Before watching this anime, I thought to myself: wow, another higurashi? must be pretty decent. And now I know that I was indeed very wrong.
If it wasn't for my personality - I don't like leaving anime unfinished - I would have dropped this anime at the beginning of the second arc.
So the story started off, like every other anime, setting up the environment and introducing the cast's relationships and importance to the plot. I would say, until the end of the first arc, it would've passed as a decent higurashi v.2. However, many things were vague as to why things happened the way they did in regards to the murders, so I continued to watch this anime, hoping that an explanation will come to give the audience a realization of what has happened.
Onto that "explanation" that this anime tried to pull off:
So there exists this witch named Beatrice that supposedly caused the murders, and she cannot be a full witch without everyone surrendering to her existence. And that is where the main character Battler, comes into challenge her because he denies it. At this point, the story gets good, as the mystery of the murders are supposedly cracked by Battler with intense logic and mind blowing but viable theories. Well, there ain't none of that in this anime until the final episode where he supposedly puts it all together from around episode 6 to 25, and literally sprouts bullshit that conveniently fits the pieces together.
From episode to 6 to 25, it is painful to watch because of:
- slow pacing
- confusion
- "wtf" moments - why does he/she have powers? Is he/she good or bad? What kind of punishment is this? Why is Maria watching a television episode of higurashi? (LOL)
- random flashbacks to the past
- conveniently trying to explain another bullshit created during the episodes.
As for the art, nothing spectacular, but there are some "gory" scenes that aren't really gory but nasty in a way... I'll leave that up to you to decide if you really choose to watch this.
One of the things that made me really dislike this anime was the characters.
It lacked any kind of character development (one could argue that Beatrice changed over a few episodes, but she really didn't, or about the girl that looks like Rin from fate/zero - she becomes a main character for a few episodes).
In addition, there were so many annoying characters, not because they act their roles badly, but because they had additional "Modus Operandi" (i.e. Maria's annoying "UuuUuu" and her laugh that scares you only at first but becomes overly tiring to look at, or Beatrice's laugh and her constant reminder to the audience that she is Beatrice, and the infamous "flip da chessboard")
Simply,
Uminkeo is a rip off Higurashi.
I think the producer was trying to put all kinds of genre into one anime (magical girls, martial arts, crime, mystery, horror, suspense, romance, time travel ... etc) and it clearly didn't work.
I would not recommend this anime to anyone, unless they specifically look for as MAL users put "a train-wreck"
