I don't know why but I remember the series having 4 seasons. Like first is the prologue, second is the rival yakuza and his ass buddy, third is the orphans and the fourth is the conclusion. Anyways I recommend to strap your seatbelt since season 3 is going to be a wild ride.
You're correct in your thinking: there are four seasons for the vn, however, the manga adaptation, what I'm reading, got canceled after the third. If I wanna find out what happens in that forth season, Imma have to read some online cliff notes or something like that...
Been awhile since I been here but I got sick and while holed up, decided to read the Umineko manga.
Previously I had tried the original VN but... fuck that thing. Seriously after ten hours it was still a whole lot of "nothing happening." The manga is paced faster, and I've heard its not missing anything essential.
I've been warned the anime sucks, so I'm avoiding that.
So, I've read the first "Arc" of the Manga--the parts labeled "Legend of the Golden Witch."
Putting thoughts behind a spoiler:
So.... two different chapter-opening color illustrations depicted nine-year-old Maria in... pretty suspicious ways. It probably should not surprise me that Ryukishi (or someone) finds the little kid attractive but....
So the final sum-up describes some of the knives with demon names on them, and it treats "Beezlebub," "Lucifer," and "Satan" as if those aren't all the same person. I just find that kinda funny.
So I'm mixed. I want to like Battler in part because I agree with his philosophy, especially during the "Tea Party" where everyone wants him to agree with stuff just because he can't explain it. I also can appreciate he's not meant to be a super-genius like Conan Edogawa... he comes off more like Phoenix Wright.
My problem is I feel the stuff he has a hard time explaining isn't even that hard.
Most especially he gets hung up on the issue of how a killer coulda got past the chain lock, when that's actually probably the easiest one to explain... of course, I say that as someone who has watched an unhealthy amount of Detective Conan, but seriously the amount the door opens is enough clearance for anyone to apply the chain lock from the outside and its just absolute retardation that they keep acting like its impossible.
I am glad, at least, that he eventually latched onto the "the faces on the bodies were mutilated so that someone could fake their death" thing.
Also, while Battler notices this, he never brings up how odd it is that Eva put the slip of paper in the door to the study in the first place, at a time before she knew any crime had occured.
On that note, my own theory is that the person Natsuhi talked to in the library wasn't actually Kinzou at all--he was likely already dead and burning. The person she talked to was either the doctor or that one servant guy pretending to be Kinzou for whatever reason. I just found it sus the manga avoided showing his face and she herself only sees him from the back.
Speaking of lookalikes.... am I the only one who noticed that some of the women look an awful lot like Beatrice?
The main thing I recall hearing is that it leaves out important evidence and literally isn't even a finished version of the story because only four arcs were adapted.
The main thing I recall hearing is that it leaves out important evidence and literally isn't even a finished version of the story because only four arcs were adapted.
I'm trying to find a list of events missing or ruined by the anime and it's overall lackluster. It isn't helped that the story ends with LOL why waste your time?
I'm trying to find a list of events missing or ruined by the anime and it's overall lackluster. It isn't helped that the story ends with LOL why waste your time?
Honestly regarding the spoiler... yeah I'm kinda already asking that.
So the manga volumes end with statements by Ryukishi where... okay, he says some doofy things.
In one of them he talks about how people get hung up on trying to figure out the trick. YES, THAT'S HOW MYSTERIES WORK.
He also in one says "don't try to figure out the trick, try instead to answer 'is there really a witch'?" Which... I mean, of course there is. That would be like the director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit saying "try to figure out if there are really toons."
This leads to another thing. Ryukishi has a Scott Cawthon-like attribute where its hard to tell if something is clever writing or him being phenomenally retarded. I most especially notice this about Maria. A lot of her actions and behaviors in the first arc really only make sense if you assume she's possessed, but the manga tries to offer the explanation that she's actually really into the occult and likes to put on a scary act.
The thing is, in-story, Battler seems like he does not buy this explanation.
As a reader though, I'm not sure how to interpret this: "she likes to play make-believe" could be just George and Jessica's retarded cope, but at the same time I know from Higurashi that Ryukishi really will run with a retarded concept or characterization and expect it to be perfectly believable.
