This is another example that highlights my thought that the real driving force behind kakera in general is ‘people’. These rules aren’t some outside law placed upon the people of these worlds. Rather, they are aspects of these people’s will and situation made manifest, seen as a pattern to follow from a meta-world perspective. Again, this is likened to trying to understand the rules of chess just by observing. The thing is, these rules aren’t a construct, the ‘rules’ here are based on understanding people and how or why they act. What situations or factors constrain them.
I think we’re well on our way towards building a solid theory for how the metaverse functions. Though I do think to have a full understanding we need to look at the entire WTC theory. That’s not to say you can’t understand Higurashi on it’s own, you’re just severely limiting what information you can draw upon, so you’re only going to have a limited view of how things work (similar to Frederica). Don’t forget that Bernkastel herself had trouble making sense of Beatrice’s gameboard because she was too fixed on trying to find the ‘rules’ for it, which was a fundamentally different approach then how Beatrice works. This is why Bern and Beatrice have ‘bad compatibility’.
This is why I think kakera are [possibility made actualized]. If there is no person to follow through with the possibility, then there is no world to be created. This explanation is drawing parallels in my mind to how fantasy works, and could actually explain why ‘fantasy’ kakera may be possible, based on how Umineko explains fantasy. You must be able to actualize the results yourself, and if you can, then infinite possibilities can be created. The only constraint are the people involved and what they believe.
This is something that I’d probably regard as ‘extraordinary’ in terms of how kakera work. I take this as a ‘miracle’ that Berknastel is able to obtain, which places is as a sort of anomaly in terms of ‘how kakera work’. I’d say this is mostly used as a plot device to highlight the power of friendships and bonds humans share, which places it’s significance at the level of subtext for Higurashi as a story.
Though if we really want to understand the complete picture of how kakera are connected, we probably want to look at Shannon and Kanon from Umineko as well. This because they are the only ‘humans’ who recognize previous worlds in Umineko, which certainly must have been something Ryuukishi as an author knew people would take note of when he wrote it in during EP4. This makes the information to sift through for an answer much more complex, since now we’d need to also ask questions of fantasy layers, authorship/game-mastering and piece-to-meta connections. I’ll leave that discussion for another time aha
I like this, it fits well with my idea that kakera are a ‘record of a perspective’. Drawing from this idea, I don’t think an observer needs a direct piece to observe, but there does have to be an ‘observer’ piece. In Higurashi’s case, this is Rika. In Umineko’s case I’d say this is either Battler (as representative of the human side, and would be what Battler/Bernakstel sees) or Beatrice (as representative of what the fantasy side presents.
I wonder if this means that kakera in Umineko are not as simple as in Higurashi. In Higurashi, we see simple individualized kakera, as experienced by Rika. In Umineko, this dynamic seems more complex. Here we are at the level of gameboard, which is what generates kakera. I wonder if the incongruence between Higurashi and Umineko can be explained like this. In Umineko we’re not seeing individual kakera, but rather something more akin to crystal clusters. This is why we observe multiple perspectives strewn together, which include both mystery and fantasy layers. There are Battler’s personal experiences (akin the the individual kakera of Higurashi) but there’s also various other kakera conjoined with this, such Beatrice’s ‘fantasy narrative’ or the fantastical interpretations of people like Eva, Maria or Natsuhi. We as observers are sifting through this complex mass of information. This would also explain the lines across various TIPS where Bern/Lambda talk about Beatrice’s ‘grimoire’ being even more advanced then what they had seen before. Perhaps Beatrice, in her understanding of fantasy, was able to create even more complex kakera than existed before her inception.
I feel like I’m getting closer a complete understanding of how the metaverse as a whole works. Any thoughts?
