Umineko: Yasu, Lion and the miracle he is…
When you read something like Umineko it’s pretty normal to end up in discussions about gender issues and gender identity and then wonders if Lion, who’s called as some sort of miracle for Yasu, is what Yasu wanted to be in terms of sex and/or gender identity.
In truth, Yasu’s sex and gender identity are the tip of all the issues Yasu have.
Yasu doesn’t just have problems with her gender identity, she has problems with her identity as a whole.
Starting from when she believed to be just Sayo she began hiding herself behind various masks, some of her own choosing and some pushed onto her but that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is that she doesn’t feel accepted, she feels so rejected that at a certain point she stops accepting herself. She keeps on trying to push away what doesn’t work in her and take a different identity in hope of receiving acceptance but always fails along the way.
She couldn’t be the perfect maid ‘Shannon’.
She isn’t really the powerful witch ‘Beatrice’.
She’s not capable to become ‘Battler’s princess’.
Being ‘Maria’s fave witch’ doesn’t satisfy her enough.
Deep down she feels forced in the role of ‘Yasu’ a nickname given to her and which she hates and somewhat uses to label everything that’s wrong in her.
She still tries becoming someone who can be accepted, either ‘George’s princess’ or the ‘resurrected Beatrice’ and as soon as she solves the epitaph the few securities she had on her own identity come crashing down.
She isn’t an orphan nor she was abandoned. It’ll be better if she was. She’s Kinzo’s incest baby who was so rejected that her mother tries escaping from her golden prison without her and her stepmother tossed her off a cliff while her father never recognized her despite her being right there and, when he finally recognizes her, first he apologizes to her as if she was her mother then… dies. The father she has found is immediately lost, the mother was lost already, the rest of the family very obviously doesn’t want her, won’t accept her.
Her identity as Yasuda Sayo isn’t her real identity but even if she claimed to be Ushiromiya Lion… who would accept her?
It’ll be nice if she could search for acceptance some other place that’s not among the Ushiromiya but…
she’s not a girl, she’s a boy, only she can’t be a boy because due to a wound she received she misses some parts she judges fundamental to be loved as a boy but a lack of boy parts doesn’t make her a girl so… in a way she feels as she can’t be either, she’d not human, she’s furniture, an object.
She was always rejected in her past but she had hopes things would change… and now instead she believes she can’t even hope to find someone who could accept her considering what she is. Or what she’s not.
She basically doesn’t exist if not in the personas she shows on the outside.
As long as no one sees her she’ll never be accepted for herself and therefore her thirst for love will never be sated however… she has no idea how to show her real self, how to discharge her personas who are, in a way, the ‘safe’ shield behind whom she is forced to hide when her true form is so pathetic.
It’s the final blow to whatever hope she had of being accepted.
As her real self begins to fray down due to her pain and grief and belief she’ll never been accepted… the need for someone to see HER, not Yasu, not Shannon, not Kanon, not the witch Beatrice, not Castiglioni or Kuwadorian Beatrice, not the son/grandson of Ushiromiya Kinzo, not whoever else isn’t fully her but just an incomplete part of her soul, becomes an imperative and yet… she doesn’t know how to face it.
Her real self isn’t seen by anyone… and that’s part of why she wrote her tales. That’s part of why she starts her game. So that there will be the chance that someone will manage to see it. This someone that will see her will be Will (and Battler too but she won’t know about this).
Meanwhile she dreams of a world in which… all this won’t be necessary and she’ll be accepted from the start as she is because… she’ll be real, she’ll be who she was supposed to be, Lion, the future family head, Kinzo’s beloved grandchild, Natsuhi’s baby, Jessica’s older brother, a popular, model student capable and confident in his abilities, all things she isn’t but that thinks had been denied to her due to her fall.
Lion isn’t perfect, upon seeing him people are unsure about his sex (which is male by the way) but that’s not a problem. Lion’s happiness lies in the fact he’s accepted and loved by everyone, regardless of this.
Does it really matter to Yasu he’s male?
