#or if umineko is just that big and that expansive you are able to see the umineko in everything kind of like homestuck

[pochapal]

me reading a book for my studies: wow this story is so umineko-coded

[diaboluslapis]

Ryukishi07′s Q&A at Animecon in Finland

Full Q&A video:

Part 1: https://youtu.be/DBQe_zsF-tk

Part 2: https://youtu.be/WOh-MWhv4UE

Translation under the cut:

Part 1:

Interviewer: Could you start out with explaining how your career started and how the circle 07th Expansion was born?

Ryukishi07: It’s a very boring story, but I just thought about what I wanted to do with my life and simply decided to try what I wanted to do, and this is what happened!

I: Your career started in doujinshi circuits. What’s it like making games for an audience similar to Comiket?

R: I did work for an audience similar to Comiket happening in August and it’s been very stressful but also rewarding.

I: Wasn’t there another happening in December as well?

R: For the happening in August there’s a lot of time to do work to prepare, but for the happening in December there’s only 4 months to prepare which makes it harder.

I: Could you tell us how your masterpiece Higurashi no Naku Koro ni was born?

R: I got an idea from the American movie The Blair Witch Project and thought it’d be fun to make a Japanese version of the movie’s scenario.

I: Higurashi is told through many stories that raise questions about the plot, questions which are then answered in the later games. Where did the idea for constructing the plot like this come from?

R: By drinking Coca-Cola, you get a lot of ideas! *laughter*

I: Which character is your favourite in Higurashi?

R: It depends a lot on when you ask the question because it changes for me all the time, but at the moment it’s Satoko Hojo.

I: 07th Expansion’s games are described as sound novels, where the world of sound plays an important role. How does this affect the writing?

R: For example, you can hear sound in an anime. I wanted to combine anime, manga and visual novels and create my own coherent ”chain”.

I: Your games have been released for various consoles. PC, Playstation, and Nintendo DS. Do you have a favourite console?

R: At the moment it’s either Playstation 4 or Nintendo Switch.

I: The When They Cry series later became very popular and was made into manga, anime and even movie adaptions. How does this popularity feel?

R: I’m very grateful for all the support that I get from everyone.

I: Was it possible to imagine, when making the first Higurashi, that it would ever become this popular?

R: In my dreams I thought it’d be amazing to become that popular, but of course it was still a surprise.

I: Nowadays a lot of visual novels use shocking and horror elements. Do you feel like Higurashi was a ”trendsetter” in that regard?

R: I feel like works like that existed before as well, I don’t feel like a ”trendsetter”. I’m an especially big fan of Kamaitachi no Yoru, it was an inspiration for me because it was also connected to horror, so I wanted to a work with horror as well. It was presumed that sound novels were mostly based on horror, but nowadays you can find a lot of cute girls in them as well. But even these cute girls can be horrifying! *laughter*

I: After the Higurashi series, there was Umineko no Naku Koro ni. What inspired you to write it?

R: I wanted to make a more Western-based story, since I previously made a story based on Japanese country life.

I: Did you have to do any background research for writing Umineko?

R: I went to a small island where there was believed to be a ghost. Of course there was no ghost but I tried to capture the feeling from that island, but since there wasn’t actually a ghost there I had to come up with some white lies in my work. *laughter* It was challenging, since there wasn’t actually anything on that island.

I: What motivated you to show clearer answers in the Umineko manga?

R: Because as the final release, I thought it would make it special.

I: In Umineko there is a character named Yasu, whose persona and feelings are presented to the reader indirectly through the stories she has written. How was the process of creating this character?

R: From the start, I had considered a character who was a criminal, but then felt like that would be too extra, and so I ended up with a character like Yasu.

I: There are apparently plans for a new episode of Umineko, could you tell us about this?

R: There will be a new character, who will be revealed soon, so be prepared for that.

I: There is also a new When They Cry game in the works, could you tell us more about this?

 Part 2:

R: It will be more international this time, and there might even be a Finnish character!

I: Higurashi refers to cicadas, while Umineko refers to seagulls. Do you already know what the next When They Cry series will refer to?

R: I haven’t decided yet, but I want it to have the same theme, like being connected to plants and rain. It’s still in the works, please wait and be excited.

I: Do you know if the new part will be released in English?

R: If someone is ready to translate, then absolutely. My English abilities aren’t enough for this.

I: What’s your opinion on the games being translated to English and gaining an international audience?

R: I’m very thankful and appreciate that people have been able and wanted to translate my works. I see a lot of appreciation for the translators and they’ve definitely had a lot to work with.

