy like him would make shit up as he went along. Anyway going back to Bern, considering how she never lies, I can see how a massacre of some sort would go down. However, because Bern is known to twist muddle the truth (some parts of the EP7 Tea Party were inaccurate to Prime) I think she's trolling on how the massacre is carried out.

Whoa there - I’m getting the impression that you misunderstood the point of my post!! I guess I’ll go through this point by point.

“I doubt its Ryukishi’s bullshit. Mostly because I doubt that a guy like him would make shit up as he went along.”

Well…setting aside the fact that Ryukishi himself has admitted that he does sometimes make up aspects of the story that weren’t originally intended (source: pending), that wasn’t what my post was actually focused on. My argument (backed by various pieces of evidence from the EP7 tea party itself) boils down to this: the ‘ingredients’ that lead Rudolf and Kyrie to commit the massacre should fundamentally not exist in Lion’s world. 

The argument was then whether this was Ryukishi - a human author who can, and has, made other mistakes before - who failed to consider this (his message for this scene in EP7 is to show ‘as long as the gold exists, the adults will be driven to violence’, which is true, but my point is that the tools that allowed it to extend from violence to massacre should not have been in place)…or if it was Bernkastel’s fault, who lied intentionally, spinning a false tale for the sole purpose of driving Lion (and by extension, Beatrice, for whom Lion was the only hope) and Ange into deeper despair.

But let’s focus on that ‘Bern lied’ part first.

“Anyway going back to Bern, considering how she never lies”

Can you show me where, exactly, in the VN it is ever stated that ‘Bernkastel never lies’…and then show me where it’s said in red? Because as far as I’m aware no such passage exists, and in fact there’s evidence in the story to the contrary. The only thing in Umineko that never lies is the red truth, and even then one of the themes of the story is that you can’t always believe in a ‘single truth’. The red is CONSTANTLY abused with various loopholes, so in essence, it’s possible to even ‘lie’ with the red. And yet nowhere are we ever told ‘Bernkastel never lies’…so I’m not sure where you’ve gotten that idea from.

(and let’s not get too far off-topic here, but wouldn’t the entirety of EP5 be a primary example of Bern, in fact, lying? She rigs the entire trial in favor of humiliating Natsuhi as a culprit and claiming she slept with Kinzo, who she knows is dead. The entire ‘truth’ of EP5 is one big fat lie.)

Realistically, the only canon justification for Lion’s world also having a massacre, I’d argue, is in fact Bernkastel lied. Since she’s hungry for revenge against Beato, she spun up a fake tale in her expanded catbox world wherein Lion is also gunned down by Kyrie following the exact same sequence of events as Prime. After all, she’s the Game Master, right? Game Masters can lie about scenes on the board - isn’t that what all of the magic scenes in Beato’s game show us? So it’s entirely possible that Bern created a fake scene showing Lion the massacre, because she never says it in red (she only says the truth of Prime that Ange saw is the truth in red). 

And she’s got no opponent in this game, to boot. Who’s going to stop her from doing this…?

Oh wait. Will. Bern didn’t know that Will was still around, but he was. And he comes back to save Lion and buy him time to escape. Except he’s unable to hold off Bern for very long, and loses an arm as a result. In the end, Will and Lion are overcome by Bern’s kitties, and the game fades to black. I cannot speak of what happens to them in EP8 (which you also seem to be referencing? As I’ve said before I have not yet read EP8, so I can’t comment on any of that yet), but the fact of the matter is that Will comes to buy time for Lion…and fails.

But there’s something about the idea that Bern lied that bugs me personally. If she had done so, deliberately…shouldn’t Will have brought this very argument up and been able to buy more time? As long as she refuses to repeat it in red, she won’t get a Logic Error, but it would be a painful argument all the same and keep her occupied. He should have been able to prevent these facts and buy Lion time to escape. She should not have been able to easily defeat Will, who would be able to argue back these facts that the tragedy could not happen in Lion’s world. And yet, Will is defeated…and seems like he barely has anything to argue against in the first place. Maybe it’s because Will hasn’t even accepted Prime as truth so he didn’t think of it, but…

I feel like ‘Bern is lying’ was not actually intended to be the conclusion when Ryukishi wrote it, but that Ryukishi simply didn’t think about these little details as to why it shouldn’t have happened. Note that I didn’t actually attack Ryukishi and say that he ‘made it up as he went along’ in my post. What’s interesting to me is that other people I’ve shown this post have also told me that they (the kinds of people in the fandom who love picking apart and analyzing it) never stopped to think about a lot of the factors i pointed out tells me that it’s entirely possible it slipped by Ryukishi, too. 

