[Game] Umineko - Spoilers, Theories, Interpretations

[battle22]

I think the fact that pretty much everyone who watched the anime without reading the VN

I first discovered anime . I must say that it was good enough for me to get interested in the series. Then I read the VN and was blown away how awesome it actually was.

[RandomAvatarFan]

Yeah, I don't think many people would have picked up the source material if their introduction to it was a complete failure of an adaptation.

My point is that I'm willing to say that Ryukishi probably did work with the creation of it, maybe not as close as the manga, but close enough that perhaps certain changes may have been intentional.

Check out Kanon's anime death in EP1. Watch it. By the time Nanjo and Battler come in, the stake isn't even piercing Kanon. I already gave mention about the appearance of the gold ingot, how it even appears unfinished. The map of Rokkenjima in EP4, Watch the preview for the third episode (It plays WorldEnd, and is narrated by Shannon). I was in tears.

My point is that it's possible that some changes in the anime could actually be an additional clue, like how we've been viewing changes in the manga, as opposed to an absolute screw up.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by RandomAvatarFan

I noticed that the anime had a nice depiction of the crest of the ingot. The impression of the OMK design is that the crest was intentionally a one winged eagle... but the anime shows almost a faded on the side opposite the wing, as if the engraving had been filed off... or not stamped correctly, as was the case in EP7.

I really think the anime is better than what everyone gives it credit for. Has anyone watched it recently?

A lot of things that were red in the VN were taken out... but I think having them made it more confusing and gave the wrong impression.

Take EP4 for example:
Battler Ushiromiya has a sin. Because of this sin, many people on this island had to die. All die, none survive.
That can't be right, because in EP4, we also have a world in which Eva had survived... a world that the American release makes a point of mentioning that it is in fact not an extension of Banquet.

Well, that red works for the game, not for Prime... but funny enough Eva is dead in EP 4's Prime (or Ange's world or whatever you want to call it).

Anyway the anime isn't completely bad... the problem is they really cut a lot of the plot from it, not just in terms of red but also of character relations.

I could accept them making the mysteries easier due to anime lenght, after all the anime is far shorter than the VN, is when they start cutting the characterization that for me it started failing.

Beato and Battler's interaction is definitely not good enough in the anime and Beato's chara loses a lot of her charm.

After reading the visual novel I got a completely different impression of Battler, Beato and their relation compared to the one I got after I had merely watched the anime.

There's even a fanmade ending for Ep 4 that's better than the ending of Ep 4 itself and Ep 3 manga version in many points is much better than Ep 3 anime.

The anime has its good points, of course, and some scenes are pretty good but, all considered it seemed to focus much more on the gory element than on the plot and if you consider that part of the gory scenes were covered up in the tv version to show them only in the dvd you've even that becoming a problem for the tv version.

There's to say things might have improved in Chiru, personally I considered the anime of Higurashi Kai much better than the one of Higurashi so there was a chance that the second series of Umineko would have been of better quality but I guess Umineko got too little love to push Deen to risk making a second anime series.

We'll see if things will change in the future.

[DaBackpack]

I think Ryukishi mentioned somewhere that the anime held some extra hints for careful viewers. My biggest problem was more of characterization/character portrayal issues. Last episode being probably the worst case.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by DaBackpack

I think Ryukishi mentioned somewhere that the anime held some extra hints for careful viewers. My biggest problem was more of characterization/character portrayal issues. Last episode being probably the worst case.

Well, he was at least of the opinion that EP1 was so broken down to he most important elements that it became too easy to solve. In some interviews he actually seemed afraid that the anime adaptation would give away everything.

He also said that he revealed the whole truth to Ohara Sayaka, the voice-actress of Beatrice, and some partial gameboard elements to Shannon, but left all the other voice-actors in the dark.

[GreyZone]

If I remember correctly, the biggest fail in the anime was something like "Everyone beside Eva and Battler are dead" at the end of Banquet when discussing Nanjo's death. Unless "Beatrice" does not count as a part of "everyone" or "human" and is essentially a ghost... or they really went with Battler's EP4 theory (which was actually never really disproved, not even by Lambda in EP4-???TP of the VN, if I remember correctly).

[Renall]

Clearly Beatrice can be alive while also dead because whatever the red doesn't mean anything anyway if she's allowed to be running around in ep3.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by GreyZone

If I remember correctly, the biggest fail in the anime was something like "Everyone beside Eva and Battler are dead" at the end of Banquet when discussing Nanjo's death. Unless "Beatrice" does not count as a part of "everyone" or "human" and is essentially a ghost... or they really went with Battler's EP4 theory (which was actually never really disproved, not even by Lambda in EP4-???TP of the VN, if I remember correctly).

