Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Episode 20 Discussion / Poll

[TheForsaken]

Originally Posted by Crontica

The series could have had a nice and steady pace if they were willing to hang on trough 4 seasons but that isn't the case is it.

This series had to deal with A LOT of adaptation cuts because they couldn't fit all of it in, they even had to reshuffle scenes so it made the most sense possible.
And now we suddenly see a massive drop in the shows fast-almost-to-fast pacing in order to keep up with the VN.

What do you think is going to happen to the rest of the plot with only 6 episodes left?

1. Cliff Hanger

2. Epic Adaptation Cuttage

3. Nonsensical time saving plot twist

Uhm, no.
In fact this episode isn't slow-paced at all, just this is a slow part of the novel.
If they try to keep up with the novel's pace, I don't think two or three episodes are enough.

[maximilianjenus]

while the kakera system has not been completely explained by ryoukishi, you can consider them different worlds/paralell relaities, with one "main" world which is the purgatorio, Ep4 gets confusing because it has scenes form purgatorio, episode4 world AND the episode 3 world as well.

[luckyssol]

Originally Posted by Nochgo

Hmm I see. So about that Maria talking with Beato and becoming an apprentice witch, when did you happen? Was that a past story seperate from the games? (so its assumed Maria and Beato had this meeting before all the games occured?)

This happened sometime in the past before October 4, 1986 since the signatures are in Maria's book. It's unclear exactly how far back it was.

Originally Posted by Nochgo

The flashbacks to Ange's school (and ange and maria's story line) is a flashback of the 1998's storyline? And Ange was enrolled in a witch school?

Yes, flashbacks of the 1998 story line is the easiest way to view it. You can also view it as events that occured to Ange after episode 3 ended, sort of like 'what happened after episode 3?'. It's not a witch school, just an ordinary private school for rich kids.

Originally Posted by Nochgo

So regarding Beato's change of face in game 3 was all a farce planned by the Beato's teacher? (this was some series mind****) Including Eva-Beato? So Eva-Beato was an existance created by Beato?

It appears as though Beatrice and Virgilia tricked Battler in episode 3. Beatrice passed the title of endless witch on to Eva-Beatrice with Lambdadelta's approval (Apparently, approval from a witch in the "senate" is needed). Eva-Beatrice supposedly was destroyed after Beatrice denied witches with red, but we never heard exactly what she said.

Originally Posted by Nochgo

As for the current Ange trying to help out Battler, is that from the story line of 1998 after Ange already did all she can to figure out about the 1986 incident?)

The answer to that question requires a bit of a spoiler so I'll avoid it but it appears that way at the moment.

Originally Posted by Nochgo

As for all these 'games' that's being going on, can we assume it as a new realities each time? Like, restarting a game = going back to the past and doing October 4-5, 1986 over again. But then, the Battler of the first game would simply be and seperate entity from the reality. Asking what happens to this Battler should the game end, is probably going to be a spoiler so I won't ask (if its already revealed, that is).

Each of these games are like chess game boards. The chess pieces move all over the board and some get knocked out. Each time a new game of chess starts all the pieces come back.

Having read the VN makes me no less confused than the people watching this at times.

[SilverSyko]

I commend Maria for not going creepy even once in this arc so far.~

Good god Rosa. Neglecting your kid like that. It's no wonder she became so immersed in the belief of magic and actually made Sakutaro a living thing. What the heck happened to her father anyway? I'm assuming he died but I could be wrong.

A shota Sakutaro eh? Well the When They Cry series has been missing one of those, it ws inevitable I guess. xD

So Maria's the apprentice of the Witch of Origins? Who's the current one?

Lawl the Stakes and Sakutaro, must be tough being adorable.

Ange was an apprentice in training too eh? So that's why Bernkastel called her Ange-Beatrice. Seems like she had a bit of a friendship with Mammon too, I would've liked to see that more in depth but oh well. =/

Ange apparently adores her big brother Battler, so nice to see siblings getting along like that.~

Lambdadelta has a point...and she has an ulterior objective to the game between Battler and Beato... (True main antagonist maybe?)

Bring on ep. 21!

