…there is one survivor.

Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

So if it wasn’t clear enough from EP2, EP3 will definitely convince you that Umineko is a completely different beast from Higurashi. We begin with a look into the past with the revelation of the existence of Kuwadorian and someone who’s actually named Beatrice as well as Rosa’s confirmation of this fact. We also take a look inside Eva’s ambitions and how this plays a part in 1986 Rokkenjima.

The exciting parts of this episode during the actual twilights were decent. Both Beato vs. Virgilia and Rudolf/Kyrie vs. Stakes were a bit short. All of the important good parts were kept, of course, but the extra stuff that really sealed the deal was absent. The depiction of Evatrice’s carrying out of the second twilight was one of the more disappointing parts of EP3. The visual novel was able to render it much more nightmarish than in the anime. The anime’s offering was also a lot weaker than what we all imagined. When they said sea of jelly and mountain of cake, I think that was what we were expecting to see.

But the most important part of the Episode was the ending. How well did it do on that front?

I felt like the ambiguity of who died and who survived shouldn’t have been there (yes, Eva was the only who survived). The buildup from the beginning of the episode was fairly well done. From the looks of my feed reader, Beatrice did her job and masterfully trolled everyone. Ange’s introduction was pretty good, although it could have been foreshadowed better (like mentioned once in a while over the last three Episodes rather than have a flashback the episode before). I’m not sure about the choice of forgoing more EP3 Tea Party stuff for going straight into EP4 material. I suspect that they wanted to clear up who died and who the mysterious girl was, but from the discussions I’ve read, it seemed to make little difference.

The main problem with the adaptation is that it hasn’t managed to convey the depth and richness of the visual novel’s storytelling. This is for two reasons. The first is that there simply isn’t enough time. At the moment, I think that they’re doing the best that they can, leaving in all of the important stuff. That’s good, but it’s all of the small details that get paved over that really makes Umineko fantastic and I think that another twelve or thirteen episodes would have given enough time for the studio to include even small, incidental stuff. I’m not saying that it needs to be one-to-one, but the selection of material to adapt can definitely improve.

The other thing is that I just don’t think DEEN is good enough to render an adaptation that matches up to what we see in our heads when we read the VN. All of the awesome parts of the visual novel so far have been good in spite of the adaptation. However, for every single one of these moments, there’s always something lacking in the execution.

Just ended my terrible string of being busy. Now I have time to squander away. The question now is how best to do so.

5. The Sacred Blacksmith

Everything about this is completely underwhelming. Quite honestly, I expected it to be this way, but I’ve been avoiding these fantasy/RPG types of shows for a while because this is exactly what I expect when I think of those. So far, I haven’t dropped it simply because it’s only twelve episodes, but it’s not soon after the start of the episode that I get the urge to.

4. A Certain Scientific Railgun

I didn’t get very far in Index. That said, while the premise of this is still kind of stupid, the first few episodes have kind of been amusing enough that I don’t mind. Yeah, people are complaining about how it’s boring school life and Kuroko is annoying and all. Oh well, I think it’s doing alright for a show about a girl who is a railgun.

3. Kobato

There are some shows that I wonder why I’m watching them and it turns out the answer is that it’s because they are nice. Clannad was once of these the first time I watched it (although now, I watch that sort of stuff without a second thought). I don’t find Kobato’s retard moe to be annoying like I did with Yui, but that may just be that there’s no Mio to compare her to here. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Her ignorance of how the world works does make me cringe sometimes.

So far it seems like a pretty nice going to help people out sort of show, kind of like Natsume Yuujinchou. Of course, people who are more familiar with CLAMP seem convinced that weird crap is going to eventually happen. Oh well, what could go wrong?

2. Darker than BLACK: Gemini of the Meteor

It’s still too early to piece together what happened in between the first and second season (and I guess there will be that OVA to help with that). At twelve actual episodes (not “twelve” two-episode arcs), I’m not sure how far they can bring the story and I’m pretty sure that we’ll be seeing another season. And even though they dropped the episodic format, they still seem to be introducing cool contractors and then offing them by the end of the episode. Everything’s still as well produced as I remember, so this’ll be pretty good.

1. Kimi ni Todoke

This is the show of the season. If you don’t like this, you are a bad person. Well, I guess if you don’t like shoujo, then you probably wouldn’t like this, but that’s okay. Kimi ni Todoke is one of my favourite shoujo manga, probably second only to Kare Kano. Of course, that’s based on the tiny number of chapters that are released and scanned. There’s a very good chance that it can top it.

