When They Cry/...no Naku Koro ni - Ryukishi07 Appreciation Station

[Yamamaya]

When I saw Eva's furniture the first thing I thought was,
"Mi Mi MIKURU BEAM!"

[GeneD]

I'm watching the last episode of the first arc in Higurashi right now. It's almost 11 o' clock at night. Yeah, I don't think I'll be sleeping very well tonight, but what the heck. XD

[blkmage]

To start off, first, a flashback:

So.

I just finished Episode 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch.[spoiler][SIZE="7"]WHAT.[/SIZE][/spoiler]

And so, we arrive at Umineko III-vii.
[spoiler]As always, it seems that the end of each arc is the strongest part of the adaptation. And as usual, we have lots of reveal bombs. Here, we have Beatrice's elaborate troll played quite beautifully. Ange's introduction was also pretty great. In case it wasn't clear, unlike the arcs before this one, when the seagulls cried, there was one survivor. And fantastic BGM selection for this episode.

Too bad, witches don’t refo-rm☆]
[color="Red"]*cackle*cackle*cackle*cackle*cackle*cackle*[/color]

[Yamamaya]

Am I the only one that laughed when the furniture saw Battler's anti magic resistance.

IT'S OVER 9000!!!

[Tsukuyomi]

I'm watching the last episode of the first arc in Higurashi right now. It's almost 11 o' clock at night. Yeah, I don't think I'll be sleeping very well tonight, but what the heck. XD

Lol, I was surprisingly enough able to handle watching Higurashi at night XDD I'm such a scardy cat (I proved this last night.. Just ask Fish and Anony >_>) xDD

I really should hunt down more Higurashi episodes >_>;

[Yamamaya]

Holy crap..

[SPOILER]Beatrice is the best troll ever. Quite a twist at the end. It was both satisfying and a little sad since I liked the nicer Beatrice. [/SPOILER]

[blkmage]

Holy crap..

[SPOILER]Beatrice is the best troll ever. Quite a twist at the end. It was both satisfying and a little sad since I liked the nicer Beatrice. [/SPOILER]

*cackle*cackle*cackle*cackle*cackle*

You're in good company. Just search for Umineko EP3 blog posts to see how visual novel players reacted.

[blkmage]

Sup guys, it's the beginning of EP4: Episode 19, IV-i. For future reference, Umineko EP4's title is Alliance of the Golden Witch.

[spoiler]A few important things in this episode. We're introduced to a new setting, off the island: the year 1998. First, note that all the 1998 stuff happens after the last 1998 scene from the last episode with Eva dying in the hospital. If you thought we had too many characters already, here are a few more. And here, we see the work of magic outside of Rokkenjima. In particular, we have Ange speaking to Maria through her diary or something. This leads us to Maria's past, before Rokkenjima, and again, we see the animated stuffed lion, Sakutarou (uryuu~, voiced by Minori Chihara in her Minami Chiaki voice lololol). The episode ends with another bout of siblings trying to extort Krauss. We get a scene where Gretel calls Battler out for being incompetent and Beatrice giving Battler his blue text. Finally, Kinzo lifting Krauss with a finger, throwing him to the ground and declaring he's going to settle his children's hissyfits.[/spoiler]

[blkmage]

Is it safe to assume that no one is watching this anymore, or are people just too lazy to talk about it?

IV-ii:
[spoiler]Again, Umineko shows us that there's way more than we understand that's lurking beneath the surface of the story. We take a break from the crazy stuff that's happening on Rokkenjima and spend a bunch of time in 1998. Ange seems to be looking for clues having to do with what happened in 1986.

Again, what's interesting is that we're seeing magic supposedly happen outside of 1986 Rokkenjima, this time with the Stakes. Unfortunately, we didn't get a lot of the moe moe Stakes and Ange character development scenes, although you could probably extrapolate what they were like from their kyaa-ing over Sakutarou.

