On the island belonging to the Ushiromiya family, a great mystery is about to take place. They are an old standing family with more money than God and a shady past. When the witch Beatrice starts sending threats, and claiming the credit for the families success, nobody pays attention [despite being issued in an incredibly creepy way, that being through mind controlling a small girl.] Until her threats carry through, and high standing family members and servants start showing up dead. Now its up the Battler Ushiromiya to find out the secret behind the Ushiromiya family, and find out who Beatrice truly is.

See that synopsis above there? See how thats interesting and a tried and true story, but with a unique twist to it? That would be a better story, but apparently the writers metaphorically flipped a table and went for the balls in a vice insane equivilent.

Spoilers so skip this paragraph is you really care.
Episodes 1-5 are relatively normal for a show like this, and everything happened the way i thought it would, only a heck of a lot faster. Episode 6 is where the show just goes nuts, with Beatrice emerging from the painting, and basically telling everybody "Screw off, im a witch. Magic FTW." In fact, i believe its in episode 5 that the good guys fail, and enter some kind of weird afterlife, where they exist despite being dead...or something. Its never explained so i dont understand. Everybody seems to accept that Beatrice is a witch....because she kinda is, and Battler refuses to accept this because he's extremely thick.

So, because she's bored, Beatrice decides to CHANGE THE TIME STREAM, in order to convince Battler she's a witch. Now Battler says he'll use logic to explain it away, but he really can't, so he just goes "No i wont accept." and Beatrice laughs and we move on to more revision of the original couple episodes.

But thats not the weirdest part! No this show is just so random it hurts! How about the lightsaber wielding goat men in 3 peice suits from episode 8?
You thought i was kidding? No, i wasn't! I don't have to! This show just loses its freaking mind after episode 5, and its all down hill from there. Oh an this fight literally lasts under 10 seconds. They just wanted a cool image to get you to come back after the commercial. Fun.
Oh but it gets even weirder! After the goatmen get murdered, turning into butterflies as they die, [Of course] Beatrice summons her evil demon fangirl to fight.

This all happens, within a minute of each other.
BUT WAIT! WE AREN'T DONE YET!
After she transforms into a metal spike, and bounces around the room like she's made of rubber!
BUT HOLD ON! WE HAVE MORE CRAZY INCOMING!
After the metal spike kills Jessica [the blonde girl in the goatmen picture.], Beatrice summons SATAN TO KILL KANON [The guy with the red laser blade.] But again, only in Japan, Satan is not this....
He's this.
Sends a shiver up your spine doesn't it?
Apparently, Beatrice employs fallen angels to do her bidding......not that this is ever explained....

Trust me though, i made it sound a lot more interesting than it actually was to watch. I swear this is the most dull, tedious, trudging, dragging show, I've ever sat through. But enough of that, lets get onto the individual elements of the show, like....

The characters.
Battler Ushiromiya, a detective like character, who more or less leads the merry band of plot central characters. He enjoys squeezing girls breasts and being vulgar, but also being 2 dimensional as a sheet of paper. And who names their kid 'Battler?'

Oh right.....the obscenely rich.......moving on....

Maria Ushiromiya, Battler's cousin, who spends the entirety of the show as a demonic sock puppet for the Witch Beatrice. She's basically a fangirl in the words worst incarnation, and for no real reason. Her family never treated her well, we gather as much from the first episode, but really, you'd think she'd value family over her hero. She's obnoxious, and is like one of the little girls from Higurashi, minus the blood lust. Also, the whole shock of having a small girl, something you would never assume to be dangerous or creepy, be dangerous and creepy, doesn't work if we never see her be normal. From the word GO Maria is so busy riding the Beatrice is awesome wagon that she never seems like a real little girl. Combined with how teeth grindingly annoying she is, and you have yourself one of the reasons this show fails.

And of course Beatrice. But she.....has no personality, other than being pure evil. She does what she does because she's bored, or at least claims to be, and gains pleasure for brutally murdering the Ushiromiya family, going so far as to reverse time to do so again and again. At first i thought they'd play up a relationship between Battler and her, kind of like L and Kira, both apposing views, but hell bent on stopping one another. This does not happen, although the show flirts with the concept in the first few episodes, before careening away from the idea at Mach 5.

