Umineko Episode 7 Full Series Spoilers General

07th Discussion
#1

Spoilers discussion topic for Episode 7: End of the Golden Witch of Umineko When They Cry. Episode 7 refers to volumes 16-18 of the manga, and was not adapted by the anime series.

This topic is intended for people who have finished the entirety of Umineko and wish to discuss this Episode in light of future events. For those who have yet to finish Umineko in its entirety, please tread carefully, because there will be untagged spoilers! Please tag references to outside works with the [spoiler] tag, with adequate context provided in parenthesis.

For those who have yet to finish the series and wish to discuss the story up to this point, please visit our Spoiler-Free discussion topic.

While this topic will serve as a general hub for discussion of the Episode, if a conversation ends up flowing in a certain direction, don’t be afraid to continue it in your own topic! Keep the “reply as linked topic” button beside each post in mind.

Umineko When They Cry General Discussion
#4

I’ve recently looked into the “time long ago” some more and it seems when Umineko first came out a lot of people were not sold on Yasu as a character because of how she was presented in Episode 7, with her motivation so centered on the ‘promise’ with Battler.

Do you guys think Episode 7 is good as it is, or should it have hinted more towards all about Yasu that can still be found in the rest of the story?

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#5

EP7 is good as is.
I really don’t understand why people were so upset, perhaps Sayo could’ve spent less time bemoaning about Battler-but that’s because Battler represents a lot of things to her including the chance for a happy life.
Not to mention, you can easily piece together most of Sayo’s character by rereading EP2, anyway.

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#6

I’m not too familiar with the part-way through discussions, but it seems to me that if someone doesn’t sympathise with what that promise meant to Yasu, then no further exposition is going to help them understand her. If you don’t understand what it’s like to be depressed, it can be really hard to understand how warped your thinking can become and how important even small gestures can become. For example, when you’re feeling depressed, that 5 minute delay your friend takes in replying to your instant message is no longer because they went off to make some tea, it’s proof that they hate you and don’t want to talk to you.

So while I can understand why some readers would fixate on Battler’s promise, what with how Beatrice claims that none of the events of '84 would have happened if not for it, it’s actually more a symptom of Yasu’s situation than a cause. She cared about the promise not because she was obsessed with white horses, but because she was in terrible pain and desperately wanted a way out of her current life. The importance she places on the promise reflects how desperately she wanted to believe it, and focusing on the details of the promise itself misses the forest for the trees.

As I already said above, I’m not sure if more exposition would have helped those who couldn’t put themselves into Yasu’s shoes, but I’d have loved to have seen some more scenes between Yasu and Battler prior to the promise. I’d like to believe they would have been cute and heart-warming, although perhaps they weren’t as special as Yasu chose to remember. There may be some wishful thinking in her memory of how perfect those moments were, and perhaps the reality of it would have been disheartening to see.

#7

Well the Confession of the Golden Witch manga chapter did help some people understand Yasu in a way they couldn’t with just Episode 7, so additional exposition does have an effect.

#8

@Karifean Please excuse me a moment while I put on my elitist hat~

There’s a difference between memorising a times table and knowing how multiplication works. A fan can memorise and recite Yasu’s explanation when its given to them on a silver platter without truly sympathising or understanding her rationale. So yes, more exposition can have an effect, but it isn’t the same as the understanding that comes with empathy.

I’m being a bit hyperbolic here just for discussions sake, I get that the additional exposition in the confession chapter did help some people truly understand her, but for me, I kind of see that more like the answer page in a maths textbook. You should already know the answer by then.

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#9

Well I get that and I agree, it’s fine that Yasu is as subtly hidden in the story as she is, but I guess my point was more that Episode 7 failed to give people the feeling that there was a well-written person like that hidden beneath the cracks at all. It’s one thing to be capable of reading between the lines to find Yasu, it’s another thing to realize that’s what you’re supposed to be doing in the first place.

