#but yasu and tohya...

[onewholivesinloops]

so much of what sells battler to me as a character is the tohya reveal at the end of ep8 bc it gives his characterization throughout the vn a whole new layer and the recontextualization level is on an equal level as that of yasu and shkanontrice

[knoxs2nd]

kinzo/bice and tohya/ikuko are foils, as filtered through yasu's eyes

starting this off with an assertion that yasu's ideal relationship is kinzo/bice.

she identifies with kinzo: how he went through the motions to do what was expected of him, how he didn't fight against his fate. kinzo was waiting to die but too cowardly to do it himself. he was empty inside and disconnected from his world. then he meets bice, the one person who connected with him, not because of his status, but based on shared interests and camaraderie. kinzo/bice create a universe of two, figuratively and literally. they save each other, run away together, and literally spend the rest of bice's life hidden away and secluded together with just the two of them, happy with their escape from the cruel outside world and its obligations (kinzo)/dangers (bice). kinzo remembers it as the happiest time of his life. and so yasu, who's a kinzo-kin, wants that for herself, and it helps shape her idea of the ideal relationship: a universe of two.

now, onto tohya/ikuko! if yasu's narrative predecessor (kinzo) got the fairytale relationship she dreamed of and aspired to make come true, then her narrative successor (tohya) gets her dream passed down by pure chance...but is it really as idealized as she dreamed of?

because yeah, tohya/ikuko bond over sharing the same interests and can talk as friends! and yeah, they're secluded. no one even knows tohya exists, for the matter. they're free from any obligation to the outside world and don't have to interact with any sort of cruel society. tohya and ikuko only interact with the outside world on their own terms, through the anonymity of the internet, and later as famous authors who can use their wealth to obscure themselves through pen names, agents, etc. they really have created their own single universe. they even choose to share a single identity instead of "splitting" their identities like yasu did.

but. are tohya and ikuko really happy like this? tohya can't just let go of who he was before he met ikuko, no matter how much he wants to. he's not like bice, who was "happy" (we don't even know that for sure, considering that kinzo is an unreliable narrator) going from a wealthy, privileged, worldly life, experiencing severe trauma, then becoming a hermit with a close friend. tohya even has a whole new name but it doesn't change that the trauma follows him. tohya experiences so much guilt for trying to let go of his past, for not reaching out to ange, for trying to protect his new sense of identity as the person who's a mystery novel writing hermit. in short, this isn't some idyllic life for him. and even ikuko, who genuinely likes being a recluse and brought tohya into that life, realizes this isolation isn't it, and maybe they have to break this little bubble of theirs (she does not go about it in the best way: i talk about it a bit here.)

in conclusion, what i'm saying for tohya/ikuko is that the isolated "universe of two" did not cut it. they both suffered, because you can't just cut all ties to the outside world and expect things to be all hunky-dory and you'll live happily ever after, free from sadness and pain.

what brings tohya salvation is reaching out to yukari at the end, breaking his own shell to communicate honestly with someone from his outside world. even if he's not guaranteed a perfect, accepting response, even if she gets justifiably angry, even if he's scared - like tohya says, he should have done it a long time ago

anyway, i'm going to end off with this screencap. because battler Got It. not a secluded universe of two, untethered to the rest of the world. but a relationship where you will experience the world together. that's living.

[gothamcityneedsme]

also on a narrative angle. willards only contemporary is tohya. The ultimate reader (detective) and the ultimate author (witch)

[batbeato]

Someone asked me on my retrospring if I preferred the Umineko manga or VN. (I prefer the VN, for a lot of extra details and lovely prose).

But that reminded me of the manga-specific Confession chapters, which I have an incredible amount of issues with, so I'd like to talk about that a bit.

The very first problem with it is this: it goes against the fundamental principles of Umineko, not just in opening the catbox, but in how it contradicts Sayo's character.

Sayo wrote her forgeries and created her entire murder mystery to confess her crimes and try to have someone understand her feelings. They feel so much shame and guilt over everything that they are incapable of openly confessing to someone about everything and must instead use this oblique method. Even Beatrice never openly confesses everything, no matter how hard she is trying to get Battler to understand her. Even when she must use the red truth to deny witches against EVA, she asks Battler to cover his ears so that he doesn't hear it.

Why would Sayo create this direct confession of everything and then put it into the sea like all their other message bottles? Genuinely... why? They are already writing their forgeries as confessions and want someone to use those to understand them. This is what multiple characters state Beatrice's goal is and also state that someone understanding her will grant her peace/happiness.

