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Oh neat, I didn't know we had a thread about this! I've been slowly reading Umineko since about May this year. My wife has been a huge fan for years, and through them I've already heard a fair number of the major spoilers. (That is, I asked for spoilers; I wasn't planning to read the story myself at the time.) I'm presently in episode 4. The pacing has been frustrating with all the time spent on the new character in this episode; all I really want to see are the murders and the arguments about the murders. I'm told that the later episodes are better in terms of time management. Honestly, I think the new character's plot suffers for being crammed in the way it is. Maybe it should have its own series instead so it could have room to breathe. Overall, Umineko is an enjoyable story, but not quite living up to expectations. From my wife's perspective, it sounded like something incredibly deep and philosophical. To me, it's kind of cheap and schlocky at times. Still having fun, mostly.
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Oct 14, 2022 12:12
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 07:22 |
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Something I stated to pick up in episode 2, which gets fully spelled out in episode 3 is that it doesn't matter how much magic you are shown, none of that is the solution to the mysteries. So it feels really dumb--granted it's a minor point--when episode 4 comes around and Battler is clutching his head worrying that there are even more magical cast members running around. We're really going to pretend that conversation didn't happen? It seems like Ryukishi just rewrites his characters on the fly to advance whichever scene he's currently writing. Yes, they all have internal contradictions, but a lot of the time they just do and say whatever is convenient for the plot. I also think that the whole Sea of Fragments plot device introduced in episodes 3 and 4 makes it pointless to have one single version of 1998 that's the canon outcome of Beatrice's game. So there goes Ange's relevance. Edit: This extended fight scene has a lot of meanings under the surface:
Regarding the fourth wall break, who got a worse beating, Goat-kun or that dead horse? So Math fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 15:41
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I'm paused in the middle of a major turning point in episode 4. I disagree pretty strongly with the narrative on what constitutes a healthy and wise perspective on inter-generational violence; decided I needed to take a break and come back later. Besides that, something clicked with me today. The secret mastermind is a specific kind of character presented from a metatextual point of view. (Reminder: I already know a fair amount of spoilers for later episodes I haven't read. Trying not to read too many other spoilers that would be new to me. Major spoilers below for episodes 7 and 8, I think?) The culprit wants to be the protagonist of a dating sim. We don't control her, we watch from the point of view of the secret romance character. It seems like she gets what she wants, but it's actually awful for everyone including herself. Here's my evidence:
These are things you wouldn't bat an eye at if this was your avatar in a VN. But they aren't, and that's what makes the culprit so weird and capable of violence. I think that's a neat idea.
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Oct 23, 2022 23:55
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I finished episode 4 last week! I thought that the whole 1998 story missed a lot of its potential and was way too long for what it was trying to be. I mentioned before how I disagree with the trajectory for that storyline. Ange got a worse perspective on abuse than what she started out with. And the power of love allows her to... have better magic for killing a bunch of faceless goons? The first tea party was excellent. I've been wanting more of this since the showdown in episode 3. Then the second tea party undermined a lot of that, but didn't actually build enough new stuff to make up for it. Overall, I think that Ryukishi pulls off this anti-mystery stuff the best when he doesn't actively call attention to it. Like, I think it's hilarious that Battler would need to explain the verbal descriptions of the spells in a future episode. But having the characters talk about how Battler has not actually solved a single mystery and how Ange's involvement was a waste erodes my suspension of disbelief. I'll see about starting episode 5 in a week or so. E: fixed the spoiler tags So Math fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Nov 2, 2022 |
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Nov 2, 2022 00:51
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I started reading episode 5. Here is a shitpost I hope you will enjoy.
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Nov 8, 2022 23:42
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I'm in episode 4 and the game has started! I know too many spoilers to get the full effect of the man from 19 years ago, but it does raise some questions about how much Natsuhi knows about the skeletons in the closet. (She is way too proper to have a bastard of her own running around anyway.) Lambda and Bern talking about genre expectations is an obvious troll, since it's Bern's self-insert who is breaking the mystery conventions that she was advocating for in her previous scene. I know that Battler is a meathead and Beatrice is a tsundere, so they're supposed to get together eventually, but it feels really forced so far. I'm much more interested in the story on the game board than I am in the meta-narrative framing device. I do like that Kyrie's interest in the Ushiromiya family contrasts with her experience with her birth family. In her backstory, Kyrie is the hyper-competent first born who jumps ship at the last minute and leaves a younger sibling in charge to make sure the family will continue. Here, the oldest sibling is a dolt and Kyrie is helping the younger siblings get a piece. But she isn't concerned with the longevity of the main family, she's happy to get Rudolf his $200 million and leave Krauss's family in shambles Here's a Battler doodle. 
