[Anime] Umineko - Spoilers & Expectations (for experienced VN readers only)

[Endless_Witch_Nipah]

Originally Posted by k//eternal

Alright guys, if the words "small bombs" are not uttered in this episode, that's an automatic 1 from me

YOUR RIGHT !! O___o
If they screw SMALL BOMBS TOO...
Ou you'd better to not see me.
*evil*

[Geekodot]

Well, Battler does WIN with small bombs (at least, Beato never counters it) so it would be wierd to cut it... then again, I am prepared for about anything at this point... even completely removing the red and blue...

And I am expecting them to cut the Lambda reds... so things are going to make 0 sense for anime only viewers.

I was always imagining the rose garden battle to be with strong red roses and dancing petals and whatever... like a red version of the golden land, so just the ordinary rose garden early in the morning was kinda... well, as long as they keep the red and blue in, I'm happy.

[DizzyRoro]

I guess it looks pretty. I remember the first time they used the "theory scenes" with Natsuhi killing Kinzo, then again with Eva being stabbed in the forehead with a stake at the door in Episode 1, I had a feeling we would see them being used for the Blue (due to how they seemed to be deliberately tinted blue). It seems that my hunch was correct, according to the previews, at least. I'm hoping things turn out well. Or at least... as well as they can be.

I don't see how they can fit in the game board aftermath of the Tea Party in without making everything else suffer even more... even though I believe it's really important to know these facts if people are attempting to solve the mysteries on their own. I also want to know where Kyrie's body will be found, due to the inconsistencies as to where she placed the phone call and died.

I also wonder about their choices for music, I would personally really love to see dreamenddischarger seeing as how its pretty much the "summary" of all the past EPs 'magical terror' songs, wrapped up in an epic package. ...I theorize they may take out Beato's "first fall" in the match, and just have one big round. While it was effective in the VN to see how Beato's mentality was at that point and having a glimpse of what she truly desired out of their impending battle, DEEN has proven that they may not actually care about things like that.

Screw characterization, we have bad pacing! But I agree. No small bombs = no love. We must brace ourselves. It's downhill from here.

I also fear for the existence of ????... but if DEEN knows what's good for them, everyone loves to see two lolis in pure sexual tension. Then again, they may be too flat-chested for DEEN's liking. And maybe illegal. 1000 year old witches argument, anyone?

[Christen]

I'm not being pessimist, but chances are the preview would be better than the final product

But I'm still hoping DEEN would not screw this up.

[tcaz2]

I'm super worried about this coming episode.

Even episode 11 and 18 didn't have this much sheer length to cover. Yeah, they had more scenes, but 26 is coming up on some of the best scenes in the VN, with LOTS of talking. It took the fan drama CD 80+ minutes to cover all of that stuff. I have no clue how they're going to make this decent at all. To be honest, I'm thinking they may have even stopped trying, considering I see no red or blue effects in the preview nor any blue stakes at all.

Thank god it's almost over, that's all I can say now.

[MarthX]

They're going to cut a lot of it and only leave the really important truths.

I'll be surprised if they keep the small bombs theory.

[MeoTwister5]

I'm going to assume that Battler's direct investigation into Rokkenjima, where he finds the bodies but can't find Kanon's will be at least 80% butchered to salvage the Ending Duel. That will at least buy them... 4 minutes?

[Leinne]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

I'm going to assume that Battler's direct investigation into Rokkenjima, where he finds the bodies but can't find Kanon's will be at least 80% butchered to salvage the Ending Duel. That will at least buy them... 4 minutes?

They can also cut many theories from before Kinzo is dead, since gthe only importan part is ep4 there

[Jan-Poo]

I expect there will only be a single battle instead of two.

In other words Beatrice will tell that Kinzo is dead from the start or very shortly after that.

[Geekodot]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I expect there will only be a single battle instead of two.

In other words Beatrice will tell that Kinzo is dead from the start or very shortly after that.

And that would fuck up everything, because there is no reason for her to say that Kinzo is dead at the beginning when the whole game has been about showing how he is alive...

[Servant-Kanon]

"Watashi wa... daaare?" ;_;

;___;

if they screw MY FAV SCENE
I SWEAR I WILL BURN DOWN THEIR STUDIO ;_____;

I'm coming with you !
If they screw this Scene ooooh they better stay away from me

And that would fuck up everything, because there is no reason for her to say that Kinzo is dead at the beginning when the whole game has been about showing how he is alive...

