Ryukishi07 megathread / griefing thread - Higurashi, Umineko, Ciconia, etc.

[skykiii]

So jotting these thoughts.

I just finished "Turn of the Golden Witch, Volume 1" (manga).

Spoiler

Okay so Sulla confirmed there's some language trickery going on with the Epitath. Before seeing his post I was starting to think "is this elaborate suicide instructions?" And honestly for all I know it might still be.

So I guess the one person who really solved it was Nagito Komaeda.

Just before clicking "Post Reply" I had another thought, that the epitath is actually saying to disfigure the painting itself.

I notice that painting seems to change occasionally. Not sure if that's an artistic liberty, a deliberate clue that its alive like a Harry Potter painting, an element of the time loop, or what.

So "Beatrice" shows up to talk to Maria... but as soon as I saw her I was like "Wait, isn't this just Jessica?" Because she looks a lot like that costume Jessica was wearing for her stage performance earlier the same volume. The continuing scene with Kanon just further convinced me this is Jessica in an outfit.

Problem with that theory is that she would have to have slipped away from Battler and co. at some point.... oh and somehow be present at the dinner table when Shanon is delivering food to the guest room. Some possibilities: One, the real Beatrice stepped in to make the game "interesting," two, Shanon was delusional and talking to herself (as this manga seems to have a theme of everyone is an emotional, mentally-unbalanced wreck), or even that scene was more an artistic extrapolation of Shanon thinking over what Kanon told her.

Which, now that I'm on that train of thought, her speaking to Kanon could also be just him imagining things, and from there all that "she plans to kill you" stuff is something he entirely (but unknowingly) fabricated. There's a rule I learned from Miss Marple: If only one person claims to have witnessed something, that account is suspect.

(Although now I have to factor in the X-Factor that "Ryukishi is a terrible writer.")

Going back to the issue of Maria, here's actual dialogue from her during one of her manic states:

"Kee-hee-hee! That's it? Q.E.D.? Just like that? Without a shred of proof? It's a classic case of ignorance making a mockery of your so-called wisdom.... a violent shutdown of all mental processes."

Now maybe part of the fault is on the translation, but... nine year olds do not talk this way, no matter how they've been coached or how much they've read.

I'll tackle the rest of Turn of the Golden Witch later.

 

[Horribadger]

I was going to post about something weird I noticed in episode 2, but I wouldn't want to drop spoilers on skykii so I'll hold my tongue for now.

Ryukishi keeps thinking his shit is golden

Hyped for Umiunko ep 10, shit of the golden witch

 

[skykiii]

I was going to post about something weird I noticed in episode 2, but I wouldn't want to drop spoilers on skykii so I'll hold my tongue for now.

You could always spoiler-mark it.

Or how about... I'll stay off this topic until I finish reading Ep2. So post whatever you want.

 

[Horribadger]

It's series-general culprit-related spoilers, not just ep 2, but good point I'll just put it in a spoilerbox.

Spoiler

So I'm kind of half-joking when I talk about Umineko having a changed solution and kind of half serious. One thing I like to look at is just random weird little details that aren't really explained by the official solution (there's a whole fucking lot of them).
Take episode 2 for example. During the intro the Beatrice Shannon imagines is kind of... off compared to how she usually is. She seems less intelligent and instead talks about food a lot for some reason. This carries over to at least the end scene when Beatrice kills the last three and she starts mocking Shannon talking about grating parmesan or whatever. Meanwhile the miniskirt Beatrice who appears to Maria and Rosa (and who is clearly Kanon playing witch for Maria despite him pooh-poohing Shannon earlier, while Shannon is too busy failing to serve tea to be involved in any of this) doesn't, instead seemingly acting closer to how Beatrice normally is.
Now I haven't actually read episode 2 properly recently, just skipped around a bit, so while this... oddity was at the back of my mind I figured it might not mean anything. But I'd been thinking about it again lately, so I went and checked the second twilight, see how Beatrice acts there.
And how does it go?... Skirt-trice, the one associated with Kanon previously, shows up to prey on his insecurities, then "disappears" and reappears in Jessica's room... as Dresstrice... and immediately begins talking about food.

Seriously, what the fuck did Ryukishi actually mean by this? Kanontrice vs Shannontrice true solution anyone?

 

[skykiii]

Oh wow, @Horribadger showed up with spoilers JUST as I finished "Turn of the Golden Witch, Vol 2."

Anyway....

Spoiler

At around 200 pages in I could feel my brain shutting off. Going with what I posted previously, there's two possibilities:

Possibility one: the parts where it suddenly seems to be introducing demonic characters or hard-left-turn shonen action fantasy (characters making lightsabers from their hands) is either a mass delusion, bullshit that didn't actually happen but is being presented to the reader in order to throw us off... or the manga has indeed just gone full shonen fantasy action and I might as well stop trying to solve a damn thing.