I tried to read a bit of the second story arc and it immediately begins with a dumbass love story between the one servant girl and George. And this... I think is gonna be a sticking point. I'll be honest, I don't give a damn until the murder mystery aspects pop up. I don't care about the characters. They do not interest me. So knowing the opening of every arc is gonna be "here's someone's retarded emotional issue" for likely an entire volume before the fun part starts... translates to me as "every arc is gonna have a long boring bit to get through before the fun picks up."
A lot of her actions and behaviors in the first arc really only make sense if you assume she's possessed, but the manga tries to offer the explanation that she's actually really into the occult and likes to put on a scary act.
Possession would've been a good explanation for her, but it's laid out plain as day that Maria is more-or-less a zealous true-believer and everyone literally believes she's playing make-believe which at age nine she technically could get away with but also can't. Her actions make more sense the more you learn about her and Rosa's home life, however, as I haven't finished Umineko at all, I can only assume the coping mechanism that the occult gives Maria and not her being a child is the only thing that actually saves her from the cruelties of the witches.
I really should just suck it up and just force myself to read the manga some more since I have all of it for this exact purpose due to the sound novel being more time-consuming for me (as much as I enjoyed Episode 1). The fact they're such thicc boi volumes means that it takes literal hours to finish each one and I have more of a life now than I did two years ago that I just don't really have the time, and I've also noticed that by the time I'm finishing Banquet, fatigue's setting in.
It sucks 'cause I really want to be more involved in Umineko conversation, it's just that real life is more important and I'd rather read a single thin manga volume a day/watch a couple anime episodes if I want my fix. If only the scanlations had been fully up-to-date ten years ago, my NEET ass would've been all over that as soon as I had finished Dice-Killing.
I'll be honest, I don't give a damn until the murder mystery aspects pop up. I don't care about the characters. They do not interest me. So knowing the opening of every arc is gonna be "here's someone's retarded emotional issue" for likely an entire volume before the fun part starts... translates to me as "every arc is gonna have a long boring bit to get through before the fun picks up.
If you actually want to attempt to solve for the mystery, skipping arbitrarily will make it impossible. That goes for both the retarded given solution or the fan solutions.
Possession would've been a good explanation for her, but it's laid out plain as day that Maria is more-or-less a zealot true-believer and everyone literally believes she's playing make-believe which at age nine she technically could get away with but also can't. Her actions make more sense the more you learn about her and Rosa's home life, however, as I haven't finished Umineko at all, I can only assume the coping mechanism that the occult gives Maria and not her being a child is the only thing that actually saves her from the cruelties of the witches.
It's not just a coping mechanism, it's also revealed that the culprit is actively coaching maria to act like that. (in the 1999 future timeline where ange is investigating.)
That's during Alliance, right? I remember thinking the eeriness of her stuffed toys telling her things sounded more like grooming/coaching than her actually having magic after years of studying the occult. Her becoming a witch was definitely manufactured and suspicious as fuck.
If it turned out Ryukishi was originally going with the idea that rejecting reality for fantastical delusions makes you open to grooming and manipulation, that makes the troon fanbase all the more hilariously tone-deaf. I don't think that's what it turned out to be in the end, but that's the general idea I had gotten from when I would push myself through the question arcs multiple different times. Also from how Shitsugou botched the execution.
He also in one says "don't try to figure out the trick, try instead to answer 'is there really a witch'?" Which... I mean, of course there is. That would be like the director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit saying "try to figure out if there are really toons."
Ryukishi really liked this retarded question and the problem is that it's meaningless. Either magic exists and there is not solution, or magic exists and it's a waste of time. Maybe it would have worked at a different genre that's not so autistically based on logic.
If it turned out Ryukishi was originally going with the idea that rejecting reality for fantastical delusions makes you open to grooming and manipulation, that makes the troon fanbase all the more hilariously tone-deaf. I don't think that's what it turned out to be in the end, but that's the general idea I had gotten from when I would push myself through the question arcs multiple different times. Also from how Shitsugou botched the execution.