The answer is that there is no reason besides a contrivance to:

a. have Ange (and us, the audience) learn about Sayo's backstory without having love to "see" it

b. explain why Ikuko (and thus Tohya) know everything about Sayo to be able to write their forgeries (a lesser reason, but one nevertheless, that also reduces the potential effort Tohya spent to learn more about Sayo by studying her forgeries)

Also, this manga differs from how EP7 frames Yasu as a bodiless being, one without a sense of self who takes on different "roles" - Yasu becomes Beatrice, but is also separate from Beatrice in the narration, speaking of "us" but not speaking of a self as "myself" or "me". They can become their personas, but they are not their personas directly.

In Confession, we see that everyone besides "Sayo" is just an illusion or fake, centering Sayo as "the real one".

"And when I was myself, I could actually smile and be happy" - implying that Beatrice and Kanon are not her true self, and only "Shannon" is, as Shannon isn't mentioned in the above section.

Another thing is that this chapter introduces more contradictions than just characterization ones. Nanjo mentions that Natsuhi pushed the servant and baby off the cliff.

However, how does Nanjo know this? I tried to figure this out, as someone asked me about it on here before. But no one was there at the time. They had to have guessed this, or assumed this, or else somehow overheard Natsuhi talking about it.

Was this line meant to confirm that Natsuhi did, without a doubt, push Lion off the cliff? But this was already pretty much confirmed, given Lion's existence and all the discussion about it in 5 and 7.

Also, it seems as though it's trying to confirm that Sayo is trans and AMAB, but Nanjo specifically says "though you could not bear children". Hopefully some weird translation thing... on the official translation... (@dainadjakyou checked her Japanese copy and thankfully this is a mistranslation; it's meant to be that Sayo is unable to have children in general).

But otherwise, well. It doesn't manage to even confirm that Sayo is AMAB, whether that line is a mistranslation or not, since if Sayo was born with ovaries and those ovaries were destroyed by the accident, Sayo's body wouldn't produce enough estrogen to have a feminizing puberty, which would be similar to if Sayo was born with testes that were destroyed (not enough T for a masculinizing puberty).

I should also mention that for whatever reason, even though it canonizes the fact that Sayo has a scar on their abdomen, this scar is never depicted despite the fact that we see Sayo's abdomen. Just didn't draw it. So it has internal contradictions, too.

Oh, it does confirm that apparently Jessica didn't know that Kinzo was dead. Somehow.

It also tries to confirm or at least more heavily imply that Kinzo was responsible for the Italian/Japanese fighting in EP7.

As much as Confession confirms some details, overall it contradicts Sayo's character and other depictions of them in the story while also adding some new contradictions, not managing to properly confirm several things it clearly wants to hammer in, and also contradicts itself at some points due to what I'm assuming is either artistic oversight or poorly thought out stylistic choice.

Opening the catbox didn't need to be this way. And yet, it is.

[cheonmaneechan]

I'm going to word this terribly, but I find Yasu's outlet and the difference of when it is actually carried out to be a very interesting note on the difference between taking out and expressing oneself through a fictional outlet and carrying out one's harmful thoughts beyond that. Beatrice is the endless golden witch with a (seemingly) impossible mystery across perhaps dozens and dozens of messages in bottles metaphorical or literal, and would later be carried on by those beyond her including Hachijo Tohya and Hachijo Ikuko among many unnamed others. Yasu can express themselves and their pain and hatred and even love through fictional mysteries starring their entire family whom most of which don't even know they exist, let alone that they're their family at least in blood relation if nothing else. When they try to carry it out however as they've given up on life or just about hoping that Ushiromiya Battler would solve their mystery however, everyone actually dies horribly and they end up regretting it and likely kill themselves as or after Ushiromiya Eva and Ushiromiya Battler escape. Only one of their mysteries led to death, and it was the one attempted in reality. They never had to feel that regret in any of their previous mysteries for writing them because no one was harmed, and though they at the very least in part meant well and hoped for everyone to reach the golden land in great part out of love, they spend the last moments of their life forced to live with the very real reality of death that in part was a result of their actions.

Then later on even after death, even their fiction in a sense comes into reality and is quite literally experiencing a mass movement of sorts of death of the author. It again was fine when the stories were just an outlet of their continuously traumatized imagination, but now twelve years later it is being treated as simply a work of fiction, divorced not only from the author but from the victims and reality of said victims including not only the author but all of the dead family members. The golden witch survives even after her death or third death when considering Kuwadorian and Bice Beatrice, but without any of their original agency or personal connection or care for those she both loved and hated because the vast majority of the writers are now divorced from it all entirely and only relate to the tragedy via fictional writings they are personally divorced from.

