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

[Horribadger]

I'm bored and there's no real other place to discuss this shit so I'm posting it here.

So at the end of episode 1, Bernkastel talks to some unknown subject; at the end of ep2 as well where Lambda joins in, but I'm just talking about ep1 here. She refers to the subject as her "piece", so it could be Ange, or maybe Battler, or even the audience of the game:

I've found some discussion about who's being talked to, but no real conclusions; honestly whoever it was was probably lost in some retcon at some point as these scenes just kind of stop happening... but there's some weird bits in ep2 where people seem to be quoting her.

First, the Beatrice of the portrait of all people:

The "is that what it was?" even implies she's repeating something she heard in-universe.

But then Battler goes and says this:

Not an exact quote of anything, but it's a very Bernkastel-ian line. Beatrice even thinks he heard it from some other witch.

I just wonder what Ryukishi was planning with this... if anything.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

I'm bored and there's no real other place to discuss this shit so I'm posting it here.

So at the end of episode 1, Bernkastel talks to some unknown subject; at the end of ep2 as well where Lambda joins in, but I'm just talking about ep1 here. She refers to the subject as her "piece", so it could be Ange, or maybe Battler, or even the audience of the game:

View attachment 5201156

I've found some discussion about who's being talked to, but no real conclusions; honestly whoever it was was probably lost in some retcon at some point as these scenes just kind of stop happening... but there's some weird bits in ep2 where people seem to be quoting her.

First, the Beatrice of the portrait of all people:

View attachment 5201158
View attachment 5201159
View attachment 5201160

The "is that what it was?" even implies she's repeating something she heard in-universe.

But then Battler goes and says this:

View attachment 5201162
View attachment 5201166
View attachment 5201167

Not an exact quote of anything, but it's a very Bernkastel-ian line. Beatrice even thinks he heard it from some other witch.

I just wonder what Ryukishi was planning with this... if anything.

I think you mean what BT was planning

 

[Trombonista]

Irotoutoshi 4.1.

 

[Horribadger]

Now slogging through episode three and jesus christ this is worse than anything in the previous two episodes. Pointless endless diatribes about nothing up to 11, Beatrice has suddenly become a cartoon character and also kind of a retard, the actual crime scene of the first twilight is basically skipped over... I'm not sure how much I believe Ryu's claims about Land and how ebin and awesome it was going to be, but this sure feels like something hastily made up on the spot.

Also, a cool observation I totally didn't steal off of /jp/:
After ep3 Ryukishi published this cute little short story about Lambda finding Beatrice and deciding to sponsor her. Ryu claimed this was a testament to him not retconning the culprit in the future... but it's already a retcon in itself. In the second game Lambda showed no signs of holding any power over Beatrice, she pretty much just showed up because Bern was there and it looked interesting.
Also the story contains a bizarre aside about how boys can become witches too. Which... I guess technically makes sense with Shannon, but also not really.
Honestly at this point I think the culprit might have been the one thing he *didn't* retcon.

 

[Trombonista]

Irotoutoshi-hen updated and reddidiots think Kihiro is canonically asexual even though he's only 14 and admits he could eventually have "lustful" feelings for someone.

 

[Horribadger]

Kihiro's story was 900% him being gay for Keitarou and not realizing it yet. Also, is it just my brain rotting or does the girl who dumped him look like Inori?

Anyway, continuing my Umineko slog, who could forget this gem:

The weird part is how Ryu managed to get this right back in ep1 (and in the ep2 discussions of ep1), talking around Kanon's "death" and Shannon's corpse not being in the shed... Then despite being able to do that he decides to declare Kanon dead in red in ep2 when just "he isn't hiding and his corpse didn't leave the room" or the like would have worked perfectly well.
Doing this here would even have improved the "15 are dead" red web bit later. Have Shannon come back and kill Nanjo then return to the parlor (maybe bringing Jessica with her for an extra Shkanon hint... or you know one single solitary actual hint to start with) where either Eva shoots her or she offs herself like she does in eps 2 and 4. When the "15 dead" bit is dropped, Battler assumes she died before being found in the parlor because she's now dead in the parlor, but actually her time of death has been deliberately displaced. Also, she can now commit the rest of the murders herself rather than having Eva do it for some reason... not that there was anything restricting her movements before that. Man, what a mess.

