Discussion topic for Kinzo Ushiromiya, the elderly family head.
Feel free to discuss the entirety of Umineko without [spoiler] tags, but please tag references to outside works, providing adequate context in parenthesis. This topic will contain massive spoilers, so if you have not finished reading Umineko yourself proceed with caution.
Kinzo is a really interesting character, because only only ever see him through the lens of other people. This is true to some extent for every character, as the way they are portrayed is based on who the in universe writer is, as well as by the perceptions of general public in the future, but it’s especially true for Kinzo.
Kinzo is dead before the start of the story. Every scene with Kinzo in it is a lie, a falsehood, something shown to the readers to give them a specific perception. Kinzo comes across as a larger than life character, because that is how people see him. Kinzo is intimidating to his children, and by extension to his grandchildren. We are constantly told about his madness and eccentricity, and then the scenes that show him only reinforce this concept.
However, we also see Kinzo’s actions and words reshaped to suit the present need. Whenever Natsuhi has a scene alone with Kinzo he is strict yet kind, and shows his appreciation for her. However, this is just the way she has chosen to remember Kinzo, and is not truly the way he treated her in life. Battler is able to maintain the illusion of Kinzo in episode 5 by providing him a crazy escape route that the adults “Wouldn’t put past father.” Kinzo is a legend, a tall tale, a remembrance of the more extreme parts of a real man.
Episode 8 brings the focus back onto Kinzo as a human, as a parent, and as a grandparent. Battler’s portrayal of Kinzo to Ange seems radically different from how he was shown in previous games, but that doesn’t make this Kinzo any less valid. People fixated on the suspicious, crazy, radical elements of Kinzo’s life and personality and painted him as a eccentric old man who would performs satanic rituals and forsake his family. Battler is reminding us that Kinzo was not always like that, that he had his moments of kindness and that he cared for his family.
Episode 7 also gives some fantastic insight into Kinzo. His relationship with Beatrice Castiglioni, his relationship with his daughter, and how his regrets drove him to madness. Kinzo’s story is a tragic one, and it’s pretty much the only example of incest being handled with proper care that I can think of in any Japanese media. What is even more fascinating is how so much of Kinzo’s tragedy is echoed in Battler’s journey and his relationship with Beato. Especially with his interactions with Chick Beato in episode 6.
Kinzo serves many roles in the story. A red herring, leading the reader to suspect an occult ceremony. A tragic figure that indirectly brought about all the tragedies of the story. A Legendary man who’s actions and words are larger than life. A literal manifestation of unreliable narration. A prime example of the views of the future overwriting the truth of the tale. A loving grandfather who is sadly misunderstood. A mirror for Battler and his journey. And of course a hammy as hell family member who makes every scene he is in more entertaining.
Ah, Kinzo. What a fascinating individual. For all intents and appearances, he’s pretty much the Gendo/Citizen Kane of Umineko.
I admit, I didn’t think much of Kinzo when I first read Umineko. Thought he was nothing more than a bizarre old guy who had a really creepy fixation on his wife. And of course, this impression of him only served to grow as I progressed.
Though I will admit, on my second re-read, I found Ushiromiya Kinzo to not just be some meme character, but a fully complex and three dimensional character whose characterization almost seems to derive from classic novels such as Frankenstein.
I won’t really elaborate, since I’m quite tired, but I do find Kinzo to be quite interesting and his many parallels with Battler (even outside of EP6) to be really interesting and well done. Truly Battler is Kinzo 2.0. Or at least a Kinzo who managed to not succumb to any wicked deeds and sins. Though I will say that I did find his behavior towards Chick!Beatrice to be kinda selfish and gross-even if it end up making me like his character more.
Edit: Y’know, after watching a couple PH mmvs, I wonder what Bice’s life with Kinzo was like after the massacre.
I have a question, was it only implied that Kinzo massacred everyone in the Rokkenjima base during WWII? Cause I think that even if the explosives had been gathered in one area to erase the evidence, it could be that he was just trying to erase the memory and was also being pragmatic as a soldier.
Like the thought of Kinzo premeditating killing everyone just to keep the gold and Beatrice kind of irks me. I’d like to believe Kinzo was a semi decent guy even if his view of the past is extemely rose tinted.
As far as I remember, I thought it was the Japanese and Italian soldiers who killed one another in the fight for the gold. Kinzo just tried to keep his head down and managed to survive the carnage.
As far putting all the explosives in one place, I thought that was just mainly a practicality issue as it was easier to store such dangerous content in one location rather than many? In terms of using them, the only times I remember he talked of that was for those insane egomaniacal moments where he thought he’d only be able to come up with a solution if he put himself under extreme pressure again, setting himself the task of finding a solution before the clock struck midnight with a bang.
