[Hypothetical] Umineko as Live Action (Spoilers up to Episode 4)

07th Discussion
#1

So it’s no big secret that the Umineko anime is a less than stellar adaptation of Umineko (or maybe it is since several fans deny its existence). Now I was thinking lately if a live action adaptation for Umineko could work, or could even work better than any anime ever could. As this will never actually happen, I want to put forth the following premisses for discussion if that could work in your eyes, so that discussion is still possible:

  1. Whatever studio does that adaptation, let’s assume that they have a sufficiently large enough budget to basically do anything they wanted.

  2. Similarly, if CG is going to be used at some point, we’ll assume that that CG is of high quality, comparable with all those action scenes you see in every second Hollywood film.

For why I got that idea of Umineko as live action: Well, because the story in general has a very western flair to me and live action is more the type of medium you connect with the west when it comes to TV. That’s why I said “could work better”.

So now for some questions to get some discussion regarding that idea:

Would you want to have such a project be done by a Japanese studio or would you want that be done by a western studio instead?

How would you want to see all the magical scenes adapted?

How should red and blue truth be handled?

Should such an adaption be done as a series of feature films, similar to Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, or should it be a TV series instead?

You can also explain in detail how a specific scene could be adapted, but if you do that, please use spoiler tags for scenes from Chiru, if you really have to talk about scenes from that. I don’t want to be spoiled on that. I repeat, use spoiler tags for anything happening after Episode 4

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#2

I want a Netflix style two season adaption that’s released all at once, maybe with the first half of season one released first, so basically eight episodes released at a time. I want four fourty minute episodes for each Episode of the visual novel.

Season 1:
Legend

  1. The Family Conference
  2. The Epitaph
  3. The Chessboard
  4. The Tea Party
    Turn
  5. The 19th Person
  6. The Red Truth
  7. The Wolf and Sheep Puzzle
  8. Furniture
    Banquet
  9. The Princess
  10. The Family Head
  11. The Witch
  12. The Golden Land
    Alliance
  13. The World of 1998
  14. The Marriage Sorciere
  15. The Test
  16. The Final Question

Vague spoilers for Chiru
Season 2:

[spoiler]End

  1. The New Gamemaster
  2. The Detective’s Authority
  3. The Child Grown
  4. The End of the Golden Witch
    Dawn
  5. The Resurrection Ceremony
  6. The Lovers Duel
  7. The Closed Room
  8. The Wedding
    Requiem
  9. The Heir
  10. The Servant
  11. The Culpret
  12. Prime
    Twilight
  13. A Story for Ange
  14. Confession of the Golden Witch
  15. The Family Conference Again
  16. The Rokenjima Tragedy[/spoiler]

I don’t think it could really work as a movie, it needs more time, but I do think it could work as a longform television show.

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#3

I was actually mulling over what this could be like at one point.

To start, I agree that it should be a tv series: not covering enough seems to be one of the Umineko anime’s problems in the first place.

Moving on from that, I am not sure.

#4

I agree with everyone else that it should be a show, not a movie, preferably with hour long episodes. I’m not opposed to a western studio doing it, but if they do, they must retain a Japanese cast, otherwise Kinzo’s backstory would have to be heavily rewritten. Red truth can be the same as in the anime, but with nothing cut out. No shorthand.

Magical scenes should be modeled after the manga. Otherwise, adapted straight like in the anime, they’d be people talking around a table. Forever.

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#5

Could you elaborate on that? As I haven’t read the manga and sadly am not going to be able to do so soon, I have no idea how the manga did it.

#6

The manga basically just provided interesting visuals to dialogue heavy scenes. When Beatrice is telling Battler about how he could hypothetically just come up with however many people past the 18 who couldn’t be responsible, the room fills up with glass boxes, and when Beatrice uses red to disprove that idea, she shatters them.

There’s a lot of examples in the battle against Eva-Beatrice. For example, when Eva-Beatrice says she manipulated Kyrie, she conjures up a creepy Kyrie puppet. Similarly, her “web of red truth” is a literal web.

UPDATE: I added links to those pages of the manga!

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#7

Can I say OH God Please No and be done with it?

#8

While a Western studio would most likely have the budget to pull off an Umineko movie, Umineko is an Eastern story with Eastern nuances that a lot of Westerners get, like the chain of karma and a lot of the concept of gender roles that are essential to Umineko (I’ve tried to explain things about like with Eva not being the head of the family to my cousins and they didn’t understand at all, no matter how I explained it).

