Subjectivity of truth in Umineko

Umineko sets itself up as the ultimate love letter to detective stories, while presenting multiple plotlines as one.

Image source: Entergram's promotional website for Umineko When They Cry Blossom: Symphony of Dream and Cat Box release

Premise

Umineko no Naku Koro ni (When the Seagulls Cry) is a horror mystery visual novel written and published by Ryukishi07 of 07th Expansion. It was released across eight "Episodes" from 2007 till 2010, and enjoyed many spin-offs, adaptations, and remakes. The two sets of four Episodes are labeled as the 3rd and 4th main installment of the When They Cry franchise respectively, following after Higurashi that used the same release structure. Umineko contains several hints that it's a sequel to Higurashi, but is otherwise narratively disconnected.

The story follows the gruesome and tragic demise of the wealthy Ushiromiya family on their private island of Rokkenjima. On October 4th 1986, shortly before the storm isolates the island, Battler Ushiromiya returns from his self-imposed exile to participate in a conference regarding the old patriarch's, Kinzo Ushiromiya's, failing health and the question of inheritance. During it, a letter arrives from the so-called Golden Witch Beatrice, who promises an absurd amount of gold to those who solve the puzzle underneath her portrait commissioned by Kinzo, which everyone takes as a game to decide Kinzo's successor. But on the following day, all 18 human characters, including Battler, are murdered one by one by an unknown assailant.

However, Battler then awakens in a dimension that exists between life and death, and is greeted by Beatrice in person, who proudly claims responsibility for the murders. Despite Beatrice showing blatant displays of magic and the ability to summon minions, Battler believes that she did not exist in the real world and is thus a fictional phantom hiding the real culprit's actions. Following that, Beatrice puts Battler through multiple timelines where the family with a copy of himself are killed all over again in seemingly increasingly impossible ways, challenging him to explain how the murders could have been done by a human culprit. If it ends up possible for someone without demonic powers, regardless of who did it and if they actually did it, Beatrice shall stop existing. Battler forms a rivalry with her and realizes half-way that "the truth" won't be enough to put the souls to rest, as outside forces start interfering with the duel.

The story goes heavily into the topic of metafiction, as the magic characters are aware they exist inside "a story", and not only dare Battler to figure out the circumstances behind the initial murder case, but also to decipher what does "the writer" really represents though their allegorical archetypes. Each Episode includes a preamble that asks the player to treat the novel as a puzzle despite having almost no interactive gameplay.

A warning that the themes can't be seriously discussed without heavy spoilers.

The reality duality

The story most recurrently uses the concept of subjective perspective and subjective interpretation. Beatrice acts as the storyteller and uses the "magic culprit" narrative to explain how the murders have occurred, while Battler is then required to recontextualize the events using the "human culprit" narrative. At first, the events are presented as literal despite the incomprehensible powers that the demon servants bring, until in Episode 3 it is explained that what Battler sees is a visualization of someone's impressions and only the material facts matter. As a simple example, when one character closes their eyes and the other character is shown to explicitly be creating candies out of magical energy, without two people observing the event it could be presented as literally anything, but in the end the candy did come from somewhere and one of two does have large pockets.

There is also a split in the storyline with Ange Ushiromiya, Battler's sister who did not go to the island as a child and now lives in 1998 in the reality of the aftermath. Ange seemingly becomes capable of traveling back 12 years into the past and helps Battler with the investigation, and the story additionally blends in gossips from the future into the narration, making it ambiguous if the entire story is told from Battler's point of view or from Ange's hindsight.

The metaphor of the Schrödinger's catbox is constantly brought up. At first, Battler rejects Beatrice's tale out of principle. But as Virgilia tells him, he can't in good faith, for example, disprove a TV being operated by small gremlins without breaking it apart. Thus, in the story "it was magic" can be rephrased as "what happened is uncertain". Since he's not privy to the truth of the crimes, he has to keep an open mind and argue without being able to check own claims. Only Beatrice knows the full story and tells him how close he's getting, which often yields paradoxical results due to heavy involvement of delusions and wordplay. Battler is forced to accept that until the "box's lid" is open, both version of the story have equal value and treating everything inconvenient as deceit is counterproductive. It turns out that magic not only obfuscates the culprit's tricks, but is what everyone else genuinely believes is occurring for reasons that turn out to be personal for each of them, making it repeatedly necessary for Battler to change the trajectory of his arguments. Instead of breaking the illusion, he makes breakthroughs by becoming considerate to the accounts from all sides.

While it's easy for a rational reader to think that magic isn't real at all, and Beatrice eventually pretty much admits so, the end portions of the story ask the players to understand that magic is true at least in an abstract sense. Despite the Scooby-Doo-like solution, it's not all lies and play-belief. The plot goes from attacking the magic narrative in the first half, to then asking the reader to think about the anthropological origins of faith. Almost the entire cast turn out to be burdened with grief and are in desperate need to find some rationalization for their lives. Meeting fairies, appealing spirits, feeling obligated to a dead relative, performing good luck rituals. Neither children nor adults are immune to belief in miracles. As an example mentioned in the story, Santa Claus may not be real, but Christmas is. The later-introduced truth-aligned characters may be right, but are not in the right, and are heavily criticized for dismissing the emotional aspect. In the story's ending, Ange just outright rejects "the One Truth" and creates her own.

