Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Episode 25 Discussion / Poll

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by Muyasuki

I do find it really weird that people are bad mouthing this episode despite saying that it was a faithful adaption. Sure it may mess things up for next week's episode but that itself has nothing to do with the quality of this episode. Its not fair to judge something based on something else that has yet to occur.

To be more precise, most people are badmouthing the studio and/or director regarding this choice. By itself, it is a good adaptation, but ironically, it is so good it will deal a terrible blow to the next episode, and the franchise as a whole.
This is also why some people still can't rate it, as you are sandwiched with the episode itself, and the incoming failure (unless there is a miracle) of the next episode.

Fair or not, the rating is about how you can enjoy a given episode, and even if the said episode is good, if it makes you worried about the next one, there is no surprise it will lead to a mitigated reception.

[SilverSyko]

So Eva Beatrice was the black witch eh? I thought we saw the last of her in episode 3 but oh well. I guess if I had to guess an evil witch that already appeared in the series she'd be the first answer I'd give.

She totally got what she deserved, Kasumi too. The bitches.

I now understand that love is also required to harness and see forms of magic and there are two types, white and black. But what exactly is this toxin Ange keeps referring to? I'm guessing it's lack of love or something but since Amakusa had the toxin too I could be wrong.

[-Sho-]

Omg this episode ....
Next Last episode about Battler's sin ?

[Vega Lyra]

This episode had a wonderful amount of detail in it. I hope the same for the next episode.

[Arkwright]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

To be more precise, most people are badmouthing the studio and/or director regarding this choice. By itself, it is a good adaptation, but ironically, it is so good it will deal a terrible blow to the next episode, and the franchise as a whole.
This is also why some people still can't rate it, as you are sandwiched with the episode itself, and the incoming failure (unless there is a miracle) of the next episode.

Fair or not, the rating is about how you can enjoy a given episode, and even if the said episode is good, if it makes you worried about the next one, there is no surprise it will lead to a mitigated reception.

Is there not usually a poll for overall series rating/review?

From what I can see, the reasoning is, "there is not enough time left to effectively portray the remaining events in one episode."

But episode 25 and 26 are not the only episodes in the series. Certainly, episode 25 could have been cut shorter, but so could any of the other 24 episodes in the season. So the issue seems to be the overall pacing of the anime, which would fall under overall series rating, rather than any particular failure on episode 25's part.

Thus I think this episode should be rated on its own merits.

Also, regarding the next episode:

Spoiler:

Everyone is assuming that the next episode is going to rush through the remaining events without covering them effectively.

But what if the anime ends up stopping before the Tea Party? If they could fit one chapter in the entire episode 25, then it's certainly possible they could do the same thing again and dedicate episode 26 to the chapter "Ushiromiya Ange." And if they did it well, I think it could be a fine conclusion to the season, even if it's a different point of intermission.

As for my comments on this episode, I would say they did a good job of portraying an atmosphere here that was missing at times in the anime. Although, sometimes I think the dialogue seemed a bit too much like a speech (for example when Kasumi is giving her own backstory.)

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Arkwright

Spoiler:

Everyone is assuming that the next episode is going to rush through the remaining events without covering them effectively.

But what if the anime ends up stopping before the Tea Party? If they could fit one chapter in the entire episode 25, then it's certainly possible they could do the same thing again and dedicate episode 26 to the chapter "Ushiromiya Ange." And if they did it well, I think it could be a fine conclusion to the season, even if it's a different point of intermission.

Are you trying to defend the possibility that ep 26 will be something that will be appreciated by the fans or are you totally destroying our hopes? Because in my case your suggestion heavily brings me to the latter.

[Ttak]

Originally Posted by SilverSyko

But what exactly is this toxin Ange keeps referring to? I'm guessing it's lack of love or something but since Amakusa had the toxin too I could be wrong.

The anime didn't went and explained it. This "toxin" is something all humans carry and is like when someone thinks rationally about the "supernatural". People who doesn't believe in magic carries this "toxin". Many people with this toxin around = Low chance magic can be used around them. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Jan-Poo]

it's correct. The antimagic toxin is the rational thinking and disbelief of supernatural. In our world dominated by science the antimagic toxin is everywhere and extremely strong.

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by Arkwright

...

The whole concept of "if this episode could be any shorter, then so any other could be" doesn't make any sense: Episode 25 was blatantly spanning for 20 minutes on the spot. Unless you want to keep it while shortening like 1 minute from most previous episodes (which will make some episodes even more rushed than they are already), it doesn't hold the candle at all, imo.

That's just a matter of opinion, but I personally see why people would rate this Episode badly: if the end is subject to have much to be desired, it is mainly because this Episode was taking the largest time span, more so than most previous slow episodes.
To begin with, it isn't even the episode which is badly rated, but the decision used for Episode 25.
Thus, by this extent, you can blame the whole anime pacing, or more precisely, episode 25 pace. Both point of view are eligible, so I really don't see any problem with people rating badly ep25.