Also

A fitting copyright infringement for a witch, you mean.

 

[skykiii]

@Horribadger apologies BTW, I actually stopped going through Umineko because I just got bored of how long the VN was taking to fucking get anywhere.

 

[Horribadger]

@Horribadger apologies BTW, I actually stopped going through Umineko because I just got bored of how long the VN was taking to fucking get anywhere.

Understandable. I'm only getting through it propelled by my spite, and the ability to play youtube videos at double speed.

 

[skykiii]

Incidentally, I just remembered this one scene from the Higurashi anime (the Kai season specifically) that made me LOL with how bizarre it was.

The scene was Rika and co. were cornered in a cave or passage by the evil military people who wanted her dead, a "you surrender or we kill everyone" situation, and somehow Rika talks herself into surrendering for the sake of her friends, and the whole time has this heroic monologue going on in her head.

She thinks, "That's right... I will live to be an adult... my breasts will get bigger..."

Like, maybe this is a cultural difference, but that line seems so bizarre to me. Like imagine if it were a boy and he heroically monologued that his penis would enlarge, and its meant to be taken seriously.

Just... what?

 

[Kari Kamiya]

She thinks, "That's right... I will live to be an adult... my breasts will get bigger..."

Like, maybe this is a cultural difference, but that line seems so bizarre to me.

She's an old woman trapped in the body of a nine-year-old. She feels she's been denied of having a life, which includes growing up, it's all she was asking for by that point. But it's likely that in her eyes, in her limited world view, going through puberty is what would make her a grown-up.

And chalk that up to another reason why Shitsugou sucks ass. It didn't even try to explore such nuances of her needing to learn what it means to grow up after spending a hundred years trapped as a child. Learning about the pains of growing apart from her childhood friends is just a small part of it, but she became such an airhead once she entered high school, good God. No fucking way did she forget her entire ordeal once she broke the cycle.

 

[Trombonista]

She's an old woman trapped in the body of a nine-year-old. She feels she's been denied of having a life, which includes growing up, it's all she was asking for by that point. But it's likely that in her eyes, in her limited world view, going through puberty is what would make her a grown-up.

And chalk that up to another reason why Shitsugou sucks ass. It didn't even try to explore such nuances of her needing to learn what it means to grow up after spending a hundred years trapped as a child. Learning about the pains of growing apart from her childhood friends is just a small part of it, but she became such an airhead once she entered high school, good God. No fucking way did she forget her entire ordeal once she broke the cycle.

And the turd sprinkles on the shit sundae is she didn't even get those tiddies. At least DEEN gave them to her.

 

[Trombonista]

Oni Chapter 12 has been translated, and I'm kinda pissed at how short the new Meguri update is seeing as we waited 2 extra weeks for it.

 

[Horribadger]

Well guys we can pack it up, Eva just proved witches didn't do Rokkenjima with this one line of red text, nothing more to do- seriously ruikishi get your shit together, the fuck is this

Having slogged my way through most of ep3 now I'm actually convinced Eva wasn't meant to be the episode's culprit. She seems legitimately sick even when Battler is around, even screaming about there being witches outside after Hideyoshi leaves. At most, she's an accomplice tasked with getting people to leave the guesthouse where the real culprit can get to them. And who staked Hideyoshi's group, anyway?

I almost forgot, in the scene where the adults find Shannon "dead" they shake her body and shit before Nanjo can get them to stop... so either they're fucking stupid to not notice she's playing dead or the scene's bullshit, which means there's no guarantee the rooms were ever locked because Beatrice blatantly avoided ever saying they were locked in red and Battler didn't even fucking notice. But the real solution to that scene is funny personality death. Okay. Sometimes I think Ryu went back through every individual murder mystery scene and changed the solution just for the fuck of it...

Also, whatever this shit is.

 

[the rat]

I've recently finished Gou and Sotsu and have played through all of the original VN episodes but I can't seem to understand why in the hell anyone would genuinely like this shit.

