I'm in agreement of what Das said. Thus is why it's inevitable for this and the Higurashi series to be set apart from one another.
I would like to think that the necessary buildup shall be implemented during the latter parts as the mysteries get solved one by one in forms of flash blacks, more or less similar to Higurashi's style in more ways than one. If its titling (I-I, I-II, I-III) would imply anything, it definitely has got something to do with the order of things. As far as I'm concerned, the first three episodes as part of the first verse(volume, chapter, or whatever you wanna call it) which I'd refer to as the "Blind Spot" verse, was intentionally directed to look, sound, feel, smell, taste, seem that way from the viewers' perspective.
Das wrote...
ep 3 killed off one of the most promising ones for me
Even though I had seen it coming early on, I do share the same pain.
Das wrote...
I'm still enjoying the show (watching in the middle of the night using headphones helps) but I'd really appreciate if it'd skip on weird face closeups and focus on some character buildup instead.
In my case, I watch it late at night without a care if anyone else outside the house could actually listen-in to it. Atm, my primary joy is set on figuring out who's gonna die next halfway through each episodes and seeing their corpses afterwards, to prove my guesses right.
As for the closeups, instead of wasting it on Battler and Maria's stupid mugs, they'd be better off using it on the more brutally murdered characters and maybe on Jessica's certain anatomy parts.
Before I forget that aside from the family's awfully fast and ludicrous coping recovery rate, did anyone else find that old hag's laughter, in the part where they were discussing about Beatrice's existence, disturbing? I can't tell if they're trying to make us believe all of these stuff as a part of the entire crazy and bizarre shit that's been happening but I still find it odd and very awkward. Actually, that entire scene became even more of a nuisance when Maria entered the picture. (fucking loli who wants to be the center of attraction vs Battler and his silly deductions, who is in fact just another attention whore)