#in retrospect its funny cause i only really intend for his powers to be used for like. maaaybe a panel or two out of ilke what. 10

[xxplastic-cubexx]

show us the antithesis of cute and funny 👀👀👀 the people demand it!!!

patience my friends i have at least 14 asks about cats to get through first ☝️

[arecomicsevengood]

AGING ALTERNATIVES

We live in a culture that worships the large-scale spectacle of the obvious. Partly because of this, the most affecting thing a person can do is something with a large amount of effort behind it, delivered to a small audience: An elaborate meal cooked for a loved one, a labored-over zine in an edition of ten. But of course, time has this great leveling effect, and attempting something large scale can easily crash and burn, and in so doing become something only for a limited audience.

There is an ongoing conversation being had about older comics but they are almost always superhero comics, with some weird eighties genre trash thrown in. This conversation includes a great many alternative cartoonists, but it is very rare for a forgotten art comic to slide its way into the discussion. There’s numerous reasons for this: The larger the print run, the larger the chance a work will find its way to a bargain bin. But also, artists are competitive, and largely inclined to promote themselves or their peers. Once an artist is no longer producing work, they are rarely championed.

Obviously, not everyone finds their way into “the canon,” but you would think that work intended to be somewhat personal would end up being valued enough by individual people that you’d hear about it now and again. The case for alternative comics is the same as it ever was: It’s an artistic medium that can do anything, and it’s released in the fairest most egalitarian way, via mass production, for it to find people who will support it. The art is immediately striking in a way that gives it an edge over the written word, but it’s distributed to shops across America rather than galleries, and so should have long life after its initial release. Of course, the vision falters due to the reality that most of what gets produced is pretty bad, and not really expressing anything particularly unique or individual, and this only goes unspoken at the time of a work’s release due to admiration for the amount of labor that nonetheless went into it.

But what ends up happening in retrospect is this thing where banal superhero work gets reevaluated, with certain aesthetic decisions dictated by the technology of the time (like the coloring) becoming romanticized and recognized as things of beauty, while tons of black and white comics made by people who were desperately trying to push the medium forward and make something that works as art or literature get tarred with a blanket dismissal, associated with either the indulgences of the highest-profile practitioners or simply casualties of their pitiful attempts at graphic design. Only the small handful of practitioners whose publishers have steadily championed them and kept their work in print get to escape this fate. But obviously, if you’re working at something risky, you might end up working with publishers who are not economically viable in the long term, or, if they are, it’s because they’re being subsidized by projects way more commercial than yours.

There’s plenty of stuff which had a large enough print run for copies to be found, but functionally exist at the level of visibility of a zine. But, while I might be interested in extending the same amount of charity I would to someone making work with no hope of commercial success, to engage with the work honestly means that the fact that it was attempting to find its place in the world of commerce must be taken into consideration when thinking about the goals it set out to fulfill. That so much fails to meet these commonly-held goals can make one feel pretty depressed about the medium, and maybe this is another reason for people to avert their eyes: When you’re talking about superhero comics of a certain vintage, while they might not have attempted to be art, at least the people making them got paid.

Obviously, The Comics Journal has been fighting this fight for decades. I am sure all of the books I am going to write about, they have already covered, and they probably came to the same conclusions, and depending on the writer, they might’ve been more entertaining to read than I will be. But I want to offer these reconsiderations in light of all the other reconsiderations being made, that are coming to the opposite conclusion of what The Comics Journal would’ve. It is easy to look back at the 1980s now and say, for instance, that Elektra Assassin is a better comic book than American Splendor.  There’s a discrepancy between what is the best work being produced at a given historical moment and what is the most exciting scene to be a part of. I like to think if I had been writing for the Comics Journal in the early nineties, I wouldn’t have gone all-in praising Palookaville, but I get that in the moment it would’ve felt important to do so. Now, of course, there is very little that feels exciting at all, in the context of real-world community, due to the global pandemic. This is an incredibly lonely moment, and nostalgia has a powerful allure.