It wasn’t hinted that Kinzo massacred everyone as much as it was implied that it was Kinzo who convinced Lieutenant Yamamoto to steal the gold. At least that’s the case in the VN since it was, apparently, sort of confirmed in the manga that it was Kinzo who started the massacre (haven’t read that part yet so I can’t say if it’s correct or not).
Well, there was the red guts scene in EP7 that implied Kinzo was the one to suggest that the Japanese steal the Italians gold and was even reprimanded for it. And I don’t really know why he would suggest that other than to keep the gold/Beatrice all to himself.
I just don’t like that scenario for several reasons-one being that it really ignores the heart.
Would you happen to know where that part was? I don’t ever remember coming across it.
Have no idea sorry, just read it on Tv-tropes. I’ll read through Ep 7 and 8 and see if I find anything.
In the VN there’s only the guts scene as far as I remember.
The manga has a brief part about it in the EP8 Confession chapters.
Basically the skeletons of the soldiers were all found just kind of piled up in one of the underground rooms.
The conclusions Sayo draws from this don’t favor Kinzo, though I guess it technically doesn’t confirm what really happened, either.
What I find rather interesting is that Genji never corrects Sayo about their interpretation of the event. So while it’s still not confirmed it feels like Kinzo was, in some way or another, the one to instigate and maybe complete the massacre.
I just read the scene. The part where Kinzo is all bloody holding Beatrice with all his dead comrades is pretty much just Sayo speculating. Genji’s silence after Sayo’s questions could either be an admission of Kinzo’s guilt or that he genuinely doesn’t know what happend and can’t really give her a definitive answer.
Personally I think its the latter as Genji says in that chapter that he only heard about the incident. He likely speculates the same thing that Sayo did but because he was never there he can’t say for sure. And Genji is the last person to be spreading those kinds of rumors.
Though it does make me wonder why he would instigate the slaughter.
The Umineko page on TvTropes is horrible so I wouldn’t put any stock into it.
I’m curious, what do you guys think of the various parallels between Kinzo and Battler? I know that Genji was the first one to bring up how alike the master and Battler were, so I’m wondering just how alike you guys think the two were and if there were any moments during the novel that made you agree with Genji or not.
Hmm, maybe that has to do with how Battler and Kinzo shape different important aspects of the story. For example, Kinzo is the catalyst of Umineko’s tragedy, with being Lion’s father and whatnot and not taking care of his child properly, albeit he tried. Battler on the other hand, is the one who treats Beatrice/Lion with love and understanding, becomes their friend and helps them become a better person in the meta world, thus taking Kinzo’s twisted series of events and like the latter was the catalyst for them, Battler is the catalyst for whatever small miracle or good ending can be created from them. Another similar parallel may be that like Kinzo used to be the head of the Ushiromiya family in the past, and has dictated many events that lead to the tragedy and Battler becoming the Game Master in Episode 6 and trying to find a better outcome, makes him the main figure in all of this.
Kinzo is really interesting to me. I feel really bad for him, but I also resent what he did. Especially when it comes to Beatrice II. I have more mixed feelings about Kinzo than any other character, and that’s exactly what makes him intriguing to me. The story portrays him in a way that allows us just enough information to understand the guilt and obsession he suffers from, but not quite enough information to prevent characters’ perceptions of him from shaking our own. For me, this effect is most prominent when Sayo is drawing increasingly bad conclusions about him in the EP 8 manga, but we’re also given rather convincing images of his character based on Natsuhi’s perspective, Eva’s perspective, what Battler himself knows about him, and what the man himself says in EP 7. Perhaps none of these are the complete truth. In fact, they most likely aren’t. It’s probably more like a big conglomeration of every viewpoint, giving us the obsessive, sad, misogynistic wreck known as Kinzo that I honestly would love to see happy in a different life. (AU fic time.)
I suppose if we’re talking about Kinzo it’s inevitable, but I have to warn I’m going to be mentioning incestuous rape.