And again, this is where I mention the X-Factor of "Ryukishi is a terrible writer." A sudden genre change isn't beyond him (Higurashi did that), but neither is wasting our time with shonen magic battles that later turn out didn't actually happen (which is a hack move that would've gotten him lambasted outside of weeb circles).

Then the end scene has three witches making a "wager" of some sort... I'm sure in Ryukishi's mind this part was clever but it instead feels like just throwing random shit at a dartboard. And yeah I do notice Bernkastel and Lambdadelta look a lot like whats-her-name and Satoko from Higurashi, I'm sure there's fan wankery about that (in ways I don't even wanna comprehend).

So when it comes to real games, I often am known to back out when it becomes clear the designer is just making shit up... and that's kind of the feeling I get here. He kinda admits it in the afterward that the whole point of this arc was to present a scenario which would convince us the witch is real.

.... I wanted to end that last paragraph with "I imagine there might be some misdirection there" but.... this is Ryukishi. Again, the X-Factor I keep mentioning. The minute you factor that in, it makes much else just kinda entirely pointless.

Put bluntly though.... I'm beginning to feel like there's no point "solving the mystery."

I compared Ryukishi to Scott Cawthon earlier, and yeah, that holds up--he really does strike me as the kind of writer who will keep things vague so that he can retcon them later and say "Uhhh, that was always intended!" He's like one of those writers who hears the fans already figured out that the Butler did it, so he decides to change it to the Chambermaid.... except its more like "this is suddenly a shonen manga now."

Fuck. This. Guy.

The one thing I'm thankful for is that it reminds me what genuine bad work is like, so that I'm better able to appreciate artists who aren't retards. In a way there's a value to torturing myself with this so that I'm better able to appreciate the Gosho Aoyamas of the world.

 

[Sulla]

Spoiler: Big boy spoilers to only see after you've finished umineko

Seriously, what the fuck did Ryukishi actually mean by this? Kanontrice vs Shannontrice true solution anyone?

>imagine accepting confessions of the golden witch as the original truth when it goes against the entire point of having the original open ending.

Rosatrice is the only reasonable conclusion.

@skykiii regardless of whether ryukishi is a good writer or not, umineko just happens to be well written. Before you arbitrarily judge everything, just because a chapter has finished doesn't mean the events of the chapter wont be brought up and re-discussed again.

disclaimer: I haven't read the manga so I can only guess that it cuts out a ton of the foreshadowing the vn had.

 

[skykiii]

disclaimer: I haven't read the manga so I can only guess that it cuts out a ton of the foreshadowing the vn had.

Possibly, but.... I tried the original VN and.... when you make fucking Wheel of Time books or modern JRPGs look succinct and punchy, you done fucked up.

Like, just a comparison:

In the manga, the first family dinner (ep1 volume 1) occurs 70-something pages in.

When I was going thru the VN, it took TEN HOURS to reach this point.

Ten hours.... For fucks sake, I could've done some power-levelling and killed Dark Lord Shabranigdu with those ten hours!

(BTW, I read the spoilers but they didn't really feel like they spoiled a whole lot for me... especially since I was already theorizing that some of the characters were delusional and I had noticed that more than a few have a resemblance to Beatrice anyway).

 

[Horribadger]

Spoiler: Big boy spoilers to only see after you've finished umineko

>imagine accepting confessions of the golden witch as the original truth when it goes against the entire point of having the original open ending.

Rosatrice is the only reasonable conclusion.

Hard agree that Ryukishi is a retard and that the "confession" schtick was just patched-together bullshit half to cover his ass and half to appease the fanbase (which failed... well I can't actually say that because plenty of the fanbase just shlopped it right up). But I have to disagree on what the original solution was.

To my mind the most likely original solution is something more similar to the professed solution, which actually makes the changed solution a dirtier trick- you try to say "that solution's not right", you get slop-fans going "but this theme and these characters were focused on at certain points, that means it could never have been anything different!!" when it's just those themes and characters in a different, less retarded arrangement. Though that also makes the suggested original solution itself seem like a dirty trick- of course "basically the solution we got but less retarded" will fit the work while being less retarded.