No, the red you remember was 南條殺人事件発生時、戦人、絵羽、朱志香は生存している which would translate to "At the time when Nanjo's murder occurred, Battler, Eva and Jessica were still alive," which says nothing about other characters state of life or death.
Don't know how it was subtitled though.

[GoldenLand]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

I think the fact that pretty much everyone who watched the anime without reading the VN thought it was a terrible disappointment compared to Higurashi is pretty good proof that it was definitely a failure.

I can't deny that the anime has a bad reputation in the fandom or that it is lacking as an adaptation, but I have to say that the anime was my first introduction to Umineko, and I really enjoyed it. I doubt I would have ever played the VN if I hadn't liked the anime so much.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by GoldenLand

I can't deny that the anime has a bad reputation in the fandom or that it is lacking as an adaptation, but I have to say that the anime was my first introduction to Umineko, and I really enjoyed it. I doubt I would have ever played the VN if I hadn't liked the anime so much.

Also, the Umineko VN had a much larger following when the adaptation was made in 2009. Higurashi was an unknown little game that nobody besides VN readers had paid much attention to, then the anime adaptation came out and it was all the rage.
Voices from the fanbase regarding how bad an adaptation the first season of Higurashi was were present, but they were few in comparison to the many newcomers, of whom many went on and became readers of Umineko.

I would say, by comparison Higurashi season 1 was the worse adaptation, but the superior anime in and of itself. It was not left with that much a cliffhanger (though still pretty big) and managed to characterize at least it's main cast to a certain degree. Umineko managed to cram everything of major importance into that one season, but basically cast all characterization and atmosphere aside in several places. It serves it's purpose as an introduction or reminder, but doesn't do that much as a work on it's own.
Higurashi on the other hand managed to leave almost all major hints out of the anime and made it way more complicated than it needed to be.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I would say, by comparison Higurashi season 1 was the worse adaptation, but the superior anime in and of itself. It was not left with that much a cliffhanger (though still pretty big) and managed to characterize at least it's main cast to a certain degree. Umineko managed to cram everything of major importance into that one season, but basically cast all characterization and atmosphere aside in several places. It serves it's purpose as an introduction or reminder, but doesn't do that much as a work on it's own.
Higurashi on the other hand managed to leave almost all major hints out of the anime and made it way more complicated than it needed to be.

Well, the first series of the Higurashi anime was, in my opinion, lacking in matter of plot and seemed an excuse just for the horror. However the characters were well portrayered. One could sympathize with them, slowly get to know them and more or less understand why they did what they did.
Higurashi however has a small cast. Umineko starts with a huge cast that keeps growing. By the end of the anime I had hard time remembering all the characters or having an opinion about them as they felt... skimmed over.

There's to say that Ep 1 of the manga is even worse than the anime as it seems to be a summary of the anime but the following episodes slowly improve while with the anime is the inverse.
Ep 4 is so summarized I would have preferred if they had cut it entirely.

[Drifloon]

Yeah, they'd probably have done a better job if they'd just adapted the first three arcs...or even the first two. They made a mistake of thinking they could fit an arc into a few episodes like with Higurashi; it's understandable since Higurashi's arcs are about the same length as Umineko's, but they failed to take into account that about half of each Higurashi arc was useless filler that could be cut without losing anything, while almost every scene in Umineko is important.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Drifloon

Yeah, they'd probably have done a better job if they'd just adapted the first three arcs...or even the first two. They made a mistake of thinking they could fit an arc into a few episodes like with Higurashi; it's understandable since Higurashi's arcs are about the same length as Umineko's, but they failed to take into account that about half of each Higurashi arc was useless filler that could be cut without losing anything, while almost every scene in Umineko is important.

Well, I think works like Umineko requires either author and anime studio to cooperate a lot with possibly the author closely checking the script or the anime studio to say the author: nice story, I'll take it as a starting point but then I'll go on my merry way and possibly create an Umineko universe were witches really exists or where the culprit is Gohda or it's all just a dream.

Because, let's face it, it was clear Deen would have to cut things since they only wanted to make so many episodes and it was also obvious that since Umineko was unfinished and Deen didn't know the solution to it they wouldn't know what was okay to cut and what was not.