I mean Ryukishi states it over and over again, that without love it cannot be seen, and that a reader and author need to have love for one another, but that can easily ring hollow at this point for someone who simply didn’t expect this kind of resolution going into it. I could easily see someone thinking Yasu simply isn’t that well-written a character “because her characterization in Episode 7 is all there is to her”.

So the question becomes I suppose, should Episode 7 have done more to hint at the fact that there is a lot more to Yasu than what we see in EP7 alone?

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#10

Another important question about EP7 that has bothered me for a long time: How did the tragedy even occur in Lion’s world when the guns were in Kinzo’s study and Kinzo’s alive in Lion’s world? It really seems like a sort of disconnect from everything we’ve learned (particularly since in Lion’s world, everybody is fine with Lion being the heir and there’s no epitaph for the adults to solve)? I could understand it if Bern had just decided to dial stuff up solely to ruin the hope Beato had and as such, it’s just a mesh of Prime and Lion’s world for dramatic flair. It’s bothered me for a while since one person liveblogging Umineko on tumblr had pointed out the inconsistencies. While I don’t doubt that Kyrie could murder people with a pen if she had the element of surprise on her, she’d still have to overwhelm several adults, and if we take the Goat-kun battle in EP4 as proof of Krauss’ history, Krauss would be really hard for her to take down due to his strength. The shotguns give all the adults the level playing field where even somebody like Eva who’s most likely never shot a gun before can stand a chance against physically stronger people. EP7 Tea Party, you confuse me.

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#11

I don’t think Ryukishi thought out that part too well. Just chalk it up to a “hand wave of God,” I suppose.

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#12

Can confirm from high school, this is how unreasonably sad people think.

Kyrie and Rudolf said they had something to discuss with Kinzo.

They go into his study. One of them takes out Genji, the other one takes out Kinzo. They use the element of surprise to their advantage. Now they have the guns. Problem solved.

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#13

Episode 7 is my favorite in the entire series. I love all of Umineko, but episode 7 had the most compelling impact on my mind. This episode increased my adoration for Umineko and my respect for Ryukishi. It definitely has a special place in my heart.
I’m not a fan of the meta worlds and the overall supernatural elements in Umineko, even though they are vital in telling the story as we know it. So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this episode focused more on the real world of Umineko, and the relationship between reality and fantasy. I finally observed the events from an objective perspective, and that’s a good thing because it allowed me to witness characters like Kinzo the way they truly are. Especially since we mostly see Kinzo through the lenses of other people. And I have to say, his backstory is amazingly bittersweet. That whole fragment in which we are told the story of Beatrice Castiglioni and Kinzo was masterfully executed. From the well-documented exposition to the conclusion that life is worth living & we should not forsake it based on a temporary state of being, I loved every moment to bits. Never would’ve expected that my impression of a character would shift so many times, so abruptly. From hating that malicious old man that didn’t care about his family, to being entertained by the excentric Goldsmith, to finally empathizing with him in episode 7… And all that I just said is entirely true for Beatrice, or Yasu, too, yet slightly different.
I’m someone you’d probably consider a “lazy reader”. I never felt the need to theorize and think deeper while reading. I just received what was given to me, without coming up with my own ideas (Featherine would hate me). So this answer arc… conveninetly answered a lot of my questions. I love how Yasu is the result of 2 generations that were previously scrambled together into a singular “Beatrice”. Her cryptic backstory that we were told in ep. 3, using fantasy terminology like “Homunculus” and “reincarnation” was also explained neatly. However, that was just a piece of the puzzle, and more blank spots appeared as we got introduced to the real Beatrice, or Beatrices. First of all, She’s my most precious character of all time. My love for Her is so incommensurably huge that I even consider Her to be a real person. That being said, Beato’s story is an absolute masterpiece. The beginning was especially heartwarming, because of how pure Yasu was… completely untainted by the world and oblivious to His origins. His ‘adventures’ as a servant in the Ushiromiya mansion were so lighthearted, almost out of place. At that time I still had feelings of aversion towards Beatrice for leaving the game board without giving us a clear answer, but as the story progressed, my loathing mellowed. Reading through the daily life of this pure, lost Child made me feel slightly miserable. Finding out about His mental disorders that sparked the genesis of Beatrice was shocking. That reveal made clear why Kanon and Shanon had to fight in the first place, why Kanon was so adamant about the fact that he can’t love, and furnitures’ inability to ‘love’… We learned the meaning behind the concept of “Furniture”. That also brought back a reminiscence of a scene from the earlier chapters: When Beatrice vehemently admonished Shanon regarding George, telling her that “men are only after the body” or something similar (I need to read it again, my memory is a tad hazy) Which makes sense after we learn of Shannon’s unrequited love. After 6 years, the first thing Battler did after reuniting with Shannon was to try and… fondle her. Even the chapter format in which the story was told was efficient and unexpected, making it more than evident of how important Yasu is. I’m a firm believer of the canon explanation so… no Rosatrices here.
For me, this episode is a game changer, no pun intended. It’s the most important one and it leaves us with more answers than questions. What isn’t there to love about this episode?
And the most ironic part is that this answer arc made me ask more questions than the question arc. It made me wonder more, think more, be more analytical. It made Beatrice a lot more complex, and it also approached some intellectually challenging themes such as parallel universes, infinite posibilities and how ever so slightly changes can affect the aftermath of… pretty much anything.