I: You’ve previously worked with Key Studio on their game Rewrite. Rewrite’s art director Itaru Hinoue also visited Finland this year. When working on Rewrite, did the two of you get to work together?

R: Yes, it was our first time working together.

I: Who are your favourite characters from the game Trianthology?

R: There are a lot of characters, but Alice is my favourite.

I: A game called Iwaihime is also in the works. Could you tell us about this?

R: I was asked for a horror work and I decided that since there are primarily two types of horror in Japan, creepy horror and horror that focuses on monsters, I wanted to bring these two types of horror out in the finished work.

I: Video games are very popular today, perhaps more than ever before. How well do you think visual novels are surviving in the video game genre?

R: I hope that it could become as big of a thing as novels, anime and manga, and I think it has a chance, but at the moment smart phone games are more popular in Japan, which makes me a bit sad but I’m still hopeful.

I: Which work you’ve written are you most satisfied with?

R: A very hard question... *laughter* It’s always the one I’ve most recently released that I’m the most satisfied with.

I: How do you stay motivated when writing?

R: At the moment I’m very motivated simply because work is work, but previously my motivation was that I played war video games on the Xbox and when I lost, it made me so angry that I wanted to work! *laughter*

I: You said that your most recent work is always the one you’re most happy with. If you could go back and change something about an earlier work like Higurashi or Umineko, would you change anything?

R: I gave it my all, so there’s nothing I would like to change. If I changed something, that would make it an entirely different story. A lot of people ask me about going back 10 years in time, but 10 years back in time would mean that the pages would be empty, there wouldn’t be any text yet, which would probably mean playing a lot of games!

I: What other hobbies do you have beside playing war video games?

R: All kinds of killing games!

I: What’s your favourite anime?

R: Girls und Panzer.

I: What’s your favourite game?

R: Even though I like war video games, I also like zombie video games.

I: What’s the best thing about your work?

R: The state of flow, when you’re so focused on your work that you forget to eat and even to go to the bathroom.

I: When you write a story, how do you come up with the characters? Do you get any inspiration from other characters or real people?

R: I want to connect older characters to newer characters, it’s very important to me to make that connection. But sometimes when playing games I just see a character that I think is cute and it gives me inspiration.

I: Have you ever thought about adding your old characters in a new game, like for example having the characters from Higurashi in a new story?

R: Inside my head, these characters are my friends, but now that the work on that story is done, these characters are gone. But if I had to work with the same story, the characters would probably return back into my head.

I: What advice do you have to aspiring writers and visual novel creators?

R: Seriously or not seriously? It’s important to think of your own style. If you want to make it your job, it’s very important to know what your own thing is. There are three different styles: liking money, wanting praise from other people, and just liking writing. So if you like writing, but also like getting money from it, that’s very good! You should consider, even though there are people who write and write and write without making money, money is still a big motivation. And even though you like getting money, you should also want to write because you enjoy it, that’s more important.

I: What kind of stories do you like writing the most?

R: Of course it’s fun to think about women with big boobs, but it’s also fun to think about environmental issues... *laughter*

I: You’re mostly known for writing games, but would you ever want to try making an anime?

R: I don’t think I’m good enough at drawing for creating it, but if someone else would do that I would be very proud and happy.

I: Our interview is coming to a close. Is there still anything you would like to tell the audience?

R: I want to complain about how warm Finland is, I had heard about how cold Finland is and only brought long-sleeved shirts, and then I got here and it was sultry and far too warm, so I would like to say that nobody told me Finland would be warm!

[sg2tiger]

Commenting on your post about Lion's death in EP7, I doubt its Ryukishi's bullshit. Mostly because I doubt that a guy like him would make shit up as he went along. Anyway going back to Bern, considering how she never lies, I can see how a massacre of some sort would go down. However, because Bern is known to twist muddle the truth (some parts of the EP7 Tea Party were inaccurate to Prime) I think she's trolling on how the massacre is carried out.

Whoa there - I’m getting the impression that you misunderstood the point of my post!! I guess I’ll go through this point by point.

“I doubt its Ryukishi’s bullshit. Mostly because I doubt that a guy like him would make shit up as he went along.”

Well…setting aside the fact that Ryukishi himself has admitted that he does sometimes make up aspects of the story that weren’t originally intended (source: pending), that wasn’t what my post was actually focused on. My argument (backed by various pieces of evidence from the EP7 tea party itself) boils down to this: the ‘ingredients’ that lead Rudolf and Kyrie to commit the massacre should fundamentally not exist in Lion’s world. 

