What would you ask? (Please tag any spoilers.)
I’m not sure what I would ask… That’s part of why I started this thread. I need ideas for…reasons.
I know some of you lucky folks have already had the opportunity, so you can either say what you asked or what you would ask if you had another chance. Or both.
I’d be really interested how much he stick to his plans when he was writing Umineko.
Did he had it all planned out beforehand and only changed things slightly to adjust to his fans’ tastes, or is it like 30-40% of the story that he thought up based on fan ideas.
I want to ask him what he did to make his backgrounds, and what the journey was like taking all those photos.
I would ask him if he has some sort of cohesive vision for the WTC universe, especially with the overlapping elements like Bern and Lamda. It would be interesting to know if the different stories were intended to be consistent with each other as part of the greater series, or whether they were only ever intended to be internally consistent with little nods to the previous works.
I would like to know more about some relationships between some of my favourite chaarcters and also what his inspiration and intention was when creating umineko.
Well I actually had two questions answered by him. One by accident and one where I basically got up and ran up to the mic - the latter I know caused a stir, but oh well at least I asked!
The first one was what his inspiration for Erika was. I didn’t think they would actually pick that question from the questions box. I wrote it as a whim really considering my name is also Erika and I wanted to know the origins.
The second one well… I asked about the possibility of Rika falling in love with Keiichi when she would grow older. I know I’m one of the unpopular opinions, but i just had to ask it. I was inspired by that Satoshi and Shion question, that I figured it was now or never.
I’ll never forget about that day.
I’m not sure what else I would ask if I ever had the chance again. Maybe write a story about the original Higurashi timeline and not just Hinamizawa Bus Stop.
Where did Battler’s cape come from? That’s seriously the only thing I want to know.
I think Battler’s cape was inspired by fanon, since their ideas of Battler as a witch/sorcerer included a cape, and Ryukishi thought it was cool and included it.
I guess I would ask “If you could rewrite Twilight of the Golden Witch to convey what you wanted to that people missed, what would you change?”
Edit: I’d also like to ask what series inspired you to try to write sympathetic people who do bad things? Were you influenced at all by JoJo like Touhou is?
If I could have an actual serious talk with him I’d ask him what lead him to write so much about children abuse.
Will we see more Umineko universe stuff? Really want more…
One thing that still bugs me to this day is
Did FErikas boyfriend cheat on her or not. I believe he did and there’s quite a lot of circumstancial proof that FErika found to support the theory of him cheating.
I just feel like if I were to ask him that he’s just say something along the lines of “oh I never planned on having it one way or another so i have no answer.”
Wasn’t Ryukishi a social worker before he wrote Higurashi? That might explain the child abuse thing.
I’d ask him (Umineko spoilers) if Yasu actually committed the murders in Rokkenjima Prime or if she just fantasized about it. My intuition is that Rokkenjima-Prime strongly resembles the EP7 Tea Party, but some closure would be nice.
Also, for funsies (Umineko spoilers again) is Lion born male or female? My headcanon SCREAMS male because it makes things really interesting and I’d probably reject his answer if he said “female” but oh well ^^;
I suggest you read the manga ep8. It gives you prime on a silver platter.
And as for
Beatrice has only the power over the catbox of October, so she can’t change the genders which means that yasu is the same gender as Lion, and as for what gender Yasu is the mango drops some very clear answers on that as well.
I didn’t know that… can anyone confirm this?
It’d explain a lot of things… including perhaps why he quit that job there’s a predominant disenchantment with the ability of these services to actually help children present in 07th’s stories
I believe he said it in an interview, but I can’t recall which one exactly.
Both reference this fact, but I can’t find any primary sources to verify it.
It might be this interview: http://apgnation.com/articles/2015/05/19/17101/another-round-red-truths-ryukishi07/
It was around this time that Ryukishi07 went into great detail about his life outside of 07th
Expansion at the time. For nearly a decade, the author worked as a
government worker and had varied success balancing his writing and work.
But around the release of Higurashi‘s fourth episode, his work
load suddenly exploded, dragging production to nearly a year, compared
to the sixth months it typically took for him to write an episode.
Ryukishi also mentioned to aspiring authors in the audience that, if
possible, it is best to try and have both a day job and a writing job
going at the same time. By having a job where you encounter many people
on a daily basis, you can use these interactions as fodder for your
writing.
As for what I’d ask Ryukishi…
As an aspiring mystery writer myself, it would probably be something like:
I’d also love to thank Ryu for showing me how fun it is to create unusual, twisted, troll characters. 
I would ask him if he intends to work on a new When they cry. Since I discovered this serie one year ago, I didn’t have the opportunity to follow Umineko or Higurashi while there were released. I’d love to read/make theories about a when they cry episode while waiting for the next to be released. But Ryukishi seems to like keeping secrets about his work so I think that even if i could ask him, I would not have an answer.
Also, I wonder if when he was writing Higurashi, he had already some ideas for Umineko, since for example (Higurashi/Umineko spoiler) Hanyuu has a broken horn, surely in reference to Featherine
I would certainly ask him about Yasu’s and Lion’s gender. But knowing he wouldn’t ever answer that explicitly for a very justified reason…
There are pretty much 3 questions other than those two:
1- Ask about Erika at Rokkenjima Prime and how the whole thing happened.
2- Ask about Hideyoshi’s backstory and how he lost his family, etc… (I’m very interested on how did his character developed into a cool uncle kind of person after all that).
3- Ask about Ange’s entire timeline of events (one of the most confusing things in the story). Where did she entered the magic part of the story, and what would be its reality counterpart (if there’s any).
The biggest mystery of all to me is the true nature of the meta world? Is it just fictional, is it a representation of the characters suffering in real life “prime”, is it really a “real” place ? Thats what i would ask Ryukishi. Thats been bugging me since forever and there are many theories but no definitive answer.
I would love to ask Ryukishi07 what the logic error was and what the miracle was and about Keiichi facing Bern and how they would act around each other.