[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

BYou're right that to some extent exaggeration for dramatic effect can fall flat, but bear in mind that bullying in particular always looks like less of a big deal to adults than it appears to be to the involved parties because kids are stupid and think everything is the biggest deal in the world。

Though now you make it sound as if bullying was something that stops when you grow up, which it clearly isn't. I actually wonder if Umineko should have made some of the connections even more obvious than they already were, namely that Ange and Maria weren't the only victims of bullying.
Yes, Maria and Ange were the most obvious cases of classical bullying that most people imagine when hearing the word, but if you look at it, so many people (if not almost all the characters) were being bullied (in the sense of being verbally, physically, psychologically or structurally abused). And I think what it reall highlights, and I don't know if that isn't apparent to people without bullying/abuse experience, is that it is rarely about a specific aspect or circumstance of the victim and how it relates to the offender.

Let's talk Ange and her assailants:

What gets me is why anyone in Ange's particular situation (I can't speak for Higanbana) would care so much.

I don't think they really cared. It was a convenient way for them to relieve their stress, because Ange's family is considered to have done something morally wrong, which made it possible to cast blame on her by implying she is inherently "just as bad".
What were they blaming her for? For pulling down the class-average, for not involving herself, for being different. This had nothing to do with her parents or the Rokkenjima incident, it was a flimsy excuse to be able to antagonize her.

It's the same thing that happens between Eva and Natsuhi. Eva is just using the fact that Natsuhi lives the life she is trying to escape to vent her frustration for not being able to fully do so. It is never actually about Natsuhi.

Maybe that segment would've been better had Ange been dealing with a singular, named, portraited bully with a better-developed backstory and a reason to be confused and upset and willing to hurt Ange out of that.

I find it actually a lot more poignant in this case, that her bullies do not have individual personalities, because we see the event partially through Ange's eyes. In a way we are able to consider both sides, Ange is being a victim because she never consciously tried to anger these people, but in a vicious circle she is actually giving them material to attack her on things she actually did "wrong" by trying to escape her everyday life.

I actually found the bullying in Umineko to hit very close to home, because I myself experienced it both as a person being attacked and a person standing at the sidelines...I would even say that I was part of some structural bullying in college, which I realized way too late.

For me, what Umineko shows is not that the world is shitty and beyond hope, but that most people are unable to gaze past their own limited horizon, living for themselves and rarely considering the effect their actions have on others. Those can be little things like a childhood friend involuntarily hurting your feelings, bigger things like forcing your worldview on others, or even blaming and hurting people for things they are not actually responsible but easy to blame for.
Umineko is about the fact that it takes a little amount of work to believe in something, but the really hard work is to face the truth and still go on.