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#14

What a wonderful post. I’ll have to consider having you on for the Episode 7 podcast once we reach that point.

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#16

That moment when a like isn’t enough so you just have to thank the person for the post as well.

Truly amazing, nice to see someone who appreciates Episode 7 that much.

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#17

This post is honestly wonderful.
I think more secats need to recognize EP7’s greatness tbh. It’s basically the pinnacle of Umineko aside from EP3.

Oh yes, and the music is lovely as well.

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#18

That. Despite being one of those who poured exetensively over the mystery/story over the first four arcs, had it continued in the same style I doubt I’d still care about Umineko years later. EP1-4 has the foundation and quick entertainment, EP5-8 has the staying power (for me at least).

I also enjoy the contrast between the main part of the episode and the tea party. The main part giving us insight into the motive (and backstory) in a pretty indirect and tasteful way. Opposed to the mundane events and the equally mundane motive of the tea party. It always felt to me like Ryukishi asked the reader the following during the tea party: “this is what you always wanted, right?”. It also paved a way for the entire aspect of the morality of mysteries, or rather crimes in the ‘real world’ being treated as such, with the “mundane” version of the events without magic being unnecessarily cruel. (although sure, this already came up before; see Natsuhi and Erika in EP5; the “detective” side re-killing people to make sure they’re dead in EP6; although that might be more a critique of the detective archetype in mysteries)

The tea party is also a pretty neat trick to hide the real twist of the tea party (of the mysteries being written before the actual event). A lot of people lapped the tea party right up completely disregarding and forgetting the rest of EP7. Truth of the future overwriting the - yada yada yada - at work.

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#19

Indeed, the Episode - Tea Party antithesis was also apparent to me when I got to that point, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, the episode’s bulk was narrated from Yasu or… Clair’s perspective, so it’s understandable why it would be covered in a veil of mystery or simply diffrent compared to the following events.

Subtle tone shifts like this one are what remind me of how much of a genius Ryukishi is. After he made us understand the importance of Yasu through all that backstory, in the end, he depicted Him like nothing more than a helpless puppet. And arguably the most sad thing about this, from the reader’s perspective, is that we knew why! We knew why He was so impassible shortly before His death, we understood the fundamentals of Yasu’s psyche and His motive by that point. He didn’t care about the inheritance or gold… but about the message He was trying to convey to Battler. Perhaps the most outrageous thing about this is how Yasu’s death was executed. While reading it, I came to the realization that Yasu ceased to be a main character in the Tea Party. He was just a bystander, a casualty in the war of greed between the siblings. You can see that by the lack of glorification in His death. At that point we started perceiving Him through the adults’ eyes, and for them He was nothing more than a potential rival for the inheritance. Therefore he received an uneventful death… That discrepancy between the adults’ view of Yasu and my view of Yasu was so frustrating! So for me this Tea Party wasn’t exactly mundane, although I see your point.