[Marion]

Originally Posted by SilverSyko

I commend Maria for not going creepy even once in this arc so far.~

Good god Rosa. Neglecting your kid like that. It's no wonder she became so immersed in the belief of magic and actually made Sakutaro a living thing. What the heck happened to her father anyway? I'm assuming he died but I could be wrong.

A shota Sakutaro eh? Well the When They Cry series has been missing one of those, it ws inevitable I guess. xD

So Maria's the apprentice of the Witch of Origins? Who's the current one?

Lawl the Stakes and Sakutaro, must be tough being adorable.

Ange was an apprentice in training too eh? So that's why Bernkastel called her Ange-Beatrice. Seems like she had a bit of a friendship with Mammon too, I would've liked to see that more in depth but oh well. =/

Ange apparently adores her big brother Battler, so nice to see siblings getting along like that.~

Lambdadelta has a point...and she has an ulterior objective to the game between Battler and Beato... (True main antagonist maybe?)

Bring on ep. 21!

Maria's father is never known. He might be dead, alive, missing. No one seems to know.

Maria is Beato's apprentice - she is just named the Witch of Origins.

[Arbane the Terrible]

Originally Posted by Ssol

This happened sometime in the past before October 4, 1986 since the signatures are in Maria's book. It's unclear exactly how far back it was.

The thing is, this doesn't make much sense. Before Oct. 4th, Virgilia was (as far as we know) still 'sleeping' as Kumasawa, and didn't call herself "Virgilia" until AFTER Beato 'killed' her in Ep. 3.

Originally Posted by SilverSyko

I commend Maria for not going creepy even once in this arc so far.~

Very much yes. If they'd made her seem less insane in the earlier arcs, the fans might not have loathed her so much.

Originally Posted by SilverSyko

So Maria's the apprentice of the Witch of Origins? Who's the current one?

I don't think there is one--it's just Maria's own title.

Originally Posted by SilverSyko

Lawl the Stakes and Sakutaro, must be tough being adorable.

The Stakes are a lot less scary when they're not on the job.

Originally Posted by SilverSyko

Lambdadelta has a point...and she has an ulterior objective to the game between Battler and Beato... (True main antagonist maybe?)

If you check the Sound-Novels, the Tea Party for Ep.3 makes that quite clear--according to Lambdadelta, she _MADE_ Beatrice a witch, and threatened to return her to 'your miserable existence' if she tries to stop playing her role, which is to keep playing with Battler to form a game Bernkastel won't be able to abandon.

So, yeah--right now, it's looking like this whole situation is LD's doing.

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Tsuyi

Really? No one liked the Maria+Mama flashbacks? D': I thought they were really cute, and brought a slice of life-ish feeling to Maria's situation ;;

I actually did, since it shows that their relationship wasn't always as bad... or maybe you'd think. As the episode suggests, bias towards picking only happy events or sad ones tends to change stuff. I'm also shocked the toy isn't evil; I was half expecting it to tell Maria to kill people or burn stuff. But in any case, there definitely is more emotional development, as I have been quite detached emotionally from almost every character for most of the first three episodes which limits where the story can go for me.

As for Ange training; somehow this reminds me of Future Trunks in DBZ where they go back in time and get stronger. I gave this episode an 8; I didn't really find it boring at all, though the part with Lambda wasn't very impressive.

[ChibiBear]

Sakutaro is sooooo cute... Omochikaeri

[Siesta34]

Originally Posted by Nochgo

Hmm I see. So about that Maria talking with Beato and becoming an apprentice witch, when did you happen? Was that a past story seperate from the games? (so its assumed Maria and Beato had this meeting before all the games occured?)

The flashbacks to Ange's school (and ange and maria's story line) is a flashback of the 1998's storyline? And Ange was enrolled in a witch school?

So regarding Beato's change of face in game 3 was all a farce planned by the Beato's teacher? (this was some series mind****) Including Eva-Beato? So Eva-Beato was an existance created by Beato?

As for the current Ange trying to help out Battler, is that from the story line of 1998 after Ange already did all she can to figure out about the 1986 incident?

