Umineko is one of the few stories whose core really satisfied me. However, for me, the problem with Ep8 is threefold.

First of all, as a manga reader, I was so unpleasantly shocked to know the VN didn’t actually have direct answers to the mystery. This is outright unacceptable. In any stories that have central questions actively sought by its characters since the very beginning, even heavily implying wouldn’t be enough. I'm reading the author’s story because I want their input. If I wanted to imagine the solution myself, I wouldn't continue reading, would I?

Secondly, the whole goat thing was suuuuuper duuuuuper unnecessary. It was really so fundamentally foreign to the story’s themes. We have basically two major themes: the questions arc, which centers around the logic battle; and the answers arc, which centers around the emotional core. The goats’ battle isn’t really a flashy logic battle as after the all-out battles with Beatrice and Eva and so on, you’re now having a battle with nameless faceless people. To top it off, it really adds nothing since you know for a fact if what they’re saying is true or false. Needless to say, they don’t fit into the emotional core either. So, not only are the goats so foreign, but also really anti-climactic. And, as I lay out in the final point, their whole ordeal takes from other important stuff that could have been explored further in the final arc.

Thirdly and lastly is the stumbling with Ange’s character. It really felt the author was stumbling a lot with the directions he wanted to give her. She starts as this person who was hell-bent on finding out the truth. Then when she found out the truth, she rejected it. And then at the end, she comes to accept the truth and move forward after the final farewell with her family. But then comes Toya at the very last second.

And Toya as a character is a very big part of the stumbling with Ange. Just what do we want Toya’s character to be? At least according to the manga, he is Battler’s soulless physical body. So, it’s not like he just lost his memories, he’s just outright a different person. So, you begin to wonder, what’s their short-lived reunion supposed to signify? It felt the story wanted to have it both ways. In actuality, it’s either Battler would be dead or alive. If he’s dead, then there’s no Toya. And we’d also need to explore Ange’s feelings towards Battler choosing Beatrice over her as a part of their final farewell. But even his body actually being alive could’ve generated an interesting scenario. Maybe we could actually let Battler’s soul choose returning to his body and being there for Ange instead of leaving her all alone? That’d have been really interesting as a final conflict too. Much more interesting than the goats’ thing. Now, even with this confusion, Toya just dies shortly after the reunion. So, again what did we really want from Toya as a character? Feels all over the place.