Umineko - Rosa Ushiromiya Character Discussion (Full Series Spoilers)

07th Discussion
#1

Unless I accidentally skipped over the thread, there’s no discussion thread centered around Rosa. I think the youngest Ushiromiya sibling is one of the most fascinating characters in Umineko, so I’m going to try to fix that now. ^^

What are your thoughts on Rosa? Do you think of her as a vulnerable little Woobie that you want to hold and protect because of all the pain she’s gone through, or do you hate her for how abhorrently she treats Maria? For those interested in Psychology, does she seem as though she exhibits Borderline Personality Disorder symptoms, or is she more of a PTSD case (or neither, or both)?

I love the long portion of episode 4 that’s all about Rosa and Maria. It’s so gritty, so nuanced, so intelligently written and true to life. It’s clear that Rosa is just as wounded as those that she’s inflicting wounds upon, and I could read about her relationship with Maria forever without getting tired. I wonder if she would have mellowed and healed with age, and if the present day mid-sixties Rosa would be a completely different person from who she was as a young lady. No way to ever find out, sadly. Her story ended when she was still at her lowest.

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#2

While usually I recommend the Umineko anime as a good watch because of how bad it is, please don’t watch it yourself. I’m worried you will die from how badly portrayed Rosa is in the Rosa Maria scenes

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#3

In the case of Rosa, the manga gives both her and Maria closure in their relationship together. That she treated Maria as her older siblings had treated her. It was a really touching moment and since I’m in the camp that everyone is still happy in the afterlife of the Golden Land, Maria gets to spend the rest of eternity with the good witch.

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#4

I think Rosa was a victim yes, and that ultimately she propagated the cancer that is within the Ushiromiya family. I felt that part of her was very human and that that her flaws were understandable. That being said, given how the likes of George, Battler, Jessica, and even Maria turned out, I think Rosa could have moved past her own upbringing and was a better mother.

While they may be happy in the Golden Land, it still is tragic that it required the Golden Land for such a possibility exists. I just pity and yet at the same time admonish Rosa.

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#5

We should still acknowledge that Rosa is an abusive parent and nothing in her background can excuse the way she treats Maria. Rosa was a victim of her parent’s and sibling’s abuse. She is most likely mentally ill, and she suffers from the trauma of Beatrice II’s death.

Rosa is a very complicated character who has the unfortunate fate of never being really understood by anyone. Her siblings think she’s an airhead, but she’s actually very cunning. She performs exceedingly well during episode 2 as an accomplice, she is the only other person besides Eva to solve the epitaph, and she has no qualms with coolly manipulating Eva in prime, even after her brother and his wife were brutally murdered.

This makes it all the more upsetting how she abuses Maria (She even notes at one point she hits Maria above her hairline, so bruises won’t appear on her face and gives her daughter specific rules so she won’t be caught leaving her home alone for days!! talk about cunning!!).

That being said, her actions don’t match with her goals. She wants to be a good mother to Maria, but she actively takes steps to worsen the relationship between herself and her child. She claims men won’t want to marry her once they discover she has a child, but in EP 4, we find out this is a complex of Rosa’s fabrication. The man she’s with even asks her to look after Maria more. We can probably deduce that the Rosa we see getting gored by Maria and Beato is a one dimensional representation of Rosa (a manifestation of her “black witch” persona that Maria and Beatrice developed together), but I can imagine her saying those things to Maria. If you say things like that out of anger, you can’t take them back, so it doesn’t matter if she didn’t really mean them.

Rosa is not as much of a victim as we may think, but I imagine she thinks of herself as more of a victim than an abuser, even when she’s beating her daughter. Rosa can see her behavior as flawed, but she makes no steps to change it. She was only able to repair the relationship with her daughter in the Golden Land which is incredibly unfortunate… but that’s what Umineko is about, after all. People who are too reluctant to change in life, must do so in death so they can move on from worldly attachments.

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#6

That’s a wonderful way of putting it. I totally agree with your take on Rosa. We can’t excuse her actions as a momentary lapse of judgement where she let her emotions run away with her, she’s well aware of how poorly she treats Maria and how wrong it, hence why she thinks ahead about how to hide evidence of her abuse.

In her only defence, Rosa doesn’t abuse Maria because of who Maria is as a person, but because of what Maria represents: a walking and talking reminder of her failed relationship. She isn’t attacking a person as she sees it, but a manifestation of her failures. This might be of scant comfort to Maria, and Rosa is still a terrible person for doing so, but it’s the only excuse she has.

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#7

I acknowledge the surface child abuse that Rosa is known for, however I would like to offer the feeble 6 pts of love vs 84 pts of hate as even Rosa deserves a heartful defense.