As for all these 'games' that's being going on, can we assume it as new realities each time? Like, restarting a game = going back to the past and doing October 4-5, 1986 over again. But then, the Battler of the first game would simply be and seperate entity from the reality. Asking what happens to this Battler should the game end, is probably going to be a spoiler so I won't ask (if its already revealed, that is).

And, I think these are the main questions I had. Thanks to anyone who answers these questions.

lots of questions! I´ll try my best to answer some (if I hadn´t been ninja´d already), but if someone can clarify something further, please do

Spoiler for answers and whatever possible spoiler:

- I always assumed that conversation between Maria & Beato had to be before the gameboard´s events (Maria did know "Beato" before those events, so...), but for all we know (or not), they might be "delusion time!".

- yeah, those Ange flashbacks are from before 1998 (I don´t remenber that well, but weren´t they from 1996 or so?) And, no, Ange was enrolled in a "normal" super-rich girls only private (prison) school (But I REALLY imagined it bigger somehow ), "MARIA" was teaching Ange magic (again) through her grimoire in Ange´s "free" time.

-Yeah, apparently the "North wind and the sun" strategy was, if not all cooked up by Virgilia, at least suggested by her (and it worked lovely ). AND, from what I understand, Evatrice is NOT created by Beato. Beato just gave her her golden witch magic and the "Beatrice" title, not created her out of the blue. She was already another "personality" of Eva, who just was lucky enough to solve the epitaph, find the gold and gain magic for the bonus.

Beato did said she didn´t expected someone to actually solve the epitaph, if she can be trusted on that one, then it wasn´t exactly part of the plan, but did help it a lot in the end.

- Here even I am a little confused. Ange apparently enter the game after talking to Bern back when she jumped down the skyscraper, so she shouldn´t have been capable of knowing anything more than she already knew at that time. I have read some theories on this as "what if nothing actually happened and Ange did die that night..." and so on.

I remember the timeline for this being really confusing in the VN. Will need help here from some experts!

- I would say this is correct. But you can´t ask Meta-Battler (the Battler that is drinking tea and playing with Beato) what happened because (from what I get) he can see everything (at least what is showed to him/us at the time) up until Battler (the one who is a piece in the gameboard) dies. If he already knew what happened he would have won long ago, wouldn´t he?

well, here you go, I did my best, but again if someone can add more to it, the plesase do it.

Especially in that one about gameboard!Ange timeline

EDIT: wow! did get ninja´d really fast XD

[y0shi]

I'm confused xD

And whats with all the german references anyway?
Zugzwang means you're forced to play your turn / you're forced to take action

Gretel is (alhtough I guess this was explained before) a name from a german fairytale (Hänsel & Gretel) where 2 silblings get lost in the woods and get caught by a witch. The witch makes the girl a kind of maid and wants to eat the boy but the girl saves her brother by tossing the witch into an oven. The name kinda fits :P