The argument was then whether this was Ryukishi - a human author who can, and has, made other mistakes before - who failed to consider this (his message for this scene in EP7 is to show ‘as long as the gold exists, the adults will be driven to violence’, which is true, but my point is that the tools that allowed it to extend from violence to massacre should not have been in place)…or if it was Bernkastel’s fault, who lied intentionally, spinning a false tale for the sole purpose of driving Lion (and by extension, Beatrice, for whom Lion was the only hope) and Ange into deeper despair.

But let’s focus on that ‘Bern lied’ part first.

“Anyway going back to Bern, considering how she never lies”

Can you show me where, exactly, in the VN it is ever stated that ‘Bernkastel never lies’…and then show me where it’s said in red? Because as far as I’m aware no such passage exists, and in fact there’s evidence in the story to the contrary. The only thing in Umineko that never lies is the red truth, and even then one of the themes of the story is that you can’t always believe in a ‘single truth’. The red is CONSTANTLY abused with various loopholes, so in essence, it’s possible to even ‘lie’ with the red. And yet nowhere are we ever told ‘Bernkastel never lies’…so I’m not sure where you’ve gotten that idea from.

(and let’s not get too far off-topic here, but wouldn’t the entirety of EP5 be a primary example of Bern, in fact, lying? She rigs the entire trial in favor of humiliating Natsuhi as a culprit and claiming she slept with Kinzo, who she knows is dead. The entire ‘truth’ of EP5 is one big fat lie.)

Realistically, the only canon justification for Lion’s world also having a massacre, I’d argue, is in fact Bernkastel lied. Since she’s hungry for revenge against Beato, she spun up a fake tale in her expanded catbox world wherein Lion is also gunned down by Kyrie following the exact same sequence of events as Prime. After all, she’s the Game Master, right? Game Masters can lie about scenes on the board - isn’t that what all of the magic scenes in Beato’s game show us? So it’s entirely possible that Bern created a fake scene showing Lion the massacre, because she never says it in red (she only says the truth of Prime that Ange saw is the truth in red). 

And she’s got no opponent in this game, to boot. Who’s going to stop her from doing this…?

Oh wait. Will. Bern didn’t know that Will was still around, but he was. And he comes back to save Lion and buy him time to escape. Except he’s unable to hold off Bern for very long, and loses an arm as a result. In the end, Will and Lion are overcome by Bern’s kitties, and the game fades to black. I cannot speak of what happens to them in EP8 (which you also seem to be referencing? As I’ve said before I have not yet read EP8, so I can’t comment on any of that yet), but the fact of the matter is that Will comes to buy time for Lion…and fails.

But there’s something about the idea that Bern lied that bugs me personally. If she had done so, deliberately…shouldn’t Will have brought this very argument up and been able to buy more time? As long as she refuses to repeat it in red, she won’t get a Logic Error, but it would be a painful argument all the same and keep her occupied. He should have been able to prevent these facts and buy Lion time to escape. She should not have been able to easily defeat Will, who would be able to argue back these facts that the tragedy could not happen in Lion’s world. And yet, Will is defeated…and seems like he barely has anything to argue against in the first place. Maybe it’s because Will hasn’t even accepted Prime as truth so he didn’t think of it, but…

I feel like ‘Bern is lying’ was not actually intended to be the conclusion when Ryukishi wrote it, but that Ryukishi simply didn’t think about these little details as to why it shouldn’t have happened. Note that I didn’t actually attack Ryukishi and say that he ‘made it up as he went along’ in my post. What’s interesting to me is that other people I’ve shown this post have also told me that they (the kinds of people in the fandom who love picking apart and analyzing it) never stopped to think about a lot of the factors i pointed out tells me that it’s entirely possible it slipped by Ryukishi, too. 

Remember - he is human. And a doujin (non-professional) author. Just because he wrote a story of a quality surpassing many professional works doesn’t mean he’s incapable of mistakes - and I feel like a lot of Ryukishi fans like to put him up on a pedestal simply because they love his work (not saying you do, but I have seen this attitude among 07th Expansion fans a lot). My thing is that you can love Umineko and still be critical of potential mistakes and errors in judgment. And you can author a great story and still mess up on smaller details. It’s human. I think he simply made a mistake that, while it doesn’t break the story overall, is, nonetheless, mistaken.

That said, I’d advise you to go back and reread the post in question again, but I’ll sum up my basic point - the factors that caused the massacre in Prime do not exist in Lion’s world. Because Yasu, inherently, does not exist in Lion’s world. And without Yasu, there would be no guns, no knowledge of the bomb, and most importantly of all there would be no 2 billion yen cash card.