• Death: WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN’T SAVED HIM?
• Susan: Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?
• Death: NO. THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN. A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
• Susan: All right, I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.
• Death: REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
• Susan: Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—
• Death: YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
• Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
• Death: YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?

— Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

The story provides quite a huge amount of lore for the magic characters and makes it seem that the Rokkenjima's incident is a part of a cosmic plan. The absurdity of having to go to the Heaven's office and file a rather detailed paperwork can be YMMV and has nothing to do with the story aside from adding flavor, unless you believe it's someone's imagination pouring in. While the story is ambiguous where half of the magic characters come from, the story becomes more digestible if one treats it as a tabletop roleplay between Battler and the culprit, and everyone being walking metaphors. Indeed, most of Beatrice's demonic army hide them having real world counterparts, people or tools, that were involved in the crimes. Beatrice herself is an amalgam of multiple urban legends and tragedies that accumulated on Rokkenjima over 40 years, and becomes a completely different character as her secrets get peeled like onion layers. Explaining the parallels between what a demon servant claims to have done and what actually happened would be too long to list. The ending ultimately leaves the nature of the Illusion world inconclusive and lets the player speculate if spirits could have possibly been involved after all.

It's quite telling that within the story Ikuko Hachijo is the most powerful "magic" user. In the real world, she's a writer who has discovered the diary of one of the family members, and thus is free to spin the truth to the press as she sees fit. In the Illusion world, she's a god-like being who can alter how the events play out by commanding so to happen and has a cult following hailing from other worlds. When everyone else has to follow causality, she can simply make someone dead and neglect demonstrating the cause. The story avoids clarifying how much influence Hachijo really has, but with the perk of being one of the "authors", she is capable of derailing the narrative whenever it becomes inconvenient. Similar to folklore deities, because Illusion characters have their identities dependent on how they are perceived, the final confrontation becomes about deciding whose "truth" is the real truth and preserving the dignity of the dead in the face of the public.

The power of a mystery novel writer

In the second half of the story, characters of Dlanor and Willard become vocally critical of "the detectives'" ability to read between the lines. The first time it's more tied to Battler's failure to recognize that Beatrice's motive was not of vengeance. But it is also a quite long-winded monologue about how mystery writers expect their readers to be patient and give their puzzle a fair chance, while readers in turn trust the author to allow them to figure the plot out on their own without nonsense. The second time the topic is brought up is when the ace detective Erika loses to Battler due to her objective evidence being unable to provide full context to her cold-hearted explanation. The third time is when Ange tries to skip Battler's riddles to get to the truth, with Battler insisting that providing the answer would defeat the point. The fourth time is when the army of goat minions representing the outside world tries to replace the spiritual version of Rokkenjima with their headcanons due to giving up on the truth and trying to present the most "interesting" explanations as one.

For a bit of historical context, S. S. Van Dine in 1928 and Ronald Knox in 1929 have published some house rules for detective stories, as a form of criticism that many of them became impossible to be followed by an average reader and rely on cliche plot points. In Japan, the detective genre has slightly diverged from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction thanks to Edogawa Rampo's Detective Story Club. While Western detective stories focus on the drama of identifying the villain and apprehending them, Eastern detective stories focus on why the culprit the way they are and how to explain their wrongdoings to them. Both sides have evolved and took inspirations from each other, of course, but Japanese detective stories follow the "orthodox mystery" more commonly. As such, a typical Japanese detective novel will be feeding thread pieces to the reader and prompt them to make a guess what truly happened before the police do their job.

Fittingly, Van Dine and Knox are mentioned as historical characters in Umineko, who have passed down weapons that can stop witches from acting "unfair". Umineko makes it rather explicit that it's heavily inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, it not only being the basis of the culprit's revenge plot, but also with magic characters acknowledging that they are bound by 'the powers that be' to follow specific rules and leave their challenges beatable by humans. Despite the novel's huge length and magic-related complications, one of the story's praised aspects is the heavy use of foreshadowing, and an open-minded reader would be able to notice the deceit since the first chapters. Battler himself realizes that the signs where there all along, and when he tries being the Game Master a try, he nearly breaks everything the first time due to causing what's essentially a plot hole.

Speaking of Erika Furudo, she serves multiple roles despite being a late addition. Upon her introduction, the Great Witch Bernkastel creates a Game Piece in own image to "assist" Battler, but in truth tries to steer the course of the investigation by using a proxy. Erika has several traits that a reader can easily identify as a 'Mary Sue' self-insert: she has the same hair as her creator, her name is an anagram of one of the creator's aliases, is allegedly a famous detective, everyone complies with her inspection of the crime scenes despite having no obligation to, they praise whatever she's doing, she has supernatural senses and resilience despite being a human, and has heavenly summons. Erika is a self-proclaimed expert at mystery novels, but her main "skill" is using outer dimension's foreknowledge to come up with an answer as soon as possible, with motives regarded as irrelevant. Despite her reasoning indeed being factually accurate, her lack of romanticism makes her a direct foil to Battler who has learned to always question if "there's more to it". As he mentions, the one who calls everything a poorly written mystery has to be a poorly written detective, and she's a natural enemy of any self-respected writer. Despite this, Erika is a rather profound character who grows independent of Bernkastel's malice and often raises moral issues with the overall story that the reader can question if she has a point or is narrow-minded. As with everyone else, her origins are ambiguous, and it's implied she's actually based on a heart-broken girl whose unresolved death was exploited to excuse her spirit being added to the cast against her will.

