Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Kei Natsumi. Released in Japan in two and 1/2 separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Banquet of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Joker. Released in North America by Yen Press.

In general, I find that the Umineko manga does a bang-up job of adapting the original source. It can’t possibly have all the verbiage that the visual novels have, but it usually manages to include all the important points (something the anime adaptation was very good at avoiding), and it plays fair with the reader in regards to the mystery (something the anime didn’t even bother to try). Where the manga can truly stand up is when it dramatizes those moments in the VN where you really wish you could see more than just sprites on a screen, where you want some action and heartbreak.

Say what you will about Kei Natsumi’s love of exaggerated faces twisted to the extreme (Beatrice and Virgilia in the Golden Land comes to mind), she’s very good at laying out a page. There are lots of two-page spreads here designed to rivet the reader and keep them on the edge of their seats, the best of which is the moment when the fourth wall shatters. The last few Umineko ‘worlds’ have involved a meta world where Battler and Beatrice debate how things are being carried out while, on the island, the murders actually occur. The same thing is going on here, only Eva-Beatrice has ‘hijacked’ Beatrice’s game and is going around merrily torturing everyone.

Beatrice, at a low ebb after being yelled at by Battler for being uncaring and cruel, has been doing her best to stop the worst of these excesses, and when that fails she just straight up helps George and Jessica get a final moment with their loved ones, even at the cost of her life. It’s quite a character building moment for the Endless Witch, and Battler knows it. (Most of the shipping that exists in fandom started with this arc.) So, in the meta world, Beatrice asks if she’s redeemed herself enough to be Battler’s opponent. He notes she has, but that he’s not her opponent in this case… then reaches out, smashes into the island world, and grabs Eva-Beatrice by the scruff of her neck and drags her to him. It is *the* most badass moment in this volume, and beautifully handled.

(By the way, for those who enjoy being spoiled, Page 516 makes it clear that Kei Natsumi knows what’s really going on.)

Meanwhile, it becomes clear through most of this volume that Eva-Beatrice = Eva Ushiromiya, using the ‘witch’ identity to help commit murder. Why? DID YOU SEE ALL THAT GOLD? Some fans have trouble with ‘all that money’ as a motivating factor, to them, I recommend Higurashi, which is a lot more idealistic than this series. That said, some of the murders clearly are NOT the work of Eva, as her witch self points out to Battler – Eva couldn’t have killed Nanjo. In fact, none of them could have. So who did? Beatrice? Well, if Eva-Beatrice was Eva, then who is our Beatrice?

In the end, Battler (though he has improved greatly in his analysis) can’t get past this, and Beatrice sacrifices herself in order to stop Eva-Beatrice from winning the game. Thus they both end up in the Golden Land, which is essentially heaven. And it really points out all the difficulties with an idealized heaven that many people have if they look at it closely. In particular, Natsuhi and Eva hugging each other while despairing over their offspring marrying the servants is so horribly WRONG in every way you almost recoil at the change in their personalities. And sure enough, the Golden Land *is* false, a trap designed to make Battler accept witches. (How much Beatrice actually wants to go through with this trap is perhaps apparent in her faces right before she starts to cackle, which show someone desperately sad.)

Luckily, we have Ange coming to the rescue. Ignored in other arcs because she stayed home with a cold, almost forgotten by readers, Ange is older now and ready to kick Battler’s ass. And Beatrice’s as well, but most of this seems driven by a sense of jealousy and being left behind, which makes perfect sense. We do see the Ange of 1998 interacting with a dying Eva (who survived!), and she is at a point where she is the perfect pawn for Bernkastel to bring in to stop Beatrice. Of course, one wonders how much Bern is on anyone’s side…

By the end of this volume, I think even the most unspoiled should have a pretty good idea about the concept of Beatrice, if not the actual identity. And, just as Higurashi abandoned Keiichi in its 4th arc to focus on a new protagonist, so Umineko does the same, with Ange driving much of the next arc. Of course, that arc brings us full circle. At the start of this review, I raved about what a great manga adaptation can add to the source. With Alliance of the Golden Witch, we’ll find out what happens when a manga adaptation adds things you REALLY don’t want added to the source.

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Kei Natsumi. Released in Japan in two and 1/2 separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Banquet of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Joker. Released in North America by Yen Press.

