Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, or When The Seagulls Cry, is a combination of those standard subplots and elements of everyday storytelling, but the main plot is the most intriguing of all. What will you do if you find yourself ostracized because of your astute but not substantiated agnostic belief in a phenomenon that most people widely accept as supernatural? The mass killing of all your friends and loved one is one horrible thing, but the worst anguish when you discover you don't have the superhero prowess to crush the living daylight out of the monster.
As many good stories do, Umineko has several layers of interpretation. As a start, let me define my ultimate interpretation of this story: a battle of with between superstition and science. The main protagonist, Battler, is someone with tough, unshaken beliefs that witchcraft does not exist, even after he experiences the presence of his arch-nemesis, the Golden Witch Beatrice (a tribute to Dante?), and even gets revived and aided in his quest to unravel the mystery of murders using human reasoning alone. On the other hand, the supreme witch Beatrice epitomizes the kind of deity who is so bored with her omniscient power that she plays a cruel, unfair game against the humans.
Enough summary. Let's go back to the period when witchcraft did 'exist'. The Medieval Europeans tended to succumb to superstitions in tough times when disasters and plagues, like Black Death, struck. Witches, or at least people who were accused of practicing the black magic, were staked to death in the fire, while another flame of passion called the Enlightenment started to creep inside the brightest minds in the continent. This highly skeptic and critical mindset, although initially only existed in the form of Copernican revolution, ended up transforming political and economic system. Newton was not alone when he tried to find the answers to natural riddles with physics. Marx tried to invent the fairest economic system using his historical observations. Hitler enforced the application of his half-mature views on the world to make the world 'better'. As human species evolves, there is one undeniable trend that thoroughly is lacking in other species: the pursuit of sensibility. Human always wants to make sense of his world, create theories to push it to higher limit and delude himself in artificial heavens.
While this pursuit is the main force for the development of society, is it still qualified to push the ambition to the extent of denying the existence of all supernatural matters? In this series, Battler tires himself haplessly to explain all the murders alone, but he would eventually find the solution, but not before he receives the aid from the hatred witch. In one respect, this epitomizes the effort of many scientists to solve their own puzzles, but end up getting back to superstition, the natural enemy of science. Umineko indeed puts an optimistic view on science, in terms of how the world would be much better for the mankind once the puzzle is solved by the human mind. Nonetheless, it questions the optimism that science will eventually get rid of superstition completely. Think of Theory of Atom. Think of Theory of Evolution. Think of Theory of Relativity. All these theories were made without elaborated evidences at the time of the creation even though the creators were obviously vivid in their observations and had very sharp deductions. Nonetheless, the direction that science today is going is to make a breakthrough with a concept first, evidence later. When the belief is dismissed by later proofs, too bad. Even the godly Newtonian physics cannot shy from this trend of decline
Moving on to philosophy, Umineko contains numerous classic philosophical problems to the 2D world. The one that dominates the main plot is diabolica probatica, or the Devil's room. In short, you cannot deny the existence of something if in return you can't prove that it does not exist. This argument is today's most accepted standstill of the existence of God. Since both philosophy and science cannot disprove the existence of God, people luckily still have the chance to be both intellectual and religious. Many skeptics break away from this standstill and resort to Occam's razor: it is simpler to believe in the non-existence of an inconceivable thing. Another group of people become the defenders of faith by arguing that it is safer to have a good God in the afterlife (remember Pascal?). The few outside both groups are still dazed, like me.
I arrive at a conclusion after watching Umineko. Maybe supernatural beings exist after all, but their existence is just too way beyond the limit of our comprehension. My assumption is it is logical and possible, although not necessarily easy, to explain everything in the universe which human can perceive. I don't say that our universe is limited to its four-dimensional, space-time relation. This universe might be full of other highly-intelligent beings, but the things we can see and think of are limited to our power of perception. Hence, if any supernatural beings are involved in an event in our space-time universe, the event that is induced by the supernatural beings must be itself natural, in order for us to be aware of its existence and able to conceive it. In short, all supernatural things possible to our observation must present themselves in the form of natural phenomenon which can be explained by our mind. Yes, it is a combination of anthropic principle and Berkeley's tree, with a bit of Kant.
Then, how do I define 'exist'? Surely all things that we perceive have high possibilities to exist, but to say that all things impossible to our observation non-existent? Let's reserve to Wittgenstein idea of language game. Normally, every claim about human action in related to its subject can be explained as 'X exists and X does Y'. For example, I write this blog. Therefore, I make a claim that I exist and I write this blog. However, the context of word 'exist' is different when I say 'aliens do not exist'. The exist in the first sentence reflects on the expression of our mental state. 'Exist' here is our mental desire to claim that 'X should exist'. Therefore, though I will never be sure that the person sitting next to me really exists, my unconscious mental desire claims that he does exists. Whilst 'exist' in the second context is a claim that is formed by our external knowledge. It is more a result of the teaching of our external world. To put it simply, it is like a student who claims that aliens do not exist because his teacher tells him so. However, 'exist' in the second context is not an expression of mental desire independent of the teaching of an authority figure outside our mind. Nobody ever tells you that your parents do exist, but you surely believe in their existence without confirmation, don't you? (probably until someone else tells you that they might not exist)
In conclusion, that is my stand. A miracle is not a miracle when it is understood. Science, which rejects miracles rigidly, is actually full with miraculous theories and assumptions which are further substantiated with reasonable, perceivable and reproducible proofs. A supernatural phenomenon, a.k.a miracle, must become a natural phenomenon, a.k.a not-miracle, in one way or another in order for us to be aware of its existence and able to conceive it. Thus, a miracle is not about whether it is possible to be explained or not; it is about how tricky it can deceive human mind into thinking that it is out of our reasoning.
Moving back to Umineko, I haven't found any single miraculous aspect in this series except the fact that opening theme is half sung in Latin.