And of course, we are treated to more of Maria and Rosa's past. Still the best mom in the world? Probably not. Although, this does explain why Maria, when we were first introduced to her, was annoying and eccentric.[/spoiler]

Also, they seem to have discovered filters or something this week.

[Fish and Chips]

While I'm keeping up with Umineko in principle, I really don't know what to say about it anymore. It's all a retread of the visual novels, which I've already gone through, and cuts out a lot of material. I don't really have anything to comment on except the animation of the action scenes, since any discussion of the mysteries is going to be saturated with stuff I already know, but hasn't been revealed in the Anime yet.

Though on a tangential note, I actually found it kind of hilarious that they used Witch Hunt in the Anime adaption too, meaning an official Japanese studio has now paid tribute to an American fan localization group. Pukukukuku~.

At least we have Sakutaro around now.

[Yamamaya]

Interesting episode this week. Throws another curveball at ya.

[Yamamaya]

The best mom in the world is back.

[SPOILER]So this confirms the fact that the belief of the individual is what creates magic. If the witch herself denies the magic, then it ceases to exist. Still, these past episodes have been a bit slower since they've focused more Ange. The Maria centric parts of it were good tho[/SPOILER]

[Bobtheduck]

So [spoiler]Rosa resents Maria because she's... special and Rosa is getting tired of dealing with it and not having a life.[/spoiler]

A more mundane thing to think about than what most people are, no doubt.

[blkmage]

So [spoiler]Rosa resents Maria because she's... special and Rosa is getting tired of dealing with it and not having a life.[/spoiler]

A more mundane thing to think about than what most people are, no doubt.

Yes, but
[spoiler]If you look at the reason why Maria is the way she is, it all goes back to Rosa. Rosa doesn't resent Maria because of that, she resents the fact that Maria exists. Remember, Rosa had Maria out of wedlock and adding another headache in her life, in addition to hooking up with her boyfriend, saving her failing business, and having to deal with Ushiromiya family stuff. That Maria isn't falling in line and doing exactly as Rosa says is just adding to the burden that she is.

A lot of her pressures in life stem from her family problems. Kinzo is obviously not pleased with Rosa, especially with Maria and she's always had to deal with her over-ambitious siblings. And as the youngest one, having to live with her really ambitious siblings, she's always had an inferiority complex (notice how she just goes along with Eva and Rudolf when they're extorting Krauss). And there's the business thing that I don't think is explained very well in the anime, but essentially, each sibling is given a loan from Kinzo to essentially create businesses and wealth for the Ushiromiya family. In fact, the yearly family conference's purpose is to discuss these business endeavours.

And so Maria is then forced to come up with ways to amuse herself and explain why Rosa is a terrible mother and we end up with Sakutarou and other things that we will discover later on, shortly. And this antagonizes Rosa further, which causes Maria to use more "magic" creating the spiral that we see.[/spoiler]

[Yamamaya]

Soooo, episode IV-IV Epic Maria is epic.

[SPOILER]It's cool to see lil Maria become a witch. They're sure trying to make us hate Rosa. It was about time she followed up on her creepiness. The new furniture are getting a little silly. There's no need to introduce some more of them every new arc.

So last arc was Evatrice and this arc it will be the father who calls the shots. This makes me wonder if another of the family members was performing the murders in the first two arcs.[/SPOILER]

BTW blk, I saw your comment on Star Crossed Anime blog on this episode. It helped explain a few things about character development.

Speaking of which I purchased Vol 4 and 5 of the Higurashi manga today.

[blkmage]

So the latest episode,
[spoiler]This was pretty good and was one of the times that probably got the intensity of the scene spot on.[/spoiler]

[SPOILER]The new furniture are getting a little silly. There's no need to introduce some more of them every new arc.[/SPOILER]

[spoiler]The thing with furniture is that after playing through EP4, it's pretty clear to me that they're not just random characters that are thrown in. Look at the Stakes, for example. They started off being random characters in EP2, but by EP4, they somehow play a role in Ange's subplot. Why is this?

