Higurashi when they cry; Higurashi when they don’t
What have I been reading lately? If you guessed Higurashi When They Cry visual novels, you are absolutely correct. For those who don’t know (likely none of you??), the Higur...
Higurashi when they cry; Higurashi when they don’t
What have I been reading lately? If you guessed Higurashi When They Cry visual novels, you are absolutely correct. For those who don’t know (likely none of you??), the Higurashi franchise is a series of horror mysteries involving curses(?) and conspiracies(?) in a small Japanese village in the 1980′s. The franchise is quite famous for its scenes depicting grisly murders by various cast members who have potentially gone insane, but this is actually just the tip of what is a pretty gigantic iceberg. The visual novels were eventually adapted into popular manga and anime series, and each medium has managed to add more stories to the expansive franchise.
But what am I reviewing here? Over the past several months I read through the first four visual novels, which are often referred to as the Question Arcs of the series.
Onikakushi-hen – or Demoned Away Chapter
Watanagashi-hen – or Cotton Drifting Chapter
Tatarigoroshi-hen – or Curse Killing Chapter
Himatsubushi-hen – or Time Killing Chapter
These visual novels were all released on a single CD by MangaGamer, though you can also buy them easily enough as digital downloads from their website. For the rest of the Higurashi story, you need to also acquire the Higurashi When They Cry Kai bundle, which includes the four Answer Arc visual novels.
Perhaps I’ll start with a little background of my experience with the Higurashi mythos. I have read a majority of the manga volumes that have been released by Yen Press (props to them for doing such an excellent job with those, by the way), and I absolutely loved every page of what I read. The characters are my favorite element of the series, but the premise, artwork, mystery, and the ominous atmosphere in general are top-notch. Each story did an excellent job of getting me to love all of the characters, and then through a surprisingly ingenious(?) series of despairing events managed to destroy their lives in some of the worst ways I could imagine.
I’ve watched a few episodes of the anime and do indeed plan to watch it all some day, but I thought I’d take a look at the visual novels first–I bought the Question Arcs and proceeded to enter a very long journey as guided by Keiichi-kun. (And Asakasa-san in the last novel.) Suffice to say, my first impressions were… mixed? At least I was a bit surprised to see the visual novel looked like this:
Higurashi is truly a frightening sight to behold
Well perhaps we can all agree Quality Artwork isn’t what made Ryukishi07 a roaring success. (The random effects-stricken photograph backgrounds don’t help much either.) But what about the story? That’s what we buy a novel for in the first place, right? And just as I hoped, the Higurashi stories are great. The level of detail of course is drastically more extensive in its original form–one manga chapter is perhaps an hour of reading time in the visual novel, or maybe the equivalent of thirty seconds in the anime (holy crap is the anime fast-paced). On top of this, there are a lot of extra scenes in the visual novels, so the main cast gets plenty more character development. The general atmosphere of each story builds slowly, characters change gradually, and the payoff at the end when things finally get crazy… IT’S HUGE. Ryukishi07 definitely knew how to plan these novels in a way to bring about specific and strong reactions from his readers. And all the while, there’s always that overarching mystery to try piecing together. It really is an engaging style of storytelling being pulled off with this series.
I’m still not sure what all that stuff is in the entry though.
Another plus is that we really get a good feel for Keiichi’s character, since the stories are told from his point of view. His confusion and distrust in Demoned Away, his feelings of regret in Cotton Drifting, and the series of