But I’d like to ensure the nostalgia we feel compels us to fight for what’s human, rather than allow us to simply surrender our past to the colonizing forces of corporate interests. In the interest of the human, I will not make any grandiose claims for the works I’m writing about. I’m not describing anything as a masterpiece. These instead fulfill the humble virtues of being charming, cool, interesting. They didn’t upend my value system of what the comics medium could be. But, since it was all of the Picturebox releases that shifted my perspective on comics on its axis when I was in college that caused me to ignore some of this stuff, that its virtues can endure after such a flip is itself notable. Anyway, I have no reason to have written such a long preamble. I could’ve easily just made separate posts for each comic I wanted to talk about, but all this additional context seemed important to me to articulate. All of these are books I bought online over the past few months.

Shuck Unmasked, by Rick Smith and Tania Menesse

Feel like the main thing holding this comic back is a certain lack of joie de vivre to its line. There’s a certain cuteness to its designs that seems reminiscent of Jeff Smith or Goodbye Chunky Rice era Craig Thompson but it’s a little bit stiff in ways those cartoonists aren’t. The mask Shuck wears resembles the face Chester Brown draws himself having in Paying For It. I feel like this is maybe the only comic I’ve seen that frequently has dialogue that’s misspelled in an attempt to capture phonetic dialect and presents that through lettering that feels like a font. There’s a sense of being rounded instead of being scratchy, a lushness that feels hinted at, but also tamped down. There’s a literary flavor to it, an attention to the language, a deliberate and delicate sense of stately melancholy that’s present.

The Shuck of the title is a demon, living on Earth, tasked with making sure the dead don’t escape the afterlife and roam around. Despite his horned form, he’s able to wear the mask of an old man, and fit in with his neighbors, which include a little girl, with whom he develops a bond. There’s a gentle quality to it, but also a sense of darkness that prevents it from being cloying, an interest in the esoteric that suggests the profound. The premise could be a recipe for sitcom-ish stasis, but actually the status quo shifts quite a bit, over the course of these self-published comics, collected into a book by Top Shelf.  It feels like each individual chapter should be reread a few times before proceeding on; the chapters have a nice density to them. That’s the funny thing about a lack of velocity to the line, it suggests a studiousness with which to approach it, but doesn’t invite the eye to return to it. Two issues of a sequel were self-published afterwards, I would read those.

Tales Of Woodsman Pete, by Lilli Carré

I’ve heard a couple people call Lilli Carré the best cartoonist of her generation. The first time I heard it said, I had never read anything by her, but I was struck by the assertion because there’s so many heavy hitters in that cohort I’m not comfortable making such declarations about anyone. There’s a collection of Carré’s short stories I’ve checked out from the library, but I found that collection inconsistent, with notable highs that didn’t still didn’t quite bowl me over. This could be partly an issue of format - Few cartoonists of Carré’s generation have a short story collection of their work available, and it might not be the best way to examine the work and see its strengths.

(A sidenote irrelevant to the larger thrust of this conversation - I started keeping a google doc of what years cartoonists were born, and have a my own idea of “generations” of cartoonists in terms of whose work it makes sense to consider alongside one another. 1960-1967 is one cohort, then 1968-1975, then 1976-1982, then 1983-some point unclear to me at this point, there’s a generational divide for sure but I don’t yet know the rules of it. I lump Carré in with Eleanor Davis, Dash Shaw, and Michael Deforge, rather than the slightly older group which includes Kevin Huizenga, CF, and Sammy Harkham. That’s not to say the people championing Carre are making the same distinctions, these generational lines are weird and arbitrary and some people are “on the cusp” and everyone chooses their own peers to a certain extent. However, I do think these generations are important or useful to think about, in terms of who came up with access to alternative newspaper strip jobs vs. the Xeric Grant vs. Tumblr, and it’s just generally interesting to think about what was around to serve as an influence at a formative age. People born after 1967 have had very few opportunities or chances for institutional support, by my reckoning. Over time, more people became acclimated to making uncompromising art, and there also became way less economic opportunity for people making work intended for adults. I suspect the forthcoming generation will be more inclined towards making content for kids because they grew up with things targeted to children, and they can be part of the push to make that stuff more diverse. This coincides with all of the economic infrastructure except for libraries being obliterated.)

