Umineko: When They Cry - Episode 1: Legend of the Golden Witch - Visual Novel Informal Club

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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That section really is something, huh? Thinking back it was probably the most dense part of the whole episode for me, so you’ll have that behind you once you can get through it. And IIRC in total it isn’t even THAT long so you’re probably not too far? I told @prath it’s where things begin to get exciting (and I do think that!) but hid that it’s also pretty tough to read :sweat_smile:

Spoiler response

That’s really sad, sorry to hear about all the family trouble. I hope it turns out as well as it can. This author is really good at writing about some hard subjects like that; I would not at all be surprised if he’s drawing from something real there. I had largely defaulted to thinking about them fighting this way because the very way this family is organized and the rules around it are pretty psychotic and damaging, but hearing this has me now thinking about it in another way.

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Spoiler response

Yeah, even the big posthumous fight over the will on my mom’s side when her mom died had some similarities. Her mom was mentally ill and would do small things to pit her children against each other, and also clearly favored some over others, and grandma’s will was designed to favor the kids she anticipated would take care of her the most, so she gave my aunt and one of my uncles way, way more money than she gave my other uncle and my mom.

But things didn’t quite go as she expected, and my mom ended up taking care of her a lot in her final years, even though she didn’t live in the same state. My mom would fly down to Texas and often spend months there just taking care of her mom.

So by the end of my grandma’s life, it was pretty clear that she regretted how she’d divided her wealth in the will, but her health deteriorated so fast, she wasn’t able to change it, so the will went through as it had been written a decade+ earlier. My mom was pretty devastated by it because it favored her two siblings super heavily (they also already happened to be the richest of the four kids, so it was just an added insult that they got all this extra money that they didn’t even need…). Her uncle who was also left out was also super upset about it, and he ended up taking their two siblings to court over it, but my mom didn’t participate because her lawyer warned her that she wouldn’t be able to win, so it would just be a gigantic waste of money.

…And that’s exactly what happened. Her brother lost the case and got nothing, and all three of her siblings spent like over a hundred thousand dollars in court for basically no reason, and all three of them to this day remain mad at my mom for not participating, especially her brother who was also left out, because he had expected her to also be angry about the will and join his side.

My mom realized at the start that the whole thing was really just her siblings working out their anger and grief over being treated unfairly by their mom while she was still alive, though of course that doesn’t really make it easier to bear…

But yeah, I guess that’s always my first thought with things like this, that people react first and foremost out of trauma and grief, with greed kind of being second to that (though it’s absolutely also a factor in both my mom’s siblings’ case and my dad’s siblings’ case).

I dunno if writers necessarily consider that though haha. I’m curious to see where this story goes with it, because it does feel more real to me than most, like despite the extreme circumstances (a super rich family with possibly witches and magic being involved lol), the emotions feel like they’re coming from a genuine place at least.

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I’m 69,162 characters in and finished 90% of the 4th chapter in one sitting!! :o

I don’t know what came over me, but I was excited to catch up. I spent a couple of hours reading daily and had a 3-hour hyperfocus session today.

It feels so nice to have completed it, and I’m not even feeling exhausted this time (although it was super hard to understand this chapter).

4/10 13:30 - Spoliers for the entire chapter

The family drama unexpectedly hooked me in. I found it familiar with the dynamics my dad shares with his siblings (they’re also four siblings, and my dad was physically and emotionally abused by his father).

I also sympathize a lot with Natsuhi because she reminds me so much of my mom, who had to take care of my dad’s parents throughout their old age simply because none of the other siblings were willing to help. The caretaker stress is so real.

I can fully understand how emotionally unstable and frustrated Natsuhi must be feeling. I mean, as a child, seeing how my grandfather treated my mom and my dad’s conflicted position between the two of them was almost unbearable. I haven’t really seen anyone like Rosa in my family because everyone is crude and manipulative in their own way lol. I kinda like Eva’s characterization though. She really knows how to trigger people.