To be honest, while the anime did so much wrong (and it irks me to this day there’s not a whole lot that’s perfect for editing), I did like their way of handling the Red and Blue Truths. But I would like it the way that the fanmade EP4 Tea Party handled it, no fancy color-changing backgrounds, just Red and Blue words on screen, flying and vanishing once the speaker’s done. It would make certain scenes far more effective, like the Red Text Web scene (imagine the words slowly transforming into parts of a web.) That’s how that should be handled.

Since Umineko was so text-heavy, and as far as I’ve heard (I’ve only read on Harry Potter book and didn’t like it, you are free to burn me at the stake for my heresy), the Harry Potter movies left out a lot of stuff and took weird directions, I would say a long TV series like Game of Thrones has would be appropriate. It wouldn’t have a movie’s ginormous budget, but you’d be able to fit the important scenes in while being able to cut down some wordiness (because let’s be honest, Ryukishi is a wordy mofo). I agree with @MrDent’s thing about the magical scenes. The manga has brilliant representations of scenes that are otherwise akin to a slow-moving 100-car freight train of text, and if people are just sitting around in this show, audiences will be bored, and that’s no good, no good at all! Like, Higurashi’s recent TV drama looked cool, could you imagine how cool an Umineko TV drama would look?

I agree, though, an hour long per episode thing would be best, like for example, if we were doing EP3, the first episode could end shortly before Beato narrates her past. Then the second episode for the arc picks up from there, and ends with Eva solving the epitaph. The third episode picks up with Eva discovering the gold, and ends with Rosa and Maria deciding to go outside. The fourth episode picks up with EVA meeting them in the garden, and goes to just before Kyrie and Rudolf’s showdown. The fifth episode picks up with the showdown, and ends with George and Beato leaving. The sixth episode starts with George and Beato trying to bring back Shannon, and then ends with Beato being shot through the heart. The seventh episode is dedicated to most of the Meta fight, and ends with the start of the Red Text Web scene. The eighth episode is that scene and ends with a certain someone stating she’ll expose the truth of Rokkenjima 1986. The final episode is dedicated to the Tea Party and the ??? Tea Party, and it ends with Activepain playing as the credits roll, and at the end, you’ll see a “To be continued in: Episode 4: Alliance of the Golden Witch.”

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#9

I think a Japanese studio/Japanese actors are really needed if we want to truly show the more of the Eastern nuances that make Umineko even more complex. That said, I really want a western studio to do it, since they tend to have higher budget films. I think the Umineko movie would do well if it were directed by someone like Christopher Nolan. I just want a crossover between Inception and Umineko.

That said, I agree with @MrDent and @WitchOfGames. Umineko is too plot heavy to be put into a movie. It would have too much going on at once, and would probably end up confusing people. But if it were drawn out over a tv series, it would have more time to develop a coherent story. The manga already provides a great way of handling magical scenes, and I also thought the anime did a pretty good job with the whole red/blue truth goes.

#10

I don’t really watch any Japanese live action media so I can’t really compare how it would differ from a western studio, but I do think a Eastern cast is vital as Kinzo’s backstory is rooted in the culture, and his relationship with western culture as a Japanese is of note. So a Western production team could hypothetically produce the series with a Japanese cast.

I can’t speak for Chiru as I haven’t read it, but I think a series of films would be rather hard, If they really chipped away at it they could make episodes 1 - 3 long films, but episode 4 would be rather difficult to fit into a 2 hour movie. I think the Netflix style release for a show could work. perhaps three seasons of 12 one hour episodes? Each episode of the novel could then get 4 - 5 episodes. As for the nitty gritty of how it would be paced I have no idea.

I suppose the Red and Blue truths could be handled with something like a red or blue glow appearing around the character or something like that. (I haven’t read them manga or watched the anime so I don’t know how it was handled there.)

I would definitely be excited to see how this would be handled if it happened (which It most certainly won’t) so it was fun to think about for a bit.

#11

What about the story is particularly eastern, actually? Besides Kinzo(Which I really think you could just change the nations involved to like, mysterious French gold if you wanted to westernize it), the Epitaph(which would straight up need to be changed no matter what since a hypothetical viewer would have no idea the things in play there), and I guess the family head system but I think that’s something thats easy enough to explain if its made clear Kinzo’s a misogynist.

#12

I don’t think it’s too easy to change the nations, considering most of us are imagining an adaptation done by an American studio.

Among other things, there’s the shrine, and the conflict between eastern magic and western magic that comes from it. There’s also Natsuhi’s backstory and her holy mirror, which I think would be tricky to westernize.

Really I think it would be more trouble than it’s worth to whitewash the cast. It would require some extensive rewrites, and I don’t think it would be worth it anyway.