Tales Of Woodsman Pete is a smaller object, of digest proportions, that Top Shelf released, early in Carré’s career. It’s worth noting her style nowadays is far more experimental and minimal, although I suppose at the time her work might’ve been considered pared-down, closer to folk tales than novels. This comic follows a woodsman, who monologues to no one, speaking to the trophies he’s made of his kills, in a series of short strips. This is juxtaposed against bits involving Paul Bunyan and his ox Babe, who share a camaraderie between them that doesn’t truly abate Bunyan’s sense of loneliness. It is, like Shuck, a gentle thing, and is able to conjure up some emotion, but I wonder if the sense of tweeness present within it is something Carré feels she’s outgrown? That’s not to say I object to it, just that I recognize a shift away from that stuff. I believe Carré is a Calvino fan, this stuff might be closest to the early stories in Our Ancestors, but Calvino’s work became far more overtly experimental afterwards. I don’t know, I still don’t have a bead on who Carré is or where she’s going. And that’s great, why should I?

Hectic Planet: Checkered Past, by Evan Dorkin

In high school, I read a Hectic Planet comic called The Bummer Trilogy, and liked it a lot. That was a single issue collecting three short stories that were the last work Evan Dorkin would do with the characters. While in retrospect, high school is probably the ideal age to read this material, those strips still feel more mature, in a sense of being personal, than much of Dorkin’s work. He’s written some superhero comics for the big two that never did much for me, and he has some collaborative genre comics I’ve never read, but he’s most associated with his humor cartooning, which I have kept up with despite only finding them intermittently funny. There’s always a sense of Dorkin as a performer of his material, where the humor tends to feel angry, but his most self-consciously autobio material is about the fact that his psyche is a dumping ground for assorted pop culture detritus. What’s interesting about this material is that is, in fact, still kind of immature, but it’s moving away from the science fiction premise, to be present enough to make jokes and talk about feelings. It’s the falterings towards finding a voice and having confidence in it, a youthful move towards what might not be maturity, but is, at least, work. So chunks of this are about a dude who’s heartbroken because he caught his girlfriend cheating on him and so he’s annoying all of his friends by complaining all the time and he’s thrilled to meet girls who like the same bands as he does and he goes to the grocery store and only buys junk food and while this might sound dumb, in context, it’s the beginnings of a worldview that feels fairly true to life for someone who would’ve been that age, at that point in time.

So, considering the era, and the sense of a science fiction premise being abandoned, it might make sense to think of this comic as following in the footsteps of Love And Rockets, albeit from an East Coast Jewish male perspective, and nowhere near as good. It almost feels like if a low-budget eighties sci-fi movie had cast a stand-up comedian in it, and when the budget got cut, they let him fill out the runtime with his routines and riffs, in an attempt to make it a star vehicle in case he ever got cast on SNL. Slave Labor put out a lot of alternative comics, and they all kind of got looked down upon to one degree or another. Much of what they published is both really poorly drawn and nakedly chasing whatever youthful subculture audience they could. Dorkin is easily one of the better artists they had, but the desire to be cool according to the terms of the subculture of the times makes for comics that feel dated now. All the characters in this book are really into ska, the back of the book has all these images taken from ska compilations and 7-inches featuring the characters. But that’s also interesting, because sensing the book’s quest to find its readership lends such authenticity to the young adult milieu, of what it means to be on your own and trying to find your people. It’s from a moment in time when talking about young people put a work in dialogue with alternative culture and not major book publishers, who due to generational differences, would not have understood any of the things this comic is about.

(This piece is sort of a variation on what I talk about in my article in But Is It… Comic Aht 2, by the way. There, behind a beautiful Lilli Carre cover, you can see me talking up more explicitly “all-ages” comics Slave Labor published, like Zander Cannon’s Replacement God, and Scott Roberts’ Patty Cake. Halo And Sprocket was a little bit later than the time period the article focuses on, but I liked that as well. Maybe the most interesting thing I’ve read from Slave Labor that wasn’t all ages and was never collected into a book would’ve been Jon Lewis’ series Ghost Ship. I also like the issues I’ve read of Bernie Mireault’s The Jam, which ran at multiple publishers, and I would like to read more of.)

[yasuda-yoshiya]

EP1 reread notes

So, I'm done with my reread of the first episode of Umineko! I'll probably write up a more detailed post for general thoughts on the episode as a whole later, but for now I'm just dumping these rough stream-of-consciousness notes here. These were mostly jotted down pretty hastily in the middle of reading, and I didn't start taking notes until quite a way into the episode, but it covers some little points that struck me throughout. (They also unavoidably got more detailed and comprehensive as I got further in, because I'm apparently incapable of staying concise for the life of me.)

