Manga 23900 Umineko No Naku Koro Ni Chiru - Episode 7 Requiem Of The Golden Witch

So after a short break of 2 months after finishing the question arc and doing my review for Episode 4, aka Alliance of the Golden Witch, I just finished this part saw that there are no reviews and thought "why not just do one myself?" because again as you can see from my score this was one of my favorite parts of the story, so without further ado:


STORY:

There's not that much to say about the story here aside from the fact that it is a carefully crafted and exceptionally well presented reveal of the "Who-Dunit", "How-Dunit" and "Why-Dunit" of our culprit, the real identity of ... the person behind Beatrice the Golden Witch, in the 7th game overall which is divided into 3 parts that are easy to follow yet eye-openingly mindblowing as they go on and on giving you the answer to the questions that have plagued you from the very beginning of the story (or at least should at the latest have done so after Episode 3). The way the story is presented is so uniquely Umineko that it at times left me speechless about how this particular way of revealing your main mystery hasn't been done to this extent before, but to that I will have to say more in the character portion. Alliance still remains my favorite part of this story so far cuz of the emotional connection with Ange I made through it but this one is definitely a close second, so this one also quite easily gets a
10/10


CHARACTERS:

Now one small aspect of Umineko that I am not particularly fond of is the fact that with every part there is always a plethora of new characters added to the already big cast we had prior to said part. With Requiem being no exception from this fact, I rather had my doubts about it before starting and wished it would focus less on new characters and give more proper screen time to the ones that were there from the beginning.
BOY WAS I WRONG ABOUT THAT!
The character writing was, by far and without a single shred of doubt in my mind, the best thing about this part of the story.
Through the newly added characters Will and Lion we slowly learn about the main mysteries this story has presented us with over the course of its run:

1) Kinzou and Beatrice's first meeting as well as the backstory of the Ushiromiya Gold and all it brings with it.
And with this story comes my utmost respect for Kinzou, the head of the Ushiromiya household and the mad man constantly rambling on about the occult and Beatrice the Witch, as a character. Seeing his backstory about what happened long long before this story starts presented in such a grounded way was something I never thought I would enjoy as much as I did but here we are with this being one of my favorite parts of the entire manga.

2) The identity of the person behind Beatrice the Golden(/Endless) Witch and how her in canon story became what it is now.
Through the above mentioned carefully crafted backstory of our culprit we get one of the most graceful and respectful ways to reveal and resolve a mystery ever, both to the readers as well as to the characters in the story while giving so much focus to JUST the one character and her connections to the "magic world". The way they were put to rest through the battle with Will (man I like Battler but I wish we had more of Will in the previous parts too) with them going through all the games played and reveal each and every answer to how it all was done is probably my absolute favorite thing all of the parts up to here have done so far, and I've come to love a few of the characters, especially the servants much more than I did before.

3) The Truth about the incident on Rokkenjima of October 4th and 5th 1986.
Well, we got this one mostly through Ange and Lion put at the end of Requiem and the only thing I gotta say is: Damn, how can the part that is probably the most grounded in reality and the calmest also be the most f'ed up of the whole thing with the tea party chapters at the end there.

Now to not have this portion end up too long, the last thing I'd like to say about the characters, that is in general and not limited to this part, is that I wish that not all the parents or parent figures would be such over the top a-holes or kinda just bad parents, like how F'ed up is it that the best parent figure (aside from the servant Kumasawa) is the guy who banged and had a child with his own daughter. Think about that for a moment; and with a please never change, Japan, never change I also bestow a score of
10/10 for the characters in this part, simple because it managed to absolutely deliver on everyone it focused on.


ART:

The art is still my good and precious Umineko art and now, unlike Part 4, I get to have my magical black and "golden" background whenever the scenes outside of the gameboard play again so I am rather happy about that. Without much else to say, it is not the best art I've seen in manga but it is pretty high up
9/10

To stay in the technical aspect I also listened to the OSTs for this part too which is surprisingly amazing, yet much much calmer than its predecessors and I had a great time reading while listening to it, obviously not to the right track for every corresponding scene but hey, still.

ENDING/CONCLUSION:

Now one of the things I always take into my rating of anything I watch and read is the ending, or the conclusion, of the story being presented to me. Despite this not being the actual ending of the entirity of the story I feel like this did an incredibly good job answering most of the questions that have been set up over the course of all of the previous parts and with the ending we got with Battler coming back in again for Ange, I am very curious on what Episode 8 is gonna be, because I have literally zero clue as to what I should expect, also given that it is many readers' favorite part. So with me gushing on about this for basically all this review, I'll give the conclusion to this one a
9/10
though I personally still can't wrap my head around why so many people love Bernkastel, maybe I'll know by the end of part 8.

ENJOYMENT/EMOTIONAL IMPACT

I think by now you all now that I absolutely love this manga, and as much as I want to give this aspect a full score, because I simply cannot connect in any way with a lot of the parents characters and especially not with Bernkastel the Witch of Miracles I have to subtract at least a few points for this here.

Overall my score for Requiem of the Golden Witch comes down to a 9.5/10, given that it is far better than most of the previou parts and only topped by Alliance which I overall also gave a 9.5.

I am very curious to see what awaits me in Episode 8 and how this whole thing ends, but until then (which will probably be in the next 2 days given I read this one in the span of a bit less than 3 days) I bid you adieu and wish you all a belated happy new year 2022

NOTE- THIS REVIEW IS FOR THE WHOLE OF UMINEKO EXCLUDING EP 8
This review might come of as a bit amateurish because i am not really a good writer, but i am still writing this review because I absolutely love Umineko. I just want to write down my thoughts on this topic.

What makes Umineko unique from the other media I have consumed is the way it tackles its themes. Usually in stories , the themes are apparent and can be easily gobbled up by the readers.Because the themes are spoon fed to the reader, some have little to no attachment to the story. However in ... Umineko, the readers must carefully follow the story as the theme/nature of the story can be easily missed. This effort put by the readers makes them emotionally attached to the story.

Umineko is all about questioning and theorising. If you're put off by this, then I do not recommend you this manga/visual novel because the answers to the story aren't explicit. Umineko uses metaphors to convey its themes and answers. Catching these metaphors can be easy provided the readers come up with their own theories. Of course, there are cases where the theories do not match with the truth. This is fine because the language used to convey these metaphors is in common with the theories the readers come up with.

what makes me appreciate this story even more is its answer arcs.The answer arcs recontextualize a few scenes in the question arcs. With the new context that is provided in the answer arcs, the readers can see the character interactions in a different light and make more sense of a certain events.

In conclusion, Umineko is story that requires commitment from the readers. It can be tiring to be committed to such a long series, but believe me the pay off is worth all the effort. Even the readers who do not like umineko still have an opinion on this story.That is to say, it leaves you with a lasting impression which is either good or bad.