And Mammon means a large amount of money though this might be a coincidence.


~~~

This is getting more and more confusing. But now I'm pretty sure that magic actually means "believing into something til it turns real". Back when Beato broke the base and virgilia helped here they just believed that the cat destroyed the vase until it became their reality.

Maria doesnt want to be angry at her mom and so she just believes whatever she needs so she doesnt have to blame her. But she's also very lonely so she makes up friends. Beato signed this thing which could mean that she accepted Marias imaginary friend and play along.
And I really think that the "maintheme" is that, once you make others believe into something, it becomes real. Thats why Beato signing that Marias animal is real "made" him real for Maria.

I can also see how Marias animal is her "other side", she IS getting scizophrenic from being lonely all the time. She knows what is really going on with Rosa but she makes up this other personality to convince herself that Rosa loves her etc. The animal also is a present from Rosa so it might be an "embodiment" of Rosas love for her. Maybe this is the "secret" behind these magic items, they just help to make you believe what you want to believe because they're connected to what you want to believe. So for angi who misses her family these hairthings (dunno the name xD) might prove that Battler is still with her and that she can resque him.

IMO we can at least pretty savely assure that Maria has some kind of split personality issue going on. And this could explain a lot of earlier stuff, shes not possesed or anything, she just has kind of a screw loose :/ Though the question is, why does she make up creepy characters insteaf of yellow animals? Maybe thats her way to deal with all the horrible stuff going on? She cant really take it so she talks about how this is all part of Beatos plan and that they'll all be revived in the golden land. This is her way of denying that everyone is dead for real.

About Lambadelta, I guess she just wants to screw with Bernkastel, Bernkastel is the witch who can make a miracle happen so she tries to find allies who help her to prevent this miracle. This way Bernkastel would be trapped forever / maybe would loose her powers completly?

About the timeline, Ange is from the 3rd timeline but Bernkastel brough her to the 4th one because when she picked her up the 3rd timeline was already over. This just leaves one question:

- Why are the messages in the bottles from the 1st and 2nd timeline appearing in the 3rd one? One of them might be reasonable because tehy might be the same in the end (like the mion/shion arcs from higurashi) but 2 bottles appearing means that there has to be some kind of mash up between the timelines.

THIS ALSO MEANS THAT, IF THE TIMELINES ARE MIXING UP ETC ANGE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE BATTLER AGAIN SOMEHOW

I just hope we dont run into issues like paradoxons, time traveling & different realities now. (Like DBZ Trunks) This would make it confusing beyond anything.


I'm pretty sure I made some good guesses with that.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Arbane the Terrible

The thing is, this doesn't make much sense. Before Oct. 4th, Virgilia was (as far as we know) still 'sleeping' as Kumasawa, and didn't call herself "Virgilia" until AFTER Beato 'killed' her in Ep. 3.

I guess that was part of the act. Since the truth is Virgilia gave up her name to Beato a long time before and she couldn't just go on without a name.

[Alair]

Aw, I was so looking forward to the family conference...

Instead we mostly just get the super-abridged version of Ange's origin story. Which isn't a bad thing, mind you, since it was mostly self-introspection that you can't really animate. They could have done something with the breaking of the stakes though - I can't imagine any anime-only viewers were able to even figure out what was going on there.

I do have to wonder why they were so quick on the "Rosa's off with some guy" reveal - I'm pretty sure in the novel we didn't find out she wasn't really off on business work until after she'd dropped her receipt and snapped at Maria for looking at it. Foreknowledge just blunts the impact.

They did do a really good job with Maria's bits though.

[maximilianjenus]

The bootlesare my favorite part, theory wise of this part of the arc. those mean that beatrice actually remembers what happens between worlds and thus is able to write
a letter tht details the murder of Episode 1 and 2, which I assume are he regular kakera that happen hundreds of times; then we have lambda delta messing up with one kakera and creating the unique Episode 3 kakerawhich is what creates the ange piece that bernkastel uses in the metaworld.

Originally Posted by y0shi

I'm confused xD
About Lambadelta, I guess she just wants to screw with Bernkastel,

truer words have never been spoken.

[~Ayane~]

This way Bernkastel would be trapped forever / maybe would loose her powers completly?

oh dont worry, apparently trapping her doesnt make her lose powers



episode was okay, but i want more anybody other than Ange pleeeeaaase
love Maria scenes

oh and btw

Spoiler:

she has some kind of em...almost-troll-face after all, lol

[kuro_usagi]

I found this episode pretty enjoyable~ =)
..though, some parts such as Ange's flashback & Rosa's animation (some) seems kinda off...
Sakutaro's transformation into shota scene & Maria's witch outfit is cute~ ^^