* Krauss managing to turn the situation around during the adults' discussion is kind of impressive, and it's funny how he always ends up the underdog in subsequent episodes. The whole discussion is incredibly intense even after like 5 rereads...Especially the part where Krauss sort of gloatingly parrots the adults' mockery of him at the end. "Sorry, since I'm such a useless and incompetent loser, I don't have the money to be able to help you!" God damn.

* Kyrie being so incredibly passive and quiet during the adults' discussion is also weird given how later episodes go, but I sort of like the interpretation that Yasu didn't know what to do with her on account of barely knowing anything about her, while Tohya gave her more active involvement based on his memory of how things actually went.

* Kinzo's talking about his miracle really was incredibly telling in retrospect? The desired outcome wasn't for no one to solve it, but it wasn't for any of the adults to solve it either, so the only explanation can be that he wanted a specific person to become his heir. And it stands to reason that the person he's telling all this to - Kanon - might be that person, right?

* In general I like the way Kinzo and Yasu both made their own bets using the epitaph for different purposes and how they both get conflated and run together through the fantasy scenes. From an authorial perspective, Yasu choosing to prsesent insight into her own mindset in making a desperate bet with fate through Kinzo, while still portraying Kinzo as himself as well, is interesting. In general I like how the other characters are used to represent the themes that tie into Yasu's story without detracting from their own individuality as characters either, e.g. Evatrice in EP3, Maria & Ange in EP4, etc. Their stories are obviously used to illuminate the nature of Yasu's magic but their approaches to it are also really different and individual to them as well.

* I am struck this time by how clever Yasu's use of the fantasy narrative in general is. During the scenes that do "take place", Shannon and Kanon show interesting sides of Yasu's actual reactions, but then in the fantasy scenes that aren't taking place, they work differently. Kanon and Genji talking about Beatrice, and Kanon's wariness of the witch and reluctant resignation to having to go along with her ceremony are all part of a completely fictional narrative, but Kanon's reactions in that narrative are still telling for his "character", and what Yasu wants to represent about that side of herself. Kanon is a developed character of his own in Yasu's story, and I like that.

* I do really like Krauss and Natsuhi's relationship; the miscommunication on both sides feels real. From Natsuhi's PoV, hiding the gold's existence from her was a betrayal, but from Krauss's PoV it wasn't really intended that way; Natsuhi wants to be respected and seen as an equal above all else, because of her insecurities about not really being a full Ushiromiya despite all the effort she's gone to to put her old family name behind her and devote herself to the Ushiromiya family - but Krauss sees himself as having failed as a man if he burdens Natsuhi with his problems and wants to try to do everything himself, not because of any real disdain for her but more because of how it ties into his own insecurities about not living up to Kinzo's ideals of how the successor to the head should be, and wanting to prove himself in that way. Neither can really understand the other's perspective at all, though, so it keeps happening. I love her relationship with Jessica for similar reasons. It's easy to sympathise with Jessica's frustration with her mother and her strict upbringing, but it's also easy to sympathise with Natsuhi wanting her to be as best prepared as she possibly can to succeed in the difficult environment of the Ushiromiya family, and her frustration at Jessica's rejection of all that. The whole family dynamic is really believable and sad.

* Shannon and Kanon's scene in the guesthouse servant room makes me sad...Kanon mentioning that he tries not to get close to people because he knows he's not really a person, and deriding Shannon for making that mistake, ow. At the part where Genji points out that he could go play with the cousins himself, reassuring him that they would have invited him too if he'd been there instead of Shannon...part of me kind of takes that as him wanting to encourage Yasu to try interacting with other people more as Kanon, to see if it makes her any happier.

* Cute how they changed "Renon" to "Lenon" to emphasise the Leviathan connection.

* I have a lot to say about George and Shannon... (I ended up making this into a separate post here)

* The scene with Kinzo validating Natsuhi really is extremely sad when you understand that it's basically Natsuhi imagining to herself that Kinzo might have secretly acknowledged and appreciated her efforts in that way, knowing - as said in red by Bern in EP5 - that he obviously never actually did. At the same time though, it's obvious that her imagining and believing in those possibilities genuinely gave her strength and she probably wouldn't have been able to get by without those beliefs, and that's what allows her to be such a pillar of strength and support for the kids throughout this whole episode. It's a pretty clear demonstration of the two conflicting sides of that "power of magic" that Umineko is all about exploring.