We know Ryukishi in the beginning helped but we don't really know how much he was involved and who's to blame in the case he wasn't involved enough so we can't really say who's to 'blame'.

But yes, 4 arcs in so few episodes were too much. I'll say they could manage to fit 3 arcs in them, and yes, something would have to be cut anyway but an anime has a different pace than a visual novel and some stuffs that works well in a novel fail in an anime and vice versa (especially because the target of the anime is much wider than the visual novel so you've to keep things simple) so a little bit would be fine.

The last arc after all takes 8 episodes of the anime. Skipping it would have meant 2/3 episodes for each arc, more than enough to add some important bits that went completely skipped.

[Renall]

If I were going to animate the arcs in a particular fashion it would be:

• Legend/Turn/Banquet: The first three primary mysteries, then end it with the appearance of Ange.
• Alliance/End/Dawn: Battler fights Beatrice, Battler beats Beatrice, Battler gets Beatrice back. Nice easy arc here.
• Requiem/Twilight: And take them real, real slow.

That would kiiiiiiiiiiiiinda work, I guess.

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by Renall

If I were going to animate the arcs in a particular fashion it would be:

• Legend/Turn/Banquet: The first three primary mysteries, then end it with the appearance of Ange.
• Alliance/End/Dawn: Battler fights Beatrice, Battler beats Beatrice, Battler gets Beatrice back. Nice easy arc here.
• Requiem/Twilight: And take them real, real slow.

That would kiiiiiiiiiiiiinda work, I guess.

Yes, it probably would work at least for the first 2 groups.
I don't know how Ep7 would turn out in animation... it's... a pretty weird episode to animate and there's also the whole retelling of Beato 2's death which I think doesn't need to be told twice... I wonder if the animation would sort of cut Will's investigation and merely go for Kinzo & Yasu's story...
Ep 8 though might work as all they would have to do was to animate the plot they used in the manga...

[GreyZone]

Originally Posted by haguruma

No, the red you remember was 南條殺人事件発生時、戦人、絵羽、朱志香は生存している which would translate to "At the time when Nanjo's murder occurred, Battler, Eva and Jessica were still alive," which says nothing about other characters state of life or death.
Don't know how it was subtitled though.

How did Eva-Beatrice bring Battler into desperation then? I am sure she never listed all the people who were dead. I cannot remember, what the anime used as replacement for the "red web". Someone knows?

[rogerpepitone]

Originally Posted by RandomAvatarFan

Check out Kanon's anime death in EP1. Watch it. By the time Nanjo and Battler come in, the stake isn't even piercing Kanon.

What's wrong with that?

Originally Posted by Episode 1

`...Kanon had already been prepared for his own death,`@` ......but although he could do nothing but accept the death he had received, he attempted one last measure of resistance.`@
br
;　…そして両手で胸に刺し込まれた凶器の柄を握り、@…………この世のものと思えぬ激痛に歯を食いしばり ながら……………、@…………………………抜く。\
`...He grasped the handle of the weapon sticking into his chest with both hands,`@` ............and gritting his teeth with an acute, unearthly pain............,`@` ........................he pulled it out.`\

... (Kumasawa sees this and screams)

`The first one to dash in was Natsuhi, holding the rifle.`@
`Battler and Genji dashed in after her.`\

[jjblue1]

Originally Posted by GreyZone

How did Eva-Beatrice bring Battler into desperation then? I am sure she never listed all the people who were dead. I cannot remember, what the anime used as replacement for the "red web". Someone knows?

According to the subbed version she said:

After Jessica was injured, Eva was always under Battler's constant surveillance. Therefore, Eva has a perfect alibi for murdering Nanjo.
At the time of Nanjo's murder, Battler, Eva and Jessica were alive.
At the time of the crime, only Nanjo and Jessica were in the servant room.
Ushiromiya Jessica did not commit murder!
Eva and Battler weren't involved in Nanjo's murder either!!
No more than 18 people exist on this island!
Nanjo's death was a homicide, and the culprit killed him from point-blank range!
Red only tells the truth

This is her anime 'red web'... which doesn't even take the shape of a web visually. After she says so Battler falls on his knees crying, Beato tries to encourage him but fails so she stands and says she'll deny the witch in red. It turns out this will cause her and Eva Beatrice to disappear so Eva throws a fuss and Ronove restrain her. Battler stands and tell her there's no need for her to sacrifice herself but she asks him to cover his ears because she doesn't want him to her what she'll say. Battler cries but let her go and obeys to her request.
Beato uses the red, everything disappear, then we skip to PieceBattler who is facing Eva that shoots him and then he and Beato are in the Golden Land with everyone cheering them.

