Kakera Theory [Higurashi and Umineko Spoilers]

07th Discussion
#1

I think it’s pretty apparent that even besides Rika and Hanyuu, the characters in Higurashi are supposed to be the “same people” from world to world (although they don’t remember previous worlds). But I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly how that works.

The simplest way would be if Rika and Hanyuu were just “rewriting” the same world with a different possibility each time, but we know that each world continues even after Rika and Hanyuu leave it, so that can’t be the case. So then we might be tempted to think that the worlds really are completely separate, but that would disregard all the evidence that the characters are the same people from world to world.

So…here’s the best I can come up with at the moment:

When Rika and Hanyuu left their original world, they took the souls of the original world with them (or maybe just the souls of the people of Hinamizawa? It’s hard to say). Each time they go to a new world, those “traveling” souls merge with the “stationary” souls already in that world. Then when Rika dies, or shortly thereafter, the traveling souls part with the stationary souls and move onto the next world. And so on.

Thoughts?

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#2

I think Rika describes the phenomenon as literally, “rewinding time”. I disagree with her phrasing for several reasons, but mainly because certain arcs continue after Rika’s death (which is when I assume time rewinds, as it is her and Hanyuu’s last memory in the new “timeline”) although I guess that from the girls’ perspecitves, time is rewound for them. For example in Tsumihoroboshi-hen where Rena is interviewed by Akasaka and Ooishi, the epilogue takes place long after the Great Hinamizawa Disaster.
Another reason is that minor discrepancies exist in each separate “timeline” - For example despite Minagoroshi-hen being directly proceeded by Matsuribayashi-hen, Houjou Teppei does not return to Hinamizawa (which he did in the previous arc). Or how Akasaka had managed to save Yukie (his wife) in some arcs, but not in others (an event that would’ve occurred before the “rewind point” in some arcs).

This leads me to the theory that the different arcs may instead exist as a series of parallel dimensions - each one slightly different than the others. This would make Rika and Hanyuu a pair of Sliders, who jump to a similar world replacing their counterparts there, or rather replacing their memories (since Rika doesn’t age abnormally). Things that combat this interpretation include the fact that other characters begin to remember the events of previous arcs - which can’t be explained by parallel dimensions, unless it’s related to Hanyuu’s ability to carry across Rika’s memories? Also, the spin-off game Higurashi Daybreak features a “Time Freeze” as one of Hanyuu’s special abilities: implying some sort of control over time… but the authenticity to the original canon is debatable.

Late into Higurashi, these separate worlds are officially named “Fragments”- a term returned to in Umineko. The exact meaning of the term is up for speculation, but Umineko seems to imply that Fragments [Spoiler]may not necessarily exist in reality, and provides a number of possible interpretations: perhaps the fragments exist as different works of fiction (like the VNs in the Real World?), different interpretations of factual events or more abstractedly, fantastical games between magical beings in planes that transcend our own. Importantly, this question is never answered, which leaves the reader free to interpret the events of the stories as any of these possibilities[/Spoiler].

For my personal interpretation; I think it’s a bit depressing to imagine that each arc is a self-contained world and that for every happy ending there are an infinite amount of unhappy equivalents - something I thought about a lot when reading another VN, Steins;Gate. In the case of Umineko, [Spoiler]only one “True World” really exists, and thus fragments can’t represent reality. If we look at Higurashi from that perspective, perhaps Rika and Hanyuu really did rewrite time, taking certain memories and experiences with them, but ultimately erasing the bad ends[/Spoiler]. But I feel that the true meaning of fragments is much larger than we can understand - they’re a deliberately abstract concept, much more than any of the definitions provided here. My understanding of fragments is that they can’t be understood. Call it a plot hole if you will, but it explains why we can’t come to an exact conclusion on how they work. Thus, if the fragments themselves can’t be explained, neither can Rika and Hanyuu’s ability to move between them, or the phenomenon causing people’s memories to carry across.