I really like the anime. I wasn’t too thrilled with Noto Mamiko’s voice in the first episode, but I guess I got acclimatized to her voice so the second and third episodes weren’t as bad. So far, the anime is pretty much following the manga in lockstep. I’ve noticed a few people who were pretty unhappy with the direction, but I really haven’t noticed anything bad. And the production values on this thing are great, as expected from Production IG.

Fall? More like fail

This is a pretty bad season, a fact which is magnified by the fact that summer was one of the best seasons in a while. With FMA and Umineko, that makes seven shows, two of which are middling and would be dropped as soon as I don’t have enough time. I guess there’s always those extra episodes of Hidamari Sketch and Bakemonogatari to look forward to.

To be honest, the only reason I watched this was because I’d heard that Kinoku Nasu wrote it. I wasn’t really expecting something like Kara no Kyoukai or Fate/stay night, but I’d expected some kind of similarity. Well, I guess the only similarity was the fact that the plot is pretty incomprehensible.

The incomprehensible story that is CANAAN features a cast that I can’t really bring myself to like. There’s SUGOI, there’s her generic bumbling guy co-worker, mysterious assassin lady who happens to be friends with SUGOI, her mysterious evil counterpart mastermind, crazy girl who has the hots for her oneesama, masochist in love with crazy lesbian, hot lady with tragic past, ex-agent who caused lady’s tragic past but is in love with her, Yun Yun, and taxi driver.

The thing with the story is that I’m not sure what it was supposed to be about. It seemed like a bunch of random things happened in sequence. Oh look, there are a bunch of people infected with a virus and then terrorism happens at an anti-terror summit. I can’t see colours but suddenly I can again! Let’s go investigate this virus, also we’re both CANAAN. Also I’ll just shoot my arm off, TIME PASSES, stuff happens, THE END.

What.

I guess the gunfights were pretty cool.

I wasn’t going to give this one a shot, mostly because I’m not a huge fan of baseball. Yeah, I know, I’m reading Cross Game and I wasn’t really anticipating that one either. Also, with the avalanche of girls doing stuff (rock band, mahjong, kendo, baseball, art etc.) shows, I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to watch another one. That changed when someone noticed that the start of the first episode was a two-minute musical of the main character singing about how great Taisho era Tokyo is. I guess I’m attracted to shows with musical inserts (Kure-nai!).

As expected, the show was about a group of girls trying to play baseball and eventually challenge the boys. What’s nice about this show is that none of the characters are terrible moe archetypes that we’ve come to expect with our K-ON!s and Sakis. None of them really have a trait or meme that can be used to perpetuate their popularity throughout the imageboards and across the Internet.

They’re also doing funny things as opposed to cute things. Instead of sitting around eating cake or doing repetitive things, they’re actually actively doing hilarious things like becoming roving street baseball gangs. The gags aren’t dohohoho, aren’t they retarded and moe, but rather dohohoho they are pretty awesome and this is hilarious.

I really liked Saburo and Koume because they are so d’awwww ( ◕‿‿◕ ). Anyhow, I hear there is more material in the light novels to be adapted, so maybe we’ll see more? That would be nice.

I was first lured into Saki with the promise of mahjong. Of course it was a fairly transparent trap. High school girls playing mahjong? Really? I didn’t really expect much going into it. Hell, the first few episodes bored me to tears and I eventually dropped it right before the tournament started.

A few months later, after the PA anime thread devolved into people having their lives ruined after watching School Days, people started talking about Saki. Then I saw this and decided that I needed to see what the hell was going on in that show.

I like to describe the show as Code Geass with mahjong. You’ve got the same kind of ridiculous stuff going on in Saki. I mean, when you’re Geassing the mahjong table or going in and out of stealth mode, it’s not too far a stretch to start expecting someone to turn into a rocket, right?

The side characters really made the show for me. I mean, the Kiyosumi crew is just Saki, Nodoka, whipped dude, Tacos, glasses girl, and Hinagiku. Basically, everyone was just being awesome while Tacos had ADD and the guy was around being irrelevant. Most of the other major side characters had motivations and backstories that were far more interesting than any of the main characters. Not only that, but they pulled off some ridiculous crap.

Like Geass, Saki was a really fun show to watch, with each week bringing moments that would be discussed with incredulity. Unlike Geass, there’s not much more to it. Serious mahjong this is not. Of course, now I don’t know if I’ll be on board for a second season now that all of my favourite characters are out of the picture. I can’t envision Saki without Stealth Momo anymore-su.