Furthermore, for spoiler reasons, Episode 4 shouldn't end any time before its real end, or the whole purpose of Ep4 is totally moot, since non VN reader will have to wait ages to have proper red and blue to realize how far the lies and truths of Umineko is stretching.
By skipping both tea parties, it will just be a sham. See the spoiler thread for more details about that.

[Arkwright]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Are you trying to defend the possibility that ep 26 will be something that will be appreciated by the fans or are you totally destroying our hopes? Because in my case your suggestion heavily brings me to the latter.

Spoiler for response:

I was trying to say that it's not certain that episode 26 will be ruined by episode 25.

In other words, if it stops before the tea party, people might find that objectionable, sure. But if that were the case, it would have been purely the fault of episode 26, and the pacing of episode 25 would have been completely unrelated (and this episode would have been downvoted for nothing.)

If you want my own opinion, I think I've decided I would rather have a good adaptation of that chapter than a cliff notes version of that AND the entire tea party, even if neither option was close to my ideal situation.

How they would cover the tea party in this situation, I have no clue, though. I do suspect that from DEEN's perspective the average anime watcher doesn't care as much about the "theory/red truth" section of the story, compared to the character-based scenes.

[Tjaard]

This epi have a faithful adaption, pretty slow but was done very well; the problem is the next, cause probably have too much to cover to be adapted well, so i can only hope that the don't rush the next cause can destroy the ending of this season
However, this epi was pretty good overall, so i hope that they keep this animation for the last one too

[Qilin]

Great episode IMO. I gave it a 9/10.
Well, I do tend to like any episode with Bernkastel in it...

Of course, I do share the rest of the worried sentiments in this thread. They have a LOT of stuff to cram in the next episode. I expected that the episode would end at the part right before the tea party, but I guess my prediction was very much off. There are exactly three parts I want them to do right for next ep.

If the last episode ends up as epic as it should be, I will forgive everything.

[Ronove]

Well.. I find that this episode indeed helps with the mystery. Anime-only viewers will have more of a hint for Anti-Magic. Although, the final scenes seem to blur me too.

We also learned that Beatrice died at 1968 (or I learned at least). That can bring a lot of confusion through time-spans, what happens, age of family, etc. :]

Although, I'm still hooked how those bodyguards and Kasumi died. Supposing magic doesn't exist.

[June 1983]

People have a couple of theories about that.

Spoiler for possible anti-fantasy explanation for those deaths:

Most people believe that Amakusa did follow Ange after all and that the long package he was carrying was a sniper rifle.

[Divaa]

Originally Posted by June 1983

People have a couple of theories about that.

Spoiler for possible anti-fantasy explanation for those deaths:

Most people believe that Amakusa did follow Ange after all and that the long package he was carrying was a sniper rifle.

Agreed.


Also, this episode wasn't terrible. As myself an anime viewer catching up with the novel it seemed alright, maybe the concept of giving it a whole episode was a bit much, I kept sitting there waiting for time to switch over or the big bang of what battler did or didn't do.

Wrapping this all up next episode will likely have some people cheering and most of us booing because choices like these are kinda disappointing.

Another studio should just remake this and do the rest of the little arcs to follow. I give it a 7/10 due to the fact the emotion was there. Weird faces included but it was still a pretty solid episode.

[Fishcaek-Chan]

Hmm? Well it looks like the polls say this episode was better than the last one?!
Well I personaly disagree, I liked the last episode waaaaaaaaaaay better!! Though we did figure out a bit of new things, and Angie is "cool" now, I'd really like to get back to Battler please!!

Originally Posted by June 1983

People have a couple of theories about that.

Spoiler for possible anti-fantasy explanation for those deaths:

Most people believe that Amakusa did follow Ange after all and that the long package he was carrying was a sniper rifle.

OoOoh! What a thought!! This could actually lead somewhere, ne? I mean, it's entirely possible, to think about Angie's weird physiologics, she could of very well imagined the 7 sisters there~.

[bigemperor]

It makes me laugh when people expect an “extra chapter” like when they try to explain deen errors saying they will fix them later (like eva finding de gold without any sense etc etc) NO EXTRA CHAPTER WILL COME OUT THE DVD/BLURAY SALES ARE HORRIBLE next week umineko will end and will be a common ending thanks to deen.

[Geekodot]

I decided to rate this episode 10/10 because of how good it actually was... even though I know it will screw up the pace, the scene was indeed very well made imo...

If Deen fucks up the ending, I will rate the last episode low, but this does deserve a good rating

[momobunny]

I'm going to rate this episode itself a 9/10. It's very faithful to the game... but like others have said, it's going to screw up the finale... which is much more important. ^^;

This is going to drag the overall score of the season down a lot for me.
But for now, I'll just rate this episode very well.

[ameskitty]

As I thought at first, a very well adapted (if kind of dull at points, especially with all the LOLseacats everywhere) episode. Would give it an eight or nine were it not the second to last episode and that they really don't have time to be adapting this scene...like this :/.

I think I'll abstain from voting this time because there's no reason they couldn't have shortened a few things and gotten farther >:/. They put the right emphasis on the wrong thing.