While Rosa was shown to take a reasonably expensive vacation with one of her lovers (Hokkaido crab buffet, which might only be the $80-100 variety), I’d like to present evidence that Rosa does indeed have to work hard to just get by:

  1. Rosa has yet to clear the debt from Maria’s dad who skipped town, after 9 years…

  2. Above suggests that Kinzo has not given more then token support to Rosa if even that

  3. Rosa and Maria live in a small 2 bedroom apartment (probably rented, otherwise the apartment would’ve been claimed for her debts)

  4. No one knew about Alta Rosa as stated by Ange

  5. Rosa’s company take jobs as small as a consignment unpopular dolls. She even had to sew some herself…

Next although EP4 has Rosa admitting that she hates Maria, this does not undo the points when she says she loves Maria. Just because one part of her heart rejects Maria does not stop another part from accepting her. While the story on the surface puts emphasis on the negative opinion of Rosa based on circumstantial evidence and outsider interpretation, we can’t assume that the face value is all there is to it, ie:

  • Rosa “admits” that she only attended all of Maria’s sports days and etc to keep appearances. However this is an interpretation of the fact that “Rosa attended all of Maria’s school events” with a subjective negative view. This could just as easily be seen as Rosa wanted to cheer her cute daughter on at school

The train candy scene in EP2 is also like that, the subjective interpretation. “A passenger witnessed Rosa fighting with Maria. When she tried to intervene by giving candy to Maria, she was rudely refused by Rosa. Rosa slapped Maria.” This is shown as Rosa enraged by being embarrassed by Maria’s behavior. However it is also possible to say that Rosa was enraged because she was over-anxious about Maria’s present and future challenges.

While many “observers” would claim that is BS, I’d like to present a real life example of how the observed event lead to a completely unfair judgement by the masses (https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/video-macau-woman-abusing-elderly-mother-public-shared-widely-hong-kong-netizens/).

Someone filmed a woman hitting her elderly wheel-chaired mother repeatedly. The net opinion immediately demonized the woman as a savage, cruel bitch. Later a reporter went to dig up more dirt to sell the story while it was hot. Only in this tiny article, that probably wasn’t read by a fraction of the “net judges” did the truth come out. The woman had gave up her marriage and her own life to care for her two parents who had become disabled. For 13 years she had worked double shifts to make ends meet while rushing home to physically care for her parents. That day, her mother had wanted to give up on life and her daughter exploded on her. Nobody acknowledged the years spent by the hard working, self-sacrificing daughter; only judging the seconds captured on film. The reporter was terribly ashamed at his premature conclusions going in. Truly without love the truth cannot be seen.

Therefore we cannot determine Rosa’s full relationship with Maria with only the few bad incidents presented to the public, while ignoring whatever made Maria say “Ange, what are you trying to do to Maria’s happiness?”. Ange only presents the pages which support her view; alot of pages are flipped by without acknowledgement. Thus I suggest that while Rosa certainly had hurt Maria at times, there must have been other times where they loved each other that were not presented or subjectively overwritten.

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#8

The very first time I experienced Umineko, which unfortunately was with the not-well-done anime incarnation, however badly the characters were portrayed, I was very much drawn to Rosa for some reason. I may even say that she was one of my favourite characters during my first experience with Umineko, and I still like her even now. Now, this may make me look strange, as Rosa is quite the notorious character, but I was really drawn to the mess she is. She was so flawed, but had so many different aspects to her that contradicted one another yet perfectly consolidated to create who Rosa is at the same time, too. Honestly, I don’t see her as much of a victim, well, I haven’t finished Umineko yet, but I’ve read all the episodes except for the last one, so I can surmise that most of Rosa’s character has been shown to me. I feel like she mostly didn’t have much support, or any solid relationships, with her family and socially in life. But I just really like how strong and cunning and intelligent she is after being shown as a volatile and violent person, and somebody unstable is rarely those things together with their instability. She was so damaged yet so strong inside at the same time. I don’t know, just keeping her strength and intelligence while falling apart is very interesting to me. On another note, I really like how intelligent she is, and how very subtly she uses her intelligence, leaving an impression on the others she shows it to for it and continuing to be so soft-spoken with them. Anyhow, however much of a mess she is and even though her treatment of Maria is reprehensible, there are characters who somewhat compensate for that by having very good characterisation, and Rosa is definitely one of them.

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#9

Never before has there been a character I’ve been more unsure of. She is the poster child of “characters I’m unsure how to feel about”. Every other character in the game, I can say whether I like, hate, or love to hate them. Rosa is the only one that I don’t know, and that’s not a terribly common thing to happen. Usually, my opinions on characters are completely defined, but Rosa switches between love and hate every time she opens her mouth.

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