#i was actually writing a whole VN for him but ended up dropping it

[bf-rally]

This morning I thought of lore for A's name.

His name is kinda weird, it's just 'A'. Originally it was just supposed to be a placeholder for 'Angel' while I was writing stuff for him. Until I came up with a different name of course. But it ended up sticking for me,,,

But I came up with a funny lore reason why it's A! A is an angel who loves people watching. Humans have always been interesting to him, and it's become a hobby he does in his free time.

During one of these times, he overheard another human calling someone 'Bea' (pronounced bee) but thought it was just the letter 'B'. So when he revealed himself to you for the first time, he decided he needed a human name. And ended up settling on 'A'.

[toskarin]

so re: urobu chi in madoka we are just replacing the "man/ghost" with a girl with grey hair, right? I buy that.

I think he has strayed away from these basic conventions a lot as of late, but he also has been working a lot less in general. I'm curious if you have a favorite of gen's work or if you feel you haven't absorbed enough of it to have an opinion (or maybe you just don't like any of it). while it does boil down to the basic framework you describe I feel like on the journey to that he explores some pretty interesting ideas. Just as well I also like the different ways he resolves his "everything sucks" narratives. at least I feel by the end usually there is more there than that basic idea but sometimes it takes too long to get there.

As far as zero is concerned, Nasu approved it basically all the way through its release and worked with gen on it so there is that. And when you consider Gen was basically given free reign there's no real reason for him to stick to the original concepts, I don't think (but I understand the argument for him to do just that). I guess my takeaway is if you find them incompatible (zero and stay) then that's fine because they were made by two completely different people, the same way I don't have Aliens in the same headspace as Aliens. They are different things that just happen to have the same characters.

I spent a lot of time just stating my own opinions rather than asking yours, sorry. Whatever you feel about Gen (I'm not a big fan but he's made some stuff I like), it's hard for me to say he did some interesting things that a lot of authors would be too afraid to do (or perhaps simply wouldn't be allowed to by their publishers).

anyway if you can/want to point me to where you've written more about these topics I'd be curious to see it!

I'm gonna apologize in advance because I'm using your ask to write my most comprehensive (and sympathetic) post on Urobuchi so far lmao

I should definitely open by clarifying that when I drop an opinion like that, I'm exaggerating my actual stance because I think it's funny to do it, so I'm not actually as anti-Urobuchi as I come off, it's just that I'm just not especially a fan (and at the end of the day, no matter what I say on here, I'm a pretty big Madoka fan who thinks Saya no Uta is a fantastic piece of horror and likes Nitroplus vns as a whole)

in general, when I sound overly negative about an author, it's usually because I don't feel the need to write out every time I find a piece of media okay or even good, so playing up some stronger opinions for a punchier line is always gonna result in what looks like a paradigm of blind praise and seething hatred. it can come off especially rough when preexisting connotations attach themselves to my rambles and rants

for example, me complaining about the misogynist tendencies of Urobuchi's writing is more of a ribbing than a hard moral judgment on whether it's got merit. I've got no idea what he's like outside of his work, besides that we like a lot of the same movies and he seems to get along with other people I hold in high regard. that's a big part of why I make a point of tending towards more tongue-in-cheek references to his choking fetish as opposed to anything with real substance

all that being said!

even though my stated opinions are oversimplifications of what I actually believe, I'm a little unfair to him, and I'm fully willing to acknowledge that. I disagree heavily with the way Zero was handled, especially in regards to how it handled preexisting characters, and it's one of those few situations where I wonder whether Nasu was actually right to lend so much creative freedom to a partner on a project he was (by all accounts) so closely involved with

Gen has a fantastic sense for horror and despair, and it's solely because he produces stories so close to what I'd consider amazing that I complain about the things holding them back. an example I'll point out is that I've never gone after the low hanging fruit of gun jokes because, while it is a recurring theme in his writing, I genuinely appreciate his fixation on the specifics of firearms

I haven't kept up with Urobuchi's stuff recently, largely because of time constraints, but I really do hope he's been working his way out of the boxes he worked himself into. if he were a purely mediocre writer who made consistently okay work, I don't think I'd have any opinions on him at all, after all

in the end, I really dislike Zero because of both what it tries to be and what it doesn't try to be. if it had been a more boring production, I'd have much less to say about it. I think that's a pretty good encapsulation of my feelings on him. I'm never bored, regardless of whether I'm having a good time

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep6

Let’s just file this one under “top 10 shittiest anime deaths” *badum-tish*

Thoughts under the cut.

I feel like in a lot of ways this episode kinda highlights the highs and lows of the new series, and how it feels like it’s trying to be like three different stories at the same time and usually only succeeding at being one of them.

This episode, and this arc in general, as a standalone part of the franchise was actually really good, and delivered on the promise of ‘what if Mion actually became the culprit in one arc’, but as part of the answer arcs for the new series it just continues to feel kinda pointless and predictable. I still think that a lot of this has to do with them trying to be both a sequel and a remake at the same time, but unlike with the Rena answer arc, I honestly feel like even new fans could have guessed everything that happened in this arc, since it didn’t actually go into anything that wasn’t already discussed in Gou. So even on that level it doesn’t really feel like it’s providing essential answers that couldn’t have been worked out in advance.

It’s kinda weird how little this arc actually explored anything about Mion and Shion that wasn’t already shown in Gou, considering how much stuff from the VN related to them hadn’t been covered. A lot of their backstory stuff ended up not exactly being relevant to how this arc played out, but it just feels like a weird thing to gloss over when they’ve spent so much time going over stuff from the VN as it is.

Though on that note, I’m really curious about how they’ve made absolutely zero reference to the fact that Mion and Shion swapped places as kids, or anything about Mion’s tattoo. At this point I have to wonder if maybe Ryukishi just doesn’t actually like that plot point in hindsight, and is choosing to effectively write it out of the story here. I can see why, though, since from what I remember it kinda verges into being a twist for the sake of having a twist, and doesn’t actually do much for them as characters that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

The lack of basically anything to do with Shion’s backstory and her relationship with Satoshi still feels a lot more iffy, but at least some of this stuff feels like intentional revising on Ryukishi’s part. Which I think is a really interesting aspect of the new series as a whole. It feels like he’s taking the chance to look back on the VN and show us how he feels about it after all this time. The stuff with characters like Teppei and Rina seems to be his way of making up for them being shallow villains in the VN, and Satoko being evil here seems to be in part inspired by how little agency or control she had in the original story. I guess the big issue here is that a lot of people probably just straight up disagree with the things that Ryukishi thinks of as being problems with the VN that he’s trying to ‘fix’ here, but I think it’s really interesting to see him do this sort of thing, even if it’s messy and overly ambitious and doesn’t fully work.