I haven’t read enough of the manga to draw conclusions about manga-specific information–
– but I really detest Kinzo. I don’t feel like the VN tries very hard to make you sympathize with him and I’m glad. Although he’s just a goofy grandpa in ep 8, the man is purely a piece at that point. In life, he was a bad person. We can work through Kinzo’s despicable actions from his earliest memories: firstly, he was partially to blame for the Rokkenjima massacre during WWII. His greed was limmitless and he crossed boundaries to gain possession of wealth and people to suit his Desires ( ha ha ha). Regardless of how you feel about his aggressive business practices, he was certainlly aggressive toward his children and his wife. He may have been an abusive father (the adult Ushiromya’s all turned out PERFECT after all), and he was extremely misogynistic (not letting Eva attend university even though she was brilliant). I guess you could call him a product of the times, but there is evidence he treated women like objects. I do not know if Bice ever stayed in the golden VIP room, but uh… it’s a bit horrible he would want to keep his lover in a luxury dungeon. Then there’s Beatrice II. I don’t have to say more-- since no amount of spiritual retribution Kinzo inflicted upon himself could make up for what is practically tantamount to the sexual enslavement of his daughter-- but I’ll keep going up to Sayo.
Sayo clearly had a complex about her father. She envisioned herself as a combination of all three “Beatrices” (with herself included) so that lead to some alarming statements. Although Kinzo apologized to Beatrice II through Sayo, he didn’t really seem to understand how much his actions wounded his other daughter physically and mentally. To see herself as Alchemist Beatrice, she had to take on the weight of being Kinzo’s concubine. This was clearly due to the sentiment Kinzo would make advances toward her for resembling her grandmother so much. Beato associates sex with some degree of sado masochism. Her feelings that “love is lust” could extend to familial love… I would give a listen to the drunk phone call in Ep 4. She has some colorful ideas about Kinzo’s sex life which in hindsight are very upsetting.
Kinzo left a lot of broken bodies behind. I don’t think what he said and did was enough to repent for his sins at all! He never apologized to his children, only to Bice the II who he was so possessive over he wouldn’t let her leave a cage. One could even say the massacre was an almost direct result of his refusal to write a will that didn’t involve a weird murder puzzle. Seriously, what is up with that epitaph? I know it was a symbolic riddle but Grandpa was morbid as fuck. PLUS he had that crazy bomb in the basement to fuck around with. He endangered every member of his family and the servants. Awful, awful person. I’m sorry but some things you can never take back.
Everything you learn about Kinzo gets progressively worse, and he said it himself, he will rot in hell among demons.
I was looking at this thread again and was interested in this question because I have a lot of feelings about it.
I’m going to address this in terms of Battler and Beatrice because it’s the most striking parallel.
I don’t think they are really alike. The allusions to Battler resembling Kinzo start early in the game. However, Battler does not seem to possess the sin of greed which defines Kinzo’s character. I wouldn’t say he is an “incarnation” of Kinzo just like I wouldn’t say Beatrice (or Lion) is an incarnation of Bice or Beatrice II. The parallels can be uncomfortable, but I really do think representing Battler and Beatrice as “reborn” Kinzo and Bice skates past the even more uncomfortable incest implications. I feel that’s how Sayo rationalized it.
I think ep 6 really hits the nail on the head with parallels. Player Beatrice dies and in her place, and Battler actually creates a homunculus Beatrice. Virgilia even tells him to think of her as his and Beatrice’s daughter. Weird. It didn’t really reflect negatively on Battler simply because chick Beatrice was not related to him (at all), but it’s definitely purposeful. There’s a little bit of possessiveness of Beatrice reflected in Battler, but it’s… sweet. Beato and Battler seem to be more fated than Bice and Kinzo.
And let’s be honest, we all cried at “I’ll never let you go— because you’re my golden witch.”
Not even that but the fact that he said that he wouldn’t even let the broth of her corpse escape him (or something like that). That’s when you realize for the first time, that this man is truly fucked.
Hmm, I suppose if I was going by this angle-you could say that Ange and Beatrice are closer to Kinzo in terms of characterization if we were to go by greediness alone.
Eh, personally I think that EP5 and 4 are likely the closest in terms of Kinzo-Battler parallels. Though you’d have to dig a little deeper.
What do/did you guys think of the young version of Kinzo from World War II before his experiences with the war and Beatrice turn him into the unfettered madman we know and love? Of my two main Umineko buddies, one thinks that ~40 year old Kinzo was pretty dull and lacks the spice and character intrigue that he develops whenever he’s older. The other loves all Kinzos equally no matter what their age, but says that he doesn’t believe the difference between Young Kinzo and Old Kinzo is actually as dramatic as most would think - that the 1970s/1980s Kinzo was probably more mellow in reality, and that he was only a ridiculous caricature in Yasu’s writings. (I’d never considered that viewpoint before, I always just took it for granted that Young Kinzo was much closer to being sane and ‘normal’ than the post-1967 version.)
Now that I got all of my kinzo rage out, I wanna tackle a more nuanced view.