So Math fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Nov 14, 2022 |
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Nov 14, 2022 13:19
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MegaZeroX posted:I would say that whenever someone is reading/playing Higurashi/Umineko/Ciconia, and they mention that they have been spoiled about anything, as a blanket response, someone should remind the person that false spoilers are not uncommon for WtC. This reminder should happen regardless whether the spoilers in question are real or not. That way we get the effect of people at least considering the possibility that the spoilers are fake/misremembered. This would come off as patronizing to me. Most of the things I'm spoiled on I got from the fan wiki, and I'm not going to take you seriously when I can just go reread the wiki to double check (and probably spoil myself on more stuff accidentally). So in the end, I'll just decide that I'm remembering correctly and keep reading under false assumptions. If I'm that badly thrown off about it, just point out what my false impression is and tell me that it isn't true. The problem isn't information itself, the problem is the feeling of certainty. So Math fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Nov 19, 2022 |
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Nov 19, 2022 14:59
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LordMune posted:Deliberately re-reading spoilers should someone dare to imply you may have been misinformed seems like a very specific you problem, to be honest. Then I need to clarify, because that is not something I actually do. I know that I have the ability to reread the wiki, and I chose not to. But knowing that I could do it gives me certainty in the wrong answer. The spoiling has already happened; I am not interested in someone else dancing around a topic for what they think my sake is. I am the person who determines what is in my interest. I would rather someone say "So Math, you think that the spoiler is Kinzo won his fortune in a poker match, but it isn't," instead of something like "Well gee, So Math, why do you think Ryukishi put in all this stuff about real estate if that's not actually the answer?"
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Nov 21, 2022 12:28
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I've had to put my Umineko reading on pause for a few days. In the mean time, here is something I wrote at the very beginning of Episode 4. It's an alternate take on the logistics of moving people between different Fragments. Battlers Royale
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Nov 24, 2022 01:38
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Made it to the episode 5 credits. Spoilers for episode 8 as usual. The trial started out pretty strong, but I thought that Battler feeding lines to Dlanor was a waste of time. Throwing for content, you might say. Half that stuff was already litigated earlier. It's especially dumb when Battler's motivation is to put Beato out of her misery--he decides that the best he can do is to sacrifice himself to make sure... she can still exist in this game she hates to be in? She said herself she would rather them both die together because he still can't remember his childhood promise to her. (Figured that one out myself!) Which, wouldn't that promise have been between him and Shannon? Why does she expect him to remember while she is in a false persona? The bit about putting a living Kinzo in Natsuhi's bed seemed gratuitously misogynistic, but I can see that scene being there to suggest using a similar train of logic on Shannon/Kanon. It's pretty clear that Battler needs to focus on Kanon's suspicious behavior from earlier this game. Was Lambda just going to let Bern win like that when she could pull the rug? I guess Lambda gave up immediately on trapping her weird gf forever. None of these fake-rear end witches actually have the mental stamina to commit to eternal anything.
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Dec 2, 2022 13:27
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Finished 5's tea parties. Kind of thought that Battler would implicate Kanon for acting suspicious in this episode, but I guess that's for later.VostokProgram posted:Did you mean for episode 5? Or are you re-reading or something? Unclear if I can post at you with full story spoilers or not This is my first proper read of Umineko. I was introduced to the story years ago when my spouse first became obsessed with it. I wasn't as interested in the story at the time. I had them tell me what was going on so I would be able to keep up with their read. These are things that I know about Umineko, which are massive spoilers for the end of it: - Beatrice is representative of Sayo (Shannon). She is Kinzo's secret incest bastard, whose mother is his secret non-incest bastard that lived in Kuwadorian. She is technically the first born in Battler's generation and the heir to the gold. - When she found the gold she also found a pile of explosives left over from when the island was a military base. - Shannon has rigged the island to detonate at the end of the second day, killing nearly everyone regardless of any other murders taking place. - Shannon faked her death in episode 1 and continued to kill other people. - Kanon is also Sayo. They are the same person. - Beatrice is in love with Battler. She wants him to reciprocate these feelings while he plays her game in Purgatory. - Kyrie is Battler's biomom. She only thought she miscarried. - Rudolf and Kyrie get a turn to be the killers in episode 8. The events of this episode are what really happened. - Battler survives in 1998 under a new name. He is an amnesiac and writes stories about Rokkenjima trying to remember what happened. There are probably some other things I am forgetting, but those are the major ones. I don't actually know how the murders happened in this episode yet. Or in 1, 2, and 4. Episode 3 seemed pretty blatant about it, but I suppose Ryukishi could still pull something out of his rear end for that one.
