Umineko started off feeling more promising to me because it felt more like a classic murder mystery and less of a weird series of events that happen to annoying schoolkids. I just wanted to watch a “Who dun it?”-type mystery, but that was the wrong thing to want out of Umineko. In the beginning, I enjoyed it well enough: the gigantic cast confused me, but I did kind of sympathize with Battler and his “Objection!” pose. Most of the other characters I was pretty indifferent to and even “Uuu~” girl didn’t really irritate me that much. The murders were entertaining and the suspicious and accusing atmosphere was fun.

But it didn’t take long for the characters to start boring me and for me to stop caring about what happens to them. Battler never really accomplishes much of anything, and the lack of forward progression annoyed me . The beginning of a new iteration always seems to be hard on my patience — I don’t care about the characters or setting or outcome enough to sit through multiple versions of the same basic idea. The fact that I’ve never played a visual novel probably also contributes to my lack of interest, since I don’t care for the endgame shenanigans as a result. I don’t care which witch wins the game; I don’t care how they go about doing it; I don’t care who dies in each part or whose fault it is. So why am I watching it?

The animation wasn’t anything special and I got pretty tired of seeing Maria’s psychotic face every other scene, particularly because none of the other character seem to notice or react to it even when she was grinning in their faces. At least Light Yagami had to decency to grin behind people’s backs. The music was nice and I especially liked the opening theme, but no one really keeps watching a show just for the music, huh?

And that’s that. Second casualty of the season! Let’s see if I end up dropping CANAAN?