The same goes for other furniture, but these aren't as obvious from the anime and are only found in the supplementary TIPS in the game. Consider Ronove. We already know that he somehow has a connection with Genji. However, it's never mentioned that Genji's full name is Ronoue Genji. HMMMMMM.

Also never mentioned in the anime (and likely won't be) is Siesta 556. Recall that there are three Siestas right now: 45 (pink), 440 (blue), and 00 (yellow). What happened to 556? Well, the character description says that she was killed in a battle with the Black Witch. Also, she likes playing the trumpet. Where else have we seen four rabbits with instruments?

The thing to remember with Umineko is that a lot of things seem really random or inconsequential, but once you start seriously theorizing and going over every detail in trying to piece together what everything means, you'll find that there's tons of stuff to consider even in those things that used to seem innocuous.

Anyway, after you're done with the anime, you should totally look up some hardcore theories on Google.[/spoiler]

Also, some interesting game news. As you know, Comiket 77 is coming up, so that means the release of Umineko EP6 is upon us. The title is "Dawn of the Golden Witch" and screenshots and the new portrait is here. OBVIOUSLY, HUGE SPOILERS.

[Fish and Chips]

Since Star Crossed Anime has been namedropped, I agree with Psgels that rushing Ange's backstory like this was a bad move. I would have preferred it if they'd spaced it out across the accompanying episodes. We wouldn't be any further ahead or behind, but it would feel less like an infodump.

Then again, Alliance of the Golden Witch was never really about the mystery until the later chapters, since until in-game Battler sees it, nothing is confirmed.

Also, some interesting game news. As you know, Comiket 77 is coming up, so that means the release of Umineko EP6 is upon us. The title is "Dawn of the Golden Witch" and screenshots and the new portrait is here. OBVIOUSLY, HUGE SPOILERS.

Shoot, nice find. I was wondering when Episode 6 was supposed to come out.

[Yamamaya]

So the latest episode,
[spoiler]This was pretty good and was one of the times that probably got the intensity of the scene spot on.[/spoiler]



[spoiler]The thing with furniture is that after playing through EP4, it's pretty clear to me that they're not just random characters that are thrown in. Look at the Stakes, for example. They started off being random characters in EP2, but by EP4, they somehow play a role in Ange's subplot. Why is this?

The same goes for other furniture, but these aren't as obvious from the anime and are only found in the supplementary TIPS in the game. Consider Ronove. We already know that he somehow has a connection with Genji. However, it's never mentioned that Genji's full name is Ronoue Genji. HMMMMMM.

Also never mentioned in the anime (and likely won't be) is Siesta 556. Recall that there are three Siestas right now: 45 (pink), 440 (blue), and 00 (yellow). What happened to 556? Well, the character description says that she was killed in a battle with the Black Witch. Also, she likes playing the trumpet. Where else have we seen four rabbits with instruments?

The thing to remember with Umineko is that a lot of things seem really random or inconsequential, but once you start seriously theorizing and going over every detail in trying to piece together what everything means, you'll find that there's tons of stuff to consider even in those things that used to seem innocuous.

Anyway, after you're done with the anime, you should totally look up some hardcore theories on Google.[/spoiler]

Also, some interesting game news. As you know, Comiket 77 is coming up, so that means the release of Umineko EP6 is upon us. The title is "Dawn of the Golden Witch" and screenshots and the new portrait is here. OBVIOUSLY, HUGE SPOILERS.

Thanks for the heads up about Umineko EP6. I'll be looking up the spoilers for EP5 and some vids of the VN once the anime is over.