If i compare this to how the manga dealt with the same scene, each red of Eva becoming a rope that goes to form a spider web that traps Battler, everyone's death confirmed, Battler struggling and offering some theories, until he surrenders, completely trapped and unable to move in the web, Beato desperately asking him to react, the last hug between Beato and Virgilia, Battler desperately calling Beato back (or telling her to stop) while crying unable to free himself, Beato's request for him to cover his ears, Battler obeying while crying desperately, (I think Battler also realize the implication of what had happened but I can't read if the text matches the one of the VN), a much clearer scene of what happens in piece Battler's universe and then Battler next to a human shape that represent Beato accepting to recognize her as a witch before tehy'll end in the Golden Land...

...the manga makes such a beautiful work compared to the anime I feel like crying.
Even if I can't read it, without music, without hearing the tone of who's speaking... well I'm moved.

Later on the manga will also portray much better Battler's delusion at having been tricked by Beato than what the anime does even though really, the anime could have tried matching the manga in many points without too much effort.

So sad, the anime doesn't even seem to try to make a good work while the manga puts up lot of effort...

Oh, this was the VN red web... definitely bigger than the anime...

After Jessica was injured, Eva was always under Battler's supervision.
Battler is neither the culprit nor an accomplice.
By this, we can establish a perfect alibi for Eva
There are no more than 18 people on this island
No life forms other than humans have any connection to this game
Kinzo is dead
Krauss is dead
Natsuhi is dead
Hideyoshi is dead
George is dead
Rudolf is dead
Kyrie is dead
Rosa is dead
Maria is dead
Genji is dead
Shannon is dead
Kanon is dead
Gohda is dead
Kumasawa is dead
Nanjo is dead
The 15 people mentioned are dead
Battler is alive
Eva is alive
Jessica is alive
Eva was with you the whole time.
So committing a crime was impossible for her.
Of course, Battler-kun isn't the culprit.
He wasn't forging an alibi for her, and he took the possibility that she was the culprit into account, watching her actions carefully.
No chance existed for her to do anything suspicious!
In short, at the time of the crime, only Nanjo and Jessica were in the servants' room
Ushiromiya Jessica has not committed murder
She was not involved with Nanjo's murder
Her eyes were completely blocked.
It's impossible for her to carry out a murder like that
Neither Eva nor Battler killed Nanjo, nor were they involved
The culprit who killed Nanjo was neither Battler nor Eva nor Jessica
Jessica's eyes were completely blocked, and murder was impossible for her
No actions caused by Jessica's body had any relation to or influence on the murder of Nanjo
This also applies to Battler and Eva
neither Jessica nor Battler nor Eva is the culprit who killed Nanjo
Nanjo was killed by another person
Of course, it was with a direct method of murder, not a trap
A weapon was readied, and he was killed with it from point-blank range in front of him!
The culprit appeared openly before Nanjo's eyes, and as they both looked at each other's faces, the culprit killed him
The red only tells the truth
Absolutely no factors other than humans participate in this game board
The one who killed Nanjo was definitely a human
A human, with their feet on the ground, held up a weapon and killed with it!
Right before his eyes!

[GreyZone]

^this creates a huge error in the narrative of the anime's "Alliance o.t.g.w.". As it seems, it was never denied in the anime that someone just "played dead" in Nanjo's murder in the third game. But in Battler's "showdown" against Beatrice he argues as if the playing dead part was already denied.

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by GreyZone

^this creates a huge error in the narrative of the anime's "Alliance o.t.g.w.". As it seems, it was never denied in the anime that someone just "played dead" in Nanjo's murder in the third game. But in Battler's "showdown" against Beatrice he argues as if the playing dead part was already denied.

Well, it was not like the playing dead was denied in either the anime or the original novel regarding EP3 ever, so I wouldn't call this a huge error in the narrative. The problem was that apparently the scriptwriter of episode 26 seemed to think or remember that during episode 18 the death of individual or all people was given in red. If this was an oversight by just simply copying lines from the original novel's script or a problem in the planning department when finishing the anime script, we will never know.

Yes, Battler is referring to a line that did not appear in the anime, but the whole playing dead argument wasn't even brought up during EP3's anime adaptation, so it appears more like Battler just thought it up during EP4's final battle.