I’m interested in how the rest of the community feels about how Ryukishi handles all the heavier topics in his novels, like how he discusses and comments on things like abuse, murder, incest and all other sorts of messed up stuff.
While I haven’t read it yet, I’ve also heard that he touches upon nationalism a bit in RGD-and I’m sure it would be interesting to talk about since Japan is going through a nationalist phase of the sorts rn, but tbh I’m just curious n hearing the community’s thoughts on how Ryukishi tackles heavier topic in his novels.
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Mmh… interesting topic. I must admit, that I have worried about several topics Ryukishi has tackled quite a lot in the past.
First of all, I think Ryukishi’s biggest strength is his character-driven storytelling and his characters are always very compellingly written. Therefore issues that have to do with the heart of them, with their mental state, with their relationships and their fears and traumas and ambitions, those are always on point. And he does such a good job with that that even though I am certain he is no feminist, you can take away feminist messages from his writing and that alone makes it strong.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sure I am in any position to call myself a feminist myself, but I have learned that it can be quite advantageous to scrutinize stories with a feminist lense, because the core issue you have to look for, is whether the writer treats all his characters with the same amount of respect and avoids to let his own bias and stereotypes dictate their actions. Since Ryukishi’s characters’ actions are almost always derived from their back-story and I do feel that he respects all of them, regardless of gender, his stories tend to do fairly well when approached from that perspective, even with the exposed legs and D-cups… There are exceptions though. Hanyuu in Higurashi for example sticks out like a sore thumb, given how she plays a lot of moe stereotypes straight that Ryukishi initially deconstructed, even though she should be supposed to an adult woman. I also cringe at most of the female demon characters in Umineko, though admittedly, they are supposed to be flat as cardboard, given how they were created in-universe.
In any case, let’s come to the difficult issues. For example I absolutely adore Eva in how she deals with Internalized Misogyny. A concept in which a woman looks down on other women, disregarding them as inherently inferior in order to make herself look more superior, because of course such a woman regards herself as special. Take for comparison Cersei Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire and how she regards every woman around her with contempt and laments that she should have been born a man like her brother. But where Cersei is hilariously petty and incompetent, we see in Eva a very intelligent and strategic thinking woman who still makes use of this way of thinking to demean Natsuhi, whose ambition she sees as a threat. In fact we see how Eva used to be full of ambition and feminist attitude herself, but was desillusioned in her dealings with her father and grew to just adopt his hurtful language, realizing that it furthered her standing with him and within the siblings. Admittedly, I found that argument flashback in episode 3 a bit heavy-handed, but it still effectively conveyed the point of how she came to become that spiteful person we know in Umineko. And yet you cannot help but love Eva, for she is terribly aware of what she’s doing, beats herself up about it when alone and proves in her positive interactions with Jessica that she really only uses misogyny when it benefits her and doesn’t allow it to cloud her relationship with someone who doesn’t pose a threat to her and George (I initally expected her to be openly demeaning to Jessica as well, but seeing how she sided with her against Natsuhi, knowing that Jessica rather wouldn’t take the inheritance anyway, was quite lovely to see). All that makes Eva a very interesting character and a good case study for this kind of behavior.
I could expand on other such topics as well, but I guess you get the point. I just want to add how clever I thought Ryukishi was able to avoid the difficulty of handling gender identity in the case of Lion. All we know is that the true Yasu doesn’t know her gender at all, that even though she identifies mostly as female, that is in a large part because she was raised this way. While it is implied that she was born with an y-chromosome, Lion still doesn’t disclose his gender, because we simply can’t know whether he would want change his gender in a world in which he was raised with the sex he had at birth in mind. Like Willard says at one point, this question lies outside the gameboard and since Yasu is no more, nobody could ever find out with which gender identity she would live most comfortably. It is simply not a question anyone other than her is supposed to answer… and that in itself is a very strong message that clearly shows with what care he tackled the issue!
