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2centsoframblings · 2 years

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Two cents of ramblings on: “Umineko no naku koro ni” (Anime)...

...and why I STRONGLY DON’T recommend it (read the novel or the manga instead, they're AWESOME!).

GENERAL DATA

Title: Umineko no Naku Koro ni (うみねこのなく頃に“When the seagulls cry”)

Media: Anime television series

Adaptation of: Umineko no Naku Koro ni (うみねこのなく頃に “When the seagulls cry”) shōnen dōjin soft visual novel by Ryukishi07 and 07th expansion.

Genre: Murder mystery, psychological thriller, supernatural horror

Directed by: Kon Chiaki

Written by: Kawase Toshifumi

Studio: Studio Deen

Original run: July 2, 2009 – December 24, 2009

Episodes: 26

WARNINGS: There are gruesome murders, psychological and physical torture, nakedness, abuse.

The plot in short: On October 4, 1986 for the annual family conference, the Ushiromiya family gather on Rokkenjima island, a small island owned by the family head, Kinzō, who also reside there and whose health is declining. Among the family members there’s Ushiromiya Battler, one of Kinzō’s nephews, who comes back after a 6 years absence. A storm traps the family, the servants and the family doctor on the island, while a letter from the Golden Witch, Beatrice, challenges them to solve the epitaph so as to find Kinzō’s secret stash of gold or die according to the epitaph.

HOW DID I STUMBLE INTO IT

As I watched “Higurashi no naku koro ni” and “Higurashi no naku koro ni Kai” I thought I might enjoy this series as well.

THINGS YOU MIGHT WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE TACKLING THIS

This story is filled with murders which are gruesome in nature and depiction (and I’ll show some images of them). The TV version censors them by blurring/covering the scenes but the dvd version shows them in all their gory nature. You might not feel like stomaching them. The anime also covers only the first part of the story. A second anime covering “Umineko no naku koro ni Chiru” was never realized so the only way to see the end of the story is to either read the Visual Novel or read the excellent manga transposition. This series is also split in 4 arcs, each of them proposing a different version of what happened on Rokkenjima on those fateful days. Also I reference “Higurashi no naku koro ni” and mention “Golden Kamuy”.

MY TWO CENTS ON IT

THE SHORT VERSION… or what I can tell you about this while trying to keep spoilers at the very bare minimum.

Opening & ending: The anime uses as opening “Katayoku no Tori” (片翼の鳥 ‘One-Winged Bird’) by Shikata Akiko and as ending “La Divina Tragedia: Makyoku” (la divina tragedia～魔曲～ ‘The Divine Tragedy: Diabolic Song’) by Jimang from Sound Horizon.

I love the opening, the mixing of Italian text and Japanese one, Shikata Akiko’s voice so perfect as she sings this. Although the opening is the same through all the episodes, the visual changes 4 times, so that in a way the 4 arcs all have visually different openings, though sometimes the differences aren’t that radical. Although the visual might remember the opening of a visual novel (but this series had birth as a visual novel so it’s fitting) the images often well match with the rhythm and the words of the song, creating an iconic opening many love. The ending also has a beautiful music, through the visual, after a quick panning of a long chessboard, is mostly of scenery which don’t really match the song in any way. The only noteworthy bit is the one at the end that shows two empty chairs, then Battler and Beatrice on them, then they disappear from them. Still, the most of the anime viewers who also know the Visual Novel and the manga, agree that the opening and the ending are one of the few great things of the anime.

The plot: Now the plot of “Umineko no naku koro ni” is intriguing, deep, mysterious, elaborate, psychologically and socially well studied, in short, AMAZING! Too bad the anime cuts it so much it’s barely understandable. It feels more like watching a messed up summary, the changes affecting the mystery parts so that the solution of some mysteries becomes impossible.

The characters: Although this story has a VERY LARGE cast (Just the Ushiromiya family counts 12 members plus there are 5 servants and a guest, the doctor, for a total of 18, plus there’s Beatrice and all her magical underlings and let’s not forget Ange, Bern and Lambda... yeah, as I said a VERY LARGE cast) the characters are well studied from a psychological point of view, they’re deep and intriguing and well characterized… or better, they are as such in the visual novel and the manga. The many cuts of the anime, the poor adaptation of scenes made by cutting dialogues or changing them or changing expressions or not showing them or generally making a mess of things made pretty hard to get to know most of them and will mislead you on who they are or how their character is. In short, a mess.

The visual: Let’s start with the ‘up’ side. The anime improved Ryukishi07’s art so the character design is kind of better than his own. Not great, I’m not even sure I’ll call it good but… it’s better. And that’s the only nice thing I can say because, for everything else, the visual is poor. Scenery, shots, characters’ expressions, characters’ position, quality of the graphic… You name it it’s a mess that drags in even in some illustrations for the anime and in the dvd version. Even the Pachinko game is better than this mess.

The musical background: Actually this one is one of the few very good things. The people working on it where mostly the same of the ones making the music for the visual novel so they keep the same atmosphere and, hey, the visual novel had beautiful music so this works for the anime too. This is a BGM you can enjoy to listen.