Due to truth-seeking characters ironically being portrayed in a negative light, the last Episode has gathered some criticism due to its non-subtle accusatory tone. The story also kind of undoes own prior warning of trying to communicate with the dead. It's commonly rumored that Ryukishi07 has been going though a rough time due to having to address fan conversions and theory-crafting on the forums in between Episode releases and the loss of his colleague. The characters reinforcing the idea that the solution shouldn't be handed out to those who don't deserve it is believed to be the author's complaint against own audience. Aside of a rather bitter tone, the ending was met with mixed reception, by the Japanese fanbase for being too ambiguous despite the promises to explain everything, and by the Western fanbase for ironically not being ambiguous enough and showing bias towards a specific explanation instead of leaving everything up to interpretation.

Without love it cannot be seen

The character constantly use the phrase that the truth is elusive because the observer lacks love. Umineko is definitely a love story, but how love is even relevant to perceiving reality is one of the most complicated puzzles.

The truth of the plot is that Beatrice's human counterpart is Sayo Yasuda, who has been working as a maid named Shannon. Sayo is the granddaughter of Beatrice Castiglioni and the daughter Beatrice Ushiromiya, both of whom were Kinzo's secret lovers. In cause you've missed that, Kinzo had sexual relationship with own daughter because she was a spitting image of his mistress, who provided him with stolen Nazi gold and a will to live. Sayo nearly died in an accident as a baby, and was raised as a maid in secret. Upon discovering the truth of her origins, this provided one half of her murderous intent. The other half comes from Battler, a kid at that time, making a promise to marry her and take her off Rokkenjima, but then forgetting it because of the conflict with his dad.

Let's start with Kinzo. In the present time, he's a sobbing mess who believes the witch will come to drag him and everything he has built to hell as interest for the lent gold. To everyone else he's a lunatic who wants to repay his diseased sponsor. The complication here is two-fold. In his dying years, Kinzo has realized that his insanity regarding Beatrice's daughter was inexcusable and wanted to make amends somehow, but didn't know that Sayo is alive. He tried to use "alchemy" to give Beatrice a physical body, but the reason she fails to manifest is because he misunderstands the source of his imaginary curse and can't "hear" when her spirit actually tries to tell him something. At the same time, Kinzo's place in the story is hard to understand without knowing which Beatrice is he referring to in which context. Correspondingly, the Illusion of Kinzo poses as one of the victims, but deducing that the crazy grandpa Goldsmith has effectively ruined the lives of everyone else breaks one of Beatrice's last lines of defense.

Now back to Sayo, as she's the witch in question. Another big reveal is that she didn't actually kill anyone. The family died because of the infighting, there was an explosion, Eva escaped, and Battler became comatose. Before this, doubtful Sayo wrote down her murder plans in advance, which serve as scripts in the Illusion world. Battler at first saw Beatrice as his arch-nemesis, but at the middle point of the story comes with a realization that she's taking responsibility to prevent a more horrible truth from being exposed to the public. By finding Sayo's lost love towards him, Battler turns Beatrice into his main ally against outer world witches who want the murder games to last forever. In return, Battler remembering his promise makes Beatrice's heart purified from its demonic influences. Discovering Sayo's backstory helps contextualize Beatrice's abilities, which are based on scary stories Sayo believed in as a child. How sympathetic Sayo is can be debatable, but a lot of what Beatrice does early in the story has an explanation in Sayo having a rather abusive life growing up, on top of her dissociative identity disorder getting in the way of forming genuine relationships.

One notable pairing in the theme of love is Maria and her mother Rosa. Rosa's husband ditched her after making her co-sign a loan and running away with the money, leaving her alone as a manager of an atelier and with no time to be taking care of own child. Rosa has a rather complicated attitude towards Maria, and sees her both as a treasure and an anchor. This creates multiple non-exclusive versions of Rosa in the narrative: the one where she's a powerful mama bear who'd shot anyone to protect her daughter, the one that regularly beats her up just for speaking up, the one that'd kill own siblings for extra cash, and the one who is possessed by a Black Witch whenever she has a bipolar episode. Maria herself isn't helping much; due to Rosa's nonexistent parenting, she believes that she has the power of the Key of Solomon and can create new worlds. Naturally, Maria is heavily bullied in the junior school, causes mischief to Rosa, and is prone to hallucinations. Despite acting as if she's 5, Rosa repeatedly points out that Maria is 9 and should behave according to her own standards. In truth, Maria is rather cunning, sadistic, and depressed. In one of the Illusion events, Maria and Rosa see each other as monsters and try to tear each other to shreds. But in critical situations, they admit that they just want each other to grow up happily. In one of the curious pieces of detail, Rosa is discovered to be skipping work to go on a tour with her lovers, which may be treason in the eyes of a child, but from an adult's perspective one possibility is that Rosa is scouting a better father figure for Maria. As with many cases, solving Maria's resentment reveals how Sayo came up with her plan, specifically by having Maria as a close confidant.

