Discussion topic for Lion Ushiromiya, successor to the headship of the Ushiromiya family. 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.
Please keep the discussion in this topic to the Lion Ushiromiya in Episode 7: Requiem of the Golden Witch specifically.
To be honest, I was disappointed with Lion. I feel he started out as a very cool character, soft-spoken and polite and probably very intelligent, strong, pragmatic and even ruthless, or at least that’s what I thought. I thought the latter traits would be displayed more during the 7th Episode, and whilst on the first few chapters I very much liked him, he became… very dull and tedious afterwards. I felt like he was a very passive character during the whole episode, mostly getting help from Will to solve the mysteries and didn’t catch on very quick to things. Also, during the Tea Party, when he was forced to watch how the truth unfolded, he didn’t talk very cleverly to Bernkastel when he was pleading her to stop it, meaning that he wasn’t being convincing nor using his words very cleverly, not that she would stop it, but he didn’t even make Bernkastel once take offense and such. Well, maybe I am comparing this with Will’s more cool approach to Bernkastel, though probably not. Anyways, I’ll be nice and stop here, I don’t want to turn this into something negative, but overall, with the introduction of a very intelligent young man and somebody who was good at most things and was even chosen to be the next head, I expected so much more from him. 
I Äşiked that about Lion though, because it showed how sheltered they were to a real cold reality. They grew up loved and raised to be a proper head of the family. Polite, courteous, gentle hearted, intelligent/well read, and so on. They were raised with virtually no real problems or issues to face, again, leaving them a bit sheltered and naive, which their reaction to the events about Bernkastel and Will in surprise or even annoyance quite natural to me for their character.
I feel like Lion was overwhelmed with everything and naturally so. Up until Ep7 we the reader had gone through a very wild few Eps and begun to chew on all the mysteries for quite a while. But Lion was a bit more like us, the reader, back in Ep1. Everything was quite surprising and sudden, being thrown into a different world, especially for Lion one involving your own family, I liked that their character didnt suddenly cleverly react or know how to react or solve things with more tact, since it showed their humanity - an outsider to the many worlds we the reader and other characters had experienced/known.
And also, as a perfect foil to Beatrice. Who is, quite clever, ruthless, boastful, pompous, flashy, a complete opposite to Lion.
Lion and Beatrice have the same origin point. It can be said theyre two sides of the same coin, but the coin we saw had had its “heads” up the whole time with the “tails” buried in the ground until Bernkastel found the coin and flipped it over. The two images are completely different but with the same base (the coin, the origin point)
It was very beautiful writing of Ryukishi in my opinion to do this. The contrast is wonderful. Lion is just Lion, but Yasu had become Beatrice, Shannon, Kanon, and created her whole world of magic - the Golden Land - from her different life and experiences. Her personality is from all of her own experiences, not Lions. And Lions is from all of their own experiences - a usual, loving, warm, sheltered, privileged life, raised to be the heir of an incredibly wealthy family. The contrast between how Lion reacts to all the events versus how we came to know and love Beatrice (and by extension Yasu) is incredibly impactful. It raises a lot of discussion as well in regard to nature vs nurture and how people change depending on the world around them
(Similar mention in Saikoroshi hen of Higurashi, where there was comparison to the flower that grew in a green house (like Lion) vs the flower that grew wildly and weathered storms (like Beatrice) and that one cant judge, as a human, what was better or worse - even Lions world ended in tragedy)
Well, you don’t necessarily have to have gone through a lot of hardships throughout your life to know how to respond to cruel people, especially if you’re intelligent, you should be clever enough to know how to confront them with little or no experience. And since he was even chosen as the next head, he should’ve been clever enough or had experience with such things, going into the business world, though him being chosen as the next head might just be Kinzo’s blind reasoning, though him being good at most things in his life might suggest otherwise. Though I do agree with you in regards to Lion being the other side of the coin and being the completely opposite version of Beatrice, which definitely makes for an interesting different point of view on their character.
I think the idea is that Lion didn’t experience as many hardships as Beatrice/Sayo and as a result he was more…fragile? As a person who had never experienced hardships in his life, I could see why he would be easily overwhelmed by bad things because he spent his whole life in an ideal world.
Lion is certainly intelligent, but there is only so much stress you can take before you are overwhelmed by all the pain and misery, before you crumble.
I’m 99% sure Kinzo was being blind when making Lion the Head. Lion is good at certain things and intelligent, but he lacks the life experience.
I really, really love Ushiromiya Lion. I love their sarcastic, harsh attitude in the beginning, and I love the journey they take from being someone who’s honestly sort of a snobbish jerk to being someone who, while still a bit sharp-tongued, understands and appreciates their life with a new perspective.
I also feel really, really bad for them.
Like, “Okay so you had an overwhelmingly high chance of living a life that would result in absolutely everyone on this island dying by your hand because your grandfather is actually also your father and your mother would’ve literally pushed you off a cliff as an infant if you had been just a tiiiny bit less lucky”.
