Story: The story of Umineko is just as Higurashis really complex and seems to quite equal to it. But as soon you reach a certain episode you might realize, that it is not!
The story takes place on an island called Rokkenjima. One day the head of the rich Ushiromiya family, Ushiromiya Kinzo, invites all his children and grandchildren to come to his island. Here the actual story is going to get started. After a bit of talk and backgroundknowledge, some people get brutally murdered. Soon it turns out, that those shouldn't stay the only ones getting killed. One after another the whole supporting and even the main cast gets wiped out. The end? No. Not even close. As you might have guessed the whole thing works the same way as Higurashi does and different archs continue this slaughter in different ways.
The whole story has a heck of a lot of twists but it sometimes fails in keeping you concentrated and you might get a bit confused about how everything worked out this way.
8
Characters: The whole character list for this Anime is far too long to list everyone here, so I'll just name the few that get the most screentime, which are Ushiromiya Battler, who is the one that has to solve the whole riddle. He is more of a fighting style character, but does lose his confidence sometimes, which makes him a bit more human.
The next one is the golden eternal witch Beatrice, which is a cruel witch, that kills everyone for the sake of her revival. She is the opponent of Battler and is our typical psycho-antagonist.
The supporting cast is as I said earlier really big, with it holding every single bit of the Ushiromiya Family and their servants. They are giving a lot of careful attention to them though, explaining a whole lot of background, which makes everything much more deep.
8
Art: The art isn't really a master piece. It is well done for it's time but by now quite aged. The character design, does look good if you compare it to the original one (which I saw on some pics). I mean...seriously the original one was crap.
6
Sound: The Sound of Umineko does always fits well to the tone the Anime does currently have, but never is somewhat memorable. I found myself listening and singing with the Opening many times though. Espacially the ending always made me hyped for the next episode. The Opening just fit really well to the whole show (even though I liked Higurashi's more at this point)
Enjoyment: If Umineko no Naku Koro Ni lacks one thing it is continuity. There are many points, that just make you go "wtf? What just happened?" If you aren't prepared for some oddly placed Shounen scenes and some random fanservice (it is not much though), that sometimes don't really fit the show's theme, than you will be really surprised by this (at least I was). There were points in the show where I almost sopped watching during an episode due to boredom.
On the other hand, there were also parts, that hooked me so much, that I actually jumped out of my seat (I mean...literally). Combined with the ending that effect was even better.
7
Summary: In total, the whole plot of Umineko is really interesting. It has a good idea, has a lot of good characters and a heck of a fanbase loving the VN. But as we know DEEN, they like to disappoint us whenever we are expecting the highest. They had many points, were they executed it brilliantly but also many points, were they did it just as poorly. It got me hooked and it got me bored. So I give it in total a 7/10
