Gato posted:

Umineko 8

It's been ages since I last did this. I started ep 8 months ago straight after finishing 7 but bounced off the Halloween party arc. Then I powered through that only to bounce off the purple truth logic puzzle. Instead, I went back over episode 7 again, took some time to come up with an anwer I liked for most of the murders in 1-4, and probably would have ended up leaving it there but the recent Umineko posting gave me another push to see it through. I haven't finished yet, but having just had the big anime battle against the goat army and lots of pontificating about The Truth it feels like I'm fairly close to the end. Random thoughts:

- I think the Halloween party has been the game's writing at its weakest unfortunately. It's an issue you run into with ensemble casts (the Trails games come to mind for some reason) where every scene has to have every single character remind you they're there, but there's no actual character development left to do so it just drags and drags. And god knows Ryukishi won't say something once if he can say it 3 times. Isn't it sweet how Ange brings everyone together? Isn't it wholesome but also bittersweet to see the Ushiromiyas as a functioning family for once? Aren't these anime girls in leotards so wacky? Also why is Erika everyone's friend now? I get wanting everyone on the same page for the grand finale, but she literally tried to torture and rape Battler for eternity

- The whole purple truth mystery feels a bit off when you try to put it in the broader context. After a whole series emphasising how a mystery without a human aspect is empty, and how characters are more than just pieces on a game board, we get a mystery which is just a bare-bones logic puzzle with all the human drama stripped away. (Though it was a pretty neat puzzle). At first, I thought that the dissonance was intentional - Battler's having a great time, but Bern was really only interested in using the scenario to torment Ange even more, and I kept on waiting for him to realise how hosed up it was. But instead everyone in the meta-verse just keeps chuckling about how much fun it will be to keep on coming up with new puzzles to play with! Even though this basically means making a group of sentient pieces relive the murder of their family and friends over and over again! (Jessica gets a throwaway line where she brings this up but nobody replies).

- I do like the idea of games as a means of communication between players. Sadly, Ange seems to be falling into the exact same trap Battler did, fixating on the minutiae of how to win the game rather than trying to understand what her opponent wants.

- I'm not sure the detail about Battler being Kyrie's biological son after all really adds much at the end of the day except more angst for its own sake. Still we’ve come a long way from all my convoluted theorycrafting about Battler’s parentage…

- I think part of the reason it's taken me a while to get into this episode is that after such a satisfying send-off for Beatrice/Yasu, the driving force beind the plot is now Ange's conflict, where the writing seems to be getting a bit messy. I might be overthinking it, but in episode 4 the conflict between fantasy and reality seemed to be presented in a much more even-handed way. Fantasy was a vital defense mechanism and source of comfort for Yasu/Maria/Ange but in the end it could never be sustained for ever, and literally led to murder in Yasu's case. I personally find Ange's need to know The Truth pretty drat sympathetic, but the story (through Battler and Beatrice, who are basically the authorial voice now) seems hell-bent on saying "no, it's healthier just to accept your ignorance, make something up and carry on." The reveal that Ange is basically suicidal gives some interesting context to her actions, but it also feels like a cheap way of weighting the scales against Ange's goal. "oh, so you want Ange to find The Truth? well, she's going to kill herself once she finds it. you don't want that, do you?"

- and speaking of The Truth, it's a bit of a relief to find out that the super-cynical version we saw at the end of Ep 7 might not have been what actually happened, but at the same time it's getting increasingly hard to imagine a version which does explain everything in an (emotionally) satisfying way. One final prediction: since we're suddenly playing a visual novel for the first time I'm guessing that we're going to get to make Ange's choice for her - A) read Eva's Very Convenient Super-Secret Diary of Truth and find out what happened, or B) lol catbox, guess we'll never know, but Ange is happy I guess.

If I'm right I'm going to smash that Truth button, Beatrice is going to tell me off for not believing in magic, and the catbox will remain closed forever. But god knows I've been wrong before, so here's hoping.