Nobody should hear about such a horrible alternate reality, especially when the chances of it happening are so incredibly large.
What I really enjoyed is that they learned to take it as a lesson, and that by the end of Clair’s story, they seemed to truly have developed a new understanding of life.
That story was something forced on them by someone with horrible intentions, but they managed to make it into a necessary thing that improved their worldview.
I like Lion very much! He’s a sweet kid, and I think he’s more like Beatrice than you would think.
I would argue that those qualities could also apply to Lion but in different, more subtle ways. For instance, we see Lion can be really pompous in his treatment of Will and I wouldn’t sell him short in terms of cleverness and intelligence. He’s no where as near as manic, megalomaniac, and histrionic as Beatrice, but comparisons can be made.
Could he perhaps be seen as a synthesis of Beatrice and Sayo? (with just a bit of Kanon thrown in there, as far as gender identity complexes go)
Bless @Karifean for making this thread because now I can cross post my feelings on Lion and Lion’s miracle fragment.
My theory is essentially that Lion is a projection of Sayo’s speculation as to what her life may have been like if she was accepted by Natsuhi. He’s not exactly an imaginary friend, but a character she created to flesh out a fantasy of an alternate life. This was my reasoning:
Lion is Sayo’s dream. He is the impossible, improbable life where she grew up as the family head and was cherished by her relatives. We know that Sayo, at no time, looked like the blonde Yasu presented in the manga or Lion. We can speculate that Lion resembles Beatrice because in a perfect world, Sayo should resemble the mother she deems is the epitome of female beauty.
However, even in this idealistic “miracle fragment”, Lion meets a tragic end during the 1986 family conference. Although this could be attributed to the craziness of his bloodthirsty relatives, this very detailed post outlines why events in Lion’s world couldn’t possibly line up with the events in Prime.
I believe that Lion’s death in the miracle fragment is symbolic of Sayo’s belief that her fate was inescapable. Although envisioning Lion’s world may have begun as a soothing fantasy, it grew warped as the 1986 conference approached. When speaking to her Beatrice persona, Kanon asks why she hasn’t declared her headship. Beatrice answers that the relatives would show their true colors and nothing would be left to Sayo except her own ruin. If Sayo truly believed her succession would be so disruptive, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that even in a world where she was raised by Krauss, there would still be conflict over her assuming headship.
After all it’s: “Ever since the day I was born, I’ve never been given a chance for a happy life”– NOT “Ever since Nappi threw me off a cliff––” No matter how good her prospects, Sayo thought her future was set.
Some points I think are worth consideration:
Willard strikes me as a fantasy version of Battler or perhaps Sayo’s ideal man. He seems to possess the best qualities of George and Battler and has a code of chivalry to boot (“You’ll come back on a white horse and rescue me? Like a knight?”). And what is the most idealistic quality of Willard? He leaves and comes back to save Lion from his fate.
Lion’s gender identity. Sayo seems to have a confused idea of gender because of her injury, but Lion does not possess an injury and he seems to be more confident about navigating the world as a person with an ambiguous gender. Could he perhaps be a dream where Sayo can have a fluid gender identity without societal pressure…?
Additionally, Will’s readiness to accept Lion as a companion despite his ambiguous gender is another ideal situation Sayo would dream of. Sayo notes her inability to fulfill normative gender roles. Will holds no expectations, so she can’t “disappoint” him.
Terrible that Battler still doesn’t make it in time 
Sayo must have really, really thought her chances of living her best life were slim.
That’s what I feel about Lion from a mystery perspective! Let me know what y’all think 
Oh for sure! Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t intend to say Lion was more naive (Though I recognize reading my reply now, it can be read that way). But rather that, for example, I was putting myself in Lion’s shoes to garner perspective -
For example, Lion does get snarky, but they are not quite ruthless or clever as in the sense Beatrice is.
If I were raised like Lion, even learning or trained to deal with those in the business world - training is one thing, but actual experience face to face with such persons is different. Remembering Lion as well is only 19 years old and up until that point had no such outer world experience, there is a sense of innocence around them.
Especially being faced with characters we are introduced as having quite a worldly experience and background, such as Willard with his experience in the SSVD - and then Bernkastel herself who is incredibly old in the sense of a witch and a being higher in a realm above humans, and experiencing various worlds.
For anyone, meeting or interacting with these two would be quite bewildering. And in fact I feel Lion handled it quite well and realistically given their position. If Lion immediately knew how to handle or talk to them, or was able to be one step ahead of them in attitutude and knowledge - it would feel wrong and unrealistic to me.
I love Lion for being that kind of down to earth character. I didn’t mean to say they were naive or unintelligent, but that they are very down to earth and realistic for handling/interacting with the events as they unfolded. Lion’s snark and cheekiness is evidence they are not a pushover or anything, but to become kind of like an Erika character with no prior interaction to the meta world or any being or person even rarely beyond Rokkenjima itself, I feel Lion was quite well written there.
