also the fact that bernkastel changed erika's name and face to be just hers and then proceeds to bully and torment her. bern you have every single disease in the world
battler is just not very good at playing the game master role. he's too nice......... and he's already forgotten what it was like to be in erika's shoes, with the caveat that erika is a MUCH MUCH MUCH more spiteful and generally nasty person than him. i get why he stood up for her against bernkastel and like. bernkastel saying "oh i wasn't acting <3"
it is kind of sad how often the magic side of things gets dismissed as not being relavent or as just being a lens through understanding the mystery side of things (it is that) bc i really like the way the themes inherent to the mystery reverberate through every level of the fantasy. bernkastel, lambda and erika are trapped in the same cycle as the
ushiromiya family, with featherine being their respective kinzo. i love all the ways that bern sees rika in both battler and sayo and wants to rip them to pieces in a deeply vindictive way as a result.
honestly the fantasy side of the story is some of my favorite stuff so when people downplay it or say it's not as important or whatever i tmakes me sad
also god, ppl who act like the fantasy part isn't important missed the ENTIRE point of at least episode 5 and arguably erika's whole existence in the story
but i do think it's a genuine mistake for the reasons dlanor said like. he wasn't taking this remotely seriously enough. he should know that every single one of these battles is life or death.
i stay silly :3
: late response but yes same. i love yasu as a character but i also think acting like beatrice shannon and kanon have no agency in the story other than just being ways for yasu to vent is like, fundamentally missing the point of their individual tragedies.
the way they both run from their baggage so much and sneer at erika's shallow understanding because they'll only permit the other girl to truly understand them... most married divorced immortal middle schoolers ever.
the thing that's really funny to me about bern is that according to ryukishi he never ntended to actually make her important, he just thought she would be a cute callback for the higu fans who came forward to umineko
she is so evil shion!!! thats all i could think of when she was going ino her whole tragic backstory. dark timeline adult shion who never kicked her "blame the abused child" habit.
also i tend to take what ryukishi says in interviews and stuff with a grain of salt because i feel like i've seen fandom take his words and go running with them (all the bickering over whether satoko and rika were gay for one), but this i believe. at least that she wasn't supposed to be as crucial to the plot as she ended up being.
dismissing the fantasy angle in umineko is like. idk. dismissing everything that happens in the duelling arena in utena because of the projector reveal in the final episode
i've never seen that particular hot take but i have seen some absolutely smoothbrained takes on utena's symbolism and metaphor language being used to basically like.... dismiss like 60% of the things that actually happen in the show.
yeah there are people who are like. Full Erika about how there's no magic and the only truth is the 'real' story of what happened on the island and the magic is all just a metaphor and i'm like
ryukishi's always pretty upfront about what his stories are about but people still miss the point often. like in higurashi he outright talks about the themes as the author in the visual novel but still....... still.........
not to get into spoilers but in 8 there’s a moment where a character p much is a mouthpiece for ryukishi to be like “if you’re only interested in this story to show off how smart you are you’re the worst kind of mystery fan and I have no respect for you”
ngl umineko changed my entire relationship with fiction as a whole because of ryukishi drawing the explicit parallel of “without love it cannot be seen” as a theme that applies to the connection between an author and an audience too
yeah i think thats true of basically all stories. i think it's true that if you go into something with no respect for the story its trying to tell it won't change your mind. and conversely if a story has no respect for it's audience it'll fall on it's face.
its truly a peak moment of erika being endlessly petty, cruel and also just truly deeply pathetic and miserable, that she'd see even something as simple as the candy trick as an attack on what she stands for (The Truth, Must Have The Truth, The Truth The Truth The Truth Certainty)
also. dlanor declaring that she wanted to protect her. and erika saying that she wants to set up a thousand mysteries for dlanor to solve. soft. domesticated rat.
evil shion...oh you're so right thoughthis came from tumblr and is very useful