In Umineko fandom, there are two manga arcs that are considered to be the absolute best at adapting the source and adding actual expressions and action, and Banquet is the first of these (the other is End, if you’re curious). The artist from the first arc is back, but this one gives her far more to sink her teeth into, with Beatrice seemingly getting replaced as people actually bother to… solve the epitaph this time around! Meanwhile, given the first arc was Natsuhi-heavy and the 2nd focused on Rosa, the cover of the 3rd arc should not surprise you…

Yes, that’s Eva biting her pinky on the cover… and yes, that’s also Eva behind her grinning insanely. Sort of. We get flashbacks at the start of the book to Eva as a teenager, dealing with being the smartest of the siblings but having a father who’s an abusive misogynist and a brother who realizes this is basically the only way he can ever have power over her. The flashbacks blend together with the present, as Eva arrives in 1986 for the Conference, and we see teenage-Eva stay behind, acting as sort of a ‘inner voice’ for Eva, driving her forward and giving her help/admonishment.

The First Twilight takes out all the servants (plus Kinzo), leaving us with the parents for a far more extended period than we’ve seen before. Which, if nothing else, reminds us once again how toxic this family is, even as they’re trying to hide from a killer. Speaking of that Twilight, we also meet a few new people, Ronove and Virgilia. Ronove seems like your typical ‘demon butler’ sort, there to give small hints, dole out tea, and be a bit too gay for battler’s liking. (It is worth noticing that Genji’s last name is Ronoue.) As for Virgilia, we see at the start that she was Beatrice back when the Beatrice we know was a young girl, and has been hiding inside Kumasawa until she emerges to chastise her former student. There’s a lot of double identities here, which is quite important as the series goes on.

Speaking of the Beatrice we know, there’s a lot of interesting things going on with her. She’s still really cruel and nasty, to the point where the omnibus ends with Battler slapping her after she laughs at the antics down on Rokkenjima. At the same time, she’s far less aloof and more likeable here, and I’d go so far as to say she’s even cute. This is also the first time I’ve really been able to buy the flirting that she and Battler do. We also get some backstory on her supposed history on the island; we see her as a young girl at the start, and later on a teenage Rosa runs into Beatrice imprisoned in Kuwadorian, Kinzo’s secret mansion on the other side of the island he created because he’s just like that. Sadly, Rosa leads her off the edge of a cliff (by accident, I note, she’s not an abusive mother just yet) and she dies. And Beatrice notes in read that she’s definitely dead down there. Curiouser and curiouser…

This arc has been described as “Umineko for Dummies”, as the fans apparently told Ryukishi07 that he made the first 2 arcs too hard to figure out what was really going on (except, well, “it was magic”, which they were reluctant to say). Ergo, this one really is a lot more anvilicious with its hints to Battler/the reader, describing the idea of Schrodinger’s Box as a way to avoid answering the “magic vs. human culprit” question in the first place, the use of ‘imaginary friends’ and identity theft, and Beatrice as a shared title. This culminates in Eva managing to solve the epitaph (though Rosa was close behind, give her credit), and finding the gold, which really does exist. As a result, she inherits the title of Beatrice… or rather, her teenage self does. And when her teenage self realizes she is unwilling to share the gold with anyone else, well, the murders take an even more grotesque turn. One might even go so far as to say that this game as been hijacked…

So again, if you’re looking for human culprits here, the obvious question is “Can I trust what I’m reading? And who can I not trust?” By the end of this first omnibus, you should have a pretty good idea. This is another good (and huge) adaptation of a fun and increasingly convoluted story. Will we get to sympathize with Beatrice even more next time? If so, which Beatrice will it be?

Also, Yen, you tried, and I appreciate the reluctance to use the fan version everyone knows already, but “Karub Kamy Crokatch” is no “Sucker Merry Barrels”. Love Natsuhi’s reaction, though.

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Jiro Suzuki. Released in Japan in two and 1/2 separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Turn of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press.

The Turn of the Golden Witch concludes, and takes a turn for the grotesque and humiliating. The cover chosen (at the last minute, if advance solicits are to judge) by Yen for the omnibus features Rosa, the last remaining Ushiromiya sibling, glaring suspiciously at the reader with her Winchester at the ready. Open the cover flap, however, and you’ll get a far more appropriate image: Beatrice leering in triumph at a naked Battler, bound in chains and with his naughty bits covered by golden butterflies. Until the very last minute, what happens here is nothing less than Battler’s complete defeat by the magic of the Witch and the power of fantasy.