Umineko truly is meta in the actual sense and not the just trying to sound cool or smart sense. There's so many things and ways and levels you can look into it, including from a writing or writers perspective and once again as I've said many times, it is a work that only gets better the more you think about it. Again, sorry if this was all worded terribly, it just popped in my head on a whim.

[revindicatedbyhistory]

umineko spoilers

i like how tohya at first doesn´t get any voice acting just like yasu

[whenthechickencry]

Umineko EP3. Replay Part 5

Well yeah Battler, you got it! How did the other Golden Witch get her powers then?

lmfao owned.

Man Virgilia and Ronove really spoil Battler with all the hints.

Rosa and Eva speaking in code is pretty good, neither wants to leave the room without the other....

The fact Rosa shakes a bottle in frustration in trying to find something that isn't there while being angry at Maria for being mad that something isn't where it should be is pretty ironic.

Obviously this scene didn't literally happen and something closer to what actually happens is something like Eva telling Hideyoshi about the gold and her plans and etc while being disgusted by her own greed, while at the same time going deeper into it....

Maria's random insistence at this to me seems like a sign that this is something Yasu and Maria had pre-planned. If there was a deadlock taking place, she would cry about her rose, similar to how she used the cards to break deadlocks in episode 1 and 2. Though I don't think it would work like they intended this time if Eva didn't like, fuck things up her own way.... I don't think Yasu would murder Rosa in front of Maria and I don't think she would like, shoot Maria either....

Well.... obviously the truth is something in between here. Eva may not be enjoying tutoring Rosa at this moment, but she is surely having a fight with her about keeping the secret with her, and pushing her into the fence in frustration.... and then murdering her daughter to leave no witness. Granted, I don't think Eva would just go on a murder spree normally.... I think of it as something kind of like Meakashi Shion. The murders wouldn't have happened if the first accident didn't.

I.... forgot Battler just tells her to kill herself omg.... this scene is kind of interesting. i am kind of interpreting it as what Yasu was scared Battler would think of her when she found out about her murder mystery plans... we know from episode 8 manga that he is all things considered pretty forgiving of it, in actuality. But I could see Yasu thinking this is how it would go down or even what went through his head at first before stopping himself and thinking of what led to it. Also Beato will get to get her wish of seeing what Battler cooks in episode 8!

Of course she is exaggerating for her trick strategy, but I don't think this is too far from what she thought about herself, either, and it's not like she wasn't cruel with her pranks and stuff so it isn't entirely unwarranted, but...

I imagine she probably did apologize to Maria something like here when she found her corpse and had to fix it up, too....

Obviously, though, you are supposed to be very sus of Beato here lol. I mean she turotred Kanon like, a couple hours ago lol.

It's really funny how it seems this specific act didn't really trick anyone lol - sorry Yasu I guess you kind of failed.

There is a clear difference in my view in how the family acts towards the murder in this episode and the last one. In this one they more or less figured out both this and the first murder - compared to how in the first 2 episodes everyone was clueless. I think in universe you can justify this with there being more servant deaths and therefore less culprits to worry about and also you can theorize that Yasu assumed her plan would go without a hitch - something Tohya knew wasn't true.

Eva's desperate to throw suspicion elsewhere lmfao.

tldr people don't believe in magic anymore so to make them believe it you have to make very obtuse murders.

It is kind of funny Hideyoshi doesn't realize what is going on even though it is decently obvious, lol. Also, Natsuhi is freaking out because their reasoning is stupid - and I mean it is if you take it at face value, maybe you should have thought about it Hideyoshi!

"Until that question could be dealt with, the only answer was[...] magic" Is an interesting line. The answer to this sequence of events is obvious, Kyrie and Rudolf are luring out Hideyoshi.... so if this is framed as magic, it tells you how magic is used in other situations, and to go back to other magical scenes and see what you can take from them.

I kind of wonder how Hideyoshi was able to kill both Rudolf and Kyrie, especially at such a disadvantage. I guess he didn't come unscathed, though, considering he died. So it could be as simple as a bullet missing. him or him attacking before Rudolf and Kyrie were ready.

Uh huh, Kyrie... you can tell both this was written by someone with love for Kyrie and Rudolf and that they are someone who knows Kyrie might uh, have some issues.

