Tag: Umineko no Naku Koro ni

Analysis

Hyouka and Mystery

I’m surprised at the number of people who don’t like Hyouka when the primary complaint about it is exactly what makes it special. The first few episodes make it clear that it’s an unconventional mystery series–a light mystery, you might say, aimed towards the light novel audience. But what struck me about the show right away, and what a lot of people seem to hate about it, is that it deliberately ignores mystery’s partner: suspense.

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Analysis

In Defense of Furudo Erika

[kl]

So, Erika might not be the most popular character in Umineko no Naku Koro ni. I can understand that. I suppose the shippers will always fawn over the servants and their respective pairings, or Battler’s and Beatrice’s mysterious bond. Pitting her against the entire When They Cry universe, she’s destined to lose to the classic niipah~, even if such thoughts are wrong.

Even so, Erika Furudo was the first character aside from Battler and Beato to make a strong impression on me, and she quickly earned herself Waifu Status for the WTC universe. The girl is worthy of more than people give her credit for, and here’s why.

(While this post contains spoilers, it has nothing to do with Umineko’s plot and it doesn’t matter if you agree with me. Think of it as a fanboy analysis.)

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Analysis

Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru and Ryukishi07’s Sly Narrative

[kl]

Good old seakitties. It’s been the talk of the internet for years, the reason why half of the English-speaking community patrols Witch Hunt’s site, waiting for the progress counter to increase by one percent. I’ve tackled the story before; to summarize, my initial impression was that the Ushiromiya family had to overcome their hardship in order to break free of Beatrice’s curse, and my theory after the question arcs was that magic was more relevant for its thematic significance as a metaphor than as an opponent to logic. I’m glad to know that some portions of my original line of thinking still hold true: “without love, it cannot be seen”, which has been at the back of my mind since the beginning. Now that the Golden Witch has gone through her End and Dawn, it’s time to put my brain to the test and see if I can make sense of the strokes on this piece of art that only appear to be abstract from up close.

(This post contains spoilers from ep 1-6 of the visual novel)

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Analysis

White Witch, Black Witch – The ‘Magic’ of Umineko no Naku Koro ni

[ayko]

Ryukishi07’s Umineko no Naku Koro ni has been the talk of the internet for at least a year. With spoilers flying left right and center, there aren’t many anime fans who haven’t at least heard of Battler Ushiromiya’s series of chess games against the witch named Beatrice. I wrote about the first episode when I read it, but having finally completed and digested the first complete game, I think it’s time to revisit my old theories and provide a new assessment of what the story is about and where it’s headed. Brace yourselves; Rokkenjima does not follow the laws of the rest of the world.

(This post contains spoilers from episodes 1-4 of the visual novel)

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Community

12 Moments of Anime #7: The Golden Witch and the Sun Goddess

The Golden Witch[鴉子]

Ah, When They Cry. What would we do without you? We’d all be slightly more sane, probably, but we’d also have missed out on an innovative and suspenseful story that goes beyond the proverbial locked room and doesn’t pull its punches until it’s too late.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni was a great show, and I’m sure it was seen as unique when it first aired. It’s hard to not feel disconcerted after being treated to a full serving of killer lolis, complete with a bloody hatchet on the side. Along the same lines, Umineko no Naku Koro ni really took off in 2009 with the development of the story in the games released in Japan, the speedy translations of Witch Hunt, and the controversial anime adaptation.

In addition to providing the same mind-bending mysteries and psychological intensity as its predecessor, Umineko also benefits from its setting as an apparently unoriginal murder mystery. The legend of the Golden Witch has the same foreboding atmosphere as Higurashi‘s Oyashiro-sama, but the excitement rises when Battler starts tearing apart the whodunnit tropes one after the other and the audience is left, often literally, at the edge of their seats. There’s no way Ryukishi07’s latest sublimely sinister web of mysteries won’t go down in anime and visual novel history as one of the most innovative and engrossing in its genre.

– – –

As for the Sun Goddess portion of the post title, a certain efficient Amaterasu has been turning heads this year in the VN community. Their first notable achievement is that they work quickly – some of their patches were released before I even knew what they were working on, and NNL openly praised them for their efficiency at some point or the other. Suffice to say, they’ve probably also been producing quality translations otherwise someone would have picked up on it.

However, Amaterasu also had an interesting idea going for a few months where they ran polls to determine which games they should take on next. Of course, we all know how that turned out, but the fact that their reputation as translators grew to the point that their poll would be the talk of the community and the subject of cheating and trolling says something about their rapid ascent to the top. While I do appreciate their initial philosophy of letting the fans decide what gets translated, I also have faith in Ixrec’s judgment and I expect their future projects to live up to their name. The visual novel translation scene is still painfully barren, to the point that games like Love Plus and Muv-Luv often act as an incentive to start learning the language, but it’s groups like this that remind me that the scene is constantly growing, and I’m sure they can keep it up in the coming year.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Editorial

Premature Ramblings on the When They Cry Tradition

When They Cry

Ryukishi07 is somewhat of a god in today’s anime fandom. Though he’s been writing professionally for less than a decade, his When They Cry series has become one of the most recognized franchises across the subculture, appearing everywhere from spoilerific 4chan threads to bad YouTube AMVs. Though it feels like it’s been a lifetime since then, it was only a few years ago that I first felt the horror and masochistic adoration for the anime adaptation of Higurashi; and since then, the name “Ryukishi07” has been synonymous in my mind with “crazy but awesome.”

Anyway, after finally giving in to the pressure from the internet, I found time to start playing Umineko no Naku Koro ni (which, interestingly, makes seagulls seem almost as dramatic a background motif as cicadas). So far I’ve only finished the first episode, so what follows will be a bit of rambling on my part (and it spoils the two Higurashi seasons as well as the first episode of Umineko, so beware). Since most of you know more about the story than I do at this point, I won’t bother speculating – instead, I’ll try to explore the beginnings of an idea on Ryukishi07’s original structure and recurring themes that make all the difference in an otherwise unoriginal genre.

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