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Tuxedo Catfish, you might consider checking out the manga for Episode 8. Many of the people I’ve known to be frustrated by the VN’s ending prefer it, as it adds a few scenes that contextualize things in a slightly more tied-together way and makes some of the subtext you’re missing into text. Notably, following Ange’s suicide in the City of Books, a full, first-person “confession” covering 1984-1986 from Yasu’s perspective appears, and when Ange reappears in the Golden Land, an extended sequence of the Ushiromiyas coming to terms with their sins is shown. There are also a number of scenes that are substitutes for the minigames in the original VN that give some character threads more closure. I find it loses some of the VN’s elegance and restraint (which are funny words to use about EP8), but it certainly might help clear up some of your misconceptions. I don’t even know where to begin with the idea that Beato’s suicide in the Magic End is anything less than a perfect capstone to one of the most sublime tragedies in the postmodern canon, but the manga even adds in a small scene here that might help. MegaZeroX posted:And despite how media often frames it, avoidance through jogging, meditation, and other activities can be positive, as opposed to something like drug abuse or binge eating. And in the context of the magic ending, Angie largely focuses on pursuing a passion, which is a perfectly healthy form of avoidance. Not just a passion, mind you, but actual magic that really ‘exists’ in the form of storytelling. Battler and Ange don’t avoid the past; if anything, EP8 makes it clear that both of them came to understand and be horrified by the truth of what happened on Rokkenjima. But instead of allowing themselves to be shackled to that truth, they take ownership of it, both symbolically in the meta story and in actual reality as notable authors in the epilogue. Ange recognized Maria’s original conception of magic isn’t the power of lying to yourself—it’s the power of having agency over your own narrative. Umineko pretty thoroughly covers how abuse, immaturity, and catastrophe can make this can go wrong! But Episode 8 isn’t about lying to yourself, it’s about finding a healthy way to live with the past. Through understanding, forgiveness, and atonement—through grace, even if it looks like playing pretend witches—you can transcend trauma and suffering, and come to a place where salvation/self-actualization becomes possible. These themes get lost in some of Ryukishi’s flights of anime fancy, and Tuxedo Catfish is hardly the first person I’ve seen have that knee-jerk reaction to the ending. But Umineko and all of WTC really reward close readings. Which is all to say I think Umineko is actually quite good and I would like for Ryukishi to finish playing around with his child murder anime and get back to releasing Ciconia Phase 2 ASAP.
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Mar 19, 2021 11:05
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Tunicate posted:A shorter and more heavily edited (and importantly, nonserialized) mystery probably could have tightened things up, and wouldn't have had the final summation end up sounding like a qanon post about Hilary. Probably one of my favorite posts about Umineko yet
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Sep 2, 2023 08:21
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