To be honest, I originally took this to mean Eva literally did show herself and caused the shootout where she was the one survivor when I first read it... I guess I was being too literal when I read this for the first time. It's more of a general representation on Eva's complicated feelings towards her family, the gold, etc coupled with her fucking up the board.

Kyrie is more or less wrong about everything she says here, Rudolf was not in any remote way cornered, in fact if anything he was cornered *towards* dating Kyrie and he still picked Asumu. Kyrie was never anything more than Rudolf's side and they only ever got together officially because Asumu happened to die. To be honest I can't exactly blame rudolf for thinking Kyrie would kill him for revealing the truth.... he would in fact kind of deserve it.

I kind of want to use this scene to springboard to talk about misogyny in Umineko in general - specifically the ones experienced by the mothers. This entire chapter is basically an essay on how Eva faces misogyny, Natsuhi was basically sold and used as a womb, Rosa was left by her husband and forced to deal with how society treats single mothers, Kyrie has shit with her family as well as Rudolf both depending on her while using her as a side piece and feeling emasculated by her, etc. really all the women in Umineko are greatly affected by misogyny. And since Umineko deals a lot with generational trauma and cycle of abuse that is also how misogyny is passed down in Umineko Eva yells at Natsuhi about how she is just a womb, tries to use the fact George is male and Jessica female to steal the headship from Jessica, and that's even before the awful way they treat Shannon. Natsuhi refuses to engage with her daughter as a full person with a variety of interesting and own personality and instead tries to mold her into a "proper" and "modest" woman. Rosa tells her own daughter she is the reason her father left and blames her for the people she is dating not wanting to deal with her. And finally, Kyrie throws endless shit to Asumu and basically has a headcanon about how Rudolf is blameless and Asumu was just a homewrecking whore who got in the way of her and Rudolf, when Rudolf is obviously the one at fault. I don't want to make it look like I am saying these are basically the same characters or anything like that, there is a lot of difference in motivations behind why they do this, in how they cope with it, etc, but I mostly discuss that in other posts so I don't want to go into that much details. I think Umineko overall deals with misogyny in a good way- it understands that misogyny isn't just a Big Bad Old Fashioned Man you have to defeat, and afterward misogyny is solved, it isn't something you can just defeat by just changing the way you think or whatever but a system built in favor of men that gets internalized by everyone, including women, and that those attitudes are internalized and passed to the next generation before they can so much as even talked. This is a little bit of a tangent but related to how all of the characters previously talked about are both victims and afterward abusers or otherwise people that harm others, I am happy that WTC works in general aren't shy of showing how abuse can be internalized in bad ways that cause harm to others while still holding sympathy and space for the victims. A lot of works are scared of this because if done wrong it can look like victim blaming or ignoring victims in favor of abusers, but I think works like this are really important for victims to understand that some imperfect behavior after being abused is normal and that they aren't irredeemable and can grow themselves if they ever fail and do bad things. holy shit I went on a huge tangent. I haven't played in like 2 days because I got the idea to write this 2 days ago and have been workshopping on my brain how to word it.

Anyways back on regularly scheduled Umineko, it is kind of funny how the first time humans really 'win' against magic it's not really presented in a positive light. They won because their vices were even worse than the vices of the stakes representing sloth and envy.

Beatrice struggles about dancing around the fact she just wants Battler to acknowledge her for her own sake, lol.

they have hinted like 10 times that the chiester sisters = gun in the last like 20 lines lmfao.

They are dropping a bunch of hints towards what Beatrice actually wants here. The awkward conversation with EVA meant the same thing more or less too.

This scene's interesting - I am sure Hideyoshi in actuality DID feel Eva was being changed by the gold into a crueler person but everything points towards him being pretty enabling overall. Also Hideyoshi hints towards magic and witchdom being about being unable to deal with the past. Also there is a line that says "The gun near rudolf killed Hideyoshi (paraphrasing) which is kind of interesting considering the manga says it was Kyrie instead.

The fact Eva is freaking out this much about Hideyoshi going outside - even before she knew that Rudolf and Kyrie followed him is a hint that she was recruited, I think. After all, when talking with Rosa she said she thought the original murders were a prank, and she was the one that killed Rosa and Maria so.... why is she freaking out now?

Ok yeah - she's using Yasu keywords like 'Golden witch" and witch in general on a nonfantasy scene. Definitely some hints towards that I think. i didn't catch that Eva was an accomplice in this episode until I read the manga, to be honest. Thought she'd just murdered people on her own. Definitely didn't trust Yasu at all though, didn't even tell her she found the gold.

