Last Note of the Golden Witch

安らかに眠れ、我が最愛の魔女ベアトリーチェ

Sleep peacefully, my beloved witch Beatrice

Aaand like I had hoped, I managed to finish this post just before the Famicom Detective Club remakes release next week!

A few months(!) ago, I started playing 07th Expansion's very, very long mystery visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni ("When the Seagulls Cry"), released in English as Umineko: When They Cry. I knew beforehand that playing through all eight episodes of this game would take a long time, so I decided to add a playthrough memo to the blog to write down my theories/ideas per episode and at the end of March, I also wrote a post on Umineko when I had finished the first four episodes, putting me on the halfway point. The eight episodes of Umineko are split across two story arcs: the first four episodes form the Question arc, presenting the main problems for the players to solve, while the last four episodes form the Scatter arc, which doesn't explicitly spell out the complete solution, but does provide the player with many important answers which can be used by the player to fill in the remaining gaps. In a way, this post, and the previous post on Umineko also form one set together too. In the first post, I mostly wrote about the concept of Umineko: When They Cry as a product, the basic story and the mystery elements that stood out to me in the first four episodes. In this post I'll try to look at Umineko: When They Cry more closely a piece of mystery fiction, so I'll skip a lot of the basic information regarding the games here. 

You'd best read the other Umineko: When They Cry article first if you aren't familiar with the concept yet, but to put it very simply: a series of locked room or otherwise seemingly impossible murders occur on the island of Rokkenjima, where the Ushiromiya clan has gathered for an annual family gathering. It appears the murders of the Ushiromiya family members and the servants are part of a ritual to revive the Golden Witch Beatrice and indeed, she rises as the last people on the island die. Battler Ushiromiya, one of the victims, however refuses to believe in magic and witches, which amuses Beatrice. She decides to play a game of wits with Battler: she creates a 'new' version of the closed circle murders on Rokkenjima, which Battler and Beatrice observe from an parallel universe. Beatrice's position is that the impossible murders are made possible through her magic, while Battler has to prove that these murders are not the result of magic, but committed by a real-life person. They go through this twisted game again and again, resetting the 'chessboard' of this insane fantasy mystery game again each time, with the two discussing the various murders from a meta-level, and Battler struggling every time to come up with a comprehensive human explanation for the events.

I finished the final episode about two weeks ago, but honestly, it took me a long time to sort out my thoughts on the game. Mainly, because it's really long and grand in scale. While the eight episodes form one story overall, the first four episodes Legend of the Golden Witch, Turn of the Golden Witch, Banquet of the Golden Witch and Alliance of the Golden Witch are each basically a whole mystery novel on their own. The following episodes End of the Golden Witch, Dawn of the Golden Witch, Requiem of the Golden Witch and Twilight of the Golden Witch also feature some murder mystery elements, though less elaborate and they are usually just used as a kind of case study that function as hints to solve the mysteries in the first four episodes. But even so, there's just a lot going on here, and I do have to say that if you ever want to start playing Umineko: When They Cry, you do need to plan it out it a bit because it's time consuming, with each episode taking about 8-10 hours.

This makes Umineko: When They Cry a tricky mystery story, because from the start, it simply tries to overwhelm you with sheer volume. At the end of the first episode, the Golden Witch Beatrice revives and no real explanations are given regarding the murders that occured. From that point on, the player and Battler are thrown in the game of the ever-repeating Rokkenjima murders, meaning you have the previous series of murders to solve, as well as newer iterations, as none of the murders are solved in the first four episodes. Nearly twenty people die in each iteration of the Rokkenjima murders, often in locked rooms or seemingly impossible situations because everyone has an alibi, so the number of individual murders you need to solve quickly becomes rather hard to keep track of. This wouldn't be a problem on its own if not for one characteristic of Umineko: When They Cry: writer Ryukishi07 isn't economical with words. While every scene may have a certain purpose, some only apparent with the power of hindsight, the writing is extremely longwinded, with each seperate conversation going on for like thirty, forty lines even though it'd only take four lines to convey the main message of a certain scene. So it's not just that the main murder mysteries and the relevant background stories take on a grand scale in Umineko: When They Cry: all of this is also buried in so much text it's just tiring to get through at times. Because there are so many murders in each episode, sometimes you think of a theory and want to check up on/compare to an earlier dialogue, but more than often I just didn't do it because I knew it'd mean having to dig through a haystack, even though I knew precisely what kind of needle I was looking for.

