Episode I-II First Move
This episode begins with the whole family sitting down at the table talking with each other about various nonsense until Maria inquires about dinner ending. Once it has ended, Maria pulls out a letter from presumably Beatrice due to the letter being sealed with the head of family rings crest. Maria opens the letter up and reads it very creepily as Beatrice’s Messenger. I was going to post the letter from the game however I found it too long to post at the current time, will edit it in later on.
During this time, Maria has her very creepy face and mood activated which creeps out the whole family whilst listening to her. Afterwards, Kinzo’s children rush up to Kinzo’s study and start banging on the door asking him to explain what was going on, this falls on deaf ears as Kinzo ignores them.
Kyrie invites Battler to talk to her about it. Kyrie is most probably the most logical person on the island and she is able to produce her own deductions on the matter. She uses her Chessboard Thinking to deduct her own opinions on the case and that there could potentially be a 19th person on the island or that there could not be (Don’t have video on me right now so the descriptions I give will be pretty vague). Rudolf enters the room shortly before the finish and tells Battler that he has something to tell him if they survive the night as he believes he has no chance of surviving it.
Natsuhi and Krauss are somewhere else in the house, where Krauss unveils one of the pieces of gold that Kinzo inherited from Beatrice, stating that this is the only one that he ever publically showed to earn the trust of investors. Afterwards, Natsuhi is suffering from one of her headaches when Jessica comes up to her and starts to talk to her, giving her the scorpion charm that Maria gave her. Natsuhi says she will give her something special to her later on.
After finding out the new servant timetables for the evening, Shannon meets George out on the Rose Garden Gazebo where George makes a proposal to her. The requirement to accept is to simply put the ring on any finger by the next day. As Shannon reenters the mansion, she does not notice a golden butterfly that follows her around…..
The next morning, Kanon notices the phone lines have been taken down whilst Genji wakes up Natsuhi. As she exits the room, she notices that her whole door is covered in bloody handprints as if someone had tried to tear the door down. Also noticed was that Ghoda hadn’t appeared and thus breakfast hadn’t be started. Natsuhi, goes to Kinzo’s room where Kinzo encourages her by saying that even through she isn’t a blood-relative of the Ushiromiya family and thus cannot wear the family crest on her clothes, she has the crest engraved on her heart.
As Kanon is going to the Rose Garden Storage Shed where he notices a magical symbol drawn in red paint/blood. He calls everyone else there when the open it and find a sight shocking to behold. The scene switches over to the guest house where Genji asks Doctor Nanjo to come with him. Curious, all the children leave to follow him except Maria who is watching a very ‘child-friendly’ show from the far future. As they arrive at the shed, Natsuhi holds them all back, which Jessica manages to break through only to come across the corpses of 6 people….. Kyrie, Rudolf, Krauss, Ghoda, Rosa and Shannon (Althrough Shannon is only revealed right at the end). Everyone starts to panic, as Nanjo states that Rigor Mortis had set in so they would have been dead for about 6 hours. George asks Hideyoshi if there are only five people in the shed, only to find out that his new wife was lying dead in the back of the shed, with the episode ending with her hand with the ring on her finger.
Graphics
First of all, I was wondering how they would display the brutal death scenes as honenstly, the game only described them (The TIPS screen showed very limited detail) whilst the manga showed a massacre even out of the last deaths of this arc. I can say that it was much more brutal than I expected and it was obvious that the culprit went out of their way to turn it into a brutal scene. But I guess having a much more detailed scene is better than a censored scene which is no help in future episodes where it is investigated. Secondly, Maria is definately much more creepy than I expected when reading the letter. I thought she just read it normally but after seeing this, it captured my interest more. Thirdly…. the scene with Kyrie and Battler might have just been a normal talk between the two of them but honestly, it was pretty well animated, especially in this image (Don’t know why but it really adds to the overall mood very nicely, as well as being the last scene of one of my favourite Umineko characters. The portrait of Beatrice is freaking GIGANTIC through…. I thought it was a portrait and not a whole wall piece! Finally, I think they may have over animated the scene of George and Shannon just a bit too much…. Nuff said on this.
Music
More of the Visual Novel themes in this episode, including one songs like goldenslaughter (If you ever play the visual novels, a lot of songs are named like this). Not much to really comment on except that they worked really well and set the mood well. For once, I feel that the lack of background music in a considerable portion of some scenes, leaving the heavy rain or ticking background sounds really do work well for the serious tone.
Storyline/Characters
Interesting storyline, which was much better than the introduction episode last time. I guess a few of the scenes were a bit short in comparison to the novel and I don’t recall the proposal being in the first visual novel (Could be wrong through). Character development was pretty good, especially around Kyrie, Battler, George, Shannon and Natsuhi, whilst the other characters really only had a minor role in the episode. Overall through, pretty well done and it didn’t stray too far from the game.
Personal Opinion
The speed of the episode was a bit slower this time which was good. In the previous episode, they crammed so much in that new people to the series could possibly forget the characters names by the end of the episode, this episode took much more time and didn’t cut so much out of the episode. It was good to see Kyrie’s scene with Battler remain in as it would have taken a lot of working around not to include that. Also, the scene with Natsuhi and Kinzo was well done and an accurate representation of the novel. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the consistency and that they didn’t cut too much out. Final note, did you notice what Maria was watching when they all left for the crime scene?
Total Score
Graphics: 8/10
Music: 8.5/10
Storyline/Characters: 18.5/20
Personal Opinion: 9/10
Review
Pros Cons Decent character development, Some good music from the visual novel series, Decent portrayal of the murder scene and the emotions caused by it. Some scenes were a little bit too short.
Rating
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