[musouka]

Just talking about purely in terms of what disappointed us about the ending, I would say that the mystery aspect is the least of my concerns. I've said time and time again that I found the EP7 ending perfectly satisfactory in that regard, so there wasn't much more to work with from the "reveal" angle.

My issues really stem from the EP7 Tea Party. I think EP8, as a whole, would have been a lot stronger if the EP7 Tea Party had been cleanly excised from Umineko as a whole. (It's hard to get riled up about Ange burgering herself over the truth if she's already burgered herself over something that is, if not the truth, is very close to it. Likewise the sheer brutality of what Bern did made it hard for me to accept her role in EP8 without some resentment on my half.)

But, I can't accept cutting it out either, because the EP7 Tea Party holds my entire heart in its grip. I am a Beatrice fan. I love Ange with all my heart. I am truly happy she got the ending she deserves. But throughout EP8, my mind kept on returning to Clair's body torn to bits on the silent stage, and of the young woman who looked out between the bars of her prison and dared to dream of Lion, only to have that dream cut down in front of her very eyes.

In that respect, I found it hard to like the scenes where Will and Lion were dumped in with all the other meta characters without a word. I find it hard to accept a Lion that can blindly say "I'm Beatrice's last hope" without that having anything to do with the actual plot of EP8, as opposed to EP7 where it actually meant something. And Battler and Beatrice's ending was so beautiful it made me cry, but deep down it also felt a little hollow because there was so little context around it.

I felt like EP7 ended the mystery beautifully. But I felt it left Beatrice in a place where she was still suffering, and it hurt to see that go unacknowledged in EP8. (I actually found the scene in the finale where Ange kept winking her in and out of existence because she dared to flirt with her own husband a little repulsive.) I felt like it flattened Will and Lion by bringing them in without giving them anything important to do.

There are a lot of things to really love about EP8, but I did have those problems in particular with it.