Another main roadblock in the games is so-called EVA-Beatrice. In Episode 3, Eva has a fever dream about overcompensating towards other siblings when she was a child and wanting to become richer than them. This creates multiple iterations of a new witch who usurps Beatrice's name and has to be dealt with. The first EVA-Beatrice is a personification of the gold and how it's Eva's for the taking, corrupting Beatrice's intent for it. The second EVA-Beatrice is how Ange perceives Eva, due to her escaping Rokkenjima and claiming to have killed everyone to take over their corporations. The third EVA-Beatrice is how George sees his mother, someone whose spiderwebs won't let him "leave the nest" and start own family. But the real EVA-Beatrice is Eva trying to prevent the press discover the infighting that occurred for Ange's sake, though it only made Ange's life a living hell and Eva had to apologize for it in the afterlife. In the last Episode EVA-Beatrice acts as the mole and helps Ange and Battler. EVA-Beatrice showcases how Illusion characters can be used as reusable stamps to cover blanks in someone's story, but most cynical interpretations end up as diversions in the mystery and don't lead to the solution.

Sin

......Without exception. Everyone one of them, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, WANTED A LOT OF MONEY RIGHT NOW...!

A recurring element in the story is the concept of sin, with each Episode having something new to say about it. The main one being Greed, as, despite acting as a loving family, all adults have financial problems and are willing to get the gold by all means necessary even in the chance it ends up being a myth. This is noted by Sayo who believed any one of them can be turned into an obedient accomplice since she has 20 billion yen ($118'000'000 discounting inflation and the paperwork of exchanging the gold. As Battler puts it, he could provide for a hundred of people for a hundred years, which also showcases how contrasting his morals are) in her pockets.

• Krauss has blindly taken multiple investments from shady people, calling sponsors swindlers when they don't produce results, only to view each next one as a respectable official. Despite Natsuhi's repeated protests, Krauss planned to turn Rokkenjima into a public resort and also sponsored space tourism. As a reminder, in 1986 space tourism wasn't even entertained by NASA. Natsuhi, for her own part, wanted to be a proper wife of Kinzo's next-in-line and decided to do nothing more than to complain. This got completely off-rails when Kinzo passed away from old age shortly after Krauss put Kinzo's mansion as a mortgage. Thus, to prevent Krauss from being eaten alive by the lawyers and the rest of the family, Natsuhi became the de-facto head of the mansion, ordering the servants to act as if Kinzo is hiding bed-ridding in his room.
• Hideyoshi owns a fast food chain and is a "honest" manager, but put it up on the stock market thinking it'd be financially efficient. In turn, the stockholders have started to buy out assets, threatening to cut him off from own company if they gain the majority. Meanwhile, young Eva was bullied by her brothers and Kinzo for being a tomboy, so she wants to prove that she can become successful without relying on womanly charms. In 1998, Eva created a massive hostile corporation, then pushed all the responsibility on Ange out of spite before dying.
• Rudolf has a company in America that got caught up in some kind of intellectual property rights violation. The lawsuit is too much for Rudolf to afford. Kyrie herself is a bit of a gold-digger hailing from a yakuza family, and relies on Rudolf's romance to have him get as much money from the Ushiromiya family as possible. In the true timeline, it's shown that Kyrie planned to kill everyone so Rudolf would be the only heir standing.
• Rosa is a single mother whose western-style clothing company takes her full time, regularly leaving Maria home alone and unsupervised. Her "future husband" convinced her to co-sign a loan and then disappeared, so she uses her work hours to travel around hot springs and fish out guys who could share her burden, while hoping her man returns if she pays. Rosa is the one who deduced that Krauss is hiding something and conspired with the others to blackmail him about the embezzlement.

In contrast, their children are optimists and don't really care about the money. And while ambitious, just want to get own house and not be concerned with corporate management.

While gold is a recurring color motif in the story, the adults also gain counterparts in Beatrice's minion squad. Sayo based them on Kinzo's ritualistic stakes (actually souvenir paperweights), maids in the orphanage, and observations about the family's behavior.

• Pride: Is associated with Natsuhi believing it's her duty to upkeep the honor the Ushiromiya family despite marrying in, making her rather stubborn. And with Lucifer, who acts as the leader of the Sisters of Purgatory but is afraid of others finding out that she's rather weak.
• Greed: Is associated with Eva wanting to get the gold regardless if she can use it or not. And with Mammon, who has a habit of monopolizing everything to herself. Mammon's stake happens to be in Eva's possession when she survived, and she becomes a sort of a sister figure to the depressed Ange.
• Gluttony: Is associated with Krauss taking more and more loans hoping they'll pay off. And with Beelzebub who is constantly hungry.
• Wrath: Is associated with Rosa punishing Maria for the slightest provocation, mainly for her being her child in the first place. And with Satan, who has a short tempter and has trouble working in a team.
• Sloth: Is associated with Hideyoshi's negligence of his company and turning into a coward in front of Eva's attitude. And also with Belphegor, who ironically is a workaholic who wants to make an excuse to call everyone else lazy.
• Envy: Is associated with Kyrie being resentful of Rudolf's first wife Asamu taking his attention even after her death. And with Leviathan, who is the clumsiest of the Sisters and tries sabotaging them to make them even.
• Lust: Is associated with Rudolf being a chronic charmer and ending up taking Kirye as his lover while his wife Asamu was already pregnant. And with Asmodeus, who dreams of getting her prince charming and has a dirty mind.