Side note: I feel these discussions get dangerously meta, mainly thanks to Umineko. I almost wrote a paragraph describing each fragment as a different Visual Novel written by Ryukishi because that’s what they actually are and therefore we shouldn’t worry about fragments since they’re just a narritave device; which they actually are. Oh wait, I did write it after all. Help.

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#3

You’re probably right that they can’t be understood, but I’m going to try anyway because it bugs me. :sweat_smile:

I could bring up my strongly anti-parallel interpretation, in which Rika and Hanyuu really do rewind time, and the events that are shown to occur long after her death are either simply a depiction of what would have happened, or there’s one hell of a delay before the next world “starts.”

In that interpretation, the sea of fragments would just represent Rika’s memories of past worlds, or as in Umineko different possibilites and not be a place that objectively exists.

As far as the discrepancies across “timelines,” I actually have my own convoluted theory to explain that. It goes like this:

It’s not actually how far back in time Hanyuu can take Rika that gets shorter and shorter, it’s how far back she can take Rika’s memories. In other words, Hanyuu always takes Rika back to the same point in time (let’s say, 5 years ago), but it takes longer for her memories to return. However, her memories can return for brief periods, especially if it’s at a point that Rika previously devoted a lot of energy to changing things. This is how Rika was able to warn Akasaka 5 years ago in the Minagoroshi world even though she didn’t “arrive” in that world until two weeks before the 1983 Watanagashi.

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#4

I like this theory a lot!

This totally fits in with the style of the later VNs, in which the characters are only able to remember their previous actions when they try really hard. It’s a result of their strong friendships, continued suffering and effort. Plus, with no abandoned parallel worlds, there are no bad ends… or they only exist as memories, anyway.

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#5

Yeah! Anti-parallel fist-bump! :facepunch: (Okay, this emoticon is called facepunch, but it works for this, too.)

I always thought the idea of an infinite number of bad endings was depressing, too.

Edit: Okay, here’s what I’m thinking now: There’s only one “true world.” (Umineko spoilers) This is true in both Higurashi and Umineko.(Although of course, there’s a mundane explanation for everything in Umineko, but not Higurashi.)

But wait, then what about the Sea of Fragments? Well, the Sea is a place of abstract possibilities. Even in the real world, alternate possibilities “exist” in an abstract sense. But the whole point of witches is that they’re beings who can experience the abstract as though it were objectively real.

So Hanyuu’s power is that she can cut out a chunk of time and shift it to a more abstract state of being, so the “parallel” worlds are all just possibilities, and none of them will become fully “real” until Rika wins (or gives up completely).

(Umineko spoiler) Also, when Hanyuu does this, she’s effectively placing that chunk of time into “witch territory,” which is how it gets adopted as a “witch’s game.”

But that leaves us with the problem of how the worlds apparently continue after Rika and Hanyuu leave them. See, I think these are just representations of what “would have happened.”I do think the world continues for a little while after Rika leaves it (like, a few years, tops), but after that, it gets replaced by the next “possibility.”

(Saikoroshi spoilers) Well, what about the “perfect world” in Saikoroshi? Well, we don’t know if this was just a dream Hanyuu showed Rika or not, but even if it wasn’t, I think it might be able to work as a fluky “possible world.” So if Rika had chosen it, it would have become “real.” That’s why she thinks to herself at the end that she “forced her friends’ sins on them” by choosing her original world (Her saying this makes absolutely no sense if we assume the worlds are completely separate, by the way.)

Or there’s that scene at the end of Matsuribayashi where Frederica changes Miyoko’s fate. But again, Frederica is a witch, so she can play around with “possibilities” all she wants. Also, Ryukishi has said that the point of this scene is pretty much just to get the viewer to think about the fact that if this one child hadn’t been abused, then the tragedies of Higurashi might never have happened.