Let’s ignore the first two, though. Let’s say that, somehow, Rudolf and Kyrie got access to the guns and learned about the bomb in Lion’s world (despite my post also going over how little sense this makes, but let’s just do a ‘wouldn’t put it past kinzo’ and say he left the guns and told them about the bomb). So their plan is…what, exactly? To kill everyone for giggles, escape to Kuwadorian, and wait for the bomb to clean up the mess? What do they have to gain for this? Absolutely nothing. Because the entire reason Rosa argued with Eva about the bomb was that the pile of gold would be wiped away by the explosion as well. 

Remember. The reason it still benefited Rudolf and Kyrie in Prime to use the bomb was the existence of the 2 billion yen cash card, which would let them be set for life. Who put the money on that card? Yasu. Who doesn’t exist in Lion’s world? Yasu. How much does a single gold ingot weigh? A fucking lot. How much does ten tons weigh? …well, ten tons. Which is even more of a fucking lot. It’s not something they could escape the island with, and as I also pointed out in my post, Krauss was stated to be the only one who could easily convert the illegal unmarked gold from 40+ years ago into usable cash. So not only would the gold itself be difficult for them to do much with…setting the bomb would destroy it all in the first place.

The only reason they commit the massacre is because they are able to take the already-converted 2 billion on the cash card and leave the island.

That. Is. Fundamental. Truth. And in Lion’s world, that cash card should by right not exist. Kinzo has no reason to convert 2 billion to cash and have a card and pin number ready to give his shitty kids. He hates his kids. Lion is his successor. He doesn’t think the others can solve the epitaph. Which he decided to present to them on a whim. Compared to Yasu, who prepped all of this in advance. If they solved it all Kinzo would do is say ‘enjoy your gold’ and leave the issue of how to turn it into cash in their hands - he wouldn’t hand them that kind of shortcut.

So???? There’d be no cash card in Lion’s world. Period. There is simply no way this makes sense given Kinzo’s character.

It can be simplified down like this: no cash card, no reason to set the bomb and lose all the gold, no reason to kill everyone, no tragedy. And that’s ignoring the other points I made about why they shouldn’t know about the bomb in the first place or have access to the four rifles and case full of bullets.

That was the point of my post. The factors that actually lead them to kill, by their own admission, wouldn’t have existed in Lion’s world, so Bernkastel saying ‘it happened the same way as the truth you just saw’ is incorrect. As fans, we can ‘correct’ this mistake and say ‘Bern lied, and because she didn’t do so in red Lion’s catbox is about as valid as the idea that Zombie Kanon killed Nanjo and Kumasawa in EP2′. That’s fair. We can absolutely say that Lion’s massacre was because Bern lied, because that’s the sort of thing she’d do. Featherine already got her answers, and Clair had already passed on. What happened to Lion after that had no obligation to be true, so we can simply say it wasn’t, and she did it for her own amusement. But to me, it seems more likely that Ryukishi probably just slipped up and ‘Bernkastel lied about Lion’ wasn’t actually the narrative intent.

Maybe my use of the word ‘bullshit’ was a point of confusion, in which case, I apologize. My intent was saying ‘somebody messed up here because these details won’t make sense’, not ‘OMG RYUKISHI A SHIT AUTHOR WHO PULLED THE STORY OUT OF HIS ASS’ (which in fact I made a post about once before as to why I don’t think he pulled the story out of his ass as many Ryukishi-negative people claim, so). But the fact of the matter is…there are too many reasons that the massacre wouldn’t have happened in Lion’s world to just throw up our hands and accept Bern’s truth. Either she straight-up lied, or Ryukishi goofed.

People can make mistakes. Authors can make mistakes. Ryukishi is not some kind of god, and we are allowed to criticize him (nothing stopped him from criticizing the readers, after all…). He’s made other minor mistakes in Umineko, as well. We can love Umineko as a story, and still analyze it as, well, a story, and acknowledge that the story’s author is not perfect, too. I may not like Ryukishi, but I don’t attack him baselessly, either…and I wasn’t even attacking so much as pointing out something that doesn’t make sense with the information presented. 

In the end, Lion’s world is entirely separate from Prime. This level of mistake doesn’t break the logic of Umineko as a whole, or ruin the meaning of the story Ryukishi set out to tell. It’s indeed a very minor thing…but it’s still a mistake, all the same, and one I wanted to analyze in greater detail.