For the most part I agree with all the criticisms about these arcs feeling like a bit of a waste of time as we wait for the story to eventually loop back to the Nekodamashi cliffhanger. Even from the perspective of this being mainly for the sake of new fans, it feels kinda strange to see such straightforward ‘this is what was happening behind the scenes in the question arcs’ style answers, with lots of reused footage and basically zero twists or reveals. The VN’s way of designing separate arcs that provide answers for the question arcs was more satisfying, and Umineko went even further with that by just vaguely going over the basic keys to figuring out all the how-dunnit mysteries of the question arcs, and everything else about the answer arcs there was just a continuation of the meta plot. So it feels kinda weird to see him loop back around to the opposite end of the spectrum here.

It makes me wonder if there’s some sort of larger meta mystery going on here that’ll become more apparent in the next arc, and will reveal that we didn’t actually know everything that was going on like we thought we did, but at this point I feel like it’ll probably all end up being a lot more straightforward than we predicted. But there’s still the looming specter of the meta plane stuff, the hints dropped about where this series fits into the wider WTC universe timeline, and the fact that the whole point of the new series in the first place seems to be guiding Rika and Satoko down the path toward becoming their Umineko counterparts. So all of that stuff makes me think there might be some curveball twists going in the future that expand the scope of the story, but I have no real idea what to expect from that, and if it’d even feel satisfying. As much as I’m a diehard Umineko fan who loves the idea of this being a Lambda and Bern origin story, I still worry that the execution might not work once we get to the end. I also don’t really think that anything the series does in the final arcs will completely make up for how predictable these first few answer arcs have felt on a week by week basis, lol.

In general it gets me thinking that in spite of how predictable the answers have been thus far, I’m largely clueless about how I think they’ll actually wrap up the overarching story with Satoko and Rika. It feels like there’s still a lot of different directions they could take it in, and a lot of it depends on just how far Ryukishi wants to go with tying this into other WTC works.

For one thing, I’m not even sure how to expect them to follow up on the Nekodamashi cliffhanger. It’s at least hard to imagine how they could stop Satoko from shooting Rika then and there, considering how this episode in particular went. And one way or another, we’ll have to see how Rika and Satoko handle being in a situation where they both know what’s going on with each other. I think it’ll then just depend on what Satoko’s mental state is like at that point, and also what they plan on doing with the whole looper-killing sword thing. I think Ryukishi’s implied multiple times now that the next arc will start to test Satoko’s resolve, and going by her attitude during the infamous gut-ripping scene, as well as her traumatized reaction to the punching glove box prank, I think she’ll be much less confident in her goals by that point, and probably more willing to talk about what’s going on.

I don’t think it’ll be as simple as ‘she just gives up and everyone forgives her’, or even ‘Rika beats up Satoko while everyone cheers and they all move on and abandon her’, though. I think there’ll be some kind of balancing act between redemption and punishment, but I also think that ultimately it’ll also tie into the Lambda/Bern origin story stuff they seem to be going for. I think I’ve said this before, but my best guess for how this will end is that the looper-killing sword will be used to separate their ‘meta selves’ who are aware of the loops and stuff, while leaving behind their regular physical selves who thus lose most/all of their memories of the loops. At least that way they can have their cake and eat it too by showing how Lambda and Bern became witches, while also having separate versions of them that get to stay behind and mend their relationship or something. But I’m not even confident about all of that, lol.

It’s also worth noting that the key visual for Sotsu features Satoko and Rika as teenagers, and the OP also features that pretty heavily, along with an ominous scene of the other main characters as teenagers. So that makes me think that the story will somehow get back to that whole time period, which makes me a bit more unsure how the last arc will go. One option is that the final Nekodamashi arc will just keep going until they become teenagers again, but the way those scenes are presented in the promo material makes it seem like Satoko and Rika’s relationship is still bad then. So maybe on the other hand we’ll just go back to the original Matsuribayashi timeline where Satoko first met Eua, but I feel like that’d probably be the happy ending where everything goes back to the original timeline and they all end up reconnecting again, so I’m still not sure how the ominous presentation of the teenage characters might play into that.

Either way, I think all of that stuff will probably just come up in the final arc. The next one will probably be covering Tataridamashi and Nekodamashi from Satoko’s perspective. The next arc should be where things start to shake up, but I still think they could easily cover both of those arcs in just five episodes. Nothing much seemed to be happening with Satoko until the final days of Tataridamashi, and I can’t imagine there being much to explore with how she set up the rapid-fire loops in Nekodamashi.

With what’s been hinted at about the next arc not going according to Satoko’s plans, and her resolve being tested, I think that this will probably be where things go entirely out of her control and she starts to doubt whether or not she should continue with her plans. Specifically I think that being in a new loop with Teppei being nice to her, and watching everyone else try to save her from her [perceived] abuse, will start to sway her toward thinking that maybe that sort of timeline is worth staying in, even if it means giving up on controlling Rika.

One way or another I think Ooishi went crazy all on his own. I think Ryukishi explicitly said in an interview that Ooishi went L5 naturally, and I think the manga version of Tataridamashi made it clear that Satoko was genuinely thrown off by how things went there, so she probably didn’t want Ooishi to kill anyone. I can see how he might have gone off the deep end by interrogating Teppei and realizing that there was basically a witch hunt going on against him, but I’m not sure how he would have ended up specifically blaming Rika unless Satoko pushed him into it. Either way, Teppei probably really did attack Keiichi at the end of the arc, and we know that Satoko just has one syringe to use, so at most she probably injected Teppei and then Ooishi went L5 naturally.

I’m also curious to see if/when Satoko learns about Rika being given the power to remember her deaths, since that’d also go a long way toward explaining what her intentions might have been with how that arc ended. I think Satoko is at least aware that Rika doesn’t remember how she dies, so I’m at least not sure what she’d try and accomplish by setting up a loop that only goes to shit at the very last second. It feels like it wouldn’t do a whole lot aside from making Rika confused in the next loop. But Rika only gets her ability to remember her deaths after that loop already ends, so Satoko could have only known about it if there’s some sort of conspiracy going on about Hanyuu. Which there probably is, since her whole presence in this is weird and her deciding to give Rika a new set of powers was always super suspicious, but still.

I’m also curious to see if we get any real payoff to the idea that Satoko’s looping is causing more and more people to remember past loops. Especially when it comes to the main club members, since there’s various moments in Tataridamashi and Nekodamashi, both in the anime and manga, that seem to imply that most of them are starting to remember things.