This also explains all how characters can be the “same people” from world to world, which is critical to my enjoyment of the story (Plus I think there’s too much evidence in the story itself to ignore).

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#6

I’m not gonna have any evidence right here to back this up but this is what I think…

I’m gonna go with the fragments being parallel universes. Whether the universes already existed and they simply travel through them (replacing the souls and memories of the Rika and Hanyuu of those universes) or whether they created them I’m not sure. But in a way I think they are creating those parallel universes. In a similar way to the concept of diverging realities branching from every possible outcome, every “reset” is the creation of a new universe.

So the worlds of course are not destroyed if they leave or erased, this is evident with the arc that showed an adult Rena, and I think that’s pretty canon as well. As far as the club members starting to remember things as the universes went on I like to think of it as a similar parallel universe concept as that of Bokurano.

The… I guess “greater universe” is actually limited, so when there are too many parallel universes they begin to collide (which is why they gotta fight it out for alpha universe survival or ya know, the plot of Bokurano). So in a similar way, I think as there are more and more fragments, they get closer and closer, causing overlaps in consciousness. This works not only with the fact that people surrounding the cause for these parallel universes (Rika and Hanyuu) start seeing visions of themselves in other timelines, but even with the real-world concept that connects parallel universes and déjà vu.

However, it gets trickier once Umineko is involved. The different game boards are created, but at the same time, there seems to be one universal truth. However, it’s also well known that more than one truth can exist at the same time, like Schrodinger’s cat. In that case, whether it’s one universe or multiple, either could be true.

The point is that both have meta universes, and have had fragments visually conceptualized. Could the meta universe be the space where the fragments reside? The limited greater universe?

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#7

Hmm, yeah, there are parts were Rika outright says that the worlds continue after she leaves them, so that kind of makes it difficult…

I could maybe accept that the characters just happened to “remember” stuff from other worlds, but them happening to remember stuff ONLY from worlds Rika has been to and ONLY ones she’s been to recently on top of that is too much for me.

Or what about that scene in Minagoroshi where the souls of the club members are shown going with Rika when she dies? It would be kind of silly if they were like “Let’s go together” and then a short time later they’re like “Op, just kidding, you guys are going, but we’re going to the land of the dead, or wherever.”

Or maybe this was just some kind of hallucination of Rika’s? Well, in that case, was Hanyuu a hallucination too? Well, this is a pretty important scene, because this is where Hanyuu learns it was her fault they didn’t defeat fate, so I’m thinking it’s a pretty safe bet it’s the real Hanyuu. But then does that mean Hanyuu can interact with Rika’s hallucinations? And if Rika figured out that it was Hanyuu’s fault they didn’t defeat fate, then why didn’t she just tell Hanyuu herself rather than having Rena do it?

I swear, this question is turning my brain to mush.

#8

That’s where I think the “proximity” comes in. The limited universes are getting closer and therefore beginning to overlap. Maybe if she would have kept going on and on, their memories would have become more and more?

Well, I think it’s established that Rika and Hanyuu are connected beyond a physical level. If Hanyuu can feel what Rika feels, then surely she can see what she sees.

And my brain is totally mush too. I swear, any time you start to think you’re getting it, you suddenly don’t understand anything anymore hahahah.

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#9

That could work, I suppose. But that makes it sound like them gaining memories from other worlds was inevitable. In Matsuribayashi it’s said that it’s thanks to Rena that Keiichi was able to remember other worlds (and this is just a thought of mine, but maybe him remembering somehow “opened the door” for others to remember), so it sounds like it could have just as easily have never happened.

#10

This is gonna get a bit far fetched but…
If we’re assuming the fragments occupy some sort of physical space, we can also assume that they have movement. Therefore perhaps certain events, like things that are out of the ordinary (err like things that don’t usually happen in the normal discourse of the universes) can cause a movement in the universe…? Shifting it closer to other fragments and the such.