Overall: Someone might remember I had no flattering words for the “Golden Kamuy” anime adaptation. Well, the “Golden Kamuy” anime adaptation is a masterpiece compared to “Umineko no naku koro ni” because, even though they share many flaws, at least the visual is, despite not being great, way better and there’s not all this interest in showing breasts and backsides in place of what we need to see.

THE LONG VERSION… or what I loved and hated about this with, of course, TONS OF SPOILERS.

I started my “Umineko no naku no koro ni” experience with this anime and, after finishing it, I didn’t want to hear anything else about it. It wasn’t like “Golden Kamuy”, a poor adaptation but that still was good enough it encouraged me to read the manga. It just discouraged me from having anything to do with the story. If it wasn’t for a friend who insisted and persuaded me to give the visual novel a chance, assuring me it was good and the anime messed up, I would have never known how AWESOME the source material was.

This adaptation lacks direction, it’s as if Studio Deen picked up hoping it would sell as “Higurashi no naku koro ni” did but then they felt confuse by how the story was different and had no idea how to process it.

They put hardly any effort in the visual.

There’s a senseless abuse of creepy/deformed faces (mostly with Maria)...

...but, apart from this, compared to the visual novel where the characters have an EXTREMELY LARGE range of expressions, here they have a rather poor one, often not even showing them. The scenery is not so great and all the anime seems to love showing are gruesome scenes,

creepy faces and… giggling breasts and waving backsides or characters in inappropriate poses (when George cries over his mother’s body, the scene seems to focus more on how he rubs his face in his mother’s breasts than on his grief),

the changes of scenes are poor and, often abrupt. Some shots are simply horrid, the proportions of the characters messed up...

...some movements are so weird they seemed comical when they aren’t meant to...

and the shoots are often bad, cutting heads...

... or being rather weird...

...or focusing on breasts and backsides (sometimes placing the characters in uncomfortable poses to have a better shoot at their backside) instead than on what characters are doing or on their expression in a way that’s not even sexy in such circumstances.

Characters often don’t react appropriately (When George is griefstriken and supposedly unable to support himself Battler and Jessica hold him as if he were a sack of potatoes, apart from Nanjō no one seems to care Jessica is coughing her lugs out...)

The cuts from a scene to the other are a mess because, often, too abrupt, with characters’ dialogues ending up being mistaken for the continuation of the previous scene.

They had no interest in having us solve the epitaph, which gets barely any attention… which okay, I can partly understand but still…

They actually had no interest in us solving the mystery either. Ryukishi07 said he would work with Studio Deen but somehow communication should have been lacking because the anime adapted some scenes in such a way that the intended solution becomes impossible (Nanjō taking care of Kanon’s wound in front of everyone so that they would see there’s no wound, Natsuhi also being shoot in front of everyone so for Beatrice it’s impossible to hide the letter Natsuhi had with herself...).

They hardly made an effort to characterize the characters. Where they were complicate people now they’re AT BEST given a character trait and that’s it. Sometimes not even that and they just loom in the background (episode 1 even forget to show Nanjō’s name).

This comes especially bad in regard to Beatrice and to the one character who’s the true identity of Beatrice, but also in regard to Battler and Ange’s feelings.

We’re talking of main characters here, not of side characters, those at least should have been well cared for.

They cut a lot, indiscriminately, but then they were totally capable to waste time for things that weren’t needed like random shots of the weather worsening, or of the clock when they could have just showed it in the background behind the characters.

Now, credits when it’s due, the visual novel is a massive work.

It was impossible to transpose its first 4 arcs in 26 episodes, 26 episodes are barely enough for 2 arcs, not 4. So if it was just the cutting… I guess I wouldn’t be so negative.

But here it’s more than just cutting, here it’s lack of care.

I’ve seen fans animating the final sequence of the dialogue between Battler and Beatrice way better than the anime did. I’ve seen the Pachinko game make the characters way more expressive than the anime did, with the tiny bit they animated with jerky animation being way better transposition than the anime one.

I don’t know why things went so bad with the anime, why they missed the good spots of this AWESOME story (the characters’ dept, the social themes, the mystery) to focus just on gory scenes (which are drawn in that sort of ugly way that doesn’t impress you, more like disgust you not for the gory scene but for the animation), breasts and backsides and creepy, almost insane faces as if they came to believe this was what made “Higurashi no naku koro ni” good and, in order to make this series good as well, they would need to recycle those plot elements and nothing more. Because yeah, they had ”Higurashi no naku koro ni” in mind as we have extra scenes showing Maria watching some random scenes from the “Higurashi no naku koro ni” anime.

To sum it all… read the visual novel or the AMAZING, AWESOME manga adaptation which, in the “Umineko no naku koro ni Chiru” part contains improved scenes but watch the anime solely after them… if you really have to watch it, because boys… it’s ugly and messy and misleading and really, it would seriously need a remake but I doubt they’ll even make one since the fact this mess was a commercial flop apparently discouraged Japanese producers who missed the fact that if the anime was a flop it was solely because the anime was poorly done, not because the story was lacking.

And now let's end this with an AMV about this series I recommend watching: Dolls of Rokkenjima 2.0