The only part of Ciconia I've actually read was some preview snippet and it was some of the dumbest shit I've ever read in my god damned life. So not-Tomitake(dude he's referencing past characters again so clever) goes to talk with that hacker guy, and we get Ryukishi not understanding how computers work in the slightest (does the funny color virus modify files directly or just mess with the display? or both? what does it do with compressed files? can you really account for every single possible file format that might have some kind color data in it? what if it's not stored in rgb but in cymk or something else? jk computers are magic lol), more dual personality autism (dude having a internet haxxor persona is just like parallel processing or whatever the fuck and also shkanon, that wasn't a dumb plot twist at all lololol) and then not-Tomitake yelling at the guy "why did you KILL DA BEE??" repeatedly which is also stupid anyway because it could have just been a programming kludge, that overwriting to the end of a color triplet was less work than singling out the middle then stopping. Well not with Ryukishi's understanding of computers and color data it isn't.
If this is what he thinks is worthy of posting as a preview to get people interested in Ciconia I can only imagine the rest of the work is just absolutely retarded dogshit.
Anyway, Umineko.
I was excited to see the next part of ep4 was a whole 2 and a half hours with no Ange. Fool was I, for that entire section has been nothing but shounen battle bullshit and misplaced comedy. George babbling about muh love Shannon and Jessica getting through to Kanon feels extra hollow knowing it's just the Shkanonborg going around shooting them.
The only thing of any possible value has been the interactions within the survivors group from characters who don't usually interact much, mainly Kanon, Krauss and Kyrie, Nanjo is basically just there and Shannon is... Shannon.
Also, where is Battler in all this? Just in his room sitting on his thumb? He could just peek out the window towards the rose garden and see George fighting a stripper and goats... or see him getting shot by Shannon, or whatever's happening. Or hear any of that. This is stupid. Actually, Meta-Battler hasn't shown his face this whole time either. How much time is this all taking, anyway?
You could easily improve this by having Kyrie's group routinely finding telephones along their path and calling Battler with updates; the absurdity of her conveniently finding these phones in a dungeon would itself be the first hint that they're actually staying in one place, or maybe moving around the mansion or something. Then Battler, even now armed with his knowledge from ep3 that fantasy scenes are bullshit, would need to come up with explanations for these calls, as he hasn't reached the level of enlightenment that everyone on the gameboard can feed him bullshit as well.
Also, the Shkanonborg would need to be in two places at once to kill both George and Jessica, or else one of them would have had time to wander around and screw things up, as Jessica even thought about doing.