Idk… ahaha

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#11

No, don’t worry about it being far-fetched! We need to tackle this with Battler-style shotgun blue truths! And this is even a harder mystery than Umineko’s because we don’t know if there’s actually an answer!

Edit: I guess I’m still favoring the theory I put forth in the OP, even though it sounds ludicrous when I reread it.

Oh yeah, I just remembered in the afterword of the last volume of the Matsuribayashi manga, Ryukishi says this, “As you know, Rika and Hanyuu, in addition to the club members and everyone else in Hinamizawa (though they didn’t know it) have repeated this world again and again.”

That would be a weird thing to say if the worlds were completely separate, because if that were the case, the characters wouldn’t be repeating the events of June 1983 anymore than they’d be “repeating” any other events in their lives.

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#12

The fact the we, the viewer, observe the events of the story is what makes them tangible. There might be lots of unseen fragments that we don’t find out about, but we could speculate that what we see, at least, is “real”: seeing each arc as the current possibility that Hanyuu made real makes sense. Of course, this means that the arcs with bad ends are also real, but only at that point in time. As Hanyuu changes reality to another possibility, the previous fragment returns to a being a hypothetical alternative. I always felt that the role of Hanyuu was somewhat representative of us, the viewer. On a few occasions, Rika’s words to Hanyuu sound like they could be potentially aimed across the fourth wall, and in the first few arcs she is simply observing events, just like us. So maybe there’s a connection? Like Hanyuu, we decide what is “real” by choosing which arc/fragment to read/observe…

TL;DR I really like this theory, it seems to make the most sense to me out of everything we discussed so far. There are some reader-Hanyuu parallels that might support it.

I need to read up on this again, but I always saw that scene as a metaphor for the club members’ power of friendship, a symbolic representation that they now have the strength to finally rewrite their destinies. I do want an explanation for retained memories though, so taking it more literally could be a useful viewpoint.

I usually interpret the “Sea of Fragments” as a metaphor, but I suppose there’s no reason that it couldn’t be a literal sea! This would make Umineko’s fragment-crossing witches seafarers and pirates!

[Spoiler]

Furudo.Erika.full.1083293.jpg702x520 277 KB
[/spoiler]

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#13

Thanks! If only it weren’t for the worlds continuing for a long time after Rika and Hanyuu left them… I feel like (Umineko spoiler) I’m Battler trapped in his logic error and the fact that the worlds continue is my "door chain.’ I can’t get out!

I still think that thing you said about the fragments not being understandable is the wisest thing that’s been said on this topic, but I’m not quite done trying to break this wall with my head. :grinning:

Edit: I guess the bottom line for me is that, in my mind, Higurashi is a story about group of people struggling and learning from their mistakes and finally defeating fate. But if they aren’t the same people, then it’s merely a story about the last batch of people reaping all the benefits of their predecessors’ experiences, isn’t it?

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#14

I think the biggest issue here is that

Higurashi as a stand alone can work with a simple parallel universes concept

Umineko as a stand alone can work with a simple “there is one true non-magical reality” that we see at the end

It becomes a bugger as soon as you have to consider that they are in fact related, so related, painfully related to each other.

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#15

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Although at the moment, I’m kind of having trouble getting Higurashi to work even on its own!

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#16

Can I suggest renaming this topic to be specifically about discussing the nature of the kakera? I question the necessity of a Higurashi General Spoilers topic.

#17

But wouldn’t a topic title like ‘How the worlds work in Higurashi’ kind of be a spoiler in and of itself?

#18

“Kakera Theory [Higurashi Spoilers]”

Kakera Theory sounds like a cool subject to study.

#19

My new college major tbh.

#20

By the way, have you ever considered that even even Rika and Hanyuu might not be the same from world to world? Maybe they just have their predecessors’ memories. They even refer to that process as “inheriting” memories rather than, I don’t know, “carrying over” the memories or “connecting” them or something.