I’ve often pondered on what ‘magic’ really means in the context of 07th Expansion. It seems to me like a certain jargon exclusive to the Umineko universe. The term ‘magic’ and all related jargon are just a lens through which we can interpret certain unexplainable phenomena. If this were a sci-fi story, we could easily replace the term magic with ‘grey goo’ or ‘psionics’, and it would accomplish roughly the same thing.
Witches are the only constant here. Witches in the 07th Expansion universe represent beings that exist on a higher (or by Lambda’s metaphor lower) layer of existence to the focal ‘basic’ layers presented in each story, that we’d usually consider ‘planet earth’. The term witches and gods seems interchangeable in Ryukishi’s lore. I think the term God more accurately describes them, but I understand that Ryukishi wanted to distance himself from religious ideas of benevolent creators and all that, and instead coined his own term for these higher beings. So, it’s not a matter of ‘casting spells’ like the magic doctrine would imply, it’s a matter of bending realities to their will. ‘Magic’ is a human concept, and does not apply to real witches. I do wish he’d use a different term than ‘witches’ though, because it’s stuck with an association to that ‘magic doctrine’ I mentioned earlier. I much prefer using their ranking terms, ‘Territory Lords’, ‘Voyagers’ and ‘Creators’.
But anyway, magic is super interesting to me, because it starts raising a chicken and egg problem. I was talking about this with @Rabla, about “Where the red truth came from”, and it really is unclear. In Episode 2 it’s implied that Beatrice made it up, but in later episodes it’s suggested that the Red Truth is just an objective fact of the universe. But that got me thinking. It’s suggested that characters like Dlanor and Will are meta beings, but what if they too, together with all the demons and furniture, are all part of Beatrice’s ‘compendium of magic’? It’s as if Beatrice herself, as essentially the author of Umineko no Naku Koro ni, created all of these concepts of ‘magic’ and ‘furniture’ and ‘demons’ and ‘red and blue truth’ as mechanics of HER universe. Apart from perhaps Bern, Lambda and Featherine, it could be argued that EVERYTHING in Umineko was born from Beatrice, or should I say Yasu’s mind. She created the ‘universe’ and ‘systems’ governing that work of fiction we call ‘Umineko no Naku Koro ni’. Of course it could be argued that EVEN THE META SPAWNED FROM HER, but that gets very hairy so I prefer not to think of it like that. Maybe it could even be argued that Battler, through his association with Featherine, helped create Yasu’s universe, since ‘it takes two to make a universe’.
There is another interpretation though, and that’s something like, a shared multiverse with different ‘phases’ or ‘lenses’. Let’s take the character of Will. He’s a manifestation of Van Dine, but anime-fied and magic-fied to fit into Beatrice’s system. A real life man has become an embodiment of one concept present in Beatrice’s universe. If you take him out of Umineko, he doesn’t look anything like the Will of Umineko. And of course he can’t wield anything like the ‘Blue Truth’.
Not the strongest resemblance…
By this interpretation, if a future 07th Expansion work featured Will, he would probably be a completely different character to conform to the ‘rules’ and ‘system’ of that universe. If it’s a sci-fi story, maybe Will is a time traveller in that story. But there will still be some part of him that’s consistent between the two universes. It’s very counter-intuitive from a human perspective, since when we go to bed and wake up the same day we are still, with some minor exceptions, for all intents and purposes ‘the same person’. But what if we weren’t? What if when we went to school, our appearance and personality changed to suit the rules of that place, like maybe everything’s in black and every time we say something it appears as a speech bubble above our heads, and when we return home for the day we’re back to our old atom-filled body? Just like wearing a mask and taking it off again, but on a more fundamental level. It’s crazy, but that might be the kind of way the ‘Multiverse’ of 07th Expansion works. After all, it’s strongly suggested that many characters in Umineko do play roles outside of Beatrice’s world, but that just depends on your interpretation of how far the scope of Beatrice’s world extends. Are characters like Ronove, Will and Lambda all part of Beatrice’s world, or where does her world end and a ‘higher world’ begin? It’s up for interpretation and debate, but I don’t think questions like these on the metaphysics of Umienko and the origin of concepts weren’t something Ryukishi didn’t have in mind while writing. At the very least, he had the sanity to leave them open-ended.
Umm, did that make any sense?