Even though the execution of this whole new series makes me a bit more wary about how any sort of new anime for Umineko along these lines might pan out, I can’t help but still really hope this is leading to something like that. For one thing I just think that if he’s going for a Lambda/Bern origin story with this, at the risk of alienating lots of existing fans, I think there should at least be a more concrete payoff to that than just ‘ok now you can go back and read the Umineko VN’. But I think there’s a lot of potential to be had with some sort of remake or sequel to Umineko where he gets a chance to revisit it after more than 10 years. One of these days I should still just make a whole post about my hopes and predictions for what could be done with any sort of new Umineko anime, lol.

Anyway, this got longer than I planned, but all in all I enjoyed this more than it probably comes across like I did, lol. Even if the plot’s been kinda boring, I think Sotsu has done a great job of elevating it with good direction and visuals. The moment to moment pacing can still be kinda choppy, and sometimes the presentation of flashback scenes is confusing and ambiguous, but in general it still feels entertaining to watch unfold, and the brutality has a lot of impact. I’m just hoping that the rest of Sotsu is more ambitious and surprising than these first two arcs have been.

[earthenterran]

higusotsu post ep 7&8

So. My belief was proven wrong. We’re shown in these episodes (which I’m sort of treating as one episode bc I watched together and idk where it started and stopped bear with me) that Satoko is pulling the strings very particularly. 

So my thoughts were wrong, and I’m dealing. Trying not to be like, too affronted because I thought the direction I assumed we were going was pretty good, but yknow. Fuck that I guess.

SO. What did I like? Because I did like things in these episodes. And also things I don’t like. Let’s start with the good:

I liked the opening conversation between Rika and Satoko. And I know I don’t touch about it enough because I do write mostly about Satoko’s whole thing but fuck, I hate seeing Rika in this situation. She’s done this before, she’s tired, she’s done. She doesn’t deserve this torture. And every time she expresses that my heart aches. She’s just a kid. She’s been just a kid for so long. Now, she’s gotten a few more new and real years only to be snatched away and put back in this cycle. It really fucking sucks. They all deserve peace and happiness and this goes so much more so for her.

I like Eua’s conversation with Satoko. There’s Eua saying something to Satoko that we get to see unnerve her. This whole time Satoko’s goal is Rika and keeping her around, but also remember all the times i’ve been saying like... Eua is the god that gave Satoko these powers and the freedom of consequence that comes with it. Now, here, we get one potential downside Satoko has to avoid. (Also weird how Eua went from ‘you’re definitely get you’re happy ending’ to ‘if you do x wrong you’ll literally lose so there’s actually no guarantees but i’m focusing on The POSITIVEs so hold on to that)

I liked the bit with Eua talking about Satoko being a witch now and revealing (its very show and tell but whatever its information ) that she is finding happiness in the deceit and manipulation and has to keep doing it. This tells us as an audience where she’s at right now. I really wish we got to see a more subtle descent for this but fuck! Wait. positivity portion.

Anyway I do like knowing where Satoko is said to be at mentally. We’ve been told that looping changes you. We know how Rika used to be, and even with anime-only OVA some light explanation that there was a witch Rika was that she had to let go of (saying this as a person who’s reading the VNs but still only has that anime info only since I haven’t gotten that far in the og source material). Basically we have previous information to connect this with, and we can move forward with the story figuring out... how to approach Satoko as a witch, and how will she respond (I mean we know... a gun, but yknow we’re not back there yet so....eeeeeh)

So. Things I Did Not Like or... yeah.

Keiichi’s just... dropped stuff. Like in the deceiving version of this arc Satoko has a connection with him. Which sure she’s pretending but this would’ve been a Wonderful chance to showcase her thoughts on someone who isn’t Rika, how she views the rest of her friends. How she views Keiichi, who she’s sometimes looked to as an older brother but also now as a looper has seen the dark sides of him. Mix that in with her like, viewing him as pawn as her rationale. Like how different is her view on him compared to Teppei? There’s gotta be a line right? Or show me how she’s blurred so much so to these faces that she can’t connect to permanently not matter who they are, if they aren’t the Rika she’s chasing after.

Eua’s line about how Satoko can’t withdraw now since she’s cast the die. Okay. If you’ve seen my other posts... whew man this got me steamed. I’m never going to get over the fact that EUA put Satoko in this position. Did not ask for this, and Satoko tried to run but was sent back to looping anyway and just kind of... scrambled from there. Like... fuck you. Hello??? I do recognize that Satoko is far away from who she used to be then but it... it all started there. Because Eua put her in this position, freedom and power and encouragement and HOW the fuck else was Satoko meant to end up? Who was Satoko supposed to become but a witch in search of happiness through the powers her god gave her?

I... I think that’s my big thoughts at the moment. I liked not seeing that shit Irie. I liked seeing the scene where Mion is told about the Teppei situation. I enjoyed the small bit of Satoko as a witch rolling on the ground. It read as kind of silly and while I’m like sort of humming about what’s the point of this story that was a nice break of just like ‘this is her headspace right now and see how she enjoys it’.

[momestuck]

Let’s read Hiveswap Friendsim volume 2!

So each volume of this VN is semi-self-contained, it seems. There’s not a continuous route through every chapter, or at least if there is, there’s no like persistent state beyond unlocking a little icon for befriending each troll.

The last couple of chapters seem to be bugged, since I have the achievements unlocked already, even though this is my first time playing the game.

Anyway last time our options were to get mind controlled by a twitch streamer, or steal loads of hot dogs with a homeless kid... or accidentally straight up fucking murder him, that can happen too. What are we up against next?

Beginning volume 2, it does in fact seem to be set chronologically after volume 1. Presumably Diemen won’t feature, since he may not have actually survived the first chapter!

So this time we have an indigo blood troll (same as Equius) - and a yellow blood (same as Sollux). So in each case, we’re basically one rung up the hemospectrum from the last game. Let’s go from left to right again.

Amisia

According to the credits, Amisia is written by Aysha U. Farah.

Amisia’s typing quirk seems to be that she doubles up the letter ‘u’. She finds us cute. Or rather, cuute.

She lives in a classy part of town.

Our first choice is whether or not we’re an artist. Going off pattern, saying we’ve never had a knack for art is the rejection option.

...turns out not. Apparently friendships with artists can be ‘frauught’. She’s very happy to have us along, and the narrator seems to be very happy to find someone not a ‘maniac’.

The narration calls attention to the paint on her smock. Which ‘doesn’t really look like paint’. 

Oh.