[SPOILER]Hmm, you're right I never noticed that part about the bunnies. It's easy to miss stuff like that while you're actually watching the anime. Like any good mystery, the devil's in the details[/SPOILER]

Speaking of which, here's one of mah pathetic theories.
[SPOILER]We know that anti magic is none other than disbelief or a situation that encourages disbelief. That's why Ange's furniture said there was so much anti magic that an action like killing those girls would be difficult. Their natural disbelief for magic was extremely strong. We also know that declaring disbelief in furniture's existence is enough to kill them. However, a place in which magic would flourish would be the mansion. We know that both Kanon and Shannon are furniture. The fact that they are visible to everyone proves that whoever created them possessed great belief in them. Thus, the people in the mansion live in harmony with magic. Merely expressing belief in the existence of Shannon and Kannon adds strength to the magic around them. Add to that fact that many of the people at the mansion are capable of using magic and you've got yourself a very "magical environment." Thus, this would make it easy for Beatrice to create a "chessboard" out of the mansion[/SPOILER]
Yes it's poorly made, but I came up with it relatively quickly.

The problem with Ange is the fact that no other characters in the anime received as much character info/development time as her. In fact, the entire anime focused more on the story than on character development. Thus her introduction felt a bit forced and boring.

[blkmage]

Episode 23 (IV-v):
[spoiler]Upon finishing EP4, one of my first thoughts was that, really, everyone gets a chance to be awesome at least once. Yeah, not everyone's had a go at it yet, but there's still plenty of chances for them to step up. So obviously, I'm talking about George and Jessica here, whose scenes in this episode are fantastic.

Also interesting is the Ange part of this episode. I honestly didn't remember that much about it, so I was surprised at the quadrillion to one thing and the bag of Sakutarous. If I recall correctly, the game never revealed what it was that Ange saw in the captain's basement. I'm not exactly sure what to think of this.[/spoiler]

[Yamamaya]

Episode 23, why so shoenun?

[SPOILER]Overall it was a good episode. Somehow this letter was meant to be sent to all of the surviving children of the family. One of them got sent to Dr. Nanjo's son. Intriguing. I must say this episode definitely gave me more insight into George and Jessica. Despite their relative pacifism, they are incredibly determined. They even bluffed their way through the first questions only to strike out against the attackers. Also, this episode proves my point that everyone on the island is capable of magic. Surprisingly, this episode contained very little of Battler and none of Meta Battler. I wonder how Battler and Maria will handle their tests? Maria will certainly be interesting but poor Battler really hasn't shown much promise. For most of the series, he's been getting pwned over and over. Hopefully his test will make up for it. [/SPOILER]

[Fish and Chips]

The detective in any mystery is necessarily the least involved in the actual plot. Battler's our sort-of stand in resident sleuth, so everything actually substantial has to happen when he's not around, which dooms him to the sidelines. Or Board Battler anyway, Meta Battler is obviously a bit more active.

Personally though, I'm more intrigued with what's going on behind those envelopes.[SPOILER]Everyone except Eva died in Banquet, leaving only these letters for the surviving family of the murdered. The timing though means that all these deaths were considered in advance, and reparations made. This means the deaths on the island weren't just something that "Happened," but were planned. Of course we can't know how many letters were sent out. Did only Ange, Nanjo's son, and Kumasawa's son receive them as they were the only living relatives, or did every single family get one, we just don't know about them? Were the envelopes supposed to pay off fellow partners in crime, or were they paid out of "Respect" for the dead? And why was Nanjo's number scrawled on the door?

This leads me to the following conclusion: there were (at least) two killers in Banquet, but Eva wasn't supposed to be one of them (necessarily). Someone else planned for some kind of murder, only to have Eva beat them to the Land of Gold, in turn possibly killing the original culprit who killed off the servants.

Given certain events in Alliance, I'm tempted to suspect Krauss and Nanjo the most, for reasons I'll expand on when the Anime is over.[/SPOILER]For that matter, I never did figure out what the deal was supposed to be with the messages in the bottles either, since in every repetition a new one floats to the surface along with all the previous ones.

[Bobtheduck]

I guess I'm just not in the right state to analyze this very closely. I remember how much I got into Lain and Boogiepop and Donnie Darko and Silent Hill 2 and 3 and MGS2, but I guess I'll have to go back over the anime at least to see what I can pull from it. ALso, unless I'm going to get the SN, which isn't likely right now, I'll have to rely on the Anime and Manga and wait a year for Chiru to be animated.

