「ベルンさま」/「ガガミング」

No, it’s not quite over yet, but this year, I got to experience the joy of the six month waits that accompany each successive Comiket. Yes, after going through Umineko EP1-4, I was suddenly left with nothing to do but wait for the fine folks at The Witch Hunt do their stuff. It’s definitely different having about half a year in between each Episode. For one thing, it was a lot harder to hold the details of each Episode with months in between playthroughs. But now, there is only one left as the pieces of the game are almost set in place.

Chiru was something I was really looking forward to because it would mean the beginning of being able to make sense of the insane things that went down in the first four Episodes. Of course, I didn’t expect it to be as straightforward as Higurashi’s Answer arcs, but I don’t think I was quite prepared for Ryukishi07 to continue in the tradition of Umineko by throwing in even more characters and new reveals that add to the questions rather than answer them.

Well, that’s not entirely true. While the Core arcs doesn’t show us what “actually” happened (and it’s unlikely that it ever will), it does explain how the mechanics of the games work. Things like the role of the Detective and Knox’s Decalogue give us the framework and a direction from which to approach the stories of each Episode. Throughout Episodes 1-4, we were essentially flailing around, looking for any possible explanation for what was going on, but the Core arcs finally let us narrow down the search space for plausible theories.

Not only that, but we get a lot more Meta-world shenanigans. Somehow, there’s a lot more time spent in the Meta-world, away from the events on Rokkenjima. Like the entire game in general, a lot more of the time is spent on the mechanics of the games instead of the events that are occurring in the games. The various witches and furniture and demons are getting a lot more screentime than the original 18 are, which is fine with me, because they get some amazing scenes.

And that’s not to say that there’s no reveals that aren’t more direct. There are a ton of hints scattered throughout these arcs, but EP7, much like Higurashi’s Minagoroshi-hen, has some pretty huge reveals. No, the mystery isn’t explicitly solved, but it should be close enough that a bit of thinking should get you pretty close, if not right at the answer.

For all the focus on proof and logic in the Question arcs, the Core arcs shift the focus pretty bluntly in EP5, with the introduction of Furudo Erika. Why are things like the Decalogue and other rules of the games revealed now? The Core arcs are much more about the nature of the story and why things happen rather than what or how things happened. Somewhere along the way, we realize that denying the Witch won’t necessarily give us the good end, because it means there’s still someone running around on the island murdering people. So the question now becomes finding out why there’s someone on the island murdering people.

Umineko has been an insane ride and I’m definitely looking forward to finally finishing it and having my head explode one last time next year.

I’d been fairly charitable throughout most of the anime’s run. I mean, there’s absolutely no way that any studio can adapt Umineko and have everyone be satisfied with the result. It just isn’t possible. So I was willing to give Deen a little slack. Okay, so it has bad animation, but Umineko isn’t known for great art. Okay, so some things aren’t paced well or got cut. I understand, it’s a challenge given the time constraints. Okay, so they remixed awesome tracks for the anime OST but never use them. Wait a second.

Episode 4 was terrible. Unlike the other arcs, there was not one scene throughout the entire Episode that was done well. Episode 1 had its tea party, Episode 2 had its tea party, and Episode 3 had Beatroll.

The weakest parts of every arc have been October 4 and 5, 1986. The problems with the pacing are because they decided to slow down only as much as necessary and to blaze through whatever could have been rushed. So all the mundane, important parts got the time that they needed, while the awesome parts got cut or rushed. And so, a lot of the emotional connection that Umineko has is lost.

The problem is magnified in EP4, where a lot of the story is introducing and fleshing out who Ange is. Ange’s parts of the story are comparable to the very first airport scenes. That is, they’re long, not very exciting, but pretty necessary. With that making up the bulk of the anime’s EP4 and the decision to do it mostly in one shot, the last part of the anime seemed worse than usual.

And what happens when you take all of the character and emotion out of Umineko? It’s just a bunch of tl;dr. It’s not even a coherent mystery that you can solve because there are quite a few things missing from the anime.

The final blow to the Umineko anime is that Deen just isn’t very good. Yeah, the animation is some improvement over Higurashi, but that’s not saying much. The music, even with the zts tracks that people were worried wouldn’t make it in, ended up being a travesty. And, as all Umineko fans are aware, the music of Umineko is a very integral part of the experience.

It’s really disappointing because I was really, really hoping that it’d at least be decent. At least now I know to preemptively be in despair whenever I see Chiaki Kon in the director’s seat (pretty sure Nodame Finale is going to be terribad).

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.

So Episode II should provide some character development that was pretty lacking from the first arc. In particular, the focus is on the relationships between Kanon and Jessica, Shannon and George, and Rosa and Maria. We also move into the real main story thread of Umineko and we learn some more about the mechanics of the world.