But there's a specific scenario I've stumbled upon that works... concerningly well, for a lot of the work. It's something I don't think anyone's noticed, though I've seen similar things suggested here and there. I don't know what I'm going to do with this idea, given the story's been over for like a decade now and the only people who still care about Umiunko are the zealous fans who have no interest in actually questioning it, and not just slobbering about how deap and meeningful it is that the schizomaid got everyone killed because she's cockless and Battler didn't bring her a pony. Meanwhile the sort of people who might have liked it at some point but thought the ending was shit will have moved on years ago. And frankly I don't blame them. Umineko's a fractaline mess and it's fun to kind of do media archeology on it, same as looking for the missing outfit sources (did you know most of the character designs are borderline stolen from a small collection of fashion magazines?), but... there's no reason to care. It's not going to turn into a better work just because you've figured out what Hackishi may have squandered. Though you do get to laugh at him for fucking up his work so hard. Maybe that's worth it.

 

[Wendell X]

The one thing I'm thankful for is that it reminds me what genuine bad work is like, so that I'm better able to appreciate artists who aren't retards. In a way there's a value to torturing myself with this so that I'm better able to appreciate the Gosho Aoyamas of the world.

Can you name some others? They don't have to be Japanese, but I enjoyed most of Umineko. I have a very high tolerance for woo though and mystery box plotting though.

 

[An empty shill]

I'll just put it in a spoilerbox.

Spoiler: thoughts in spoilers

I think the reason why skirtrice acted so different might have been because Shakanon was trying to get a feel for what type of chick Batler would have liked personality wise.
He can see her from where they're playing the game and "Beatrice" could sus out wheater he liked it or not. Remember the whole reason why she's a busty blonde isn't just because of the portrait, it's because Batler told Shannon when they where kids he'd like a girl with big boobs. She still was obviously carrying a torch for even after all this time, so who's to say Beatrice's personality wasn't another attempt to please Batler on Shannon's part?

Having said that, it now makes me think; could Umineko be appriciated more if where actually a character study about the things people do for love and acceptance?
I honestly feel like if I think of it that way, I can respect the work a whole lot more...

Fuck. This. Guy.

I feel ya my dude. I almost just flat out gave up on the manga once a certain character was introduced.
But i agree with Sulla, it's still a pretty solid work, until the end.

 

[skykiii]

Can you name some others? They don't have to be Japanese, but I enjoyed most of Umineko. I have a very high tolerance for woo though and mystery box plotting though.

Mystery is a pretty loaded genre.

Spoiler: Mystery Genre Thoughts and Recommends

When I was a kid I got my foot in the door thanks to Encyclopedia Brown and.. some other series I read as a kid that had a gimmick of always using process-of-elimination to solve the mystery, but I forget what that was.

And then as an adult I started with the big one.... Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and I have to say that because there actually are Holmes books that aren't by Doyle. I've tried some of the non-Doyle stuff and it tends to be uneven).

Agatha Christie's stuff is usually good, though there are some things about her that irritate me. One is that she will over-emphasize the red herring to the point it clearly isn't fooling anyone, and another is she'll sometimes have a line, event, detail in the description etc. that for me often gives the whole game away (I found Murder on the Orient Express suffered from this). When she's clever though, she's really really clever. (I do have to agree with the consensus that "And Then There Were None" is a classic).

Erle Stanley Gardner, inventor of Perry Mason, is worth reading... and the Perry Mason TV show from the black and white days is worth watching. Especially if you want something that is kinda like a more serious, less-anime version of Phoenix Wright. There's a modern Perry Mason show but I've heard nothing but bad things about it.

In terms of Japanese stuff... well I think everyone knows about Detective Conan. I've seen episodes of Kindaichi Case Files and that show is also pretty good, though last time I checked the fansubs were a bit on the iffy side--though they're usually good enough that you can understand the mystery though.

There's also actually an anime called "Agatha Christie's Great Detectives: Poirot and Miss Marple" by the way... tho its better to read the actual books.

I'm personally a bit of a Danganronpa fan buuuut that series comes with some built-in caveats. I've seen other Kiwis state they can't stand the over-the-top stylization among other things. If you can though, they're all genuinely compelling. I've actually been thinking about DR a lot while going thru Umineko because while DR has a lot of retarded elements, they ultimately work in a way where I can buy that the retardation is just an inherent part of the world and not just the result of bad writing. I'm tempted to say something like "Danganronpa is a better version of what Umineko was trying to do" but I'm not sure its right to sell it like that.

I will say this though... with both DR and Phoenix Wright, I prefer to watch lets plays because I find the actual "gameplay" aspects kind of annoying. With DR the first two games (and a spinoff game) were played by a channel called TheRPGMinx back in the day, and while you might find that person's voice annoying, at least her lets plays are only 20-30 parts long... for the final game I had to go with Cinammon Toast Ken's LP for the exact same reason: everyone else's LP was stupid long.