Remember - he is human. And a doujin (non-professional) author. Just because he wrote a story of a quality surpassing many professional works doesn’t mean he’s incapable of mistakes - and I feel like a lot of Ryukishi fans like to put him up on a pedestal simply because they love his work (not saying you do, but I have seen this attitude among 07th Expansion fans a lot). My thing is that you can love Umineko and still be critical of potential mistakes and errors in judgment. And you can author a great story and still mess up on smaller details. It’s human. I think he simply made a mistake that, while it doesn’t break the story overall, is, nonetheless, mistaken.

That said, I’d advise you to go back and reread the post in question again, but I’ll sum up my basic point - the factors that caused the massacre in Prime do not exist in Lion’s world. Because Yasu, inherently, does not exist in Lion’s world. And without Yasu, there would be no guns, no knowledge of the bomb, and most importantly of all there would be no 2 billion yen cash card.

Let’s ignore the first two, though. Let’s say that, somehow, Rudolf and Kyrie got access to the guns and learned about the bomb in Lion’s world (despite my post also going over how little sense this makes, but let’s just do a ‘wouldn’t put it past kinzo’ and say he left the guns and told them about the bomb). So their plan is…what, exactly? To kill everyone for giggles, escape to Kuwadorian, and wait for the bomb to clean up the mess? What do they have to gain for this? Absolutely nothing. Because the entire reason Rosa argued with Eva about the bomb was that the pile of gold would be wiped away by the explosion as well. 

Remember. The reason it still benefited Rudolf and Kyrie in Prime to use the bomb was the existence of the 2 billion yen cash card, which would let them be set for life. Who put the money on that card? Yasu. Who doesn’t exist in Lion’s world? Yasu. How much does a single gold ingot weigh? A fucking lot. How much does ten tons weigh? …well, ten tons. Which is even more of a fucking lot. It’s not something they could escape the island with, and as I also pointed out in my post, Krauss was stated to be the only one who could easily convert the illegal unmarked gold from 40+ years ago into usable cash. So not only would the gold itself be difficult for them to do much with…setting the bomb would destroy it all in the first place.

The only reason they commit the massacre is because they are able to take the already-converted 2 billion on the cash card and leave the island.

That. Is. Fundamental. Truth. And in Lion’s world, that cash card should by right not exist. Kinzo has no reason to convert 2 billion to cash and have a card and pin number ready to give his shitty kids. He hates his kids. Lion is his successor. He doesn’t think the others can solve the epitaph. Which he decided to present to them on a whim. Compared to Yasu, who prepped all of this in advance. If they solved it all Kinzo would do is say ‘enjoy your gold’ and leave the issue of how to turn it into cash in their hands - he wouldn’t hand them that kind of shortcut.

So???? There’d be no cash card in Lion’s world. Period. There is simply no way this makes sense given Kinzo’s character.

It can be simplified down like this: no cash card, no reason to set the bomb and lose all the gold, no reason to kill everyone, no tragedy. And that’s ignoring the other points I made about why they shouldn’t know about the bomb in the first place or have access to the four rifles and case full of bullets.

That was the point of my post. The factors that actually lead them to kill, by their own admission, wouldn’t have existed in Lion’s world, so Bernkastel saying ‘it happened the same way as the truth you just saw’ is incorrect. As fans, we can ‘correct’ this mistake and say ‘Bern lied, and because she didn’t do so in red Lion’s catbox is about as valid as the idea that Zombie Kanon killed Nanjo and Kumasawa in EP2′. That’s fair. We can absolutely say that Lion’s massacre was because Bern lied, because that’s the sort of thing she’d do. Featherine already got her answers, and Clair had already passed on. What happened to Lion after that had no obligation to be true, so we can simply say it wasn’t, and she did it for her own amusement. But to me, it seems more likely that Ryukishi probably just slipped up and ‘Bernkastel lied about Lion’ wasn’t actually the narrative intent.