The choice of Rosa as the adult viewpoint character, which was uncomfortable enough in the first omnibus, gets even more tortuous here. At least with Natsuhi in Vol. 1 we had someone we could root for and sympathize with, even if her haughty pride was all too visible at times. Rosa may be trying to protect Maria and the children, but it’s not nearly as noble. (Indeed, one has to be suspicious of why she alone survived, given all seven siblings and spouses were seen in the chapel the night before the “Happy Halloween For Maria”.) Her use of the ‘wolves and sheep’ puzzle is more or less an excuse to scapegoat the servants. It’s actually oddly surreal at the very end when she finally starts attacking the fantasy “goat butlers” who arrive to destroy everything in order to save her daughter – the scenes of her and Maria reaffirming their love for each other as everything goes to hell seems even more unrealistic than the flying stakes and light swords bandied about earlier.

As for the ‘meta world’ battler and Beatrice, Battler sometimes seems to gain an advantage – the Red Truth is rolled out in this volume (which Yen, like the Japanese tankobons before it, uses a different font on – colored inks cost money), and he’s very quick to figure out how to make it work for him. But the trouble is that his ‘proof’ is simply denial. There are no witches because I say so. Whereas the answer he’s avoiding is “There are no witches because someone I know and care about is guilty instead.” If you choose to treat Umineko as a mystery and not a fantasy, you have to assume that someone is killing everyone, and try to figure out why they’re doing it. Battler, who won’t even bother to find Who, certainly is nowhere near Why. This is why Beatrice subjects him to the ‘naked furniture footstool’ punishment, and parades him past an array of butlers (and a disgusted Bernkastel). It’s his low ebb.

This brings us to this arc’s Tea Party, which this time involves Rosa waking up and not realizing what’s going on. It has to be said, this is easily the most grotesque scene in the series to date – yes, it’s even worse than the Happy Halloween candy corpses – and reminded me a bit of the horror splatter films of Mario Bava. It’s easy to see why Rosa may say she hates her siblings and her daughter – she was physically, mentally, and emotionally abused as a child, and Maria is quite the handful. But much as she’s an abusive mother, and a spiteful sibling, deep down she really does love her family. This is why Beatrice’s waving their fates in her face is so grotesque – and why Battler is able to find the gumption to stop it. (Though I could do without his asking Maria to say ‘eat me’ to him in 10 years time – why does he always fall back on being a pervert?) Indeed, you’d almost think she did this on purpose just so that they could play another game…

Like Battler, the reader, to a certain extent, is rooting for the fantasy. The scenes with Kanon and Shannon battling the stakes (even if the stakes are, sigh, moe teenage girls) are really cool, and the entire sequence plays out in various ways as dramatic, tragic, and heartwarming. Reaffirming love and choosing to go out with a smile… there are some of our very best story cliches come to life here. That said, if the reader wants to continue to say ‘there is a realistic explanation for what happened’, this arc drops the most obvious way of figuring out what that is: don’t believe everything you see or read. Clearly, if this is realistic, some of what we saw here has to be imaginary. It didn’t really happen. So, what did happen? Did Rosa murder her siblings? I doubt she could kill all six of them without a fight. Perhaps the servants, who are highly suspicious throughout this? Aw, but they’re so nice! I don’t want Shannon or Kumasawa to be a killer!

This feeling of pleasure, intrigue and discomfort is what drives the Umineko series, and it drives Battler (and us) to play another game, so we can get closer to the truth. Even if that truth involves a witch. (Also, I want to read further to find out where the hell the Battler/Beatrice fans all came from… is it all hateship? Certainly Beatrice is at her most loathsome here…) Yen are taking a break until January, but then we’ll have two more omnibuses, and focus on a new family member – get ready to get inside Eva Ushiromiya’s head.

Oh yes, about the hidden tea party: 1) Lambdadelta seems to have the body of little Miyoko Tanashi (aka Miyo Takano) and her personality of Satoko Houjou. What a horrible combination. 2) Bernkastel basically doing Rika’s “mew” line further makes the listener raise an eyebrow at Ryukishi07 when he insists she’s not Rika. Certainly SOMETHING in her is Rika…