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Episode 8 is about per­sonal redemp­tion.  I voted for Eva because it seems that some of us read­ers owe her some for­give­ness.  Not say­ing her char­ac­ter is per­fect… but as  most lov­able char­ac­ters, she has her own virtue and faults.  She was mis­un­der­stood and denied of love after the inci­dent, yet her per­sonal prowess helped to build her busi­ness empire..  And for that, I respect.

Final rank­ing: #25

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To ful­fill Lambdadelta’s wish in EP8, here goes my vote.  Now, please give me a bag of candy for reward

Final rank­ing: #3

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The mys­tery of Beatrice’s mor­tal iden­tity is the heart of Umineko story, which, unfor­tu­nately, is frag­mented for­ever.   Clair not only is a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the rules of Beatrice’s games, but also rep­re­sents a good deal of mis­for­tune and imag­i­na­tion of the last descen­dant of Beat­rice Cas­tiglioni­who bears the same name.  Although her per­son­al­ity may be purely imag­i­nary, Clair’s real­iza­tion is the final piece of machin­ery out­side of the “cat box”, and with this, the cat box is complete.

Final rank­ing: #29

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Another char­ac­ter seem­ingly suf­fer­ing from iden­tity being split.  Apart from being most feared witch around, Feath­er­in­pos­sess dual rules of being both the “observer” and the “writer” of Beatrice’s sto­ries.  The con­cept of “observer affects out­come” falls nicely into the set­ting of Schrodinger’s kit­tens.  I am intrigued by the appar­ent age­less appear­ance of her real-world coun­ter­part; maybe we should attribute Feath­erin to be “Witch of Youth” :p

Final rank­ing: #53

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Though Rion is a new char­ac­ter almost exclu­sively for Episode 7, his (or her, or it, or what­ever) exis­tence is impor­tant as a pos­si­bil­ity of a Good End of the Ushi­romiya fam­ily.  Per­son­ally speak­ing, I would like to see less mys­ter­ies being left unsolved–apart from Rion’s gen­der, that is.  I also would like to con­sider such vague­ness is not solely for intro­duc­ing moe ele­ment but also hints for the pos­si­bil­ity of Kinzo and his daughter’s immoral off­spring being… male.  Fulfilling the “Wat­son” role in EP7 resulted Rion­be­ing “paired up” with Mr. Dine…

Final rank­ing: #10

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かわいいロリだから

Final rank­ing: #15

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One would say that it is pos­si­ble to fore­see an end­ing sim­i­lar to this from EP4 and before.  Although Bat­tler and Witch Beat­rice are the focus point which umineko’s story revolve around, I feel an inad­e­quate end­ing depicted in Episode 8 could, but did not, com­plete the grand con­struc­tion of their per­son­al­i­ties.  Yet, as actors to enact imper­fec­tion, my votes are for them.

I have decided to give my final vote to the Black Goats since the begin­ning.  I deeply believe that the poor goats are the most mis­un­der­stood enti­ties in Umineko… evi­dently shown in EP8.  Con­trary to the author’s words, the goats are not a blood­thirsty, love­less, and gore-mongering bunch.  The Goats are excep­tion­ally good lis­ten­ers.  They devoted their atten­tion when the author is telling the story, and then con­ducted heated debate among them­selves after each Episode.  Of course, the goats had no real con­tempt to the author, and by the very act of lis­ten­ing to the author’s story, the goats were pay­ing their respect to the author.

Yet for god-knows-why, the author’s para­noia has got­ten bet­ter of him.  Maybe because the author knows for every word of the mys­tery scenes in his story, he would have to explain the answer with a hun­dred words.  Finally, the author snapped.  His audi­ence is no longer sup­port­ers of his, but his ene­mies, sent by Satan of what­ever source of Evil; and in his imag­i­na­tion the goats are here to get him.  His gave in to this dark­ness, caus­ing him to spit venom in his story, jeer­ing at his lis­ten­ers in a des­per­ate attempt to hold on to the illu­sion of author­ity in his own story, which, iron­i­cally enough, had been safely in his dis­posal all along with­out danger.

And so the party ended bit­terly.  Of course, though the goats aren’t really sent by Satan for the pur­pose of drag­ging the author into Hell, they aren’t saints either.  Some praise the author for the won­der­ful story despite them­selves being demo­nized in it.  Some ful­fill their depicted role in the author’s story by shout­ing out how big of a fraud he is.  Some sim­ply shook their heads and tried to flush away the hor­ri­ble aftertaste.

Ergo, final vote of lamen­ta­tion is a fit­ting conclusion.

Final rank­ing: #39