(For Phoenix Wright... a channel called Willbits did great playthrus of AA4-6. I never found anyone good for the first three games, but I guess you can just watch the anime instead. I actually think the anime improves on Game 1 but there is an aspect of Game 2's adaptation that bothers me--the total removal of the Psyche-Locks, I actually have not yet watched the season that adapts the third game).

But i agree with Sulla, it's still a pretty solid work, until the end.

I saw a Youtube video with the thumbnail calling it "Ep 8: Virtue Signal of the Golden Witch." Which has me interested just to see how dumb it is.

Started on the third episode. 100 pages in, but again still not sure how much brainpower I should dedicate to "solving" this "mystery."

Like, okay, it opens saying Battler has died and been reincarnated by Beatrice several times... but after thoroughly giving up in the previous volume, he now wants to fight again.

First off... I feel like this shit totally breaks the whole "is there actually a witch?" thing Ryukishi likes to say. Because like, of course there is. She's right there. She explicitly has powers.

And again, Battler is an idiot.... it never occurs to him that the killer could have unlocked the church door earlier, propped it open somehow (with a rock or something) so it would not close and re-lock, and only allowed it to close before luring people to the body. It's like @Horribadger said, there's never a serious sit-down-and-think about the crime, its more like Battler just kinda shoots off theories.

Not that Beatrice is much better. The whole "red text" thing feels like just condescending to an idiot.... also a bit of a cop-out with the whole "its true, and I ain't gotta prove it, you just have to accept it" Dungeon Master's fiat thing its got going. It's like thinking is genuinely hard for Ryukishi.

This goes back to an issue I had with Higurashi, which is that clearly we were supposed to think Keiichi is cool and awesome and totally ride-his-cock worthy, to the point where every character in the story will have a scene thinking to themselves "I want to have this man's babies." But.... no. He's not admirable at all. Battler is a fucking idiot.

This is the thing I think bothers me the most about Ryukishi's works.... his ideas about everything are just ass-fucking-backwards. He represents blind denialism and grasping at straws as heroic traits, and like I said earlier he seems to always cast thinking or logical characters/actions as "evil" but emotional characters as "good," even when the "good" characters are doing things that are blatantly self-destructive.

@An empty shill already mentioned that Battler's "character flaw" is he wants to trust everyone but also does not want to believe in the witch. The thing is... I don't think Ryukishi even saw this as a flaw: I think he's genuinely convinced he wrote Battler as an inspiring, heroic, virtuous character and role model for us all.

To paraphrase a certain Egyptian pharoah: "Ryukishi, perhaps there is some planet in the universe where your play was genius. The problem is... we are on planet Earth."

Going back to the Danganronpa comparison I mentioned in the spoilers.... those also have retarded emotional elements, but those are handled way better and actually are way more believable, in part because they're based on something understandible we can relate to. Ryukishi's ideas really only make sense in his own head, with its particular brand of damage.

EDIT: Also, I kinda wish Battler had stopped being the protagonist. He gave up. He lost. Why is he being given another chance just because he did the anime thing of having a heroic second wind? Oh, right, because he's Ryukishi's mary sue.

 

[Nobunaga]

Umineko is more bearable if you go with the retarded black battler theory instead of absolutely stupid troon/women moment

 

[skykiii]

Umineko is more bearable if you go with the retarded black battler theory instead of absolutely stupid troon/women moment

Without knowing what "Black Battler" is I ended up with three possibilities:

One -- See, he's able to accomplish so much because he's one hell of a butler--err, battler.

Two -- a version of Battler who has thick lips and eats fried chicken and watermelon (I've been on KF too long).

Three -- Battler is the killer and all that stuff about mental dueling with Beatrice is actually him in denial (so basically, the typical Silent Hill twist, but even more retarded).

EDIT: Right now honestly the most interesting part of Umineko to me is that there's somehow a fighting game based on it.

 

[An empty shill]

Not that Beatrice is much better. The whole "red text" thing feels like just condescending to an idiot.... also a bit of a cop-out with the whole "its true, and I ain't gotta prove it, you just have to accept it" Dungeon Master's fiat thing its got going. It's like thinking is genuinely hard for Ryukishi.

It's because Ryukishi is being stupidly meta here.
Beatrice and Battler are playing a game, the red text is a rule for that game.
Once she lays it down, Battler has to now work within the confines of it.
It's a semi double edged sword as once she says it, it can used against her too.
After all, if the red text is the "truth" how can you deny it?
It's so he can't just say what ever semi logical explanation that comes out of his mouth is surely what happened.
He needs to abide by the "rules" if he wants to "win".
I agree it's dumb because it takes away from the mystery and just makes it more video gamey...

