Okay...bracing myself...here we go.
Spoiler for finale review:
-So they did cut the OP. Well, that buys them a little time. Hope they use it wisely.
-Kinda wish they'd have cut the scene with Ange in the Golden Land down a bit. It's too late for this kind of lingering development, as important as this scene is. If it was kept to 'hey bitch get your ass back to the game' then we would have more time for the scenes that really count in this episode. Especially since the lack of red makes the scene kinda...
-No Ange's red...I liked the animation in Ange's sacrifice, though the music wasn't very fitting...would have been a lot more emotional with better music, because Satou and Ono both did a very nice job.
-Cut out the whole first half of the tea party. Can't say I didn't see this coming, but it's still a shame to lose it...though I guess, considering they changed almost everyone's deaths in the Anime, it makes more sense this way.
-T-they...please tell me that's not GoldenSlaughterer I hear...they didn't...they DIDN'T...they even MADE a remix of DreamEndDischarger for the Anime OST...and they didn't...USE IT?!?!?!?!?! RAAAAAAAAGE!!!!!!!! (yes, I know, Mortal Stampede, blah blah blah, MORTAL STAMPEDE ISN'T GODTRACK LIKE DED FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU--)
-Dragon!Kinzo was pretty cool, though the blue stakes could have looked more...well...blue...
-And one blue stake is enough to put Beato in such a state?! Dammit, where is the barrage of blue?!
-Endless Nine!! Well, at least they kept ONE godtracks in the scene...liking the remix, though I've liked most of the Anime remixes of songs that were already awesome.
-Extreme lack of red and blue...seriously, I expected it to be trimmed down, but from what I gathered a lot of the red statements were said, just...not in red. Nnngh...
-Okay, Beato being impaled on the spire of blue was AWESOME. I just wish the stakes looked more blue and glowy...they don't seem very representative of the truth, which they should.
-Not enough emotion in the final riddle...fanmade one is much, much better. Still, Thank You For Being Born gets me every time, and Sayaka Ohara > fanmade Beato's voice by far. If there's one reason I won't join the 'Umineko Anime Does Not Exist' bandwagon is because I love all the voices so much. Even with the joke of a script this series got, they managed to do a fantastic job throughout.
-...on second thought...having the emotional ending abbruptly cut by that irritating ending song (no, I don't like the song, and I haven't since episode 1) makes me reconsider the whole 'I won't pretend the Anime doesn't exist' thing I just said...honestly, the artists have gotten their songs plugged for 25 episodes so far...they cut the OP but can't even be bothered to cut the ED?! That's a minute and thirty seconds we could have gotten for the HUG and allowed the emotional impact to settle in!! I know it would have been asking too much to use Discode, but still...DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!
-Even ????? was pointless. Yay lesbian loli fanservice. Yeah, I'd totally rather have that instead of my rightful emotional EP4 ending. I wasn't expecting Lambda's red, but they didn't even give us Trollkastel. What the fuck. Why bother animating it at all. Well, at least now I know that by Anime logic, Bern's tail is real. That always bugged me.
That was...more of a disappointment than 24. And somehow I was still holding out hope that it would be just a little better than that, my lowest-rated episode of the series (if only because I didn't start reviewing until after episode 11). I just...I'm raging so much that I can't even effectively put it into words. But what's it matter...the collective VN population has pretty much spoken for my feelings anyways, since before this episode actually aired. I don't really have anything new to say about it. The preview for this episode was better than the episode itself. That's not right. That's just not
right, DEEN. Damn you all. Learn your lesson already...please, let there be no season 2, unless by some astronomical chance another studio picks it up. I don't care if they reanimate all of the first series, just let someone else animate (or at least replace Chiaki Kon in) Chiru, or let it not be animated at all...
4/10. And I'm being generous, because the voice acting was well-done, as always. As for you, Studio DEEN, ハブ・ア・ナイス・ドリーム。 シー・ユー・イヌ・ヘル。
Soooo...what's the status on that EP5 patch, Witch-Hunt? I need a nice Christmas present to wash the foul taste of this episode out of my mouth ^^;