[fwuitgummyy]

Will and Lion as a pair fucks me up, because they're both Tohya and Yasu's ideals. In only a reality where they weren't themselves, they could finally love each other freely. Will and Lion may be replacements for their missing actors, but that doesn't fulfill the gaping hole of them not being there. Even if Tohya and Yasu feel their existences were a mistake, a world where they could make eachother happy wouldn't have prevented anything. But it's better to think of what should have been for each other, then to think of a reality where it was never possible to begin with.

[construingseacats]

Umireread: Turn of the Golden Witch - Chapter 8: Wedding Ring

Sat, Oct 4 1986 - 10:00PM

The following contains spoilers for the entirety of Umineko. Please do not read if you are yet to finish it.

I know this isn’t the first time that Santa has been brought up in relation to fantasy vs reality, but it is a pretty apt comparison for the message of the story. No-one ever says that it’s cruel or immoral to lie to kids about there being a magical man who delivers presents around the world. If it wasn’t for the fact that they have to learn the truth eventually - since they’ll need to help perpetuate it for the next generation - would it be better if they spent their entire life believing it?

Case in point.

It’s interesting how much time they’re devoting to setting up devil proofs here - priming us for the introduction of the Red Truth and showing how many issues we’d have trying to solve the story without it.

Come on Ryukishi, you can’t just say “wow! I’d love to read a story about a child seeking revenge!” in your story about a child seeking revenge.

Episodes 1 and 2 dwelling so hard with the incorrect axiom of “the killer doesn’t want to be caught” really torpedoes the arguments that the characters are able to come up with. By now, it should be pretty reasonable to figure out that the killer wants to be caught - and that they want the Epitaph to be solved. But why? Is it possible to even construct a plausible theory for that at this point?

This scene is just oozing in the overall truth, isn’t it?

Very funny to see that “human woman” is in bold here, but not “single”. Don’t want to make the regular accomplices and the resulting roulette too obvious now. I’m sure Yasu is pleased to be perceived as a human woman, though.

You know, I’ll have to see how much this facet of Maria’s personality remains in the Tohya Forgeries, because this really isn’t doing it for me - and I’m wondering how much of it is down to this being Maria’s actual personality, and how much of it is down to Yasu focusing on that element of her.

No comment necessary.

Echoing my former comments on how, regardless of how their relationship formed, you can’t deny how much it means to her.

Shannon’s use of ずっとずっと here made my ears prick up - admittedly due to the immense amount of times that I’ve listened to Revelations. While it’s definitely too much of a stretch to link these together, I do find it interesting how the phrase is used here for “always, always” yet in Revelations it’s used as “again and again”. Of course, the latter translation is meaningless nonsense if you think of a single gameboard - but if you think about it over the wider Sea of Fragments?

This is really interesting to compare to the philosophical discussion of the life of the wilting rose in Episode 1 - all the cousins talk about their thoughts on seeing the rose, being glad they could see them when they bloomed, but here Yasu is the one considering not how she feels about the Cicadas, but how they feel themselves. And isn’t that the actual important part of it all?

Okay - so this was going to happen eventually, but now is as good a time as any. Allow me to chime in on Umineko’s central theme of “love” as an asexual person.

I’ve alluded to how you can interpret Umineko as a criticism of heteronormativity before, but even at the core, Umineko is intrinsically connected with the base human instinct of love. I’d go as far to say that Ryukishi (at least, at the time of writing) wasn’t really aware of asexuality, and just assumed that experiencing love was a base part of the human condition that everyone experienced. Mildly amusing if so, since it means he too has fallen victim to building arguments on flawed axioms, while writing an entire tale about that very issue.

However, even as an asexual… I don’t mind this. I don’t feel seen by Umineko, but there’s a key component to how Umineko has been written that stops it from being entirely unrelatable: while Umineko dwells in romantic and sexual love, Ryukishi is writing with unrestrained love towards his fellow human beings. He’s writing with love towards the world he was born into. The world that we were born into. While he may not have done so intentionally, platonic love oozes from his work.

That’s why I can still resonate with the central message. Maybe I don’t love anyone in the way that Ryukishi expects I should. Maybe my body, too, is effectively furniture. But even still, I can love my fellow human for existing. I can love the joys that we can experience because we are alive. I can say thank you for being born - not just to others, but to myself. I can relate to that. And, honestly - I think everyone can. Maybe romantic love isn’t something that everyone can or will experience. But a general love to the world around them? I do think that might indeed be a universal part of the human experience.

