When the Seagulls Cry #14 — Fingerbanging

September 30th, 2009

 

This week, Deen discovers the fingergun.

Impressions:

Despite starting with a CG bang, this episode didn’t really entertain me all that much. The first half started well, but then the rest of it was Battler throwing a temper tantrum and moping around, which really killed the mood. Well… if you consider magical murder a mayhem a mood. Not that the rather short CG fight was all that impressive, but like I’ve said before, when it comes to Deen, my standards are low. At least the CG was too obtrusively terrible, although they could use a biology class so that they can learn that blood is not some kind of viscous pudding that comes out of your mouth looking like a fruit and then explodes all over the place. Although I wonder why they drew that rather grisly scene but have censored some of the less gory stuff. Ah well.

I’m still pretty unhappy with the direction of this arc. At least they got back to crazy crazy Eva briefly after about 40 minutes of ignoring her. Apparently the crazy person with MPD who hallucinates an antisocial version of herself isn’t worth checking in with regularly in a murder mystery. The main focus this episode after Virgilia gave Battler a pep talk was on what the deaths of all the master key-holders means and solving that loop of locked doors. Beatrice rules out traps, but Roanove cuts her off when she starts getting a little too uppity in the face of Battler’s interrogation. In the last minute or so, Eva also figured out the answer to Beatrice’s riddle and found the gold.

Posted in Umineko | 8 Comments »

8 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • chounokoe says:
    September 30, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    Well as far as I remember this WAS still the boring part, at least in the VN…the fun should start next week.

  • Serpit says:
    September 30, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    I’ve been very positive about the anime. Up until now.

    2 very promising episodes, and now we get this. The most epic battle of this season watered down to 2 minutes of CG.

    • Ian says:
      September 30, 2009 at 9:17 pm

      So then don’t expect much to come out of next week’s episode. Who knows? We may end up being pleasantly surprised.

  • Ian says:
    September 30, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    Wait, do you mean it WAS or WASN’T obtrusively terrible? If it WAS, that partially contradicts what you said about the disturbing gore scene.

    Ah, well, I took some of your advice about action sequences and figured the fight wouldn’t be quite as good as the original beforehand. But it did end up satisfying me, particularly the rather interesting interpretation of some of the magical weapons and such.

  • Digdri says:
    September 30, 2009 at 6:36 pm

    @Sepit/Ian: Well I almost knew they would cut this battle down in time when I saw Eva search in the library in the preview. But I think it’s ok you convey the idea of superlative needed for the plot advancement.

    And for all of us you liked the long version of the battle better there is still the fan-made cg-interpretation of this scene on youtube :P (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW_2_LgvHMk)

    At least they kept the talk between Battler and Virgilia intact. Otherwise this “We don’t get the story at all” of many Non-VN-readers would have never ended. ^^

    I think what hurts this episode much more is indeed the direction of the rest after this battle like Aroduc said.
    The exchange of music for the big meta-discussion really make it seem unimportant and boring. I really wonder why the change the game OST around so much. After all the music of the game was made for specify scenes….. FAIL INDEED…

    Cutting all the talk of the parents about the riddle before Eva gets the idea how to solve it herself also seem like a big mistake. After all this riddle is made to be solve by the viewers and now they just cut the only clues in a long time how to solve it. -_-
    This cutting of important clues really starts to add up. The missing part in EP2 tea party where Bern and Lambda comment how this game of Beato may work after all also were some much needed hints in the VN. The missing game end credit parting the main game and tea parties are another confusion element.

    But I also found some funny discussion on animesuki where some people said how the 10t of gold seemed quite unimpressive and small until someone did the math and concluded that this stack of gold really is a realistic representation of 10t while the VN make it look much more awesome…. the anime depicting a scene more realistic then the VN… well … that new XD

    • Ian says:
      September 30, 2009 at 8:02 pm

      @Digdri: Actually, I saw that video already. Which is why I’m glad that there would be an alternative to see if the anime disappointed me. Of course, being true to source material doesn’t always make something good. I did enjoy the episode, despite knowing that it definitely wasn’t anything like it could have been.

      As for the things DEEN is cutting out, maybe Ryukishi07 will complain like he did for all the things that were cut out of Higurashi, which is why the second through fifth episodes of the anime adaptation of season 2 were created.

      On a side note, I believe the anime’s quality in voice acting is gradually improving, almost akin to the Umineko Drama CDs they performed in.

      Of course, if people continue to be disappointed by the anime for being unable to fulfill their astronomically high expectations, they can always turn to the Drama CDs. If they can find them. I could only find excerpts on YouTube, some set to images from the anime to allow viewers to see how it could have been and perhaps discourage them from watching the anime further.

      Indeed, I encourage people to continue watching and expect absolutely nothing special from the anime. That way, the rate of disappointment will drop, leaving more room for people to be either impressed or unimpressed.

  • Anon says:
    October 1, 2009 at 12:37 am

    The “epic” battle isn’t nearly as epic when you take out the long descriptions. It would last 4 minutes. People expecting a really long magic fight were naive.

    This is another example of people having too high of expectations. The anime cuts down EVERYTHING, what made you think the fight wouldn’t have been cut down too? Especially since we saw how far the episode would go in the preview.

    Stop thinking DEEN is magically make an episode that’s 10 times better than the previous ones. Because that’s not going to happen and every time you expect it to, you will face disappointment.

  • Anonymous says:
    October 1, 2009 at 3:01 am

    I wonder why DEEN has only used Dread of the grave for one relatively short scene. I assume they’re saving it for the really awesome ones, but there aren’t too many till the VERY end, and its supposed to play different music then.

    Oh well, the episode was about what I expected. Completely sub-par.