[spoiler] And Beatrice is killing people because of Battler. Hmm... Or not, I haven't looked into it as hardcore as all of you have.[/spoiler]

I'm sure this is all delightfully metaphorical and all of that, and maybe I'll figure it out on my second, more thorough viewing of the series (or... when the followup comes out) but I still think the whole idea behind anti-magic is kind of stupid. It's a lot of double talk. I have to prove you don't exist so you'll disappear, but if proving that makes her disappear, she had to have been there to disappear, therefore she existed, unless we're talking a Carnival of Souls / Jacob's ladder situation.

Also, I read the Witches' Tanabata, and I'm still wondering how they'll work out [spoiler]Rika's alternate personality to be a villain... I mean, that WAS Bern talking in the "adult" portions of Rika's dialogue, right? Of course, it was "board" Bern, not "meta" bern, but they have the same personality... I got the idea from Higurashi that bern was cynical and had a dark sense of humor, but not outright evil. If you're going to take the hero(ine) from the previous story and turn said hero(ine) into the villain(ess), you darn well better do it convincingly (Hint: star wars Episode III was NOT)[/spoiler]

[blkmage]

First of all, Episode 24:

[spoiler]Two episodes left for tons of material. Will they be able to stuff everything in?

I noticed that the jailbreak was cut by a lot. This is one of the places where there's a lot of tension and development from showing how those five manage to break out. There's a lot more Kanon and Shannon fighting and we even get Krauss' moment to shine. Of course, this also means that POWER LEVEL and Goat onii-san got cut out, so maybe it's for the best.[/spoiler]

I'm sure this is all delightfully metaphorical and all of that, and maybe I'll figure it out on my second, more thorough viewing of the series (or... when the followup comes out) but I still think the whole idea behind anti-magic is kind of stupid. It's a lot of double talk. I have to prove you don't exist so you'll disappear, but if proving that makes her disappear, she had to have been there to disappear, therefore she existed, unless we're talking a Carnival of Souls / Jacob's ladder situation.

Much like Higurashi, one of the conditions for winning is to figure out all the exact rules and parameters of the game. One theory is that Battler's specific objective is to deny magic on Rokkenjima on October 4 and 5, 1986.

Also, I read the Witches' Tanabata, and I'm still wondering how they'll work out [spoiler]Rika's alternate personality to be a villain... I mean, that WAS Bern talking in the "adult" portions of Rika's dialogue, right? Of course, it was "board" Bern, not "meta" bern, but they have the same personality... I got the idea from Higurashi that bern was cynical and had a dark sense of humor, but not outright evil. If you're going to take the hero(ine) from the previous story and turn said hero(ine) into the villain(ess), you darn well better do it convincingly (Hint: star wars Episode III was NOT)[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I think it's still unclear what Bernkastel's role is. Now about Bernkastel in relation to Rika, I believe that the case is that Bernkastel and Rika were the same entity until the final game, which ended in victory. That is, Rika wasn't only a piece controlled by Bernkastel, but she was Bernkastel. Now, Bernkastel is the entity that was the result of the thousands of Rika's deaths that travels between the kakera (shards/worlds). Since Rika won the last game, Bernkastel is no longer Rika.

Is Bernkastel Rika? No. Is Bernkastel related to Rika in some way? Yes, Rika created Bernkastel. Does this mean that Bernkastel is necessarily good? No. Is Bernkastel conclusively evil? Not at this point in time. Does Bernkastel ever say nipa~? She does once in the sound novel while trying to motivate Battler after his defeat at the end of EP2. In fact, her full quote make up the very first words of this thread.[/spoiler]

[Yamamaya]

Interesting episode but I can't for the life of me figured out what actually is going on and why Beatrice wants Battler to remember his sin. The most obvious answer is available but I somehow doubt that that's the right one. Once again, this another one of those, "wait what?" moments. Or maybe it's just because I'm rather tired atm.

