This page details the spoiler policy for Umineko no Naku Koro ni. Everything after the General Spoiler Policy section will contain untagged spoilers for the series.
General Spoiler Policy
Wikis normally don't tag their spoilers, working under the principle that people who have not completed the series should not be browsing the wiki. Unfortunately not everyone knows this. The fact of the matter is that people still visit wikis regardless of this, so it makes practical sense for us to have to set some standards for this.
The general guiding principle for spoilers here is that whether or not something is a spoiler should be evaluated based on the context of the article. What part of the story would a person who can find this page be at? The page would assume knowledge of details up to that point and slightly further for relevant details within reasonable limits. Consider the kind of content implied by the section headings when browsing.
Umineko is the hardest work to define a spoiler policy around, as many details that are accepted as basic knowledge for the series are also major twists for an unknowing reader. It is impractical to spoiler tag basically everything about the story for a wiki, and thus we have to draw the line somewhere. Context-sensitivity for spoilers is thus more important here than in any other work.
We do not recommend browsing Umineko articles on the wiki, especially character articles, without first completing the Question Arcs at the minimum (full completion is preferred). This is despite the fact that some Question Arcs details may be spoiler tagged. A major exception is story arc pages and their subpages (except for Truth for obvious reasons), as these provide useful reference information from those arcs only. These should be visited only after completion of the corresponding arcs. Terminology pages are generally safe, but this should not be assumed
On this wiki, we use spoiler tags, collapsibles, spoiler warning banners, and in extreme cases, spoiler warning pages. Apart from the last one, none of these methods of spoiler protection will work on mobile. This is an issue with mobile CSS support on Fandom's side, and as far as we know there is no way around it.
Spoilers for Higurashi
Any Higurashi references involving contents considered as spoilers in 07th Expansion Wiki:Higurashi Spoiler Policy should be tagged as spoilers. However, the main Umineko story includes unavoidable spoilers for the Higurashi series, some more major than the others. For this reason, it is highly recommended to read main When They Cry titles in the order of release.
Examples of Non-Spoilers
From the Question Arcs
- Murders happen on Rokkenjima according to the epitaph, and someone claiming to be Beatrice is taking credit for it.
- That the story of Legend of the Golden Witch was found as a message bottle at sea
- Beatrice is an actual character
- The existence of fantasy elements in the story, including fantasy characters
- The red truth and blue truth
- The idea of a human explanation behind fantasy events
- Ange's existence and her being a protagonist in Alliance of the Golden Witch
- Eva's survival in Ange's future
- The media and occult sensation around the Rokkenjima Mass Murders
- The discovery of a second, contradictory message bottle, and the fact that Eva was dead in both of them
- Ange's witch name ANGE Beatrice
- Backstories of characters that are revealed in the Question Arcs
From Umineko Chiru
- The names of the arcs in Umineko Chiru
- Mentions of the names Erika, Dlanor, Cornelia, Gertrude, Featherine, and Willard, along with the most basic information about them, including that Erika and Will are detectives and that Erika is an antagonist.
- The gold is definitely real
- Kanon's real name is Yoshiya
- Mention of Knox and Van Dine's rules is permitted in the context of Dlanor and Willard, but should be kept to a minimum
Examples of Spoilers
From the Question Arcs
- Shannon was Battler's first crush
- EVA-Beatrice's existence for any article that does not assume context from Alliance of the Golden Witch onwards.
- Narration in the story from viewpoints other than the Detective (Battler in the Question arcs) may be unreliable. More broadly speaking, the concept of unreliable narration itself
- Beatrice's emotional ruse to make Battler accept her in Banquet of the Golden Witch
- Kinzo is actually dead at the start of all games
- Any suggestion that the number of humans on Rokkenjima may be less than 18
- Sakutarou is a mass-produced stuffed animal
- Ange's death in Alliance of the Golden Witch
- Beatrice defeat at the end of Alliance of the Golden Witch
- The real life analogues of the Chiesters and Maria's connection to them
From Umineko Chiru
- Any theories about the mysteries not made in the Question Arcs, or the solutions to the mysteries themselves
- The identities of the new game masters in Umineko Chiru
- The existence of The Man From 19 Years Ago
- Beatrice is not carrying out the murders for revenge or pleasure
- Battler is not a killer (except in Bernkastel's game)
- Beatrice's death in End of the Golden Witch and revival in Dawn of the Golden Witch
- Battler's ascension to Game Master and Endless Sorcerer
- Bernkastel is an antagonist
- The concept of Forgeries and the existence of the Forgery author "Tohya Hachijo"
- The Forgery author "Tohya Hachijo" is made up of two people, Tohya and Ikuko
- The person that appears in Dawn of the Golden Witch is actually Ikuko, and that Tohya is actually Battler (well, his body) after the events on Rokkenjima.
- Any mention of Yasuda, Sayo Yasuda, Clair, and Lion
- That Shannon, Kanon, and Beatrice share the same body
- The link between appearance of the Fukuin House servants and the Seven Stakes
- That the Beatrice in the Kuwadorian was Kinzo's child
- Ange's child sprite and witch sprite from Twilight of the Golden Witch
- The meaning of the Golden Land
- The character Black Battler
Guidelines for Editors
Spoiler tags are used as follows:
In ''Dawn of the Golden Witch'', <span class="spoiler">spoiler text here</span>
Collapsibles are used as follows:
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"> A section of spoiler content. Use this method sparingly as the Expand button is not that obvious to readers. </div>
The spoiler banner used is <add spoiler banner here>
Special Standards
The article for Sayo Yasuda is located at Yasuda/Article, both to remove the name combination from the search bar as well as to reduce the chance that a person lands on a major spoiler immediately upon opening the article (especially given that the name Yasuda is mentioned before some readers understand who that person is) by placing a spoiler warning on the main page. No page should ever be named Sayo Yasuda, including a redirect page. For additional safety with page "recommendations" from Fandom, the first picture on the article should be of her appearance in the Requiem of the Golden Witch manga.
The articles for Kanon, Shannon, and Beatrice should not include details regarding them sharing the same physical body, discuss their backgrounds and roles in the context of Sayo, or discuss the subtext between their relationships with each other. All of these details should only be covered in Sayo's article, which readers on the other articles will be pointed to under a spoiler tag.
The same form of spoiler protection will exist for Beatrice Castiglioni, Tohya Hachijo, and Ikuko Hachijo, whose appearances alone are a spoiler — all their articles will be relegated to a subpage with the main page serving as a spoiler warning. All mentions of "Tohya Hachijo" in a pre-Twilight of the Golden Witch context should instead link to the article "Tohya Hachijo (pen name)". This article will discuss Tohya Hachijo/Itouikukuro as the Forgery author, and use Ikuko's sprite as the picture. It should not include a subpage for sprites. The spoiler warning page for Tohya Hachijo should suggest the pen name page instead under the reason of major spoilers being discussed early on in the actual page (not an unreasonable thing for a reader to accept, given that this character is already seen as important). While the Beatrice Castiglioni page doesn't really spoil any events in 1986 and onward, her very existence is the truth of Kinzo's legend of the witch.
Kuwadorian Beatrice, Lion, and Clair's pages will simply have a Major Spoiler Warning banner on the top of their pages, without subpage level spoiler protections.