Umineko No Naku Koro Ni ep2

After the disappointment the first episode turned out to be, I am eager to see whether the second episode will be any better. So let’s get started with a brief summary of the plot.

So now everyone is eating dinner. After everyone is done eating, Maria (the UUUing loli) takes out a letter that she claims to be from Beatrice. Then her face suddenly turned all murdery.

The letter is pretty long. But I can sum it up in like 3 sentences. “I am Beatrice, I made a contract with the old man. I lend him a bunch of gold, but with conditions. He must return all the gold someday, and I will inherit all his assets unless one of you can find the hidden gold”. Something like that. Then a whole bunch of not very important things happened, except the glasses guy gave Shanon a ring and say he loves her and stuff. Then the next morning, some people went missing. In the end they found the missing people dead. Their faces are all smashed up. Shanon is one of the victims.

So it seems the anime starts to get more interesting. MURDER! What we all have been waiting for! Although I am very happy that the killing finally began, I am still not very satisfied with it. The letter was a necessary piece of information. But other than that, the entire episode feels a waste of time all the way until the last part. Even with so many victims killed at once, I did not feel the tension and suspense building up to this point, that eventually lead to murder.

It all just happened so suddenly off screen. I am yet to know if this was intentional. But at the moment, I think it takes a great deal of excitement out of it. Also, the expression on Maria’s face when reading the letter was in my opinion out of place. It just doesn’t really fit and definitely doesn’t make much sense. Such a small child reading a long letter with perfect pronunciation of all words and with perfect fluency, she does it while making such a creepy expression. It all just seem like they are over doing this “psycho loli” act. Don’t get me wrong, but I love this stuff. Its just that they didn’t use it at the right time for this episode I think. In addition, Battler the main character of the series is still yet to do anything important at this point. All he has done since he got to the island was eat, act like an idiot, and play cards… But anyhow, the ending of the episode was nonetheless rather interesting. Even though it could have been done better. I still haven’t lost hope in this series, but this is my honest opinion right now.

Episode Rating: 6.5/10

Screen Caps: