Karifean's Blog of Visual Novels

(Original Post on the Forums)

#1
Umineko no Naku Koro ni
Developer: 07th Expansion
Availability: Localized by MangaGamer (translated by TheWitchHunt)
Adult Content: None
Length: Longer than the Bible (100+ Hours)

The food the victims were given had small bombs in it, which exploded from inside their stomachs!

Nothing else could be number one. As much as I love Little Busters to bits, my appreciation for Umineko is on a whole new level. A spiritual successor to Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, but a fundamentally very different story.

Umineko OST - Fishy Aroma

At first glance, Umineko is a simple mystery story. 18 people gather on a remote island. A typhoon comes and traps them all on the island for three days. People start dying. It's very reminiscent of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, but Umineko is so, so much more than that...

For starters, it's not as simple as people being murdered. It's people being murdered in impossible scenarios. People dying inside closed rooms with no possible way for a murderer to escape the scene after committing the crime. People dying even though everyone else has an airtight alibi. And all the while, eerie occultic drawings and mocking letters appear that claim the murders to be the work of the legendary golden witch 'Beatrice' using magic to kill the victims.

One of my favorite parts of Umineko is its absolutely stellar storytelling. The first episode is rather reminiscent of its spiritual predecessor, Higurashi, what with the increasingly unsettling atmosphere and urge to find out what's really going on, but when the "Episode 1 Post-Presentation Tea Party" (think all-staff gatherings from Higurashi) rolls around, things change. The protagonist, Battler Ushiromiya, refuses to accept that his family was killed by a 'witch' using 'magic', because, well, magic doesn't exist and the very notion that a witch was the one killing people is absurd!

So many questions start filling your mind. Is 'Beatrice' human or a supernatural being? Are there really only 18 people on the island? If Beatrice is indeed one of the 18, then who could it be? Couldn't there be more than five master keys? What if there was an unknown 19th or even 20th person X that uses spare master keys to create closed rooms?

You might be thinking that because you can never be sure about the true answer to these questions that reasoning in Umineko is pointless. Well my friend, that's where Umineko becomes ~glorious~ and introduces the "red truth". Simply put, any words written in red are the absolute truth, and there is most certainly no need to doubt that! Such a simple addition, yet it changes everything. Now all of a sudden, if you get a red truth stating there are no more than five master keys on the island you can be 100% sure that this is the truth, not just a lie perpetuated by someone, and thus you may discard any theories involving more than five master keys.

But... if you ever find yourself completely out of theories... or you just don't want to suspect any of the character you've come to love... you may just have to accept that magic does exist, and the murders were indeed committed by a witch...

"OBJECTION!" ...uh I mean "REPEAT IT!"

Of course Umineko isn't just a puzzle. It's certainly much of the initial setup, and trying to reason out the truth is a lot of fun, but if that were all it wouldn't be sitting at the #1 spot. The main happenings of 1986 Rokkenjima are only the tip of the iceberg. Below the tip is recursive layer upon recursive layer of storytelling. When you're reading a story that's an imitation of message bottles telling the same story in a different way, which in turn is being read to you by a character in the game, and you get to see all that by spectating a higher plane of existence from an even higher plane of existence... it's amazing. And naturally all those layers have their own stories and characters, and it gets to the point where I'm simply in awe at the fact that someone actually wrote this. Someone actually thought up this entire complex multi-layered story, and wrote it in such a skilled way that it's, surprisingly enough, almost easy to follow.

Umineko can be enjoyed in many different ways, hell you could probably just ignore the mystery entirely and just try to enjoy the plot, but if you don't at least occasionally stop to think, gather your ideas, draw conclusions, Umineko is going to leave you in the dust. It very much expects its readers to engage in its plot, it's not a mindless kind of story you can just quickly read through without caring much... if you do that I believe you'll miss out on a lot of what makes Umineko as great as it is.

Oh, and for the record, it's not connected to Higurashi beyond one common character (who didn't even have a sprite in Higurashi) and numerous references. Plot-wise they're completely separate, so there's no need to worry about missing out on anything if you jump straight to Umineko instead of reading Higurashi first.

Battler-actually-killed-his-family-to-take-revenge-for-his-stupid-name-Theory.png

Wow I got so hung up on the storytelling I haven't even mentioned the characters yet! The main characters of Umineko are the members of the Ushiromiya family - the old family head, the seven adults and the four cousins - with the adolescent Battler being the main protagonist. There are also five servants on the island at the time of the incident, as well as the family head's physician, making 18 characters initially. But Umineko's cast grows to almost ridiculous numbers. Every single episode introduces new characters.

