That it is solvable.

Yes, the seven forgeries are solvable with culprits, but you'll never "really" know what happened on the island on that day. And that's the point of the story.

People who are trying to find out the truth are looking for something that isn't there, just as Battler tells Ange in EP8.

Very well, to begin let's post an obligatory KnowNoMore's screenshot.

Once that has been done, let's go to the point:

* Red truth is objectively true.
Completely false, proved wrong a lot of times in the novel. Please die in a hole, you pretentious bastard.
* Yasu's DID
Ok actually about this I'm not completely sure, I don't think it was ever perfectly explained as the answer is supposed to never be said. I believe one of the strongest theories suggests Yasu's personalities were born just from her trying to act differently, and instead of being separated personalities with their own will and goals, were just different roles Yasu took (this is very open to interpretation, though).
* The real story behind the curtains was meant to be solved
This might be more of an opinion, but there's little evidence saying otherwise.
As Kinjo mentions, the story suggests we were never going to be told what really happened during those two days, if anything we were shown the results after many years and a short scene that show us how Battler escaped from Rokkenjima (which is sadly regarded as false by the fans).

>>175
Agreed. About Yasu's DID, after actually learning what DID is and how it works, she'd have to be completely unaware of any of her other 'personaltiies' for it to be DID. However there are plenty of scenes showing she is aware, for instance when Shannon's feelings for Battler get transferred to Beatrice. Yasu was the puppeteer pulling the strings behind that, in a much more literal sense of the phrase.

Also, if it were DID, switching from Shannon to Kanon so much would make it impossible for her to be so consistent with the methodical closed room murder plots, unless they had some sort of note-writing system invented, but that clearly was never hinted at.

I believe Yasu was just so isolated from the real world and bullied so much that she found comfort in her 'imaginary friends' as did Ange in EP4. In both cases, they are conscious and aware that their friends don't exist, but what else are they going to do? Unlike Ange, however, Yasu was prepared to get her own hands stained with blood, which (I guess) resulted in her becoming them.

This is a good thread. Anon's three points were the exact same ones that I was going to make, though. But I guess I can add a few more.

* That each game actually takes place in an alternate universe or "Fragment", in the same manner as Higurashi.
* That the distinction between Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice as separate people was necessarily as pronounced in reality as it was in the message bottle stories.
* That the mystery Ryukishi urged the readers to solve was not the riddle of Beatrice's heart, but a series of closed room puzzles.
* That there was ever supposed to be any kind of internal consistency to the meta-narrative.
* That Beatrice's goal was to deceive the reader, rather than to be understood.

...And also that one that just got brought up in the thread below this, about the Episode 7 tea party being the truth. I'm surprised at how many people I run into who seem to believe this.

Last edited at 13/06/08(Sat)02:20

That Erika's existence or non-existence really matters. She's a character. It doesn't matter if she was really there. That isn't the point of her. Hell, even her powers and limitations don't matter. That isn't what End and Dawn are about. If those mattered that much, we'd have gotten full 1986 narratives for them.

Like seriously, we know nothing about "Prime" as it is, there's no way to know if Erika was involved in it or what her personality would be like or anything of the sort. It's irrelevant.

Actually, the very notion that "Prime" exists at all is somewhat of a misconception or opinion. I've always been of the thought that it's a theoretical concept, and while ep8 more or less suggests there is a "real world" (the world in which Tohya exists), it's hard to say with absolute certainty whether that's the case, what actually did happen to Ange there, and so forth.

The existence of a "prime universe" makes thematic sense in the context of the story, but it's never actually proven to exist. After all, we're presented Ange's ep4 1998 as if it's reality but it doesn't match up with any other portrayal of Ange's actions in 1998 that we see in Chiru.

This is why I didn't even try to make a story speculating on "what really happened," yet I still get people thinking I somehow did. Insert obligatory Battler facepalm here, I'm at work.

>>177
>>181
>That each game actually takes place in an alternate universe
>That Erika's existence or non-existence really matters.

I'm surprised people even think that. I mean the one about Erika I can sorta see someone making up random ideas but that first point should have been explained once they got to EP2, and even inferred from EP1 teaparty and onwards.

I guess that just reinforces that most Umineko "fans" never even bothered solving anything. Which is probably where this all the misconceptions stem from when you think about it.

>That each game actually takes place in an alternate universe or "Fragment", in the same manner as Higurashi.

Why is that a misconception? I believe the general consensus is that each game or fragment symbolizes a written story that is made by people in the real world. If you believe in the meta-world however, you could see the sea of fragments as a universe filled with different parallel worlds. So while it's certainly not the same structure as in Higurashi, it's not exactly off the mark either, I think.

>>183
I think the main misconception is that people fail to realize they are written forgeries. In other words they only see the "magic exists" perspective and stop thinking there.

When I read EP1 and EP2 I believed Beatrice really revived people with magic in much the same way as Higurashi's Kakera. However to call them "different Kakera" is sort of wrong because the universes don't work the same way.

Rika's Kakera were created from her many attempts at trying to create a miracle, while Beatrice's were made trying to expand the catbox. That is, the misconception is that there are infinitely many possibilities of the Rokkenjima murder out there. That's wrong; there are only so many possibilities as there are written stories as interpreted by fanatics after the incident.

>>184
To go further, the main point of issue is that many people seem to think that the gameboards are actual realities rather than just possibilities and speculations. This leads to lines of thought like "Ange's story in 1998 must take place in EP3's Fragment since that's the one where Eva survived" and "Erika washed up on the island in all games, she just didn't happen to survive in the first four", and so on. (KnownNoMore actually believes both of those, incidentally.)

Obviously there is no issue in using the metaphors of 'the sea of Fragments' assuming that one actually understands them. But there seem to be quite a lot of people who actually take it at face value, despite the overwhelming evidence of author theory in the last few episodes. Well, even I was under that impression for quite a while after I first read Umineko.

Well, the meta-world makes everything kludgy, so who really knows. I view the contents of the catbox as essentially infinite because they are theoretically infinite, but the only Fragments that anyone is ever going to know about are ones that exist. It's just more exist than we see; for example Trinity and Land, which are stated to have existed but we haven't the slightest idea what they'd be like.

My thought is more that the Sea exists beyond the general space of the existence of the catbox and that any story that theoretically could be written has been written and exists in that sea. But that's just a metaphor; in "reality," only stories that actually were written (such as the canon ones, and unidentified Forgeries known to exist in canon) can be used for anything, since obviously characters can't read a story that doesn't exist.

But like, what about the Fragments they search through to find the epitaph solution? Does that mean there are Fragments where authors tried to do that? Does that mean that there was at least one story actually written that correctly solved it? Or is Bern just leafing through potential stories, knowing that sooner or later in a contained infinity some story would eventually get the details right?

None of that is stated anywhere though (nor is much of anything about the true nature of the meta-world), so it could all be nonsense. The point is that the stories we read are definitely in-universe Forgeries... except like, what is Requiem? What is Twilight? Fanthology mash-ups? Something else entirely? Bern implies Lion was Yasu's idea, but Yasu never wrote about Lion, so who came up with Lion?

Noticed this in some archives. Has some theories I didn't completely read so I'mma going to leave it here since I'm sure this is one or two things that could spark debate.

https://archive.foolz.us/a/thread/88016721/

Last edited at 13/06/27(Thu)08:39:23

One of the guys in that thread is literally plagiarizing my AS posts, almost word for word! And not a single mention of MAH FANFICS? Unacceptable!