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.
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.