The TIPS menu helps you keep track.

This seems strange to say after gushing about how much I love the characters of Little Busters... but Umineko has definitely the best cast of characters I've ever seen. What sets them apart from Little Busters is that there are no saints or devils in Umineko. Umineko makes sure you understand that even your favorite characters have their faults, and even your most hated characters have their good sides. Wishing for everyone to be perfect is just... fantasy.

Pretty much every single one of the about 40 characters is complex and well-written, especially the adult family members and the one particular character first introduced in the Episode 1 Tea Party - BEST FEMALE CHARACTER EVER. There are very few characters I don't care for at all, mainly the useless rabbits. Everyone else, protagonists and antagonists alike... well let's just say a Top List of favorite characters would become monotone and predictable reeeally quickly if I didn't limit myself to one-per-novel.

Just like Higurashi, Umineko is considered a 'sound novel', so it doesn't have any branching story paths or anything like that, and overall focuses on using its plot and sound to create an atmosphere, rather than through its imagery. Does it succeed? OH YES IT DOES.

Saying this on a Final Fantasy forum feels dangerous... but Umineko has bar none my favorite soundtrack of all time. It's a collaborative effort with entries from many different Japanese composers and it. is. glorious. The main three composers are dai, Luck Ganriki and zts. My favorite of those three would have to be zts, for composing totally awesome and hype tracks for every episode, like Worldend Dominator, Mirage Coordinator, Golden Slaughterer or Dreamenddischarger, and also some beautiful tracks like Far, or really atmospheric tracks such as Dead Angle. Dai is responsible for many feelsy tracks, for example Hope or Soul of Soul, but also wonderful tracks like Life or Final Answer. Special mention to ~45, who composed several gripping tone-setting tracks such as Solitary Deep Sea Fish, Prison Strip and Patchwork Chimera. Yeah, I really like the Umineko OST.

As for the graphics, it's a significant step up from Higurashi, no doubt, but the drawings are still somewhat crude. However, I have to give it to Ryukishi07, they have some of the most expressive faces I've ever seen, and I do feel there's a certain kind of charm to the sprites. There is once again a graphical upgrade patch if you still don't want them, and it also adds voice acting to the game, but I feel both versions have their advantages.

Here for example I feel the two variants give off quite a different vibe. I prefer the former.

But what ultimately cements Umineko at #1 is the effect it had on me. Umineko changed the way I look at the world, and the people in it. I feel it widened my perspectives, that I can now understand and see things I couldn't have before. The struggles and teachings of Umineko deeply resonated with me and even though it's only been a little more than a year since I first read it, I couldn't imagine what I'd be like never having read it.

One of the most fun parts about reading Umineko was going back and reading through all 100 hours all over again just to find myself in awe at how beautifully and intricately it's constructed. I used to far prefer Episode 3 over the other episodes of the first half, but now I like Episode 1 and 2 just as much, and Episode 2 and 4 don't feel nearly as badly-paced as they used to. My absolute favorite scenes in the story are the endings of each and every single episode, especially Episode 5, 6 and 7. Just thinking back to that "Sorry but... Even if you do join us..." scene takes me right back to how much it blew my mind the first time I read it.

About the anime, I have not watched it myself but I have heard soooo many negative opinions on it that I still honestly discourage watching it. I could not imagine the story of Umineko being nearly as impressive if it wasn't told as well as in the visual novel, and that seems to be where the anime fails. Which leaves naught but a confusing mess with way too many characters than could possibly be developed well in a condension of 50 hours of reading time into 24 anime episodes. Not to mention Chiru - Umineko Episodes 5-8 - never even got an adaptation so you're stuck with an incomplete story! Yeah, don't watch the anime. Just don't.

But if you're more of a manga person, I have heard many very good things about it - even supposedly clearing up some all-too-cryptic parts of the novel - so that might be worth checking out. If you can stand the lack of that amazing soundtrack, that is.

Maria <3

I do not hesitate to call Umineko a masterpiece, and the overall best work of literature I have ever read. It's not perfect by any means, and has many flaws I could point out, but that's only natural and its good sides far, far outweigh the bad. Ryukishi07 is a truly amazing writer, and I hope that one day the When They Cry series will be continued. Not as a continuation of Umineko of course, it's a complete story and fine as it is, but as an all-new installment.

And to everyone who doesn't think nearly as highly of Umineko as I do, I only have one thing to say...

Without love, it cannot be seen.