Then comes Rose Guns Days… I must admit, I had severe trouble reading that story. As I said, he is good when it comes to showing the conflict within the heart of people, but when it comes to politics, I regard him as somewhat amateurish. I guess that’s why I am thankful that his Rewrite route only dealt with Lucia and her state of mind and he didn’t allow himself to comment with anything on the idiotic anti-environment message Romeo Tanaka has in his routes.
But… seriously, Rose Guns Days… I can only hope anyone who managed to finish the story can give a better assessment, because my impression I got from the first manga chapters surely isn’t a nice one. I just found the whole premise… unnerving. That whole unspecified catastrophy and the enforced mass immigration, fine, but… when regarding the simple fact that the culture these sympathetic protagonists are mourning is that of Imperial fucking Japan, then I’m going to get a very, very bad feeling. In these first chapters, the good guys must have lived in wartime Japan themselves, they must have lived under an oppressive regime drowned in propaganda, with a callous disregard for its own soldiers and the cover-up of atrocious war-crimes. And yet all they naively focus is some vague sense of tradition. What fucking tradition? Because this nationalist Japan that had turned completely crazy is what was before! Why not a single bloody reference to that? And then comes the fact that the enforced loss of Japanese culture… made no sense at all. Why would that be enforced with the changing of names and shit? I’ve never seen an occupation force at any point in history do that to this degree. I get the idea that the whole setting is set up as some nationlist’s worst nightmare, but it doesn’t change the fact that nothing about this occupation made sense to me. If that is how they were going about denazification, then they were doing a terrible job. I actually tried to apply all my knowledge about how things were handled under Soviet occupation, but the way the population reacted to the Nazi regime being deconstructed created a totally different atmosphere to what is present in Rose Guns Days. It just… felt wrong. The whole setting. Terribly, terribly wrong.
And that’s why I couldn’t read anymore. Because I waited for all these issues to be addressed and when they weren’t, all what was left was dread about the direction this story would ultimately take.
Well… those were my musings, anyway.
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The way Ryukishi portrait socio-political criticism and shout-outs in Rose Guns Days becomes genius subverted later on in the story. Don’t judge it before finishing it, as he actually has no bias, and it becomes progressively his point about Nationalistic antiques. He never take a side, he points out motifs and wrongs in any of his political representations.
You can truly see why he said he based a lot on “The Third Man” settings, but it’s a sincere and very fair approach to the post-WW2 issues in that regard. I recommend you reading the Visual Novel up to the end (the manga was a rushed mess if I so recall correctly).
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Among many different themes, I feel that Ryukishi does an especially excellent job of portraying the themes of abuse and bullying. Not only throughout his WTC works, but also works such as Higanbana No Saku Yoro Ni where such themes are the very foundation of the story. He is able to handle the topic in a variety of ways, whether it is trying to understand how bullying spreads, pondering on how to stop it and whether it can be stopped at all, or even considering the perspectives of both the bullies and the bullied. I also appreciate the way he is able to offer advice to his readers through his writing, such as advising them to talk to someone first, cry for help and emphasizing that suicide is never the answer because it will only lead to your damnation and that what you have to do is try to focus on making the best out of your life.
I feel like these topics are difficult to handle, and not even Ryukishi himself has all the answers, but he still handles them with such maturity and grace. And what I absolutely love the most is the way he uses his characters to portray these themes; so human, so flawed. Absolutely lovely.
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I like the way he hardly tries to smooth things over and treats the topics with the seriousness they should have. Those are themes you’d hardly find in games, and that are barely discussed by people, but he makes a point of showing how important it is to talk about it, the way he shows how bullying is harmful and cruel in Higanbana can be even scary, I feel he conveys completely the despair and the suffering the characters are going through, as well as the way they deal with it, and I don’t I’ve ever seen any kind of media exposing this reality many of us were able to experience there, to the point where most of us from the bookclub got shocked upon finding out it was never exaggerated and that things like those can happen to anyone.
