Witches (Umineko full series spoilers)

07th Discussion
#21

Really, though, that Witch Senate…
We know Lambda is a member of the Witch’s Senate (and it’s implied or confirmed that Bern is as well, since she’s stated to be able to have recommended Evatrice to become a full witch but chose not to since it isn’t her domain). And Featherine is also one. Apparently opposing a witch from the Senate, even being a Senate witch yourself, is a grave sin against the Senate and it could have disastrous consequences, so it’s a position to take seriously. Apart from that, though…

I wonder if the Witch Senate is like the Youkai Council seats in Higanbana?

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#22

I think it was less of senate vs senate and more like lambda was inhibiting bern’s actions that was under the orders of featherine, who was like the head of the senate.

also regarding the witch rankings, I think beatrice is actually a bit higher than territory but still below voyager level. lambda makes it a point how special and unique beatrice’s magic is and of course it was able to gather enough interest to someone like featherine who tried to take it in their great library. so if we rank it like 1, 2 and 3 for each level, beatrice is probably a 1.5. her magic is akin to using fragments/kakera like voyagers, though on a smaller scale. the likes of maria, eva, virgilia and ange are the level 1, or at least were until beatrice was added to their namesake. as we all saw; maria, eva and ange were still essentially “witches” way before beatrice’s power was given or shared to them.

oh yeah and I should add that in lambda’s letter, she makes it a point in hoping a bit that beatrice would be able to ascend to her level, or even go beyond her.

#23

I think Ryukishi knew people were gonna start trying to piece together the witch part of his worldbuilding and only proceeded to make things more complicated.

Because [quote=“silvercover, post:22, topic:559”]
the likes of maria, eva, virgilia and ange are the level 1, or at least were until beatrice was added to their namesake.
[/quote]

reminded me of how in EP8, Ange and EVA are considered stronger than the witches on Rokkenjima (Ange moreso to where she is considered stronger than Bern but Bern wields a blade that cuts Ange to her core). Because they’re considered witches of the future (EVA being the Beatrice from 1986 to 1998, and Ange taking on the name in 1998), which I suppose means that unlike the witches tied to 1986 specifically like Bern or Beato, they have far more possibilities they are capable of to where the other witches cannot touch them (which makes sense, since they’d know the fate of the people/thing behind the witch and could use it to their advantage). It’s just that for Ange, up to that shonen finale, she was tied down heavily by the past, and thus, Bern could easily destroy her mentally and emotionally with Red.

So, if we look out of the box, Ange and EVA, due to being witches of the future, if pitted against witches of 1986 and they aren’t just pieces on the board, could easily be maybe about 2s on the scales, 1.75 at the least? And it’s implied that had Maria lived on and was able to nourish her magic, could have soared to rank 3 alongside Featherine as a Creator.

#24

Bern and Lambda are specifically not tied to 1986, they’re voyagers. Time really has no bearing on them. Ange just pulled some protagonist tier bullshit to be able to fuck over Bern.

#25

Yeah, but for the sake of EP8, they’re considered witches of the past (even though we’ve seen Bern go to 1998 quite a few times, so it might just be a writer’s choice to have them pegged as witches of the past, so the battle isn’t essentially The Ballad of Edgardo in VN form).

But that IS to be expected, especially by Ryukishi, who loves shonen endings. You always have the hero recover in the eleventh hour because the story HAS to end and if the antagonist wins, the protagonist has to go back and defeat them to gain something like peace of mind. (And to be fair, though I don’t care for Bern, Ange’s endgame power IS very “okay I get it but it’s still messed up and pretty broken.” It’s literally denying reality so hard that the villain gives up because they can’t get through to that, not exactly a good message).

#26

Isn’t Erika technically Bern’s piece? If so, couldn’t Bern name her whatever she wanted?

#28

From my view, witches seem to be entities basically that have a lot of roots in real world spirituality. In the concepts of humans ascending (or in Lambdadelta’s case as she explained it, descending) into their consciousness, or in simpler terms developing their spiritual senses and awareness, whether its through trauma (as for many of the witches, such as Beatrice, Bernkastel, Lambdadelta, Ange - even Maria) or through other means such as Featherine and Virgilia, and Eva Beatrice (swollen with pride and drunk on the occultic world of her Father, Kinzo) or in Battler’s case, a form of enlightenment

Like spiritual things, witches are connected to the psyche of their originator. Bernkastel for example, while a witch from outside of Rokkenjima, was born from Rika’s trauma. And its not that witches are necessarily coping mechanisms or personalities as an antifantasy sense, but an evolution of consciousness into a world beyond the physical, that the spirit of the person evolves into beyond their own physical self, if that makes sense.

The meta world reads a lot like the astral world to me, and witches a lot like a spiritual self, who exists in the astral/spiritual world but connected to the physical world (and can incarnate /interact with the physical world, kind of like what “pieces” are) or that a “piece”, like Battler, can ascend into this world and be conscious of it, like an astral traveler.

There’s more to it but I dont want this to get too long, but essentially witches, and the meta world, seemed very much like that to me. Especially since the meta world goes beyond Beatrice and her own magic, and there are outsiders with no real world counterparts. We know the Siestas and 7 Sisters, and Sakutaro, but not the SSVD or Eiserne Jungfrau. Bernkastel and Lambdadelta are also outsiders, and especially Featherine and all of her servants. As Arietta mentioned as well its confirmed Alice is another witch outside Umineko, so I believe the meta world and witches could be a metaphor for basically the spiritual world in the WTC universe. (And that being said - to a Japanese person the spiritual isnt a seperate, far off place from the physical, but rather the other side/inherently connected to the physical world - like two sides of the same coin) which would also fit into that concept of the meta world.

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