Backlog Dialogues

After an Umineko episode all about the relationship between the creator and the reader, what would be a better minilog than Zenshu, the 2025 anime that's all about misunderstood media and the power of love. Natsuko Hirose is a virtuoso animator, but she has never experienced love before and is struggling to bring it to the big screen as part of her first movie directing job! But bad clams contrive to isekai her to the world of her favorite movie, the depressing flop A Tale of Perishing, where she must awaken the power of animation to push back the void and fix the story!

Good to see you again, Child of Man. The story seems to have reached the point where the detective reveals the whole truth - and yet, instead of doing so, the truth is obscured from our eyes. From our vantage in the world of gods, let us consider the how and the why. It's time for the first godcast of the final season of When They Cry.

It's time once more to let our theater kid energy flow, because the Episode 5 Tea Parties are too important to cut anything. This one has it all - a defeated hero rising to claim victory, discussions on the relationship of trust between an author and a reader, and the most epic yap battle of mystery yet. We'll discuss it all next week in the godcast!

After Hideyoshi is murdered, Erika declares an early checkmate on Natsuhi and initiates a trial! The first part of the End of the Golden Witch finale contains a full court proceeding and lots and lots of trauma. It's the beginning of the end, so buckle in!

Oh shit the murders are still happening what the fuck! Battler wakes up to find everyone else in the cousin room dead, but that's the least of Natsuhi's worries as she learns Genji was also murdered and Krauss was kidnapped! As the rest of the family forces their way in to Kinzo's empty study, Erika turns to divine knowledge in the form of a small girl personifying the rules of Detective Fiction to try to corner the culprit once and for all...

Furudo Erika and Battler have solved the Epitaph! As they discover the hidden gold, Battler learns just how awful Erika's personality is as she describes herself as something that we are not keen to repeat in polite company. But strange things are still afoot on the island, as Natsuhi finds herself cornered both by the relatives trying to gain access to Kinzo now that Battler is the new head, and the strange man that keeps calling her...

Lambdadelta's game reaches October 4th, 1986, and what starts as a fairly normal game is swiftly diverted when Bernkastel drops a completely new piece on to the board - Furudo Erika, her arrogant jerk Detectivesona! And if that's not strange enough, Natsuhi is getting unusual phone calls from a young man claiming to be a child she murdered 19 years ago! As Battler can do nothing but observe, the pieces start to move in unusual ways.

We're back, and it's time to start unraveling this big mystery by working from the one answer we have - Kinzo is already dead and Natsuhi and Krauss are trying to hide it! Unfortunately, Beatrice is not able to game master, having become a silent captive of Bernkastel and Lambdadelta's treachery. What can we learn from this new game that Ronove describes as without love? And who the heck was that Rika-clone in the prologue?

We're bringing a second minilog to you this week, because before we go in to the part of Umineko focused on rolling out answers to the mystery, we wanted to have some fun discussing Rian Johnson's take on Cozy Mysteries, the Benoit Blanc Trilogy! (Netflix calls it the Knives Out Trilogy but that's silly, only one movie is called Knives Out.) We talk about the themes and structures of three very progressively minded mysteries, what we learn about the detective that solves them, and so much more.

Our final minilog of the season is John's favorite manga and the second minilog covering a Satoshi Mizukami work, Spirit Circle! We go in to this short but poignant, melancholy, and ultimately optimistic work about spirits locked in a perpetual battle through reincarnation. Fuuta just wants to get to know Kouko, the cute new girl in his class, but Kouko hates him due to the actions of his spirit seven lifetimes ago! Can this Boy meets Girl story reach an outcome other than Girl kills Boy?