That said, the concept of having to piece the truth together by viewing various alternate versions of the Rokkenjima murders was very entertaining. While in each episode, the Rokkenjima murders are quite different, with changing victims and murder circumstances, the underlying basic story and interpersonal character relations at play remain the same: only the specific events that occur on 1986, October 4 and 5 on Rokkenjima differ each time. This means that while the player has to solve different murders each time, there are always connections between the 'parallel universes' and these allow you to solve the mystery. An event that occurs in Legend of the Golden Witch might take on a different meaning after seeing a scene in Requiem of the Golden Witch for example, or perhaps you notice something that happens in the first episode, actually turns out to be a pattern that repeats across all the episodes. Figuring out how these pieces that are apparently from different sets of jigsaw puzzles do actually fit together is something you don't often see in mystery fiction. Mystery fiction that deal with parallel universes, time travel stories, or games with branching storylines like Kamaitachi no Yoru have similar ideas at times, where stories unfold in different manners depending on a story-changing choice made, which therefore make you think about the underlying meaning of that choice. This however never happens at the scale of Umineko: When They Cry, with complete novel-length stories as its puzzle pieces. While I was jotting down my ideas for each episode in the playthrough memo, I'd always try to see how the events we saw in an episode could also apply to previous episodes, and whether I could see patterns emerging. It did actually put me on the right track, which was really satisfying. At first you have all these scattered points that seem miles away, but as you progress, you'll be able to connect all the dots and draw clear lines between them.

One of the core themes of Umineko: When They Cry is whether you give in to the fantasy solutions the Golden Witch Beatrice offers you, or whether you try to find a 'realistic' explanation. The player and Battler observe each version of the Rokkenjima murders from a parallel universe, but through a 'filter' of Beatrice, who actively tries to push her 'fantasy' solutions. The result is that as the player, you'll often see grand fantasy battles between the warriors and monsters summoned by Beatrice and the murder victims: these are the 'interpretations' of Beatrice of how the murder occured, while Battler and the player have to try to figure out how these locked room/impossible murders could've happened without interference of the supernatural. You could simply enjoy Umineko: When They Cry as a fantasy story by the way, believing in the story that witches suddenly appeared inside a room to horribly torture a victim, but I already declared we'd be talking about Umineko: When They Cry as mystery fiction here. The merits of Umineko: When They Cry as mystery fiction do definitely lie more on the overarching storyline than the individual murders though. Not that they are bad, but often a lot of options are left open on purpose when it comes to the impossible crimes. Some locked room murders are basically only "impossible" if you choose to believe that some characters aren't accomplices or lying, something often pointed out in the episodes themselves. This is usually done purposely as to not tip the balance in favor for a fantasy or mystery solution, but because many options are kept open/vague, sometimes the mystery seems to lie mostly in the fact that the reader isn't given enough specific information regarding each murder scene. Seeing how these murders eventually link together though is good though, but it's clear Umineko: When They Cry is best enjoyed at the macro level.

Umineko: When They Cry starts in an overwhelming manner, with the lengthy narrative and then explicitly showing off the 'magical fantasy solutions' of Beatrice to confuse the reader who's looking for a human explanation for the events, but as you go through each episode, you'll slowly piece together an internal logic of the game, which can be both fun and frustrating. At various moments in the story, the game will make it clear that the mystery is solvable based on the hints it'll provide and that there are certain rules it will adhere to make this a fair and solvable mystery, but it expects the player to figure out these limitations themselves. Which adds another layer of mystery to solve for the player, but which can feel a bit unfair, because the player can never be sure whether 1) the game and the player are really playing according to the same rules and 2) whether the rules won't change midway. The game has an inherent advantage from the start, so by making the rules part of the mystery too, it's only tilting the balance even further. It's unclear for example at first how 'much' of the information seen in each individual episodes actually apply to all the other episodes. It demands a lot of dedication of the reader to not only engage with the core plot, but with the meta rules too, so that's quite tricky and doesn't always feels fair.