…I’d love to leave this little aside there, wrapped up nicely in a bow, but I did have a bit of a gut punch at the “maybe I too am furniture” note - because, yeah, in hindsight, that might be directly aphobic. That might be the line that’s devalidating to asexuals. But, again, I don’t personally have a problem with that, because that concept is directly stated to be Yasu’s line of thinking - not a view that finds itself entirely endorsed or condemned by the narrative. Because it’s just what she thinks - and it’s up to you to decide how you want to feel about that. Yasu is hurting, her beliefs come from a place of trauma - I don’t feel invalidated by that. I just want the person who believes that to become better, to heal. I want to be able to love the human who lies behind that layer of unmitigated despair and agony. And, again, isn’t that ability to understand what Umineko is about?

Once again, moving swiftly on from a deep dive to a more regular point of analysis. The concept of a “tie” in Beato’s game is an interesting remark - because how would that happen? Of course, with full knowledge, this is a board state where Yasu is caught and apprehended (all it takes is a lucky shot from one of the guns), but the Epitaph is not solved and the bombs still go off. But, if you don’t know that, how does a tie work in this game? You catch the culprit or you don’t. So this is a pretty strong hint towards Beato having a failsafe.

This is one of those scenes where I’m deeply curious about what’s going on behind the scenes. How much did Yasu reveal to the adults here? We know the chapel is connected to the secret room, so it’s very possible that she straight up showed them all the gold.

Actually, thinking about it, there’s an alternate solution for the First Twilight here, isn’t there? You could actually Red Truth that the door was locked, since we could have got in/out via the underground passage to Kuwadorian. Although of course, that doesn’t play nicely with Knox, even if we allude to the presence of a secret passage with the code in the chapel.

I’m going to be honest, I don’t actually remember them doing Role Calls after Episode 1. The first one stuck out to me a lot, but I guess the repeats didn’t leave as much of an impression.

No Kumasawa, Shannon, or Nanjo this time. Very interesting - we already know that the Role Calls are untrustworthy since we have Kinzo in the study, but even if you wanted to say “but that’s just his body”, we have Kanon in the corridor and Beato in the VIP room, so that’s an impossibility there. I’m going to rescind my Episode 1 remark about the missing people being those who are sleeping, and just flat out say that I don’t have any reasonable conjecture on why the people who aren’t in the Role Call are absent from it. Natsuhi’s absence in the first Episode torpedoes the idea of it being accomplices. Could not give you a single theory that connects these missing pieces together.

And time for the First Twilight… for the second time.

[8bitsupervillain]

What were your thoughts about Kanon way back then that could be interpreted as correct? I'm too lazy to go back that far lol. Also, time to reinterpret the entire story through the lens of what you now know about the different authors - Episode 4 with all the focus on Battler's sin and his failure to remember was Tohya! Yasu wrote Beatrice as a horrific witch and the embodiment of all her worst impulses and emotions in Episode 2, and it was Tohya who made her sympathetic and tragic in the later Episodes! There is So Much To Unpack

Way back in the first episode when the game introduced Kanon I made a post saying that I didn't buy that Kanon was male, and that he was probably secretly a woman. So, depending on how you look at it I was right.

The reinterpretation of the various episodes is actually part of the reason I'm not being too quick to judge how I feel about the series as a whole. I want to give myself a bit of time to reflect and go over it rather than give a knee jerk "it sucks," or "it's great."

Also I had read about the existence of the stuff they added with the later edition of Umineko. Our Confession, and Last Note of the Golden Witch. I'm curious about how these affect the story.

[thirdmagic]

funny how the first time i read umineko ep8 and we got the tohya reveal i didn’t really vibe with it, thought it was kind of tropey/cliche and silly, and the final ending scene in the epilogue did touch me but i thought it was kind of disconnected for this character we just met, and then years later after looking back at the entire series with him in context, suddenly it’s like. oh. oh of course it makes perfect sense. it was there all along. he was there all along! like of course umineko is the story of beabato and the story of yasu but also the story of tohya and tohya and yasu, of tohya’s attempt to reach out to this girl who caused all of this who he knows he wronged and and to understand her heart and also find closure and reconciliation with his memories, trauma, identity, so many little things about how the series is structured and the way battler and beato’s character develop in the narrative within it over time, all of ep6, there’s so much of tohya there just like there’s so much of yasu there if you just look. so of course it ends with him, the entirety of it was his journey. the ending is rokkenjima, ending with battler and beato, but the epilogue is ange and tohya, the survivors dealing with the aftermath, trying to deal with it and reconcile with it, so the epilogue is a grown up ange who had already thrived and found herself as an adult and got her closure, so the end point is tohya finally, after this entire long journey of reading yasu’s episodes, writing his own forgeries and stories in response to deal with his trauma and feelings and the only way he can deal with it and convey his own heart and his feelings, of course the real end of all of umineko is the end of his own toil of writing and his struggle with himself and finding peace, because that’s what we’ve been watching and experiencing him struggling towards all along. that’s umineko. it’s all there if you look with love and search for the heart!!!

