Umineko – 01
The Ushiromiya family arrives on Rokkenjima Island for the annual family conference.
I just skimmed this episode before the subs come out. First impression is that this episode was really, really rushed. Not sure why unless they’re limiting the first season to 13 episodes (which seems unlikely..), but they left out Battler’s reunion with everyone at the airport and all the dialogue on the boat. Pretty much jumps right into the family conference issues/Beatrice’s portrait. The facial contortions are every 5 minutes, which is really not really warranted.. the siblings early relationship was never this poor until the later episodes of the game. I can understand why they’re cutting out a lot of the boring development, though, otherwise they’d waste 26 episodes on witty sibling banter and “lol magic, sure, Maria”.
Episode includes some backstory on the Ushiromiya family, about the fire and Kinzo being forced to take over as head. Eva jumps right into discrediting Natsuhi for not being able to wear the Golden Eagle (which I don’t think happened this early before) and just.. a lot of yelling.
Most of the voices are okay, except Hideyoshi’s is weird and Eva sounds way too much like Takano. Maria sounds pretty much exactly like Ayu. Rosa is batshit insane right from the get-go. Art is alright but kind of weird, although I don’t really know what I was expecting.
As far as I can tell, some music is original but there is some music from the game included, like the serious/creepy music. Eyecatch is the chapter breaking shattered glass/clock noise.
You see a brief cameo of Beatrice near the end of the episode as she goes to give Maria the letter, but that’s about it. Not like I was expecting to see her at all, since you don’t formally ‘meet’ Beatrice until the end of Episode 1.
Overall this episode was a bit lacklustre, especially for a first episode, but here’s hoping it improves.
You can’t imagine how loud I laughed when I read “lol magic, sure, Maria”. As much as when Eva *beeeep*ed Natsuhi.
But yeah, definitely a rushed introduction.
They only got 5 episodes for the first Arc, so it’s quite understandable.
Well, with a lot of times murder in 5 episode, you need to rush at beginning :P.
@ Smankh: LOL THE BLEEPING, JESUS. WHY was that necessary!? I died laughing at that.
Maria actually seems a lot crazier in the anime then she is in the game..
@ Veldril: wow, only 5 episodes? Makes sense, then. I guess if they had to choose what part to cut short, they’d make it 1.. since all the other episodes are much more detailed and have a shitton more characters to deal with.