Ooooooooooh.

Yeah so remember the Grand Highblood who liked to paint his judgement chamber in the blood of various trolls? Yeah I’m pretty sure I can see where this one is going.

She puts our arm in a ‘medicalizer’ which heals our injury. The narration mentions we have a sling so... does that mean the branch where we killed Diemen is canon? Probably shouldn’t assume so. Maybe we got a sling in another branch. Then again... those other branches seem kind of final, so maybe this does follow killing Diemen, and ending up friendless.

We get the choice to be chill or dance around the room. Always dance, I say. Not surprisingly, we end up falling on our ass.

We fall on our ass a lot in this game. But the result is that we get a cut and that makes - shocker - Amisia really excited about our bright red human blood.

Lucky she never met Karkat, I suppose.

She takes the opportunity to be Space Racist.

Then she pulls out a huge axe. I guess if Equius’s thing was a huge bow, her thing might be a huge axe.

Whereas if we don’t flop around, we will surely remain unhurt. So I think we’re on track to become a kind of artistic blood donor.

The narrator finally gets a bit of a clue. But noo, she just wants to show us the axe... and somehow it slashes our wrists.

Sure is Hussie writing.

We get a reveal... she’s not a real painter. She’s ‘really good at the other parts’...

But now she’s inspired, and unlike her other contributors, she’s not gonna just murder us.

So instead we get kept on as a permanent muuse.

We really know how to pick ‘em in this game huh!

So now we have a couple of branch points to try. First, let’s say we’re an artist ourselves...

Amisia is not impressed.

The second branch we can try is to be chill about it when she heals our broken arm.

Ardata gets a mention. Technically this isn’t inconsistent with the route where Diemen dies, but I think it’s more likely this is a kind of ‘floating canon’ where you’ve implicitly tried all the routes, even if it doesn’t make strict logical sense. But if we want to construct a consistent timeline... either an Ardata route happens after Diemen dies, or we injure Ardata’s lusus and then do one of the Diemen routes.

In this route, you tell her you have red blood, and she assures you she has plenty of burgundy. How convenient.

This sounds healthy!

So some troll cops show up with a troll for Amisia to exsanguinate. (Oh it’s good when I get to use a word like “exsanguinate”!)

She tries to get us to do the axe murdering honours, but our ribs give out. We learn that, like Equius, she is STRONG. I recall that wasn’t supposed to be a general indigo-blood trait, but whatevs. So she gets us to hold the troll while she kills them instead.

It goes poorly.

Amisia briefly mentions another troll named Chahut as she kicks us out for messing up her hive.. I presume we’ll meet them later. We get another ending:

Honestly, this seems like a better ending for us. We’re alive, our arm’s repaired and we haven’t lost loads of blood, and we’re not trapped in a ‘friendship’ with Amisia.

Speaking of which... the narration hinted at some kind of supernatural cause behind our obsessive need for friendship, I think. That’s probably worth noting.

So now...

Cirava

I can’t find who wrote Cirava in the credits. Maybe I’m just not being observant!

I kinda like Cirava’s music actually. Feels cyberpunky.

Cirava’s typing quirk seems to be using the word ‘lmao’ a lot, and similar abbreviations. I’m kind of imagining that as saying ‘ell em ay o’ out loud.

We reveal that we’re an alien. Cirava seems chill.

Ohhhhhhh my god this is the vaporwave troll??? And there’s like... a troll bong there?

Also who’s that on the screen? Is that Ardata’s torture stream? ...no, those horns are different.

Cirava, it turns out, is also a streamer, whose viewers are into aliens.

So far... this seems kinda... not horrific? When’s the other shoe gonna drop lol

That’s a little real!

So, in Alternia, instead of vaporwave we have ‘moisturewave’. Which, I’m gonna say, we’re hella into.

Incidentally, the narration seems to be using ‘they’ pronouns for Cirava, so that’s neat.

So I guess we’re making fun of those music youtube channels too? Also trolls have anime, apparently.

The effects of chasing online fame are like, our Theme here I guess. Cirava mentions an ‘incident’ that made them less trusting...

A little on the nose huh.

Cirava, apparently, won’t be our friend unless we get a better aesthetic and a ‘chittr’ account. I’m pretty sure Homestuck already had a Twitter parody, but that was in the whole dream bubbles thing so I guess it wouldn’t extend to Alternia.

Our second choice is whether to let Cirava do our look, or do it ourself. Let’s try doing it ourselves.

Next stop, Harajuku. Cirava, luckily, is into it.

The narration seems to be pretty clear that the generic MSPA reader figure is a guy, alas.

Soon we’re being hit on by strangers. Next up, we’re vaping out of a bug’s ass.

So we get high on alien vape juice hell yeah. Time for THE INCIDENT.

Like a lot of trans girls (come on, vaporwave musician here? blatantly trans), Cirava got in a bunch of twitter chittr fights and started getting fake reported. Only on Alternia getting reported as a psionic means getting enslaved, not just banned off Twitter. This social media fight resulted in Cirava’s friends abandoning them to avoid being targeted (...yeah, that’s real), until Cirava removed their own eye to avoid being used as a psionic battery.

And now... they stay quiet, try not to get in fights, or get close to people.

Help I care about a fucking vaporwave troll now

So yeah that’s like... well of all the endings it’s the least awful one? god ><

Anyway what’s the other route? First, if we say we’re not into moisturewave... predictably, they say this isn’t going to work and kick us out.

Second, we get Cirava to dress us up.

hell yeah

Unfortunately Cirava gets kind of Chidi about the whole ‘making decisions’ thing. Eventually they dress us up...

Exactly like them.

Unfortunately this proves a bit too popular and Cirava freaks out that we’re going to steal their fame.

And as a result of stealing their look and popularity...

As a result, you straight up... kill yourself? With a gun that you find under a stump, because of MSPA memes?

Honestly?

Those wacky kids and their callout posts, am I right? This isn’t exactly a hot allostatic load level critique of disposability and social media mobbing here.

eh. whatever. this definitely feels like an outsider critique... but it feels more personal when I’m vaguely adjacent to the subculture getting mocked lol. (not that i smoke weed and work on vaporwave and make callout posts - but like Cirava’s whole thing is like ‘trans memer’ stereotype, you know?)

Anyway, that’s the outcomes available to us. Chill and smoke space weed with Cirava, be a living blood bank for Amisia, fail to murder someone, or die.

Fun times in Alternia!

I’m not sure if all of these episodes are gonna be like... ‘meet troll, hijinks, backstory dump, suffer’ or if there’s going to be more of a plot later on.

