Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Episode 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch
Umineko WHEN THEY CRY Episode 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch

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It's strange that there are no reviews for this manga. So let me explain why this episode of the story stands out more than the previous two and deserves 9/10.

Story - 9
The plot continues to show the great confrontation of minds, but in this episode we receive something slightly different. Instead of focusing only on battle where Beatrice and Buttler are trying to defeat one another, story provides us with Eva's and Beato's past. Without going to spoilers I want to say that their backstories are key features of this episode, because we get explanation of characters' motivations. This leads to a huge development of ... the overall story, where readers have to deal with plot twists.

Art - 8
Just like in the other episodes art is very good. Emotions of despair, fear, horror and madness are drawn in way that you will get shivers. There was a moment, where I turned over the page and got scared.

Characters- 8
Characters are interesting as always: Charismatic Buttler, foxy Beatrice, ambitious Eva and etc. You get attached to them pretty quickly. And also we get development of those characters, which really makes your reading experience more enjoyable.

Enjoyment - 10
Personally, I really enjoyed this episode. It gave me sleepless nights, because I wanted to know what happens in the next chapters (thanks to cliffhangers).

Overall - 9
I think it is a fair score for such nice experience. I can't wait to read next episodes. If you read this review without being acquainted with the Umineko No Naku Koro Ni series, try to give it a chance. It will definitely leave you enjoyed.

Thanks for reading.

Banquet Of The Golden Witch .

The 3rd installment of the Umineko series and an episode which is more enjoyable than the previous ones in many ways .

Story - 8

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON ??????????????????????????


That's probably what a completely new reader to this would ask on more than one occasion .Which is pretty understandable .Weird "furniture" being summoned with absolutely no explanations .No answers to the matter of what exactly "witches" are and no proper bearing of the situation as a whole being given by the author .
...
It is fucking lovely .

Okay so I might seem pretty biased since I've already finished it (the entire series) but I'm really not .Umineko is a weird story you see so when ,as a person who's finished it , read through and see the "extremely" subtle foreshadowing and clues I can't help but smile to myself as I read .The weirdness is not a bad thing though .Stuff like that gets revealed later so if you judge this chapter individually then you're being unfair .Umineko has to be seen as a collective series even though it's broken into parts .

My lord the plot twists in this are amazing .

So wonderful and so unexpected .If I want to teach someone how to troll I'd tell them to go read Umineko .The approach to solving mysteries is very intriguing as well .Various concepts like "Hempel's Raven" and "The Devil's Proof" being applied to the point of abuse (which isn't a bad thing at all) .

If I were to have a problem with it it would be that the story is sort of hard to follow a times .There's a point near the middle where an explanation of the epitaph (you should be well acquainted with this by now) seems to be slightly hard to follow even as a rereader .I understood what was being said but it didn't seem to stick .As though understanding one part of the dialogue would mean that to understand the next one you'd lose the current understanding you have .

Slightly hard to understand what I'm saying isn't it ?Well ,reading it would give you a better idea .It's hard to put into words .

But it was okay and it was only for a few moments so I'll let it off for that .

Art - 9

I've read other reviews on this series and to be honest I'm amazed when I see people rating Umineko's art so far a 6 or 7 I mean....

Is there any other manga that does panel arrangement as well as Umineko ?
NO .

Is there any manga that does troll expressions as well as Umineko ?
NO .

Is there any manga that can do shocking page transitions as well as Umineko ?
NO .

NO .No to all of those questions .The art itself even without all that is pretty damn decent .Too decent .How do you not clap for it ?It perfectly represents the emotions so well this thing should deserve an award ...

Okay so let's talk about the bad stuff about the art .Sometimes it feels a bit over the top with it's expressions .Some panels (few if I might add) also seem to have less work put in them than others .There's also.......................................................................................................................................................................................

Nope there isn't anything else .That's pretty much it .There aren't any other problems with the art .You all should be bowing down to the paperback that you bought or your computer screen .