During her life thought, she doesn’t show any particular interest in being a boy. Of all the identities she constructed only one is male and it’s the one that despised himself the most and has no faith whatsoever in having a possible love relation. Kanon always loses. Kanon is honest with himself and makes an honest effort to be with Jessica only in Ep 6 and he loses against Shannon all the way. Nor he or Jessica for the matter posses the strength of feelings toward each other to make it work.
The winners are always Beato or Shannon. Shannon if there’s no Battler, Beato if there’s Battler.
But what does Yasu really wish? To be a girl? To be a boy? To have a love story with Battler? With George?
We get our answer right at the beginning of Clair’s tale.
Clair’s tale begins with:
"Ah, where is this place?! And who am I?!"
"Then let me ask! Where do you want it to be? Who do you want to be?!"
"Any place, so long as it will wrap itself around me gently! Anyone, so long as I am treated kindly!"
"Yes, for us...!"
"For us...!"
""Where and who we are hardly matters!!""
What Yasu longs for is to be loves and accepted. Whatever identity is fine. Whatever place is fine. Probably whatever person were to accept her would work or, at least, she believes it would work.
And so we go back at Lion. That’s why Lion is almost like a dream to her.
Lion is apparently perfectly accepted by everyone. Natsuhi raised him. Krauss agreed to be his father. Kinzo considered him his grandson and not his mother’s reincarnation. His classmates all love him and make him school president and captain of the badminton team. His sister is more or less proud of him and under him and he gets along well with his cousins. He doesn’t hide beyond masks, he’s okay with being the head with leading the life he leads and he’s even told by Will that, whatever sex he is, he’ll be accepted. Lion wasn’t supposed to wake up a day and discover his life is fake, his identity is fake, is sex is fake, his feelings for the person he is might be fake and no one will accept him for who he is.
At least in the idea world Yasu constructed in her dreams.
Bern methodically shatters this dream world by having him being informed that his perfect family is actually screwed up as his true mother is dead, his grandfather is also is father and his parents are actually his adoptive parents and, as if this wasn’t bad enough, he could have had it much worse.
Will though fix the damage saying: hey but it doesn’t matter because everyone really loves you and so Lion more or less deals with the blow smoothly. Bern tries to push the issue, implying even if he had lived as Lion and not as Sayo there could be places in which Kinzo would see him as Beatrice’s reincarnation and force himself on him but the trick doesn’t work as that’s still another world she’s talking on so she waits for Will not to be present and then forces on him the truth he too, like Sayo, isn’t accepted in his own world.
The adults don’t want to be the heir, Kinzo won’t fight hard enough for him but hand out to them a way to steal his place and they not only will do it but reject him in the most dramatic way by… killing him.
So really, I don’t think it’s Lion’s sex, the possibility it matched with his gender identity or his love interests/sexual attractions (about whom we’re told nothing but it’s more or less clear that, if they exist, they aren’t Jessica, Battler or George) but the fact that Lion was accepted, that made him a miracle.
Lion was accepted and loved by everyone.
And that for Yasu should have been really amazing, so amazing it was a miracle.
And it’s the fact that Lion was suddenly not accepted anymore, that the adults think he’s just something that gets in the way between them and the gold or something, that it’ll be better to get rid of him, first as head/heir to the head and then as a person, that’s the hardest blow for Yasu, the one that would make pointless to hope she had the chance of growing up as Lion.
Lion, although with lot less issues than her, ends up in the same position as her. Someone not accepted, someone rejected, someone whose inner self is destroyed. Bern denies the concept on which he was built, the fact he would be a Yasu-self accepted and loved by everyone, in a sense destroying Lion’s self way more than the bullet did because the Lion to what she showed the Teaparty is in the Meta and more than a real person is the representation of a concept, of an idea, of a dream and once he’s denied he simply can’t exist. Bern shatters Lion the way Yasu had been shattered, she takes any hope from him to live and be happy.
And, in order to save Lion, it’ll be Will who’ll give him hope again. Will accepts Lion and wants to protect him even when no one else does, even when Lion has given up, even when he’s covered in wounds, even when he can’t win. Will’s acceptances gives Lion the will to live and will be Lion’s Meta salvation as Lambra will praise Lion and Will’s will and save them.
