Okay, so after last week’s little episode of background, we’re back to the island and get another clue to what’s going on with this series. This series’ set-up is indeed a bit like Higurashi, but with slight differences. Most notably that Higurashi focused at different people with each arc, while in Umineko instead keeps on looping the same story with perhaps one or two slight differences that we’re not even sure of.

So this episode shows a bit more of what happened in the first half of the first episode, with the big difference here the appearance of Beatrice. At this point, it’s still not clear whether these events happened exactly the way they did in the first arc, or whether Beatrice conveniently inserted herself into the story to make it seem to Battler that she indeed existed.

Since Higurashi also was a really layered story, I also suspect something similar to happen here: the basic world has no magic whatsoever, but outside of it Beatrice’s power has free range, and her ultimate purpose seems to be to have everyone acknowledge her, and my guess would be that she tries to make everyone believe that she has magic, while in fact she doesn’t have any at all in the “real world”. This episode would then show that she managed to get accepted her powers apart from Battler, which is probably going to be the main focus of this series.

If this indeed turns out to be true, then that must mean that Beatrice is a very talented illusionist. The way that she seemed to make Maria close her eyes while turning the candy back seems to suggest that, and I assume that she used some sort of trick to prevent Maria’s mother from seeing it. While it’s a bit far-fetched, the butterflies then could be the product of some sort of optical illusion concerning holograms.

This episode also paid a bit of attention to Maria and her mother, and learn that Maria may have an issue of multiple personalities that run in her family. Perhaps Kinzou is also bothered by it, or his mysterious wife could be the key in this. It also could have spontaneously appeared with her, but in any case you could see that the two of them were related to each other in this episode. Maria’s mother at one time is the worried and caring mother, and the next moment she starts beating her own child. With that, it’s somewhat understandable for Maria to develop a split personality as well. With the way she seems to be closed in her own world, her ramblings about Beatrice could be blamed on her imagination running wild.

In any case, while this episode did build up, I liked it a lot. Beatrice could have been a bit less stereotypically evil, but overall it was a very nice episode. Oh, but one thing: I know that we’re not supposed to expect much from the graphics in this series, but could the creators in the future please try to give Battler a less constipated face when he’s angry? This isn’t Dragonball Z, or anything.

Oh, and to close off, I want to put a little disclaimer here: THIS POST IS ABOUT THE ANIME VERSION OF UMINEKO. If you want to say something about events that happen after this episode, then GO FIND A BLOG THAT COVERS THE VISUAL NOVEL AND PUT IT THERE.

I really hate to put up this warning, but I’ve personally gotten really tired of all of the visual novel fans flaunting their superior knowledge to us simple mortals who haven’t played the game yet. I’m interested in seeing the speculations of other people who haven’t played the games yet, and are also in the dark of what’s going on here. What’s the point of hearing the speculations of someone who already knows what’s going to happen?!

And sure, normally I’m not such a Nazi with this. A subtle hint of what’s going to happen next of course isn’t bad, but the problem arises with popular franchises as this one, when seemingly every single fan of the visual novel is keen to drop a small hint of what’s going on. With hundreds of “small hints” like these, it just doesn’t remain fun anymore. Not to mention the few not-so-subtle hints that float among them.

I know that I’m confused, but isn’t that the whole point of this series? Then what are you doing trying to clarify things that were meant to be completely mind-boggling?
Rating: * (Good)

Spiral is a battle of wits. It’s set up in such a way that the lead character (Narimi Ayumu), who is a highly gifted teenager, has to face a number of opponents who rather than simply shooting him to death attempt to bring him down by creating all sorts of puzzle situations for him to overcome. Not really the most believable of all premises, but it does work.

Because I have to admit, these mind games are well created. They’re creative and not as ridiculously elaborate and far-fetched like you’d see in shows as Death Note or Code Geass. The creators really did well in keeping a balance between believability and ingenuity, and that’s where the fun comes from: the situations in this series are so created that a lot of them can be figured out by the audience as well. The characters make well use of their surroundings, and also carefully try to analyze the persons they’re dealing with and predict what kind of moves they might make.

The mind games and the psychology in this series is what makes it worth watching, and that’s a good thing because apart from that there really isn’t anything notable for this series. Spiral basically is a series that’s really good at one thing… but fails to stand out in any other way. The lead characters are serviceable: the creators are good at analyzing them, but they could have been fleshed out much more. The villains however are a real joke: we learn absolutely nothing about them: they’re just a bunch of paper bags with no motivation whatsoever.

But the biggest problem with this series it the fact that it leaves so many questions open. And sure, I’m not often concerned with this and I usually don’t mind if a series leaves a bunch of plot-holes open at the end. But Spiral takes this to a completely different level when it fails to answer just about every major question it asks throughout the series. Seriously, this series just stops at one point and nothing whatsoever has been solved. My guess would be that this is another series adapted from a manga that never got its second season due to unpopularity. Such a shame!

Anyway, whether or not you’ll like this series is simple: if all you want is a battle of wits, then this series isn’t going to disappoint you. Especially the first half of this show has everything that makes for a bunch of very interesting mind games. If you’re interested in something else though, then you’d better stay away, because this series sure as heck doesn’t have it.

It’s episodes like this one that really make it unfair to wait for an entire week to see what happens next. Such a powerful episode even though it was nothing like your average dramatic anime episode. Aoi Hana really feels like one of the most realistic romances I’ve seen in a long time and it works incredibly well so far.

In this episode you could really see the distance between Fumi and Yasuko. It all starts with Fumi seeking refuge at Akira because of what happened in the previous episode, which is when she realized that Yasuko is still hung up over her past crush. In the meantime Akira finds out through Kyouko (who obviously has been researching on Yasuko) that Yasuko has four sisters, one of which previously taught at their high school.

The main meat of tihs episode however was about Yasuko, finally deciding to show Fumi her family and vice versa, and at that point we get to see a totally different version of Yasuko. At home, she’s really known as the spoiled princess. As the youngest, she often gets looked down upon by her sisters. You’d think that that would make her stronger, but because she’s seen as a role model outside of her family, she instead chooses to withdraw whenever her sisters or mother start to annoy her.

On top of that, Fumi makes a huge mistake of mentioning to her sisters how one of them taught at their high school, without ever mentioning that she had that knowledge to Yasuko herself. Fumi makes even more stupid moves, by actually taking the side of her family, rather than of Yasuko, and also mentioning how she previously was in love but got dumped.

That all leads to the end of this episode, in which Yasuko proposes to break up. That’s one very nasty cliff-hanger there. If the two of them manage to stay together like this and grow to accept their differences, they’ll probably get a lot closer to each other, however the chance of the two of them really breaking up is really big, and I’d really hate to see that happen. It’s exactly because the two of them are so different that they form a very nice couple.

I also wonder. Kyouko obviously got her crush on Yasuko because of her popular image, but I wonder whether she’d be still as enthusiastic about her when she learned that she also had a vulnerable side. In that way you can really see that Yasuko cares about Fumi: I don’t think that she’s ever willingly shown her weak side to anyone else, but Fumi at the same time is just so dense that it’s going to take a lot of effort for the two of them to fully trust each other.
Rating: ** (Excellent)