[remys-lucky-franc]

There are some really interesting and true points on this thread.

Here’s my two cents without repeating over what others have already said better than I would.

I really like the premise and feel like a lot could be done with it but I’m already starting to feel like the pacing is rushed (so sadly half the potential may get missed!) if that makes sense?

I’m reading Cash route only (and I’m enjoying it a lot!) but my friend is reading both Cash and Alana - and quite honestly if she wasn’t feeding me the backstory breadcrumbs from Alana, your girl here would be lost in the forest by now. We seem to be getting a heck of a lot more background information that actually makes the story make sense in Alana’s route where as in Cash’s route we get brushed off for info (by him) or things just seem to get glanced past in a comment and I’m like ‘wait, what?’ And having to go back to see if I missed something. And I actually haven’t. Which is a little disconcerting. So I am like ‘we’re only 3 weeks in’, so I’m totally giving benefit of the doubt here, maybe it’s all going to drop like a bombshell and we get all that backstory next week and the two routes are running sort of in sync with each other rather than being completely disparate in terms of knowledge (I’m fine with romances of different speeds btw!)? Either that or LS are assuming we’re all reading both routes simultaneously and therefore know stuff. I don’t know.

I’m very much enjoying the writing itself, it’s visual and beautiful which is honestly one of my my favourite things about Lovestruck vs other VNs and why I keep coming back and spending on bloody hearts even though my faves usually get cut short... *side-eye* But the ‘gaps’ (as I’m calling them) here are just a little jarring and they’re definitely noticeable - and I know I made a separate post about this so excuse me for repeating if you read that too - example- the whole thing with Lord Whatsit’s hair? That was just like ‘uh what’s happening here?’ - the pacing of that whole thing felt, quite frankly, bizarre: almost like it had to be trimmed back to a wordcount but key things ended up in the trash or something? I don’t know. But it was just, off.

Anyway that’s my two cents. I don’t know if anyone agrees with that, or thinks I’m just not paying enough attention to what’s going on if I don’t understand, but I’m usually pretty good at following things and even reading between the lines, so I don’t think it’s me...

While the writing in both Cash and Alanna’s routes is stellar, the series has yet to really grab me.

It feels like too many disjointed ideas slapped together and not working in harmony (time travel! Regency period! Secret Society! Immortality!)

I don’t know if it’s just my disillusionment with all things Lovestruck or if the series really is lacking, but I’m just feeling very “eh” about the whole thing.

Not that my opinion matters but I got a message asking me why I haven’t posted Cash and Alanna’s English Lessons and honestly, that’s why.

[pacoslimee]

Paco Reviews a Visual Novel #2

Finished playing through one the other day. I feel like doing these reviews might end up being a thing now. Spoilers and the like under the cut.

Went out of town for a few days for family stuff. So spent my time playing through a random visual novel I came across. This time it is DS: Dal Segno.

Plot Summary: *Insert Protagman’s name here* is an orphan who’s been living with his aunt since his parents’ death. He’s been handling as best he can but it still eats at him from time to time. Until he hears of a technological island called Kazana, that has been designed so that it is Summer all year round. It carries the slogan “Where no one is ever unhappy”. He takes this to heart and decides to move there and enroll in school. Upon arrival he is greeted by an AI named Ame. While getting a tour she seemingly trips off the side of a cliff. Forgetting that she doesn’t have a physical body, Protagman jumps off after her. He awakens to find that he landed in the sea and was saved by another girl from the island. After this Protagman discovers that he now has the ability to see the “happiness levels” above people’s heads. It’ll go up when they are happy and drop when they aren’t. This makes it a little hard for him to focus in class, so Ame nominates him to be a producer for the christmas beauty pageant. He now needs to find a candidate for it.

Overall thoughts: Better than I had anticipated. The prologue is super convoluted and throws a million concepts at you at the same time. But once it gets rolling it’s fairly easy to get through. Characters are nice and varied, the writing is pretty good for a straight forward romance-comedy. Music is entirely unmemorable. And the art is fairly standard. The game shines in it’s use of misdirection. It starts each route by throwing a trope or cliche at you. Which resulted in me trying to predict where each route was going. I was 0 for 5. Each route had twists that blindsided me. Also I didn’t specify the protag’s name because this game let’s you choose it. Which is neat for a visual novel that is pretty much fully voiced. Individual Route Reviews:

Himari: The girl who saved Protagman from drowning. She is a free spirit who just does what she wants. She also has a friend in a talking hat she wears on her head. In this route, Protag chooses her for the pageant. She tentatively agrees. In the time they spend preparing she falls in love with protag. They then date until abruptly one day she breaks up with him. It turns out she too can see happiness levels. But also that she can control and manipulate them. Consciously and unconsciously. She believes she has been manipulating Protag’s emotions the entire time they’ve been together. And to an extent, she has. Throughout the route things have been oddly straight forward with little to no conflict. Long story short, Protag doesn’t care and works to eliminate her power and succeeds. And in doing so his feelings don’t change. He still cares for her just the same. This was the first route I played and the first time I saw firsthand the game’s use of twists. The twist here is perhaps a little too subtle. Most of the foreshadowing went completely over my head and I was caught off guard by the twist. It’s not as well done as the others but it is good. 7/10.

Hazuki: The student council president and daughter of the school principal. She is very consumed in her work and reliable. Protagman chooses her for the pageant. In doing so he asks her out. She reluctantly accepts and suggest they do a trial run of dating. But at the start of christmas break she leaves town for business. She spends very little time with him at all until one night she sends a text to him at midnight asking to go out on a date. Her attitude is much more bubbly and fun. They spend the rest of break going on dates in the middle of the night. When school starts back up Protag meets with Hazuki in the student council office. She then tells him they need to prep for going out. This confuses Protagman as they’ve been seeing each other for most of break. Hazuki denies this, saying she had been going to sleep early every night. She writes this all off as dreams protagman was having. Protagman shows her the text logs and sends her into a panic. That night “Hazuki” asks Protagman out on a date again at midnight. He meets up and she acts like nothing happened. He asks who she really is and she pauses. She quietly says “Haruhi” and runs away. When he tells Hazuki this it only makes the situation worse. Haruhi was Hazuki’s twin sister who died in a car accident when they were children. Skipping ahead, Protagman learns that it was actually Hazuki that died and Haruhi is suffering from multiple personalities brought on by trauma. She is Hazuki 90% of the time. But being with Protag has brought forth Haruhi. She decides to continue living on using both personalities at the same time. This one was actually pretty darn good. Probably the most unpredictable route. But it did drag a bit in the middle. 9/10.