So in a way Lion remains a miracle… or became one if you prefer as he managed to have what Yasu didn’t have. Acceptance from another human being.
In truth, Yasu’s sex and gender identity are the tip of all the issues Yasu have.
Yasu doesn’t just have problems with her gender identity, she has problems with her identity as a whole.
Starting from when she believed to be just Sayo she began hiding herself behind various masks, some of her own choosing and some pushed onto her but that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is that she doesn’t feel accepted, she feels so rejected that at a certain point she stops accepting herself. She keeps on trying to push away what doesn’t work in her and take a different identity in hope of receiving acceptance but always fails along the way.
She couldn’t be the perfect maid ‘Shannon’.
She isn’t really the powerful witch ‘Beatrice’.
She’s not capable to become ‘Battler’s princess’.
Being ‘Maria’s fave witch’ doesn’t satisfy her enough.
Deep down she feels forced in the role of ‘Yasu’ a nickname given to her and which she hates and somewhat uses to label everything that’s wrong in her.
She still tries becoming someone who can be accepted, either ‘George’s princess’ or the ‘resurrected Beatrice’ and as soon as she solves the epitaph the few securities she had on her own identity come crashing down.
She isn’t an orphan nor she was abandoned. It’ll be better if she was. She’s Kinzo’s incest baby who was so rejected that her mother tries escaping from her golden prison without her and her stepmother tossed her off a cliff while her father never recognized her despite her being right there and, when he finally recognizes her, first he apologizes to her as if she was her mother then… dies. The father she has found is immediately lost, the mother was lost already, the rest of the family very obviously doesn’t want her, won’t accept her.
Her identity as Yasuda Sayo isn’t her real identity but even if she claimed to be Ushiromiya Lion… who would accept her?
It’ll be nice if she could search for acceptance some other place that’s not among the Ushiromiya but…
she’s not a girl, she’s a boy, only she can’t be a boy because due to a wound she received she misses some parts she judges fundamental to be loved as a boy but a lack of boy parts doesn’t make her a girl so… in a way she feels as she can’t be either, she’d not human, she’s furniture, an object.
She was always rejected in her past but she had hopes things would change… and now instead she believes she can’t even hope to find someone who could accept her considering what she is. Or what she’s not.
She basically doesn’t exist if not in the personas she shows on the outside.
As long as no one sees her she’ll never be accepted for herself and therefore her thirst for love will never be sated however… she has no idea how to show her real self, how to discharge her personas who are, in a way, the ‘safe’ shield behind whom she is forced to hide when her true form is so pathetic.
It’s the final blow to whatever hope she had of being accepted.
As her real self begins to fray down due to her pain and grief and belief she’ll never been accepted… the need for someone to see HER, not Yasu, not Shannon, not Kanon, not the witch Beatrice, not Castiglioni or Kuwadorian Beatrice, not the son/grandson of Ushiromiya Kinzo, not whoever else isn’t fully her but just an incomplete part of her soul, becomes an imperative and yet… she doesn’t know how to face it.
Her real self isn’t seen by anyone… and that’s part of why she wrote her tales. That’s part of why she starts her game. So that there will be the chance that someone will manage to see it. This someone that will see her will be Will (and Battler too but she won’t know about this).
Meanwhile she dreams of a world in which… all this won’t be necessary and she’ll be accepted from the start as she is because… she’ll be real, she’ll be who she was supposed to be, Lion, the future family head, Kinzo’s beloved grandchild, Natsuhi’s baby, Jessica’s older brother, a popular, model student capable and confident in his abilities, all things she isn’t but that thinks had been denied to her due to her fall.
Lion isn’t perfect, upon seeing him people are unsure about his sex (which is male by the way) but that’s not a problem. Lion’s happiness lies in the fact he’s accepted and loved by everyone, regardless of this.
Does it really matter to Yasu he’s male?
During her life thought, she doesn’t show any particular interest in being a boy. Of all the identities she constructed only one is male and it’s the one that despised himself the most and has no faith whatsoever in having a possible love relation. Kanon always loses. Kanon is honest with himself and makes an honest effort to be with Jessica only in Ep 6 and he loses against Shannon all the way. Nor he or Jessica for the matter posses the strength of feelings toward each other to make it work.