Higurashi and Umineko are masterpieces in showing how the need to maintain public appearances can hurt others. The way Satoko is neglected by the village simply because everyone was fearful of going against the Sonozaki family, and how the Sonozaki family never publicly forgave the Houjou family to avoid being seen badly by the other villagers creates a vicious cycle of suffering to the little girl, all to preserve the public appearances. Rosa’s need to maintain the appearance of a wealthy and well-succeeded woman is a huge part of the set of things that causes Maria’s pain, and if she could leave her pride aside sometimes, Maria wouldn’t be so deeply hurt and go so far as to saying her mother hates her and wishes she was never born, something that I take as a lesson that we must be aware of how our pride might hurt the people we care for at times.
Ryukishi is the lord of the dark themes, and I think it’s really nice how he’s thoughtful of those and tries to make people think about these.
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I’ve always been impressed by his capacity for Negative Capability. He always feels as if he’s exploring and taking very human concepts and issues i.e. bullying/abuse, dealing with loss, managing one’s internal and external perceptions etc. to their extreme logical conclusions (in extremely entertaining ways), but he never feels as if he’s offering only solutions to said issues, or that he’s dictating how we should feel about them.
Kinzo’s one of my favorite examples. The reader is shown multiple sides of him: the empty young man, the insane Goldsmith, the senile, shouting old fool and the doting Grandpa, and all of these are given as much weight as any other (although not as much screen time). He doesn’t try to explain away or justify that a person with the capacity to love their family can also be a mass murderer and a rapist and he doesn’t try to reconcile these sides of his being with each other, he just sets them all out, fully communicates them to us, and lets us do what we will. He embraces the conflicting natures of his characters and they, and the ways in which we interact with them, become so much more human because of that.
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I just wanna say this post is great and I’ll be commentating on it more after I finish my Ecology paper.
Anyway, I think the topic I’d like to focus on is incest, specifically how Umineko handles incest.
Ep6 shed an interesting light on this with the two main pairs, George/Shannon and Kanon/Jessica. Both pairs are fighting for a love that arguably, shouldn’t be allowed to exist. The two pairs have utterly been consumed with the idea that they should fight form their love to exist, even if it means killing their family members.
In Jessica’s point of view, I’d argue she is fighting less for herself and more for Kanon. While she does desire to be with her first love, as someone who described herself as the protector of the household in EP4, I assume this extends to Kanon as well. She is fighting for this meek and vulnerable boy who she seems as having a lot of potential, but devalues himself so much that he can’t even fathom the aspect of someone loving him. In short, her love (and jealousy) is more of a protective sort.
In George’s point of view, he see’s this as affirming the right that he and Shannon have a right to love each other. Damn societal customs, and damn his mother’s constraints, if it means living a fulfilling life with his beloved, he’d do just about anything.
However, from Shannon and Kanon’s point of view, they know something that their lovers don’t. That they are related to them almost as closely as siblings. As we all know, incestual relationships are inhenrently abusive, and RAINN also classifies incest as being sexually abusive. And yet with this knowledge (and a lot of self-loathing), Shannon and Kanon convince Jessica and George to take part in this deadly game and fight alongside them.
Still, despite this horribly manipulative and abusive state of affairs, I must admit it was easy for me to understand why Sayo was doing this. She who had been denied love for so long was finally able to experience a little of it-even if it was under a bit of a false pretense-and now she would have to fight for either one of those love’s to exist. Which brings up an interesting point-Do these two pairs even have to right to love each other even under those circumstances? And how would George and Jessica’s impressions of their beloved’s change if they knew this?
…And then there’s Battler. Battler is a bit of an interesting case as he doesn’t seem to care much about any sort of incest (cousin-wise that is). He makes lewd comments about Jessica, tells Maria that he’s going to eat her in ten years (ew) and makes no mention of the fact that he and Beatrice are related in Ep8. It almost seems that he thinks that if a pair loves each other, then their status doesn’t matter (or maybe its cause he knows he’s dead at this point and he has zero fucks to give).