[onewholivesinloops]

kinzo saving bice by 'kidnapping' her and being like it's okay that everyone's greed made them kill each other for the italian gold because we can start over and be happy together just the two of us only for that to trap the family in a cycle of generational abuse and trauma for years versus battler saying similar things to yasu after the rokkenjima incident only for yasu to reject that and kill herself because in her mind she believes those things were fated to happen and she can't stand the idea of perpetuating the cycle further as well as her self-loathing making her believe she's undeserving of being alive but it's also deconstructing the idea of romance ever being the be all end all of her problems so getting saved by battler and being loved by him still not being enough shows that her issues are too complex for one person to single-handedly resolve and speaks to all the systematic issues at play that failed someone like her in the first place

[knoxs2nd]

having fun thinking about the kanon/shannon and elder/chick!beatrice divide as different facets of the same person

the passive, palatable shannon is the more openly presented human "face" whos' more concerned with finding love like chick!beatrice, while for beatrice it's all about the powerful troll witch elder!beatrice "persona." thinking about how between shannon/kanon as facets of yasu, shannon is much more sociable and interacts more with others, while with beatrice, it's elder!beatrice who is far more "visible"

shannon is about being loved and acceptable to others and welcomed into the in-group, while beatrice is a lot about yasu being able to act however she wants and proving she doesn't need others to like her to be happy (rather, she just needs people to acknowledge she exists. which is easier to do if she torments them/plays pranks on them)

so of course for the human world yasu is more reticent about her ugly pessimistic side (kanon) while for the witch side yasu rejects the idea of expressing that she...does want to please the person she loves and craves their approval (chick!beatrice) when she's supposed to be AN INDEPENDENT STRONG WOMAN.

just!! thinking in ep6 how ange sees chick!beatrice and even she cares for her... chick!beatrice is so sweet & likable and that's the part of beatrice that is so squarely hidden away until the very end of ep4 and ep5 when she's on the verge of death and can't hide it away anymore

yasu being granted some measure of peace by creating kanon and being allowed to express herself through him instead of hiding him away like beatrice hides away her chick!beato self, but then getting pained because this separation means no one knows her full "true, whole" self

tohya "resolves" beatrice's storyline by writing her as two separate personas. by doing this, tohya granted them both their own expression, importance, and agency, like yasu did for shannon and kanon

but instead of framing the different selves in a battle where they have to kill each other and only one of them can win, ultimately tohya writes beatrice choosing to "reunite" her two selves into one whole person who gets to express themselves fully and doesn't have to hide any part of themselves away, and who isn't afraid of the world's judgment anymore as long as she has her loved ones' support. a;slkfdjas; tohya 😭

[gothamcityneedsme]

my umineko galaxy brained interpretation is that tohya and ikuko didnt even create erika. i think witch-hunters learned of her case and connected it for fun to Rokkenjima because it was SLIGHTLY feasible so they could throw an oc "perfect detective" onto the island. lets be honest here. witch-hunters prolly would get sick of battler as a detective. they would CRAVE the ability to make a true crime oc.

thats what i think erika really is. they dug into the life of this girl who died tragically. then just used her for their forgeries. it makes the fact that she wears jessicas old clothes even more sickening--i would assume witch-hunters looked into ushiromiya past photos and such, and someone decided to throw their oc in a dress jessica was waeing in a photo.

anyways. i dont think tohya made her up i think he and ikuko just took the fandom fav oc. and they (appropriately) made her act grotesquely to highlight the shittiness of the other forgeries.

aka i think some of tohyas writing was in response to other forgeries ie his "contemporaries". Theres this whole level of umineko we dont know because we dont see other forgeries and we only know 2.5 authors (yasu, tohya, ikuko...... And sort of another half author in eva....but her work isnt a forgery)

[batbeato]

for the family abolition, the vn pulls out the guts of the family as an institution and then asks you to pretend that it’s halloween candy. to look at them with love instead of endorising leaving the family register. ange forgiving eva at the end of alliance, for example. because ange can’t find the will to live without the family illusion, because yasu regrets the murders once they occur. i've heard some say it's toothless regardless of japanese context. or to at least endore parricide lol.

a. First, you quoted from @huayno for the "pulls out guts" / "halloween candy" bit. Credit people for taking their words at least.

b. You seem to think that "looking at family with love" and "leaving the family register" are mutually exclusive. They are not. Not only is it what Yukari herself does, but it is something that I see often in real life. People who have experienced family abuse can go no-contact with their family while also loving them and remembering their family as both loving and abusive. Family relationships are complicated.

