Originally Posted by naikou
Not to mention the extreme amounts of punctuation...................
But I can forgive the weird onomatopoeias. After all, it's a novel translated from Japanese, perhaps "Uooooaaaaaah" is more acceptable in that particular language. I wouldn't know.
I always found Umineko's pace to be fairly brisk, with a few notable exceptions. The romance scenes in EP2, the beginning of Ange's story in EP4, a few others.
The Chiru episodes especially move fairly quickly.
You use Christie, of all people, as an example? The only characters she ever managed to develop were Marple and Poirot, and even then, only because they get so many novels (Poirot would be what... a 50 story skyscraper, to use your metaphor?).
Even then, I cared far more about the cast of Umineko in EP1 than I do about most the victims in most mystery novels. Which is to say, still not very much, but more than "not at all". And by EP2 I had a vested interest in several of the characters - Rosa, Maria, Shannon, Battler, Kinzo.
I'll add that onto my reading list, though I haven't had good experiences with Queen novels in the past.
Carr is probably my favorite mystery author (yes, over Ryukishi), so kudos for that. But I wouldn't take his extremely clever locked rooms as the same kind of thing that Ryukishi accomplishes with Umineko. I don't know how much of a backing in philosophy you have, but one of my favorite parts about Umineko is that it goes for interesting, but rarely discussed issues in epistemology, and steers clear of boring and done-to-death metaphysics. And it actually discusses them well!
Many mystery writers do point out the challenges. Every Queen novel I've read has an aside where Queen says, "Alright, you can solve the mystery now! Go ahead! Re-read as many times as you like!"
But that's beside the point. Umineko isn't a mystery novel at it's heart - if anything it's a story about mysteries. It isn't for lack of subtlety that Ryukishi explains the mechanics of mystery novels - it's so that he can analyze them and build them back into something new. See EP5, in particular, with its rare evil detective.
Umineko is amateur, yes, and I agree that a few more rewrites would have helped. However, I do think it is an original concept. The mystery contained inside it is not original (the remote island during a storm is intentionally lampooning mystery novels, not mimicing them, I think), but Umineko is not only it's mystery aspect. That's only one component. There are way more interesting and important issues at stake than "whodunit".
Agreed. Although I hadn't seen a few of them before. The first twilight murders of EP3 come to mind.
The ideas are not original, but the presentation is very much so, which is really the most important part. Most of Shakespeare's work is "unoriginal", he got all of his plots from old folk stories, or other plays. But no one cares, because it's execution that counts.
And I should clarify, I don't think all fantasy novels merely imitate LotR, only bad ones do that. My personal favorite fantasy author, George R. R. Martin, has been stuck with writer's block for over 5 years, which is why I am even more impressed with Ryukishi's quick speed. It is probably too quick, as you say, but it is nonetheless impressive how good Umineko is for a first draft.
Well, mystery is a very big genre, Golden Age mysteries are a very small part of that genre. And that particular sub-genre has been out of steam since the 1930's. It's almost impossible to write a traditional mystery these days without sounding tongue-in-cheek. And I don't think Umineko belongs to that genre, which is the point I was trying to make earlier.
And I never intended to disparage the fantasy genre at all, only the idea that fantasy is 70% describing scenery, and 30% throwing characters in a blender, or however VladD put it. That's seriously, seriously misjudging how difficult the writing process is.
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