[blkmage]

So Episode 25. I half expected this to happen, with them spending an entire episode on that part. I guess it's pretty important, but the, for once, the pacing matched the scene, but likely at the cost of everything that happens afterwards, which will be this week.
[spoiler]And now you all feel bad for hating on Maria because of uu. I hope you're all happy.

The thing with the 1998 scenes is that it's a lot easier to see how magic can be explained. I mean, yeah, that was a fairly moving scene where Ange is able to summon the Stakes and fight against the Black Witch, but, well, she's the only one who can see it. The most commonly accepted theory at this point is that Amakusa just trailed Ange in with a sniper rifle or something.

But yeah, the stunning conclusion took a while to get through in the game. We'll see what kind of cliffhanger we'll get left with.[/spoiler]

[blkmage]

And we've reached the end of the first part of Umineko no Naku Koro ni. Unlike Higurashi, the prospect of a second season of Umineko isn't a sure thing, mostly because its sales are pretty dismal. Anyhow, episode 26:
[spoiler]Honestly, this episode was fairly abysmal. Way too much dialogue was cut out, giving a fairly disjointed feel to the entire episode and it made it seem like one person was doing most of the exposition for a lot of the scenes. Ange's big reveal to Battler didn't have the same emotional intensity, largely because Battler didn't have any chance to react to "your little sister is waiting" before Ange went with the "I'M ANGE".

In addition to chopped dialogue, there was a lot of stuff pertaining to the mystery that is missed. Before the final confrontation, Battler goes around Rokkenjima looking for clues as to what happened. Through this investigation, we pick up a few more interesting things.

As for the red vs. blue fight, a lot of Beatrice's rebuttals were cut and the anime made it seem like she was just rolling over. Yeah she wants to die, but she doesn't just take it. As a result, the exchange in the sound novel gives us a more complete picture of what went on, since we get more theories and more rebuttals. Finally, Bern and LD's exchange was largely the same, just without LD cutting Battler's theories to shreds through red text.

But congratulations, anime watchers, you're now caught up.[/spoiler]

Oh one more thing. I like how they remixed this track for the anime OST and didn't use it. I got the idea to blast dreamenddischarger on iTunes during that scene (since the BGM is always pitifully quiet in this show) and it made the scene about six times better.

[Bobtheduck]

What sales are abysmal? The VN sales or the Bluray / DVD sales of the anime?

[blkmage]

Anime sales are terribad, like 1170 units for the DVD and ~600 units for the BRD of the first volume. I don't have numbers for VN sales, but I'd assume they're strong, since Umineko's one of the main highlights for the last few Comikets. And it's not like the VN sales need to be superb, since it really is a doujin game.

[Fish and Chips]

Considering people on foreign continents are picking up 7th Expansion's little homebrew mystery, I'd imagine it's fairly secure in the sales department.

Anyway, this final episode they cooked up for us. Disappointing, but then I kind of expected that with how much they'd have to cram in all compact into the final episode since they lavished so much attention on Ange, which would be fine if they hadn't sabotaged most of the character development in earlier episodes. No Dreamenddischarger either, which is also unfortunate.

Really, it feels like they just stopped. Nothing's resolved or even intensifying for a probable second season, just stopped. Like they ran out of money, so they decided to just end it. Granted, the visual novel's ending wasn't much more, but it still carried a punch to it that settled things in the meantime.

[blkmage]

I think what we have is an adaptation that is mostly accurate and fairly mechanical in its interpretation of the story and basically leaves out the spirit and everything else that made Umineko special. Unlike Higurashi, I think the only people who would've bought Umineko were the people already playing it, and those people are definitely not going to be enjoying this particular anime. This is something that I probably should have expected from this director, who managed to do the same thing to Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter: making a condensed version of the story to fit the time constraints and leaving out all of the small details that made it great.