Definitely one of the bigger problems with Umineko is that Battler never really dials in on the murder mystery scenes and tries to solve them. He basically just goes "but what if it was uhhhhh something??" then Beatrice gives him some red that disproves it and he immediately begins crying "no magic not real me no believe!! aaaaa!!" or he comes up with some bullshit like small bombs and the only reason Beatrice lets it through is that she's stopped caring. And this continues even after Battler gets told about the narrative distortion in episode 3, which barely actually changes how he approaches anything. God only knows how retarded it would have got if Ryukishi had continued with his original plan of taking Battler's detective's view away in 3 and just jerking him and the audience around without context until ep 5. (Of course the sane thing to do would have been to just insert the explanation into ep3 as-is, eg by explaining to Battler what he's lost with the loss of the detective role. Which is why my theory is that Ryu just chickened out of writing his oh so le epic supermystery he said ep3 would be because he's a hack fraud and couldn't actually figure out how to implement his oh so epic ideas, or how to keep it up afterwards. But that's just me)
Part of this is definitely Ryukishi's autistic obsession with keeping the mystery "unsolved" to the audience, which is reasonable, but it's clearly led to him keeping the entire mystery at arms length in a lot of ways. Like, he either thinks that Battler making any headway on the mystery would give too much away, which is retarded, or he's just too retarded to figure out *how* to have Battler approach the mystery without giving too much away. And of course part of that is that the solution (or at least the version of the solution we got) is just shithead retarded and is just kind of slammed onto the mystery with a sledgehammer. How solve mystery without break rules? Oh, uh, this one character just inherently breaks the rules. You can only make the most vague and wanky allusions to that one character breaking the rules because any indication of it immediately ruins the mystery. Oh and of course the situation behind that breaking of the rules is retarded and it's impossible to imagine it actually having been kept up for multiple years, so the exploration of it has to be kept to an absolute minimum to avoid displaying how absolutely retarded it is.
But even with all of that it should have been possible to have Battler not be a retard and actually engage with the mystery without showing his hand. Like take Jessica and Kanon's deaths in ep 2. Battler could have just sat down and examined that scene, removing all the magic and getting down to- no one entered, no one exited, no one's hiding, how murder do?? That examination in and of itself would have helped with the whole "magic/the heart is important uwu" shtick by showing that the cold hard facts alone aren't enough and you do have to consider the fantasy feelsy bullshit as well. Additionally it could have put certain mysteries into a similar position as the 18>X>19 thing which itself would have been a hint to the "heart" of the solution being... you know, whatever the fuck it was.
But all of that would have required Ryukishi to not be a fucking hack and for BT to not be the real author. P:
So the final sum-up describes some of the knives with demon names on them, and it treats "Beezlebub," "Lucifer," and "Satan" as if those aren't all the same person. I just find that kinda funny.
Some of the stake-girl names are also present in the Ars Goetia demon ranking that's pulled from starting in ep3 (Asmodeus is at least) and that's also never mentioned or explained.
It's because this is tied to the what is ultimately the heart of Battler's character conflict.
That Battler doesn't want to believe any of his family or the staff are guilty, yet, he also refuses to accept a fantasical solution like a "witch" did it either.
He wants a real, logical answer that doesn't involve the people he loves being responsible for it.
I think for all of Ryukishi's blithering, he doesn't seem to fundementally understand Mysteries as a whole.
People like a good mystery yes, but they also want it to be SOLVED. It's why when they don't in real life, it unnerves and creeps people out so much.
I think he conflates "magic" with mystery.
We kinda understand that magic is at it's heart, is fake, not real, so as long as the author follows their rules for magic in their stories, no one questions the logic behind it, they accept as real in the confines of the story.
Murder mysteries, are often more grounded in reality however, unless we're told flat out they aren't going to ever be solved, you can't really get away with that as much, they do have to make sense.
Ryukishi seems to think just because he made a magical murder mystery, he doesn't have to explain the hows or whys, you should just accept it as such..problem is, he doesn't even follow his own stupid rules!
I think is gonna be a sticking point. I'll be honest, I don't give a damn until the murder mystery aspects pop up. I don't care about the characters. They do not interest me.