But even then, Battler does seem to draw a line at parental incest considering his reaction to Twoto (Chick Beato, I’m sorry this is my bad Eva ref) is one of disgust after she calls him Father. Or maybe even he doesn’t know what to make of the nature of their love yet.
(and this isn’t even getting into the parental dynamics yet)
Anyway, those were my ramblings about incest. Back to Ecology!
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It is funny you mention that in regards to Rose Guns Days, because it does answer those questions later on- Ryukishi is actually rather critical of Japanese culture and nationlism. He builds up to it.
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Typically, I feel that Ryukishi handles heavy topics really well, and the only exception I feel is with Higanbana. I think he kind of beats the reader over the head with his messages in that story, whereas I feel like a more delicate approach would’ve worked a lot better. Higanbana is still incredibly powerful and emotionally resonant, but it kind of feels a little heavy-handed with its bullying messages.
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I personally don’t think relationships with cousins would be actual incest, but that’s an opinion which varies depending on the person. To me, Kinzo’s relationship with his daughter is the actual aggravating thing, and I believe it wasn’t too explored to avoid going into details people would rather avoid, however, Genji’s reaction hiding Yasu from him after what happened to Beatrice was a clear indication of how hideous what he did was. But the Shannon/George and Kanon/Jessica thing is quite normal to me, even if they’re cousins their family ties aren’t that strong, to me something like George/Jessica would be more shocking, specially because they were raised together, so it’s almost like a relationship between siblings.
To me the point of that violent approach was to show how awful bullying is, without sugarcoating it at all, if we consider how bullying is dealt with, specially in Japan, it makes sense that he wouldn’t go for a delicate approach, thus the gruesome story we are welcomed with in the very first chapter. That was almost a warning that you should prepare yourself mentally before reading it through.
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Personally I disagree since cousin is more or less one step away from brother/sister. You’re having a relationship with your parents sibling’s child. Not to mention Sayo is technically Jessica and George’s cousin AND Aunt.
But it is less gross than something like Jessica/George, since the relationship between the four cousins is almost sibling-like (which makes Battler coming onto Jessica and Maria even more gross ew)
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I’m not sure R07 was trying to make a point about incest with Umineko to be honest, Yasu is kinda of a special situation given her background and situation.
Now that I think about it, was the “incest” even ever brought up in the novel itself? I do remember Yasu being disgusted at herself in the manga because Jessica, Battler and Jooji are her nephews/cousins and she felt like she was repeating Kinzo’s actions, but I don’t remember anything like that in the novel.
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I had hoped someone would say that and admittedly, that’s why I kept looking for foreshadowing of awareness that things aren’t as black and white as the initial protagonists see it. But at least in the manga there was none. The way I’ve read it, the most generous interpretation is that everyone in the story is just blissfully naive, something that is utterly ridiculous if you assume that they have first-hand experience with a fascist regime. And yet they didn’t show the willful denial and silent agreement coming from sympathizers amidst denazification at all. Therefore I saw myself forced to decide: Either the setting is bogus, or the characters are all idiots.
That may be just my impression of the beginning of the manga, but sorry, I can’t make myself to get the VN to get it a second chance, because I just felt so awful reading the manga…
Oh yes, you are totally right! This whole cycle of bullying and how abused people sometimes become abusers as well when they haven’t learned other ways to regain control and power over their lives. That’s really a large part of any of his works, isn’t it? I wonder whether his social worker background has a lot of influence on it in regards to first hand experience.
As much as I adore the love duel, I think that is arguable. The way the story presents it, when George and Jessica become accomplices, they do so under the impression that it is just a game and within the love duel itself, they just do so because they became somewhat aware of the gameboard nature of thei existence, making their ‘murders’ while still very real to them, a bit of a purely symbolic thing.
