A jornada da Ange e a forma que o jogo mostrou a "magia" neste capítulo bateram muito comigo. Até mesmo fez com que eu perdesse uma das minhas raivas com a própria Maria, esta sendo o fato de que eu a achava bastante irritante. Entretanto, é muito lindo o que o jogo quer passar neste ep. Criar um próprio mundo feliz para si, mesmo que o próprio seja um ser que apenas recebe negatividade, é uma das lindas que o ep me mostrou. Sem contar o quão cômico o ep em si é. A Ange virou uma das minhas personagens favoritas deste jogo, juntinha do seu irmão. Não me surpreendeu e me deixou em prantos chorando e quase mamando o criador, mas é, de fato, bom. Uma dica: desative a porra das dublagens que incomodam você, isso melhorou demais o jogo para mim.

I could just write "umineko pacing" and move on (and probably should, considering that I'm also gonna write a full review for the question arcs right after this, lol) but I'll still try to keep this shorter and save my energy for the larger review.

Episode 4 of Umineko is a 3/10 and an 8/10 stapled together at the halfway point. I'm giving this a 6.5/10 and rounding up, partially since the jump from 7 to 8 is much greater than the jump from 6 to 7 in my scale (making the 8/10 worth that much more), and I'm rounding up to account for having not rounded up the 7.5/10 I gave to Episode 3.

As for the first half: Maria sucks. Maria never gets better. She's an annoying, screaming, petulant child. I hate her. The only interesting things about her are how other characters interface with her, see mostly Rosa but sometimes Beatrice. But Maria by herself is almost always cloying, or irritating, or something of the sort to me at the dour age I am. There is a good 3 or 4 hours of Maria SoL in the form of flashbacks here minimum and during all of it I could feel the seconds in my life draining moment by moment.

Ange is certainly better but only in comparison--her threads are unmistakably less interesting than anything going on at Rokkenjima. Any time Ange interfaces with the world of magic though her story goes from kind of ok to kind of bad. Sorry, I just don't have any childlike wonder left in me, I wanna get back to the murders and the battle of wits and the inheritance debate and all that good shit!

But both of these threads are almost entirely confined to the first half. They do show up from time to time in the second half (just as Rokkenjima does in the first half as well), but for the most part, those are the plotlines in the first half, and Rokkenjima is the second half. And once you get back to Rokkenjima it's really fucking good!!!

The ritual is great this time round, probably the best extended thriller sequence in this series yet. Same goes for the battle of wits stuff with Battler. I don't have much to say about these outside of the realm of spoilers but they're really great!! just because I only have a couple sentences here don't get it wrong: this almost made trudging the entire first half all worth it. Almost.

Anyways, full question arcs review will be coming in the next hour or two.

to quote a friend:

"umineko ep4 is like

two characters have a conversation in a quiet atmosphere

two characters have a conversation in a quiet atmosphere

domestic abuse

two characters have a conversation in a quiet atmosphere

KRAUSS CAN BEAT DEMON KING PICCOLO?

two characters have a conversation in a quiet atmosphere"

an absolutely insane conclusion to the question arcs that shattered every single expectation i had for it. ange is the GOAT. what a fucking series this is

Torn on this one. Has some of my favorite and least favorite moments at once. Those beginning bits with Ange really dragged and unfortunately i don't really find her to be that compelling of a character. However, Maria got a lot of really good development in this chapter. To me she felt at least a little cartoony in chapter 1 at least, but here they explain her character in a way that makes a lot more practical sense. Some of it was maybe a little cheesy though (Idk how to feel about the Uuuu reveal) I love Krauss. The last bit was super hype as well. I think there should be more scenes where Battler is heavily drinking they are awesome.