There are other Characters, like Jessica, Battlers cousin, who wears a skirt thats always tempting panty shots but never quite achieving it. George, another cousin, whose kind of bland, but also is in love with Shanon, the maid, whose basically a moesplosion. And finally theres Kanon, the butler, who has a laser blade arm.


The animation.
Its relatively clean and good, although I do have a bone to pick with some of the character designs, namely how every woman has a bosom the size of two watermelons stapled to their chests, but other than that their all unique and good looking. I do get upset about how they handle what I call, Maria's demon face. She looks spooky in a close up...maybe once. After you do it 5 times an episode, nobody cares. Maria is not a likeable character, so nobody cares about her, making her a constant strain on anybody watching, making you want to turn the bloody show off please please make it stop the stupid giggling make ittt stooooooooppp............
........Im ok......

The music.
Bland, and forgettable from beginning to end. 99% of the time you don't even notice it, and the other 1% its just subtle chirping noises. You can't sing along to the opening, or headbang, or even really enjoy it, because its a weird mix of classical opera with an orchestral score. Its well written, and I acknowledge it as the best song in the show, but thats not saying much.

Everything about this show just rubs me the wrong way. Every scrap of dialogue from anybody to anybody else seems so forced, so completely contrived and lacking any form of actual humanity. Its like somebody wrote how they THINK human beings act but aren't sure. "Oh yes, human males are obsessed with Mammories so I will make his first line of dialogue with every female with large breasts be "Let me squeeze your tits." and to make it all the funnier, i'll make every female character have huge breasts! I'm a genius!"


The Setting is never really explained, and whats supposed to be intriguing mystery never really GOES anywhere. Beatrice is basically God on the island, kills everybody, rinse repeat until other witches show up and the plot takes a sharp turn down retarded and bananas.

The personalities are static and undeveloping, the premise is insane and literally goes nowhere. This could have been a 4 episode OVA and it would have been better, made more sense, and been more enjoyable. As it currently stands the show is an abomination of stagnation. Avoid at all costs, it will only make you wish for death. 20%, a definite F.

J's Pet peeve: Maria is annoying, not frightening. When she puts on her demon face and is just like "Teeheeheeeheee, Beatrice did it!" I want to slap her for 2 reasons.
1: Because the Japanese dont call her Beatrice, they call her Beatrichay in a smug obnoxious way. It isn't that hard Japan, smarten up.
2: Because when she does she gets annoyingly smug. Your parents are dead, and your worshipping the one who pulled the trigger! It doesn't help that whenever she starts acting like a demon sock puppet, she makes this face.
Less terrifying, more like she's taking a dump.
But I know what you're thinking though, 'why is she even in this story if she doesn't impact plot at all?'
Well this show is written by the same guy[Ryukishio7, a pen name.], and is part of the same series as Higurashi No Naku Koro ni, or When They Cry, which is a story centered entirely around little insane girls trying to kill people, instead of just having one as an annoying side character. If thats all Higurashi is.... I'd rather eat the still living, disembodied head of my own daughter.

Yes........that happens.
I never wanna see this piece of garbage again.
Coming up next, Soul Eater.

The series is not yet liscensed for North America, and I hope it never is. The show, along with a manga series is available for order [but only in Japanese, as far as I know.] from the Manga and Anime branch of Square Enix, who are also responsible for the game of the same name, and a set of drama CD's, and a line of novels. Studio Deen and Chiaki Kon are responsible for this work of fiction.

Comments (4)

Oi.
written by Helmet, September 04, 2010

Congratulations, you successfully summed up about 50% of what Fans of the Visual Novel basically said.

However, I have a bunch of bones to pick with you:
Beatrice vs. Beatoriche- Beatrice, Jessica, and basically every character with an english name is spelled in Katakana, which you use to spell your name if it's foreign. It basically makes you have your name easier to pronounce and read(Example: 'Will' is written as 'ウィル', but pronounced 'Wiru'). Fansubbers are just using the already confirmed (By R07) Romaji form.

Also, Beatrice was represented as flat. She's actually a very complex character who's motivations are really, really hard to pick out. She's basically saying 'Oh, yeah, that was me. AHAHAHA.wav', but later on, she seems more like a tragic heroine than anything. Beato isn't evil(Arc 4), she basically tried to get Battler to realize his sin (whatever it was, has not been revealed)(Arc 4), failed miserably, and learned that the people one the game board are not just pieces, but people with hopes and dreams like her(Arc 3). Before they were just things that were expendable.