Like Daisoujou said, I think this was also one of my first excitement points!! (although it was difficult to watch Natsuhi have her breakdown). On this note, I kinda already hate Krauss because he’s such a bad husband. Maybe he does the bare minimum, but not providing moral support to your wife in front of everyone is awful.

I don’t have a lot of observations about Rudolf, but he seems like a less-intense version of Eva haha.

While they’re all discussing inheriting the money, I wonder if they know what their father is thinking lol. I can’t wait to see the chaos that’s gonna unfold after this.

Also, I loved the background music and the voice acting!!! Chef’s kiss. :pinched_fingers:

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Oh great job! Very impressive.

13:30 responses

It’s… not exactly good to hear how you all can relate to this stuff, but it does say really good things about how the relationships are developed. This episode really emphasizes what a terribly hard position Natsuhi is in, and yeah, Krauss comes across really badly. I think I mentioned that, though it may have been in a slightly later part. Thus far Natsuhi is very self sacrificing, but we really aren’t given the impression he supports her in response at all.

Eva is so awful but I simply have to love how awful she is; she remains one of my favorites haha.

With Rudolph, something about his art and voice, I just cannot get over this impression of him as like a cartoon criminal henchman. That kinda overtakes my thoughts on him :sweat_smile:

Truly, the voice acting is phenomenal. It’s wild how in these VNs (like Higurashi too) it has always been added in a later version. I can’t imagine going without it. Like the author has a new one, Ciconia, though there’s only one part out because apparently he didn’t like how it was paralleling world events and got a little uncomfortable continuing for now. But anyway at this moment it has no voice acting and when it first came out I already told myself I need to wait a while and see if it gets added later, too.

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13:30 responses

Yes, and I wonder why she defends Kinzo a lot. Is she just kind-hearted/innocent, or does she probably have other things up her sleeve that we don’t know about? Maybe I’m overthinking this part haha.

Yeah I agree :joy: Maybe I can’t take him very seriously because of Battler’s narrations, but he doesn’t give me the same anxiety that Eva does lol.

Oh wow, I didn’t know that! It would’ve been much harder to read these VNs without the voice acting. Glad we picked it up a bit later haha.

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Yeah, and I believe Higurashi was originally just made by the author and his brother. This one might be similar? They’ve had tons of re-releases and updated versions over the years. The original art is… charming in its own way. I’ve been meaning to share this Kinzo mug my wife bought me lol.

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Hope the reading is going well for you all! I have decided, I don’t feel like I’m in SUCH a rush to go through Umineko right now and episode 1 especially isn’t too hard for me to recall what happens so I will take another break of sorts to help keep us closer together. I finished Everlasting Flowers with that club already; I knew it would be short going in, but today I’m going to start Steins;Gate and hopefully when I’ve finished reading that it’ll be a good time for me to start Umi Ep 2. :slightly_smiling_face:

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(70,509 characters in)

Finally finished the 4/10 13:30 conversation! Time to reply to some stuff:

Spoilers 4/10 13:30 dining hall

Yeah, I thought it was super well done! The tension was really good, and Eva’s acting was amazing. Despite Natsuhi being a character that the story wasn’t really trying to present as likeable, I really felt for her there, because you could feel how she was so utterly caught between a rock and a hard place… It’s so unfair what happened to both her and Eva, but it’s also unfair of them both to be so cruel to each other.

Basically, this:

:pensive:

I’m sorry you also found it familiar… It really did manage to hit on some real emotions there, huh?

Yeah, that’s a good point… He really threw her under the bus :pensive:. And the way she turned her anger toward him because there was really nowhere else her feelings could go, and then she just broke… It was so sad :sob:.

She’s a great heel :sunglasses:

Honestly, that makes me feel better as a writer myself, haha. Playing it like this, it feels like such a polished product and the art and voice acting and writing and music and such all really shine, but it’s good to keep in mind that it didn’t come out fully formed like that, hahaha. There’s hope for some of my own writing projects to also become way cooler and better later on :laughing:.

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