Then there would be no sense of animating EP 5. as well o.o
But DEEN is unfathomable. :/

[Digdri]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

Because studio DEEN has a very bad adaptation history over the years.
If you asks any FSN VN reader, you have 99% chance to notice they did a very poor job (not as bad as JC Staff with Tsukihime, mind you).

Sorry I'm bit late with this discussion about adaptions but as many of you started comparisons to other adaptions and studios I thought bringing up Tsukihime is an interesting example of comparison and lead me to some further thoughts. Sorry in advance for this wall-of-text-answer

By now Umineko and Tsukihime are both "accepted" as really bad adaption of the source material in their fan communities but IMO while both series are plagued by some shared problems (many content cuts, anime format "to short", much simplification of the plot), there is also a big difference:
While the Tsukihime fan even created a meme for their disappointment about the adaption this anime is regarded as quite enjoyable by many people who don't know the VN.
On the other side the Umineko anime gets flak from both of this groups but for different reasons, sometimes even conflicting (e.g. what would be the right pacing for the anime).

Well, I looked into both world for some time since the anime was airing.
For the VN-fan part that was obviously this forum and I shared many of the opinions about the bad execution and direction of the adaption.
But I also looked into the "average" anime blogs when this series was still discussed by anime fan not so hardcore about mystery games etc. and unfamiliar with the VN.
I commented in some of them about the VN vs. anime stuff and tried to clarify some parts which confused those people.
Klashikari did this on a much larger scale in his blog with this epic summery & analysis posts (which obviously was a much more effective approach to this and had other intentions) but to me this was more like an experiment how difficult it is to make this bloggers take the VN-perspective on this series if they only know the anime (especially after the "stubborn Battler"-discussions started).
... Also talked with some friends about the series concepts.

Thats when realized that the problem doesn't lie in the QUALITY & budgeting, the missing story details or too much fanservice shots. Most of them simply didn't enjoy it because they didn't "get" what's the point of the story setup.
There even started some small silly drama from this in some blogs: When the anime-only-watchers started bashing the anime some VN fan logically reacted by defending the VN.
I often saw some oversimplified reasoning like "You don't even try to understand it the right way, so you have lost". I found this quite funny because that was no real answer to the problems those people had with the confusions about the anime yet represented some part of the message of the games. It clearly showed how the VN achieves to push you into some specific mindset while the anime don't get this part across (or so late many people didn't care anymore).
This promotion texts for the games, the extra TIPs and all the meta world talk... All of those give you a clear idea about the "rules" of this mind game you are playing while dealing with the different arc and that you have to accept those rules to really enjoy the games. And thats because they spend so much text on giving you this idea why this isn't just some random rubbish in the story. The anime really failed in this part and IMO thats where everything fell apart. Without the overall concept clear Umineko just becomes a weird and unbelievable mix of genres spiced up with violence, psycho horror and lengthly discussion without purpose (and IMO mostly the little mistakes in execution created this problem).

And thats why I think those thoughts about which studio could have done the better visuals and while episode should have been cut more or less to make room for fan favorite / important scene X etc. are leading nowhere .

After all this chaos I saw about the reception of the anime my question was more like:
Did DEEN really understand what's the point of this games series and what made it so successful, if they chose to present it this way?
Or to put it into another context: Did they really know with audience they wanted to marketed this anime to?

At least for the 2nd thought I get the feeling the couldn't decide what they want. The hardcore mystery fan / Umineko VN reader and "average mainstream watching otaku" (put in your favorite stereotype here ) who likes more simpleminded entertainment may be two groups which don't overlap so much.
On the one side they make this previews which are full of insider jokes you only get if you have read the novels and put in some gags like the mackerel cans and tried to reuse a big part of the beloved OST. But on the other side they overemphasize those scary faces and the fanservice for kicks to the point of annoyance and cut most of the important logic in the logic battles. And those things like the DVD "Boobs-Special" try to stretch a joke even more which (i guess) many VN readers already had found very insulting the first time. IMO that was very tasteless use of the material.

Guess they tried to target the widest audience they could think of but ultimately didn't hit anyones taste with their decisions and the result is the lose-lose-situation mentioned before.