* I don't have much to say about the discovery of the crime and such that hasn't been said already, but I do think it's interesting how Hideyoshi is visibly shaken by the whole thing - his repeated frantic questions to Nanjo are obviously partly coming from a place of "That wasn't real, right? Right?" and he also obviously feels legitimately horrible about George's reaction to his lie about Shannon. But Eva's attitude really is completely detached and out of place, really shrugging off the whole thing. It sort of reminds me of how she shrugged off Rosa's death in the EP7 TP. I don't think she actually consciously thinks the murders are real, but I also think she also deep down really doesn't give a crap if they're dead or not - and even though she loves George, she can't give a crap about his love for Shannon, because she never saw that as real either.

* Eva's comparing Battler to Rudolf is true in some ways, honestly.

* The issue of "why would the culprit draw attention to their crime and the fact that only a servant could have done it?" is a big one, really. Battler goes so far here as to say that the very fact that the crime was committed in a way that made it "obvious" that only a servant could do it is exactly what makes a servant culprit theory impossible, and I think that's what caused a lot of people (myself included) to block out those theories as a possibility as well. It really comes down to no one really thinking that the culprit might have WANTED to be caught - even though that's really what everything about their actions points to, in retrospect. Eva and Battler both repeatedly stress that the culprit's actions are weird and impractical and sabtoage their own goals, but Battler doesn't make the logical connection to why that would be. The existence of the "special clause" in Beato's letter itself is huge, and it's interesting, again, how Battler and co try to reason it out - "maybe the culprit is only killing people because they want us to solve the epitaph?" - but then dismiss that because it doesn't make sense, and never really come to a satisfactory explanation.

* I think the fandom often didn't really put a lot of thought into the culprit's motives, either; there was probably an assumption that they'd be spelled out later, that the mechanics were the part they should be figuring out...I think what Battler says in EP7 about the expectations the mystery genre sets up is honestly pretty true.

* MARIA BEING FIERCELY PROTECTIVE OF BEATO MAKES ME SO HAPPY

* Man, George really does like that "chick breaking out of its shell" analogy, using it here to describe Maria just like he did before with Shannon. I think it's pretty telling about how he sees his own journey and his own struggle to break out of Eva's control and move from being a "child" to an "adult", personally...It's also pretty telling of how he views Shannon as a child as well, though.

* "Aniki, I can't believe you're single...You sound like you've already raised kids through middle school" UM BATTLER YOU KNOW HE WAS NOT SINGLE UNTIL HIS FIANCEE JUST DIED HORRIBLY A FEW HOURS AGO RIGHT

* It's funny how the argument over the receipt is basically exactly the same, point for point, between EP1 and EP5.

* Eva must have been so goddamn mad when Battler stole the show from her attempt to corner Natsuhi and turned everyone's opinion around with a ridiculous theory about Kinzo hiding under his bed. I love it.

* The really messed up part is that Eva doesn't even actually gain anything out of pressuring Natsuhi here. She doesn't need to expose Kinzo's death to blackmail Krauss, since she's already going to get a share of the gold from Yasu. It's pretty much pure spite. There's a reason she only impulsively placed the receipt right after Natsuhi managed to maintain her dignity in the face of Eva's goading and made her look bad after leaving Kinzo's study the first time.

* Battler to Eva: "To me, you're an awesome aunt who's always fun and playful." BATTLER......

* Yasu presenting Kanon as constantly thinking after Shannon's death about how she did everything better than he did is pretty sad, all things considered...Shannon is miserable and dissatisfied, but at least she’s confident in her ability to function; she's stable and secure. Living as Kanon, on the other hand, would be a leap into the unknown, and that's really scary...