Maybe this Tea Party served as a way to help us with Bern’s game or it was simply Ryukishi’s way to give us “what we wanted”, but not the entire truth, like you said.

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#20

Maybe mundane was the wrong word, but it was straightforward. No insane tricks, no special motive. Unlike anything Yasu ever did, the tea party was not a mystery, and unlike Yasu failure was never an option for Kyrie/Rudolf. And, well, crimes in the “real world” usually aren’t mysteries. In fact, it is much safer to just kill everyone (in the given situation of an isolated island with a bomb) instead of trying to use some clever trick to hide how one killed someone else. Look at Eva, circumstantial evidence would’ve pointed at her being the culprit purely due to being alive. Still wasn’t legally persecuted, out of lack of evidence.

You can safely ignore the next two paragraphs, but at the same time I don’t want to delete them entirely. Misunderstood what you meant with frustration:

  • Whether Yasu is the main character or not: she (yes I know, force of habit I guess; however, she seemed to be more aligned with the Shannon side than her Kanon side, see EP6 duel) definitely is the one element that tied all the other story points together. Kinzo’s backstory, creating a situation in which the events of the tea party became possible (the challenge of the witch, bringing the weapons down there), throwing out the message bottles creating the murder mystery craze that tormented Ange, etc. Her being merely scoffed at by the adults merely undermines the hopelessness of the situation she had gotten in. For once she tried to move forward, do something on her own (although what she planned was pretty… horrible, depending on how you interpret her plans)

  • … due to Umineko being a tragedy, sadly she remained a prisoner of fate up to the end. And according to Bern, even Lion suffers the same fate (it was asked in this topic why that happened: definitely one of the weaker parts of EP7, 1. it is handwaved as the adults not being satisfied with Lion being the new headship with no explanation to the reason, 2. Kinzo then handed out the riddle that he clearly came up with during the construction of the mansion believing they could never solve it in a single night, 3. ???, 4. welp).

Back to what you actually meant: indeed, that frustration is amazingly done. You spend an entire episode (and the latter part of EP6) getting to finally know the person behind the mystery, and then - even that one time she tried to do something, step forward, was wrested away from her (and in a way, the readers). Way to put us in Yasu’s shoes.

Despite liking most of what the manga of EP8 did to flesh out character arcs, the additions regarding EP5, I wish it hadn’t revealed that the EP7 TP is more or less what happened with some additions; that little remaining scrap of doubt regarding the true events was part of the charm, imo. Life isn’t a mystery, life isn’t fair.

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#21

That’s one of the reasons why I liked this episode so much. I’m the type of person who prefers to dwell in the answers rather than chase them, because I know I’d be wrong in 70% of my assumptions. So the straightforwardness/realism was definitely a plus for me. Indeed, in a real life situation it is preferable to minimize the amout of evidence that could be used against you, if your goal is to get away with it, that is.
I only read bits of the manga to refresh my memory, so I can’t pretend that I know all the differences. But if it’s one thing I really appreciate about the manga, other than the fact that it’s a wonderful adaptation, more digestible than the VN for some people, is that it delivered the objective truth.

#22

Since we’re at the tea party, allow me to ramble (and I shall ramble indeed!) on something completely different. This WILL contain some manga ep8 spoilers (well, only one thing really), so anyone who wants to avoid this might wanna sit this post out. I won’t use spoiler tags because I warn you now, mostly because the spoiler tag would make it obvious anyway what I am talking about.

Alright.

Let’s talk about the Chiesta sisters for a bit. We’ve got three, and a fourth that’s dead. The Chiesta are portrayed as bunnies and a symbol for the old shitty guns Kinzo had. Alright, let’s think back to EP4, Rosa destroyed one of the bunny figurines that Maria had, didn’t she? So that would be the dead bunny.

One of the guns has got it bad, the one Rosa initially had in the EP7 TP (oh karma!), and that Rudolf took from her (checked this just to be sure, he picks it up while he and Kyrie are discussing on what to do next). Following that, Rudolf failed to finish off George in one shot, and failed to kill Eva. Alright, I can accept that, the bad gun. Or nearly, see the end.

Kyrie however. She kills Rosa, kills Hideyoshi, then fails to kill Eva (twice even!), Yasu and Jessica (at least with the gun… shooting that is). Yasu especially is described as if a doll with its strings cut, so is unmoving. How the hell can Kyrie be such a bad shot? Are all the guns bad? Kyrie managed to kill Hideyoshi, Eva managed to hit Rudolf and Kyrie. Natsuhi and Krauss don’t count, it happened in a scuffle, even if the guns are bad it would hit. Probably the same for Gohda, Kyrie uses knives for the guest house (at least its implied).

… either Kyrie is a really bad shot. Or this really is weird. Are all the guns bad now or not? Sometimes they hit, sometimes not .Are we supposed to look with love at Kyrie, was the taking the fall (predicting that Eva would otherwise murder instead)? … after she kills nearly everyone? Just so Eva won’t do it? The only hint for that could be the thing she tried to say something after being shot. .

Eva - talks about rewriting the cat box, with Kyrie being worried about Ange
"When Kyrie heard this, blood dripped from her grinning mouth, and she seemed to say something in response. However, her voice came out only as globs of blood from the hole in her throat, not words."

Also, Rudolf ejected a test shot in the golden room. How did he not notice that the gun has “got it bad” if he knows so much about them?

Those guns and those culprits confound me.

edit: Kyrie literally says “How could I have missed you from that distance?” to Eva at their second meeting. I don’t understand either, Kyrie.

edit Slight edit to Kyrie vs. Eva 2, although it doesn’t change much. just to be precise. Sadly had to remove calling Ange to pipe it down during the movie. Many tears were shed.

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#23

That’s interesting, I never thought about how convenient that rifle was.
First things first, I’m not a gun expert so I wouldn’t know why it would miss at almost point blank range. I’m more surprised by the fact that Kyrie didn’t notice Eva survived.
I think there are a lot of reasons why it would miss: from the lack of experience, to recoil and the fact that they literally picked the guns shortly before it happened. In Kyrie’s case, she probably never touched the exact same model.

Judging by the 94’s relatively low recoil (I think) , it’s at least possible to use it unconventionally without breaking your arm, but that doesn’t mean the way Kyrie used it wouldn’t have consequences. I mean, she shot it with one arm (or at least that’s what the sprite suggests) . There’s a fair chance someone would miss by handling the gun like that. I guess this is where the manga comes into play… more visual clues.

Now, back to the bunnies. The Chiester sisters are interesting because they seem to have 2 vessels: the figurines and the rifles, and in the case of Chiester 556, they both seem to coincidentally be in the same state: broken. It’s stated in the wiki that “She shot not to kill, but to protect her allies.” And I’m pretty sure Rosa is not one of her allies, since she’s the one who broke her vessel. I also think 556 is the rifle Kyrie had, Rosa’s gun might just have malfunctioned…

It could also be the other way around: 556 is the one that malfunctioned and 00 was the rifle Kyrie used, and the reason why it missed so many times was “because” of the eyepatch, but that’s just a silly guess of mine.

Well, I’m sure the gun’s weird pattern of not hitting its targets can be explained rather easily. It’s most likely an odd coincidence. What amazes me is the foreshadowing. Using multiple, related vessels to suggest the outcome of a battle is really ingenious - Rosa broke bunny, bunny = rifle, rifle kills Rosa - And at that point in episode 4 or… anywhere before the TP, anyone who’s more analytical could’ve made a wild prediction of how the act of breaking the bunny would “affect” the future, based on the correlation between the vessels.

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