Io: A girl in Protagman’s class suffering from that one delusion thingy that apparently is common in anime. She calls herself the daughter of darkness and she believes herself to be a demon. Protagman is intrigued by her and asks her to be in the pageant. She constantly refers to it as a bid for power and a way to earn new slaves for her demon army. The pageant also leads to them dating (as is the pattern you may have noticed). Protagman comes to learn she is an author and all these delusions are more or less her stories. Slowly throughout the route she becomes more and more focused on the stories. Setting aside protagman at times. Until one day she flips out at him screaming that she needs to write and can’t stop writing. He leaves her alone for a few days only to realize that she had not left her room at all in that time and passed out from exhaustion. Leaving herself in a coma. Ame (the AI) tells him the truth. That her father had passed away, not only that be she also has a power like Protagman. She is able to enter the world of her writing in her sleep. She has written her father into that world and has decided to stay there. Hence the coma. Ame links their minds and Protagman enters the dream world. He finds her stuck in a mental ice prison. With an internal struggle playing out. Her true self is distraught and never wants to leave. Whereas her delusional demon self wants to wake up and actually see the real world. Protagman helps her come to terms with her father’s death and wakes her up. Was much more emotional than I was expecting from what I thought to be the comedy character. Only complaint is that there wasn’t nearly enough foreshadowing for me. The twist didn’t seem like it came about as naturally as the others. 7/10

Noeri: *sigh* Cousin of the protagonist. Come one Japan. Why you gotta be creepy. Anyway, her whole schtick is that she wants to be like a trope from anime she likes. The “little sister” love interest character. She introduces herself to people as his sister and he constantly corrects her. He is at such a loss for not finding a pageant contestant that he asks her. She immediately agrees. During the pageant she confesses to him in front of the audience and he accepts. He thinks back to her and her mother, his aunt. They took him and his actual sister in when their mother died and tried to treat them like family. But Protagman always kept his distance. So now that he is actively in a relationship with his cousin, she is overjoyed. But the “little sister” trope that she was pushing early on continues. To an extent where she begins relaying memories of their childhood together. But Protagman is concerned. She’s relaying not her own memories, but his actual sister’s. Eventually she doesn’t say that they are dating, but rather they are in fact related. Then she stops recognizing people at school. Her memories are actively being corrupted. She truly believes herself to be his sister. Protagman learns that his actions as a child may have resulted in Noeri believing that he wanted nothing to do with her and her mother. So she made a wish on the island that she could become his family. This wish was inadvertently granted by Ame. Corrupting Noeri’s memories. Protagman manages to get through to her and fixes the issue. Relative routes in VN’s give me the creeps. But that seems to have been the intention here. 5/10.

Ame: The island AI. Protagman can’t find anyone to do the pageant, so he asks Ame to do it since she put him into this mess. She agrees. Ame’s goal as an AI is to keep everyone on the island happy. She can also see happiness levels, but at least she has a reason. After the pageant she becomes concerned with what “true happiness” is. She asks around but doesn’t get the answers that she’d like. One student suggests it is love. Ame doesn’t fully understand love and asks Protagman. He gives her the textbook definition but that doesn’t help. Himari and Noeri suggest she go on dates to learn about it firsthand. They nominate Protagman, and he agrees despite not really wanting to help. He helps the AI learn about love firsthand. But she begins to short circuit and disappear whenever her emotions become too out of the norm. This happens frequently enough that Protagman talks to her creator. The creator tells Protag that the system wasn’t made for extreme shifts in emotion. That Ame had fallen for him despite being an AI. Ame and Protag confess to one another and everything seems to be fine. But the short circuiting continues. Until irreparable damage has been done. The creator tells Protag that she has 10 days to live. Before the system permanently shuts down. And unlike the other routes, this doesn’t have a truly happy ending. The Protagman doesn’t suddenly find a solution. He spends her last 10 days with her and she “dies”. Protagman comes to terms with the loss of a loved one yet again. The twist here was that there wasn’t a twist. They done got me good. 8/10.

How Avoidable Are H Scenes: There is a All-Ages steam version and an uncensored MangaGamer version.

Let’s Dub Potential?: Fairly Low. It was pretty good. But I don’t think it would cross over well to the LDP fan base.

Enjoyment Level: 7.5/10 It’s pretty darn fun. Got through with it in maybe 5 days. For a fairly straight-forward romance VN it was pretty enjoyable.

[ramblingsofthegoldenwitch]

(You've commented a fair number of times about how you don't like EP7 much compared to other EPs. If you don't mind elaborating, what are your complaints about it?)

It’s difficult to explain my feelings in regard to Ep 7... and they might feel like things that affect just me so, everyone, if you feel like digging in this explanation, consider yourself warned.

In fact, to be honest, some of the issues I’ve with it are a matter of personal taste, for example I didn’t like at all how it was structured (as in the way the whole story was delivered to us) and I felt like many choices in it weren’t really necessary to the plot. All this can of course be countered by another person with a mere ‘but I liked it!’. We���re all different, after all, and my tastes don’t rule the world or dictate what should be likable and what shouldn’t.

Some issues I’ve about it are in regard to how ‘confusing’ its presentation is. No, I’m not talking about Will giving us obscure answers, I’m talking about the huge Meta structure that basically permeates all Ep 7 and that is never well explained. By now I’ve my theories and I’ve more or less sorted it out but the problem is that they’re just MY theories, MY interpretations. People come asking me what in the world is going on in Ep 7 and all I can reply to them is what I THINK is going on but I can’t say for sure and what makes it worse is that I don’t think we needed things to be so confusing. Umineko had better Meta ways to deliver things that had already been used. No need to complicate everything by making new ones. Of course, again, there can be people who loved all this.

Another issue I’ve with it is the Theatre-going authority. We’re lulled into thinking that it will push characters to tell us things, and that their testimony will be the truth. All the people Will uses it on were ALREADY willing to speak (even Kinzo was persuaded to do so by Lion) and they tell us an extremely personal, sometimes even deliberately mendacious version of the truth (Kinzo was the one who wanted to kill the Italians, not Yamamoto). The effect of the theatre-going authority is fundamentally the one of a giant fantasy flashback. We already had them, no need for it... unless they were supposed to be red herring? The only person who didn’t want to talk is Shannon, Will tries to use the theatre-going authority on her and then… gives up. It seems as if the theatre-going authority only existed to let us see Shannon going in ‘freaky/robot mode’ (it varies according to you reading the VN or the manga). It’s one of the things I felt we could go without.