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Dec 4, 2022 23:16
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Ytlaya posted:Ah, this is good to know. Thanks for not being weird about it.  My guess for the whydunnit uses what I mentioned previously, that Battler made one of those anime childhood promises to Shannon. Well, that and revenge. I do hope there's more to it than that. The romance elements have been pretty badly forced in my opinion; Ryukishi flipped a light switch between episodes 4 and 5, and suddenly Battler reciprocates the feelings of the insane tsundere who has been committing existential torture against his entire family. I can tell that romance is something that Ryukishi wants to be core to the story. Just, he kind of squandered a chance to do a slow burn on Battler's side of it in favor of doing the bulk of the character change off screen. There's also a question about the magic. Not whether the magic inside the board is real--that's been settled since episode three, and five completely dropped the ruse in favor of using the furniture cast as a metaphor for Beato trying to fight off Lambda's control. I mean Purgatory itself. The characters never really litigate this argument, but they talk broadly enough that it kind of sounds like they are, especially in the question arcs before the red text is introduced. Sure, it could be that Purgatory is real and that the nature of reality is determined by games such as the one we are watching. There is plenty of fourth-wall breaking between the pieces and the players of the game, to the point where I think you'd have to say that the board pieces are basically magical actors who are constantly goofing off. In the Fragment that episode 5 would make, I do think that Natsuhi would have been imagining Beatrice, but it's kind of contrived that she would imagine up Ronove, Virgilia, and Gaap exactly the way they were drawn in previous episodes, and she would imagine them constantly talking about the events of a higher level game that she should not know about and just ignores every time it is mentioned. My perspective has been anti-magic since the first episode. While I know this is not the anti-magic interpretation that's offered in the end, I think it's neat to imagine that all of Purgatory is going on inside Shannon's imagination. It's the most recent iteration of her imagining about imagining about killing everyone. First, Shannon imagines different ways she would kill everyone and toy with them the whole time. That's why the murders happen differently in each episode, and the reason that she's hyper-competent in her ability to get the murders done and rope the other servants into the con. It's why the entire cast ignores simple details that would make everything fall apart. (It was raining. Forget Hideyoshi's cigarette, doesn't anyone notice that Eva was wet?) She also wants to wipe out the family early enough so that she can flirt with Battler. Now it's kind of hard to imagine a Battler who would want to flirt while his family's corpses are still warm, so she gets meta. Shannon imagines a Battler who lives in her mind and can see her plans. He hates her when she wants him to hate her, and he does a 180 and loves her when she wants that instead. Even Ange's story is part of her imagination; Shannon grew up so badly that she cannot imagine any kind of childhood for Ange besides being an orphan, getting bullied, and growing detached from the world. The imagined 1998 is warped in ways to suit Shannon's ego -- Ange confirms that the condolence money Shannon sent out was received, and that thousands of people the world over care about what Shannon did and why.
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Dec 7, 2022 13:13
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I started six. Battler writes a lot more hints than Beato ever did. Also, the eagle crest on Erika's veil was a nice touch. Obviously Beato is eventually coming back, the entire point of having Featherine say that Beato won't in red is to set up some kind of wordplay dodge later on. Question arcs Beatrice is so irredeemable as a romantic interest that Ryukishi had to kill her off to start the relationship over again from scratch. Lol. Here's an alternate interpretation. Beatrice never wanted to be mean to Battler at all. However, Lambdadelta would only allow her to be a witch as long as Beatrice acted cruel, so she went along with it and tried to give Battler the most comfortable and romantic eternal torture she could come up with. She can be in the story only if she is a villain, so she was trying to be a convincing villain but pining for Battler the whole time. Possibly she's inept at pulling her punches. A similar vibe to (a 2022 RPG with a meta twist) the ending of that FF1 remake where you're Garland. I'm not sure how to politely label the spoilers in I'm cracking up now that I realize the baby 19 years ago got a penis injury from the fall. Kanon and Shannon are having an open argument about whether or not she can be with George despite not being able to make babies for him. That's how much this one person hates themself and their body. Then they resolve to flirt with everyone, marry whoever they can get first, and discard their other worksona completely. With confidence issues this bad, Shannon/George is going to go to some very dark places; George has a latent tendency towards manipulation that he gets from his mom. It's so melodramatic it's kind of sickly funny. I'm not expecting Ryukishi to offer a nuanced take on intersex stories at all, so I'm trying not to worry too much about the implications for the moment. Edit: The Weekend at Bernie's/Hedwig and the Angry Inch crossover no one asked for. So Math fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Dec 10, 2022 |
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Dec 10, 2022 14:54
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Cyouni posted:You may wish to reread the ending to 3 with Beato and Ange and think about what it might mean. You mean the part where Beato was obviously stalling her own victory and throwing out hints Battler wasn't catching? Just like she does in episode 4 where she emphasizes Battler's kinship to Rudolf right before grilling him about Asumu.