* I love Eva a lot. The scene with her and Hideyoshi in their room is a side of her character we don't see often, but it's really important. Her being so self-aware about having let her life be guided by her childish resentment of Krauss is really striking, especially since...the way she describes it, it kind of seems like she'd managed to let go, for a time, having given up and accepted that Krauss would be the head and it didn't have anything to do with her any more? But then the idea about how maybe she could get Kinzo to keep her in the family if she could produce an heir before Krauss got into her head, and she made her whole life revolve around that hope of gaining Kinzo's validation once again, through George. So her asking Hideyoshi to "take her back to that time when they were newlyweds" is really sad in that light. It's easy to tie to the struggle between her "adult self" and "EVA-Beatrice" in EP3 as well...

* The part where Kanon is in a really frantic hurry to get to Eva's room and cut the chain while Genji goes to fetch Natsuhi, so much so that Kumasawa is out of breath following him, is interesting. In retrospect, since he would actually have already cut the chain (to get in there to murder the victims) before going back there with Kumasawa to "discover" them, it would be really bad for him if Genji and Natsuhi arrived back there before him and Natsuhi saw that the chain had already been cut before he arrived. He needs to be the first one on scene for the story that he just cut the chain to hold up, thus forming the illusion of the closed room.

* Aaah, Maria tries to comfort Battler and quietly says "Battler, don't cry, don't cry" after he starts sobbing when he sees Eva and Hideyoshi's bodies...It's such a different reaction to how she mockingly dismissed everyone's grief over the first deaths, but actually seeing Battler completely undone like this at the moment of discovery obviously gives her more of a shock and disturbs her. She didn't get to see that with the first victims, so it didn't penetrate as hard. But of course, after the shock has worn off and Battler is on to speculating about the closed room, she quickly goes back to being smug and vindicated again, pointing out how Beato "granted his wish" for a crime that would be impossible for any of the family. I love how honest her portrayal is in balancing her genuine sense of empathy and real maturity in many ways with her real childishness and self-centered, "bratty" behaviour at other times. It sort of reminds me of how she gently pats Battler on the back to comfort him when he's recovering from the boat incident, but she's also totally happy to gleefully make fun of him over it with everyone else later.

* Interesting how Yasu basically spells out her motives through the magic circles. Maria totally misinterprets the second one, though.

* Kanon's death in the boiler room is really upsetting on many levels. The desperate attempt to put forth that he can break free from his fate by giving up on the roulette and that the act of making that choice himself rather than just passively hoping to be exposed might make him more than "furniture", trying to build up the courage to just abort the whole thing himself and confess, and Beatrice just sneering the whole time at how completely ridiculous and pathetic he's being.

* One weird little detail is that Maria spends a disturbingly long time just staring at Kinzo's burnt corpse, even to the point that she's reluctant to leave when everyone else does, and Battler notes that she was probably staring at the stake stuck into him. Given how we know from Maria's diary that she'd made extensive notes on how to summon and talk to the images of the stake sisters in her mind using their stakes as "vessels", part of me wonders if she was actually having a conversation with Mammon in her head that whole time.

* The whole thing with Nanjo carrying Kanon back to the servant room and apparently trying and failing to "treat" his wounds while George and Jessica watch...this always feels pretty hard to swallow, honestly. It really stretches my suspension of disbelief to think that they could somehow go through that whole charade without anyone noticing that Kanon isn't actually wounded at all. I feel like this part is actually kind of unfair from a "solvability" perspective, to be honest; I think it would have made more sense and been much less of a stretch for Nanjo to have just declared Kanon "dead" when they found him. It strikes me as one of those things that would really throw off anyone who was actually getting close to the truth, because there isn't really any subtle hint in the text or anything that might indicate that George or Jessica noticed anything strange about Kanon's "death". I think I'd file this along with the EP5 perspective trickery and "Shannon and Kanon are 2 people" as Ryukishi trying too hard with the misdirection and unnecessarily obfuscating things.

* To Ryukishi's credit, though, I do think he covered this gap pretty well later by making it very explicit through the EP4 tea party that Kanon couldn't possibly have died here. He could easily have used the "Kanon is definitely dead" trick as he does in other places to misdirect further, and it would have been thematically valid, but instead he phrased the reds in such a way that you really can't come to any other workable conclusion besides "Kanon wasn't really dead".

* I really like the scene with everyone being hit by Kinzo's grief over Beatrice and making the leap that that was where the whole legend of the witch came from, with Battler and George having these kinds of awestruck "Yeah, I see, I think I can call this magic" reactions - but the part where it shows Maria in the corner just facepalming and sighing "No you idiots, it's real magic, Beatrice exists" while all this is happening is just the best.