The VN is quite possibly one of the most boring experiences I have put myself through, all the characters are fucking retarded, the ending is stupid, most of the visual novel is just dead air that I'm expected to like because LOL ITS JUST LIKE REAL LIFE SO RELATABLE RITE GOYS ????!?!?!?!?!?!!??! (it is fucking boring, talking with people is boring, how in the fuck can you think this shit is fun?), the low bitrate Sims tier music is garbage and the art is either: mspaint shit, basic anime style (which weirdly enough seems to be the best look this series has had) and low quality porn tier art.

The characters are all stupid (though Mion really doesn't do anything retarded), one of my favorite grievances with the characters is how Takano is handled, originally assumed that she is just intent on destroying the village because ??? but turns out actually to do with her grandfathers work and people at Tokyo pulling all the strings and Takano is just a puppet. Would have been way cooler if Takano was just a bitch and not some stupid puppet that I'm expected to feel sorry for, that is no fun at all.

Child Hanyuu, Rena and Satoko (actually mentally ill as well) are retarded with their gay AUAUAUAUAUA or Hau~ shit.

The ending also is fucking retarded, from parasite affecting people to bullshit magic because ??? and Takano is actually good she was just a puppet

Gou and Sotsu are weird, definitely fun I think but not good at all. All the same issues with the characters before (Keiichi punchable retard, Rena mentally ill, Satoko autism and Rika retarded)
but now with BT gone ryukishit gets to really dive deep into his quite obvious fetish towards Satoko. The plot is basically the autist gets mad at the retard because the autist is incapable of just saying fuck off when asked to come along to a lesbian powered school and then we skip to magic and trying to link up with Umineko but maybe not actually who knows ???? (I HATE UMINEKO I HATE UMINEKO I HATE UMINEKO I HATE UMINEKO)

With everything wrong with Gou and Sotsu, frankly you get what you fucking deserved.

So please, why the hell does anyone like this boring, poorly written cbt nightmare designed to get autistic people to show how lonely they are that they think dead air conversations between retarded characters are actually fun?

 

[Trombonista]

Here's the new Meguri chapter.

 

[skykiii]

So please, why the hell does anyone like this boring, poorly written cbt nightmare designed to get autistic people to show how lonely they are that they think dead air conversations between retarded characters are actually fun?

Maybe I'm being pretentious, but I've noticed a thing on the internet I call "the law of inverse quality."

The more objectively shitty something is, the more people will hold it in high regard. By contrast, things that are objectively good will get scorn and derision.

Just for example: say that Higurashi, the Star Wars EU, Sonic fanfics, My Little Pony etc. are even remotely flawed... you get "OMG HOW CAN YOU HATE THIS HOLY WORK?"

Those exact same people though, will snub their noses at the likes of Tolkien, Alfred Hitchcock, Lovecraft etc. Bonus points if they hate an author just for being a "boring dead guy" just like that braindead protagonist of that one Goosebumps book.

No joke I've literally been told I have "bad taste" for not liking coomer shit written by obvious pedos.

 

[Bloitzhole]

Now slogging through episode three and jesus christ this is worse than anything in the previous two episodes.

@Horribadger apologies BTW, I actually stopped going through Umineko because I just got bored of how long the VN was taking to fucking get anywhere.

I stopped midway through three and don't think I'm ever reading Umineko beyond that point. It is like someone dialled everything bad about Higurashi up to 11 and made it 4 times longer than necessary.

I've recently finished Gou and Sotsu and have played through all of the original VN episodes but I can't seem to understand why in the hell anyone would genuinely like this shit.

How do you go through so much media when you realize you are not enjoying it? I'm not being facetious, I genuinely don't understand.

I can only speak for myself but I largely got invested because I just wanted to know the solution to the murder mystery and then liked the "mechanics", the setting itself, as well as the unreliable narrator and paranoia triggering the virus, enough so that I'm willing to trudge through the other nonsense - sort of how in Agatha Christie's "And Then there were None" the characters and romance and w/e are somewhat forgettable but the idea of people trapped on an island and having to find out which one is offing them one by one before it's too late (and the ultimate solution) is interesting enough to keep one reading and guessing.

I also quite enjoyed the first arc and the Shion solution arc and I keep hoping against hope that any of the Higurashi media being released will offer a new mystery within the same setting that is as enjoyable or better, rather than a rehash.