Maybe my use of the word ‘bullshit’ was a point of confusion, in which case, I apologize. My intent was saying ‘somebody messed up here because these details won’t make sense’, not ‘OMG RYUKISHI A SHIT AUTHOR WHO PULLED THE STORY OUT OF HIS ASS’ (which in fact I made a post about once before as to why I don’t think he pulled the story out of his ass as many Ryukishi-negative people claim, so). But the fact of the matter is…there are too many reasons that the massacre wouldn’t have happened in Lion’s world to just throw up our hands and accept Bern’s truth. Either she straight-up lied, or Ryukishi goofed.

People can make mistakes. Authors can make mistakes. Ryukishi is not some kind of god, and we are allowed to criticize him (nothing stopped him from criticizing the readers, after all…). He’s made other minor mistakes in Umineko, as well. We can love Umineko as a story, and still analyze it as, well, a story, and acknowledge that the story’s author is not perfect, too. I may not like Ryukishi, but I don’t attack him baselessly, either…and I wasn’t even attacking so much as pointing out something that doesn’t make sense with the information presented. 

In the end, Lion’s world is entirely separate from Prime. This level of mistake doesn’t break the logic of Umineko as a whole, or ruin the meaning of the story Ryukishi set out to tell. It’s indeed a very minor thing…but it’s still a mistake, all the same, and one I wanted to analyze in greater detail.

[tigytigeru]

Thinking about it now, Ange's journey really only gets difficult when her memory pops up. In EP4, Ange-Beatrice "dies" meaning that the Ange we see in Chiru is not a product of Tohya/Ikuko, but Ange Ushiromiya. With this thought frame, it's easy to see how Ange lost her way in EP8 due to the truth Bern showing her utterly shattering every facet of reality-making it thy the only way Ange can sustain herself is by hate. It gets confusing when she references stuff like 'the hamburger.'

Honestly Ange’s journey has so many confusing and overlapping layers that I’ve lost track of it way too many times and wound up more confused than I would have been if I just didn’t question it too much. Sometimes she seems to be a meta character, other times she’s a piece who somehow has knowledge of the meta, and there’s the question as to how much of that meta journey is ‘real’ and how much is simply her own delusions, and that’s not even taking into account the flashbacks which made EP4 really damn confusing for me the first time I read it (the anime of all things helped clear that up for me at the time, since it put them in a bit more of a chronological order)…I’ve found it’s just easier to throw up my hands when it comes to Ange and subscribe to Will’s philosophy - to not think about it too hard, or I’ll just get a headache.

[tigytigeru]

So now that you finished EP7, would you saw that you came to like and appreciate Umineko in comparison to before?

Oh, I first read EP7 YEARS ago, right after the English translation was first released. This most recent run was a REread, as I hadn’t actually read it in several years.

My feelings for the series have been a rollercoaster in general over the past ~6 years, and the reread as a whole has revived a lot of my old appreciation (which most of my posts likely show), but rereading EP7 in particular did not change my feelings, and it remains my least favorite Episode.

[englishvisualnovels]

Do you know why Mangagamer doesn't release the PS3 patches of Higurashi and Umineko alongside the updated translations on Steam? It sort of bewilders me.

Since MangaGamer doesn’t have rights from Alchemist to use their assets for the English releases of Higurashi and Umineko as far as I know, I assume it’s because they legally can’t endorse any unofficial patches that uses those same assets by Alchemist either.

[tigytigeru]

I'm confused about your reaction to Rudlof/Kyrie and the guns. They clearly didn't know about the blanks, that was just the narration pointing it out.

I didn’t actually mention anything about blanks in my post? I believe that’s EP8 information, so while I vaguely know of it, it wasn’t something that factored into my post at all. My argument about the guns is that they shouldn’t even be there in Lion’s world, because the one who put them there in Prime was Yasu, as per her game. And in Lion’s world, Kinzo is still alive…so anyone else going to his study and removing them wouldn’t be nearly as easy, either (vs. Yasu’s world where we know Natsuhi had the study key and they could probably get it from her, even if we ignore that Yasu had the other one). 

It might help you if you read my post again with the perspective that I’m referring strictly to information presented in EP7 itself - I’ve not read EP8, so my analysis is not factoring in any information from it.