There are several other moments that Beatrice interestingly explicitly identifies as a "sin": Battler leaving the family and thus Sayo for 6 years and not even remembering what he did wrong, Kinzo's despair of trying to bring his lover back by any means possible, Natsuhi dropping baby Sayo off the cliff due to wanting to bear own child when Kinzo asked to adopt her, and Beatrice herself coming to existence. As she points out, a domino effect of past grave mistakes was the reason the entire family dies.

The coping mechanism as a magic system

There are a few cases that make it quite obvious that the magic characters are imaginary, and the circumstances behind them have some similarities. However, each of these cases showcase that "demonic possession" is not the problem but the consequence of a problem.

In Episode 4, there's a B-plot of Ange dealing being the last survivor of the Ushiromiya family. Due to excessive bullying, she manages to somehow communicate with Maria via her notebook and befriends a demon Mammon. As Maria teaches her, if she closes her eyes and wishes really hard, she can teleport to a new realm that she can reshape as she wants. A rather significant moment is when Ange orders Mammon to kill her classmates, to which Mammon replies that she can't do something Ange can't and isn't willing to do herself. This makes it apparent that Mammon in reality is no more than an object in Ange's pocket and magic characters can't commit murders that can't be disguised, providing a big hint to the main mystery. But more immediately relevant, this shows that the demon is not a creature of magic, but is a product of Ange's rage and deteriorating mental health. At the same time, Episode 4 explains that Maria became a magic researcher due to abuse by her mother, and can bring her toys to life due to seriously having nobody else to talk to. It's worth mentioning that Ryukishi07 was previously a child support service worker, so the story often gets critical about how "private problems" were treated in the 80's.

In Episode 5, Natsuhi hides the fact that Kinzo has died to delay the passing of inheritance until Krauss's investments bear fruit, which are extremely unlikely to happen. She puts a lot of effort to stick to the routine, helping cleaning the house and ordering the servants to act as if Kinzo always wants to be left alone. She also keeps saying that it's her duty as the lady of the mansion, with the original motive completely degrading. Over time, Natsuhi starts seeing Kinzo's ghost, who encourages her devotion to protect the family. As Erika points out, Kinzo was an abusive father to her and would most likely be enraged by what she is doing. When Erika tries to expose Kinzo's death as a part of an investigation into the murders, instead of explaining how it's unrelated since it really isn't, Natsuhi repeatedly goes into a self-victimizing rage, thinking she not only has Kinzo's support to protect the Ushiromiya family's dignity, but has Beatrice and all of her consort as her support. The narrative portrays Erika as a villainous character in this case and makes Battler also support Natsuhi's fictional team, but it's easy to see how the Illusion characters are actually Natsuhi becoming completely delusional.

In Episode 7, we are given Sayo Yasuda's full backstory. After Natsuhi tried to get rid of the baby, Genji and Nanjo have discovered her survival and decided to let her grow up in the Fukuin, a religious orphanage that raises maids for the Ushiromiya household. Due to her status and hidden background, Sayo was given some privilege despite being older and doing a sloppy job, which attracted harassment of the other servants-in-training. Thanks to Kumasawa (who really should have known better due to doing the same to Beatrice II and it didn't end well), Sayo was taught that her misfortunes are really the fault of evil spirits, and eventually starts seeing them. Sayo then learns their "power" herself, pranking the other servants and covering her tracks, slowly establishing a cult of paranoia. Sayo also started to act as multiple people due to hating herself and trying out being a girl or a boy depending on the mood. One of recurring plot points is Kanon and Shannon referring to themselves as "furniture" and less than human, and them being incapable of begin separated without one of them dying, reflecting Sayo's complex about her body injury and indecisiveness about her gender dysphoria. Once Sayo became old enough to work at the mansion, she learned about various rumors about Beatrice, and selectively incorporated them into her "magic compendium". When she was finally told that she's the true heir of the family and what Kinzo did, Sayo's inner world has significantly darkened, and the magic turned from the tool of miracles into a weapon. Shannon or Kanon "evolving" in some of the scenarios if George or Jessica start dating them shows Sayo hoping for someone to give her life meaning.

Blindness of faith

The Golden Land in reality refers to the gold room, but commonly is addressed as the destination of everyone's ambitions, with most of the time being described and presented as heaven. Beatrice makes large promises that those devoted would be worthy of the Golden Land, and those who reject her would be devoured by demonic beasts. Initially, it is believed by some that the Golden Land is a more literal location that Beatrice hands over as the prize. But reaching the Golden Land can only truly be achieved by dying, with its gate referred to as where one obtains eternal happiness after leaving everything behind. With such explanation, Maria gets very on-board with everyone being killed, believing the afterlife is a better place to live in than the reality, and can't find a problem with this logic. At the end of Episode 1, Battler's siblings tell him that everything is over and they can gain everything they've ever wanted if they simply submit, however Battler refuses to accept this ending, resulting in him being thrown into another game. This repeats a few times while Beatrice tells Battler that everything he wishes for is in the Golden Land, but what he wants is what's in it, his family, not being in it. Ange also tries to reach the Golden Land, believing she can discover the truth of her family's death and reunite with them, be it either metaphorically or literally through suicide, resulting in a clash with Battler who tries to prevent her from going inside.