Anti-Fantasy Vs. Anti-Mystery:
The reason why Battler denies magic is because he simply doesn't believe it exists and thinks that all mysteries are solvable by using human means. At first he tries to deny magic entirely- then changes to 'Witches exist, but they didn't commit the murders' because it was easier on him.

Also, the every random part of the show (Demon butlers, stakes, etc) is all just a ploy to throw Battler off and make him accept Beato's existence. After all, how could you explain how your cousin just died by human hands when you just saw a bunch of goats kill her? The Virgilia V.S. Beato fight is also another example of this.

Maria:

Anime-Maria < VN Maria. DEEN tried really, really hard to portray her as scary and creepy, even though the actual Maria is basically just a snob. She never made those kind of weird, twist facial expressions. Maria is basically obsessed with occultism.

Beato was actually her only friend, and, hell, Beato and the whole magic thing was Maria's way of looking at things with 'love'- which was why she loved her mother more than anything in the world despite the fact that her mother was a total fucking bitch to her and excusing most of what she did. Also note that Maria is the key to understand Beatrice, and she is way more important than your actually thinking.

Also, Maria and her dead parent (Father *SPOILER* them, go figure)? She firmly believes that they will be going to the Golden Land (=Heaven of sorts), so, yeah, she isn't really thinking Beato as the murderer.

Ryukishi07-

He's a troll, dude. He received MAJOR backlash about the fairly recent EP7 novel of Umineko, because, well... Let's just say that the story was nicknamed Homolust of the Golden Witch, and the Tea Party scene was basically the MOST EPIC TROLL EVAR, by *SPOILER*, just to screw with Ange and the readers.

Higurashi-

Has way more depth than you're thinking, but yes, it was basically a story with little girls killing each other. But if your considering watching the anime, keep in mind that that the horror element was just an extra to the novels, and Deen just blew it up times bajilion.


Flat Characters:

Should have tapped on this with Beato, but....

Consider that Each novel is about 8 and half hours long, give or take. Condense all that to about two and a half hours, and you have a bunch of conversations either chopped up or cut out entirely, backstory removed, and not a whole lot of material to make each character of the huge cast... pop out. Yea- No. Not gonna happen.

Big Boobs and Fan Service:

Otaku happen to like big boobs. Granted, the boobage was highly exaggerated- hell, that on scene in the anime with Battler trying to touch Shannon's rack happened in the VN, too. Everything else? Don't recall it ever happening (Except the cow tits thing). THEN THERE WAS FAN SERVICE. Again, that was just DEEN. Panty Shots are entirely nonexistant in the original novel.

Satan:

...Satan isn't an a employee or anything. Being Furniture means being a SLAVE. I suggest you look up the Divine Comedy for further explanation...ish.

Music:

I respect you opinion. I really do. But to me and VN Players, the soundtrack was fuckin' awesome. DEEN really misused it, though. ALOT.

Setting:
...It's an island. With a Mansion. And A chapel. And a quest house. And two ports. and a Golden house somewhere. And an awesome freakin' *Spoiler*.

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I noticed that I used VN alot here and there. That's because that the anime is an (god awful) adaptation of the novel. So those watching the anime aren't going to really get it at all, are missing a lot, and are going to get a massive headache over it. The Manga does a better job, though- not a whole lot, but, whatever. It's just better to invest your time reading the VN, then think of the Anime episodes as more or less summaries than anything.

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Hmm
written by JoelStibbs, September 05, 2010

You know what you should have done? Made your own review of this show. You obviously know enough about it, maybe more than me. As it is now theres a review, followed by another review.

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...
written by Helmet, September 05, 2010

I...Realized that a bit too late. But, more or less, I was trying to explain the story to you.

As it stands, though, I intend to do a Let's Play of the first Novel (which is out as a demo)and second (to really explain things). Since that are no choices in gameplay, though, and I can't really record myself playing it (07th Expansion (the creators) and Witch-Hunt (the translators) are having a cow over it, because it's getting pirated a whole lot and the videos of game play are not helping), I'll just be doing screen shots and notes. Not much, but...

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Well
written by JoelStibbs, September 05, 2010

Well i didn't mean it as rough as it came out. But really, you know a lot about the show, that much is obvious. Do your own review of the Visual Novel, i'd read that, or even just do an opposing view to my review, explaining things i messed up on, and details on why the show is WORTH watching, or at least playing the game. xD

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