August Updates

Hi everyone!

I hope you’re all well. I’ve really enjoyed summer, but am starting to look forward to autumn in hopes that it’ll cool down a bit as London has been way too hot.

It’s been a few weeks since I uploaded the Japan ‘vlog’. It’s been a less popular upload which was to be expected between the length, lack of actual video for much of it and slight departure from my usual content, but it was a passion project I really wanted to complete for my own sake, and I’m hoping it will even have been useful for a few people. Now that it’s been a while since my trip, it was also a really fun way to reminisce, and made me so excited to go again, hopefully sooner rather than later. Still, the video took way longer than it should have, and it feels great to have moved onto a new project. It’s finally, finally Umineko time!!

I ran a poll a while back asking whether patrons wanted my next video to be on Chainsaw Man or Umineko, with the latter unsurprisingly coming out on top. I’ve been asked if I will/to make videos on Umineko pretty much since starting my channel. It’s always been the plan, but necessitated me re-reading the sound novel (it’s now coming up on ten years since I first finished it), and this was just never in the cards for one reason or another. Fortunately, things have lined up really well to shift my focus to this project now.

I’ve been in the induction period for my new job which has given me way more time and energy than I used to have, and it’s looking like it will stay significantly less busy and draining than my last job (which I loved but was very intense). Maybe because of this, because I was working on the Japan video for so long, or because I’ve wanted to get to Umineko videos for so long, I’ve been really motivated. I’m already coming to the end of re-reading the question arcs (though I made some headway with these earlier this year). As always, I’m taking notes as I go, which will form the skeleton of my video scripts. I’ve also been doing some other bits and pieces of research/background reading as I go. After the sound novel (including bonus content), I plan to read the manga (for the first time!), watch the stage plays and likely also re-watch the anime before I can get into writing the first video. As you can appreciate, this will all make for a lengthy process, but will give me all the material I need for what I expect to be multiple videos.

Making videos, for me, usually entails having a series (or film, etc.) I want to discuss, re-watching(/reading/playing) that series, and letting the video idea(s) take shape as I do this. Sometimes I have an idea of what I want to talk about before going in, but this is always subject to change and refinement as I go. With Umineko, I’ve always had a few key video ideas that I haven’t shared as I knew they could change, but they’re beginning to solidify through the re-read. So, while they might still shapeshift, these are my tentative plans:

·       The Role of the Woman in Umineko. This will likely be my ‘core’ Umineko analysis. This began as an idea in my head years ago that I’d like to talk about Natsuhi’s character, one of the most interesting to me when I first read the series. I was most interested in the exploration of Natsuhi’s role in the family as a woman and how this impacted her. This quickly expanded out into a plan to talk about all four of the Ushiromiya women from this angle, and then finally Beatrice and [redacted], and some of the themes and discussions most central to Umineko as a whole.

·       Ange Ushiromiya: The Weight of Truth. Very much a working title, but I also wanted to analyse Ange’s character and journey (one of if not my favourite in the series) and how it embodies some of the other discussions and messages central to the series (how do we overcome trauma, what does healing look like, what roles do the concepts of fact and fiction play in this). This was initially equally going to be a discussion of Bernkastel’s role in the story and how the two characters interact, and this will definitely come up.

In addition to these ideas, I have some other very tentative ones:

·       Is Umineko a sequel to Higurashi? This was going to be an exploration of how Umineko fits into the wider When They Cry puzzle, and its relationship to its predecessor. I’m increasingly thinking this may largely be able to be summed up in the Ange video, however.

·       A video on Umineko adaptations. I haven’t touched the Umineko anime since watching it while it aired after enjoying Higurashi, at which point I hadn’t read the sound novel, and am really interested to see what my experience of it is like now. As mentioned, I am also planning to read the manga and watch the stage plays both for the first time, which I’m sure will equally generate some thoughts, though I’ve no idea if I’ll want to make a video out of them. If nothing else, I was thinking to record and share live commentary on the anime re-watch as a Patreon exclusive, but stay tuned for more info on that.

I have no plans on the order I release these videos in, whether they’ll be back-to-back, or much of anything else yet. It’s even possible I’ll decide to collapse everything into a definitive Umineko analysis, but I doubt it. Still, hopefully it gives you a bit of an idea of what’s to come.

As you can see, I don’t expect to make as many videos on Umineko as I did on Higurashi, but then, I didn’t plan a good half of my Higurashi videos when I started my channel, so things could always change. I’m curious to know which elements of the series people would like to hear my thoughts on.

In terms of timing, my fairly ambitious goal is to get the first video on the series out this year. With the amount of prep work needed, I’m not 100% confident this will be achievable, but will be doing my best, and then it will definitely be less of a wait for the next video.

As you can probably tell, I’m really excited to finally be tackling this project and feel back in my element again. I’ve been waiting a long time to get my thoughts on this series out there.

Lastly, I’ll be doing my usual podcast on the Japan video so if there are any questions you’d like me to answer about it, please leave them here!

Speak soon!