Maria believes that she's the child of the Holy Spirit and is a reincarnation of Virgin Mary. In truth, Rosa told her that she doesn't have a father, because he took her money and ran, so she doesn't want him ever being brought up. Rosa is a rather lazy mother with zero anger management control, so with the lack of a proper explanation Maria believes that her mother's fits of rage is her getting possessed by dark forces and it's her job to be there for her. This conviction certainly doesn't help her in school, rather it makes her even more isolated and disinterested in studying. Maria's acquired sense of superiority and misanthropy becomes very convenient for Sayo who promises to teach her magic is she follows along with the plan. Maria herself becomes a sort of transcendent figure due to having strong imagination, and can revive characters with her blessings even if the internal logic shouldn't allow it otherwise.

Sayo's own ideas of religion don't help her much. Living in an orphanage whose name literally translates to "Gospel House", she believes that her hardships in life are always the God's trial. Despite her colleagues bluntly telling her that she needs to take care of herself and boys be boys, Sayo becomes dead set on praying for a miracle instead of helping her situation, and refuses to send any letters to Battler. The locals having elements of traditional Japanese Shintoism, and Kinzo's satanism studies accidentally fed her even more rationalizations about how the world works. Due to having the expectation that only strong faith deserves to be rewarded, she starts seeing everyone else as sinful even if they are not really related to her tragedy. When Battler returns after 6 years, instead of simply reminding him about own wishes, she concludes that God isn't going to help her and she needs to become a devil-like figure herself.

Is Umineko a Fair Mystery?

Umineko regularly brings up the history of detective novels, with one of the driving questions being if the magic follows the standards of mystery or fantasy. As a conjunction, the conventions of the mystery genre become the words of power and magic characters reveal that they are incapable of doing something that doesn't have foreshadowing or a rational explanation.

Later in the story, Umineko explicitly lists a few of Knox's ten and Van Dine's twenty rules as checklist that help railroading arguments in the right direction. Though the story sometimes takes liberties in how the rules are actually phrased, and treats subversions as creative innovations. One of the scenes even has a discussion that the rules have become archaic and not following them opens room for more interesting writing, though some readers may find this argument a bit hypocritical.

With that in mind, I'd like to check if Umineko deserves its reputation as a detective story that can be solved early. I'll be merging the two rulesets and rephrasing them a bit to reduce redundancy.