A small issue is about Will, Lion and Clair. Although I love them to pieces, plot wise I feel we didn’t need those extra characters. I wave it off because… well, I love them madly because Ryukishi is awesome at creating characters. This doesn’t change the fact I get the feelings the addition of those extra was a tad forced.

A concrete issue I’ve with it is how it hand waves certain matters, just appealing to our suspension of disbelief on threat that if we think too much at it we’ll get a headache. Those things could have been explained one way or another but instead… no explanation is given for those oddities happening. They just… happens and we’re either asked to swallow them or make up our own explanation about why such odd things took place.

Will’s presence on the island? Hand waved, no one wonders how this strange got there or who he is, even though it’s a private island and he wasn’t on the boat with the adults. He walks in their private property out of nowhere and no one stops to wonder who’s this guy and from where it comes from, not the servants who should know who was invited nor Kinzo, the master of the house or… everyone else, really. Krauss asks him who he is but then he drops him with Lion and ignores the whole matter, because evidently that’s no more a private ceremony in a private chapel in a private island but a public place. Lion is the one who has a vaguely normal reaction and asks Will why he’s at the funeral, when a better question would be how he got on that island.

The portrait hanged in 1984? No reason for this is given in Lion’s world, it’s just something Kinzo decided on a whim.

Battler’s absence from the conference in Lion’s world is unexplained (yes, my Battler/Sayo heart shipper tells me it’s because Sayo wasn’t on the island but that’s my heart talking, not Umineko. Knox would wave it off as a random guess…).

The same goes for Kinzo’s decision to hold Beatrice’s funeral that year… in which nothing special happened. Kinzo just woke up that morning and decided to hold a ceremony to mourn Beatrice. When he didn’t feel like it when Beatrice truly died.

We aren’t told why Natsuhi changed her mind and accepted Lion even though it’s apparently extremely unlikely. Natsuhi just woke up and decided that hey, maybe tossing him off a cliff would be a bad idea.

Kinzo doesn’t notice how Rosa is screaming she killed Beatrice.

The whole story of how an Italian submarine carrying gold came to Japan is historically illogic as submarines in such conditions would historically go to Spain. To make us swallow it we’re told that maybe they had a reason to go to Japan but ‘nobody knows it because who knew died’. For the gold the same principle is used. It was hard enough to think it was Italian but then Will randomly tosses in it could be German which opens up an even huge can of historical worms and again the whole issue is hand waved with a ‘oh well, we don’t know’.

Clair doesn’t ask Will the solution for all the mysteries. Of course we believe Will knows everything but if we accept she believed he knew everything also then why questioning him in the first place? If I’m not wrong Ryukishi claimed somewhere he wanted to focus only on the riddles that seemed difficult but then the whole scene ends up on being a plot contrivance to deliver to the readers some answers in an obscure way. Oh, it’s artistically pretty and I love it for its prettiness, but it’s plot structure is shaky.

Note that Ep 7 (and Ryukishi) also raised questions in points that didn’t need some.

The tale Battler wrote for Beato? The fandom knew it was Dawn only EP 7 described it in such a way people didn’t really find it matching with Dawn plot so people started wondering if there was another tale written for her and it didn’t help that Ep 7 manga version didn’t bother posting the title on the book cover, something that Ep 8 has no problems making (note that, due to how the manga was printed the two scenes didn’t exactly came out at years of distance but were pretty close so I don’t see where’s the problem in confirming things in EP 7).

Battler’s letter? Maybe in the Japanese fandom things were different but I didn’t remember people doubting he merely didn’t write it until Ryukishi in an interview raised the issue there was more about it… before dropping it completely. The letter is never addressed again. Not even in Ep 8. What broke Sayo’s heart is just… hand waved. Battler doesn’t know about it and while in Ep 8 he’ll apologize for not coming back he’ll never get a head up about the letter matter.

We’re all disgusted by Kinzo’s behavior with Kuwadorian Beatrice? If I don’t remember wrong Ryukishi tells us we don’t really know how things went between them… which is true but it’s clear enough they were horrible enough to push her to follow a complete stranger and try to escape. Not knowing the details of the rape doesn’t really erase it. Unless we’re supposed to doubt the whole story Rosa told us as well as what the servants told us and think that Kuwadorian Beatrice slept with Kinzo willingly and that she left Kuwadorian only for a short walk that ended poorly.

The family conference in the year in which Battler should have come back is conveniently skipped. Or handled so poorly it seems it’s skipped. We actually have a scene from 1980… but it doesn’t look like a family conference and people talking about what will happen in ‘that year’s family conference’ (Kyrie will supposedly show up) reinforces this opinion only it turns out that the next conference we’ll see is the one of 1981… Maybe a problem in the translation? Still it doesn’t work well.

Shannon feels up on asking Genji and Kumasawa to lie to Kinzo, Krauss and Natsuhi and also… hire her as Kanon. And no one notices a thing about this boy whose face is the same as Shannon and that doesn’t come from the Fukuin house as no one of the Fukuin servants could know him but… out of nowhere, really.

Kinzo pulls out the epitaph, which is a hint to Genji that he knows Shannon might be Lion and Genji gives hints to Shannon about how to solve it but… he, Kumasawa and Nanjo don’t stop thinking to a less traumatic way to break the truth to her in those almost two month it’ll take for her to solve it as if they couldn’t realize how traumatic it would be for her. No, the idea of Ep 7 is that they had to traumatize her which requires them to be either jerks or dumb… while it could have more or less worked if everything had happened without them having the chance to predict it and so, caught by surprise, they ended up saying things in a poor manner.

We spiral down with the teaparty. We’re left with the adults in a definite situation, Eva and Hideyoshi are arguing with Krauss, Natsuhi is instead arguing with the other siblings… then all of sudden we’re told that Natsuhi jumped on Eva and this caused her to get shoot. The manga worsened things by showing that the two groups were even distant and that Eva and Natsuhi were giving each other their backs and it kept on worsening things when it insisted on how EXACTLY THE SAME THING would happen in Lion’s world as well, with the only difference that Lion would be called in Jessica’s place. I can swallow that the siblings were in economical troubles even if Kinzo was alive and hated each other so much that they would still argue and kill each other but… different conditions should cause minor shifts in the plot. Instead the only difference between a dead scene and the other is in how the gun next to Eva is placed… which can be the result of a mistake done due to the change in perspective… and well, that Beato isn’t there.