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Dec 13, 2022 02:29
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Here's what I think of episode 6 so far: The cheese riddle isn't merely emblematic of Umineko requiring rules-bending for it's answers, the cheese being folded on itself is analogous to the structure of the Purgatory story. It's not that The RPG comparison I was making the other night was more apt than I thought! The endless board doesn't mean infinitely many distinct games, it means eight games repeated cyclically. (That's been bugging me for a long time.) Beatrice in the question arcs already knew that she would die before Battler would ever understand her--she read it in Featherine's library. Knowing is different from living it out, though. Kind of undermines the surface-level tension in episode 5. Lambda was never threatening Beato's role in her own story, Lambda was performing predetermined actions necessary to motivate Battler into becoming Game Master and creating Beatrice out of the game rules. Then again, this is the first time I've gotten interested in what's going on in Purgatory beyond the logic battles.
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Dec 13, 2022 13:09
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Taking a pause right as Furfur and Zepar are getting properly introduced.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:03
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Episode 6. George and Jessica have both had their kills. I like that the magical scenes are getting repurposed to explain how the game works. So instead of things like "Kanon pulls a magic sword out of his rear end" its "Jessica starts playing a copy of the game inside itself Scheherazade-style". The bit about Kyrie locking herself in a room was amusing--her corpse can't be found in a locked room if Jessica has to break the door down to get to her. Puzzled that she didn't realize Jessica would just kill her through the door. Come on, it's Calvinball. Jessica's incantations, like Ronové's in episode 4, are kind of generic-boring. Like a bad isekai about reincarnating in not-WoW. I spent a good chunk of Kyrie's hell speech thinking that Asumu's death was the end of Kyrie's hell, and that the 18 years was really about Beato's suffering during Battler's entire life. But yeah, Kyrie is the kind of person who won't even let herself enjoy that she won Rudolf's hand in the end. She really works hard to maintain that emotional blind spot of hers. "How was I supposed to know that they were forming an emotional connection? All I was doing was arranging their gently caress dates and not dating him myself." I'm pretty sure that Asumu was just a normal kind person and that Kyrie is projecting all of the manipulative interests onto her. If she can have such a reductive interpretation of Rudolf's motivations, then why would she want to be with him in the first place? George vs EVA was much longer than it needed to be. Didn't really add anything new. Clicking through the same stock sound effect six times while the text box spells out ".........." one character at a time is a pet peeve of mine. Lol that Shannon, Kanon, and Beato all put their hands up at the same time to go next. Of loving course. So Math fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Dec 18, 2022 |
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Dec 17, 2022 16:35
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Episode 6. George and Jessica are about to fight in the second twilight. Not really that much to say since my last post. The exposition was really clunky given how much of the situation was foreshadowed earlier in the episode. Featherine is a waste of a character when everyone else is just turning to the camera and explaining the implications of their actions. I don't know how Battler gets out of this, but I know that he does. With the emphasis on Beato saving him, I think that it may involve name shenanigans for Shannon and Kanon. There's also supposed to be a hint in the next scene coming up.