Character - 8

We have some cool moments for Kyrie and Rudolf who were killed off too early for any character expansion in the previous episodes .A bit of Kyrie's past is expanded upon as well .I must say that the Ushiromiya family has some badass members .

The main focus of this episode though ,is Eva Ushiromiya ,eldest daughter of the family .She does her part quite well (especially at the end when she trolls someone) .Her background and reason's for disliking Klauss are all shown in this episode .

"It's useless .It's all useless"

Why is it that I find myself smiling whenever Battler says this line ?When you add this kind of powerful quote with an awesome panel/page transition and amazing art then you'll know that some shit is going down for real .

Beatrice is as wonderful a troll as ever and we get a small glimpse of her true nature at the end (after one of her glorious moments though) .She takes an odd ,refreshing turn in character during the middle of the episode as well .

Enjoyment - 8
Well this is pretty funny .

I rated this an 8 before writing this review but now that I'm done writing so much cool stuff I have this urge to go back and rate it a 9 instead .Only the knowledge of the glory that is Episode 5 can hold me back .

Also this review is spoiler free so don't worry about anything that seems like a spoiler .It isn't .

Now that you've spent three minutes of your life reading my ode to Umineko if you don't upvote this review and immediately add it to your PTW I'll get mad......

One of the main ways to create a mystery is to not recognize your own limits, to advance as intensely as a ferocious predator and still have the flight instincts of a herbivore. A well-aimed good story is seldom built straight from start to finish, but first a blueprint is created to determine its function. The finish line is built right after the starting line and so the author just needs to do his best in this crazy marathon.

That said, Umineko shows itself to be a rising line of quality and just like an investor seeing his company's profit soar, all that's left is a ... happy leap for such a high and pleasurable bet.
And speaking of betting, no matter how much money you lose, as long as you have a path laid out and written down in painstaking calculations, your failure will become your future success. Umineko part 1 seemed too biased, an exaggerated confidence for little demonstration, its second part however shows us that even in failure there was a reason, which was not to fight for something useless, but as a strategist who creates failure to divert his attention until that the surprise attack arrives, and well... We've reached Umineko part 3, haven't we?


About the mystery/story, the arguments are expanded in a more logical way as the puzzles collide in a way that is as intense and fun as bumper cars until they are incorporated into a logic consistent with interesting theories applied in this field. logical. Going back a little bit, there's a good build with wordplay and mystery preludes that finally reach its afterword... Or is it just your interlude? How a movie with a hyperbolically extravagant ending full of explosions and flashes that would hit-kill an epileptic, so, feeling that something is missing, after looking at the length of the movie, you find that there is still 3 more hours of duration!? Anyway, what I mean is that the author understands the vision of a reader, and this is an extremely precious essence that every mystery must have, after all, what manipulative technique is absent from the understanding towards the next? It's a corrupt kind of empathy, but perfect for an intersection as lunatic as this!!!

The Builds can range from "massive" wishes (Hoho, that works fine here) to small bumps in each character's arguments... It might seem biased as at first hand, small clues look like they'll go in 1000's of possible places, but in fact there is a great connection with time. In general, we have the witches and the epitaph that work with the future, full of tips for the reader to understand the future plot twists coming from a greater plan, what represents the author's ideals and the famous mysterious phrase "That fog that was there the whole time and no one noticed", further embodying the mystery. Not satisfied, going directly to the mortal plane, we have humans who link to the past, usually these giving clues about the complex relationships and feelings of each of the victims and culprits.


Those who suffer under the pressure of all these mysteries are none other than the victims. Expanding even further, we have the characters in general. Here many of its incongruities are part of a larger project, as already shown in part 2. Writing is also amplified as well as empathy and with that, we can create an interesting link for each of the problems and psychopathies apparent in this present, but it wasn't enough to rescue what was already lost.......