The biggest adaptation challenge for this Episode was the meta-world stuff, particularly the red text. The in-world meta stuff worked pretty well, with the greying and freezing, and I guess it’s a good excuse to use the CG golden butterflies. The red text is more interesting. When the first screencaps came out, the assumption was that red text would only be indicated by the red tint on the screen. Obviously, that would make what the exact red text was a lot more fuzzy. It turns out they chose to have the red text flying around, which I found that I didn’t mind so much. Of course, it’s amusing when it flies in weird paths.

The most surprising thing about this arc has been the censoring. I guess slit necks, fingering a deep chest wound, and disembowelment aren’t very broadcast friendly.

Overall, Episode II was pretty well adapted, other than some rushing near the end. Again, most VN readers’ whining are because of some really minor details or inconsequential stuff, like music choices. Wah, wah, wah, Dread of the Grave didn’t get used until the end of Episode II, so the Umineko anime must be terrible.

Everything before the first twilight was pretty spot on, with bonus Jessica silly faces. The first scene that I really wanted to see animated was Kanon vs. goats. It actually turned out better than I expected, although the magical blades could have used some work.

The biggest problem with the anime so far is that even though all of the major events and main points are able to fit in, the dramatic pacing has been lost. Just about all of the moments that made me drop my jaw (Kanon’s furniture reveal, Rosa Musou, etc.) didn’t make as much of an impact.

Other than the timing, the portrayal of the events that took place has been fine. Kanon’s fight was exciting enough and Rosa Musou was Musou enough, even if it was shortened. I was most impressed with Rosa’s scene at the tea party, which was pleasantly and surprisingly disturbing. It makes me look forward to the more creative murders in the next Episode.

tl;dr – there was no にぱー☆ from Bernkastel, EP2 is ruined.

Umi Monogatari

Some mermaids find a ring that some girl threw into the ocean. They venture to the scary surface and try and give it back. In the process, they release some sort of dark evil. It looks like this is going to have an actual plot, which was kind of disappointing. I’d heard that this had Aria’s director on it and that sort of gave me this false impression that this was going to be Aria with mermaids. Oh well, I guess I’ll see if it continues to capture my interest.

Umineko no Naku Koro ni

So far, everything has been pretty good. The pacing is a little lightspeed, but it would have taken about a month to get to where we are right now if they’d followed the game. Good production all around in terms of animation, music, and voice acting. There were a few casting choices that had me worried when I read them, but they sure proved me wrong. And though the OP, 「片翼の鳥」, and ED, 「la divina tragedia〜魔曲〜」, aren’t from the game, they, together with their animations, are pretty good. Very much looking forward to when things start rolling at the first twilight.

Aoi Hana

This is some sort of yuri romance thing. I took a look because I heard it was worthwhile. I feel like the OP will tell you everything you need to know about this show: flowers and girls holding hands and slow music. I’ll probably watch another episode or two, at which point, I will get bored and drop it.

So I haven’t watched or read anything in the past few weeks because I’ve been busy going through Umineko no Naku Koro ni episodes 1 to 4.

I really liked the Higurashi anime, so I was super excited to discover that Umineko was being made into an anime as well. Of course, I’d heard nothing but good about the Umineko sound novel, but I never thought to play them until pretty recently. The reason for this was because I played through act 1 of Katawa Shoujo, which made me want to try out other visual novels. The other reason was that I discovered that ONScripter can be run on a Mac.

To be honest, EP1 started off really slow, having to introduce and set up the massive initial cast and all. Even when things started to get rolling, by the end of EP1, I felt like it was alright, but it was nothing mind-blowing yet. Of course, that’s because EP1 really is a setup for everything that follows.

And the episodes that follow really deliver. As expected, they’re able to develop the characters that we were given from EP1, but each episode really does a lot expand the world and the story. I would liken some of the reveals to be like in Gurren Lagann, when we find out what we’ve seen so far is a small part of a much larger picture.

Working through each episode, you can see more and more of the influences from Higurashi. The brutality and the true nature of the story ramps up and goes far past Higurashi levels very quickly. And even though it’s not a sequel to Higurashi, there are a few familiar faces, although not in the way you’d expect.

I’m pretty glad that I decided to play through these instead of waiting for the anime. Even with the crappy drawings (yeah, they really are) and very little animation, the text and the music are able to deliver some really powerful moments. And because of the sheer amounts of text, it’s probably impossible to adapt without losing a lot.

If you can, you should definitely play it. The anime can work, but it’s a much shakier prospect than the games. And if you do, you’ll be treated to an epic horror/psychological murder-mystery, a grand battle between anti-mystery and anti-fantasy, that has no peer and is unlike anything else.

When the seagulls cry, there are no survivors.