Umineko no Naku Koro ni (Season 1) - Overall Series Impressions & Speculation

kuromi

What do you think about the first season of Umineko no Naku Koro ni.
Your thoughts about the anime, overall impressions, speculation on season 2 etc.

• General impression of the series.
• Opinions on the overall story, writing & plot devices.
• Thoughts about the animation quality.
• Characters/Character Design
• What could the creators/animators/writers could have done better.

And so on.

Burkie.EXE

Umineko is fantastic, it's damn near my favourite thing on my computer. I love everything about it, the story, the characters, the music, the plot devices. The anime however.... Not so much.
Studio DEEN kinda messed it up, badly. I've heard it was a decent stand-alone anime, but as an adaption of the Sound Novel, I could barely stand to watch it. They heavily edited the music (Compare the two versions of Mortal Stampede), skimmed over a lot of the detail (and a lot of hints as well), and cut out what was possibly the most important red of arc 4 from the ending,

which was basically Lambda cutting all of Battler's blue truth to shreds and raising new points about the previous mysteries.

.
As for Chiru, I don't know if they'll make an anime for it. Even if they do, I doubt it'll be satisfactory. I can understand skipping over less important stuff due to time constraints, but most of what's happened in 5 and 6 is fairly important, so I'm not looking forward to how it'll turn out.

tl:dr- Umineko Sound Novel is Godly, fantastic, awe-inspiring, thought-provoking, gripping, full of awesome music and excellent characters. Umineko anime is a summary, and somewhat painful to watch.
(I did like how they animated Battler though)

Sandvich

Episode 7 is such a WTF.

Can't wait for the translation though, I bet a lot of the spoilers are severe misinterpretations. I think the reason it comes off so strange is that amateurs and people with ATLAS are trying to read it, or are taking crazy 2chan theories as fact.

Umineko anime felt too cut up, but it's useful to watch to skip the bits in Ep 1 & 2 that drag on a bit.

cherryghost

Higurashi > Umineko imo. Story in Higurashi feels more cemented and the ending brings everything together nicely.

Sandvich

Umineko isn't finished yet, and TBH it's likely you haven't even read Episode 6. It's hard to judge yet, since Umineko is something purposely building to a solution/conclusion.

cherryghost

i'm talking about the anime

Sandvich

Oh, the anime is pretty naff compared to the VN. Higurashi was a better executed anime by quite a bit.

Bottleopener

Words can't describe how poor an adaptation Umineko's anime is.

The VN, however, is one of the most fantastic things I've ever read, and I'd wholeheartedly encourage everyone to check it out! Can't wait for 7 to be translated. The Witch Hunt are doing a great job translating it =P