Many people complained about Lambda-Ange's scene but as anime-only viewer, I thought it was quite okay...

[MarshmallowAngela]

I promised myself that I would start reviewing the episodes when Ep4 starts... and I slacked off. So I'm starting on episode 20.

Spoiler for long review:

Pros:

+ Sakutaro in general. No explanation needed.
+ The pajama party was well-done. Maria looks cute with her hair in pigtails~
+ Minori Chihara did a nice job with shota-Sakutaro's voice.
+ The stakes. GROUP HUG~
+ Ange in the toilet. XD
+ The hair-ornaments flashback. This is the first time I've seen Battler in normal clothes.
+ Witch-Hunt! Congrats for making it on air!

Cons:

- The background where Ange first summons the stakes seems a little lazy.
- That 2 second flashback of... you-know-what, causing a bit of chaos among those familiar with the novel. I don't really see the point of making a flashback for it if it's happening later.
- Lambda. Why do they hate you so? I didn't really want miragecoordinator in that scene since the impression of the music was too tight to be used more than once (that is a long way of saying "Save it for next time"), but seriously, they should make it more of an impact with say like, sudden music stopping? Oh, and the converstion. All threats cut. Even her laugh didn't sound very intimidating.

Points which were not really pros or cons:

> Virgillia's name. The spelling I don't mind that much. It happens a lot in anime. Didn't Virgillia choose her name when she was asked by Battler? Then I got this crazy idea in my head that Virgillia was planning a name for herself ever since she "retired", and signed her ideas everywhere. Oh boy, someone should make a 4-koma about this...
> The Rock Paper Scissors scene. Seriously, Mammon was the only one not to put paper?

Overall, this episode was better than I expected from the preview. I can't tell whether this slow or fast paced since all the other comments scrambled my own thoughts. I would have given this episode an 8 (for chopping the Lambda scene), but Sakutaro urged me to give a 9. (dammit, he's too cute to oppose...)

[Dormeur]

In Episode 20, Maria picked up a receipt of an inn.
It has some points of contradiction.

Spoiler for size:

Here's translation.

-------------------------------------------
RECEIPT
August 9, Showa 62
Mr./Ms. (empty)
24,720 yen
As a room charge
we surely received

Breakdown
Sum excluding tax 24,000 yen
Consumption tax, etc. (3%) 720 yen

Hot spring inn Rakugyo**
** **cho, Atami city, Shizuoka prefecture, 418
Phone 0557-**-****
-------------------------------------------

Showa 62 is A.D. 1987.
And Japanese government adopted consumption tax in 1989.
Wait, didn't Rosa and Maria die or miss in October 1986 ?

Possible reasons :
1. DEEN mistook.
2. Content written in the receipt is Ange's delusion.
3. Content written in Maria's diary is someone's fabrication.

One more mystery is that there is no name of the payer in the receipt.

Possible reasons :
1. DEEN mistook.
2. Rosa was going to manage the room charge as expenditure of her company.
3. Payer was Rosa's partner. He handed the receipt to Rosa.

Zip code "418" and phone numbers "0557" correctly correspond to Atami's.
Zip code has 7 numbers now in Japan, but before 1998 it had only 3 numbers.

[Ithekro]

It is possible the animators don't remember some of that...not old enough.

[chounokoe]

It is either a slight mistake or a very subtle hint...well I'll go with the mistake for now, it's not like that many people will look for the date on the receipt when first watching the show...but still it annoys somehow.

It COULD be explained in a rather convulted way if for example Rosa herself was not that fit with Japanese dates...who knows maybe Kinzo only taught them Western dates. It happened to me, too, that because a woman in a shop didn't know how to convert I was somehow suddenly born in Showa 52 (77) on a point-card when I'm actually born in 59...so it's not like there's no escape for the story if it really is a mistake

Originally Posted by y0shi

Why are the messages in the bottles from the 1st and 2nd timeline appearing in the 3rd one? One of them might be reasonable because tehy might be the same in the end (like the mion/shion arcs from higurashi) but 2 bottles appearing means that there has to be some kind of mash up between the timelines.

Or somebody is actually planting those bottles all along.
After Episode 1 we only learned of the letter fitting the first Episode being fished out by the fisherman.
We never learned about anything in the future of Episode 2.
And after Episode 3 (what we get to know in Episode 4) there were 2 bottles being found AND Eva came home...
We 'know' that the events of 1 and 2 could not have happened, because Eva is there now. So (in a 'no metaphysics explanation') either somebody planted all those bottles hoping that there would be only one washing to the shore/no contact between those who find them...or somebody planned precisely what is happening now, many people all over Japan trying to figure out the mystery of the 'Witch's Murder on Rokkenjima', what better way is there to make the witch immortal.
And isn't it a much nicer convulted mystery if you've got a ton of clues, instead of one where you have non?

[Ttak]

Ok, so judging by the preview of episode 21

Spoiler for next episode, related with ange's flashback on this episode:

Ange's bullying will be shown at its full extense, so the one in this episode was just a flashback for it