1. The plot must be kickstarted by a murder and it has to be real. The first case in the series is six disfigured corpses being found in the toolshed, which serves as the end of the prologue. One of the corpses faked own death, but others are confirmed. Other games start similarly. Battler tries to subvert this in Episode 6 as a surprise against Erika, but ironically she gets the idea to stab the pretending "corpses" to ensure they don't go anywhere, causing him to get caught off-guard as he wanted everyone to not be dead for once.
2. The reader should have all information necessary to solve the case before the reveal. The main problem in the mystery genre is the reader's ability to guess the detective's solution, to which end all evidence should be presented and all helpful exposition should be exhausted. In Episode 1, Hideyoshi prevents George from inspecting Shannon's corpse, something that isn't brought up as being conspicuous until later. Adults in general sometimes bring up something that only makes sense on the second reading. So as long as the player doesn't take the narration at face value, they should be able to identify the culprit immediately instead of waiting for Episode 7 to spell it out. Of course, Shannon isn't the only one murdered, so narrowing it down to her and understanding how the murders have occurred would require learning tricks across the rest of the story, so technically the reader can't solve the cases until Episode 7 without heavy guesswork. At the end, murder games remain intentionally inconclusive since they hardly matter in the overarching plot, and are left to the player as a homework, but it can be frustrating to many that Battler keeps dying before solving the challenges. The manga adaptation is more explicit about how the murders have occurred, though some readers feel it ruins the story's charm.
3. Deaths have to be murders, not accidents or suicides. Battler verifies these most of the time. Even in cases where the characters hanged themselves, it is shown to be possible for Sayo to have backstabbed them. While the rule is omitted in the witch's game, all deaths are homicides. The final deaths actually being due to a massive underground bomb, though, isn't hinted at until one of the games' epilogue.
4. The culprit must introduced early in the story. The entire cast is given full intros in the prologue. Battler tries to argue that a mysterious 19th person is behind everything to avoid accusing someone he knows, but this blows in his face. The culprit is Shannon and in the individual games she bribes a few others to convert them into accomplices. When Erika is added to the story, Battler gets offended by this and Bernkastel assures him she doesn't exist in the true timeline or previous games.
5. The story must have one definite culprit, accomplices aside. The mastermind is Sayo, and who follows along changes between games. It's mentioned that everyone aside of Genji are either bribed or believe it's a party for Battler and don't think the deaths are real. Episode 3, however, violates this with Eva going completely off script and starting to commit murders independently of Sayo. This is hinted to as the murders continue despite Eva finding the gold was supposed to end the game, and foreshadows that the game was written by Ikuko who isn't interested in the rules. For the overarching story, all of the adults can be designated as culprits due to them killing each other, which provides a lot of shock factor, but is mentioned to be unsatisfactory by the outer world who wanted to turn the tragedy into a big villain showdown.
6. The detective cannot be the culprit. At no point a detective character is involved in a crime. The story actually plays with this; when Erika is introduced in Episode 5 as a rival detective, Piece-Battler's account becomes unreliable and it turns out he was involved in the crimes despite being the POV. And in Episode 6, Erika insists that she's not acting as a detective this time, which allows her to commit murders thanks to Battler's mistake.
7. The culprit should avoid providing monologue before the reveal to avoid their inner thoughts being selective. The story is told from Battler's perspective most of the time, but often switches to the rest of the cast for context. This includes Shannon, who gives positive thoughts about Natsuhi and is shown to be defending herself against demons using a barrier ability. Needless to say, Shannon's account is unreliable. In Episode 3, Eva gains a split personality while she got sick with fever, but is actually one of the culprits and any scenes involving her aren't a part of the solution. As a rule of thumb, if Battler hasn't witnessed something, it didn't happen, and any narration about it is a redherring. Figuring this part out can help simplifying most of the cases. Naturally, the game cheats by changing the rule to say that interpretations are allowed to be presented, and most accounts are not true POV but are Beatrice's narrations that need to be dispoven.
8. A servant can't be the culprit. Despite the cliche, the butler did it, or rather the maid did it. Shannon and Kanon collectively act the true mastermind and other servants obey them unconditionally most of the time. In Episode 2, Rosa makes a fuss that the servants can't be trusted, and one of the solutions is them "confirming" Kanon's death being a shared lie. Ryukishi07 in an interview claimed that this rule wasn't actually violated and people who think otherwise have missed the point. One could argue that Sayo is technically not the servant since she's in fact the true head of the family, but it's kind of a stretch.
9. A criminal organization cannot be involved with the crime, which has to be personal for the culprit. Sayo wasn't assisted by any secret society or state agency. She forms her own, but it's just her and Maria. Kasumi Sumadera's yakuza family and the Witch Hunters acts as antagonists in the 1998 plotline, but in 1986 they functionally don't exist. Kirye has a criminal background, but her involvement is not strongly related to it. As for the personal investment, Sayo has plenty of reasons to believe the entirety of the Ushiromiya family has wronged her.
10. No chemical or device can be used that isn't available to everyone or its effects are unknown before use. The rule prevents the culprit using inexplicably potent foreign poisons, and murders that would require special tools. It's mentioned that Kinzo's study has a lot of weird chemicals, but they end up irrelevant. The main murder in Episode 2 involves everyone being poisoned with no resistance, and Sayo doesn't really tell what exacly did she use. There is a poison involved in Episode 4, which, while doesn't matter at that point in time and Sayo planned for Maria to go out peacefully regardless of method, also lacks the source. Battler commonly brings up the Trap X as an argument for inexplicable deaths, but fails every time.
11. All supernatural phenomena must be explainable through mundane means. This is not only what Battler is doing by premise, it's actually a rule that isn't made apparent at first. All displays of magic in the narration are functionally irrelevant, they are just the narrator's theories or are metaphors. Battler manages to debunk all magical appearances as a matter of course. However, in the final game it becomes quite blatant that the family aren't Illusion constructs but are real ghosts, though one can still debate them being Ange's imagination. The story also doesn't really explain how is Ange capable of time travel, with a possible explanation is her retelling Battler about her imaginary adventures after the fact.
12. No more than one secret passage or hidden room can appear. While Battler has to repeatedly check for these, the mansion's layout doesn't have a secret. There is a secret passage outside, but it plays no role in the murders. Episode 4 tried to play with the idea that the mansion has nasty trapdoors, but this narration turns out to be false.
13. The story has to be about the investigator investigating and solving the crime, and there can be only one of them. Battler doesn't do a real investigation, he can only use deduction. Technically, Beatrice secretly acts as the real investigator due to knowing the full story, and describes what Battler needs to know through her narration whenever it becomes necessary. Thus, to allow the game to continue, Battler can indirectly inspect the crime scenes and argue about them. While Battler has multiple "final" confrontations, the central mystery is solved by Battler in Episode 5 off-screen and the game never reveals his answer. Erika's and Ange's inclusions do muddy waters since it becomes vague whose perspective is more reliable, but in the games when Erika is the acting detective Battler isn't.
14. No member of a minority group should be a suspect or the culprit to avoid bigotry. By Knox's time, obvious Chinese assassins were already a racist stereotype, but his intent can be extended that no funny foreigner or an archetypical character can be involved in a crime. Thankfully, all characters are Japanese with some having ties to Taiwan and lack any "outsider" identifying traits, so no issue there. However, fans did find a problem that half of the cast have severe mental health issues, and Sayo is both schizophrenic and genderfluid, so the solution may be distasteful.
15. Unexplainable intuition should not be proven correct by a coincidence, accident, or confession, and such should not aid the detective. While Battler makes some utter bullshit theories as permitted by Beatrice, they don't get validated. Rather, Battler usually goes over what's in the realm of possibility before submitting an answer. Beatrice provides validation if Battler's theory is correct or not since he can't inspect the scenes himself, which does make things murky even if you believe she's only in his head. Erika on the other hand kind of bluntly cheats since she comes from the higher plane of existence and knows more than the Piece humans do, and in a shocking scene of Episode 5 stayed all night without moving so she can later make an argument how she has listened to the next room without fail out of some suspicion. Erika in general makes some leaps in logic since she knows all the rules, and takes quite a heavy toll on herself due to awareness that the time resets anyway. The only time someone ever "slips up" is Gohda, but it's not related to murders.
16. The detective shouldn't know more about the case than the reader. The player cannot be deceived in a way the detective wasn't at the same time. While Beatrice's exposition is full of lies, Battler is tricked in the same manner as the player, and all true information he collects is also known to the player. Except for the ending of Episode 5, where he somehow deduces Beatrice's identity while being unconscious. This rule becomes one of the main criticisms of the anime adaptation, since as it skips Battler's monologues, some of the clues come out late and from nowhere. And because the anime was produced before the answer arcs, it makes a mistake of showing Shannon and Kanon together, which is the novel is confirmed to be impossible.
17. The perspective character must be no more educated than the reader and has to make his thoughts known at all times. Knox refers specifically to the Watson archetype who mainly exists to ask Holmes what is he doing. The best candidates are Ronove, Virgilia and Ange, who kind of spectate on Battler, provide commentary, and start arguing with him when he is grasping as straws. Most of the time, Battler is his own Watson since his inner thoughts are followed. Battler is a literature buff, but this plays no role in the investigation and he starts off as a kind of a dumbass who learns the murder obfuscation methods at the same time as the reader. In Episode 5, Erika comes with the Eiserne Jungfrau Inquisition as her sidekicks and commentators, but one can argue they represent her thinking methods. In Episode 7, Willard H. Wright acts as the investigator, with Lion Ushiromiya tagging along and repeatedly asking what is he talking about.
18. No unknown body doubles or disguise methods. Umineko just throws this one out the window. While Shannon and Kanon aren't twins, they look rather close and in fact are the same person, as Sayo changes into one or the other depending on the situation. There is some nonsense of them appearing at the same time, but an attentive reader can notice that any meaningful action or commentary they provide only one after the other and not together. They also never appear in front of Battler together, which can give out the clue early. Though Sayo uses her mother's dress to fool Maria as Beatrice, and the narration makes her appearances indistinguishable. Sayo aside, the "identity" is generally treated as a property that can be discarded or transferred, which creates one of the most controversial recurring gimmicks. If someone says they're Kinzo, they will even look like Kinzo in the narration. Battler eventually figures out this is a thing, but the story lies to the reader who's who all the time and the reader learns to not take names for granted in Episode 4. The most absurd case is when Kanon "declared dead" by the means of Sayo "deciding to no longer use his name", which requires some asspulling even after name-swapping is introduced as a mechanic.
19. There should be no long atmospheric descriptive passages. Van Dine kind of hated how classic literature often goes into excessive narration about the environment or someone's state of mind. In Umineko, the atmosphere helps keeping the tensions high and descriptions are generally plot-revelant. But, as if to mock the rule, the magic characters just love going into excessive detail about their powers and legends they've been working with, despite none of this mattering. The Inquisition tries really hard to sell the idea that the Rokkenjima incident is just one of the many and their are countless of witches on par with Beatrice, and it's up to the reader if those are intriguing fanfic ideas or a waste of time.
20. Romance or other subplots should not distract from the intellectual story. Umineko is a love story. Sayo's parallel romance with Battler, Jessica and George serves as the core of her motive. George wanting to marry Shannon is one of the main aspects of his character, and George and Jessica unwittingly forming a love triangle becomes a whole separate arc in Episode 6. Kinzo's, Rosa's and Rudolf's past love lives also provide major context to their involvement in the story.
21. Certain plot devices are too cliche to be used. Cigarette butts, fingerprints, locked rooms, ciphers, clever dogs, using a dummy as alibi. Out of many things Van Dine complained about, in Episode 3 Kyrie discovers a cigarette butt on the floor, and uses it to deduce that Eva was not together with Hideyoshi since she can't stand smoke. As for locked rooms, Beatrice is practically a manifestation of them and pretty much all murders in the series happen in closed rooms, with Battler needing to figure out how the murderer fled.