The meta-gaming element of Umineko: When They Cry is also prominently shown with its concept of Red Truths introduced in the second episode: a statement made in red is true. Beatrice might for example show victim X being killed by a monster in a locked room, which the player and Battler can choose to not believe, but if Beatrice states in red that X was killed and The door was locked from the inside and the only key was found inside the victim's pocket, at least these facts are true and no further evidence needs to be provided to support these statements. The Red Truths are the main game-like element of Umineko: When They Cry which otherwise doesn't feature any gameplay elements which allows the player to direct interact with the mystery and, personally, I love the Red Truths. They function like third-person narration in mystery fiction, because a fair-play mystery novel should never blatantly lie to the reader in the third-person narration. Beatrice is most definitely a subjective and unreliable narrator, but any statements she makes in red are true regardless of her status. In a way, Red Truths can simplify a situation because it gives you some certainties regarding an otherwise confusing situation: by stating X was killed for example, the player doesn't need to worry about X faking their own death. Of course the Red Truths are also used to further confuse the player, as it often leads to interesting dynamics to the deduction battles between Beatrice and Battler, as Beatrice can sometimes kill off a complete theory of Battler just by making a red statement that contradicts a fundamental premise. Like Obi-Wan, Beatrice is also good at stating truths that are true from a certain point of view though, so often, you need to be careful to the exact meaning of each Red Truth. But it's quite fun to come up with a theory that manages to wiggle its way through all the various relevant Red Truths and definitely one of the best ideas of Umineko: When They Cry. It reminds of the plotting technique often shown in the logical reasoning school of mystery fiction, where a long line of reasoning changes when a new fact is introduced. In Umineko: When They Cry too, Battler and the player have to constantly adapt to new Red Truths being introduced. Sometimes you have a working theory up until the very end of an episode when Beatrice suddenly decides to make a new Red Statement that kills your hypothesis and now you have to reconsider how that new fact changes things. I think the Red Truths make this notion a lot more tangible for mystery readers, making it instinctively easier to understand how deductions can and sometimes have to change with the introduction of new facts.

It's a shame though that the game make it harder than necessary for people to approach Umineko: When They Cry's story from a mystery angle. The game introduces a lot of Red Truths starting from the second episode, some applying to specific murders, some applying to the overal storyline, but even though the game has a special menu for character profiles and so-called TIPS (extra background information), the game for some reason does not provide a kind of database or list that collects all the Red Truths for you, nor can you look up details for each crime scene afterwards. If you want to read up on specific Red Truths again, you need to be lucky and remember in which scene they were mentioned, because that's the only way to find them again  (and that brings us back to the problem of Umineko not being economical with words). For a game that so often explicitly challenges the reader to solve the mystery, it's a complete enigma why it doesn't allow the player to look up Red Truths in a simple manner, especially when sometimes you have situations where a Red Truth is mentioned that also applies to previous episodes, and it just becomes a hassle to look things up again between episodes.

Whereas the first four episodes of Umineko: When They Cry offer you the main problems to be solved (the four different iterations of the Rokkenjima murders and the underlying circumstances that led to the murders), the last four episodes form the Scatter arc: these episodes do not explicitly say who did it how and why, but are like allegories that hint very strongly a some of the major answers, and once those answers have put you on the right track, you should be able to fill in most of the remaining questions yourself. I mentioned in the other Umineko post that the concept of a work of mystery that doesn't actually reveal the truth at the end reminded me of Higashino Keigo's Dochiraka ga Kanojo wo Koroshita ("One of the Two Killed Her") and Watashi ga Kare wo Koroshita ("I Killed Him"), which both don't reveal who's ultimately arrested for the murders in those books, nor is a detailed explanation given to the reader as to how the detective managed to identify the killer. I'd say Umineko: When They Cry is a lot more generous with its hints than those books though (though the scale of Umineko does make it more difficult). But by the time you get to Requiem of the Golden Witch (episode 7), it's basically only not dotting the i's for you and with the hints and answers provided there, the attentive reader should be able to figure out the details for themselves. The way how especially End of the Golden Witch and Dawn of the Golden Witch (episodes 5-6) use new variations of the Rokkenjima murders to not only present new murder mysteries, but also to act as hints to solve the previously seen murders in other episodes is brilliant though! You're basically shown easier murder cases that utilize elements from the mysteries from previous episodes, so if you manage to solve these 'easier' versions, it will help you on the way to figure out how the murders in first four episodes were committed. The game also starts throwing Knox and Van Dine around to players who aren't really familiar with mystery fiction, and while I think I know finally understand why people into Umineko often seem to consider Decalogue and the Twenty Rules to be far more important than they actually are for good mystery fiction, I guess at least Knox and Van Dine do give unexperienced mystery readers something to hold on to. But the way these episodes use an oblique manner to guide the player to the solution without explicitly showing it is great, and I think the execution was good: I was somewhere on the way to the solution myself by the time I started on episode 5, but they really helped me focus in on the solution without actually explicitly telling me the answers.