I also think there are a lot of subtleties in the characters’ mannerisms that are more eastern than fans realize, since most of us are already fairly well versed with anime and Japanese archetypes in general. I introduced my stepmother to Umineko back when I was in high school, and a lot of things I took in stride, she found extremely bizarre. Battler leaving and rejoining the family register was, in particular, a big point of confusion for her.

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#13

But if you make it clear that Kinzo is a misogynist then you bump into problems with the Natsuhi scenes in EP 1.

Another issue would be if we don’t then you have to find a lot of competent Japanese actors who are willing to do a project where they speak English for the whole time.

Because everyone who would get mad at whitewashing it would be even madder if we conflated Chinese people with Japanese people or tried to get any other non-Japanese Asians to play the roles.

So we’d need 18 Japanese actors at a minimum who’d be willing to do such a silly odd project.

#14

I’d imagined it as a international coproduction, rather than a solely western one- With Japanese actors speaking Japanese, with subtitles or maybe high profile dubbing. The epitaph doesn’t really work in English anyways.

…respect to Witch Hunt, Yen Press and NISA. Umineko is kind of a ridiculously complicated property to localize.

#15

As @pictoshark and @MrDent have stated, there’s too much of Umineko that is entirely Eastern, and while it would be probably cheaper and easier to find Western actors for this, just take a look at the idiotic controversy with The Great Wall and the controversy over casting Scarlett Johansen in the live action Ghost in the Shell. While they could definitely cast some big names for the foreign characters like the ones later on in Chiru and you could arguably cast Western actors as the higher witches (and probably to avoid any sort of implications of sexualizing kids, you could cast actresses who are adults but look young as those higher witches.) We want people to strong textget into Umineko, not boycott it because stuff got Westernized (which you know would happen).

If Umineko were to be condensed into movies (maybe ala how Persona 3 was divided into four movies for the main story with one movie for the Fes after events of the main game? Even though the third one was far too slow-paced, it’s done a good retelling of the games with changes that made sense), I would be so down for Christopher Nolan as the person behind the movies. His cinematography in what I’ve seen of Interstellar and Inception was just so brilliant, and I think it could work with Umineko well.

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#16

Hello! First post on this site, but I glance at it every now and again because after all, I do love Umineko. Anyways…

So, I’m in high school, and when I become an adult, I want to be a director in film. One of my ultimate goals is to adapt Umineko into a film franchise faithfully, because the anime is quite shite. I think it could conceivably work as a film series, if we gave each arc anywhere from 2-3 hours (6-9 anime episodes). They may get a little lengthy, but hey, the Harry Potter movies are all lengthy and people watch them (except maybe I’d split Alliance into two parts). I actually have a dream cast written down for about 50% of the characters, and even though my dream cast is THOROUGHLY WHITEWASHED (The Ushiromiya family all look too diverse and there aren’t enough famous, well-known Japanese actors to play them all) and by the time I could conceivably make these films they’d all be too old for their roles, this is what my dream cast looks like for the most part:

Umineko Live Action Cast

Beatrice the Golden Witch- Jennifer Lawrence
Kinzou Ushiromiya- Jack Nicholson
Krauss Ushiromiya- Ben Affleck
Eva Ushiromiya- Angelina Jolie
Rosa Ushiromiya- Rosamund Pike
Natsuhi Ushiromiya- Keira Knightley
Kyrie Ushiromiya- Cate Blanchett
Seven Stakes of Purgatory
Mammon- Brie Larson
Leviathan- Famke Janssen
Belphagor- Winona Rider
Magical Creatures
Virgilia- Meryl Streep
Gaap- Leá Seydoux
Eva-Beatrice- Angelina Jolie
Lambdadelta- Natalie Portman
Servants
Chiyo Kumasawa- Helen Mirren
Genji Ronoue- Gene Hackman
Shannon- Anna Kendrick
Other
Kasumi Sumadera- Annette Bening

I took out everyone who I haven’t cast yet and everyone introduced in Chiru because of spoilers. I want to adapt the VN’s as faithfully as possible, except of course adapting the manga more closely for Twilight.

Well, what do you guys think? These were just some ideas I had.

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#17

Boy that’s a lot of famous faces! It would take a heck of a budget in order to get all those people into one movie at once. That said, I like it! Jack Nicholson as Kinzo. YES. YEEEEEEEES. That’d be perfect casting. The only thing better would be if Battler was cast as Nicolas Cage… With the amount of meltdowns Battler has in the question arcs, it’d be kinda fitting in a way. (I don’t actually want this though. Unless the movie was trying to be like The Room, which I don’t want for Umineko).

Anyway, you mentioned being new! Welcome to our happy little fragment. If you’d like, you can introduce yourself to everyone else here!