First off... I feel like this shit totally breaks the whole "is there actually a witch?" thing Ryukishi likes to say. Because like, of course there is. She's right there. She explicitly has powers.

I read this once from a blog I sadly don't remember, and once I did, it made understanding this a bit easier.
Battler doesn't have to deny the "witch" outright, he only needs to prove that for the night of the murders the "witch" didn't exist, and it was all done by human hands. But like I said, he doesn't want to suspect anyone on the island, nor does he want to believe the "witch" did it either.

Three -- Battler is the killer and all that stuff about mental dueling with Beatrice is actually him in denial (so basically, the typical Silent Hill twist, but even more retarded

I really wish it had been this...
It still would've been better

 

[Sulla]

@skykiii
lol does the manga not bring up the fact that battler is in purgatory after chapter 1?
Its very explicit in the VN.

The whole point of the red truth is to address one of the flaws of the mystery genre, that people will endlessly argue around the legitimacy of information presented in murder mysteries.
So by declaring a statement 100% true it stops people from being autistic about key details, and to actually focus on the mystery.

 

[Horribadger]

And again, Battler is an idiot.... it never occurs to him that the killer could have unlocked the church door earlier, propped it open somehow (with a rock or something) so it would not close and re-lock, and only allowed it to close before luring people to the body. It's like @Horribadger said, there's never a serious sit-down-and-think about the crime, its more like Battler just kinda shoots off theories.

That one's funny because there's alternate theories for it brought up in the work that're never actually denied (that the key was retrieved "after midnight" but before the bodies were found, there's more than one envelope, the completely unexamined implication that the "locked" door Rosa tested was actually just stuck- there's this whole bit later where some characters get attacked in the chapel and it wastes time for no reason with the door being stuck closed, no clue if it's still in the manga). But no Ryukishi has to go with his retarded answer that he's just so proud of how retarded it is, even when there are much more normal and less retarded solution options right in front of him. Like, we joke about him changing the macro-solution, but I'm just as convinced that at some point he decided to change all the micro-solutions, just because.

It's like thinking is genuinely hard for Ryukishi.

lol

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Murder mysteries that have magical elements can work, I've seen it done. The problem is you need to lay out rules for how the magic works. You can't just say "its magic, I ain't gotta explain shit."

Umineko had a "either magic exist and nothing matters, or nothing magical exists so everything is following a logical chain of events". I don't think it would have mattered either way since it's feelz over reelz.

First off... I feel like this shit totally breaks the whole "is there actually a witch?" thing Ryukishi likes to say. Because like, of course there is. She's right there. She explicitly has powers.

It's more of whether the mystery involves magic than the existence of a witch, it's all meta bullshit that was sadly doubled down on in future works.

This is the thing I think bothers me the most about Ryukishi's works.... his ideas about everything are just ass-fucking-backwards. He represents blind denialism and grasping at straws as heroic traits, and like I said earlier he seems to always cast thinking or logical characters/actions as "evil" but emotional characters as "good," even when the "good" characters are doing things that are blatantly self-destructive.

The issue is that everything cynical until the final episode where a fucking switch is flipped and suddenly people know mystic kungfu and can dispatch trained soldiers that previously straight up executed them. You can do stories that have a sharp turn for the positive but not after dozens of hours od beating us over the head with how hopeless shit is.

 

[skykiii]

lol does the manga not bring up the fact that battler is in purgatory after chapter 1?
Its very explicit in the VN.

Beatrice actually does mention that, but the way she said it made me wonder if it was literal, or if she was just talking about her ability to revive the dead in an artsy way, sort of a "I can just keep reviving you, you know" deal.

In fact the Beatrice/"Tea Party" bits in general I wasn't sure if I was supposed to read them as literally happening in some higher dimension, some sort of meta commentary, a schitzophrenic breakdown people were having, or someone slipped me a cocktail of drugs and this manga isn't even real.

The issue is that everything cynical until the final episode where a fucking switch is flipped and suddenly people know mystic kungfu and can dispatch trained soldiers that previously straight up executed them. You can do stories that have a sharp turn for the positive but not after dozens of hours od beating us over the head with how hopeless shit is.

Sooo... it literally does the exact same goddamn thing Higurashi did? Where the final arc is "our heroes band together and beat an evil army?"

Damn, maybe I should just play the fighting game and ignore the rest.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

me trying to not read Umineko posts every thread-bump and failing miserably

 

[Nobunaga]

me trying to not read Umineko posts every thread-bump and failing miserably
View attachment 6077385

Just read higanbana, ciconia (when it finally completes in 2XXX) and ignore the rest of ryukishislop