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Dec 22, 2022 04:52
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Still episode 6. Jesus loving christ the wedding is written like a rape scene?! Yeah wow, that was handled incredibly poorly imo. E: I got a Steam card for that session.  A bit on the nose. So Math fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Dec 23, 2022 |
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Dec 23, 2022 01:37
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I started 7 last night. Read for about an hour, then had to put it down. Pretty bogus how Battler and Beatrice got one scene together being happy at the end of 6 and are immediately written out of the story. Understanding people is very important for store brand Seto Kaiba, except when he's talking to people at a funeral, apparently. Him and Lion have one gimmick, and it's already been run into the ground. I find it really funny that the irl Wright specifically called out comparing cigarette butts as an unoriginal plot device in his write-up that Ryukishi is referencing. I wanted murders, not this poo poo. We'll see if it picks up in Kinzo's flashback. End spoilers bc I was spoiled before starting my read: Regarding Will's red text: Umineko hinges on the one gimmick that Sayo has like five names she goes by, but they aren't interchangeable for whatever reason. Feels like a cop out. E: Read more. Ok, young Kinzo talking to Will was pretty good. The flashback to Bice's introduction was flat. Same problem as Ange's highschool scene: a bunch of faceless one dimensional characters getting pissy about something that doesn't matter. So Math fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Jan 24, 2023 |
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Jan 19, 2023 14:23
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Ep7 thoughts. Kinzo became exactly the kind of postwar opportunist that Bice was trying to protect the gold from. Nanjo has been a feckless toady from day one. Genji, Kumasawa...  I know that a major theme of the work is to empathize with flawed people and see them as they see themselves. It falls flat for me because there is never an action so heinous that it dispels the rosy narrative. Nanjo needs to assure us that Kinzo felt bad about raping his daughter. Then Genji makes the call that he needs to hide Yasu lest Kinzo do it again. This amount of empathy just makes you a chump. All the older cousins are scared of Lion because of his favorite grandchild status. Lion has as much trouble with appropriate physical behavior as Battler does, and it's always directed towards someone Lion has power over. (They threaten Bernkastel, but don't follow through.) I think this is intended to be funny? We find out that Shannon originated as Yasu's imaginary friend. She would not have been high school age in '76, and she's sharing the room that the other girls say Yasu has alone. It's a big tell that Clair's story is back in the Rashomon narrative that was used all over the place in 2 and 3.
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Feb 1, 2023 14:20
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Still E7. Rudolf getting chewed out was good. Could have used more of that. It looks like I will not be getting a straight answer whether the family thinks Shannon and Kanon are separate people. E: A very touching moment between Kinzo and Beatrice. Now wake him up and put him in the juicing machine.  E2: We have successfully not blown up the island. Will slicing up Clair was disappointing, I wanted another logic battle with full details. E3: Finished first tea party. That's the good poo poo. Though Will and Lion never grew on me enough that I want to see them live. E4: Done. It is neat to see how much of Yasu's weirdness comes back to emulating Kinzo: wait around hoping to get lucky and have the right person solve the riddle, spend the rest of your time staring at the doomsday button. Since Kinzo actually got the reunion he wanted before he died, I take it that Kinzo's piece wailing all the time was supposed to be representative of the grief that Beato could not let herself communicate during the question arcs. Beatrice leaning so hard on the "can't explain that!" gimmick was supposed to be reminding Battler of their conversation as 12 year olds. Looking back on the question arcs, I was totally right to dismiss Ronové and Virgilia as having fake backstories. I would have really liked to see more of Yasu going off on Genji and the rest of them. So Math fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Feb 13, 2023 |
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Feb 8, 2023 02:06
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Rockman Reserve posted:I only remember two of the three(?) big shock reveals at the end of E7 - that Kinzo was the one who suggested betraying the Italians first, and Yasu's physical trauma that makes them consider themselves 'furniture' - what was the last one? What I'm getting at here is that Sayo* gets a single line which I'll paraphrase as "Why did you bother saving me Genji, my body was ruined since the fall!" I wanted Sayo to get so much more time to vent about how every single person failed Sayo while thinking that they were acting in Sayo's best interest. I'm not interested in a "what really happened" that takes every opportunity to preserve the image of the worst actors (Kinzo and anyone who works for him). *They canonically hate being called Yasu, so I don't really like calling them that either.
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Feb 16, 2023 01:09
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Rockman Reserve posted:wait seriously? That must've been in Ep7 but I missed it somehow and now I feel bad, lol They directly tell the other servants not to call them Yasu early on in Clair's story.
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Feb 17, 2023 00:07
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I had to take a break after finishing ep7. Now I've read the first chapter of ep8. I'll try to be brief with my criticism in this post. The premise so far may as well be tailor-made to discard all of my favorite things about the characters and setting, and I don't think that teaching Ange the power of love will be able to hold my interest for a whole episode. I liked finally getting so see Battler and Beato enjoying each other's company. That was nice.
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May 22, 2023 02:29
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