Umineko no Naku Koro ni

Umineko no Naku Koro ni
Made By	07th Expansion
Format	Visual Novel, Anime (TV)
Anime Adaption	Studio Deen
# of Episodes	26

Genre

Drama, Mystery, Horror, Suspense, Psychological

Sum it up in a Sentence

A family conference in an island mansion isolated by a storm turns into a murder mystery where supernatural elements may be the cause.

Main Description

From the thread:

It is October 4th, 1986, on the secluded island of Rokkenjima. The head of the wealthy Ushiromiya family, Kinzo, is nearing death's door, and 11 of his family members have gathered to discuss how the inheritance will be divided up. Joining them are 5 servants already on the island and Kinzo's personal doctor. Thus, 18 individuals gather at the estate. Coincidentally, a typhoon arrives soon after, and the 18 are isolated on the island for the next 48 hours.

They are never heard from again.

Umineko (aka When They Cry 3 for the EP1-EP4 Core chapters and When They Cry 4 for the EP5-EP8 Breakdown chapters) is a murder mystery/psychological thriller in the same vein as Higurashi. If you are familiar with Higurashi's style and presentation, you will know what to expect here. Each episode represents a viewpoint of the events on Rokkenjima, with different events leading to different consequences and outcomes. Like Higurashi, a bizarre string of murders impact the characters and you are tasked with finding the culprit.

But it is not that simple. For on Rokkenjima there exists a legend. A legend of the Golden Witch, Beatrice. Believed to be Kinzo's benefactor and secret lover, some say she is the true master of the island. And truly...given the circumstances of these murders...it seems as if magic may truly be involved.

Your challenge is to deny the witch's existence, until the very end. Whether everyone lives or dies is of no importance to Beatrice. If she has gotten you to believe in her, then you have lost. It is a tragedy and fate perhaps even worse than Higurashi, for even if you deny the witch you may not be able to save everyone. Worse still, you will have to doubt the 18. It is eternal torture until you believe in witches.

How many will live? How many will die? Or will everyone die? Is the culprit one of the 18, or not? Is the culprit a "human", or a "witch"?

This is a battle between humans and witches.

If You Liked This, You Might Like...

• Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
• Gosick (Victorique is anti-Beatrice)

Personal Opinions

Vir

I find the story in Umineko is more compelling and focused than in Higurashi, but I find its anime adaption equally marred by poor choices by the director: The horror is over-stated, making it unintentionally funny or just boring. Establishing and developing the characters is sacrificed in order to fit in as much plot as possible, making the anime more of a chance for fans of the visual novel to see some of the scenes animated rather than making it stand on its own right.

Nate RFB

What made Umineko stand out to me was the sheer unconventionality of the whole thing. It wasn't satisfied with merely being a rehash of Higurashi set in the clichéd closed circle scenario of a remote island isolated by a storm. No, it instead choose use its setup as a murder mystery as a means to commentate upon and celebrate detective fiction, sometimes in an extremely meta fashion. When I look at the vast majority of the works coming out of Japan, whether it's anime/manga or video games, I see stagnation. I see elements and markets that are perfectly content to never try anything new or take risks. This is hardly a problem inherent only to Japanese fiction (see: Hollywood and its love of remakes/sequels), but just the same it makes those rare cases that try to stand out in weird ways all the more eye catching. I feel that Umineko, for all its apparent faults, is one such case, as it dared to tell a story that was bizarre, quirky, meta as hell, and perhaps most importantly almost wholly unique. I mean, how does one even truly describe Umineko's plot? The "murder mystery" aspect alone is a very compelling part, but it comprises such as small portion of the Umineko whole. In fact I don't feel there is one single easy way to describe the whole thing. Most people (myself included) came for the Higurashi connection and for the promise of more multi-chapter murder mysteries, but what has maintained their (and my own) interest was the ways that Umineko took those expectations and constantly played them against each other. This certainly won't work for a lot of people. Many saw the schizophrenic and haphazard ways the story jumped around its own mystery, often moving the goal posts as to what constituted an "answer", as intentionally stretching things out unnecessarily, meandering, and ultimately not providing the the satisfactory answers they strove to find. Indeed, your enjoyment of this story may very well hinge upon how you handle the twists and turns it throws at you in the early going, and whether you can accept the madness of Ryukishi07 as being well-crafted rather than madness for the sake of madness.

In terms of characterization, I do feel however that Umineko lacks the well developed cast presented in Higurashi. In Higurashi, pretty much every character with a sprite was developed sufficiently and compelling in one way or another. In Umineko, while the main players themselves are fascinating, the supporting cast isn't nearly as strong. But in of itself I think that is fine, when it is weighed against the plot as whole (which I believe to be a lot stronger) and the overall polish the rest of the story has. Musically, indeed, there is no question that Umineko is heads and shoulders above pretty much all other Visual Novels, let alone Higurashi. And the artwork, which was such a sore point of contention in Higurashi, has improved enough that I would dare say that it has a lot of charm and is no longer a true fault. Unfortunately that has not stopped people from getting into Umineko outright, citing "bad" artwork. To me, that's like complaining about Legend of the Galactic Heroes because of its "old" animation; its issues are so overstated and exaggerated it is hard to take such complaints truly seriously. Where were these people when Tsukihime, a VN I would put on the same level if not lower artistically than Umineko, got translated?

I guess this is as important a time as any to close on saying that the personal opinion I am writing of here is of course referring to the Visual Novel, and not the god awful anime adaptation which heavily neutered anything that was remotely interesting about the original story. Sure the basic plot is still there, but it reads like a cliff notes version with much of the uniqueness and insanity of the original stripped out. It's all but impossible to truly follow the train of thought of the mystery, which was already pretty out there in the original to begin with. To put it another way, there are already several plot holes created by the anime that would outright prevent a second season being made and further prevents the audience from actually being able to solve the mystery itself without copious amounts of outside help. And apparently for a change, the Japanese fans actually responded properly and denounced the series, resulting in horrible sales and torpedoing the chance of DEEN making a second season anyway. And this isn't even touching upon the music direction, which took one of the greatest collections of BGM ever seen in a Visual Novel and mishandled it at every turn, and the horrific moe-ification and over-sexualization DEEN applied as last-ditch efforts to drudge up sales. One needs only to track down the images of the limited edition DVD covers to understand just how far they had gone.