Part of this is definitely Ryukishi's autistic obsession with keeping the mystery "unsolved" to the audience, which is reasonable, but it's clearly led to him keeping the entire mystery at arms length in a lot of ways. Like, he either thinks that Battler making any headway on the mystery would give too much away, which is retarded, or he's just too retarded to figure out *how* to have Battler approach the mystery without giving too much away
Like I said in the first spoiler, Battler's stubbornness is tied to his main character conflict.
But I agree, it really ruins him as character because it ends up making him look like literal hypocritical idiot.
Definitely one of the bigger problems with Umineko is that Battler never really dials in on the murder mystery scenes and tries to solve them. He basically just goes "but what if it was uhhhhh something??" then Beatrice gives him some red that disproves it and he immediately begins crying "no magic not real me no believe!! aaaaa!!" or he comes up with some bullshit like small bombs and the only reason Beatrice lets it through is that she's stopped caring. And this continues even after Battler gets told about the narrative distortion in episode 3, which barely actually changes how he approaches anything.
Yeah I already noticed this with just the first tea party. Like, I can be fine with a detective who isn't a genius (Phoenix Wright more often just kinda lucks into the solution), but Battler comes off more like.... well, like Fox Mulder writing Scully based on how she was in the first season of X-Files: empty denialism. (Scully got better later. Battler, by the sounds of it, never does).
And going by the other complaints here, I'm already having flashbacks to one of my issues with Keiichi and Higurashi in general: any time the characters had a logical solution, it was evil and wrong, but if they ever had a retarded entirely emotion-driven solution, it worked even when it made no fucking sense (still remember Keiichi rallying the entire town to barricade that building even though they had said the problem is they need to get Satoko to say the abuse is happening).
Thinking about it, it almost seems like Ryukishi fundamentally hates logical thought of any sort.
It might be autistic to go this far, but it makes me wonder: somewhere or other I read Ryukishi was a social worker before he started writing VNs. But was he particularly good at being a social worker? Did he quit, or did he get fired? And did he have his retarded "emotion is everything" views because of his time as a social worker, or did he have those views beforehand and he actually tried to apply them to his social worker activities?
Ryukishi really liked this retarded question and the problem is that it's meaningless. Either magic exists and there is not solution, or magic exists and it's a waste of time. Maybe it would have worked at a different genre that's not so autistically based on logic.
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."
Yeah I found a Steam review (or forum topic or whatever--I was looking up "Umineko sucks" if that helps) and someone said the final chapter literally has a representation of the audience... and basically comes off as "if you want an answer, you turn into an evil goat monster."
Which, it feels to me almost like someone played Metal Gear Solid, realized you can tell a story with meta elements and have it actually be fucking awesome, and tried to imitate that. That's Ryukishi--he's Retarded Kojima. But Kojima was humble enough to back off of bad ideas as a recent Did You Know Gaming showed. Ryukishi keeps thinking his shit is golden and will go full steam ahead with stuff that only makes sense in his stunted mind.
EDIT:
So I was gonna read this topic from the beginning, but I realized I do still wanna see how much I can figure out on my own.
Here's what I'm gonna do: Try to persist until the end of Episode 4, then post theories. If Kiwis confirm my theories are more than 90% correct, I'll stop there.
Some thoughts I already had:
So the first time I saw "River that two speak of" my immediate assumption is either there's some sort of pun where some location's name in kanji can be read as "two speak,"... or else its referring to the Pacific Ocean.
So the first time I saw "River that two speak of" my immediate assumption is either there's some sort of pun where some location's name in kanji can be read as "two speak,"... or else its referring to the Pacific Ocean.
Not to dissuade you from attempting to solve the mystery and while the epitaph part is genuinely well written. It will literally be impossible for you to solve it by yourself since you need to know english (since the epitaph is actually in english originally) chinese and japanese. You'll be able to logically solve for it, but the answer has to be translated into chinese or japanese at different points to actually solve it.
Also, even if you solved the murders by the end of chapter 4. Chapter 5, 6, 7 are absolutely worth reading. Its really only chapter 8 that's kind of a mess.