Returning to my initial comparison to Tsukihime: In contrast to Uminekos way there they make hard cuts and decided to only tell one arc of the game instead of desperately trying to cram everything into the available time. They also removed any hint that the VN was any eroge and not even had much fanservice to spice it up and please some fans. And they told a (in most parts) self-contained story which could be watched without VN-knowledge. All of this isn't about budget or QUALITY animation or stuff like that.
That's also why I consider it as a not so bad adaption / anime as most people say.

[MeoTwister5]

Personally I assumed that no one at DEEN actually read everything to the completion of Ep4 and tried to understand it. If someone did, they'd have done far, far less mistakes.

[chounokoe]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

Personally I assumed that no one at DEEN actually read everything to the completion of Ep4 and tried to understand it. If someone did, they'd have done far, far less mistakes.

That's something we don't know.
We should no from the many many theories on this board alone, that reading all 4 Episodes and thinking about it does not result in a similar idea about what is important, what is going on or what it is about.
Umineko is really a very hard material to adapt, especially when you think about the fact that nobody except maybe the core of 07th Expansion knows what is actually going on. Maybe they did everything wrong, maybe not...

Most people here read all 4 Episodes (some, including me, even the 5th) and there is still discussions about wether the red truth is totally true, how the red truth affects reality or the other way around, how things really happened and should be perceived.
My most beloved example for this will always be the discussion of those who believe in a disaster destroying Rokkenjima (like a bomb, a landslide, etc.) and those who believe in a human culprit who is able to cover his tracks perfectly...and the many different shades of those 2 contrasting theories.

Of course it could be that no one over there read it...but only because we didn't like it, is no real hint toward that.
Give 5 people from this board the directive power over an Umineko adaption and I think we would get at least 3 majourly different results...and nobody would like the cuts of the other.

[KanonTheFurniture]

Based on the preview we're clearly getting the tea party and proper ending (if you can call it 'proper' at this point), so all hopes of a secret 27th episode are shot. From the looks of it we'll be losing the rest of Beato/Maria in the golden land (they have to at least have Ange dragging her back though even if it's like...one sentence), and that's probably good. Honest guys, I kinda hope they do cut all but the super important red and blue from the battle, because the Anime is shot for that sort of thing as it is...I want to at least see the proper character development here at the end. The fan-made tea party animation is great, but the voice just isn't Beato for me, and I want to hear Sayaka Ohara field that. So what if we lose the core of the mystery? Have any of you been watching the Anime so far? Anime-only fans are pretty much screwed trying to solve things anyways, so considering everything that needs to be crammed...that's what I'd rather lose.

I still pray we'll get the blue stakes, and of course some of the red and blue are still vital, but losing the majority and even Lambda at the end...to me, we're fucked either way, but it would be the lesser of two evils. I'd rather lose some of the red and blue (Anime DreamEndDischarger is about 3 minutes, so just enough to fill that would suffice, hopefully a little more) than to lose the emotion of Ange's sacrifice or Beato's final riddle. That's what I'm hoping for...the Anime is doomed no matter how we look at it, so I'm hoping we'll at least get a passable finale character-wise. If we do, I'll be happy.

[June 1983]

I'm actually kind of wondering if maybe the ??? tea party might wind up being an extra.

While it would be disappointing not to see it in the finale, artistically it could work, and it would give them more space.

Of course ... it wouldn't have been necessarily at all if they had used their time wisely in Ep 25. I have the feeling thought that they did what they did because they want to have a finale that's full of ~action~.

[Geekodot]

Originally Posted by June 1983

I'm actually kind of wondering if maybe the ??? tea party might wind up being an extra.

While it would be disappointing not to see it in the finale, artistically it could work, and it would give them more space.

Of course ... it wouldn't have been necessarily at all if they had used their time wisely in Ep 25. I have the feeling thought that they did what they did because they want to have a finale that's full of ~action~.

Or it can run instead of the ED with the ED song in the background? Higurashi had a scene like that in it's first season.

[chounokoe]

Originally Posted by Geekodot

Or it can run instead of the ED with the ED song in the background? Higurashi had a scene like that in it's first season.

I assume either that or in a form of the previous previews.
But I lean more towards the scene playing out to the credits at the end of the episode.

[momobunny]

Wait... I forget, does the end of EP4 state that Ange (1998) was dead or was it just the TIPS/credits?

Because if it's not in the story itself...

[Archer]

Originally Posted by Maho Momo

Wait... I forget, does the end of EP4 state that Ange (1998) was dead or was it just the TIPS/credits?

Because if it's not in the story itself...

It's only in the credits.