If it got a good anime adaptation, would it be placed in the top 10 of all time?

The issue with adapting Umineko to an anime, and the issue with its later VN iterations in general, is that visuals fixating on the action elements does in fact detract from the surreal nature of the work.
When a battle is described in the VN, it exists within the same relative space as everything else.
When it is done elsewhere, it then exists in a different realm with CGs and constant effects, and it becomes a jarring fixation.
The reason Stage works so well is because it is just as limited as the VN and so its battles continue to exist in the same overall relative reality.

But also, Umineko wouldn't work as an anime because it's primarily length discussions on solving a murder mystery an an anime can be, at most, 24 episodes a year right now. Even if you excise "unnecessary" parts (which then calls into question why you are adapting the work in the first place), you're still left with an absurd amount of material that is just talking. Talking over tea, talking over dead bodies, talking over breasts, it's all just talking with the occasional action scene. A proper Umineko adaptation would need to be another alternate take like Stage that uses the advantages innate to anime as a medium, but a studio that actually does that (like Shaft) isn't picking up a fucking When They Cry adaptation.

good adaption

500 episodes long

The issue with adapting Umineko to an anime, and the issue with its later VN iterations in general, is that visuals fixating on the action elements does in fact detract from the surreal nature of the work.

This is a very good point about the nature of books vs visual media as a story-telling method
A lot of people get into their head that movie > book since it has visuals and music so it's better right?
But that's just not the case since for many books the elements which the viewer's mind puts together are an intended part of the experience and trying to nail that down to ONE VISION (the film art director's) just detracts from it.
Not to mention the fact that any sort of inner thought is made awkward in a film. You can have a paragraph describing how seeing something made the protagonist feel this way or that in a book which if it can't be described through the visuals and music (as it sometimes can't) must either be an awkward monologue or just skipped entirely.
Umineko is a story that benefits from being a book to such a degree that straight-up animating it just doesn't make sense.

The anime itself is not far from being good, if only they could NOT skip some important parts. Probably because the story was not finished when it aired. Also, it would need more screen time to do so.

If it works well as manga, it can work well as anime

that uses the advantages innate to anime as a medium, but a studio that actually does that (like Shaft)

This is always how I envisioned a proper Umineko adaptation. Something like using copious amounts of Dezaki style split screens or changing art style for meta world events vs narrative world events, but that's a bit too small scale.

I think the most interesting a thing an Umineko adaptation could do is this:

One cour purely on the events of the case itself

OVA for the meta world analysis of it

Interrupting the events with the meta world stuff creates an inconsistent pacing in an anime and makes everything feel terribly dragged, but through focusing on just one thing, it makes the focus on the mystery element followed by a concluding analysis. Though for the Answer Arcs this would become far more difficult, both given those scenario lengths as well as how intertwined the narratives become at that stage.

If it works well as manga

It really doesn't.
The only people who latch onto the Umineko manga are mostly people who got filtered by the VN.

Higurashi was is and will always be better

Maybe if he didn't botch the ending

Good source material is forbidden to have a good adaptation.

Battler is a better protagonist than Keiichi.

this
higurashi and seacat retards read it and stop reading any other eroge to realize how shit r07's writing is compared to actually good stuff

Bullshit. The adaptation of Episode 8 arguably exceeds the emotional climaxes of the original VN through sheer effort and attention paid to each character's internal motivations and how they're depicted on page. The time for puzzles was over at the point it came out, and the pacing benefits significantly for the changes it made. I guarantee you that the manga will be used as the source as the team buttoning up the stage play adaptation gets to their finale.

I'll admit I do prefer the things the manga does with the very end of umineko as opposed to the VN's approach, but for the other 95% of it the vn is better

You just have to wade through 5 billion pages of inconsistent artwork and an intentional missing of the point so grand it completely changes the reading of the work and confirmed to me that R07 was a hack who only coincidentally made some good VNs.

The craziest thing about this series to me is that it still, to this day, manages to get mouth breathers hovering over it, seething, still infuriated that they were called out as the morons they are as they came to the ending and didn't understand why it ended the way it did. They posture and posture and form their identity around the fact that they're better off not having understood jack shit. Genuinely hilarious shit.

I disagree, the manga has a pretty good ratio, but a few of the mangaka who episodes were handed off too bit off more than they could chew. 1, 3, and 8, handled by Natsumi Kei, are exceptional and I'm partial to 5 by Akitaka as well. I can't blame them for parceling the work out though, this shit must have been a lot of work.

The ending is worse than AOT. actually the entire story after the Act 1 setup is bad.

Your ability to endlessly create headcannon is not the point of Umineko.

new anime means more art

more art means more lewds

more lewds means more me alone time with lia

more alone time between me and lia means keikaku

keikaku means dori

I love virgilia btw

YAMI WO KIRISAKU OH DESIRE

i unironically think someone who's just watched the anime has consumed umineko in a more authentic way than someone who's watching a streamer and his friends read it for them

Your ability to endlessly create headcannon is not the point of Umineko.

The mystery is the point, not the solution. For all this bluster for how Episode 8 is improved in the manga, you miss a point beaten into your skull throughout it. Even without that, Umineko Saku outright states that is the point with Our Confession and the catbox choice.

Im reading the manga also

God I love Erika.

That's more of a selfish wish than a point. All parties recognize it as foolish. Years after Saku, after the readers were given time to come to the truth an author intended, it was time to eschew the puzzles and trickery and focus on what a reader could take out of the mystery. And that depiction was left in extremely capable hands, to someone that went through the original material and came to understand the heart of the series itself.

That doesn't mean there's no meaning or nothing to gain from engaging with mystery. Of thinking flexibly to get through dire situations, of understanding the intent of what you're being shown. That is the attraction of Umineko, what pulls you through countless hours of material.

But for all the genuine criticism I've read of the manga, all I see is a desire to not let the mystery end.

The mystery and suspense is ruined without the self pacing of VN.

exceeds the emotional climaxes of the original VN

There's no way you reach the final scene and think to yourself "yup, these poorly drawn panels are way better than the VN"

Idk man I could go pick out a random screenshot of one of the witch fights in the VN and find something goofy too, but that doesn't seem like a good use of either of our time. I like both, mind you.

No because the source materiel is retarded slop

I have changed my mind and am now in favor of an umineko anime after you reminded me how desperately I want to see Erika animated