Umineko Thoughts: Episode 1, Chapters 1-5

Thanks to @eskay’s excellent ‘Why you should read Umineko’ essay, I’m giving it a go, and five chapters in and it’s already grabbed me. I’ve played a few other VNs in the past, most notably a lot of Kotaro Uchikoshi’s work, but nothing really of this length and presumably depth! I’m reading the Umineko Project version (but with the official translation), since I liked that art best and voice acting can add something sometimes. Thoughts below the cut!

• So I feel like the major question at this point is ‘is any of this actually real or is Kinzo just… losing it. It feels as though Beatrice must be someone, but I can’t tell if this is going to go down the ‘Beatrice is actually a witch from the witch dimension and Kinzo is actually cursed somehow’ route or ‘Kinzo was just really good at scamming people but has now convinced himself that what he made up was real…’.
  • I think it’s interesting if magic does turn out to be real, since that usually devolves into ‘anything is possible’ which usually sucks the life out of a mystery novel (old woman shakes fist at a certain element of ZTD) but if there’s some kind of restricted magic that would be… exciting. There’s already some elements of that structure with the whole ‘magic requires risk’ thing that Kinzo’s going on about
  • The other interesting thing about Beatrice is that Kinzo always describes her as being ‘resurrected’. I doubt this means she’s Grandmother (which I don’t recall have a name for yet) given how Kinzo’s relationship with her sounds like. So maybe some earlier (or later, I guess) love who’s now deceased?
  • Either way it looks like this 10 tonnes of gold will be the driving factor of the story, for now at least.
• Something weird is going on with the narration. When Battler is around it’s completely from his perspective, but when he’s not it feels… distinctly like it’s from someone else’s perspective - the narrator says things like “You’ve already seen that, so I’ll skip over it”, “it’s obvious […] so there’s no need to go into detail” - I can’t tell if this is just the writing style or if there’s something more going on here though.
  • Sometimes when the chapter ends, the screen suddenly cracks. I think this might only happen when Battler isn’t around, and the story is from someone else’s perspective. Hm.
  • Seemingly nobody seemed to pick up on an oddity with the terms of the deal the other parents were trying to cut with Krauss. Five conditions were listed, and then Krauss’s extra condition was mentioned (by both Krauss and I think Hideyoshi) to be the seventh. So where’s the 6th??
    • After the deal failed I’m much less confident that this is Anything, but I’ll see I guess.
• I love the dynamic of the whole family. They are also almost all extremely dislikable characters!
  • Battler. I am begging you to be less… that. about boobs.

• I don’t know if this is just a cultural reference that I’m missing but I think it kind of strange how young some of the servants are. Shannon and Kanon have been working there since since they were pretty young, if what they’re saying is to be believed.

• Everyone seems to know something we don’t.

• What happened with the Torii on this island? It’s allegedly just hit by a lightning bolt but.. that would have to be some lightning bolt.

• Then there’s the epithet. I’m not quite sure if I can really do anything with it just yet, but I feel like this will turn out to set the tone and perhaps general structure of the game so far.

I hope someone enjoys reading my flailing around in the dark, but getting this into words here has been helpful and I’ll probably keep doing this every so often :). Where the hell is this game going?…