The winners are always Beato or Shannon. Shannon if there’s no Battler, Beato if there’s Battler.
But what does Yasu really wish? To be a girl? To be a boy? To have a love story with Battler? With George?
We get our answer right at the beginning of Clair’s tale.
Clair’s tale begins with:
"Ah, where is this place?! And who am I?!"
"Then let me ask! Where do you want it to be? Who do you want to be?!"
"Any place, so long as it will wrap itself around me gently! Anyone, so long as I am treated kindly!"
"Yes, for us...!"
"For us...!"
""Where and who we are hardly matters!!""
What Yasu longs for is to be loves and accepted. Whatever identity is fine. Whatever place is fine. Probably whatever person were to accept her would work or, at least, she believes it would work.
And so we go back at Lion. That’s why Lion is almost like a dream to her.
Lion is apparently perfectly accepted by everyone. Natsuhi raised him. Krauss agreed to be his father. Kinzo considered him his grandson and not his mother’s reincarnation. His classmates all love him and make him school president and captain of the badminton team. His sister is more or less proud of him and under him and he gets along well with his cousins. He doesn’t hide beyond masks, he’s okay with being the head with leading the life he leads and he’s even told by Will that, whatever sex he is, he’ll be accepted. Lion wasn’t supposed to wake up a day and discover his life is fake, his identity is fake, is sex is fake, his feelings for the person he is might be fake and no one will accept him for who he is.
At least in the idea world Yasu constructed in her dreams.
Bern methodically shatters this dream world by having him being informed that his perfect family is actually screwed up as his true mother is dead, his grandfather is also is father and his parents are actually his adoptive parents and, as if this wasn’t bad enough, he could have had it much worse.
Will though fix the damage saying: hey but it doesn’t matter because everyone really loves you and so Lion more or less deals with the blow smoothly. Bern tries to push the issue, implying even if he had lived as Lion and not as Sayo there could be places in which Kinzo would see him as Beatrice’s reincarnation and force himself on him but the trick doesn’t work as that’s still another world she’s talking on so she waits for Will not to be present and then forces on him the truth he too, like Sayo, isn’t accepted in his own world.
The adults don’t want to be the heir, Kinzo won’t fight hard enough for him but hand out to them a way to steal his place and they not only will do it but reject him in the most dramatic way by… killing him.
So really, I don’t think it’s Lion’s sex, the possibility it matched with his gender identity or his love interests/sexual attractions (about whom we’re told nothing but it’s more or less clear that, if they exist, they aren’t Jessica, Battler or George) but the fact that Lion was accepted, that made him a miracle.
Lion was accepted and loved by everyone.
And that for Yasu should have been really amazing, so amazing it was a miracle.
And it’s the fact that Lion was suddenly not accepted anymore, that the adults think he’s just something that gets in the way between them and the gold or something, that it’ll be better to get rid of him, first as head/heir to the head and then as a person, that’s the hardest blow for Yasu, the one that would make pointless to hope she had the chance of growing up as Lion.
Lion, although with lot less issues than her, ends up in the same position as her. Someone not accepted, someone rejected, someone whose inner self is destroyed. Bern denies the concept on which he was built, the fact he would be a Yasu-self accepted and loved by everyone, in a sense destroying Lion’s self way more than the bullet did because the Lion to what she showed the Teaparty is in the Meta and more than a real person is the representation of a concept, of an idea, of a dream and once he’s denied he simply can’t exist. Bern shatters Lion the way Yasu had been shattered, she takes any hope from him to live and be happy.
And, in order to save Lion, it’ll be Will who’ll give him hope again. Will accepts Lion and wants to protect him even when no one else does, even when Lion has given up, even when he’s covered in wounds, even when he can’t win. Will’s acceptances gives Lion the will to live and will be Lion’s Meta salvation as Lambra will praise Lion and Will’s will and save them.
So in a way Lion remains a miracle… or became one if you prefer as he managed to have what Yasu didn’t have. Acceptance from another human being.