I hope he at least sticks with his approach of just leaving things out and doesn’t do it the same way as in Rei and invents some scenes absolutely new so that they don’t tie in with the original anymore.
I admit in case of Rei it’s more or less no big deal, because all of the big mysteries are known, but when advancing a series that is still in progress he can seriously mess things up by giving a character a line he’s not supposed to have…so I hope he doesn’t act to liberatly, or else we could face something on the scale of Magic Knight Rayearth TV series 1:
“Hey it’s not big deal letting her die…she’s just a side character”
>switch to season 2>
“Oh damn…what now?! Oh yeah, identical twin!!”

The story revolves around a battle of wits between Battler and Beatrice the Golden Witch. If any of you want to know more, the first three episodes of the novel are translated, just search for it on google and you’ll find it.

I’ll just warn you that Umineko has a real slow start, it takes forever introducing the characters, so you shouldn’t feel discouraged about the first couple of episodes. It totally pays off. The only thing to be worried about it’s the production values, since Umineko features a lot of action scenes who will just feel awkward if produced with a low budget. Furthermore, it has an awesome soundtrack.

Rika and Tanako (aka Bernkanstel and Lambdadelta respectively) both make appearances, being quite crucial to the plot.

It’s definitely not flawless, but you should give it a try when it comes out. Just don’t expect it to be like Higurashi, it’s quite different from it, and anyone who just wants to see crazy murderous lolis will be disappointed.

Rika was always the one of the most interesting characters and this episode made this very clear. While her choices are relatively predictable, it’s really all about how their consequences will be presented. I’m just guessing, but it’s hard to see a peaceful solution to this problem, even if Rika herself may not actually have to kill her mother directly, depending on the circumstances.

For the record, I know even less about Umineko, but hopefully that will at least be interesting enough.

The best part of the manga was covered in the first season and with the amount of episodes Kon had she had to move through the Paris arc at a lightspeed. Looks like noitamana will never get a two cour show again…

And if Kon sticks to the material the Umineko will quite possibly be the best thing Studio DEEN have produced.

Well I have to admit I don’t really like DEEN’s version of Rei so far, because when you read the original novel you always have the feeling that so much important stuff is missing.
Well in some parts of your review I’m proven wrong, in some I’m right.

I somehow find it really sad, that so much internal monologue is missing on Rika’s side, because it fleshes out her character so much more…and it’s not like they wouldn’t have been able to add some of that.
I always get the feeling, from your review too, that it doesn’t really deliver that Rika decided to HATE her family sometime along her 100 years journey.
In the novel she describes her mother as an overprotective hothead, who can’t understand other people, can’t keep up a proper household and isn’t even able to cook a decent meal.
In the novel it come across so much stronger when Rika just decided that it would be nice to spend some time with her mother, after a rather cute cooking session where she has to hide her 100 years cooking training, because maybe it was just the fact of always loosing them anyway that led her to resent her parents.
THEN everything turns around, a mental hospital is informed by Yamato and Rika’s parents about her rather odd story, she is given her obstacle and finally she notices the Kakera in her mother.

In the OVA it felt just like ‘Oh…Rika’s mother is the Kakera? That’s…bad I think?!’

And I still can’t understand why they chose to include a totally random ‘insanity moment’ in episode 2, but chose to exclude Rika’s choice to rename the being she has become ‘Frederika Bernkastel’.

Oh yeah and it’s not 2 episodes left, it’s 1 episode left. The last episode of Rei will sadly be another Omake-Comedy.

One thing I loved is by making the overall atmosphere calm and slow paced, the violence scenes have alot more impact… As soon as Rika lowered her voice and stared at Satoko I thought “OH SHIT” that was just amazing, I usually dont care much about violence (bring it on) but Higurashi affects me in some weird way

Just cant have enough of this series, so Im looking forward to Umineko as well