According to tealovertoma, this episode was supposed to be mediocre, but I can’t see why. It yet again was a standard episode for Umineko, but the mystery yet again deepened, it gets harder and harder to explain everything with simple logic, which is exactly what the witch wants, and the situation gets more hopeless with every single episode. Sure, this show isn’t as good as Higurashi at this point, but what exactly is turning this series into a disappointment?
I mean, seriously: what the heck is going on here?! At a certain point in this episode, the characters split up: Maria, Battler and Rosa go off in one group. Gouda, Sharon, Genji and George go off to the other room. At one point, Genji stays behind because he has to keep alert for any requests of his master. After that, Gouda, Sharon and George get attacked by the supposed “Beatrice”. Rosa, my prime suspect behind the murders, could not have done this, because she was with Battler all this time. Gouda (who I also suspected as the culprit) at the same time could have done it, but he got killed off at the end of this episode. It could be a big illusion, though. At the same time, we have Genji, whose whereabouts are unknown. Yet at the same time, he couldn’t have been the killer because he died in the first arc. Either that, or that was an illusion as well.
But then again, there’s a good chance that the murderer is some sort of a magician. He could have pulled a fake body in any of the occurrences. What about Kinzou? All we saw was his dead body, but he at the moment is the only one who has the freedom to move through the entire house without being detected. He’s the one with the master key, right?
It’s also interesting how the Battler in this universe is the complete opposite. While I called Natsuhi unstable at one point, she was like a sweet little kitten compared to Rosa. Because of this, I think that he gave in to the witch in this case. Or that could have been yet another illusion by Beatrice to get him to break down. I have no idea what’s real anymore: we know that the red texts are true, but is there any other part that we can really trust?
I’m really starting to see the appeal of the Umineko series: it really builds further upon the first arc of Higurashi: mad, twisted, and nothing is really what it looks as things start looking more and more impossible to have happened without any sort of magic. Sure, this series isn’t anything amazing as of yet, but hey: we’ve still got tons of episodes left. Right now this series is quite likely building up.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Umineko no Naku Koro ni – 10
Umineko 10 episodes in > Higurashi 10 episodes in
Higurashi didn’t become really good until Meakashi. Episode 16.
i’m glad you are getting excited about umineko. the best part of the series IMO is that it just keeps on getting better, with more twists and revelations along the way. i loved higurashi, but i honestly believe ryukishi07 (the creator of the series) really stepped his game up with Umineko.
It keeps getting more crazy and better at the same time. Plus I really like watching the intro. =X
I think many people are disappointed with this episode because it didn’t cover a lot of content, thereby leaving a huge amount to cover in the supposedly final episode of the arc next week. However, I also found this episode highly enjoyable, as it really transmitted a feeling of mystery and hopelessness. Let’s just hope they don’t screw up the finale =D
Indeed. I assume that the VN is better from what people keep saying, but I’m still enjoying the show so far and have no real reason to complain.
I agree that all this build-up is necessary for what future arcs may bring us so a lot of patience is definitely required.
Now, back to the current situation…Rosa is probably behind at least some of the murders, mainly the initial six in the chapel, but I doubt she can be directly blamed for any of the latest ones. Battler and others have been standing right next to her for a while. There doesn’t seem to be any possibility for her to slip away and carry out the most recent killings.
Kinzo is certainly a bit of a wild card here. After all, from what little we know he seems perfectly happy with letting his relatives die. Then again, he might also be a partial red herring since that would make everything far too obvious given his character archetype. He probably does know what’s really going on though.
Battler’s breakdown and apparent turn towards believing in Beatrice was surprising but nice to see. The other battler doesn’t seem to have given up yet, though he’s certainly gradually losing it. By the way, the chase sequence during those last few minutes ended up quite well too, I liked the music used there.
I think Battler’s reaction is based on emotion more than logical thinking. That’s why he opposed Rosa. The point is not her thinking, but her attitude. She was clearly treating the servants like criminals. She was accusing, not suspecting. If she did it more ‘softly’, maybe Battler would have sided with her.
That’s also the reason why Battler’s so stubborn in denying magic. I think one of the main reasons why Battler can keep his stance so far is thanks to Beatrice’s non-stop provoking. If she didn’t do anything, maybe eventually he would have accepted magic.
psgels you can beleive everything that HUMAN-BATTLER see, notice that human battler never see magic neither beatrice so trust everything human-battler see with his eyes =) at least that is what i think.
Am I the only one who noticed this? ;
http://blog.seiha.org/images2/umineko10/umineko10_68.jpg
Since you actually addressed me in the intro, I’ll bother replying:
The human side of things is awful. And by “human” I’m refering of course to the way people act in this series, it’s completely retarded. But since I’ve already talked about that several times, I’ll add something to that this time: the mystery isn’t all that interesting. It doesn’t captivate me. They did a sloppy job at introducing the “META” world or whatever you want to call it. And what have the mysteries been about so far? About keys! Closed circles! Repeat ad nauseum.
I think it’s simply that the adaption is bad, though, a production company that could make me care about the characters or the drama (because this is *not* a horror anime… so what does it have going for it? The drama is awful. The mystery so far isn’t really all that interesting when you break it down).
I don’t know, maybe it’s just not my kind of story. The concept of “rationalism vs irrationalism”, presented in a “logical explanation vs magic” way here is actually pretty interesting, but when every character is acting irrational and they keep repeating the same points over and over again, it fails to interest me.
Same opinion than tealovertoma. If all those episodes are just building up for the next episodes, then it’s either too long or too bad. Higurashi captivated me with only 2 episodes, because it had a very good mystery, and a very good horror sense.
Umineko lost its horror sense with the beginning of the second arc (because it’s too rationalized); and like tealovertoma said, the mystery is not good either, because it’s only a matter of keys. I really hope this arc will end soon, or that there will be some king of huge plot twist.
Higurashi initially threatened each cycle as completely seperate story which is why each cycle “matured” faster.
Umineko is a coherent story, each cycle builds upon the last. Despite being seperate it forms (fake?) connections and a overaching story. While Higurashi build up and “delivered” each cycle the process in Umineko works over several Cycles. It takes longer for twists to show up but then they are imho a lot better than in Higurashi.
“we know that the red texts are true, but is there any other part that we can really trust?”
And that is the brilliance of Umineko. We can´t trust the event´s but we have to – the red truth is trustworthy but the Witch clearly uses it to frame the events into her favour.
@tealovertoma yes is a bad adaptation the sound novel is 100 times better, next episode is incredible amazing uber uber epic in the sound novel, let’s hope the anime adapt it well.
Personally, I’m looking forward to see George force open the box just in the nick of time, only to discover that it was the wrong box. :p