The world of witches in Umineko also I wanted to mention/examine. In a sense, yes you don’t need to have gone through hardships or trauma to know how to deal with cruel people, but it does not mean Lion didn’t handle them well (or broke down or cried) but in the sense they were quite shocked or confused, or responded with snark to them, not exactly knowing how to respond since most of their life had been absent of real-life examples of cruelty, whereas Yasu had experienced it a lot more, and developed into her various selves, mainly Beatrice.
We know in Umineko, the birth of witches is somehow tied to a striking event, commonly a form of trauma or hardships (this is true for Bernkastel, Beatrice, Maria, Ange-Beatrice, and possibly Lambdadelta as well), Yasu opened her psyche to a world beyond that of humans - the world of witches. When faced with Lambdadelta (who honored /recognized her as a witch), her attitude towards Lambdadelta made more sense in that she was used to dealing with those who were more aggressive or against her. Combine this with the power /knowledge of a realm of witches in the meta world, gives Yasu /Beatrice an advantage with a kind of “broader” view than Lion, attributing to her ruthlessness and confidence in the events on Rokkenjima. Whereas Lion never experienced or had gone beyond into the “World of witches” making their character act in contrast to how Beatrice would have been, I feel.
Also like @AMF mentioned, by the end of Ep7 Lion had been introduced to the world of witches in a sense, and gained a new perspective and understanding, which I also really appreciate to see that development along from the beginning of Ep7 to the end of it in contrast is very interesting.
I hope that made sense! ;; 
I don’t see Lion as a projection of Sayo’s speculation, otherwise we would have seen him somehow within the many fantasy characters that exist inside Sayo’s imagination. Furthermore, I think it would be impossible for Sayo to imagine a version of her that has lived a happy life because for Sayo, at least in my opinion, that seems like something that is unreachable.
I think Lion exists as a legit possibility in one of the fragments.
In my eyes, Lion’s death was less due to Sayo’s belief and more due to the fact that the harsh reality is that the Ushiromiya family is fucked up and that Lion’s life isn’t as ideal as he imagined it to be. Lion was really naive to think everyone would have easily accepted him as the new Head of the family.
HOWEVER, if we had confirmation that episode 7 was another message bottle written by Sayo, then I could easily believe that all of it was Sayo believing that even if she didn’t fall off the cliff and led an ideal life, it would all eventually turn to crap.
His character kinda end up going nowhere sadly, ep VIII’s manga does a better job with him, but his presence in Ep. 8 felt almost an afterthought and his ending with Will a joke. They never really resolved his situation despite the fact I can’t imagine a situation like Ep. 7’s tea party happening in his world.
I did really like him and his dynamic will Will though. As for “Is Lion real?” Well, if you accept the meta-world and the world of fragments, I guess he is.
There are few things about Will and Lion’s characters that went wrong after EP7.
Those who were around back then, might remember that the reactions on the Japanese forums about Yasu’s gender and everything about it were pretty bad. You could see there a lot of hatred for the idea that “Beatrice is a man”, and Ryukishi recieved a lot of ugly negative reactions about it.
I kind of believe he decided to revise a lot of things in EP8 to avoid anything that centered Will and Lion in order to avoid the fire. Ryukishi started writing EP8 only 3 months before the deadline despite having 6 months or so, so many believe he made changes because of the ugly reactions. I kind of feel it was confirmed after releasing so much internal information in the manga later when “the fandom was ready” if you can see it this way.
In fact, he even said he drafted away some idea of “Black Will” coming as Bern’s piece in EP8, which could’ve put a lot of light on Will and Lion as characters, but they were selved away.
I do like to think of some aspects in Lion’s character though, especially as a roleplayer.
For example, I kind of believe that Lion’s “perfection” and the whole “perfect child” behavior comes from a subconscious need to make Natsuhi love him as an adopted child (something that happens sometimes even when the child doesn’t know he is).
I think that deep inside, even if not being aware of it, he was afraid Natsuhi would love him less or reject him, so he made sure to be a flawless child for her (while Jessica could slack off over it sometimes).
Do you have a source for this, or is this a rumor/your imagination? Or by deadline, your not referring to the 6 months between EP7 release and EP8 release? Or by started writing, you meant producing the finalized novel? Otherwise the time-frame your suggesting is basically impossible.
I read about it LONG ago in few disscussions and they sourced it for all I remember, but I have no idea where I can find it by now, it’s from back around 2012 and many of the accounts/places relevant already deactivated or long gone.
I do remember it was brought up and was suggested to be the reason some parts of EP8 were a little rushed and how he added/fixed it in the manga later.
You don’t need to sound so attacking though- 
I wonder how many negative reactions he did expect, given the anguish Yasu felt about her situation and the type of people that read VN. But I take that even if he did expect them, it’s another thing too see people hating on your character for the same thing that you are pointing out is causing her pain.
It’s true that I could make it sound nicer