Umineko's Anime is Great

Umineko is different from most cases of my defending a Visual Novel based Anime hated by fans of the source material.  Though my basic argument that the Anime needs to be judged as it's own thing first before bringing source material comparison into it (which VN zealots constantly refuse to do) remains.

In those other cases the Anime adaptation doesn't fundamentally change anything about what happens, it's mostly fans being upset about stuff cut that they liked, but all that cut stuff is probably still Canon in the Anime it's just off screen or in most cases literally in a POV character's head.  In Umineko however actual changes happen making it so what is happening in the Anime can't be the same as what was happening in the VN.

Before I get into those changes however, I want to describe for you my experience watching the Anime as someone who went in knowing only that it's a spiritual sequel to Higurashi.  Because I knew the connection to Higurashi I figured the timeline would restart every 4 to 6 episodes but nothing else.

It starts as an Anime take on a fairly generic murder mystery set up, the first 4 and a half episodes do a good job of establishing the characters and making me interested, and there was definitely a sense that it was being self aware about the clichés it is playing with, I happen to like that style of metafiction.  I was having a good time but it was not something I'd recommend outside the specific context of Anime to watch during October.

Then in the midst of episode 5 during what seemed to my Higurashi memory like an Arc's climax the show suddenly cuts to the characters sitting around talking about the "bad end" having a conversation that feels like one of those non canon Meta conversations characters often have over the next episode preview.  Then Battler starts questioning things and then stuff starts happening and then the Witch shows up, and he starts arguing that witches don't exist, to the Witch standing in front of him.  Then it cuts to Lady Bernkastel and I'm like "she looks and sounds familiar".

Then the show goes off the rails in the best way possible, it gets so absurd and wacky and over the top and I loved every minute of it, the Brass knuckles, the witch battles, the juggling between realities and time periods.  But as all that's happening I also start to get genuinely more invested in the characters and before I know it the penultimate episode makes my Cry, something that then still happened to me fairly rarely, this show that I was a few hours ago tweeting about as a show to watch for the absurd ridiculousness now has me in tears.

When a show or movie makes me Cry it's pretty much a guaranteed 10 out of 10, there would have to be some significant problems to cancel that out and Umineko had none.  So no matter what the VN differences were gonna turn out to be, the Anime as it's own stand alone piece of art irreversibly earned it's status as an Artistic Masterpiece.

Now as I discus the VN differences I will have to get into spoilers, though I'll try to keep them minimal.

Spoiler Warning!!!!!

There are two things about the Visual Novel that makes it for me personally the inferior version of the story.

The first is the knowledge that it doesn't have as Happy of an Ending as Higurashi.  Now I know some fans do consider the ending Happy "from a certain POV" but my love of Higurashi is tied to what it has in common with Magical Girl shows and SciADV shows, I wanted the final timeline to prevent anyone from being permanently killed off and all the villains to be redeemed.

The Anime is technically an incomplete adaptation, it only covers the Question Arcs, but it ends on a positive enough note that I can imagine ultimate complete victory is where it's going.

The Anime was also made when the source material wasn't complete yet, and that's why it accidently became incompatible with what the VNs go on to reveal, since it's harder for Anime to be as ambiguous about certain things as a VN can be, we see certain characters together as clearly separate people who actually shouldn't be.  So the very reveal of who the Killer is and why is rendered unworkable by the Anime's canon.  

And that's the thing, the very plot that the Anime by pure accident contradicted is one I personally loath.

I've talked in the past on this blog about my relationship with Pretty Little Liars, how the reveal in Game Over Charles plays into a very harmful Transphobic trope and it ruined a show that I otherwise still want to consider my favorite Western TV show.  Seeing this trope repeated in that one Sherlock Holmes Anime caused me to drop it.  

The Umineko VN Canon ultimately does this trope, Beatrice is indeed a real person and the killer and was assigned male at birth but their origin story involves their genitals being mutilated causing them to pose as both Male and Female characters.  Three characters in the Anime turn out in the VN to all be this one person and I'm glad I didn't know this as I watched the show.

The thing is I know of Trans people who are fans of Umineko and repeat the same talking points about how worthless and bad the Anime is like NezumaVA, one prominent Trans Woman in the Anime community has named herself after this character, Trixie The Golden Witch.  And that's fine I understand liking problematic characters anyway, I still like Pretty Little Liars and Charlotte DiLaurentis, but my experience with that show and how my feelings on my own gender identity have changed since then has made it something I really can't forgive so easily for anything else, PLL had built up over 5 years of good will with me before it pulled this.

I imagine some of those fans might even call it "Trans Erasure" to prefer the Anime.  Thing is we don't see anyone's genitals in the Anime so you can imagine all the characters in question to still be Trans or Nonbinary or whatever else if you want. I just don't like a scenario where the only Trans person involved is a psychotic serial killer.  

And again the people making the Anime didn't change anything for this reason, the source material just hadn't gotten there yet so they didn't even know, trust me Anime is never afraid to do poorly thought out gender bendy nonsense.

I also feel like this particularly harmful trope is the one case where I feel no representation is better then bad representation, I usually feel the opposite, Bad Representation is so often reclaimed if the character in question is just plain cool enough.  But the Trans Serial killer trope is the justification of so much real life violence being done to Trans Women, as well as anti Trans legislation, that in this case "erasure" that erases this trope is for the better.

But why am I seemingly the only person who's ever called out Umineko on doing this trope?  Well Unimeko is very niche, it's infamous only within the already niche world of people who actually read Visual Novels, and then it is a very LONG novel even by Visual Novel standards which trust me is saying a lot.  So the only Trans people playing it are those who already have a built up tolerance to a lot of problematic stuff VNs are so often filled with, and then by the time the reveal happens like with me and PLL they've been pretty firmly won over by the story to even get that far.

If Umineko had a more faithful Anime structured like season 1 of Higurashi that got to the core reveal within a year, then a lot more Normies would have heard about it and the discourse around it would look a lot different.