It's the end of another anime season, and one of the series that concluded this season is Umineko no Naku Koro ni. It's a good thing that I gave up on writing organized, paragraph-form reviews, since I have trouble organizing my thoughts for Umineko. I'm not really what to say about Umineko other than that it didn't suck nor did it impress. Anyways, here is my random list of thoughts about the series.Giving up already?- One of the reasons why I decided to watch Umineko is because there was supposed to be gore, but I was disappointed since DEEN blurred everything out. Maybe I should go read the manga.- After watching 3/4 of the series, I finally figured out that the point of the game played between Battler and Beatrice is not about whether magic exists; it's just about whether if the murder scenarios can happen without magic. It's probably a good thing Battler doesn't have to explain why he and Beatrice can teleport in and out of existence since he'll probably go nuts.- Speaking of Battler, he is a rather unimpressive protagonist. He keeps saying things about flipping the chessboard around and likes to point fingers, but thus far he has solved nothing (obviously most if not all of his wild guesses in the final episode were wrong). Battler has been somewhat whiny, not all that intelligent, and actually not that strong-willed either. Thus far, Battler has been all show but no go.- There is a large cast of characters in Umineko, and it's probably because of this that most of them didn't receive much character development. Most the adults in the show didn't get much character development, which kind of leads me to think that they are just there to be killed. - Favorite moment of the series: when Beatrice and Virgilia trolled Battler in the third arc. Turns out Moetrice was actually Trolltrice. If Beatrice genuinely turned good in the third arc then it would have been the dumbest suddenly character personality change ever, but thank goodness she trolled Battler.- Trolltrice was the best moment of the series. The second and third (and maybe fourth) best highlights all involve Rosa abusing Maria.- The two characters that actually deserved to be killed over and over again are Maria and Rosa; Maria for being annoying and creepy, while Rosa for being a horrible parent. That's why the two deserve each other.Endless as in endlessly bleeding.- Beatrice was the most interesting character in Umineko, but I still don't understand her suddenly personality changes. The change in the third arc turned out to be a ploy to trick Battler, but what's with the sudden change in attitude in the fourth arc? If Beatrice was going to whine about Battler not being Asumu's son, then why didn't she do it in the first arc? And why does she suddenly want to die? I guess Beatrice must have a lot of mood swings.- Regarding Beatrice's question to Battler in the final episode, isn't the answer Battler himself? Or else it's someone who's already dead. I'm probably way off, but just thought I should throw this out there.- 26 episodes in and we still have no concrete answers to any of the mysteries. I am annoyed when a series gives no answer whatsoever to its story. Maybe they should have waited until the answer arcs of Umineko are released before making this anime.Overall, I thought Umineko was watchable. It has an original setting and built an interesting mystery, but the story didn't quite connect. I can't pinpoint what, but there's something about the execution of the series that was a bit off. Maybe it's because the story is only half-told, or maybe I'm not used to watching this genre of shows, or maybe I had my brain turned off when watching this show. The animation studio DEEN probably has something to do with it as well, since the visual novel supposedly has better storytelling. At this point, I'm not sure if I want to watch the sequel to Umineko. On one hand I'm interested in the answers to the mysteries, but on the other hand I wasn't too impressed by this series.
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