I’ve talked about this a bit with my friends.
Umineko is told through a series of unreliable narrators and Kinzo is one of the shadows of the story since he is dead by 1986
It’s highly likely Kinzo was exaggerated in the games since Yasu thinks of him poorly. It is suggested she actually admired him before she found out he was her father and grandfather. This is primarily due to the sin of incest as well as the numerous unrelated sins he committed-- including being responsible for the Rokkenjima WWII massacre which was confirmed in red. The fact that Kinzo portrayed his WWII days without this scene hints that we see a warped perspective of factual events. It’s important to remember that Theatergoing Authority only allows someone to visualize a story someone else is telling-- NOT the truth (this is why Clair’s story is suppper unreliable and near impossible to decipher without Confessions). So, we don’t even know if he was less of a raving madman or if he only portrayed himself that way.
Kinzo was severely depressed at age 40. Of course he was more mellow, he described himself as a corpse. However, once he met Bice, his outlook on life changed drastically. He suddenly wanted to live and also to conquer, and he didn’t mind who he crushed to obtain wealth. So no, I think there is a huge difference between pre-WWII Kinzo and post-WWII Kinzo… And I don’t think being so depressed you neglect your wife and children and join a war to seek death is “sane”.
The only real accounts of Kinzo’s behavior is inferred by the relatives, who hold no love for him with the exception of Natsuhi. Mellow? I think that’s doubtful. He was an alcoholic, and I certainly believe he raged quite a bit while drunk when drinking away his misery. It’s not a lie that he would go into screaming fits about Beatrice. It’s not a lie he neglected his wife and children and often raged at them. I mean, the man was willing to commit murder suicide with all of his family if he had to. I don’t see that as mellow…
Squeee, that was a joy to read, I love thoughtful analysis like that. ^^
Sometimes I do wonder about the family dynamics before World War II. I mean, I can imagine that Kinzo took care of the basics when the siblings were babies, at least, even if he didn’t have any real paternal love towards them. A lot of abusive parents do an okay job of being parents when the kids are infants, at least (yes, I realize there’s also a lot who don’t). What about after that? Sure, we know that Kinzo never truly loved his family, but did he care enough about their well-being prior to meeting Beatrice that he at least went through the motions and showed them some amount of fatherly friendliness and kindness? Whenever Kinzo meets Beatrice in 1944 and goes through his personality change, Krauss is around 10 years old and Eva is around 8. Whenever Beatrice dies in 1949, Krauss is 15-ish, Eva 13, Rudolf about 8. That’s quite a few years under the kids’ belt before Kinzo is thrown off the deep end into despair and rage. (Actually, maybe it was 1947… I can’t really remember… point stands either way.) I know that he was never worth a shit as a father afterwards, but I wonder if he ever showed the kids or his wife any warmth or kindness before that, when he was relatively mentally stable?
I’m guessing, though, that he never put forth much (if any) effort towards overcoming his feelings of indifference or treating his family with any kind of explicit affection. During his flashback in episode 7, whenever Kinzo talks about his weak sense of attachment to his wife and kids, he never shows consideration for the fact that they might have been hurting as well. There’s no expressions of guilt for feeling nothing towards a woman who, from what extremely little we know (ie just barely more than nothing), was a decent human being who loved him. There’s no worry that the kids might feel neglected or unloved. Whenever Kinzo talks about his pain, it’s entirely focused on himself alone with no recognition of the fact that the others might have been hurting, too (and I’m sure that Eva was intuitive enough to pick up on these feelings, though Krauss might have been too much of a derp to notice so long as Kinzo put on any kind of social mask).
That does lend a certain consistency to his character that unites Young Kinzo with Old Kinzo. Kinzo was probably always a self-centered turd who loved those he loved, and didn’t those he didn’t… and if you didn’t get his Seal of Approval based on whatever arbitrary criteria exist in Kinzo’s strange little mind, no amount of devotion or kind treatment could change that. Kinzo was probably always a somewhat coldhearted person. Whenever you add anger and hatred to the emotional makeup of someone who wasn’t prone to caring about others anyway, then you end up with Grandpa Kinzo.
(I know this is all a bit more obvious when taking the manga in mind with its added information. I’ve never actually read the manga, so I tend to forget his role in the Rokkenjima massacre.)
On a random note, I’d love reading some fanfics that focus on Ushiromiya family life during the 1930s or the early 1940s sometime. I think the 1930s sound interesting for the same reason that Kinzo hated the decade; given how slow, drab, and uneventful those years were, any story that focused on them would have to be personal and character-driven almost by default.