* The system0 scene where Natsuhi turns her gun on Maria and the servants is incredibly intense. Even knowing what's going on, the characters' shifting speculations and the suspicions and tensions arising between the survivors are consistently written in such a way that it's incredibly easy to get absorbed in. Ryukishi did a really good job of this in general. Natsuhi's theory here, that Genji - out of loyalty to Kinzo, wanting to ease his grief over Beatrice - set up an elaborate plot to make it look like her ghost existed in the mansion and has been behind the illusion all these years, culminating in his following Kinzo's "ceremony" for her revival as described on the epitaph as a final act of loyalty to him, is actually really strong given the information she has. It's really interesting reading these speculations with full knowledge of what's happening.

* That said, it's also easy to see how all this seems incredibly stupid and shortsighted from Maria's perspective, and she's actually extremely perceptive in her assertion that everyone is just trying to believe what will make them feel comfortable rather than facing the truth. It's true, Natsuhi was always talking about how they shouldn't be suspecting each other and should stay united and that finding the culprit shouldn't be their priority, but now she's willing to point the finger at others herself when it suits her. In general, everyone's speculations and attitudess toward Beatrice's identity come around to trying to justify whatever will make them feel better in the moment - as evidenced by Battler's flip-flopping between wanting to believe in Beatrice when suspecting one of the 18 gets too emotionally challenging, but then wanting to find the culprit among them when he feels frustrated with not being able to fight back against the culprit and wants to empower himself by believing he can expose them. Maria is completely right that in this way, they're prevented from really fully engaging with Beatrice's game and what she's attempting to communicate. I love her frustration with their inability to really "see" Beatrice, and with the way they keep shutting down her attempts to get that through to them.

* The little exchange where Battler admits to Maria just before she leaves the study that he lied about dropping the charm, and gives it back to her to keep her safe, always really gest me...I love how Maria just looks solemnly at him and takes it, and neither of them have anything to say after that, but so much emotion is conveyed. (I also love how, even before Battler tells her to wait, Maria cheerfully says goodbye specifically to Battler alone as she leaves. The weird little friendship they have is just really sweet to me, somehow.)

* The way Beatrice's command to Maria to face the wall and keep singing while she kills the last three sacrifices is phrased - "you will sing lots and lots of songs, so no matter what happens, no matter what you hear, you won't hear you won't hear you won't know" - is actually really upsetting in how it sounds so utterly frantic and disjointed and broken. Yasu was probably in a really bad mental state by this point...

* Natsuhi framing her duel with Beatrice as a fight to decide the true successor to the Ushiromiya family is a really big hint to the culprit's identity in retrospect. Beatrice never claims that right to the headship when she's "in character", so it's a nod towards the nature of the real person "behind" Beatrice.

* "So, in Maria's eyes, it's just as though all of today's tragedies didn't happen. It's as though all the time she spent deprived of love never happened." AAAAAAAAAAAA ;_;

* The ending with Beatrice appearing while everyone is still freaking out over Natsuhi's death, Maria running towards Beato overjoyed and the two of them gleefully laughing together while Battler stares in disbelief as the clock hits midnight...it gives me shivers every time. Ryukishi's writing is absolutely incredible when it comes to atmosphere.

* Man, I'll never get over how silly and goofy the fourth-wall breaking beginning of the tea party is, considering how the meta setting ends up being so central to the series. "Uu-. Definitely a bad ending. Uu-." Coming into this from all the incredibly intense feelings the end of the actual episode evokes sure is, uh, something.

* The way this feels so weird coming out of EP1 really solidifies what a daring choice it was to introduce the meta world to the series, though. The actual basic plot of Umineko, the mystery of Beatrice and the reveal of the truth behind it and everyone's motives and backstories, could easily have been fully portrayed without it, along the same lines as EP1 - just covering the "real-world" events of various possible versions of the incident, with some unreliable narration and metaphorical fantasy scenes conveying the "magical" elements, and more being revealed about different aspects of the story as the series went on. But the existence of the meta-world really turns the series into something completely different, and adds so much to the scope of the series and its thematic depth. I think it would be a lot harder - probably impossible, even - to really get across Umineko's ideas about "truth through fiction" and the nature of "magic", and the whole scope of Beatrice's character and Battler's journey to understanding her without it.