Then there’s Kyrie’s characterization. Kyrie is supposed to be suspicious, careful, rational. All this flies out of the window when she decides she can trust that the credit card really will lead them to all that money without checking first, that there’s no way to convert the gold without Krauss’ help when Sayo, in order to get money on that credit card, should have been able to do it, that the bomb will surely explode even through its mechanism wasn’t tested, that the range of the explosion surely won’t involve Kuwadorian, that the safest way to go through it will start gunning down people instead than grabbing some sleeping pills from Nanjo’s bag, drugging everyone and then gunning them down and, worse of all, she doesn’t check neither Sayo or Eva’s corpses and misses their vital points rather badly even though we were told she was good with guns. Note that I can accept that Kyrie would consider murdering everyone… but I’ve issues with how careless she becomes.

Rudolf too comes as a little odd as he knows he has a defective gun but doesn’t go take another one. It’s minor as Rudolf is lazy… but well, when you’re going on a killing spree and a defective gun can cause you troubles you should play on the careful side. But well, I can swallow it.

Battler’s ‘disappearance’ also doesn’t work well. Ep 8 explains us that the solution to this is ‘Battler left the house then, all of sudden, remembered he didn’t remember the way to the chapel and came back to ask about it to Gohda’ which feels silly as: Kyrie shouldn’t have sent him in such a place considering how it was easy to predict he wouldn’t remember where it was or should have made sure he knew the way (it’s well known that the church is hardly used and Battler had been missing from the house for 6 years, you can expect him not to remember were it is) and Battler should have asked her where the church was. So again, Kyrie comes out as careless and Battler leaving to realize he doesn’t know where to and coming back comes out as a plot contrivance.

On a general note… I think that the previous episodes better addressed Sayo’s issues than the whole of Ep 7. Ep 7 focuses a lot on how ‘it’s all Battler’s fault’, when he actually wasn’t the only one to blame, and generates the false impression that this was Sayo’s only problem. It’s true that there are hints in Ep 7 that this actually wasn’t her only problem but after getting all that ‘it’s Battler’s fault’ for so long, with Will agreeing to it as well, the other issues seem minor when they actually played a big role. Sayo also comes out as petty, pushing the blame of her actions solely on Battler, when we know that in Prime she actually took responsibility for them. So ultimately I think Ep 7 did her a disservice.

Ep 7 also lost a good chance to dig deeper into the motivations of minor characters like Genji, Nanjo and Kumasawa for setting up Sayo’s life in a manner that was… simply terrible.

I’ll let slide the whole matter of how they let her believe her sex was female without even bothering to prepare her for the fact she wouldn’t develop secondary sex characteristic or be able to become pregnant because Umineko wanted to keep in the dark Sayo’s sex and use the full trauma of her discovering her own condition as one of the driving forces for the whole thing (even though the fact that Ep 7 completely overlooked on the whole matter ended up making it look less important than it was).

Let’s focus on the fact they kidnapped Sayo and gave her a new identity so that Kinzo won’t make the same mistake and rape her, which is understandable really, but then they took her back on Rokkenjima AS AN ORPHANED SERVANT, when she was too young to work and under the disguise she was actually younger. Kinzo could have recognized Beatrice in her again, think this time Beatrice reincarnated in a person unrelated to him and rape her all over taking advantage of the fact that now she was his servant. It’s a horrible plan and their decision for going through it is… poorly explained.

Then there’s the loss of a chance to let us know more about minor characters like Kinzo’s wife (where was she when the baby was handed to Natsuhi since she was clearly still alive to scold Rosa and push her to escape in the forest and meet with Beatrice? Natsuhi claimed that Krauss and Kinzo were away but what about Kinzo’s wife? Did they drag her along?) or how Asumu, a young woman with no health problem mentioned, suddenly died, to dig a little better in Battler’s six years away from his family and his feelings for Sayo (he’s jealous she chose George but then he can brush it off… so it looks like it isn’t a big deal… only we’ll learn in Prime he risked his life for her more than once and, hadn’t she died, he was willing to spend the rest of his life with her).

Then there are issues I’ve specifically with the manga.

In the scene in which the culprit shows up for the first time… the culprit’s form is slightly kept in the dark but we can see she’s not Shannon, she’s not Beatrice and she isn’t even Clair. There’s no reason for this person in the dark to be an ‘extra’ person.

Kinzo’s wife has no face nor name. I can get over the fact they didn’t give her a name, not on the fact the mangaka didn’t give her a face as there’s no reason to obscure it. She’s not hiding some dark secret. We won’t learn the truth about her later on as we’ll do with Asumu, whose face will be showed only in Ep 8 (bless Ep 8). Yes, maybe they wanted to drive home that for Kinzo she was a ‘not entity’ (his children too get no face) but still… I don’t like this. Personal taste? Maybe.

The manga tossed in a bunch of nameless maids who… go nowhere really (when it would have been so much better if, as someone (myself included) speculated, they also were vessels for things like the Chiesters or the Eiserne Jungfraws) as they don’t get names and just… disappear, while waited to introduce Reinon. This is more or less a direct transposition of how the VN handled matters, only in the VN it worked better as there were no random new faces, just random voices so you could speculate it was a 7 sister maid the one speaking and it wasn’t so clear that Reinon popped up later. The manga makes obvious that’s not the case.

Ep 5 manga version implied the promise happened on the same balcony on which Beatrice, in Ep 4, asked Battler to remember about his sin. This was a wonderful new info but… it goes completely skipped over in the manga transposition of Ep 7. Ep 7 manga version transposes faithfully the novel and just focus on the scene in the garden… where no clear promise is made. Sayo just urges Battler to come and he confirms he’ll do but he never says ‘I promise’ nor they’ll make a pinky swear.

Overall, Ep 7 isn’t fully to blame for most of the issues I’ve with it.

The background behind the Umineko plot is one of an huge amount of extremely unlikely facts happening one after the other, most of whom we’re asked to figure out. While unlikely facts can and will happen, often, in stories in general and in mystery stories in particular the author usually avoids them or explains/excuses them. Umineko just… embraced them as if the unlikely were the ordinary and Ep 7 was the point in which we were asked to do the same, often without being given a convincing reason for having to do this beyond ‘it was unlikely but it just happened, insert devil’s proof here’.

That’s why I wish the manga had at least dimmed some issues I had with the novel version, for example handled better (and not worse) why Eva ended up shooting Natsuhi or how Kyrie and Rudolf murdered everyone in Lion’s world as well.

Most of those issues weren’t IMPOSSIBLE to handle. They just weren’t explained, hand waved with an ‘it happened, don’t think too hard at it’.

As a result, I feel Ep 7 was handled poorly and the manga version did nothing to fix it. It’s my personal impression. I know there’s who loves Ep 7 and how it handled everything and, as usual, that’s fine.