Umineko can definitely gloat over her mystery and how the journey between parts was chock full of hints, but it's ridiculous to think how incongruous some characters are. No, it's not right to specify this, so let's just generalize that all characters are doomed to commit ridiculous actions for the tiny cracks in this subtle, imperfect paper cut.

Yes yes... Some characters actually proved to keep some dark secret, but there are still certain annoying incongruities that are not explained, even looking at macro, micro, virtual simulation and among others. So we have some forced and pointless actions, some characters forgetting about their past feelings and falling into ridiculous pieces (Battler...... You're chad, but stop that shit!) and some personality issues continue.. The time frame for suffering is always overcome very easily, which breaks the reasoning even more, as it is as if the construction of feelings was interrupted, evidencing their own lack of control and attention. This ends up taking away a lot of literary value that a certain sentence could have, almost as if laughing at human complexity and saying that any spark of trauma could be suppressed after 5 seconds of dialogue.


Problems are included in the characters in a majority, but not total way, as we also have the script with problems

Don't get me wrong, it was fun to travel through these literary timelines that connect in an intense way, sometimes so intense that they generate a kind of epiphany to meet other paths or just generate an insecurity when bumping into a solid mystery that reveals itself as thick as cement and at the same time as delicate as paper.
However, these little temporal wordplays also seem to leave lines out of place, like a skillful geometry teacher mistaking the angles where the points should intersect.... More specifically, we call this incongruity.

Obvious battles where the result is depressing or some repetitions that only make the reading more tedious work as annoying counterpoints... Being even more rigorous, there are some small plot twists that come out of nowhere without any logical preparation, they are just given suddenly, almost like the typical stupid fight between omniscient beings that appear out of nowhere with a completely fictional action, always ending with "I predicted this", without any preparation behind it (Take for example the first battle between golden witches)


As an addition, we couldn't forget about the "thiller" horror that accompanies the mystery... The horror here still tries to be as caricatured as possible while covering itself with gore, which can sometimes be extremely superficial, even a creative way to introduce a narrative horror. . However, as much as there is a certain improvement over its previous episodes, the horror still seems like a comic duel of faces in which you can get 1 or 2 laughs. It definitely has its tense moments, but even these are still pretty weak... By the way, don't expect a psychotic break or a scary creepypasta, as it's more possible to get the opposite of that.


Anyway, not to close with a bitter taste in my mouth, I weave my last compliment before a summary.... This time, Umineko expands more on her previous philosophies, to the point of bringing infinite beauty in this limited life. Contradictory concepts collide in such a paradoxical way that they find their own meaning, even if in another reality, thus assuming the pure and beautiful metamorphic antithesis of paradox, like a butterfly ready to reach the horizon, and after all, what would this conflict be if not a clash between illogical truths? Shit, just as contradictory, but that's exactly why it's fun to think about!



STORY: 8 (Although there are some inconsistencies, the story was very inviting and became a success in what it set out to do, so I think it's a fair note... Besides, we still had room for some philosophy and depth, so I really believe it was a work Well done)

CHARACTERS: 7 (Interesting, especially on the part of witches and their meanings... Unfortunately it's not more than that, because it's still irritating to review some characters' actions and the gaps left by them. As a vote of confidence, I can say that there was a good job of dismemberment and on their own problems..... By the way, are Kyrie and Rudolf cyborg spies bursting with testosterone? I just don't understand their strength and how contradictory it seems)


ART: 7 (I'm glad to see that the illustrator of part 1 is back... His art is really elegant and fits well with Umineko's setting. It has its counterpoints like lack of detail and predictable framing, but it's still pretty decent! By the way, he improved the incongruities of his art, since in part 1 there were a lot more mistakes)

FUN: 8 (Self-explanatory)



I bow my head in reverence to the unseen fantasy, accepting faith and what they call rational. I put my knees in reverence to a well-engineered mystery and finally, I chant my prayer, carrying in each of my palms, a truth, I contract them and join them so that they never let go, allowing the two to coexist without destroying the finite space that hands could not cover.