Fully agreed. Though admittedly, the jealousy aspect shouldn’t be downplayed. What I love so much about Jessica is how she beats herself up about the possibility that she may only imagine her feelings because he’s literally the only boy her age around and she wants to do some romantic experiences as well. This doubt whether her love is real or just something springing up from a logical but cold rationale is very intriguing and so very human in how it deconstructs the concept. This is no fairytale love on first sight thing, it is two very rational people constantly questioning their feelings and reaffirming them this way.
I may also add that Kanon or Yasu herself is in kind of a similar pinch. When I was recently re-reading episode 2, I noticed how much Kanon envies how freely Jessica copes with the pressure put upon her with her Jessy persona. That she doesn’t completely hide her true self, but instead searches for ways to express herself in front of her schoolmates with her music, something that is the polar opposite of what Yasu is doing (and something that her mystery game attempts to do in a very twisted way). I think when Kanon fell for her at the culture festival, Yasu herself was left wondering as well whether this is love, or whether she just wants to be close to Jessica so that a bit of her confidence rubs up to her in return.
Though I have to shut up, because I ship them so badly, I can’t stop when fired up.
I may also add that especially in the first two episodes, George is the poster boy of the “Nice Guy” trope. The entitled jerk who thinks that just because he doesn’t sexually harrass her, she is supposed to fall in love with him. It is somewhat muddled by Shannon thinking it is expected of her to return his feelings, thus never having him put into a position of rejection in which he’d likely turn nasty, but it is still there. In his first two proposals he comes across as a giant jerkass and there are always bits and pieces about how he likes playing with her feeling and how he blatantly points out the status difference to make her do things she is reluctant to do. Yasu’s picture of him isn’t a very flattering one when you read careful, despite the narrations constant insistence on what a great guy he is. It is only Tohya with trademark optimisms who sees their relationship in a more healthy way and gives George the opportunity to become self-aware of his behavior.
I’d be careful with this. When the whole ShannonxGeorge thing happened, Yasu had no idea that they were related. And while it may be true that Yasu already knew at the time of the culture festival, he was quite vocal in pushing Jessica away. Yasu may have never confronted them with the truth and there is a lot of perceived shame on her part due to the incest thing, but I think that is honestly the least of her problems and I also don’t think that it would affect any of her relationships, if any had come to pass, given how they were not raised as family (effectively getting rid of the emotional entanglements that make familial incest so abusive) and Yasu couldn’t get children anyway (getting rid of the biological dangers). It does however show, how much just the revelation of it being incest messes up Yasu even more and how she stigmatizes herself for something she couldn’t possibly have any influence upon.
Therefore I find it very difficult to compare Yasu with Kinzo. What Kinzo did was straight-up rape, not to mention the whole ‘locked up at a fenced mansion for ever’ thing. You could argue that both are victims of their own feelings, in a way, but Yasu obviously never intended to do harm to anyone up until she found herself with her back facing a wall.
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I don’t think I’m really saying anything here that hasn’t already been said, but eh, might as well share my rambling from Discord here so it’s on record.
This goes both in general and for heavy topics like abuse and whatnot, but I think the thing about Ryukishi’s writing that makes it so appealing to me is that he doesn’t shy away from portraying characters who do terrible things as humans. The two examples that come to mind immediately are Rosa and Kinzo.
Rosa’s absolutely a terrible mother, and a pretty awful person when we get to see her darker side, but even at (what I’d call) her worst - during Maria’s murder-dream sequence in Ep4 - she’s not written as a two-dimensional “abusive monster with no redeeming qualities.” Even as she hurls abuse at Maria, she’s being used to bring up some pretty uncomfortable points about misogyny and double standards when it comes to single mothers in society - and it’s done in a way that makes her sympathetic without minimizing or downplaying how terribly she treats Maria.
Taken to its extreme logical conclusion, of course, we get Kinzo - a man who orchestrated a mass murder to obtain the gold, and who tried shaping his illegitimate daughter into “Bice’s reincarnation” to the point of raping her. Even just talking about Kinzo as anything other than a complete monster makes bile rise in my throat.