Umineko itself admits to treat these more as suggestions than rules, and brings them up to show how the detective fiction has evolved. Figuring out the rules Umineko actually follows is a part of the mystery, and there are plenty of hints that help figuring out what happened ahead of Battler, but fans of pure deductive reasoning will probably be disappointed.

Conclusion

Umineko is a must-read for every literary expert, but it probably can't be enjoyed by everyone. After hanging over the reader's head the consistent question between mystery and fantasy, its inconclusive answer would likely betray some expectations. The symbolic back-and-forth between people arguing and their spiritual counterparts clashing swords is clever and innovative, and the reader is always probed to work on their own which information presented is true. Though how much plot-irrelevant shenanigans of demons in leotards the player can tolerate is highly subjective. Many players also may not appreciate the story deliberately leaving a room for speculation, when the author nudges the mouths of the characters to say that one reading is more correct than the others.

It certainly has a stronger writing than Higurashi and shows the author's evolution. Each of the characters have a high amout of tragedy and skeletons in the closet, and empathy is often required to read their actions correctly. But due to the severity of their sins, it's likely not many would sympathize with them. The story is rather progressive in its themes of feminism, but the main cast could be seen as stumbling back into conservative romance tropes.

Thematically, Umineko can probably serve as a cautionary tale about the danger of unregulated polemics. Many of the characters debate righteousness and metaphysics, and it's shown that without an intelligent opponent providing the opposite perspective, their morals become self-serving. There not being one truth is not something I agree with, but those who keep saying their arguments are objective only fool themselves. In the age of social media, it's important to admit when there's a possibility of you being wrong, someone's opinion being just as valid as yours, and you not knowing someone's story regardless of news coverage. Even in science, an observation is often an approximation and one can't know the full truth of something. While the finale is rather critical of mystery genre fans, the message is that speculations about real crimes should not be turned into entertainment and it's none of the business to the uninvolved.

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