Damn, I loved episode 2. Sure I’d watched the anime before reading, but I was nowhere close to knowing everything. It rehashes stuff, but I don’t mind since the reader’s position has changed; you go from a confused victim to a confused player. It sounds a bit tame when I say it like that, but the notion of you having a more active part of the story is big in terms of mentality. Rosa also does more than Natsuhi by introducing the wolves. Natsuhi does bloody nothing from what I can remember; Kyrie was the one to throw you a tool in episode 1.
I also looooove Battler giving up while also making Maria into a benevolent saint. And yes, that’s the reason I have her as my avatar. That development also hits you with the fact that, while Umineko is a well crafted and fair game, it also has a difficulty that puts Dark Souls to shame.
Going along with my mention of the learning curve above, that digs into one of the many things I want to explore when I reread Umineko – how Umineko functions as a game. The way I see it, episode 2 is the tutorial where you learn to press A to jump, press B to swing your pathetic weapon and so on. With that analogy, episode 1 is akin to an opening cutscene because the player isn’t an active participant yet, at least you’ll think that if you go in blind. Normally, ending the tutorial with the hero crawling naked on all four would be a strange way to do it, but -once again- Umineko is hard. Besides, Battler refuses the call to adventure by not trying hard enough, and that shit is not gonna slide with Beato.
5 Likes