…And yet, even though the narrative gets close at times (mostly in Yasu’s episodes, and to be fair Kinzo’s such a complicated mess of emotions for her that I don’t think she even knows where to start in dealing with him) to “caricaturing” him, it still doesn’t go all the way. We get bits and pieces of the “softer” Kinzo shining through here and there, through more than one character, culminating in the nice old grandpa seen in Ep8 (though, admittedly, I think that was a bit too far in the other direction, but still).
It’s a topic that I think many other authors would be afraid of even approaching, and yet Ryukishi still makes a point of portraying Kinzo as more than just an unforgivable monster. Is it uncomfortable? Frankly, yeah. It’s uncomfortable as hell, but that’s the point, and it’s one that permeates Umineko as a whole - being able to empathize with people who do unforgivable things is a key component in understanding Yasu, after all (and I mean, let’s be real - as much as I love the girl, she does plot an extremely elaborate mass-murder/suicide over a long period of time, which isn’t exactly a good thing).
It’s masterfully done, in my opinion, and it’s a significant part of why I love Umineko so much. It might make me uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t give that up for anything.
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Well, that’s too bad, as Rose Guns Days is fantastic in the long run. Well, at least you didn’t started with Umineko anime, because that one was a much bigger misrepresentation than that overall. You would be missing two amazing stories instead of just one if that was the case (and Umineko in particular is a work that no one should miss), so I’m glad you apparently started with the VN for that one.
I recommend you to always start with the source material from now on, if you have this kind of turn-offs.
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That’s unfortunate in regards to Rose Guns Days. I haven’t read the manga myself, but I know that beyond perhaps ~ first season of the VN, Ryukishi is very critical of Japan and nationalism of Japan. Maybe give it another shot?
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Heh… right… because that’s what I didn’t do, eh? 
To be fair, while the Umineko Anime may be garbage, it is still noticeable that this stems from being a bad and rushed adaptation that didn’t know what made Umineko great. That there was a clever story buried beneath all the disgusting fanservice, the detached gore and the ruined atmosphere was still a bit apparent.
Up until now however I have heard only good things about the Rose Guns Days manga and I can’t imagine that the setting is presented differently in the VN. After all, it is the setting and how the characters dealt with it that made me so uncomfortable. And the way I have read it, the setting is just going to be the backdrop to some kind of completely unrelated mafia story that only occasionally delves into political monologues.
In any case, I am happy if people who managed to finish it come to the conclusion that Ryukishi is criticizing rampant nationalism. That’s what I want to think as well and for that reason I leave the catbox that is Rose Guns Days untouched. 
In any case, the manga for Season 1 is not quite rushed now that I think about it (Season 2 and above were). You might as well drop the VN in any case around the same part, so I’m not gonna even try further convincing you, fellow goat companion. But in case you change your mind, do read through the whole VN, as it is far more insightful than you may think.
Much like any of Ryu’s works, you just can’t properly appreciate it without getting the full picture.
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I heard they cut out the soy sauce arc in the manga which I’m not sure is a good thing or not as it was a pretty slow arc for me.
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Honestly that was one of the reasons why I’m hesitant to read the manga. I’ve been collecting Higurashi and Umineko volumes as they came out for years and given how I loved the VN for RGD I expected to do so for it too. But reading a few chapters from Season 1 left me with the impression that the adaptation for it fell flat. Removing the Soy Sauce war is something I regard as a rather flagrant sin. The 1948 arc was my favourite arc in the VN, and I felt that the Soy Sauce war was stronger than Zel’s character arc. The VN did a great job of showing the conflict between cultural preservation and survival/profit/pragmatic actions, and it also resonated with me pretty strongly due to forming some parallels with food culture in my country. It shows just how powerful economic warfare can be despite the fact that not a drop of blood was shed. And the scene where Claudia just cries out at the Primavera meeting about how she wants to care about Rose’s ideals but can’t because she’s poor and has to survive really hit me hard. If you cut out the arc I’m really not sure how you’d be able to stitch together the plot of 1948, and anything left would probably be a shadow of its former self.
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