Umineko no Naku Koro ni
Short Synopsis: Our lead character visits an island owned by his grandfather, along with the rest of his mysterious family.
Chance of me Blogging: 70% (It’s from the creators of Higurashi, so yeah)
Well, the series with the biggest amount of hype around it has finally aired. First of all I have to ask: out of all possible lead characters, could the creators have chosen one that is even more bland than “Battler”? He may be eighteen years old, but he still acts like an immature teenager and keeps making boob-jokes. In all seriousness though, this first episode was a bit of a disappointment, and well for the following reason: the acting. This episode suffered from a cast of bad voice actors that hardly know to use any subtlety in their voices. This goes for the lead character, but also for just about the entire rest of the cast. These kinds of stories require the characters to be able to switch to a lot of emotions, but the change from one of these emotions in the others feels woody at best. Ok, sure there could be a chance that everyone in the family is infected with the “hopelessly bad acting virus”, but the voice acting cast really needs to do a better job in the rest of the episodes if they want to do justice to this excellent storyline.
Aoi Hana
Short Synopsis: Our lead character enters high-school and meets with an old childhood friend.
Chance of me Blogging: 80% (Lots of potential)
Now this is more like it. Noise has done it again, as this seems likely to be the third hit in a row for the time-slot. It’s obviously not going to be for those who want a fast-paced storyline, but I personally loved the subtle yet poignant drama between the two lead characters who meet each other again after having been separated when they were kids. The tall girl is a bit of a crybaby, but she definitely has her charms. The rest of the cast also feels alive, rather than being a bunch of 2D Stereotypes. There wasn’t any annoyance about this episode, aside from the fact that I just know that the rich and detailed animation of this episode is probably going to disappear after the next episode.
Needless
Short Synopsis: Our lead character loses his sister and meets a weird priest with strange powers.
Chance of me Blogging: 20% (With so many other great shows this season? Not likely)
It’s strange: the character-designs in this series are abysmal; their style is uninspired and too similar to most other anime and the costumes make EVERONE look like an incredibly ridiculous fashion-victim. The rest of the visuals however, are really sweet. The animation was really good, the gun-designs rocked, and the shots in which the characters weren’t doing bland things really rocked with their visual style. Overall, this was a typical first episode in which the creators go all out to make it as exciting as possible, and for me they did a pretty good job: this episode was a lot of fun to watch, with a lot of adrenaline-pumping action and an interesting cast of characters so far. This series feels the most like the next Koukaku no Regios, so let’s hope that this time the creators do know how to handle the rest of the story, as it definitely has the potential for a fast-paced action story. I liked how the main characters are of all kinds of different ages: we have a kid, a teenager, a guy in his thirties and an old guy. Definitely makes the series varied.
Just a few minor details about Battler and his family from the Visual Nobel of Umineko (no spoilers):
In the beginning, Battler introduces himself and his family and mentions how ridiculous all their names are. His grandfather has a Western obsession and therefore gave all his children WEstern names (although spelled in Kanji); and they did the same to their childs.
Battler himself is supposed to be pretty immature at first, but during his “breast assault” on Shannon we get a bit more insight. He’s doing stuff like this playfully, and in his mind, desperately begs for someone to smack him so he doesn’t really touch her boobs >_>
With Umineko, I thought the VN players were just whining as usual at first, but they’re really rushing through the plot and leaving out all but the most essential character development. And of all things, they left in boob humor, but shortened it to ‘pervert and violent girl’ jokes. The music is nicely dramatic(except for the laughable ED), and Horie Yui as Maria and KugiRie(bet you couldn’t tell) as Shannon were both surprisingly good. Other than them, though, partly because of the character development getting shafted but mostly because of sheer half-assery, the voice acting is unusually bland and mediocre. Maybe they’ll start putting actual effort into the characters later on, but for now, I’d rather read the manga than go through with this adaptation.