Someone struggling with how they view their abusive family is different from the story endorsing a complete return to an abusive family situation, or endorsing that the person, despite their abuse, needs to love their family. Though I can admit that Umineko went back on it a bit in the manga, in the VN, Ange can choose whether she wants to view her family with love or not. In the Trick ending, Ange does commit murder, but she is still alive and going onwards. Of course, all magic disappears, so we cannot see the boat scene, or Lambdabern, or Tohya, but Ange, who has chosen not to see her family with love, is still alive and out there in some unwritten, unknown story, on her boat, going onwards.

And, Ange choosing to view her family with love does not mean that she is denying or apologizing for abuse, or choosing to remain part of the family. She leaves it behind and becomes Kotobuki Yukari.

Even though Ange's family is dead, Ange still struggled with the memory of her family. Family can deeply define who you are, especially when trauma is involved. Ange was also actively abused by Eva for 12 years - and she did try to leave. Eva stopped her and punished her. It is only when Ange resolves her trauma, either by accepting that her family was a bunch of abusive fucked-up people, or by choosing to remember that her family was abusive but also loving, that Ange can truly leave her family behind.

Ange forgiving Eva in Alliance and taking the blame onto herself for her abuse is her struggling with what happened to her. I've seen this a lot, actually - people who switch between despising their abusers or seeing them as inhuman monsters, and blaming themselves completely for something their abusers did to them. Umineko is always from some subjective POV - Dlanor even brings this up at one point, I believe in Our Confession, that Umineko is not told from the eyes of God - so we can really get into the warped mindsets people have due to their trauma. And, yes, taking on this mindset does allow Ange to forgive Eva and her family, and to become a witch, but in the end Ange does not love herself, instead seeing herself as disposable for some better Ange to exist in another timeline, and commits suicide to save Battler because of this. I... don't think the story is endorsing self-blame as a coping mechanism.

People who have been abused often take a long time for them to heal from their trauma and to truly be free of their abusers. It's just a bit more obvious for Ange given the magical/metaphorical nature of Umineko.

c. Sayo regretting the murders and Umineko not endorsing parricide are completely in line with everything. Ryukishi07 consistently talks about murder and how it can be incredibly traumatizing for the murderer as well as their community. In both Higurashi and Umineko, he stresses that you should rely on others (community, friends, family) and seek help rather than going to the most extreme option.

Sayo regrets the murders, but this is not because of family ties, but because murder is terrible and traumatizing. They realize how harmful and awful murder is, how much trauma it will cause the cousins/Ange, that people she cares about (the cousins) will die, etc.

If we say, "what if Sayo had only killed the corrupt adults?" we still have to contend with how murder would traumatize Sayo, and how it would also traumatize every survivor. In Higurashi, Ryukishi toys with the idea of parricide with Teppei. His conclusion is that murder is so traumatizing, so community-shattering, that there must be a better way. He shows how impossibly difficult it is for the group to get government assistance to protect Satoko, but how, by rallying their community together, and by convincing their friend to speak out against her family and seek help, they are able to get her to safety.

And, yes, maybe Maria shouldn't mourn her abusive mother's death. Maybe Jessica should be happy her parents, who kept her from doing things she loved, are gone. However, though their family was abusive, they also performed many acts of love. It's difficult to untangle love and abuse - Umineko is about that.

d. Let me know if you find receipts for Japanese people discussing this. And, since Japanese people aren't a monolith, if you would be able to find a variety of opinions, that would help a lot.

[akatokuro]

What was the point of Tohya's forgeries 3-6?

demonstrating tohya processing his memories and thoughts about the real rokkenjima incident seeping into the lore from the starting point of yasu's bottles and widening the thematic net of the power fiction has to guide and, ideally, heal, i think.

i mean, if what you meant was "what was the point of assigning those arcs as being tohya's forgeries in the meta" and not something broader like "why do those episodes exist" or "why does tohya's presence in the narrative exist." the vagaries of language. yasu's struggles are wide and vast...