The grand solution that ties all the various iterations of the Rokkenjima murders together is quite satisfying too, using an interestingly thought-out background story and characters to allow multiple 'parallel universe' versions of the Rokkenjima murders to occur. I really like how the answers to whodunnit, howdunnit and whydunnit are very closely related, meaning that once you figure out one angle, you're likely to solve the rest too. Once you start seeing the big picture, you'll also see how the macro concepts can apply on the micro-level and in turn how each individual murder could've been committed. Some scenes also take on a completely different meaning knowing what's really going on, and the player is even challenged to take a good look at some Red Truths again: sometimes they seemingly clash with the answer, but after a little bit of thinking you'll see how you could fit the Red Truths in without creating a contradiction. I sometimes mention the theme of synergy in mystery fiction here, how a mystery plot often feels more satisfying if it doesn't have discrete "blocks" of mysteries/murders, but where things are interconnected and elements work because of the existence of other elements, and I think Umineko: When They Cry does a good job at tying up the whodunnit, howdunnit and whydunnit together in that regard. I think that's also a reason why Umineko: When They Cry can get away without explicitly stating the solutions in the game. That said, some aspects of the solutions to the many, many murders that occur throughout the narrative do feel a bit easy, some almost coming down to "Ha, X lied at the time, they did commit the murder!". But seen from a macro-level, the mystery is definitely entertaining enough, though I do wonder whether it really needed eight lengthy episodes to tell.

While Umineko: When They Cry has the confidence to not overstate the various solutions of the mystery, it oddly does not have the same confidence in its themes though. Umineko: When They Cry can easily be consumed as a character drama, as it spends a lot of time fleshing out the various characters, both human and from the witch world and the characterization is ultimately also necessary to set the motives up, but the game is really, really intent on making you understand what it thinks about the theme of fantasy vs. truth and its impact on the characters. I'm sure a lot of people love the character-focused approach of Umineko, but if you're mainly here for the core mystery, you'll find this an extremely slow mystery story.

Umineko: When They Cry also has distinct 'anti-mystery' themes by the way, and obviously takes inspiration from the famous four Japanese 'anti-mystery' novels, Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken ("The Black Death Mansion Murder Case"), Dogura Magura, Kyomu he no Kumotsu ("Offerings to Nothingness") and Hako no Naka no Shitsuraku ("Paradise Lost Inside A Box"). It shares especially a lot of themes with the latter two. Umineko does not try to be like a tightly plotted Queen-like mystery novel where logic will prevail and clear all mists, but embraces themes from the mentioned novels like the unreliable narrator/observer/presentation, murder as entertainment, investigations into narratives-within-narratives, meta-discussions on mystery fiction, mysteries at multiple story levels (micro and macro) and an open-ended approach to the notion of "truth" with multiple solutions and characters not discussing the truth, but a possible truth. The more character-focused approach of Umineko in particular seems to be direct reaction to one of the major themes of Kyomu he no Kumotsu and I do think that if you like Umineko, it's worth taking a look at Kyomu he no Kumotsu and Haka no Naka no Shitsuraku or vice-versa. 

Considering its length, one could probably tackle a review of Umineko: When They Cry from a lot of angles, perhaps delving more into the characters or the overall themes of the game, but as I'm writing this post for this blog, the focus is on Umineko: When They Cry as a mystery story, and I am happy to say I'm glad I finally got around to playing it after hearing so much about it. It is an ambitious mystery story, using several parallel versions of the 'same' Rokkenjima murders to weave a complex web of storylines and while at the start, things can be overwhelming, the moment you start to see the connections and patterns and slowly work your way to the solution, you'll see Umineko: When They Cry is quite unique as a mystery story due to its enormous scale, though length is definitely also one of its more frustrating points. Sometimes you'll just have to roll with the story and accept characters doing this or that, but on the whole, I think Umineko: When They Cry manages to present an interesting fantasy story weaved by the Golden Witch Beatrice, which can also be seen as a complex mystery story by the reader as long as they are willing to engage with the various murders and mysteries. Umineko: When They Cry is worth a read if you're into Japanese mystery stories (as it's obviously written within a context of shin honkaku fiction), but on the other hand, I do have to repeat it's really, really long, so it's a reading project you'll want to 'plan' ahead. Oh, as a final note, I'll probably keep the playthrough memo page where it is, because I've been linking to it in various posts anyway. If you are going to play Umineko or if you have already read it, it might be interesting to compare notes.

Original Japanese title(s): 『うみねこのなく頃に散』 「End of the Golden Witch」/「Dawn of the Golden Witch」/「Requiem of the Golden Witch」/「Twilight of the Golden Witch」