Aoi Hana is a blessing after that. The manga readers are even happy with it as an adaptation. The only downside is that the source material apparently is dramatic and sad rather than happy and romantic, but that just promises realistic characters.
I think the biggest problem with Umineko’s acting is that the original script is already pretty…well let’s say staged.
Umineko doesn’t read as ‘Oh people would say that’, but more like a huge opera that is presented to you in a golden theater on a cloud of laughing little butterflies.
So yeah I think the ‘better’, or let’s say less artificial, acting will kick in as soon as the characters deepen a bit more and become more of ‘themselves’.
O.o Battler is… bland??? lol
At first I wasn’t impressed with first Umineko episode either. But now I think: now way creators are going to show us true faces of characters right from the start. 90% sure it would get better later.
Battler is anything but bland.
I think the voice acting is fine. It feels a bit rush but it acceptable. Originally it take me almost 3 hours reading to get to this point and they have to adapt it into single episode. That’s not an easy job.
Well, the nightmare will start kicking off soon. Kihihihihi
Needless reminds me of Guilty Gear…a lot.
Umineko… It felt so rush >_
even though I don’t like Yuri, or Shonen-ai for that matter…the characters are just PLAIN AWESOME!! THE BATHE in awesomeness…I mean you can really relate with those chars. (that was the case for me)
Needless was a strange beast for me – in that I couldn’t decide whether what I was watching was Hopelessly Generic or A Twist Of The Usual Stuff, Cheesy Flamboyant Designs or Awesome Art Direction, Annoying Characters or A Quirky Cast.
I think i’ll enjoy Needless, but it can go either way. At the very least, it was not disappointing.
I’m alright with the voice cast of umineko though . . .
aoi hana . . . seemed nice but I can’t stand fumi. manga made me so sick of her, definitely much more when I see her in anime -_-
I haven’t seen NEEDLESS but the variation of characters seem nice indeed. But . . .the ED . . *disturbed*
With Umineko, I thought the VN players were just whining as usual at first
One forum has more than 12 pages running & 11 of them are full of bitching & whining from the same old people. The only thing more annoying than that is Maria’s UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. Someone grab a shotgun already.
The anime looks average. It has potential for more, but things have to pick up in the next episode to get me interested. (More of Eva plz.)
Oy, yeah, they really screwed that first episode up (although a lot of the cuts I’m very tolerant of, or even thankful for in the case of the adults’ discussion ^^;).
I agree, Battler and (imo) Jessica were really generalized when they’re really not bland characters at all. I think they took the approach of “let’s set up the plot and just develop the characters as it goes”, which I guess could eventually work pretty well. Episode 1-2 might also have the potential to be a little jerky (hopefully not), but past that I can’t see how they could screw it up.
what you think about battler is a consecuence of deen adaptation battler really want someone to hit him when he try to touch a boob he did that like saying HI he never did that again in the whole history, just wait battler is going to be become the most gar character of all time.
I just can’t keep watching umineko with all that uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu from the little girl.
It is too early to criticise the series, but for most part, I too thought the pace was too quick. Compared to the source material (which I could play thanks to http://witch-hunt.com/), it is honestly subpar. I wish they would take more time to flesh everything out; spread the Episodes across multiple seasons, perhaps. However, Higurashi actually suffered from the same thing – the anime (excluding the OVAs, which are superb) lacked half the things which made the original so good, and has gone as far as omitting critical details at some points — I can’t say exactly how much because I cannot read Japanese, and Higurashi’s translation is not yet complete.
However, I don’t think the anime is bad. It is fast paced and looks like an unskilled attempt at taping together something which in the first place was already a fruit salad, but, having previously read the visual novels, it was certainly enjoyable seeing everything animated. And as with many series, it might just be that they are rushing to get to the meat of it all. So until I see some more episodes to get a sense of where Umineko is going, I’m not gonna mark it as the stereotypical adaption just yet.
Needless is f*cking awesome!!!