If I recommend the old anime to someone, it is always with the disclaimer that it is 15 minutes of pointless slice-of-life bs followed by 5 minutes of interesting plot development.

Spoiler: Meguri Manga Spoiler

Of course it has to be Keiichi who causes the final bullet to miss Rika. Jfc.

 

[Horribadger]

For a guy who was supposedly scrambling to finish the new version of ep3, Ryu sure put out a lot of bonus content around this time.

Ougon started development apparently, which might explain why Kanon has a different eye color from Shannon in the art despite that being at the very least impractical, because lol retcon.

There's Memoirs of the LD, which Ryu claimed was to stop him from retconning the culprit like he did Higurashi, which is hilarious in three ways:
A) The retcon was actually an improvement; flawed as Miyo's story might be everything he's said about culprit Irie has sounded absolutely ridiculous.
B) The story says nothing that actually indicates anything about the culprit. Which is necessary to not give anything away, obviously, but it also makes it useless in terms of publicly fixing the culprit. So, like, what was the point of this?
C) It itself contains a retcon, or at least is predicated on one. Go look at Lambda's introduction at the end of ep2. There's no indication she has anything to do with Beatrice- rather, she just shows up because Bern's there and she's bored. But now suddenly she's Beatrice's master, and Beatrice is now a "fake" temporary witch despite apparently being on the same footing as the other two previously. Okay.

Also it has this little aside:

※ Note: strictly speaking, even if it's a male, you can still call him a witch.
Therefore, you can't conclude that the gender of this 'person' is female by means of the speech 'I want to become a witch'.

If this is about Shannon/Shkanon, Lambda really just went YWNBAW.


There's the EP 3 novelty shorts, which contains:

Poems from Bern and for some reason Ronove about muh love is a lie and... Erika's backstory? Despite her being a character that was hastily created after Virgilius was discarded? ... Did Virgilius's backstory involve a cheating boyfriend??...

Anti-Mystery vs Anti-Fantasy, a bunch of gobbledygook brain-melting pretentious cringe that I can't even be bothered to read thoroughly

Bern's letter, where she writes to an acquaintance witch who's literally dying of boredom; this sounds like it's supposed to be Featherine, but not only is she seemingly alive and well by the time she pops up, Bern has no reason to be so chummy with her if she's the one who ran the Higurashi game Bern supposedly popped out of. Retcooooooonnnnn
She attempts to identify the XYZ rules for no other reason than that they were in Higurashi and Ryukishi is a fucking autist. I'm pretty sure rule X was meant to be either the bomb or Beatrice's identity (Shkanon or otherwise), but later it's made to be... bribing the accomplices, so that they lie and create the magic. When rule Y is also that lies create magic. So that's basically the same rule twice. Sure jan

And finally (or maybe there's some other stuff idgaf) there's Notes from a Certain Chef, which once you get past the useless ramblings about Gohda's work history that takes up like half the text it's... actually good? Like seriously, if the rest of Umineko was up to this level of quality I'd have much less to complain about. It tells the parallel story of Gohda getting spooked by the spooky ghost of Rokkenjima's golden witch... and Genji and Kanon trolling the new hire. The moment where Gohda insists "oh no someone must have made a duplicate key to troll you, ha ha" and Kanon is pissed off... not because Gohda's disrespecting the witch but because Gohda isn't picking up on the "puzzle", is actual gold. Also despite Gohda going on about how boobily boobers the figure he saw was Shannon is not mentioned even once. Very odd.

 

[skykiii]

If this is about Shannon/Shkanon, Lambda really just went YWNBAW.

The fuck does YWNBAW mean?

but now with BT gone ryukishit gets to really dive deep into his quite obvious fetish towards Satoko.

On that note, I've come to think that Japanese properties should just... NEVER try to handle stories that attempt (possible) sexual abuse. In both this and Danganronpa Ultra Despair Girls, the CSA victim is also the most sexualized character.

Is there any Japanese property that handles sexual abuse without it coming off like the author secretly wishes they were participating?

 

[Kari Kamiya]

The fuck does YWNBAW mean?

Lurk more.

Is there any Japanese property that handles sexual abuse without it coming off like the author secretly wishes they were participating?

Bitter Virgin.