* Wow, I forgot that the first reference to Bernkastel came from Maria. It's especially neat that she quotes Rika's iconic "If we don't all believe, the miracle won't occur" line - in a completely different, much darker context - in the same scene that (through the intentional parallel with Higurashi's non-canon review sessions) basically serves the function of slamming in your face that "this is going to be very different to Higurashi".

* Oh god, Shannon responding to George being sad about the brutal nature of her death with "Um, well, it's not like it hurt..." Yeah, because it was a total lie, sorry George!

* I really like how it's Kanon, specifically, that keeps challenging Battler and trying to push him to explain his death - especially since said death is pretty much the key scene of this episode in terms of finding Yasu's truth.

* BEATOOOOOOOO!!!!

* I MISSED BEATO SO MUCH OMG I HAVE THE BIGGEST GRIN ON MY FACE RIGHT NOW SHE IS JUST SO GOOD

* Battler and Beato's dynamic is the absolute best!! I love Umineko so much...

* Ahaha, omg. He's actually totally right on the mark here, though. You can tell Beato is just absolutely bouncing with excitement challenging him to explain, eager to hear his theories. I think it's very, very easy to see Yasu in Beato here, and to imagine how this brings her back to how they used to enthusiastically debate mysteries together when they were kids. I really love how, despite Beato at first glance feeling pretty different from the timid Yasu we see in EP7 in a lot of ways, you can still absolutely see that they unmistakeably share a common root; their basic sheer creative energy and playfulness and excitement about the things they're passionate about has exactly the same feel to it.

* The credit roll with Prison Strip playing makes me get up and dance around the room in excitement every time, ngl.

* Huh, the new translation changed Bern's title from "Witch of Miracles" to "Witch of the Fragments"! That's a pretty big change. I guess it fits too, but I'm sort of curious how some other scenes will be reframed with that in mind, since the word "miracles" comes up a lot in reference to Bern...Hmm. I honestly always thought her old title made a lot of sense for her, so I'm not sure how I feel about this! I'll have to think about it.

* I always liked the way they phrase the descriptions of Beatrice's nature compared to Bern's and Lambda's in this scene. There's a lot of insight into what makes the purpose and motivations behind Yasu's roulette fundamentally different from what you would expect from the culprit in there.

* "You're one I really don't want to fight with. Inside of you, there's nothing but zero." Wow, this is a really chilling description of Yasu...What Bern is pretty much saying with this whole speech that since Yasu doesn't have a single "desired outcome" for her roulette, she can't possibly "lose", so she's essentially unbeatable. The unspoken flipside to that, though, is that she can't really WIN, either; none of the possible outcomes are either positive OR negative, so she ends up with "nothing but zero". She's resigned herself to death whatever outcome she reaches; her inability to be "disappointed" in the outcome of her roulette is rooted in resignation and acceptance of the fact that all the things she once hoped for are completely out of her grasp, so she can't be hurt any more by the prospect of those possibilities being destroyed. (Also, notice the parallel between Bern referring to Beato as having "zero" inside her and Kanon calling himself "the zero on her roulette" earlier. Welp.)

* And given that, it's pretty fitting that the way Bern does end up finally managing to get the upper hand on Beatrice is by finding that one hidden, distant possibility - Lion - that she actually DOES still treasure and wants to keep believing in despite everything, giving her hope that that possibility could really exist, and then brutally crushing it.

* I could pretty much do a whole post on this scene. There's so much buried in every line here.

* Considering that Bern was originally only supposed to be a cameo, I think this part actually sets up the later expansion of her character really well. The signs of her being a dark and disturbing figure at heart despite being presented as your "ally" against Beato come across very well.

And we're done! I've been working at this reread on and off since about July of last year, so it's a bit surreal to have only just finished the first episode now. I'm hugely enjoying it, though! There are so many series that I enjoy at first but become more detached and critical of them as time passes, but if anything, I honestly find myself appreciating Umineko more and more deeply every time I read it. It really does feel almost like a story that was written specifically for someone like me in many ways, and I'm just forever grateful for its existence. I'm very much looking forward to revisiting the other episodes!